The Star of Kazan

As she drained her glass and stood up to go, she heard the sound of barking coming from an outhouse at the back.

‘That’s Hector. He’s woken up.’

‘Could I see him?’

‘No, not now. You need . . . a lot of time for that, and I’ve got to go and feed the pigs. Anyway, you’d better get back; they’ll be wondering where you are.’

He had suddenly withdrawn and she made her way to the door, trying not to feel snubbed.

‘Thank you,’ she said, turning to smile at him.

‘For what?’

‘The mangel-wurzel, the milk . . . letting me help with Rocco.’ Outside the dog stopped barking and began to whine. ‘I’ve always wanted a dog,’ she said wistfully.

‘You wouldn’t want this one,’ said Zed.

C

HAPTER

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HIRTEEN

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UNCH AT THE

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UNTING

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ODGE

Annika’s new-found aunt, who was married to the red-haired Uncle Oswald with the feather in his beard, lived some five kilometres from Spittal in the middle of a wood.

There were a number of such patches of woodland dotted about the great plain of Norrland, and as Uncle Oswald drove them along the lane to his house, Annika was surprised by how closely the dark pines and firs were packed together. The daylight, even now at midday, seemed to have trouble in reaching the ground; they might have been in Siberia.

Her mother’s sister was called Mathilde. She was tall and dark like Edeltraut, but Annika could see that she was a very different kind of person. Where her mother was regal and dignified and stately, Aunt Mathilde was shrewish and pathetic with a whining note to her voice.

‘So this is Annika,’ she said. ‘Well, well . . . we must just hope . . .’ and broke off as she encountered her sister’s raised eyebrows. She kissed Hermann, who closed his eyes and endured it, and then introduced her daughter, Gudrun.

‘Gudrun has been looking forward to meeting you,’ she said and the two girls shook hands.

Gudrun did not look as though she had been looking forward to meeting Annika or indeed anybody else. She was very thin and very pale and very tall, with the same light hair as her cousin Hermann, but her single plait, like Gudrun herself, seemed undernourished and ended in a discouraged-looking wisp. If one had not known that she was Gudrun Brigitta von Seltzer one would have taken her for an orphan in an institution – the kind of girl that is seen standing listlessly at the orphanage gates, not even playing with a ball.

Next to his wife and daughter, Uncle Oswald looked even pinker and ruddier than before with his shiny skin and ginger beard and the dramatic scar running down his cheek. It was a duelling scar, her mother had explained: Oswald had got it when he was a student. It was the longest scar anyone had got that year and he was very proud of it.

The von Seltzers’ house, which was on the edge of the Spittal estate, was a hunting lodge set right in the thickest part of the forest. It was called Felsenheim and was built entirely of wood, with carved shutters like those of the alpine houses Annika was used to seeing in the meadows of her homeland, but there were no pots of geraniums on the window sills, no smoked hams hanging from the rafters.

What there were . . . were antlers. There were antlers everywhere. Antlers on the walls and antlers making up the furniture. Some were huge and branched, some were small and sharp and spiky, and some weren’t strictly antlers but simply horns.

Those antlers that were not part of the furniture still had their heads, and their glass eyes, and were nailed to the wall. The stuffing was coming out of them here and there, but no one who came to visit could doubt that this was a house devoted to the chase.

Ye t here too there were those curious spaces on the wall and in the display cabinets which held antique guns and skinning knives and bullet-holders, as though many of the treasures had been removed.

‘Did you bring anything?’ Annika heard her Aunt Mathilde ask her mother.

‘What should I bring?’ her mother answered. ‘Anyway Oswald brought you three of our mallards the day before yesterday. Surely you can’t have eaten them all?’

Mathilde sighed. ‘Gudrun is growing,’ she said.

Annika, who had managed to avoid sitting on an antler chair and was perched on a stool made of deerskin stretched over two logs, was getting a little worried. It was half-past one, and they had definitely been asked to lunch, but she could smell nothing at all. Even if the kitchen was quite far away, surely there should be some smells? Onions softening in butter . . . a joint roasting . . . and with the serious smells of the meat a lighter smell. Vanilla, perhaps, or cloves added to simmering apples. They must have put apple rings down in the autumn to dry.

‘It’s the maid’s day off,’ said Mathilde. ‘So we are having a cold collation.’