The Star of Kazan

A year after Edeltraut’s return, the Freiherr had a stroke. He lived for two more months, unable to speak, helpless. Bertha and Zed nursed their Master, willing him to recover, but he got steadily weaker. They were both at his bedside when he died.

After the funeral, Bertha and Zed were sent to the hut in the farmyard, allowed to work in the big house but not to sleep in it. A few weeks later, Edeltraut’s husband sailed for America. From then on she dropped her married name and ran the estate on her own.

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Annika had been at Spittal for a nearly a week. It was still bitterly cold, both outside the house and inside, where the only stoves that were lit in the morning were in the kitchen and her mother’s boudoir. The last of the ice had thawed from the hollows, which meant that not only the fields but most of the paths were flooded, and Annika’s feet were permanently wet. She had resisted all Ellie’s efforts to buy her waterproof overshoes in Vienna – no one who cared how they looked could wear galoshes. But now she decided to ask her mother if they could buy a pair the next time they went to the shops.

More birds had come from Greenland – skeins of wild geese and flights of teal, for which the red-bearded Oswald waited each dawn in his punt. He was a good shot – seldom bringing in fewer than half a dozen birds, which were hung in the outside larder and cooked, sometimes still full of lead shot, by the only other servant who worked in the house, a sulky silent girl called Hanne from a village on the other side of the lake. Hanne had been taught to bang the gong in the hall loudly before each meal, but when the ear-splitting noise had died away, the food that awaited them in the dining room was always the same. The charred legs of geese, stewed duck, pieces of blackcock fried in lard, made up both lunch and dinner, sometimes with turnips and potatoes, sometimes alone.

The family from the hunting lodge came over often, usually for lunch, and ate hungrily. Mathilde still looked desperate and tried to take her sister, Edeltraut, aside to whisper in her ear.

Zed had suggested that Annika should ask her mother if she could learn to ride.

‘You’d do less harm than Hermann,’ he had said.

But when Annika had put the question to her mother, Edeltraut had shaken her head.

‘Not at the moment, dear. There’s only Hermann’s horse just now and he has to be able to ride whenever he needs to so that he will be able to keep up at St Xavier’s. But it will all change soon, I promise you.’

Annika had also asked if she might go out in one of the boats, if she stayed near the shore.

‘I can swim,’ she said, ‘and I’d be very careful. Maybe Hermann would come and we could fish?’

But there were only two punts; one leaked and was dangerous, the other had to be kept free for Uncle Oswald.

Because she had fared badly over the riding and over going out in a boat, Annika had been careful not to ask if she could go to the farm. She would never have disobeyed her mother, but the days, with no school and no real occupation, were long, and down there she was happy. Zed not only did not mind her helping, he refused to let her stand about and watch with idle hands. She had taken over the egg collecting and he was teaching her to milk.

‘Why does nobody go to school here?’ she asked him, for she had seen children with satchels making their way down the lane towards the village.

Zed was stirring swill for the pigs. ‘Hermann doesn’t go to school because he’s not allowed to mix with the common children, and nor is Gudrun. I don’t go to school because there’s no one to do my work if I go. And you don’t go because you have to learn to be a stuck-up von Tannenberg instead of a servant girl.’

‘My mother isn’t stuck-up. She’s—’

‘All right, I know. You’re quite right to defend your mother. I’d be the same with mine if she was still alive.’

Though he answered general questions easily enough, Zed had told her very little about himself. Now though he said, ‘She was a gypsy . . . a Romany.’

So Hermann had been telling the truth.

‘There are a lot of Romanies working in Vienna, mostly playing in the cafes,’ said Annika. ‘They’re marvellous musicians.’ She sighed. ‘I miss music . . . not that I could play anything, but we used to sing at school, and there was always music coming out of the buildings.’ She grinned. ‘And of course Aunt Gertrude’s harp.’

‘Well, you’ll hear some music next Friday. You’re going into Bad Haxenfeld and there’s a bandstand there.’

‘Are you sure? Nobody’s said anything.’

‘Yes, I’m sure.’

Sometimes now, when no one was waiting for her, Annika went back with Zed to Bertha’s little house, watched by the storks, who had laid their first egg and were more wary now, but however much she asked, he wouldn’t let her see the dog she heard out at the back.