The Wolf Princess

by Cathryn Constable

  Masha shrieked and leaped up, grabbing a piece of linen from the top of her mother’s sewing pile. Her mother quickly pulled a bowl down from a shelf and poured water into it, which splashed onto the floor.

  Dmitri kept saying the same word over and over again. “Pamada! Pamada!”

  His mother, speaking calmly, set a small bowl of fat — the pamada? — in front of him. She washed the cut, which looked deep, as if he’d been bitten: The flaps of skin around the edge of the cut were ragged. Dmitri winced as she put her fingers into the fat and smoothed it onto the cut. She then wrapped the hand tightly in clean linen.

  Dmitri, throughout this ordeal, had chewed his lip and not made a single sound. He cradled the bandaged hand in the other and, for the first time, seemed to notice his surroundings. Seeing Sophie, he started.

  “You?” he said. “Here?”

  He looked up at Masha, who stood next to him, her arm around him protectively. Sophie saw the little scar on his cheek jump.

  “Da,” she said simply.

  He shook his head.

  His mother came over and pulled off his sheepskin cap and kissed the top of his head. He growled and shrugged her off, but she laughed and kissed him again.

  “My brother, Dmitri,” Masha said. She spoke with fierce pride.

  “Is he all right?” Sophie looked at the boy. His face was extremely pale.

  “Dmitri brave!” Masha declared. “He no frightened anything!”

  The boy made a face as if he didn’t want his sister to boast. But Sophie could tell he was pleased she’d said it. His mother poured some borscht from a small pan into a bowl and put it on the table in front of him with a piece of bread. She broke the bread into chunks and he picked up his spoon with his good hand.

  “He certainly knows some good places to hide,” Sophie smiled.

  The boy looked up from his soup, the spoon halfway between the bowl and his lips. He smiled back.

  “Dmitri does many, many things …” Masha stood straight. “He very important!”

  The boy shook his head and elbowed his sister. Sophie saw him blush and he glanced up at Sophie before attacking his soup once more.

  “He chop wood!” Masha said. “Quick and fast! He groom Viflyanka! He feed —”

  Dmitri made a sharp clicking noise at the back of his throat. Masha put her hand to her mouth and blushed.

  Dmitri frowned. “She tell woman she see wolf!”

  “A white wolf!” Sophie blurted out. “I shouted, but no one believed me.”

  Masha exchanged a look with Dmitri.

  “I thought the wolf would attack Viflyanka …” Sophie’s words were tumbling out. She stopped and took a breath and looked at the intent faces of Dmitri and Masha. It was easy to see they were brother and sister now: the shape of their chins, the flare of their nostrils, and their serious, intelligent eyes.

  Dmitri nodded slowly. “She tell woman upstairs! And I am made to clean chandeliers!”

  Sophie looked at her hands. “The princess said there were no wolves, that the wolves had been taken care of.”

  Dmitri leaned back. He put his bandaged hand up onto the table. His mother poured cherry cordial into three beakers, then sat down next to Masha and smiled at her children.

  “What do you know about the wolves?” Dmitri spoke very quietly.

  Sophie said, “Ivan told us they used to guard the palace. That they avenged the murder of Prince Vladimir.”

  Dmitri and Masha looked at each other, as if wondering whether to say anything.

  “Please tell me,” Sophie said. She had sensed, when they were sitting in the chandelier, that Dmitri would not — or could not? — tell her about the wolves. Had he been worried about being overheard? What was he afraid of?

  Dmitri took a sip of cordial from his beaker. “The last Princess Volkonskaya brought the white wolves here. She found a wounded cub in the forest and she nursed it. For this the wolves stayed with her. They helped her to escape into the forest. They protected her as she protected them.”

  “Our family called her volchiya printsessa … wolf princess,” Masha added. “The day she left palace was sad day for us — the Starovskys. All good fortune went with her and the child.”

  Sophie looked into the candle flame. As she stared into its blue center, the flame seemed to rise and float to one side.

  “Terrible night,” Masha whispered. “She told my great-grandmother she come back. She said she never forget Starovskys who served her!”

  “The wolves fought hard,” Dmitri said. “The next day, our family cleared the carcasses of horses … the bodies of men. They buried the prince.”

  “And then dark times come …” Masha continued. “But we never forget. We watch. We wait for Volkonskys to return.”

  “She promised our family!” Dmitri said vehemently. “Volkonskys keep their promises.”

  Sophie struggled to get the image of the dead horses out of her mind. “And now the princess has returned!” she said. “So you must be pleased?”

  Masha and Dmitri looked at each other, as if unsure what to say.

  “Woman upstairs,” Dmitri said at last, his cheeks flushing, “she does not respect wolves. If you do not respect the wolf, you do not respect the forest, the wilderness!”

  Masha put her arm around her brother and put her head on his shoulder. Sophie didn’t know what to say. How terrible to have waited for so long for the princess to return, and then find she was not the woman they had wanted or expected.

  Masha’s mother took some logs from a pile in the corner of the room and opened a door in a large tiled cupboard. A delicious smell of warm yeast swept the room, and Sophie crinkled her nose appreciatively.

  “We keep stove warm,” Masha said. “It never go out.”

  Masha’s mother smiled as she reached up to rearrange a pile of washing: flowered sheets, drying on the top of the large stove. Sophie had only ever seen drawings of these Russian stoves in the books she’d had as a child. Broad and square, with a wood fire inside, they gave off heat for hours. Sophie gasped in surprise as the sheets moved of their own accord, shook themselves, and became an old woman.

  “My babushka!” Masha laughed. “She very, very old!”

  “Babushka?” said Sophie, feeling her heartbeat return to normal.

  “Grandmother,” Masha translated.

  Masha’s mother spoke to the old woman, telling her something with great intensity. To Sophie’s concern, the old woman started to cry. She wiped the corner of her eye with her scarf, stared at Sophie, and muttered something under her breath. Then she reached out a thin hand, like a glove of skin worn over bones, and took Sophie’s hand in hers. She smiled and spoke to Masha.

  Masha nodded. “My babushka glad you are here. She say a girl not come to palace since wolf princess come many years ago.”

  “The last princess came here when she was a girl?” Sophie asked.

  Masha nodded. “She come when parents dead. Old Prince Volkonsky her guardian.”

  At these words, Sophie suddenly remembered her first night with her own guardian, Rosemary. The flat had seemed so cold and had smelled too clean. She was given a slice of toast and told to brush her teeth before bed. She knew she must “be good,” for the simple reason that if Rosemary would not look after her, there was nowhere else for her to go.

  “Volchiya printsessa loved forest. She loved to be outside. She was happy here. And when her guardian’s son, young Prince Vladimir, returned from army,” Masha smiled, “they married.”

  A bell rang above the door. Masha jumped in alarm. “You go now. We need work. Woman upstairs want coffee. We not be late.” She tugged gently at Sophie’s elbow. “Perhaps I wrong when I bring you …”

  She opened the door. Sophie didn’t want to leave the candlelight and Dmitri and Masha, their mother and babushka. They seemed so … together. A draft whipped into the little room, making the candle flame flicker.

  “Will your hand be all right?” Sophie asked Dmit
ri.

  He waved the bandaged hand and shrugged as if it were nothing. The old woman turned her back to them, settling herself back down on the stove. But as Masha’s mother came to say good-bye, stroking Sophie’s cheek gently with her work-worn hands, the old woman said something more. A look passed between Masha and her mother. The older woman smiled, but then checked herself and made the sign of the cross over Sophie.

  Masha spoke. “My mother says she is glad you here.”

  Sophie muttered, “I’m going home soon …”

  The word home sounded wrong even as she said it. She didn’t have a home if that meant people who really cared for her in the way Dmitri and Masha and their mother and babushka so obviously cared for each other. And weren’t you meant to feel safe at home, rather than in the way and an inconvenience? She only felt safe when she dreamed of her father and he linked his fingers through hers. And for a few precious seconds when Dmitri had sung to her in the chandelier. No. She could say she was going home, but the word was meaningless. Inexplicably, she felt tears well up. Something about this room, these people, felt so right to her. She wanted to stay.

  But Masha had already started to run. “Perhaps yes, perhaps no …” She skidded to a halt and listened to a door opening and closing somewhere in the palace. Her eyes burned, reflecting the torchlight. “We are who we are,” she said. “However the moon may shine, it’s still not sunlight …”

  The panel slid open, and Sophie saw the moonlight on the bedroom floor.

  Masha squeezed her hand. “We not know why you are here, but you must be careful. Woman upstairs … she will ask you many things.” The girl glanced over her shoulder as if she might see the princess right behind her. “You say nothing. You tell nothing. It not” — she frowned — “not safe for you to speak!”

  Before Sophie could say anything, Masha pushed her through the opening, and the panel slid shut.

  Delphine whispered something in her sleep. She turned over, and her fur fell to the floor. Sophie walked through the moonlight and picked it up, laying it gently over her friend.

  She sat on the edge of her bed. The wind had dropped; the moon sat above the broken shutter. Her breath came out in a cloud. Shivering, she slipped under the heavy pelt, which crackled as it moved. Just the faint tick of Delphine’s small travel alarm clock, the hands illuminating the twelve and the three.

  She pulled the fur high under her chin and sat up in bed to watch the moon. Perhaps if she focused on that clear, bright light, it might help her to understand what had just happened, why she was here in a forgotten palace, lost in a vast, empty country with people who behaved so strangely. She was confused, unmoored, like a small boat bobbing out to sea with no hope of finding her way back to shore, prey to the tide, the current, and the wind.

  The clock ticked on, the moon slipping behind the shutter as if no longer able to support its enormous crystalline weight.

  Sophie waited. There would be, she knew with calm certainty, a single, lonely howl. She would recognize it now, the way it slid around the higher note. She put her fingers to the piece of glass around her neck. It was as warm as her skin. She knew she would not sleep until she had heard it: the heartbreaking cry of that wolf.

  No one came to fetch them. No clothes had been laid out. Delphine unpacked the rest of her suitcase, placing piles of skirts and vintage silk blouses on a chair.

  “I forgot my ballet flats,” she said, sounding cross.

  Sophie looked down at her own now rather crumpled clothes, then pulled on the Volkonsky silver sarafan over her jeans. Delphine smiled her approval.

  “What should we do?” Marianne asked. “Should we go and find someone?”

  Sophie rubbed a circle on the frosted window and looked out onto the park below. She let her eyes relax and felt the morning twilight seep into her mind. She thought about last night. Dmitri’s hand … was he all right? And his sister, Masha. The image of them sitting next to each other, shoulders touching. And their story of the last, lost Volkonskys.

  But there was something else about the way they talked whenever the princess was mentioned. Surely they should have been pleased a Volkonsky had once more returned to the palace? They didn’t like the princess — that was clear. And what did they mean about respect for the wolves? She thought about how the princess had reacted at the lake when Sophie had shouted “wolf”… “The wolves have been taken care of … You saw nothing.” Why would she deny their existence?

  “I’m starving,” Marianne said, sighing. She looked around for the supper tray, but it had gone. “Who takes the things away?” she asked, blinking. “We never see anyone, do we?”

  Sophie was about to tell them about the Under Palace, but felt, suddenly, that it would sound ridiculous. Later. She would tell them later.

  “Ivan seems to do most of the stuff.” Delphine shrugged, checking her reflection. She had twisted her hair into two yellow coils on either side of her head. “Oh, let’s go and find someone!” she said. “We can’t sit around here all day. Are you going out like that, Marianne?”

  “Don’t start!” Marianne snapped. Her hair was unbrushed, and she was wearing scuffed loafers. Her shirt hung out beneath her sweater. Her cheeks flushed and she glared at Delphine.

  “I’m just saying …” Delphine looked flustered.

  “I don’t care what I look like!” Marianne pulled her sweater down. “Can’t you get that through your head? And no one else cares, either. It’s just you …”

  “Marianne …” Sophie took her arm, gently.

  Marianne sat down on her bed and took off her glasses. She rubbed her eyes. She looked as surprised by her outburst as the others. “I’m sorry,” she whispered. “You look lovely, Delphine. It’s just … I’m not interested in the same things as you.”

  “I know,” Delphine said quietly. “I think when I’m nervous … I get more anxious about what I’m wearing.”

  “Look, I’ll brush my hair,” Marianne said and, picking up her brush, gave it two quick strokes. Hair floated up with static. “Thing is,” she said, putting on her glasses, “whatever I do, I always look the same!”

  In the corridor, everything was quiet.

  “Do we even know where to go?” Marianne asked.

  “They’ll have left food for us in the White Dining Room.” Delphine sounded confident. “Like yesterday.”

  The princess was seated at the far end of the table. She was dressed in an elegant blue skirt and high-necked voile blouse, an enormous fur draped over the back of her chair. She was wearing red lipstick, and her mouth looked as full as a peony. Her head rested in her hand as she stared straight ahead.

  She pulled the fur stole around her shoulders as if she were cold, picked up a small cup stained with lipstick, stood up, and came toward them. Close up, she had dark circles under her eyes and Sophie could see tiny grains of powder on her nose. She had painted two thin black lines on her upper lids, the ends flicked up. But they seemed to have interrupted the fine dimensions of her face, making her look less remarkable.

  The princess passed a hand across her forehead. “I couldn’t sleep,” she said. “So much paperwork!” She looked frail, not like the day before. “And we have a guest arriving today! A very important guest. His name is General Grekov.”

  “Princess!” Ivan appeared in the doorway, carrying a tray of bread rolls.

  “Ivan?” Sophie saw the princess hastily try to control her expression.

  He carried the tray toward the sideboard. His hair was unkempt and he had left several buttons on his jacket undone. He didn’t meet the princess’s gaze. Instead he busied himself arranging plates, putting glasses on the table.

  The princess jumped when he dropped a handful of cutlery, and spoke to him sharply in Russian. He bent down to pick up what he had dropped, and Sophie saw that his hands were shaking.

  The princess sat down. She asked for more coffee, then just stared at the walls, as if imagining paintings that no longer hung there.

&n
bsp; The girls felt awkward. No one spoke. The princess checked her watch.

  “I can’t bear it,” she said. “I can’t sit here …” She smiled at the girls. “Come with me.”

  They followed her.

  “What’s going on?” Delphine kept an eye on the woman’s back, her hair pinned in elaborate braids. But the princess did not reply.

  Up a broad staircase, toward a pair of double doors, lyres painted on the panels, wolves with open mouths; snarling or singing, Sophie couldn’t tell. They were outside the gallery! The princess reached into the pocket of her skirt and pulled out a key.

  Sophie would see the place where Prince Vladimir had faced his murderers.

  Before the princess unlocked the door, she turned to Sophie. “Perhaps you will see something I have missed,” she said. “Come on!” She put her cold fingers on Sophie’s hand. “Come and meet the family!”

  The princess opened the door onto a musty-smelling void. Sophie heard the rasp of a match being lit and shaky plumes of candlelight danced on top of long candles. She gave each girl a single candle and then picked up a heavy, many-branched candelabrum and walked to the center of the enormous room. Faces loomed out of the darkness.

  “The Volkonskys!” the princess announced, her white arm extended as if she were making an introduction.

  There were hundreds of portraits: beautiful women with white shoulders and lapdogs; little boys with long hair and satin coats standing, like miniature adults, next to large hunting dogs or statues; men in arrogant poses, ignoring Sophie with their hooded eyes.

  “Look at this!” Delphine called, and Marianne followed her toward a huge portrait of a dark-haired beauty in an extravagant ice-blue ball gown.

  “There are so many of them!” Sophie turned around and around, holding her candle higher. The portraits covered every inch of the vast room.

  “Correction!” The princess walked farther into the room. “Were so many of them.” She fixed her gray eyes on Sophie. “Just think! At this moment, in all of Russia, there is only” — she counted the fingers on one hand — “yes, just the one Princess Volkonskaya.”