The Star of Kazan

by Eva Ibbotson

  Edeltraut’s handkerchief came out and she dabbed her eyes. It was a new one, edged with finest lace; there had been no time yet to embroider it with the von Tannenberg initials.

  ‘Death is always sad,’ she went on, ‘but he was very, very old. Often in the last years he told me how tired he was; how he longed to be at rest.’

  ‘And now he is, God bless him,’ put in Mathilde.

  Edeltraut raised her eyebrows at her sister. She never liked being interrupted and both the godfather and his legacy belonged to her. ‘You can be certain,’ she told the children, ‘that we gave him a wonderful funeral. A dozen black horses bedecked with plumes, three carriages packed with important mourners . . . a service in the cathedral presided over by the archbishop . . . Everybody who mattered in the city was there. The Prince of Essen sent his equerry.’ She dabbed her eyes once more, then put the handkerchief away. ‘So tonight when you go to bed I want you to promise to kneel and say a prayer for Herr von Grotius. I know you never met him, but he was a good man.’

  ‘A very good man,’ said Mathilde, who felt that she was not being allowed a fair share of the story.

  ‘Because he begged us not to go into mourning we shall wear our ordinary clothes,’ Edeltraut went on, ‘except when we go out, when we shall have black armbands. There will be armbands for you also so that people know we care and I shall wear a black ribbon on my petticoat, as my mother would have done, because he was my godfather.’

  But to Annika it seemed that the clothes the grown-ups were wearing were not very ordinary. The muff Edeltraut had thrown down was made of sable, Mathilde wore a jacket embroidered in gold thread and Uncle Oswald’s shining new boots were made of finest kid.

  Hermann had done his best to listen patiently, but now he got to his feet and moved to his mother’s side.

  ‘Does that mean I can go to St Xavier’s?’ he asked excitedly. ‘Does it? Does it?’

  Edeltraut smiled at him.

  ‘Yes, my dear, it does. That will be our first task – to get you ready for the Easter term. The time for you to serve your Fatherland has come!’

  Hermann’s face flushed with joy. He pulled back his shoulders and gave a perfect military salute.

  ‘I am ready,’ he said.

  For a moment no one could think of anything except the noble way that Hermann was behaving. Then Edeltraut broke the silence.

  ‘And now you will want to see your presents.’

  The boxes were piled up on the low table. Gudrun opened hers to find, in nests of tissue paper, a blue velvet cloak and hood with a matching muff – and a pair of white lace gloves.

  ‘Oh, Mama,’ she said – and her long pale face lit up. She slipped on the cloak and the hood, and wouldn’t take them off the whole evening.

  Hermann’s present took a long time to unwrap; inside the embossed paper was a leather box with the monogram Zwingli and Hammerman, goldsmiths to the president of Switzerland, stamped on the side. Inside the box were several layers of green felt, and inside that was a statuette, in pure silver, of General von Moltke on his horse.

  ‘Be careful of it, Hermann,’ said his mother. ‘It’s really valuable.’

  ‘Thank you, Mother.’ Hermann was delighted. ‘I’ll be able to take it to St Xavier’s and show the others.’

  ‘And now you, Annika. This is what you wanted, isn’t it?’

  She handed her a box wrapped in brown paper. Annika took the first present from her mother with eager hands. Inside was a pair of rubber galoshes. Annika thanked her warmly, but she had seen at once that they were a size too small.

  The next two weeks were spent in getting Hermann ready for St Xavier’s. This was not a simple matter. Hermann had a list of the things he had to have and they were many.

  ‘I shall need two dress uniforms and a new pair of riding boots and a hard hat with a badge and my own pistol . . . and a double-breasted greatcoat with wide lapels . . . and six pairs of white kid gloves . . .’

  It was now that a new figure entered the lives of the family at Spittal: Hermann’s friend Karl-Gottlieb von Dammerfeld. Karl-Gottlieb had gone to St Xavier’s at the beginning of the year and now he sent little notes to Hermann telling him about the things that were not on the official list but everybody had to have if they were not to become a laughing stock, like slippers made of deerskin and silver tooth-mugs inscribed with the family crest.

  Because the roof of the hunting lodge was being treated for woodworm, Gudrun and her parents were staying at Spittal until the repairs were done. But even Gudrun, who worshipped Hermann, sighed when the post brought another letter from Karl-Gottlieb.

  Annika had not been allowed to help the servants, but she was definitely allowed to help Hermann. She was allowed to polish his badges and clean his buttons and iron his shirts because she did it so much better than old Bertha, who had returned from the funeral, and better even than the new maid who had been engaged.

  ‘I don’t want you to think you’ve been forgotten, Annika,’ said her mother. ‘I have a lovely surprise planned for you later, but just at the moment I know you will like to see Hermann off safely. He’s waited for this so long.’

  Annika didn’t mind helping Hermann, but she was amazed at how much he longed to go to a place which sounded to her like a kind of prison. The boys slept forty to a dormitory on iron beds, they marched everywhere to military commands and the punishments were awesome.

  ‘Sometimes they handcuff a boy’s hand to his foot or give him ten lashes.’

  ‘But wouldn’t you be terrified?’

  ‘No, because I won’t be disobedient. I’m going to win the Sword of Honour, you’ll see. And when I come out I’ll be an officer in a cavalry regiment with two horses of my own, and if there’s a war I’ll defend the Fatherland and win the Iron Cross.’

  Because Hermann had to be measured for new clothes and boots, they had to drive to Bad Haxenfeld, and since Annika had a good eye and Hermann liked having people to show off to, both she and Gudrun went with him on these shopping trips.

  And it was there that Annika met the last person in the world she expected to see.

  With the weather growing warmer, more and more visitors had come to the spa. There was a Lithuanian nobleman who was mad, but nicely so, and who stood on the steps of the casino handing out red roses to anybody he liked the look of, and a famous actress with an inflamed liver and a tiger cub on a lead. A band played in the park now as well as in the pump room. Men in white flannels brayed on the tennis courts, and brightly painted boats, ready for hire, appeared on the lake.

  Zed had driven them in. He’d been offhand and grumpy since he took Annika to hear the gypsies, and didn’t seem interested in the good fortune that had come to Spittal.

  ‘I’ve never heard of any godfather in Switzerland,’ he said. ‘And why hasn’t Bertha been paid?’

  ‘She will be, I’m sure,’ said Annika. ‘Only there’s so much to do. Once Hermann goes away . . .’

  In Bad Haxenfeld, Zed went as usual to help the Baron and wheel him to the baths. The old man was starting on a new course of thalassotherapy, which meant that seaweed had to be brought from the Baltic and mixed with the spa water because it was rich in iodine. Seaweed is slippery stuff and the Baron liked to have Zed to lift him in and out of the squelchy fronds.

  Meanwhile, Annika, with Gudrun and Frau Edeltraut, accompanied Hermann to the tailor, where his dress tunics were taking shape.

  The fitting took a long time because Karl-Gottlieb had told him that in spite of what it said on the prospectus for the college, the cadets were now wearing their collars at least two centimetres higher than in the diagram. This annoyed the tailor, who said that such a collar would scratch the young gentleman’s chin, but Karl-Gottlieb had already written that a sore chin was regarded at St Xavier’s as a sign of manhood, and the tailor was overruled.

  After that Edeltraut went to meet Mathilde in a dress shop. Her sister was spending altogether too much money on her own clothes since
the visit to Switzerland and needed watching.

  ‘You can go to Zettelmayer’s for coffee and cakes,’ she told the children. ‘I’ll meet you at the hotel.’

  Zettelmayer’s was the best pastry shop in Bad Haxenfeld; its cakes were famous all over the province. Everyone who could afford it came there; people taking the cure or people driving through the town. The shop overlooked the park; the tablecloths were rose-coloured, the chairs were pink velvet and gilt, and the smell wafting out – of coffee and cinnamon and chocolate and apricots – stopped people in their tracks.

  Gudrun and Hermann ordered hot chocolate and went over to choose their cakes. There were iced eclairs, which were wheeled away like patients in a hospital to be injected with fresh whipped cream. There were wild strawberry tartlets, the fruit as red as drops of blood, and almond biscuits shaped like stars.

  Hermann chose a nut-layer tart with confectioner’s custard and Gudrun, as always, followed him and chose the same – but Annika hesitated. She knew all the cakes, she could have baked all of them except one: a small squat bun, very dark in colour, but not, she thought, the darkness of chocolate. She studied it for a while and then asked the lady what it was.

  ‘A h – that’s a local speciality. A Norrland Nussel. It’s made of chestnuts and molasses and a touch of tansy. You won’t find it anywhere else.’

  ‘Can one get the recipe?’ Annika asked. ‘Or is it secret?’

  ‘Bless you, no. I’ll write it out for you. Are you from Vienna?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You’ll know about patisserie then.’

  Annika nodded and took her bun to the table. It was unlike anything she had eaten before – a dark and serious taste, but sumptuous too – and she looked forward to sending Ellie the recipe. But Hermann, once again, was not at all pleased with her.

  ‘Why do you always talk to waitresses and servants? It’s not the thing. You’re making us conspicuous.’

  Their table was by the window and Annika sat watching the people outside. Children bowled hoops, nursemaids pushed prams and everywhere the patients in wheelchairs or on crutches lifted their faces to the sun.

  Then suddenly she leaned forward. It couldn’t be . . . except that it was. No one else’s bottom stuck out like that; no one else born and bred in Vienna would wear such a violently Scottish tartan dress; no one else tugged at the hand of her exhausted governess so fiercely. It was Loremarie Egghart and she was coming up the steps, pushing open the cafe door. The governess shook her head, but Annika could have told her she was wasting her time. If Loremarie wanted to eat cakes at Zettelmayer’s, then that was exactly what she would do.

  ‘I want a caramel sundae with two straws and a chocolate eclair – a round one, not a long one,’ she was announcing in her loud and piercing voice, while the governess (a new one whom Annika had not seen before) tried to call her back.

  ‘You know your mama wishes not—’ she began in terrible German.

  But Loremarie had caught sight of Annika sitting at her table. She stopped dead on her way to the counter. She filled her chest with air as if she was an opera singer about to launch into a tricky aria.

  Then she pointed at Annika and in an accusing shriek she said, ‘You’re a thief! You’re a dirty, disgusting thief!’ Her voice rose even higher. Then, ‘You stole my great-aunt Egghart’s trunk!’ yelled Loremarie across the cafe floor.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  THE EGGHARTS ARE DISGUSTED

  It was Leopold, the Eggharts’ snooty manservant, who had brought the appalling news to his employers.

  ‘I had it from the filing clerk in the office below the lawyers. She’s engaged to the boy who cleans up for Gerhart and Funkel and he swears it’s true. He carried it to the storeroom.’

  ‘But that’s outrageous. It can’t be allowed. I’ve never heard anything so shocking!’ said Herr Egghart.

  ‘The trunk belonged to OUR great-aunt. She had no business to leave it to that little kitchen girl,’ said his wife. ‘No business whatsoever.’

  ‘But, Mama, you said it was just rubbish in the trunk. You said I couldn’t use it even to dress up,’ said Loremarie.

  ‘So it is rubbish. And probably full of germs too. But that has nothing to do with it.’ Frau Egghart’s bosom was definitely heaving. ‘It was OUR great-aunt, so it is OUR trunk!’

  ‘Actually it was MY great-aunt,’ said her husband. ‘All the same, it’s an impertinence. How dare she leave it away from the family after all we did for her? Giving her a home.’

  ‘Nursing her with such loving care,’ said Frau Egghart.

  ‘I’m going to get to the bottom of this,’ said Herr Egghart. ‘Perhaps that kitchen child blackmailed her.’

  ‘Annika could be very cunning,’ said Loremarie.

  ‘I’m going across to the professors’ house. It’s an insult to the family.’

  The professors were at home but not pleased to be interrupted.

  But when Sigrid announced the Eggharts they gathered themselves together and came downstairs.

  ‘What can we do for you?’ asked Professor Julius politely.

  ‘You can get your cook’s adopted daughter to return our great-aunt’s trunk,’ roared Herr Egghart, and the professor stepped back because Herr Egghart’s voice, known as the loudest in Vienna, hurt his ears.

  ‘The trunk she stole from us by making up to the poor old lady as she lay on her deathbed,’ put in Frau Egghart.

  ‘I can think of nothing more disgusting than cheating someone out of their property when they are no longer in their right mind,’ said Herr Egghart.

  Professor Julius had been taught by his mother not to hit people who came to the house, but sometimes he wished that he hadn’t.

  ‘Why don’t you sit down?’ he said. And then, ‘It is true that the lawyers told us that Fräulein Egghart had left a bequest to Annika, but as you know she no longer lives with us. We gave Annika’s new address to the lawyers and they said they would send the trunk to her mother – to Frau von Tannenberg – to give to the child.’

  ‘Well, I’m not going to leave the matter there,’ said Herr Egghart. ‘The trunk must be returned to us.’

  ‘The lawyers gave us to understand that the contents of the trunk only had a sentimental value – old keepsakes from her days in the theatre and so on.’

  Frau Egghart gave an indignant snort. ‘Are you suggesting that it would not have had a sentimental value for US?’

  ‘She was OUR great-aunt,’ roared Herr Egghart, and Emil remembered Richard the Lionheart, at the sound of whose voice horses were said to kneel.

  Loremarie, meanwhile, had crept out of the drawing room and made her way to the kitchen.

  ‘Your Annika’s a thief,’ she said.

  Ellie was sitting in the wicker chair, shelling peas. She had lost a lot of weight and she looked tired, but her voice when she spoke to Loremarie was firm and strong.

  ‘Get out of my kitchen,’ she said. ‘And fast!’

  That night in bed under the goose-down duvet for which so many Hungarian geese had given their lives, the Eggharts were still muttering angrily.

  ‘I’m going to write to Frau von Tannenberg. The trunk went to her; she will make Annika give it back. And if not we’ll sue.’

  ‘I’ve got a better idea,’ said Frau Egghart. ‘You know we’re going to Bad Haxenfeld at the end of the month. Well, it’s only about an hour’s drive from there to the Tannenberg place – remember you looked it up? If we call on her and take her by surprise she won’t have time to make up any excuses.’

  Herr Egghart nodded. ‘Yes, that might do. Perhaps I could get leave from the office a little earlier.’ He pushed his leg out of bed. ‘I’ll be glad to get Dr Becker on to my varicose veins. They’re giving me a lot of trouble.’

  ‘Yes, Becker’s a good man, but I’ve never met anyone who understood my oesophageal sphincter like that young French doctor in the massage room.’

  ‘Your what?’

  ‘My sphin
cter,’ said his wife patiently. ‘The ring of muscle between my stomach and my gullet. I told you, it’s beginning to leak.’ She yawned and settled herself back on her pillow. ‘They say they’ve got a new treatment,’ she murmured. ‘Something to do with seaweed . . .’

  In the middle of the night Herr Egghart turned over restlessly.

  ‘She was MY great-aunt,’ he muttered angrily, and slept again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  HERMANN’S HONOUR

  Annika did not like Hermann. Quite apart from what he had done to Hector, she found him snobbish, selfish and overbearing.

  But in the moment after Loremarie had called her a thief, and everyone in the cafe fell silent and stared at her, Annika saw another side to him. Hermann rose to his feet. He walked up to Loremarie, he clicked his heels.

  ‘Allow me to introduce myself,’ he said. ‘I am Acting Cadet Hermann von Tannenberg.’ He turned to Annika. ‘This lady is my sister, Fräulein Annika von Tannenberg. Anybody who calls a member of my family a thief will have to answer for the consequences. If you have a brother, it will give me great satisfaction to challenge him to a duel.’

  Loremarie stood stock-still, her mouth open. The governess tugged uselessly at her arm.

  ‘I . . . don’t have . . . a brother,’ she stammered.

  ‘Then perhaps your father would care to meet me. Ask him to choose his weapons – pistols or swords.’

  Everyone was still staring, their cakes forgotten.

  ‘Oh, Hermann,’ breathed Gudrun adoringly. ‘How brave you are.’

  ‘Not at all,’ said Hermann carelessly. ‘Any insult to those with von Tannenberg blood must be avenged.’

  But Annika now tried to return to the real world. ‘Loremarie, I didn’t steal your great-aunt’s trunk. I know nothing about her trunk. How could I steal it? I haven’t seen it since she died.’

  ‘Yes, you have. She left it to you in her will because she was mad and it isn’t fair. She was OUR great-aunt, so it is OUR trunk.’