The Star of Kazan

22 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.’

But Hermann was writing something on a piece of paper. ‘If your father would care to name his seconds,’ he said grandly, clicking his heels once more, ‘he will find me at this address. All I require now is the name of your hotel.’ And as Loremarie gaped at him, ‘The hotel where you are staying.’

‘It’s called… the Haxenfeld Hydro,’ she mumbled, and then the governess, with a final tug at her arm, managed to drag her to the door.

‘I don’t understand it,’ said Annika, bewildered. ‘Mitzi said they took the trunk to the cellar after the old lady died, to have it thrown away. Could someone have stolen it from the Eggharts’ house?’

‘What happened to the trunk is neither here nor there,’ said Hermann, waving his hand. ‘What matters is that a member of the von Tannenberg family has been insulted. Leave this to me.’

But Gudrun had seen a difficulty. ‘If the girl’s father is not ennobled, you won’t be able to meet him in a duel.’ And as Annika stared at her, increasingly puzzled, she explained, ‘A member of the aristocracy is not permitted to fight a duel with persons of lower rank. Do you know who he is? The father?’

‘He’s a councillor. And he wants to be a statue.’ Both Gudrun and Hermann stared at her as though she was mad. ‘Well, with a statue Hermann cannot possibly fight,’ said Gudrun.

‘They’ve run out of seaweed,’ said Baron von Keppel as Zed wheeled him back from the baths. ‘Well, it stands to reason, having to drive it in 200 kilometres from the coast. The smell was awful. They said it was the iodine, but I’ve never smelt iodine that stank like that. And little flies came off it when they put it in the water. There was a woman making a dreadful fuss this morning because there wasn’t any left. Viennese by the sound of her. She wanted to try it for her sphincter. Why she should imagine seaweed would work on sphincters I don’t know. Her husband’s come for his veins. A common family with an awful child. They’re staying at the Hydro, I believe.’

Zed made agreeing noises. He liked Edeltraut’s uncle, who paid him generously and was free of the self-pity that so many invalids suffer from, but he did not always listen to every word he said.

They met a party of men coming towards them who greeted the Baron politely but did not stop to talk. ‘Undertakers,’ he said, sighing. ‘They’re here for two weeks. I still miss the dentists. Though I did overhear something quite entertaining yesterday. Apparently nearly a quarter of the coffins which are opened after a burial have scratch marks on the inside.’

‘You mean the people had been buried alive?’ said Zed. ‘I expect they were making it up.’

‘That’s what I thought,’ said Uncle Conrad. ‘I suppose it must be rather a gloomy profession, you can’t blame them for exaggerating a bit. Now the jewellers… they told some fascinating stories. There was one about a man in Paris — a famous jeweller with a crooked back who was in love with a dancer.’ He broke off as Lady Georgina Fairweather came swooping towards him in one of her amazing hats.

‘Have you heard that the seaweed has run out?’ she said. ‘It’s a scandal when you think what we pay—’

Zed stopped the chair and switched off his attention.

By the time they were under way again the baron had forgotten the jewellers and was telling Zed about the man who had come the previous night and thought he was the German emperor.

‘He walks through the park and clicks his fingers at a tree he doesn’t like, and tells the groundsmen to cut it down. I must say, you do see life in this place.’

It was when they were buying the six pairs of white kid gloves which Hermann needed to wear with his dress uniforms that he told his mother what had happened in Zettelmayer’s cake shop.

‘This vulgar child came and accused Annika of stealing her luggage.’

‘Her luggage? How could she do that?’

‘Well, she didn’t of course. The girl was mad. Some girl Annika knew in Vienna — Egghart, they’re called. So I’m afraid I had to make it clear that if she persisted I would have to challenge her father to a duel.’

‘Oh, Hermann!’ Frau Edeltraut laid a proud hand on her son’s shoulder. ‘I’m afraid you’re too young to fight a duel and you couldn’t meet Herr Egghart — the family is sure to be completely common — but it’s good to know that you defend your sister. What a master you will be for Spittal! In the meantime, though, these Eggharts will have to be dealt with. Poor Annika must have been very upset?’

‘She was. And puzzled. Gudrun has taken her to the park.’

Uncle Conrad and Zed had just returned to the hotel when Edeltraut and her son entered his sitting room. ‘Conrad, I’m leaving Hermann here with you. I have some important business to attend to.’

The Eggharts were not in their room at the Hydro, nor in any of the public rooms of the hotel. They had had a very busy morning in the treatment rooms, and now, while Loremarie was at the indoor skating rink with her governess, they were sitting on a bench in the orangery behind the hotel and admiring nature.

Actually, nature in the orangery was not very natural. The temperature was kept at twenty-five degrees by underground pipes and the plants were not really the kind that grew wild in northern Europe. Enormous fig trees, climbing bougainvilleas, breadfruit, hibiscus and of course orange and lemon trees hung with fruit. Water dripped into a fountain; the warm air was full of wonderful scents. It was like being in a jungle without the unpleasant things that might have been found there, like jaguars or tribes-people with blowpipes, or snakes — and Frau Egghart was feeling romantic. She put a podgy hand over her husband’s, but he looked so surprised that she took it away again.

‘Perhaps we could go dancing in the pump room tonight?’ she suggested.

‘Dancing?’ said Herr Egghart. It always made him nervous when his wife became romantic. ‘We haven’t been—’

But at that moment the door of the orangery was filled by the tall figure of a grandly dressed woman, carrying a sable muff.

The councillor rose to his feet and bowed as he recognized Frau Edeltraut von Tannenberg. The Eggharts had meant to drive to Spittal when they first came to the spa, and get back their trunk, but there was so much that needed doing, not only to their veins and their sphincters but to other parts of their bodies which the doctors had not been happy about, that they had not yet made the journey.

And here, now, was the woman they had wanted to see.

‘Won’t you sit down,’ said Herr Egghart, pointing to the bench. He had forgotten just how tall and imposing Annika’s mother was.

‘Thank you, I prefer to stand. I have come to inform you that I will NOT have my daughter upset. I will not have her accused of stealing and lying. It is an outrage!’

‘But we haven’t—’ began Herr Egghart.

‘No, but your daughter has. She has accused her in a public place — MY daughter, a von Tannenberg.’

‘We don’t know what Loremarie has said,’ began Frau Egghart, staring at a silver brooch on Frau von Tannenberg’s collar. It seemed to be the family crest. She could make out a mailed fist and the words: ‘Stand Aside, Ye Vermin Who Oppose Us!’

‘If you have lost your luggage it seems to me quite extraordinary that you should allow your daughter—’

‘Please, please!’ Herr Egghart put up a hand. He was still shouting but not so loudly as before. ‘You see, we were told that our great-aunt… OUR great-aunt… had left her trunk to your daughter in her will. So naturally—’

‘I’m afraid I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ interrupted Frau Edeltraut. ‘If Annika has been left anything it would have been sent to Spittal and it has not been. My son, who is devoted to his sister, wishes to fight a duel to avenge the insult. He is of course too young but my brother-in-law, who was the fencing champion of his year at university, would be willing to meet you.’

‘No, no! It’s a mistake. It’s all a mistake. We were obviously misinformed.’ Herr Egghart was sweating. ‘We were told that—’

‘I’m afraid I am not interested in what you were told. I’m concerned like any mother with her daughter’s wounded feelings. Ever since I found Annika again I have made it my business to see that she is spared anything unpleasant or sad.’

Herr Egghart mopped his brow. ‘Yes, yes. Loremarie will be made to apologize.’

‘I would prefer it if you kept your daughter right away from our family. Meanwhile, I am prepared to let the matter drop, but any such insult in the future will have the gravest consequences.’

Left alone again, the Eggharts fell back against the bench.

‘After all, it was probably full of germs anyway,’ said Frau Egghart.

‘What was?’ Her husband’s heart was still racing. Duels were illegal, but people fought them just the same. Frau von Tannenberg’s brother-in-law probably had a duelling scar — a great gash puckering his cheek.

‘The trunk,’ said his wife. ‘The belongings of old people are always infected and unclean. I said so from the start.’