The Star of Kazan

31 Pupil Number 126

Two kilometres from the Palace of Grossenfluss, which housed the Institute for Daughters of the Nobility, stood an inn called the Fox and Feathers.

It was the kind of country inn one could find all over the north German countryside, with carved shutters, heavy wooden tables, big pitchers of beer and ample helpings of roast pork with sauerkraut.

As well as serving food and drink, and stabling horses, the Fox and Feathers had four bedrooms that it let out to travellers, and it was in one of these that Professor Julius woke the morning after the visit to Spittal.

He was not in a good temper. He’d been kept awake by a group of drunken guests singing sad songs about their lost youth, and a cockerel had disturbed him at dawn. His first thought as he woke was that he and Emil must have been raving mad to let their cook drag them to this place, and his second was that the sooner they saw Annika and returned to Vienna, the better.

He got out of bed and went along the corridor to find his brother.

Emil too was in a bad state; he had had a second helping of onions fried in lard at supper and his stomach had not taken it well.

‘I think you’d better go along by yourself and find out when we can see Annika. I don’t feel it would be wise for me to go out just yet,’ he said.

Professor Julius washed and made his way downstairs. There was no sign of Ellie in the dining room, but out of the window he could see her talking to the maid she had made friends with the night before. She was helping her to hang up the washing. He drank a cup of coffee, put on his hat, took up his walking stick, and set off up the long drive that led to the school.

The closer he got the more certain he became that they had been ridiculous to come. The building became larger and grander the nearer he got. The Emperor Franz Joseph’s palace in Vienna did not have half as many statues and pediments and curlicues and towers.

Professor Julius was not in the least overawed but he did feel that he was wasting his time. Grossenfluss was the sort of building that any young girl must long to live in.

He mounted the flight of steps to the front door, stopped for a moment to examine a patch of feldspar on the heel of a statue — and rang the bell.

‘What’s the matter?’ asked Emil, who was still in his pyjamas. The maid had brought him a hot-water bottle, which he was resting on his stomach, and Ellie had asked permission from the girl in the kitchen to make him some gruel. ‘You look upset.’

‘I am not so much upset,’ said Julius, laying down his walking stick, ‘as angry. Very, very angry. I told them who I was, I showed them my card — and I was turned away.’

‘Turned away. What do you mean?’

‘I mean what I say,’ said Julius. ‘I was not admitted. I told them that I had come from Vienna with friends to arrange for a time to visit Annika and they said that none of the pupils were allowed visitors in the first month, and then only with written permission from the girl’s mother. And they left me,’ said Professor Julius, beginning to glare again as he remembered, ‘they left me standing outside the door. I was not even taken into the office. I can’t remember ever having been treated with such rudeness. One wonders just who these people think they are.’

‘Well, it looks as though there’s nothing we can do at the moment. We’d better pack up and go home,’ said Emil.

A sound from the doorway made both professors turn. Ellie was standing there with the bowl of gruel and as soon as they saw her face they knew there was going to be trouble.

‘I’m going to see Annika,’ said Ellie. ‘I’m going to see her if I have to stand there all day and all night. The maid says they take the girls for a walk most days; they come out of the side door and go down the avenue and back. I’ll wait, and I’ll see her and when I see her I’ll know.’

So she left them, walking down the dusty village road in her stout shoes, her felt hat pulled over her forehead.

When she got to the junction of the road and the avenue she stopped and she waited.

She did not sit down — there was nowhere to sit. She stood and she waited all morning, and at lunchtime the maid from the inn brought her a bread roll, but she shook her head. If Annika came past she did not want to be eating, she wanted to see.

In the early afernoon, it began to rain. Ellie had no umbrella but she did not notice her discomfort. All she thought about was whether they would take the girls out in spite of the weather.

She stood there till dark, but Annika did not come. When there was no hope she went back to the inn and allowed the maid to bring her hot soup. She had expected that the professors would have returned to Vienna but they were still there.

In the morning she took up her vigil again. No one came in the morning, and no one came in the early afternoon and Ellie went on standing there.

Then at three o’clock on the second day of Ellie’s watch, the side door of the palace was opened and a line of girls in black cloaks and black bonnets came slowly down the avenue…

Since she had given up hope, Annika had only one aim: not to be noticed. So she shuffled through her day, from the moment the bell shrilled at six in the morning and the girls lined up in the washroom for their turn with the jug of cold water and the cake of slimy soap, to the same bell shrilling them into bed at night.

All the same, she was noticed.

‘Number 127 isn’t settling too well,’ said the matron to Annika’s form mistress. ‘She’s very thin and pale.’

‘Give her some cod liver oil and malt,’ said the form mistress. ‘Force it down her throat if she won’t take it — she’s probably anaemic.’

There was no need to force it down Annika’s throat — she didn’t want to end up like Minna, who still sometimes had last night’s supper served up to her at breakfast and then again at lunch. She obediently gulped the vile stuff down — but it made no difference. Each day she became more listless and quieter.

But it wasn’t till the school went for a walk one afternoon that she became really frightened.

She was walking with a girl called Flosshilde, who hardly ever spoke. Annika’s hands were folded, as were the hands of all the girls; she walked with a straight back.

At the front of the line was Fräulein Heller, who had flat feet; at the back was Fräulein Zeebrugge, who wheezed.

It was a misty day. Yesterday’s rain had passed but the air was moist.

They reached the end of the avenue and prepared to turn to the left. There was a tree by the gate and somebody was standing under it. Standing very still, just looking…

Annika stopped dead — and from behind her Fräulein Zeebrugge shouted, ‘What are you doing, girl? Keep moving, you’ve upset the line!’

So Annika moved on, and passed the woman who stood there — and it was then that she realized she was going mad.

Because she had seen Ellie. She was absolutely sure she had. And Ellie was 1,000 kilometres away in a city she herself would probably never see again.

Ellie was in Vienna.

‘She can’t stay there,’ said Ellie. ‘She can’t stay in that place a day longer.’

Professor Julius and Professor Emil looked at each other in dismay. They had packed their suitcases and asked the innkeeper for the bill. The summer term at the university began the following week.

And now Ellie wasn’t just being difficult. She was being impossible.

‘She’s ill,’ said Ellie. ‘She’s ill inside her head.’

‘Ellie, you only saw her for a few moments, muffled up in a cape on a foggy day. You said so yourself. How can you tell that she’s ill?’

‘I can tell,’ said Ellie. ‘If her mother won’t take her away then we’ll have to.’

‘I suppose we could inform her mother and—’

‘There’s no time for that,’ said Ellie, who had never before interrupted her employer. ‘And her mother thinks it’s a fine place; Gudrun said so.’

‘Look, we have to get back to Vienna,’ said Professor Julius. ‘We can return later—’

‘I’m not moving from here without Annika,’ said Ellie.

The professors stared at her, baffled. When your cook turns into a kind of tigress it is not easy to know what to do for the best.

‘I’ll rescue her myself if I have to,’ said Ellie. ‘I’ll get a ladder.’

The professors shook their heads and went into the parlour to discuss what to do.

‘It’s not going to be easy leaving her here,’ said Julius. The thought of Ellie on top of a ladder climbing through a window at Grossenfluss was not a calming one. ‘But I don’t see what else we can do.’

Emil nodded. ‘I imagine she’ll see sense soon. But I think we should definitely write to Frau von Tannenberg and ask her to find out if Annika is happy. This is an

entirely different matter to that of the jewels, which can be

left to the police.’

The maid with whom Ellie had made friends came in to

wipe down the tables and straighten the chairs.

‘Would you want any help with your luggage, sirs?’ she

asked the professors.

‘No, no; we’ve only our overnight things. Will you make

sure that the cab is ordered to take us to the station?’ ‘Yes, sir. Frau Ellie’s staying on, she says.’ ‘Yes. She’s worried about a child at the school.’ The maid pushed another chair straight. ‘Well, you

can’t be surprised after what happened last winter.’

Both professors looked up sharply. ‘What did happen?’ ‘Didn’t you know?’ The maid’s kind face was troubled.

‘One of the pupils killed herself. Number 126, they called

her. Climbed over the balustrade at the top of the staircase

and jumped. They tried to say it was an accident, but

everybody knew it wasn’t.’

Professor Julius put down his pipe.

‘Why? Did anyone find out why she’d done it?’

The maid shrugged. ‘She was just unhappy. Homesick,

they said. She was a nice little thing… such pretty hair,

she had.’