The Star of Kazan

41 The Danube Steamer

The river boats that carried passengers up and down the Danube were named after members of the Austrian royal family. The boat Annika was due to travel on was the Empress Elisabeth, and it was the newest and smartest of the river fleet. The steamer was bedecked with flags, her funnel was striped in the black and red and white of the House of Austria. The cabins were roomy; there was a sun lounge and a restaurant on the foredeck.

The band of of the Danube Valley Fire Brigade was playing rousing music on the quayside to send the passengers on their way.

It was a beautiful day. The river sparkled; there was just enough of a breeze to cool the travellers as they looked over the rails at the Riverside Hotel and the row of flowering tulip trees. Annika and her mother and uncle had boarded the boat early, and while the adults went below to find their cabins, Annika stayed on deck, leaning over the rails and trying to fix her mind on what she saw: a mother coming up the gangway holding a pair of identical twins, one in each hand: little boys in leather trousers and loden hats… A man with a rucksack, a woman in a striped dress, carrying a parasol…

If she looked hard enough at the people as they came aboard she might be able to blot out her thoughts. Or even free her mind of any thoughts at all.

Thoughts of goodbye, thoughts that she might never see Vienna again, thoughts of her future at Spittal… Memories of Ellie’s face as she stood in the door of the professors’ house, memories of Stefan explaining to his little brothers that Annika was going away again. And she had quarrelled with Pauline; her friend had not been there to say goodbye.

She mustn’t mind that; all that was in the past. And she mustn’t be jealous of Zed, who was staying in Vienna with work he loved — staying in the city from which she was banished.

Why was it so difficult to do what was right? She thought of all the people she had learned about at school who had stuck to their beliefs: there was St Margaret, who had been pressed to death under a door, St Cecilia, who had been smothered in her bath, and St Catherine, who had been broken on the wheel.

Whereas she was just going back to live with her mother. There was no need to feel this utter, black despair.

‘There you are, my dear. I’ve put your things in our cabin. You’d like the top bunk, I expect.’

‘Yes. Thank you.’

Her mother smiled at her. ‘Oh, Annika, I’m so happy to be going home with you. My own daughter beside me forever more.’

The Empress Elisabeth’s boiler was lit. She let off a burst of steam. The band of the Fire Brigade broke into an old folk song.

Annika bit her lip. Music could be horribly unfair.

‘You’re happy too, aren’t you, my darling?’ came her mother’s voice.

‘Of course.’

Pauline returned to Vienna after dark. She was utterly exhausted but she was triumphant. She had the evidence she needed and she’d been right all along.

In the bookshop she found her grandfather waiting up for her. He was not pleased.

‘How dare you go off like that? Anything might have happened to you.’

‘But it didn’t,’ said Pauline. And she told him what she had discovered at Pettelsdorf. ‘I’m going over now to tell them.’

‘No, you’re not. Everyone will be asleep. You can go first thing in the morning.’

‘But I must catch Annika — you’ve no idea how important it is.’

‘You’ll catch her in the morning. She isn’t leaving till midday.’

So Pauline, still arguing, was persuaded to go to bed, where she fell at once into a deep sleep.

But at six-thirty the next morning she was knocking at the door of the professors’ house.

Sigrid came after a while, still in her dressing gown.

‘What on earth?’

‘I’ve found out something terribly important. I have to see Annika and the professors and—’

‘You can’t see Annika; she’s gone.’

Pauline stared at her. ‘But she wasn’t going till noon today.’

Sigrid shrugged. Her face was grey; she looked as though she had scarcely slept.

‘They sent a carriage for her last night. They’re taking an earlier boat.’

‘What boat? When?’

‘The Empress Elisabeth. It leaves from the Riverside quay at nine o’clock.’

‘Sigrid, listen to what I’ve found out — and then please wake everybody up. We have to stop Annika going on that boat. We have to. She’s in danger, she really is.’

Zed had come out of the back, pulling on his jersey. He ran at once to fetch Stefan, and now the professors appeared in various stages of disarray.

‘What is it?’ they wanted to know. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Listen,’ said Pauline, ‘please listen,’ and she told her story once again.

There was no need for her to persuade or argue. It was as though deep down they had all expected something like this.

‘We’ve got to stop her going.’

But how? The boat sailed in less than two hours’ time, and not from the Danube Quay in the town but from the landing stage above the Riverside Hotel, several kilometres out of the city.

Everyone had different ideas of how they might get there.

‘If we take the number nineteen tram from the Praterstern and then go over the bridge and change to a number twenty-three…’

‘The twenty-three only runs every quarter of an hour. We’d do better to take a cab. If we choose—’

‘Those nags will never do it. The train to Kasselberg would be faster, and then a cab along the river.’

But even as they argued, pulling on their clothes in all sorts of strange ways, they knew they would never get to the quay in time.

‘The police?’ suggested Gertrude.

The police had the fastest horses, but persuading them to act instantly would be almost impossible.

It was then that they heard it: the strident pooping of Herr Egghart’s motor horn. Then came the cloud of dust, the roar of the engine as he drove into the square, and the squeal of brakes as the great yellow machine drew up in front of his house.

Herr Egghart got out and stretched. He was in his goggles and leather gauntlets, his cap and floor-length duster coat. His wife in her motoring veil followed, then Loremarie.

Up to this moment every single person in the square only had to hear the pooping of the Eggharts’ motor and they went back into their houses and shut the windows and the door. Nobody had ever been known to run towards him and his machine. Now, without looking at each other, the child did just that — and threw themselves on Herr Egghart just as he was following his wife and child into the house.

‘Please, please, you must help us,’ Pauline cried. ‘It’s desperately important.’

‘We have to rescue Annika; it’s a matter of life and death,’ said Zed. ‘You have to drive us to the Riverside Quay.’

Herr Egghart looked at them as though they were insane.

‘Drive you to the Riverside Quay — after the journey I’ve had? You must be out of your mind. Now please get out of my way.’

Professor Julius had caught up with the children. ‘It really is important, Herr Egghart. We have reason to believe that Annika is—’

‘I’m afraid I’m not interested,’ said Herr Egghart.

He was almost inside his house.

It was Stefan who found the magic words.

‘It’s about your great-aunt’s trunk, sir. We think we know who stole it and—’

Herr Egghart turned. ‘The trunk? Well, why didn’t you say so?’

‘Faster — oh, faster,’ begged Pauline. She was in the back with Stefan and Zed. Professor Julius sat beside the driver.

But Herr Egghart was already driving very fast. He roared down the Karntner Strasse, rounded the Praterstern, sent a donkey cart into the kerb. His horn blew incessantly, clouds of dust rose in the children’s faces.

There was a line of carts waiting to cross the bridge over the canal but Egghart’s horn sent them to the side and he drove on.

An old lady leaped to safety in the Schwartzer Strasse. A stallholder stared open-mouthed.

The dial shot up to thirty-two kilometres per hour, then to forty: a record even for a custom-built Piccard-Pictet.

They were driving beside the Danube now, but there were several kilometres still to go. Past warehouses, past a boatyard… past a municipal park — and then they were at the Riverside.

‘Oh no. No!’

They were too late; the gangway had been pulled up; steam poured from the Empress’s funnel. On the boat and on the shore there was a flurry of waving handkerchiefs.

Herr Egghart stopped with a squeal of brakes. The children rushed out of the car. They could see Annika in her red kerchief standing by the rail, but she hadn’t seen them.

On the bandstand the conductor raised his baton to play the steamer out — and Zed ran to him like a streak of lightning and pulled at his arm.

The last of the ropes had been thrown on to the quay. The Empress was free.

Pauline rushed to the water’s edge and cupped her hands and shouted the words which would save Annika.

Annika saw her now — but she could not hear her.

Pauline shouted again — and then Stefan came. His voice was stronger and he too shouted the same words, but he too could not make his voice carry across the water.

Herr Egghart got out of the car and made his way to the edge of the quay. He pushed Pauline and Stefan aside and removed his gauntlets. Then he too cupped his hands and shouted the all-important words as they had done.

But this was Egghart, whose voice as he yelled at his wife and child could make the pigeons fly up from the rooftops. The man whose shout could make horses kneel.

And Annika heard them.

She heard the words. And as she did so, a great weight fell from her and she understood everything that had happened.

She shrugged off her cloak and let it fall on to the deck. Then, without a moment of hesitation, she climbed on to the rails, steadied herself — and jumped.