Authors: Eva Ibbotson
She picked up the buckets, the floorcloths, the brooms and feather dusters and made her way to the dining room. Hermann and Gudrun, who had just finished their breakfast, looked at her in amazement.
‘What are you doing?’ said Gudrun as Annika began to sweep the floor. ‘You’ll get your clothes dirty.’
‘Perhaps. But I’ll get the house clean. Some of it. You can help me if you like.’
But Gudrun hurried from the room as though what Annika was doing might be infectious.
Annika dusted the huge carved chairs, she shook out the window curtains, she polished the oak table, and slid across the parquet floor with dusters tied round her shoes.
Presently she found that she was singing; the first time she had done so since she came to her new home.
When she had finished the dining room she started on the hall, wiping the glass cases of the beady-eyed fish, mopping down the flagstones. Then she put away the cleaning things and made her way down to the farm.
‘Zed, I want some eggs. Can you spare some?’
‘There are plenty of eggs – well, there are a dozen, but they’re supposed to be taken into the village and bartered for Hermann’s ammunition.’
Annika stared at him. ‘Is that why there are never any eggs?’
‘Yes. The eggs go so that he can shoot, and the pigs get sold to pay the man who gives him his fencing lessons. It’s been like that for a while.’
‘Well, I don’t care, Zed. I want the eggs. Hermann’s not supposed to shoot anyway while his mother is away.’
Zed shrugged. ‘It’s all right by me. Come on. I’ll help you get them.’
‘There has to be something else I can use.’
He grinned. ‘Well, there are always mangel-wurzels.’
She would have liked to make soufflé omelettes, but it would have to be pancakes if there was to be enough for everyone. She had flour, eggs, milk – then right at the back of the almost empty store cupboard she found a piece of smoked ham. It was a very small piece, but chopped up to fill the pancakes it would do.
The smell brought Gudrun to the kitchen door just before lunchtime, where she hovered sadly.
‘They’ll be ready in a few minutes,’ said Annika, busy turning the pancakes over. ‘You can help me with the filling.’
‘Oh, I couldn’t. Mama never lets me go in the kitchen.’
Annika said nothing, just went on heaping the golden pancakes on to the plate.
‘Well, if you don’t tell her . . .’ said Gudrun presently. ‘What do you want me to do?’
Zed came back then with more wood. ‘My goodness, they smell good.’
‘They’ve come out all right,’ Annika admitted. ‘There’s plenty for all of us.’
She got out four plates and put them round the kitchen table, only to hear Gudrun give a squeak like a terrified mouse.
‘I can’t eat here with the stable boy!’
‘Well, then take your plate through into the dining room, and Hermann’s. I’ll stay here with Zed; I have to watch the stove.’
So once more Gudrun and Hermann sat at the vast oak table in the unheated dining room, while Annika and Zed ate in the warmth and comfort of the old kitchen, and he told her about Bertha.
‘She won’t be back till the end of the week; it’s a long way, and her brother needs her. I’m hoping—’ He broke off. ‘Only I don’t suppose he will . . .’
‘What? What are you hoping?’
‘I thought he might ask her to come and live with him. He’s got quite a big farm and he’ll be lonely.’
‘But wouldn’t you miss her?’
‘No. Because I wouldn’t be here.’
Annika stared at him.
‘I meant to go after the Master died, but I knew he worried about Bertha; she’d been his nurse since he was two weeks old, and I thought I had to stay and see she was all right.’
‘But where would you go? And what about Rocco – and Hector?’
‘Yes. There’d be a lot to think about.’
Annika had put down her fork, feeling suddenly terribly bereft. ‘I’ll miss you.’
‘I haven’t gone yet,’ he said.
But tears had come into her eyes. ‘Oh, what’s the matter with me,’ she said, brushing them away angrily. ‘I hardly ever cried in Vienna.’
‘You’re homesick.’
‘How can I be? I’m at
home
.’
But after lunch, carrying on with the task she had set herself, she felt cheerful again. She cleaned out the bedrooms, lugging the stepladder along the landing so that she could dust high up, and polishing the mirrors. Then Zed returned with a pot of cottage cheese.
‘Bertha hung up the sour milk before she went and it’s ready; you can have it.’
‘Good. I’ve found some big potatoes. I’ll bake them and fill them with the cheese.’
Zed nodded. ‘They’ll go well with the fish.’
‘What fish?’
‘The fish we’re going to catch this afternoon, using your Uncle Oswald’s punt.’
Zed wasn’t boasting. He had the punt ready in the boathouse, with Hector lying curled up as far as possible from the tackle.
‘It’s all right,’ Zed said. ‘He’ll be quiet; he knows you don’t retrieve fish.’
Soon they were in the middle of the lake, putting out their lines. It was lovely to be outside, seeing the house from the water, floating on the reflected clouds.
Zed caught two pike and she caught a small perch, and though she knew that Gudrun and Hermann were watching them out of the window, she didn’t mind.
Later, when Zed had cleaned and filleted the fish, and they were sizzling in the frying pan, Gudrun appeared once more at the door.
‘Oh, goodness, I do love fried fish,’ she said.
‘They’re nearly ready,’ said Annika. ‘Tell Hermann and you can take your helpings through.’
‘Perhaps Hermann would come and eat in here if I asked him. It’s so nice and warm.’
But at that moment the sound of the gong pealed through the house. It was Hermann making it clear that the von Tannenbergs did not slum it in kitchens, and Gudrun scuttled away to follow her hero into the dining room.
The next day Annika got up early and went on with her tasks. When she came to think about lunch she found that Zed had shot and skinned a rabbit, and in the overgrown vegetable patch she pulled up some of last year’s sprouts. ‘What is that?’ Gudrun asked later, helping herself to a thinly sliced white root which Annika had served as a salad.
‘It’s a new vegetable – I can’t remember the name,’ said Annika. ‘It’s good, isn’t it?’
‘Yes, it is,’ said Gudrun, and took another portion of mangel-wurzel.
On the third day Annika was hardly recognizable as the quiet girl drifting through empty rooms. She was working from dawn till dusk, and as each meal approached she and Zed pitted their wits against the empty larder. That afternoon a pedlar came to the door and she bartered Professor Gertrude’s manicure set for a box of gingerbread and a bag of rice.
And she made soup. She made soup of absolutely everything she could find and Zed teased her about it, pretending he could taste firewood and the bristles of her broom – but he ate it. No one trained by Ellie could fail to find
something
with which to make soup.
‘Have you ever thought of marrying a Canadian settler?’ Zed asked her when he found her chopping what seemed to be the last onion in Spittal.
She shook her head. ‘Why a Canadian?’
‘Haven’t you ever wanted to go there? To the north-west – the coast is full of islands and there’s forest for miles and miles and everybody’s equal there.’
‘No, I haven’t.’
But that night she took a lamp to the library to look for an atlas. She found one too, which had not been sent to be rebound or cleaned in Bad Haxenfeld, and looked up the coast of British Columbia. Zed was right. It looked wild and beautiful, but her mother would never leave this place. If there was one thing Annika had learned, it was that there had been von Tannenbergs at Spittal for 500 years.
Annika had put off cleaning the library. It was never used and even colder and danker than the other rooms. But there were some beautiful old pieces of furniture there – in particular a large carved desk with numerous drawers and claw-footed legs that had belonged to the Freiherr. Nobody had used it since his death; it had been completely neglected and Annika did not feel that this was right.
She mixed a fresh consignment of beeswax, decanted a jar of silver polish, and made her way to the library.
There was a bunch of keys in one of the pigeonholes, but none of the drawers were locked. One by one she pulled them out and stacked them carefully on the floor. Then she began on the desktop, the back, the legs, dusting, polishing – and polishing again.
When she had finished she turned back to the drawers. Though they were empty they still had their lining paper – paper almost as thick as vellum with a design of fleur-de-lis. It would be a pity to throw it out; she would wipe it as best she could, and replace it.
First, though, the silver handles. Whoever had crafted them had not been troubled about the people who would have to clean them. They were elaborately wrought with a design that soaked up the polish but took longer than she would have believed to produce a shine.
By the time she got to the actual drawers, Annika was tempted just to push them back in, but at this point, as so often when she tried to take short cuts, Sigrid seemed to be leaning over her shoulder, looking pained. So she removed the paper from each of the drawers, wiped it, replaced it back . . . When she reached the bottom drawer she found something wedged right under the lining at the back.
A letter. She took it out and held it in her hand for a minute, not sure what to do. Then she heard Gudrun calling her and she put it in her apron pocket.
It was time to get lunch.
A
nnika was just dropping off to sleep that night when she heard the creak of her bedroom door being opened. Then footsteps – but she had no time to feel frightened before she heard Zed’s voice.
‘Get up and get dressed. Put on warm things and come downstairs. Don’t let anyone see you.’
She fumbled her way into her clothes and found Zed in the hall, waiting.
‘What is it?’ she asked. ‘Is anything the matter?’
‘The gypsies are here. They’re camped on the other side of Felsen Woods. I said I’d take you.’
She followed him out of the house and into the courtyard. It was a clear, cold night, and in the lane she could make out Rocco, packed up and waiting.
‘Are we riding?’
‘You are. It isn’t far. I’ll lead you.’
Annika followed him, her eyes gradually getting used to the darkness. ‘But you can’t walk all that way.’
Zed ignored this. He helped her to mount and adjusted the stirrups.
‘Just grip hard with your knees.’
It was like being in a dream, except colder and more uncomfortable. The stirrup leathers pinched her legs.
‘Won’t they mind me?’
‘No. You’re my friend.’
‘Do you know them then? The ones that are camped here?’
Zed shrugged. ‘They’re from Hungary and on the way to the Horse Fair at Stettin. They may have known my mother, she came from there. But it doesn’t matter. They’ll welcome us.’
They met no one on the dark road.
‘Are you all right?’ Annika asked after an hour.
‘Don’t fuss.’
They had come to the part of the wood where they had hidden from the bailiffs. Now Rocco’s ears went forward. He whinnied excitedly and answering whinnies came from behind the trees. They skirted a coppice and came out at a patch of waste ground.
It was like coming suddenly to a lighted stage. Fires burned and crackled, lanterns hung between the trees. There were wagons and tethered horses – and everywhere movement and bustle and life.
Annika had thought she knew what gypsies were like. They lived in brightly painted caravans, they cooked hedgehogs in clay pots, the girls wore flounced petticoats and golden earrings. They made clothes pegs and told fortunes . . . they stole babies.
But these gypsies were not like that. Some of the wagons were brightly painted but some were ordinary wooden wagons of the kind used by tradesmen. The young girls who were busy with the cooking wore gold loops in their ears, and bangles, but most of the women looked like the village people Annika had met everywhere, with thick shawls and woollen skirts.
And they didn’t look at all like people who stole babies; they looked, after days of travelling, too tired for anything like that.
Now an elderly man came forward. He wore a baggy suit and a woollen cap; his black eyes were bright and eager, and his enormous moustache curved round his face like a scimitar.
‘Izidor,’ he said, introducing himself, and it was clear from the way the others hung back and let him speak that he was the ‘father’ of the group; the man who gave the orders.
Zed bowed his head. ‘Zedekiah Malakov,’ he replied, giving his full name.
There was a murmur from the onlookers. Old Izidor pulled Zed closer to the light of the fire and studied his face. Then he nodded.
‘You have her eyes,’ he said in his own language. ‘We remember her.’
Annika had dismounted and was holding Rocco, standing outside the circle of light. Now Zed turned and took the bridle and led him forward.
‘Rocco,’ he said, presenting his horse.
Izidor had been pleased to see Zed, but the sight of Rocco overwhelmed him. He whistled through his teeth, he passed his hands over Rocco’s flank . . . Carefully he removed Rocco’s saddle and handed it to a man standing by so that he could run his fingers over the horse’s back.
‘Zverno?’ he asked, recognizing the stud, and Zed nodded.
Two trusty youths were summoned and allowed to lead Rocco to the patch of grass where the other horses were tethered. Water was brought for him, and handfuls of hay . . . More and more admirers came to stroke him; girls as much as men.
After that it was Annika’s turn. As Zed took her to old Izidor she was very nervous. She knew that gypsies did not approve of outsiders, of
gadjos
, and she knew that compared to a finely bred horse she did not count for much – but she gave her hand to Izidor and then, remembering her manners, she curtsied.
Then came the meal. They sat round the largest of the fires and ate some delicious meat roasted with herbs and the fiery paprika they had brought with them from the south. A girl of about Annika’s own age came and sat beside her. She was cradling a small grey kitten, which she put in Annika’s hand.