The Wolf Princess

by Cathryn Constable

His openness and assurance appeared to give Delphine confidence. She stepped toward him. “Come on!” she called over her shoulder as she took the man’s hand and climbed up the step.

  “He knows who we are, but who is he?” Marianne whispered.

  “I don’t know,” Sophie replied.

  “I’m not sure we should go.”

  “Well, we can’t stay here.”

  “But we shouldn’t go with him if we don’t know who he is.”

  “Please do not delay,” the man said, looking more serious and glancing at the sky. “The blizzard will soon return.”

  Marianne looked back at the hut. “What about the cat?” she asked.

  “He belongs here,” Sophie answered. “And we don’t.”

  Somehow that seemed to make up both their minds and Marianne and Sophie allowed themselves to be steered up the steps of the train and into an old-fashioned carriage. As she stepped inside, Sophie gasped in delight. Yes, this was the train she had imagined while wearing Rosemary’s mink jacket, sleeping in that chilly spare room! The sort of train that began adventures.

  There was a pretty chandelier hanging from the ceiling, silver-gray banquettes with deep-set buttons, wooden cupboards above, and heavy, lace-edged blinds at the window. Sophie noticed that, although it was all very beautiful, many of the fabrics looked fragile and worn, like pieces in a museum.

  Marianne stood uncertainly by the window and watched the man pluck the luggage out of the snow. He threw the suitcases up into the driver’s cabin as easily as if they were empty, slammed their carriage door shut, and walked to the front of the train.

  “We still don’t know where we’re going,” Marianne said.

  “Back to Saint Petersburg!” Delphine said. “You heard him!”

  Marianne shook her head. “He didn’t say anything about Saint Petersburg.”

  “And the train came from the other direction,” added Sophie.

  Steam billowed past the windows, there was the screech of iron wheels on track, and the train shunted forward. The chandelier tinkled and sprinkled light over them.

  “He’s been sent to fetch us,” Delphine said firmly. “He knows our names. Where else would he be taking us?”

  The train gathered pace and slipped into the snow-covered forest.

  “I’ve lost my ticket,” Marianne said, slumping down onto a banquette. “I hope he doesn’t ask to see it.”

  Before the girls could say anything more, the man reappeared. He seemed even taller and larger now that he was in the daintily appointed carriage. He rubbed his hands together and said, “It is very cold in the forest. I must make sure that you are kept warm.” He turned and took three pale fur traveling rugs from a wooden cupboard.

  He gestured to Sophie to sit down. “You must be tired after your long journey,” he said, tucking the fur under her knees and then turning his attention to the other girls. Marianne bit her nails and glanced out of the window as if she might still try to get off. The man seemed unaware of her anxiety. “I must first attend to the furnace in the driver’s cabin,” he said. “A matter of moments, only.”

  “You’re the driver, too?” Marianne looked dazed.

  “The train almost takes care of itself.” The man smiled. “Which means I will have time to serve you a midnight picnic and your first glass of proper Russian tea. I will prepare the samovar!”

  He rubbed his hands together and beamed at the girls as if he had just given them a present.

  “Miss Ellis definitely got confused,” Delphine whispered once the man had left the carriage. They could hear him singing cheerfully, and the sound of cutlery and plates being placed on a tray.

  “Or Dr. Starova didn’t explain things properly,” Marianne added.

  An image of the woman in the tapestry coat sipping coffee and checking the station clock dropped into Sophie’s mind. Dr. Starova struck her as the sort of woman who knew exactly what she was doing. She thought of her visit to the school — her certainty at wanting Sophie to do the tour, her deftness in taking Sophie’s photograph in the playground. And then looking around her room, asking about her father … In Sophie’s memory, there seemed to be a point to all that the woman had done that day, to her waiting in the station café until the last possible moment at the station, although Sophie still could not understand what that point was.

  “Perhaps …” Sophie started to say, just as the man reappeared with a small dish of pancakes.

  “Blinis!” he said proudly. Each pancake had a dollop of thick white cream and pearls of pale gray on top. “With caviar!”

  There was a question to which they desperately needed the answer, but none of them had had the courage to ask it. Sophie wished that Marianne wouldn’t go quiet in these situations; her reticence, as she sat observing everything like a little owl, had its drawbacks. And Delphine was sometimes a bit too forthright.

  “Would you mind telling us …” Sophie felt heat sliding over her cheeks.

  The man smiled encouragement as he handed them each a plate with a blini.

  Delphine, using her most sophisticated voice, finished Sophie’s sentence. “… who you are?”

  The man took a second to answer, as if he might be translating what they had said into Russian. And then he burst out laughing. “The journey to fetch you has made me forgetful!” He took a deep breath, bowed deeply to each of the girls in turn, and then said, in solemn tones, “I am Ivan Ivanovich, majordomo at the Volkonsky Winter Palace!”

  Delphine simply nodded, as if she had known this all along. Sophie thought she might have laughed if she didn’t feel so confused.

  Marianne turned to Sophie with a questioning look and mouthed, “What?”

  Delphine was still nodding. “This palace place …” she said. “Is it in Saint Petersburg?”

  The man shook his head. “Why, no!”

  “Oh!” Delphine frowned and stopped nodding.

  Marianne made a funny little noise, like air escaping from a balloon. “But we thought” — her voice had a catch to it, as if she were about to cry — “that you had come to take us back to Saint Petersburg.”

  “That’s why we got on the train,” Sophie added.

  “But why would I take you back to Saint Petersburg when you are to be guests at the palace?” The man called Ivan Ivanovich looked baffled.

  Marianne looked even more worried. Sophie wanted to go and sit next to her, put her arm around her thin shoulders. It usually made her feel braver if she could comfort someone else.

  Marianne swallowed. “We wondered if there had been a mistake,” she explained. “We were left on the train.”

  “And then,” added Sophie, “kicked off the train.”

  Ivan Ivanovich still looked puzzled. “I think you have had a long journey and you are tired,” he said. “We still have a long way to go until we arrive in the Volkonsky forest. The princess —”

  “Princess?” Delphine choked on her blini.

  “Her Serene Highness, the Princess Anna Feodorovna Volkonskaya!” Ivan said. “She requested your presence and I was sent to fetch you!”

  Sophie looked at Delphine and Marianne. They looked as shocked as she felt. None of them seemed to know what to say. Instead they watched Ivan lighting a small bundle of twigs with a flourish and pushing them into a cavity below a dented, but highly polished, silver urn with a spout in the middle. Within seconds, the fire was hot enough to make the water inside the urn hiss. He set out a tray with glasses and a dish of ruby-colored jam, then turned a tap on the spout. Hot tea splashed into the first glass.

  “Put a spoonful of jam in your tea.” He smiled encouragingly at Sophie. “It is how Russians drink it!”

  Sophie stirred a spoonful of jam into the dark, steaming liquid, then put the glass to her lips and inhaled a smoky, bitter scent, like tree bark dipped in sugar. But after the first strange mouthful, she found herself wanting more, delighted at the warmth that chased away all of the cold locked in her body.

  Ivan Ivanovich
smiled. “This is what a good Russian tea will do for you!” he said. “It brings heat to the body. That is very important when there are twenty degrees of frost on the thermometer.” He poured a glass for himself, spooned in some jam, and stirred the tea, looking suddenly serious. “And of course, tea is the only thing to relieve toska.”

  Marianne looked puzzled as she bit into her blini. “What is toska?” she asked.

  “The word does not have a good translation in your language, but it is a sadness, a melancholy that afflicts the Russian soul. So, as a remedy, we drink tea!” He raised his glass in a salute.

  “But you still haven’t explained,” Sophie burst out. “You are being very kind and it’s very good of you to come all this way to fetch us, but we weren’t told anything about a palace … or a princess …”

  “It isn’t on our itinerary,” said Marianne, rather sternly.

  “And I would definitely have remembered if there had been anything about a princess,” Delphine added.

  “You will meet the princess tomorrow. You will never have met a more cultured or beautiful woman.”

  Delphine tucked her hair behind her ear and smoothed her coat. “I’m used to meeting important people,” she said.

  “Delphine!” Marianne rolled her eyes and tried to kick her, but the fur rug had been wrapped too tightly around her knees.

  “You do not need to worry about meeting the princess,” Ivan said, his voice grave. “She is a woman of enormous grace and intelligence.” He sighed. “I owe the Princess Volkonskaya everything. Fifteen years in the army and then one mistake. A coward tells lies about me and I am thrown out of the army. I cannot return to my village: The shame would kill my mother. So I live on the street. One summer night, the princess walks past. She sees a man crushed by lies, his honor torn to shreds.” He smiled. “But she sees more. She sees trust. She gives me a new life at the Volkonsky Winter Palace.”

  Marianne fished her guidebook out of her battered leather bag. “Where is that?” She turned to the index and started looking through the entries.

  “Beyond the White Lake,” Ivan said. “But you will not find the Volkonsky Winter Palace in any guidebook. It is a diamond in the snow, a palace of dreams, so remote it has been forgotten and the noble Volkonskys erased from the history books.”

  He stepped across the carriage and pressed on the paneling. A door slid back to reveal a cabinet, fitted out as a compact traveling bathroom. He opened a deep drawer in a cupboard and brought out more furs and pillows, toothbrushes and nightgowns, putting a pile next to each of the girls.

  “It would be well if you try to sleep,” he said. “Our journey is long and I do not wish you to be weary. The princess is anxious to meet you. I know you will want to make a good impression.”

  He bowed and left them.

  “What did I tell you scruffy English girls?” Delphine looked triumphant. “I said you would want to make a good impression one day!”

  “At least I haven’t brought the sweater with the holes,” Sophie replied, but her mind was spinning with the images Ivan’s words had conjured up. A princess? A winter palace? And all too remote for anyone to know about?

  She had wished for adventure — and now it was happening.

  The train ran along over the rails, the wheels clicking like castanets. There was something so reassuring about this sound, about the velvety warmth of the train carriage, that made the girls feel quite happy to brush their teeth and put on the thick nightgowns Ivan had laid out for them. They lay down on the banquettes, tucking furs around them.

  “Fancy being taken to stay in a palace.” Marianne put her glasses on top of her suitcase. “And meeting a princess.”

  “I told you,” Delphine said, yawning. “All this fussing over tickets and itineraries and stations. Nothing ever goes wrong on a school trip.”

  Sophie buried her fingers in the fur pelt. The skin crackled like paper; it must be very old. There were no sugar mice under her pillow, or chocolate cats, no pistol to guard against the bears and the wolves. Yet she was in Russia, on a train, and it was real, not just a London daydream.

  She could hardly have imagined this elegant carriage. The reality was even more wonderful than her dreams, and made her realize the bleakness of her bedroom in Rosemary’s flat. Nothing had been done to make it inviting or cozy, perhaps because Rosemary was hoping that Sophie’s stay would not be for much longer, that she would get her spare room back. Was all my dreaming, all my imagining, just an attempt to wish that bleak, small life away? she wondered. It was hopeless. Better to admit who she was, to accept that she was not remarkable.

  She watched Delphine sit up and braid her hair, every movement precise. She looked somehow “right” in the train carriage. Sophie felt she must look ridiculous by comparison, an impostor. And she wasn’t smart like Marianne, either. She didn’t deserve to be here. She wasn’t special or interesting, however much she wanted to be.

  She sat up and moved the blind to one side to peer out. The moon, like a great diamond button, hung low in the sky. Every so often, the forest — which at times was so close that the branches scraped the windows with their snow-laden fingers — opened out into an expanse of moonlight. Sophie glimpsed wooden buildings with low, carved roofs set about with tumbledown fences, everything glimmering with its coating of frost, before the curtain of trees swept back in and extinguished the scene.

  She didn’t know how long she remained like that, gazing out at Russia, before she sensed a movement at the doorway. She turned.

  “Be careful of the moon, little Sophie,” Ivan Ivanovich whispered. “It will bewitch you. Before you know it, you can no longer live in the day, but only in the world of dreams.”

  Sophie was woken by the smell of warm bread and hot chocolate. The train whistle hooted loudly and she felt the carriage begin to slow.

  Delphine had tipped her head upside down and was brushing her hair vigorously. She flicked her head back up and her hair cascaded over her shoulders. “When we meet the princess, don’t stare and don’t speak — unless she speaks to you.”

  “Good morning to you, too,” said Sophie.

  Marianne murmured, “Too early!” into her pillow, and went back to sleep.

  Ivan appeared with a tray and boisterously announced, “We have entered the forest!” He put down the tray and pulled up the blinds. “Hurry with your breakfast, young ladies! Next stop, the Volkonsky Winter Palace!”

  Sophie had just enough time to eat, dress, and to wake Marianne before the train stopped with a blast of steam. As the cloud cleared, Sophie saw they were surrounded by the scarred, slender trunks of silver birch trees. The Volkonsky forest. That sounded beautiful. But as she looked deeper into the graceful trees, she frowned, feeling something … What was it?

  She was still trying to place it when Ivan, now dressed in a full-length sheepskin coat that was belted at the middle, brought in a pile of furs and coats.

  “So now we must dress for a Russian winter! First you put your feet into the valenki.” He held out thick, heavy boots. “Made of felt,” he explained. “They keep your feet warm.”

  Delphine, looking as if she didn’t believe him, nonetheless put her feet into the boots.

  “And then the shuba.” Ivan held up a felt coat, lined with fur. “For Marianne!” He helped her into the long coat.

  Marianne said, “I can’t move my arms.”

  Ivan Ivanovich placed a sheepskin hat on her head. “We take a shawl,” he said. “We wrap it over and around the shuba, over your hat, covering as much of your face as we can, and then we cross it, like this, at the back.”

  He tied the shawl tightly, then darted across the carriage and started opening drawers in a small dresser. With a flourish, he brought out three boxes. Inside each one was a pair of dark gray gloves. “Sealskin!” he beamed. “Now you will avoid frostbite. The Volkonskys made their fortune from salt and diamonds. But their first fortune was from fur trapping. These are lined with cashmere, and have never
been worn!”

  “I feel very peculiar,” Marianne whispered to Sophie.

  “You look wonderful,” said Sophie, but she couldn’t help giggling.

  Ivan Ivanovich held out a shuba for Delphine.

  “Thank you, that’s very kind,” she said, pulling on her exquisite gray tweed coat. “But I have my own clothes. I couldn’t meet the princess dressed like —”

  “To freeze is not good. You wear the shuba, Delphine” — his voice dropped — “or you die.”

  Delphine shrugged, as if she couldn’t care less, but she allowed herself to be dressed, just like Marianne.

  Ivan glanced out of the window. “We must hurry!” he said, putting a scarf on Sophie’s head. “We must not keep the vozok waiting!”

  “The vozok?” Marianne said, pulling the shawl down so that she could speak. “Isn’t that a sort of sleigh?”

  “How clever you are, Marianne!” Ivan smiled.

  “You mean we’re not at the palace yet?” Delphine asked.

  “A short drive along the ice road,” Ivan said.

  “A road made out of ice?” Marianne asked. “That doesn’t sound at all safe.”

  “A frozen canal,” he explained. “But quicker and safer than driving through the woods.” He frowned slightly, as if something had just occurred to him.

  “I think I’d rather go through the woods, if you don’t mind!” said Delphine.

  “What’s in the woods?” said Sophie.

  Ivan would not look at them. He spoke quietly. “The ice road is the safest way … at this time of year. There are … wild animals.” He smiled then, and said something in Russian. “My mother would always say to me, when I left her cottage to go and play with the children in the village: A sheep that strays is the wolf’s gain!” He stood back to observe the girls. “What a picture!” he smiled. “We’ll make Russians of you yet.”

  They were so trussed up that he had to help them from the carriage and onto the platform. The air was bright and hard and made the girls gasp. Sophie’s eyes watered, the teardrops stinging. She felt suddenly grateful to Ivan for taking such care in wrapping them all up like parcels.