The Wolf Princess

by Cathryn Constable

  “Our luggage!” Delphine’s words came out on a cloud of mist. “Don’t forget the luggage! I can’t meet the princess looking like this!”

  “I will fetch it later!” Ivan cried, steering the girls away from the train. Their feet crunched on the granular ice. He looked anxiously at the sky as snowflakes danced around them. “We must hurry. The storm will find us.”

  Although Ivan had told them it was past midday, it seemed to Sophie that there was only trembling twilight, all that the sun could manage in the depths of a northern winter. Sophie looked through the tiny snowflakes at the sprinkling of stars that glittered in the opaque, dark sky.

  “Did you hear that?” Marianne’s voice was muffled through the shawl.

  “I can hardly hear a thing wrapped up like this!” Delphine said.

  Sophie stopped to listen. “Bells!” she said. “I can hear bells.”

  Then she looked up. Just ahead of them, his head poking around the trees as if curious to see the visitors, stood a black horse with a wild mane. Behind him a low sleigh on delicate, curved runners seemed to float atop the snow. There was a high leather-upholstered bench for the driver to sit on, and behind it a deep, wide seat piled with fur rugs. A hood had been pulled up to keep any flurries of snow off the passengers. It looked as if it had been driven straight out of another century, Sophie thought. She wanted to laugh, suddenly, at the Russian-ness of it all. They might have expected a car, or a jeep, given the depth of snow, but this horse and the sleigh were perfect.

  The animal snorted and shook his head, and the bells on the reins jangled. Standing on the other side of the horse, holding his bridle, was a boy. There was a light dusting of frost on his shoulders, as if he had been standing there for some time.

  “You see? We must not keep Viflyanka waiting!” Ivan Ivanovich boomed.

  The boy craned his neck around the horse’s head and stared at each of the girls in turn. Viflyanka, Sophie thought. Russians have such remarkable names.

  Ivan laughed. “Viflyanka is a very impatient horse!”

  Ah — the horse was called Viflyanka. But who was the boy? Sophie wondered how old he was. The same age as her? No, older. Dark, straight eyebrows underneath the sheepskin hat. A flat snub nose. Dark blue eyes fringed with very black lashes. He didn’t smile.

  As the girls approached, the boy nodded to Ivan and then to Marianne and Delphine as they each climbed into the vozok. His expression was closed. Sophie stood next to the vozok, waiting. She didn’t want to stare at him, but she could see, out of the corner of her eye, that he had a tiny scar in the middle of his cheek, shaped like a crescent moon.

  Sophie pulled the scarf from her face. “Thank you for waiting. It must have been very cold. Your horse is beautiful.” She reached out and patted the animal’s thick, muscular neck. The horse snorted as if he approved of her kindness.

  The boy glanced at her, then his expression changed to something Sophie couldn’t read. “Voy Volkonsky?”

  Sophie shook her head. “I don’t understand —”

  “Dmitri!”

  At Ivan’s command, the boy stepped back immediately. He stared at the ground. Sophie could see the scar on his cheek jumping, and his pale cheeks were flushed.

  Ivan spoke to him harshly in Russian. The boy appeared to fold into himself. Perhaps Ivan felt he had been too hard on him, because after a second, he put his hand on the boy’s shoulder and patted it. Then he turned and winked at Sophie. His black beard was covered in tiny pearls of ice.

  “Don’t let Viflyanka hear you say he’s beautiful. He’s so vain.” The horse snorted and shook his head. “But no one can pull a vozok like he can!”

  Ivan hurried her into the sleigh. As he tucked them all under bearskin rugs, he said quietly but firmly, “It is not polite to talk to the servants.”

  “I just wanted him to know that I thought it was kind to wait for us,” Sophie started to say.

  Ivan shook his head. “It is not kind. It is what Dmitri has to do. He has no choice.” He sighed. “It is kinder not to notice him. That means he has done a good job. If you speak to him, it is difficult.”

  “But how can I not speak to people when they are helping us?” Sophie said. “It’s so rude.”

  Ivan shook his head. “Things are different here,” he said. “The princess does not want you to make friends with grooms and cooks. It is better for you if you understand.”

  The boy was already sitting at the front of the vozok. Ivan climbed up next to him and, standing up, shook the reins. “Poshawl!” he called out, and the sleigh began to move.

  “You’ve never been to a house in the country? With staff?” Delphine whispered. “Of course you mustn’t speak to them.”

  “Actually, I don’t think that’s quite true …” Marianne began. But the harness bells rang out over the shushhhhhhh of the sleigh, drowning out the rest of her sentence.

  Sophie felt a wave of panic. She wasn’t like Delphine, used to staying in grand houses. Whenever she stayed with friends, she got confused over which knife and fork to use, what to do with her dirty laundry. But how ridiculous to be worried about things like that, she thought then, when she hadn’t been worried about being abandoned in the middle of Russia in a snowstorm.

  “Gei! Geiiiiiiiii!” The words were flung at Viflyanka’s wild black mane. “See?” Ivan called back to the girls. “He is stronger than greed chasing money!”

  As if he understood the words, Viflyanka snorted and pulled harder, his neck thrust forward, his hooves shaking off the snow as if it were no more than mist. Branches, like black veins, scratched at the sky as the vozok skirted the edge of the forest. The slender pale trees reminded Sophie of something … Wait. She’s coming … It was her father’s voice! And this forest, with its pale trees and snowdrifts, seemed so like the one in her dream … Except there was no cloaked figure, no sense of sadness. Instead, she felt curious, awake, and alive in a way she had never felt before.

  Marianne reached across and squeezed her arm. “What is it?” Her eyes, blinking behind their glasses, were full of concern.

  “The trees. I feel as if I’ve seen them before …” Sophie said. She was about to add, in a dream, but Marianne nodded and mumbled, “Déjà vu,” adding something about how it could occur when your emotions were more intense.

  Sophie didn’t answer, but found herself wishing that Ivan would let them go into the forest. They weren’t sheep, after all. Straying from the path could hardly hurt them, could it? What had Ivan said about wild animals? Would she see in the forest the gray wolf from her father’s story? Or something else? The cloaked figure from her dream, with snowflakes in her hair?

  A large break appeared in the trees, and Ivan steered Viflyanka straight toward it. They shot through and Sophie found they were traveling through what appeared to be a long white corridor of clipped hedge, silvered by frost. Arches had been cut in the hedge at regular intervals, and tall statues stood sentinel; wrapped in thick burlap and heavy rope, they looked like men waiting to be shot.

  The vozok slipped past a frozen ornamental lake, then creaked alarmingly as it slid almost vertically down a bank.

  “The Volkonsky ice road!” Ivan yelled into the wind.

  They were on the frozen canal. The vozok flew along it as if on wings. Sophie could hear the thud of Viflyanka’s hooves on the ice. She wondered how he did not slip — he must have special shoes, she thought. When she finally had the courage to look up, she saw, at the end of the ice, the palace.

  I want to remember this, she told herself. I want to remember this exact moment when I’m really old. The moment I first saw the Volkonsky Winter Palace.

  It looked like a Greek temple: bone-white with pillars all along the front, like bars of a cage. The effect was delicate, almost like a skeleton, and the palace seemed to hover at the end of the ice, as if it were about to dissolve into something less solid.

  What an extraordinary place! Sophie thought. It seemed ridiculous and yet marvelous at the
same time, that anyone could have been brave enough and foolish enough to build such a palace here, in a world made out of winter. But at the same time, she loved the fact that someone had been so crazy as to try. Her father had once told her that he had persuaded her mother to marry him by filling an entire car with roses. He’d arrived at the house she shared with Rosemary and piled the flowers on the doorstep. It was crazy, stupid, foolish. And yet … She smiled to herself. She knew her father would have loved this place just for the romance of its setting.

  “Can you see it?” Ivan cried. “What do you think?”

  Marianne and Delphine were still hiding under the blankets.

  “It’s magical!” Sophie shouted. And then she laughed. The palace really did look as though it had just appeared out of the snow and the forest, conjured up by a spell.

  At last they reached the end of the ice. Viflyanka’s neck muscles bulged as he dragged the vozok up the shallow bank. He slowed to a walk now that the deeper snow dragged on the runners once more.

  “Haiiiiiiiii!” Ivan pulled Viflyanka’s head around. After a short struggle, the horse surrendered and trotted compliantly across the snow to the palace’s vast double doors. Now that they were closer, Sophie could see that the imposing façade, though beautiful, was badly damaged. Paint peeled away from the cracked stucco. Blank windows were shuttered, the glass long gone.

  Sophie felt disoriented. Close up, the palace was not what it appeared to be. This was more like the moments before a dream ended, when things dissolved into reality. It made her feel sad that such a grand building had fallen into such a state of neglect, that even this grandiose dream was no more than a falling-down building.

  Ivan jumped down, his knees bending deeply. He strode up to the horse and patted his neck, stroked his bobbing nose, speaking to him as if they were equals. Then he held out his hand to help the girls down.

  Delphine and Marianne seemed dazed from the cold and the speed of the ride. They looked very small and very young standing next to Ivan. But Sophie could have carried on riding in the vozok for the rest of the day. She looked back down the ice road, toward the forest. How big was the Volkonsky estate? Perhaps she could persuade Ivan to take them on a drive.

  “I was right about Viflyanka,” she said as Ivan held out his hand to her. “He is a beautiful horse.”

  Ivan put his finger to his lips. “Remember, no compliments! He’s vain enough as it is!”

  The boy jumped down from his seat and took the horse’s head. He stared at Sophie quite openly. Sophie pulled down her shawl and tried smiling in what she hoped was a friendly way. The boy looked as if he might risk talking to her again, but, seeing Ivan watching them, must have thought better of it. He took the bridle, pulled at the horse’s head, and the pair walked forward to the edge of the portico and out into the snow.

  “He always gallops faster on the way home,” Ivan said. “He knows he is going back to his stable.”

  But what about the boy? Sophie thought. Where was he going? Watching the boy and the horse walk away like that, Sophie felt awkward and sad. She hoped that the stable was warm, but felt that it would not be the case. She suddenly had the impulse to run after them. She could have helped to unhook the brave Viflyanka from the vozok, put down fresh straw, and make the horse feel comfortable. She’d really rather do that than meet a princess. She sighed and turned away. If only she could leave the princess to Delphine.

  Waves of snow had drifted against the double doors. Ivan brought out an enormous iron key from the folds of his sheepskin coat and placed it in the lock. It took both his hands to turn it. He kicked one of the doors hard, the snow falling off his boots, and it swung back on its hinges.

  Ivan stood to one side, his hand stretched out, just as he had at the train. “Welcome to the Volkonsky Winter Palace,” he said. “Welcome home!”

  The three girls stepped over the crust of snow and into the palace. Behind them the door closed with a deep, dull thud, as if everything that had happened before that moment was now shut out.

  Ivan had called it “a diamond in the snow,” which had made Sophie think of vast frost-white rooms, glittering and cold. But what they stepped into was a palace of shadows, of twilight, everything cobweb-colored. The hard, freezing air of the park outside had been replaced by the smell of dust and time-shredded fabrics, as if no doors or windows had been opened for decades.

  They stood in an atrium flanked by tall gilt mirrors, the glass spotted with pools of black, and chairs covered in dust sheets. Candles, almost burned down to the wicks, flickered from drunkenly arranged sconces on the walls. A grand staircase twisted up and up, into the shadows, winding around a chandelier as large as a boat. Sophie could just see it underneath a cloud of ripped and frayed muslin.

  It didn’t look like a “palace of dreams,” either. Perhaps this was the real reason it would not appear in any guidebook. Who would make the journey to come here? It was so dilapidated.

  Sophie saw Delphine’s face settle into a sulky frown. This clearly wasn’t the sort of grand country house she was used to visiting. But Sophie didn’t care that the building looked half forgotten. To her, that made it more precious, like finding something that no one else much cared for.

  “I thought Dr. Starova said we were going to a dacha,” Marianne muttered.

  “And I thought Ivan said the Volkonskys had a fortune,” whispered Delphine.

  Ivan seemed to sense their unease. He stamped the snow off his boots rather too enthusiastically. “Make some noise!” he shouted, his voice echoing around them. “No Russian likes to leave snow on their shoes!”

  Obediently, the girls kicked the snow from the toes of their valenki.

  “Apart from a few servants,” Ivan spoke gravely, looking at Delphine, “the palace has been empty and locked up for nearly a century.”

  A draft sidled up to them then, as if the palace were sighing, and the candles quivered, throwing extraordinary shadows that looked like prancing animals. Some larger movement caught Sophie’s eye at the top of the staircase, but when she peered up she saw nothing.

  “Why did the Volkonskys leave?” she asked.

  “The revolution,” said Ivan simply, as if that were explanation enough. “One dreadful night in 1917 destroyed the family forever.”

  “That was when Russia got rid of the Tsar,” Marianne said, seeing Delphine’s incomprehension. “It caused the downfall of the Russian Empire and led to civil war and the birth of the Soviet Union.”

  “How do you know?” Delphine looked suspicious. “We haven’t studied that in history.”

  “I read the guidebook,” Marianne said. “It’s important to know about the country you’re visiting.”

  “Those are the facts,” Ivan said. “But they hardly describe the reality.” He sighed. “When I first arrived here, shortly after the princess had taken up residence, I was heartbroken that such a gem, such a jewel, had been so badly treated.” He shook his head. “Any true Russian would feel a deep and heavy sadness when they walked along corridors that had once echoed with music, parties, and happy family life.” Then he smiled. “But the Princess Anna Feodorovna Volkonskaya has sworn to change the fortunes of the palace or die!”

  He smiled awkwardly as the girls looked at each other. “The princess decided you would be most comfortable in the old nursery. It is a part of the palace where the heating still works.”

  They followed Ivan up the staircase. “Please,” he said quietly as they climbed past a section of the balustrade that had fallen away, “watch your step. The soldiers ruined so much the night they hunted down Vladimir, the last Volkonsky prince.”

  “What do you mean?” Sophie whispered.

  “Twenty revolutionaries on horseback broke into the palace, intent on murdering the young prince. He knew they would come, of course: Such acts of violence had happened across even this remote province. But Prince Vladimir did not meet his would-be murderers with prayers. He strolled down the stairs in the uniform of the Im
perial Hussars, a decanter of vodka in his hand. When told he was an enemy of the people, he spat on the boots of the commanding officer. And then he said that he would be happy to speak to them, but only with his family around him. He ran up this very staircase, and they chased him on horseback. Can you imagine what it must have felt like to have twenty horsemen gallop up these steps after you?”

  Sophie turned and looked down the broad stone stairs. She would never have been able to run up them fast enough to escape twenty horsemen. “But why did he do that?” She suddenly wanted to know why the young man had behaved in such a foolhardy manner. “Why didn’t he hide? Or try to escape?”

  “A good question, young Sophie,” Ivan replied. “And one that shows a finer understanding of the prince than that of those who pursued him. For why would he — the bravest man in the Tsar’s army — run away?”

  They had reached the top of the stairs. Ivan turned to them. His eyes shone in the candlelight. Ahead of them was a wide corridor, which the stubs of candles in the few sconces barely illuminated. “The prince ran down this corridor to the gallery, where there is a painting of almost every Volkonsky that ever lived.” Ivan sighed. “There he waited for the horsemen.”

  Sophie stared down the corridor. In the distance she could see a pair of double doors, lyres painted on the panels, and the same fierce creature she had seen painted on the door of the train. The pairing of those small harps and the snarling wolves seemed odd, as if someone expected the wolves to sing. She could almost hear the snorting of the horses, their hooves on the stone, the yells of the men.

  “He must have been so afraid,” she whispered. “What happened then?” She simply had to know.

  “Without ceremony or respect for his rank, observed only by the family portraits,” Ivan said, “they shot him.”

  Sophie gasped. She felt almost sick.

  “That’s dreadful,” said Delphine solemnly.

  “They said that, as the soldiers raised their rifles,” Ivan continued, “the prince offered them all a cigarette and laughed.”