CHAPTER NINE The Vozok
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.
“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!”