CHAPTER TEN The Winter Palace #2
“Oh, save us the guidebook nonsense!” Delphine said. She took a step back and looked at Marianne critically. “If you are going to meet a princess — even a princess you’ve never heard of — you need to make an effort,” she declared. “Will you wear some lip gloss? Just this once?”
Marianne sighed. “It won’t make the slightest bit of difference, Delphine.
And it just makes me feel awkward. As if someone’s smeared sticky wax over my lips.
” She made a face and jerked her head away as Delphine, ignoring her words, put a glossy finger to her mouth.
“Do you think Ivan’s story about the prince is true?
” she continued. “I’m not sure how he could know exactly what happened.
He described it as if he was actually there. ”
“Perhaps someone saw it — or heard it — and wrote it down,” Sophie said. She wanted to believe what Ivan had said, that Prince Vladimir died laughing. She didn’t want to imagine him begging for his life.
“Well, one part of it must be true …” Marianne mused.
“What?” Sophie wanted to go on discussing the extraordinary Volkonskys until they had exhausted every angle of the story.
“The part about his wife and child escaping into the forest.”
Delphine walked across to the mirror in the long emerald-green tunic that had been placed on her bed. With her hair hanging loose, she looked like a character out of a fairy tale. “How do you figure?” she said, looking intently at her reflection.
“Because if he hadn’t managed to save them, there’d be no more Volkonskys. I suppose the soldiers must have thought they’d died in the forest so didn’t bother to follow them.”
Sophie got out of her shuba, still thinking about the princess.
How sad she must have been, and yet how brave.
And how had she survived in the forest this far north?
The cold was, as Ivan said, as sharp as a wolf’s bite.
Someone must have helped her in the woods, given her food, offered her a warm hut to sleep in.
Sophie peeled off the rest of her clothes and folded them neatly, just as she would have done at school.
They looked ridiculous: flimsy and cheap.
For the first time, she saw them through Mr. Tweedie’s eyes.
No wonder he had been so insistent on her getting a new sweater.
She felt ashamed suddenly: She didn’t want to be the girl in the scruffy clothes anymore.
She pushed them onto the floor and kicked them under the bed.
She turned her attention to the clothes that had been left for her.
A long skirt, a soft undershirt, and — like the others — a long tunic, which was simpler than theirs but made of the most exquisite silver material.
She pushed her feet into silver slippers (how had they known her size?
she wondered), then stepped into the skirt, and drew the waist tight with the cords.
Then she slid the pale shirt over her head.
It smelled of lavender. And then she pulled on the silver sarafan.
It was cut narrow across the shoulders, with long, wide sleeves.
She felt, suddenly, quite remarkable, and yet more herself than ever before.
None of Sophie’s clothes had ever been bought with much thought or care; Rosemary had never seen the need for anything but the basics.
This tunic, however — cut with precision, sewn with knowledge of the fabric, and somehow, so strangely, of the body that would inhabit it — was unlike anything Sophie had ever worn.
She looked down and watched it ripple with light.
She walked over to the mirror. Could that really be her?
She looked like someone else, someone who was used to wearing delicate fabrics cut into clothes that fit perfectly.
Would it be too much to hope that she might, wearing this beautiful garment, look a little like a Volkonsky?
She raised her arms and the sleeves fell down like a waterfall.
How hard it would be to go back to wearing a shabby school uniform after this.
“Why do you have the best one?” Delphine touched the silver cloth longingly. “Could I try it on?”
Sophie hesitated. She didn’t want to let go of the sarafan, realizing for the first time that perhaps clothes could be magical in the way they could transform your appearance, the way you felt, and even everything around you.
“I did swap sweaters when you were in trouble with Mrs. Sharman, remember,” Delphine said as she pulled off her own tunic, placing it on the bed and holding out her hands. “You could take a photo of me? For my visual diary? We’ll swap straight back. Promise.”
Reluctantly, Sophie took off the silver sarafan and handed it to Delphine, who quickly put it on and then danced away from Sophie, looking as if she had been cut from moonlight. “Do you think I look like a Russian princess in my sarafan?” she asked.
Sophie stood awkwardly, Delphine’s emerald-green tunic over her arm.
There was a smart knock at the door. Ivan appeared. He, too, had changed and was wearing a blue tunic, the shoulders covered in large silver tassels; ropes of silver braid were swagged across his chest.
“It is time.” He bowed. “The princess will greet you formally in the Winter Ballroom. Please follow me.”
Delphine’s eyes lit up with excitement. “I love princesses!” she said.
“All this stuff about winter ballrooms and formal greetings! My mother is going to be so pleased when I tell her. How much better is this than tramping through Dorset?” She put her head to one side.
“Only thing is, there’s no time to change, Sophie. Sorry.” She swished past.
“You might have known she’d do that,” Marianne whispered. “What a show-off she is.”
“It does look beautiful on her,” Sophie admitted.
“It doesn’t fit her properly,” Marianne said. “On you it was perfect.” She smiled reassuringly. “But you’ll look lovely in the green one, too.”
Sophie pulled on the tunic. It was slightly too big. She didn’t feel the same in it.
Marianne linked arms. “We don’t care, anyway, do we?” she said. “It’s only Delphine who wants to make an impression.”
Sophie nodded, but, just this once, she couldn’t agree with lovely, sensible Marianne.
She realized that she did want to make an impression on the woman who lived in this forgotten palace, who had given Ivan a new life and had vowed to restore the Volkonsky fortunes.
A woman who came from a family where people were happy to die, bravely, to save a child.
They followed Ivan back down the grand staircase and then through a series of rooms that would once have been beautiful.
There were carved gilt pediments at every window, painted ceilings, and ornate tiled stoves.
But there was very little furniture and most of what remained was damaged.
After shooting the prince, the soldiers must have run through the palace setting fire to things, smashing down doors, and looting.
But some rooms had hardly been touched, and Sophie found these the saddest of all.
In one, curled and yellowed papers had fallen from a writing desk to the floor.
In another were a card table still set with a decanter and glasses — the sediment of wine like dried blood — and a chess table with broken pieces.
Sophie bent down, blew dust off the white queen, and set her on her square.
In these rooms, it felt as if the inhabitants had only just left, as if Sophie — if only she could listen with the right sort of attention — would be able to catch their voices from the next room.
Outside, the wind sighed. Their heavy garments rustled and Ivan’s boot leather creaked as they walked.
“What was that?” From somewhere quite distant — the other side of the palace?
— Sophie had heard a sound. It was not the voice of a long-dead Volkonsky, even though they seemed so present.
No, it was a sound she had never heard before.
She strained her ears, willing the wind to die down so that she could really listen.
“I didn’t hear anything.” Delphine frowned and peered into the shadows behind her.
“I did.” Sophie slowed down and turned her head slightly. “There it is again.”
“What?”
“A moan … or a cry, or something.” How could she describe what she had heard … if she had indeed heard anything? Perhaps she had just been affected by the beautiful sadness of these ravaged rooms.
“I didn’t hear anything, either,” Marianne said. But Sophie saw her friend shrink back into herself, as if she were frightened.
Ivan said, “I think it is the wind that you hear, little Sophie.” But his eyes flicked nervously as he said it.
Sophie knew what the strange moan of the wind sounded like.
And this sound was different. This made the hair on the back of her neck prickle and her heart race.
It was wilder, more desperate than even the most savage storm.
It was the sound of something alive, a desolate cry, and she felt that she had heard it somewhere before. But where?
Ivan walked quickly on, as if he wanted them to move away from the sound. “Let us not delay!” he cried, striding ahead, and the three girls ran after him.
Finally, they reached the end of a corridor. Ivan swung open the rosewood doors in front of them and light splashed out. Beyond, Sophie saw a looking-glass world made up of mirrors reflecting candlelight.
Ivan bowed deeply and announced, “Her Serene Highness, the Princess Anna Feodorovna Volkonskaya!”