CHAPTER TWELVE The Dinner
The White Dining Room, surely capable of seating at least a hundred diners, was almost entirely empty, apart from a table at which just three places had been set.
There were shadows on the walls where paintings had once hung.
At the far end of the room, snow had blown through a hole in a high, broken window and lay in a drift on the dark floorboards.
Candles guttered in the candelabrum, the wax already dripping down onto the curved silver branches.
“This place is so run-down.” Marianne leaned across to speak to Sophie and Delphine, dropping her voice as Ivan glanced around. “I suppose the princess has lost all her money.”
Delphine shook her head. “She must have money,” she said. “Did you see her dress?”
Marianne shrugged her reply.
Delphine said, “That dress was expensive. Definitely haute couture.”
“Perhaps she’s too cheap to do the place up,” Marianne said as she picked up a large starched linen napkin and put it on her lap.
Sophie watched as Ivan moved silver dishes around on a large sideboard. She wondered about the other servants he had mentioned. And could a princess, could this princess, be cheap? She didn’t want to think it of her, just as she didn’t want to think of Prince Vladimir dying like a coward.
“If the palace has been empty for so long,” Sophie said, “and if the princess has only just returned … perhaps she hasn’t had time to make any repairs.” She looked at the faded pattern on the walls.
“You can tell she’s a princess,” Delphine said, glancing across at Ivan’s back. “Just by the way she looks. Did you see her rings? But I wonder why she wants to live here. She’d have much more fun in Saint Petersburg.”
“Perhaps she doesn’t want fun,” Sophie said.
“What else could she want?” Delphine looked around, her quick gaze taking in the almost empty, no longer grand room.
“I like the way that everything was once so beautiful, but now it’s so neglected and sad.
It seems so much more romantic that way,” Sophie said, more to herself.
“And the story of the last Volkonskys. I wonder how the princess and the child survived in the forest?” She couldn’t seem to stop thinking about it.
“But what’s the point of being a princess,” Delphine said, “unless you winter in Gstaad and spend the summer on Cap Ferrat? Who’s going to see you here? There’s no point.”
“Not everyone is interested in ‘being seen,’ Delphine,” Marianne said, sounding peevish.
But Sophie thought Delphine had a point.
It must be a strange existence living in so isolated a place.
Perhaps not if you were Marianne and interested in books.
Sophie knew she would be happy here, too — there was so much to discover, so much history, and the park was beautiful.
She could walk for hours in the snow. But the princess?
What could have made such a woman come back to live alone in this ruined palace?
She seemed so alive, so vibrant, the sort of woman who could enter a room and have everyone under her spell.
Sophie could just imagine her in Saint Petersburg, at the heart of the city.
She picked up a spoon. It had the head of an animal engraved on it, not a lion or a dog …
another wolf, perhaps. Sophie thought that it must be things like these that had drawn the princess away from life in Saint Petersburg.
The knowledge that she belonged to a family who had wolves engraved on the cutlery.
She didn’t think she would ever feel that way about Rosemary’s flat.
Her guardian was suspicious of anything ornate.
“You have found the wolf!” Ivan smiled.
“Is it the family crest?” Delphine peered at her spoon. “There’s a family I know in Paris who have porcupines on everything!”
“Why did they choose a wolf?” Sophie asked.
“For the Volkonskys, it is like a signature,” Ivan explained.
“Instead of writing their name, they use the symbol of the wolf head.” He smiled at Sophie.
“If you look around the palace, you will find wolves carved into the moldings, their paws cast in bronze as door handles … those that weren’t stolen … ”
“The nursery door,” Sophie said. “I saw it! And on the train. But why a wolf?” She looked more closely at the animal. His mouth was open and his teeth were bared in a snarl. He didn’t look at all friendly.
“That’s what Volkonsky means!” Ivan said. He brought a large tureen and bowls to the table.
“So the Princess Volkonskaya is a wolf princess,” Sophie murmured.
“There’s a wolf on the china, too,” said Marianne.
“The white wolves of the Volkonskys,” Ivan whispered. “Guardians of the palace.” Then he stopped, as if he had said too much.
“Guardians?” Sophie felt a thrilling sense of terror. For her, the word guardian meant Rosemary. How much more extraordinary to have a guardian who was a wolf! She traced the shape of the animal’s head on her bowl with her finger.
“After the prince was shot” — Ivan looked uncomfortable — “as the soldiers set about destroying the beauty of the palace, the wolves came in and took their revenge. Not many soldiers survived that night.”
Marianne shivered. “I’m not keen on wolves,” she whispered.
“It all happened so long ago,” Ivan reassured her, ladling ruby-colored soup into Sophie’s bowl. “You have nothing to fear now.”
Sophie picked up the heavy metal spoon and dipped it into the middle of the soup. She took a sip. It was warm, sweet, smoky.
“What is it?” she asked Ivan as he ladled more of the soup into Delphine’s bowl and then Marianne’s. “I’ve never had this before.”
“It is borscht,” he said. “Beet soup. The princess wants you to taste a real Russian feast!” He moved cutlery and glasses around with quiet, controlled movements.
The room began to fold in around them, as if it were able to welcome them as warmly as any person.
Was it the deliciousness of the soup, or the softness of the candlelight, or the heavy tiredness in her bones that made Sophie feel so comfortable?
“Canis lupus linnaeus.” Marianne stared straight ahead, her eyes unfocused.
“Canis whatus?” Delphine said.
“Canis lupus linnaeus,” Marianne repeated.
“It’s the Latin name for wolf. Millie Dresser did a project on wolves for Life Sciences.
” She shook her head. “But she’s so lazy, she didn’t bother to find any proper information.
” She put her soupspoon down in her empty bowl.
“It was all just drawings.” She chewed her lip, sounding mystified.
“But I do remember she’d found out the Latin name and written that in mad, squirrelly writing, to cover more of the paper.
And she wrote that each wolf has its own howl, like a signature, or a fingerprint.
” She closed one eye as she tried to remember.
“Their fur is called a ‘pelage.’” She opened her eye.
“And they are intelligent hunters that can kill their prey with ruthless efficiency.”
“Millie Dresser wrote all that?” Sophie said, surprised.
“I don’t believe it,” Delphine said.
They looked at each other and laughed, reminded of the hapless Millie Dresser and her attempts to fool the teachers.
London felt a long way away. And less real than the place they were now.
It felt good to be here, together, after their long journey, with Ivan taking such attentive care of them.
Sophie felt her limbs become heavier as she allowed herself to relax in the certainty that all was as it should be.
Someone had been in their room: The furs and quilts had been turned back and nightgowns laid out.
Their luggage from the train had been put in a neat pile. Delphine started to unpack. “I don’t think I brought any trousers suitable for skating,” she said. “If only I’d brought those camel cords!”
Drowsy from their meal and tired after the excitement of arrival, Marianne and Sophie undressed quietly. Delphine took off the silver sarafan and laid it on Sophie’s bed.
“Thank you,” she murmured. “Although I’m not sure it made any difference.” She gave Sophie an appraising look. “The princess and you … I can’t figure it out.”
Sophie climbed into her narrow bed. “I like it here,” she said. The sheets had little specks of black on them, damp spots, although they were clean and well aired. “I know it’s not grand anymore … but that makes it feel more like a home.”
“I wonder how big it is,” Marianne yawned. “I can’t get my bearings.”
On the wall next to Sophie’s bed were sheaves of paper glued to the wall.
They were covered in Russian handwriting and had been placed there randomly, mostly overlapping each other.
They looked as if they had been torn from a child’s exercise book.
Of course! Ivan had said this was the palace nursery.
Perhaps this was the writing of one of the Volkonsky children.
A few of the pages around the edges were coming unstuck, and Sophie couldn’t resist sticking her nail underneath the edge and trying to peel them back. She traced the letters: C, O, and then an O with a line through it, and a back-to-front N and R. COФИЯ. What on earth did that mean?
Behind the pages were splints of pale wood and then something black: a large hole.
So the pages had been stuck there for a practical purpose.
A draft sighed through the gaps and rustled the corners of the pages she had pulled away.
Sophie wondered where in the palace it came from.
There must be so many rooms beyond this one.
All of them locked. All of them forgotten.
“Do you think the princess is lonely?” Sophie asked the others. “Living here on her own like this?”
“I’m not sure about lonely,” Delphine said. “But she must be bored. There’s nothing to do!”
“Apart from the skating and the picnics by moonlight and the rides into the forest?” Sophie suggested.
“If you like snow,” Delphine muttered. “Which you do. I miss the south of France.”