CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR The Return
“Is that it?” Sophie whispered. “Is it really over? Just like that, in a second?”
She tried to break free from Dmitri’s arms. “There must be something we can do … We have to get Anna Feodorovna out. If we don’t get to her … Why isn’t Ivan doing anything? Why is he just lying there?”
She twisted out of Dmitri’s grip and slid down the bank.
“Get back!” Ivan roared, his face wet with tears. “You stay off the ice!”
“But we have to help her …” Sophie knew it was too late, but she felt that if she kept talking, it might not be true. “We can’t just leave her to drown … under the ice … Ivan …”
She sat down in the snow and put her head on her knees. She heard the ice creak. A hand hooked itself under her arm and lifted her up.
“I told her it was all over.” Ivan put his hand under her chin and lifted her face so that she had to look at him. “She was not a princess,” he said. “You are the princess.”
“But I can’t be a Volkonsky …”
It was so painful, this dislocation of her world.
Her throat ached. It was as if she were being told that she was a boy, or that her parents hadn’t really died but had just been playing an elaborate game of hide-and-seek on her for all these years.
It was as if she, herself, had fallen through the ice.
But no, she mustn’t think like that. She must find something solid to stand on.
“I am being foolish!” Ivan helped her up, put his arm around her, and started to walk her back toward the palace. “I need to get you inside. And quickly.”
Sophie’s legs were unbearably stiff and she leaned into Ivan’s reassuring solidness as they skirted the banks of the ice road. She glanced behind her toward the forest. The wolves stood at the tree line for a moment — and then, with a yelp of joy, they streamed off into the forest.
Dmitri led Viflyanka slowly behind them. At the portico, he asked Ivan something in Russian. Ivan nodded, then leaned down and said, “Dmitri will take Viflyanka to the palace stables. The horse needs attention.”
“Of course,” Sophie whispered. “Will Viflyanka be all right, Dmitri?”
“Yes.” Dmitri nodded. “Thank you. Without your help, he would be like …” He must have seen the pain on Sophie’s face, because he stopped.
Masha, waiting on the steps, ran toward them. Her eyes were wide. “I hear ice road crack. Like cannon! But you safe!”
“Oh, Masha …” Sophie bit her lip. “Something awful has happened. The princess …”
“Not princess,” Masha whispered.
Ivan squeezed her shoulder. “Masha, I should have listened to you. I should have understood what you were saying to me.”
Masha shrugged.
“Will you forgive me?” Ivan said.
Masha curtseyed. “I will forgive … and help you, too.” She added, “Now we both serve Volkonskys!” She looked up at him and smiled, a little shy.
“Where are the others?” Ivan asked.
“I take them to warm room,” Masha said. “I give them tea?”
Ivan smiled too, although he still looked sad. “They are in need of warmth and friendship … You will give them that, I know.”
Masha smiled proudly. “And the princess?” she said shyly. “I will make tea for princess?”
“You will make tea for the princess,” Ivan said. “But not just yet.” He turned to Sophie. “There is something I must show you.”
“Where are we going, Ivan?”
Ivan shrugged off his shuba and hung it on a passing statue. “I believed her when she told me who she was. I never questioned it.” He hit the side of his head with his fist. “I was such a fool!”
“Why wouldn’t you believe her?” Sophie burst out. “She was like a princess! She saved you, brought you here.”
“I didn’t understand what she wanted,” Ivan continued. “I believed her when she said she wanted some young friends in the palace.” He laughed, a sound more like a bark. “She said she had plans for you. But all she wanted was information to help her find the diamonds.”
They had been walking up the stairs of a remote tower. Sophie had never been in this part of the palace. Ivan threw open a door to reveal a surprisingly warm and cozy room. A gilt clock ticked on a marble mantelpiece; fur rugs were draped over gilt furniture.
“When we came to the palace, she asked me to bring the least damaged furniture here.” Ivan sighed. “There was something secretive in her manner I didn’t understand. I kept a key to the room and, although I’m sorry to admit I did that, I see now it was better that I did.”
He put his hand on Sophie’s back and gently guided her inside. “When she told me to get out of the ballroom, I came here. Then I truly understood what she wanted,” he said slowly. “That was why I tried to stop her from leaving.”
He pulled a key from behind a gilt clock and unlocked a large marquetry cabinet. Papers slid out all over the floor: photographs of faces, which were followed by more images, charts, maps.
He was quiet for a second. “I never believed that she would harm you. But the wolf hunt … I knew then. She was a perfect shot — and I saw in that moment she was not aiming for the wolf. She was aiming for you.”
“So you saved my life?”
“She thought you knew nothing. The general had ordered it …”
“She really wanted me dead?”
“In that moment,” Ivan spoke quietly, “yes.”
Sophie’s mouth was dry. She bent down and picked up a photograph. A girl in a school uniform standing in a playground. “But … this is me!” She held the photograph out toward Ivan. “At my school in London.”
“Anna Feodorovna did her research.” Ivan took the blurred picture of Sophie and looked at it.
“The general sent his secretary to be sure. He needed to know that there would be no more Volkonskys alive to dispute her claim on the diamonds. No one to come forward and call themselves a prince or a princess when she had taken that title for herself. When she found you, it must have made her desperate,” he whispered.
“She had thought she could have all of this without anyone knowing she had stolen it. But in the course of finding out the forgotten story of the Volkonskys, she found a forgotten child. A schoolgirl with a lost family history.”
“But I knew nothing of this.” Sophie blinked back the tears. “No one had told me anything.” She folded her photographed face in four and absentmindedly pushed the photograph into her pocket.
“But she didn’t know that,” Ivan sighed. “And if she had found you, if she had made the link, perhaps someone else could, too. She had to be sure that she wouldn’t be discovered.”
“So, is it really true?” Sophie said. “Am I really a Volkonsky?”
Ivan found another photograph, very old and grainy. It showed a girl, not much older than Sophie. “This is your great-grandmother Sofya.” Ivan smiled sadly. “You look very like her.”
Sophie looked into the grains of the photograph of the wolf princess. There was something of her own face, she could see that now. The straight eyebrows. The pale skin. But the expression! How many more years would that open, bright, curious face have before she perished in the woods?
“Her child was safe,” Sophie whispered. And then she thought about Xenia.
An old lady. The daughter of a forgotten Russian princess who had been brought to England.
And for what? She died alone. It was so sad.
Would her father, Prince Vladimir, have been happy for her to end her days like that?
Would her own father be happy for Sophie to live so alone?
“Xenia was rescued, perhaps by a peasant. Probably sold for bread.” Ivan found more papers.
“Sofya was traveling to Arkhangelsk. There had been reports of the British navy waiting there to help the Tsar escape from the Revolution.” He smiled sadly.
“But the Tsar never came. Instead, the boat took other travelers … and Xenia Volkonsky must have been one of them.”
Sophie sighed. “I’m sure my parents had no idea about this,” she said. “My guardian would have told me if they’d known anything.”
“Anna Feodorovna was meticulous,” Ivan said, shaking his head. “She would not have embarked on such a course of action if she had not been sure. Your guardian will have papers somewhere that relate to your family.”
Sophie thought of the box of files in her bedroom in Rosemary’s flat.
She had once looked inside, hoping to find photographs of her parents, or perhaps letters, but Rosemary had found her and become angry.
There had been a particularly vicious argument and, soon after, the files disappeared.
Did Rosemary still have them? Would they hold any answers?
She sank into a chair. “There’s so much to take in,” she said. “It feels so strange. When you think you’re one person … and then … suddenly, you’re another!”
“You are still the same person,” Ivan said. “It’s just that now you know a little more about where you came from.” He put his arm around Sophie. “But this is how life surprises us,” he said. “I thought I knew one person very well indeed … and I was wrong.”
“I’m sorry,” Sophie murmured.
“She was so clever!” Ivan said, struggling to keep his voice calm. “She could have made any life she wanted for herself. She didn’t need to rob someone else of theirs.” He turned away. Sophie glimpsed tears in his eyes.
After a second, he straightened his shoulders and said, “Let us go and find the others. There are things we must discuss. Plans we must make. We must get you back to Saint Petersburg and Miss Ellis. I think you have lessons at a real Russian school tomorrow!”
Sophie nodded, but knew that the only lessons she needed to learn would not happen in a Saint Petersburg school. Or any school.
She swallowed. “Do I have to go back?”
Ivan looked surprised.
She said again, more forcefully, “I wish I didn’t have to go back so soon, Ivan. There’s so much I want to find out about, so much I need to learn.”
Ivan considered this. “We would have to speak to your guardian,” he said gravely. “She is the only person who can decide at this time.”
“She doesn’t even know I’m here!”
Ivan frowned, not comprehending.