The boy was already sitting at the front of thevozok. 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. “Ofcourseyou mustn’t speak to them.”
“Actually, I don’t think that’s quite true …” Marianne began. But the harness bells rang out over theshushhhhhhhof 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 thevozokskirted 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.
Thevozokslipped 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. Thevozokflew 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 thevozokup 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 thevozokfor 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 thevozok, 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.
