“You’d never heard of them before you came here, had you?” the princess said slowly.
Sophie shook her head. She wanted to be able to say something fascinating, to keep the princess’s attention, but couldn’t think of anything.
The princess leaned across to turn off Sophie’s bedside lamp, and the heavy, velvety scent wound around Sophie once more. “We shall talk more tomorrow. You will tell me everything about yourself. Every little detail, everything you can remember … but now, you must sleep …”
She stood and moved to the door. “Good night, my dear guests! Sleep well on this, your first night in the Winter Palace. Tomorrow we will picnic in the snow and skate on the frozen lake!”
“I can still smell her perfume,” Delphine said, once the princess had closed the door and the sound of her footsteps had faded. She wrinkled her nose.
“She doesn’t seem real.” Marianne put the cosmology book down on the floor and plumped up her already plump pillow. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone who looks like her.”
“But it’s not just how she looks,” Sophie said, sitting up and hugging her knees. “There’s more to it than that … it’s everything. This palace … her family … even the wolf cutlery! It all makes her so fascinating.” She tried to forget the sudden flares of anger, the cold gray eyes that had looked so calculating.
“The princess seems very interested in you, Sophie,” Delphine said.
Delphine hardly ever gave compliments. But it did mean that when she said something, it was usually true.Wasthe princess interested in her? Sophie wondered. Why would a Volkonsky princess be interested in an ordinary schoolgirl?
“You’re never the center of attention,” Delphine went on. “It’s always me … and I’m not being vain when I say that, it’s just a fact. Or else it’s Marianne because she’s so smart. But ever since you gave that tour at school, things have been changing,” she said slowly, as if she were trying to figure something out. “Perhaps … perhaps the princess sees something in you that others don’t …” She shook her head. “But what? What makesyouso special?”
“I’m not special,” Sophie said. “We know that!” And yet … since she had arrived in Russia it was as if a spark had been ignited inside her. She might not be special, but she felt more alive, as if her life now had unimagined possibilities.
Marianne took off her glasses, always a clear sign that she was tired. “Maybe it’s just like that woman who visited the school and convinced Mrs. Sharman to let you come on the trip,” she yawned. “The one you thought was Dr. Starova. Maybe she feels sorry for you.”
Sophie nodded. That was the most obvious explanation.
“I’m glad we came,” Delphine said. “Everyone will be so jealous on Monday when we go to School 59 and say we’ve stayed in a palace and been skating with a princess.”
“They might think we’ve made it all up,” Marianne said.
Sophie thought she might not believe it herself, once they had left this place. And would they even be back in Saint Petersburg on Monday? She tried to remember what the princess had told them when they had signed their skating permission forms, but the memory of what she’d said wasn’t clear.
The gaps between the girls’ sentences became longer and longer. Sophie thought about the journey that had brought them here, running the images through her mind. The dainty train carriage and thevozok. The wild Viflyanka and the boy with the crescent-shaped scar. The wolf cutlery and the beautiful silversarafanthat seemed to have been made just for her.
She asked Marianne the time, but there was no answer.
Sophie hauled her rucksack up off the floor and got out the wooden pencil box. She took the ring off and laid it inside. It would be much safer in there. A diamond ring! She couldn’t believe the princess had really given it to her. How worthless her piece of glass looked next to it. It was too big and it didn’t sparkle like the princess’s intricately set ring with its dusting of tiny diamonds around the large, flashing central stone. She wondered now where that piece of glass had come from, why her father had kept such a poor trinket, though thinking that seemed disloyal somehow.
She picked up the piece of glass and put it in the palm of her hand, then, on a sudden impulse, hung it around her neck, tucking it under her nightgown. It felt cool on her skin and the string tickled the back of her neck. She felt better wearing this than the ring. It felt somehow right because it made her feel close to her father. After all, it might be worthless, but he had given it with love. The princess’s gift was more puzzling. As if she wanted something in return.
There was a white square of moonlight on the floor. The blizzard had blown itself out. Sophie slipped out of bed and tiptoed to the window. She saw the waiting-to-be-shot statues, dressed against the frost in their wrappings of burlap. She saw the Volkonsky forest, stretching off as far as she could see.
So that was where the last Princess Volkonskaya had fled with her child, that terrible night of her husband’s death. Sophie was not sure she could have left her home like that, to face such a perilous and uncertain future.But she did it for her child,Sophie told herself. Both the young prince and his brave wife had sacrificed everything they had to save the life of their child.
As Sophie looked into the woods, wondering which path the princess had taken, she saw a single snow-covered statue at the edge of the tree line. How odd that it was on its own like that. She breathed on the glass and rubbed it clear of the frost flowers. What was it? A lion, crouched down on its haunches? No. Not big enough for a lion and the head was the wrong shape.
As she watched, the statue unfolded itself, stood up, and threw back its head at the moon.
A wolf!
And now she saw that it wasn’t covered in snow … it was white. A white wolf! Just like the ones Ivan had told them about, that had once guarded the palace and avenged the murder of the prince!
The howl climbed up her spine. This,thiswas the sound she had heard as they had walked through the decrepit palace, on their way to meet the princess. Desolate and wild.
Should she be scared? Of course! The cry was even more savage than the one she had heard before. But why, then, did she feel more excited than frightened? It was as though she somehow understood, without knowing how, that this wolf was a guardian of the palace … that it might also have come to the palace to protect Princess Anna Feodorovna. Perhaps excitement was not such a strange emotion after all, when the imagined world of her dreams had come to life … when she had met a princess living alone in her deserted palace, the ghosts of her family all around her.
Sophie pressed her face to the window and closed her eyes. More than anything, she felt suddenly that she wanted to be outside, in the snow, running wild with the wolf whose cry only she seemed to hear.
But when she opened her eyes, the wolf had gone.
