“Perhaps,” the princess said, looking at Sophie over her shoulder. “If I find it.”
Ahead was a clearing in the woods and what looked like a small circular temple with a frozen ornamental lake in front, surrounded by birch trees. Smoke rose from the temple’s domed roof. Sophie was struck once more, not only by the extravagant architecture tossed carelessly into a Russian forest, but by the thought that some long-forgotten Volkonsky had wanted such a building as a simple skating hut. It seemed romantic rather than foolish.
Ivan turned around, his beard rimed with frost. “You see?” he said. “I have had the stove lit. We will not freeze on our skating pond!”
The princess pulled Viflyanka to a halt. “He goes well, this little horse of yours, Ivan.”
“But you would do well not to let him have his head so much, Princess.” Ivan collected up the reins she had thrown carelessly to one side. “He is fast … but he is not steady. You should be more careful.”
“Careful? Did you hear that, girls?” The princess stood up. “Ivan wants me to be careful!” She jumped down into the snow, laughing, then held a hand up to Sophie. “Fetch the picnic, Ivan! We will soon be hungry.”
Sophie threw back the bearskin and took the princess’s hand to jump down. Ivan pulled a thick blanket over Viflyanka and unloaded wooden crates from the back of thevozokwithout saying anything.
The princess hurried the girls into the little temple. Inside, the walls had been covered in tiny diamond-shaped mirrors. A tiled stove in the corner gave off plenty of heat, and a large round table was already laid with a crisp white cloth. It was as if the room itself were waiting for its guests, pleased to be used after years of neglect.
Delphine gasped. “It’s so pretty!”
“Like stepping inside a crystal,” Marianne said, stamping her feet on the floor to shake the snow from her boots.
“Another example of Volkonsky madness, you mean.” The princess was looking through a pile of ancient skates in a box; the blades were rusted, the leather cracked and dry. “We must find you skates!” She seemed to be speaking more quickly than yesterday, as if the ride through the woods had excited her as much as Viflyanka. Her eyes glittered like the gray diamonds on her fingers as she pulled off her sealskin gloves with her teeth.
“Here, Delphine” — she handed her a pair of skates by their tangled laces — “these should fit you.” Sophie watched the princess’s reflection refracted in the tiny mirrored panes as she started rummaging through the pile once more. “Marianne? I think your feet are slightly smaller than Delphine’s.” She picked up a battered pair of brown skating boots. “You’ll need to put them on outside.” The two girls tramped outside into the snow.
“As for you …” She looked up at Sophie’s face, as if Sophie’s expression might tell her the size of her feet. “I think you can take these.” The skates were like little brown ankle boots with slim blades attached to the bottom. “They belonged to the last Princess Volkonskaya.”
“The one who escaped? With her child?”
“Who told you that? I thought you didn’t know anything about the Volkonskys.” The princess looked sharply at Sophie.
Sophie hesitated. Had she said something wrong? “I don’t, except what Ivan told us. How could I?”
She wondered why this should have upset the princess so much. Perhaps there were things in the Volkonsky family she didn’t want Sophie to know about. Things she might be embarrassed about. But how could that be? Everything to do with the Volkonskys was so fascinating, if sad.
“He seems very keen on telling you the Volkonsky history.” The woman tossed Sophie the skates. “When I think perhaps he should mind his own business! What aboutyourfamily?”
“I don’t have a family,” Sophie said. “My father —”
“He died?” the princess cut in. “Do you remember anything about him?”
Sophie was taken aback. “Just strange things. Blurred pictures. Sometimes the sound of his voice.” She didn’t mention that she had heard it since she’d been here in Russia.
“What sort of pictures?” The princess leaned closer. But Sophie couldn’t think how to describe the images of her father reading to her, or the meticulous way he peeled an apple, or the careless way he slammed a door. When she didn’t say anything, the princess pressed, “What about the rest of your family? You must have other relations?”
“No.”
“Surely someone?”
“Just my guardian. But she was my mother’s friend.”
The princess nodded slowly. “How awful to be so entirely and completely alone.” But she didn’t sound that sorry.
“I try not to think about it,” Sophie mumbled.
They followed Marianne and Delphine outside to a large stone bench to put the skates on. Sheltered under the portico of the temple where the snow could not fall, Sophie saw that the legs of the seat on which her friends now sat ended in carved stone wolf paws.
The snow had begun to fall again. Sophie watched as Ivan carried the last of the crates into the hut.
“Unpack the picnic, Ivan!” the princess called out to him. “I need a glass of vintageshampanskoyefrom the Volkonsky cellars before I skate!”
