Scarlet in the Snow (16 page)

All the way home, and all through the lunch that Sveta had ready on the table for us as soon as we arrived, Mama and my sisters talked excitedly about the house they’d rented, making plans for when we would move there. I only listened with half an ear, for I longed to get back to my room and look at the newspaper photograph properly. Of course my silence could not fail to be noticed, and at length Mama broke off her conversation to say, ‘Is everything all right, Natashka? You look so far away.’

‘What? Oh, yes. Sorry, Mama,’ I said hastily. ‘All’s fine. I was just thinking.’

‘Not about the house, I’ll be bound,’ said Anya. ‘Have you heard anything we’ve said?’

‘Yes, yes. Of course. It all sounds . . . interesting.’

‘Interesting?’ said Liza. ‘Is that all you can say?’

‘What do you expect me to say? You know what I think of the city.’ I sighed. ‘And I have other things on my mind.’

‘What, about your professor’s job again? Anyone would think he’d put you under a work-spell, the way you’ve been going on about it,’ grumbled Anya.

‘You wouldn’t know about that, would you?’ I retorted. ‘Spell or no spell, you have no idea what work means.’

‘Girls, girls!’ Mama said, sighing. ‘That’ll do. Now, please clear the table, Liza and Anya. Natasha, you stay here. There’s something I want to say to you.’

‘Yes, Mama,’ chorused my sisters, meekly. I sat there on the edge of my seat, nervous about what was coming next, but even more desperate to get back to my search, the photograph I’d filched burning a hole in my pocket.

‘Natasha,’ said my mother, ‘look at me.’

Reluctantly, I did so.

‘I’m a little worried about you, my dearest daughter. There’s something on your mind. Since you’ve been back, you seem different,’ she said gently. ‘Are you sure you’re all right?’

I swallowed. ‘Quite sure, Mama.’

‘Is it something to do with what the professor has been asking you to transcribe?’ she asked, searching my face. ‘Is that what troubles you? Is he writing about dark magic, perhaps?’

‘Oh, no,’ I said, startled. ‘Nothing like that. Iv– the professor is a good man. I am just . . . a little tired, Mama. And you know, well, frankly, I didn’t miss Byeloka. So I find it hard to get as enthusiastic as my sisters. But I’m sorry if I have been rude.’

‘Oh, my dear girl,’ said my mother, sighing, ‘you know I have come to love our place here and that I shrink a little at the thought of being back in society. But I am merely a middle-aged widow – no, don’t protest, Natasha, that is what I am – whilst you girls are young and life is before you. And you need to see more of life than just our little world here. You need to know more people than we can know here, if you are to find your place in the big wide world, and the right man to share your life with – a man who will make you as happy as your dear father made me.’

‘Mama,’ I said, blushing, ‘there is time enough for that, and besides, I have seen the men of Byeloka and none of them interests me. They are all full of their own self-importance and think that a woman should have no mind of her own.’

‘It is surely rather harsh,’ said my mother, laughing, ‘to condemn the entire male population of Byeloka when you only know a fraction of it! I am sure there will be amongst them more than one who would be drawn to you as much for your intelligence and spirit as –’

‘Please, Mama, I don’t want to talk about it,’ I interrupted her. My belly was churning with an undefined emotion, my throat a little dry. ‘I do not think there are any such men.’

‘Well, I thought exactly the same once,’ she said. ‘Then I met your father, and I knew I was wrong and that I would go through fire and flood and all the terrors of the world for him. One day, you will understand what I mean.’ She saw my mutinous expression and sighed. ‘Meanwhile, my darling daughter, think that you are only seventeen
and that you should not have to spend your life worrying about the papers of a professor.’

‘I’m not,’ I said crossly. ‘I’m not thinking about them at all.’

‘Well then,’ she said, ‘will you come with us this afternoon to visit Madame Elena?’

Madame Elena lived in the next village. She wasn’t quite Byeloka standard, but pretty good for a village dressmaker. I shook my head gently. ‘I’m sorry, Mama. I am very tired and must rest.’

‘Very well,’ she said a little sadly, and I knew it was because she felt I was not being frank with her. But how could I help it?

Back in my room, with the door locked behind me, I tried to read the pamphlet. It proved to be slow going, even with the help of the dictionary. And as it seemed to be of no immediate help to me, I soon cast the pamphlet aside and turned to the newspaper clipping, peering at the photograph through the magnifying glass I’d swiped from the study on my way upstairs. Even with the magnification, it was hard to make out their individual features, not to mention that some were standing in such a way that they were half-hidden by others.

But I refused to be defeated, and slowly I scanned each single face. Some were easy to dismiss, such as the women and the older gentlemen with greying beards and moustaches. But there were at least ten young men in that group
who looked around the right age, and three of them had their features quite obscured by the glass they were lifting, or by someone’s hand. So I looked very carefully first at those young men whose faces weren’t obscured, and the way they carried themselves, to conclude that most likely none of them was Ivan. That left only three.

I heard the front door bang as my family left on their outing. For a moment, I felt a little guilty I hadn’t joined them. Then I shrugged and returned to my task, squinting through the glass. Was it him? Or him? Or him? Again and again I looked, trying to decide till my eyes began to hurt and my head ache. I had placed so much store on this and now it didn’t look as though it would help me at all. Oh, Ivan, I thought, I wish you could tell me! If only I could speak to you . . .

Wait a moment. What had he said? Leaving the newspaper on the bed, I hurried over to the chest of drawers and carefully lifted out the handkerchief that held the rose petal. I gently unfolded the cloth and at once the rose’s scent filled my nostrils. I lifted the petal to my face and gently breathed in its aroma. Then I stood in front of the wardrobe mirror with it and closed my eyes. ‘Oh, Ivan,’ I whispered. ‘Ivan, my dear friend, please show yourself to me. Please speak to me.’

I could feel his presence so close to me that when I opened my eyes and looked into the mirror I was sure I would see him there. But there was nothing except my own reflection, staring back wildly at me. Luel, I thought. Luel won’t let him use the mirror. She’ll think it’s not safe. She won’t even reply to me. I was only to do this
when I was ready to return, and I hadn’t said that’s what I wanted. I hesitated. Should I return? No, not yet. It would do no good. I had to know his name. I had to wait for the reply from the Imperial Art Festival. I had to wait till I knew more, till I could be sure.

I sat on the bed with the photograph on my lap. And with my heart pounding and the breath catching in my throat, I laid the scarlet petal down gently on the face of the first young man whose features I couldn’t make out. I left it there an instant and then lifted the petal off. When I looked at it again under the magnifying glass, the man’s face suddenly leaped into focus – so clearly I could almost see the pores of his skin. But it wasn’t Ivan. I tried the next man, but it wasn’t him either. And then, taking a deep breath, I laid the petal gently upon the last one.

To my horror the newsprint began to curl up at the edges, as though it was being held over a flame. I quickly snatched up the petal to save it. And a split second before the photograph burst into flames and crumbled into ash, I saw the third man. He was handsome with a straight grey-green gaze, a head of thick, red-brown hair, and a proud, almost arrogant demeanour. I recognised him at once, with the thrill of absolute recognition. It was Ivan.

‘Natashka! Natashka!’ Sveta’s voice outside my door nearly made me jump out of my skin. ‘There’s someone waiting in the sitting-room to see you, my dove. A friend of your professor.’

My heart thumped. Ivan had heard me! Luel had come! Pocketing the petal but leaving everything else behind, I hurried out. Sveta was hovering in the corridor. ‘I’ve got
some lemon cake just come out of the oven – that’ll do nicely with tea, yes?’

‘Yes,’ I said vaguely, eager only to get to the sitting-room. ‘That’ll do just fine.’

‘Luel, I’m sorry if I alarmed you,’ I said as I went in, ‘but I needed to speak to Ivan urgently and . . .’

The words died on my lips as I saw who was sitting in the armchair by the fire. Not Luel. Indeed, not a woman but a man. It was the weedy young man I’d seen only that morning at the newspaper office.

The shock jolted me so that I could not utter a word, only stare at him as he calmly looked back at me. I had not noticed his eyes before. They were blue – a clear, shallow blue, and unblinking. ‘Mam’selle Kupeda,’ he said, in a soft, sibilant whisper, with an accent I could not place. ‘The post office told me Professor Feyovin might be found here.’

‘What? No. They were wrong.’ The eyes were having a strange effect on me. They were so clear and blue I felt almost as though I could see right to the back of them, to the back of his skull. For there was nothing in them, no emotion I could place at all.

‘Oh, that is a pity,’ he said tonelessly. ‘Perhaps then you might tell me where he is to be found? I am most anxious to see him.’

‘Why?’ I said. My skin was creeping, my neck prickling.

‘I am a friend of his, Mam’selle Kupeda. We were students together. I know he will be glad to see me.’ He smiled, unsettling me.

‘I don’t believe you,’ I managed to say. ‘Get out. I have nothing to say to you. Nothing.’

‘I doubt that,’ the man said, and in two strides he was upon me. I would have run, I would have struggled, I would have screamed for help, but I could not. Every one of my muscles seemed paralysed, every movement impossible. Then he pointed his index finger at me and said something in a voice that seemed to come both from inside and outside of him. I instantly was seized with such a terrible pain in my chest that I almost blacked out.

‘Do you still have nothing to say to me?’ the man said, his blue eyes fixed on me. I could see something behind them now, something that lurked at the back – no, not at the back of his eyes, but further still – behind him, a sense of another presence, as if the man standing before me were a mere puppet or a ventriloquist’s doll. ‘Tell me where he is,’ he said. ‘That is all you have to do.’

I found my voice. ‘Never,’ I said. ‘I will never tell you.’ Summoning all my strength, I reared up and spat in his face.

‘That was not clever,’ the man hissed. ‘Not clever at all.’ He raised his index finger, but as he did so, a deep growl resounded in the room, and the blond man fell back, staring up at the mantelpiece mirror in shock.

‘Oh, Ivan,’ I gasped. ‘No, no, no . . .’ Hulking and terrible in his
abartyen
form, he stood there beyond the mirror, eyes burning like wildfire in the peeling ruin of his face, the skin underneath as raw as if it had been burned, lips drawn back in a wolfish snarl.

He did not look at me but straight at the blond man, and his voice rumbled with menace. ‘Touch a hair on her head again and I will tear you apart.’

‘Well, well, how very touching.’ The blond man had recovered himself. ‘After all this time, you walk right into my trap. But then you always were a reckless fool.’ The cold blue eyes flicked to me, and again I found myself pinned by their gaze, unable to move a muscle or say a word. ‘Threaten me again,’ he went on in sinister calm, ‘and she’ll be dead in an instant. Though, come to think of it, she’ll be of more use to my master alive. He’s been needing a new subject for his work.’

Ivan’s clawed hands twisted against each other and his eyes flashed with fierce hatred as he said, very softly, ‘Leave her be, Felix, or you’ll be sorry.’

‘Don’t make me laugh! You are powerless. You can do nothing to help her.’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ A spasm crossed Ivan’s face. ‘I still have this: leave her be and you can deliver me to your master.’

The blond man started. For an instant he looked baffled. Then he smiled. It wasn’t a nice smile. ‘You swear?’

‘I swear.’

‘Very well. Your bargain is accepted.’ And so saying he stepped towards the mirror.

‘No!’ I cried desperately, regaining my voice and my power of movement now the blond man’s gaze no longer rooted me to the spot. ‘No, Ivan, please, listen. You can’t do this. Luel won’t let you – she won’t –’

‘She cannot stop me,’ he said. ‘And neither can you.’ His voice and his glance were so harsh and cold with pain that it cut me to the quick.

‘Oh, Ivan, my dearest Ivan, don’t do this, I cannot bear it,’ I wept. ‘I love you.’ The words were torn out of me, expressing what I had not accepted or even understood until that very moment, a realisation that shook my whole world. I saw the shudder that went through him and knew why he’d sent me away so abruptly – he had known what lay between us long before I had. He had known because he had already loved me and was afraid for me. Trembling, I whispered, ‘Yes, I love you, with my whole heart and of my own will. So the spell must from this moment be broken.’