me.’
Through the door behind her bed appeared the small, squat figure of an elderly woman wearing a long, dark blue dress and white apron. Her hair was braided all over her head in tiny little plaits, and on top of them she wore a white cap like a little scarf.
With a hostile look at me and a ‘Go away, Baryna,’ she hurried over to the bed. ‘Mistress, mistress, speak to your Anna. You will make yourself ill.’
‘I am ill, you fool. Go away, I tell you. Rose, Rose Gowrie, come here.’
I did not move. Not one step would I take.
‘Do what her Excellency says, Baryna,’ ordered Anna sullenly.
‘She’s not ill,’ I said. ‘She’s just pretending.’
The old lady stopped her moans and lay back on the pillows, staring at me.
‘You can’t deceive me,’ I said. ‘I know whether you are in pain or not. And the pain, when it comes, is not in your heart, but deeper down in your guts.’
Anna gave a shocked little cluck at my bluntness. The Princess coughed, her shoulders heaving, but with laughter. I had passed some sort of test. All the same, she was a sick woman and my trained eye detected and interpreted the great pulse banging away in her throat.
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘And no more tricks, or you will be ill.’ She was running a risk, staging little scenes like this.
‘Anna, bring me a drink.’
‘Water only,’ I said severely.
The Princess pulled a face. ‘Did you think I would ask for vodka? Only peasant women drink vodka.’ She accepted a tall glass from Anna and sipped it serenely. But since the glass was coloured deep blue, I was unable to see if the liquid it contained was water. I doubted it.
‘About that great fortune you are to have.’
‘A solid, heavy fortune, I think my sister called it,’ I said, remembering.
‘Well, you must not expect it from me.’
Indignantly, I said: ‘I never thought of such a thing for a moment. That would be detestable. Stupid, too.’
‘No, as you say. And yet people do think such things. Such a thought comes into the mind without much effort. It is true I am a rich woman, but my fortune must devolve upon my great-niece and nephew. There remain the jewels which my lover gave me, but those too are promised to Dolly. So you see, you can have no hopes from me.’
‘I don’t think nature intended me to be rich,’ I said soberly.
‘No, it might not be a material inheritance that was meant. There are spiritual ones,’ said the Princess, with an intent look. ‘You have the face of a girl who might have a serious spiritual journey to make.’ She was talking, half to herself, hardly at all to me. I heard her murmur: ‘Child, in your prayers be all my sins remembered.’
Of course,’ I whispered, anxious to reassure. ‘But are they so many?’
‘Yes.’ The word ended on a gasp. I saw the vein in her throat grow and become purple like a grape. ‘More than you know. I have been a wicked woman.’
Urgently I said: ‘Where is your medicine? You have some drops to take?’ She couldn’t answer. I turned to the old maid. ‘Anna, you know, I’m sure. Fetch me her medicine.’
At once Anna produced from a capacious pocket a tiny glass phial. I looked at it, assessed its contents as amyl-nitrate, and snapped it between my fingers and held it under the Princess’s nose so that she could inhale the fumes. All the time I could hear Anna’s jealous voice grumbling away.
As the vapours rose and entered her lungs, so the Princess relaxed; it was very quick, in a minute she was breathing easily.
‘Well, that’s better. So that’s the pain, is it?’
‘One of them,’ she managed, and even smiled wryly. ‘I have several devils that torment me.’
Angina, I thought, and the pain coming because her heart muscle is short of oxygen. But I also thought that she had another and more serious ailment, an obstruction of the gut somewhere which caused even more prolonged pain. And yet I doubted if she would die of either just yet. She was tough.
‘You have violet eyes,’ she murmured, staring up into them as I bent over her. ‘Women with violet eyes always have a sad destiny.’ She was an inveterate romantic.
‘Cheer up. In our family violet eyes turn to a dark grey as we grow older, so you see I shall end up happy.’
She even managed to laugh.
‘That’s better. Goodbye now. And don’t let that old maid of yours bully you.’
‘She bully me?’
‘I think she does.’
Anna managed to bang into me as I stood there, giving my hip a thump with the great bunch of keys she carried suspended from her waist. ‘Oh, the wickedness,’ she muttered. ‘She should be beaten. I’d beat her. Take no notice of her, Princess. Old Anna is the one who knows.’
‘Be quiet, you are an illiterate old woman and know nothing about anything,’ commanded her mistress. ‘I think this girl is very wise. From your face I see I can expect a greater pain. Is that what I must look for, then? More pain?’
‘Yes,’ I said steadily.
A faint smile curved the lips of that enigmatic old face. ‘Very well. We shall see. Anna, lift me up on the pillows and light me another cigarette.’
‘The last thing you should be doing,’ I said.
‘Ah, but with you to save me – ’ she said, giving me a flash of the smile which, I suppose, must have enchanted my great-grandfather – ‘I shall be quite safe. I shall hang on to you, Rose Gowrie. I don’t intend to die yet. Tell my nephew and niece that, if you like. Settle their minds for them.’ And she began to laugh again.
I shook my head at her, and departed.
Outside on the staircase the air seemed hot and dead. I found myself swaying; I sank down and closed my eyes. I was spent; she had taken more from me than she knew. Instinctively, I understood it would never do to let her guess how much; while she was ignorant I retained free will. I sat there, leaning against the wall, and waited for the darkness which surrounded me to recede. Two old invalids in one morning was exhausting. I wondered if Erskine Gowrie knew Princess Irene. Probably one of her lovers, I thought dizzily, to be counted among those sins of the flesh she now dubiously repented of.
When I opened my eyes I found Ivan standing there, looking at me with a worried face. I realised he must have been outside all the time, waiting for me. ‘Are you ill, Miss Rose?’
Only Ivan called me by name, the other servants used any gracious term that popped into their mouth at that moment; the fact that I was a Scots girl seemed to free their tongues, they called me Excellency, my lady, Baryna, and sometimes Baryshna, just as it suited them, but it was all done with such good humour that I could not mind.
I stood up. ‘No, no, I’m not ill. Were you waiting for me? Yes, I can see you were. But why?’ Ivan, even if within earshot, was usually invisible. ‘Was it because I was there? Because I’ve been up the Red Staircase?’
He shrugged. ‘It’s a place,’ he said, meaning: Of course, it’s a bad place, or perhaps just a queer place, or even just a place he was unsure of. One always had to read between the lines.
‘She’s only an old lady. What could happen?’
‘They keep company with the devil up there,’ he murmured, looking at the wall and not at me.
‘Oh, Ivan,’ I said, half laughing. I almost stumbled; I put out a hand and he helped me down the stairs. Together we got to the bottom.
‘But