Fire On The Snow

Chapter One 1860-2

She gave an unpleasant little laugh.

“Papa has already given me my first Wedding present. What do you think it is? A Bible!”

Alida stood listening at her cousin without speaking and Mary went on,

“If you come with me, you will do as I tell you or else when I am married I will send you back to Papa with such a list of misdeeds that he will whip you insensible.”

She paused and added,

“I am not taking you because I have any affection for you, Alida, but because for the first time in my life I am to be free and I intend to enjoy myself!”

“But do you not enjoy yourself when you go to London?” Alida asked.

“Are you half-witted?” Mary asked. “How can I with Mama permanently at my elbow watching every step I take and making me repeat every conversation I have with a man?”

Her lips tightened.

“She frightens away anyone interesting I might wish to dance with! She never lets me out of her sight! If you think that’s enjoyable, I can assure you that I should find prison more acceptable.”

“Mary!” Alida gasped, “I had no idea you felt like that!”

“Why should you?” Mary asked. “I have learnt to behave myself as Mama and Papa would expect when they are present. But thank Heavens, owing to Papa’s arthritis, he cannot accompany me to St. Petersburg and Mama cannot leave him!

“I am going to get away from them and I intend to use every moment of the time to my advantage!”

Alida drew a deep breath.

“Oh Mary, I wish I had known that you felt like that. It makes things seem better – for me.”

“What do you matter?” Mary asked sharply. “Your goose – was cooked from the moment your father married an actress.”

“My mother was not an actress,” Alida contradicted. “She was a ballerina. That is a very different thing.”

“Not as far as Papa is concerned,” Mary answered with truth. “She was a scarlet woman and you are well aware that, just as they will never forgive your father for leaving the Diplomatic Service to marry such a woman, so they will never forgive you for having been born.”

“Yes, I know – that,” Alida sighed.

“Therefore you may as well make yourself useful to me and you can show your gratitude to me for getting you away from here, if only for a short while, by doing exactly what I want you to do.”

“You know I am willing to do so,” Alida replied.

“That is all I ask,” Mary said, “apart from the fact that I shall expect you to help me with my clothes. Mama insists on my taking that ghastly old Martha with me.”

She made an exasperated sound and continued,

“I am sure that it is only because Mama knows Martha will spy on me and report everything I do! Perhaps I can have her quietly buried in the snow when nobody’s looking!”

Alida gave a little laugh.

“I think that might be difficult even in Russia!”

“I am not so certain,” Mary answered. “I have heard that the Russians are pretty ruthless.”

“What is Prince Vorontski like?”

Mary shrugged her shoulders.

“How do I know? I have never seen him.”

“You have – never – seen him?” Alida could hardly utter the words.

“No, of course not,” Mary answered. “It is a marriage which has been arranged by Mama and the Grand Duchess Hélène.”

“But are you not frightened that the Prince may be old and horrible?”

“Don’t be so ridiculous, Alida!” Mary replied. “Where Royalty is concerned a marriage is always arranged. As it happens, I am told that Prince Vorontski is aged twenty-nine and extremely handsome. He is in fact the Grand Duchess Hélène’s favourite relative and, as you know, she is the aunt of the Czar.”

“I hope you will be very happy,” Alida said quietly.

“I cannot believe that the Prince will be more restrictive than Papa,” Mary said. “Even if he is what Mama calls a ‘good’ man, I am sure that we will not have prayers twice a day and Bible readings three times a week.”

“I believe the Russian Court is very gay,” Alida said.

“What do you know about it?” Mary asked rudely.

“I have heard Papa talk of Russia and I have read many books about the country,” Alida answered. “It is a land of great contrasts, immense wealth and terrible poverty.”

“The poverty will certainly not concern me!” Mary said with a laugh. “The Prince, I understand, is extremely rich and, if he has a number of Palaces, which doubtless he has, then we need not interfere with each other unduly.”

Alida gave a little gasp.

“Mary! What would Aunt Sophie say if she could hear you?”

Mary laughed again.

“Mama frightens you, does she not? And you have never learned how to handle her as I have. I can see her mark on your cheek. What did you do to annoy her?”

“I was reading a book,” Alida confessed.

“I don’t know why you annoy Mama and Papa by reading when they have forbidden it,” Mary said. “I shall not bother with a lot of musty old books. I want to live my life! I want wonderful gowns, endless jewels and to have men, dozens and dozens of them in love with me!”

“I am sure that will not be difficult, because you are so beautiful,” Alida said in all sincerity.

Just for a moment Mary’s hard blue eyes seemed to soften a little, but she said,

“What is the point of being beautiful when we sit here week after week, month after month, year after year, and never meet any men?”

“You do go to London.”

“For two months in the year,” Mary retorted. “Two months with Mama! And the year I came out Papa was there as well!

“I was lectured and prayed over every minute of the day.”

She gave a humourless laugh.

“I was even locked in my bedroom at night in case some ardent admirer should creep up three storeys to get at me!”

As she spoke, Mary rose from the chaise longue and threw the embroidered shawl that had covered her feet down on the floor.

“It makes me sick even to talk about it,” she cried. “I knew what fun the other girls of my age were having. They have a chance of flirting when they go to a party and of listening to a proposal of marriage! Even of being kissed in an arbour when they sit out at a ball! I might just as well have had a squadron of soldiers guarding me!”

Automatically Alida picked up the embroidered shawl from the floor, folded it and put it down at the end of the chaise longue.

“It’s all over now, Mary,” she said. “You are leaving in the week after next.”

“I know,” Mary said. “Papa would not have let me leave then, were he not afraid of the Russian winter. Oh, pray Heaven nothing will prevent my going!”

“I am sure that it will be all right,” Alida said optimistically. “Surely we are not travelling alone?”

“Naturally not, you nincompoop!” Mary replied and now the note of contempt was back in her voice. “The Princess is sending a special chaperone to England to accompany me, and His Majesty the Czar has ordered the Minister for Naval Affairs to escort us.”

“How very grand!” Alida exclaimed.

“I expect he is a doddering old Admiral,” Mary answered. “We are travelling in an English Steamer as far as Kiel. There the Royal Yacht, The Ischora, will meet us and take us to St. Petersburg.”

“I can hardly believe it!” Alida exclaimed. “I cannot credit it that this is really happening! Oh, Mary, how can I thank you?”

“By behaving yourself until we leave,” Mary answered. “If you put Papa in one of his rages, he is quite likely to refuse to let you come,”

She saw the fear in Alida’s face and went on,

“Then I shall have to have that spiteful little beast, Penelope, with me or that horrible Elizabeth Houghton. Mama has always liked her because she soft-soaps her. I would not trust either of them further than I could throw them!”

Her voice softened a little as she added,

“So just for once, Alida, agree with everything that Mama says. Be humble and respectful to Papa and for goodness’ sake help Martha to prepare my clothes.”

“I will, Mary! I will!” Alida purred.

“I hope you are not coming with me looking like that!” Mary remarked.

She glanced as she spoke at Alida’s faded and outgrown cotton dress which, because the Duke would spend no money on her, had been patched and darned until the material could hardly stand the needle.

“Aunt Sophie said that I am to have some new gowns made by Mrs. Harben,” Alida replied in a low voice, “but she wants them to be in grey.”

Mary threw back her head and laughed.

“Isn’t that just like Mama?” she said. “You will have to carry your sackcloth and ashes with you, even when we go to Russia! Oh well, I don’t suppose that anyone will notice what you wear. They will all be looking at me!”

She gave a little sigh of satisfaction and walked across to the mirror to stand looking at her reflection.

“It’s a good thing, Alida,” she said, “that despite the fact that you are fair, as are all the Shenleys, we don’t compete in any way.”

“No, of course we do not,” Alida replied. “How could we?”

“We are cousins, but you don’t even look English,” Mary stated. “You may have your father’s hair, but your eyes have definitely a foreign look.”

“My mother, as you well know, was Austrian,” Alida said in a low voice.

“Oh well, I daresay she looked pretty enough when she was pirouetting on the stage,” Mary said. “I wonder how many lovers she had before your Papa came along and she jumped at the chance of marrying an English gentleman!”

There was a moment’s silence.

Then, without replying, Alida slipped away.

She ran down the corridors back to her own room.

Small, bare and austere though it was, it was in fact the only sanctuary she had – the one place where she could be alone and free from the barbed remarks and the jibes of her relations.

She closed the door, locked it and threw herself down on the bed to hide her face in the pillow.

“Oh, Mama, Mama!” she whispered. “How can they say such things about you? How can they believe for a moment that you could be anything but good and as wonderful as I remember you?”

She wanted to cry, but somehow she forced herself not to shed tears.

She had cried so often and for so long after her parents had lost their lives.

But now she had made herself exert an almost superhuman control over her feelings.

She knew that once she gave in to the continual bombardment of spiteful innuendo, foul accusations and oft-expressed contempt for her mother, she would gradually become the weak, insecure, characterless creature they wished her to be.

It was her uncle who had attempted to break her spirit on her arrival at The Castle.

She had answered back, contradicted and defied him when he had defamed her mother.

He had tried to beat her into submission and soon Alida realised that he enjoyed beating her, not only because he disliked her but also because he was revenging himself on his brother who he believed had damaged the family honour in marrying a ballerina.

‘How,’ Alida asked herself, ‘can I ever make my aunt or my uncle understand? The love that Papa and Mama had for each other was so overwhelming, so ecstatic and so beautiful that nothing else in the world was of any consequence.’

They had loved each other from the moment they met and they had married foreseeing the consequences.

They were well aware that they would be ostracised by their relations, that her father must leave the Diplomatic Service and it would be best for them to live abroad and out of England.

None of this had outweighed the wonder that they had found in their love and the complete happiness of their marriage.

It was only Alida who must suffer for the sins of her parents, who must bear what amounted to almost a vendetta against her in the dark cheerless Castle, which had now become her home.

With an effort she raised herself from the bed and walked across the room to look in the mirror.

‘Mary is right,’ she thought. ‘I don’t look English!’

Her bones were very small and she had, like her mother, the figure of a dancer moving with a grace that was indescribable. Although her hair was fair and, as Mary had said, all the Shenleys had fair hair, it framed a small heart-shaped face with enormous dark eyes.

Sometimes Alida’s eyes were grey, sometimes, when she was emotional, they were almost purple in colour, like a pansy. Fringed with dark lashes they formed a strangely arresting contrast to the pale gold of her hair.