She saw people’s mouths opening and shutting in shouted warnings, but she could hear nothing in that wall of silence. Her own mouth was stretched open too – she felt a pain under her jaws. People were moving forward like a surging wave. The toboggans, one behind the other, sped like bullets, and the young men, still laughing, tried to scramble out of the way. The Count, with Yelena between his knees, missed them by inches. Uncle Petya’s sled did not. He and the young men, in a sprawl of arms and legs, went sliding down the rest of the slope together like an untidy mat. Natasha, jerked out of his grasp like a projectile, went flying in an arc over the side of the hill and fell with a heavy thud.
Anne had no memory of moving, but she must have been running already, for she reached Natasha before anyone had had time to touch her.
‘Nasha! Nasha!’ she cried as she flung herself down, reaching out hands for the little bundle of red coat and rabbit-furred hood. The cold of the packed snow struck through her knees, and the sounds were suddenly back, a blurred babble of cries and expostulations. Natasha opened her eyes and stared upwards unrecognisingly. ‘Nasha, are you all right?’ Anne said foolishly, touching, brushing away snow, trying to find out what damage had been done. She felt the Count arrive at her shoulder, saw Natasha’s eyes uncloud and recognise first her and then her father.
‘Yes,’ Natasha said. ‘All right. Want to go again.’
The Count made a sound between a sob and a laugh, and his hands came past Anne to seize his child and lifted her into his arms. ‘What?’ he said unsteadily. ‘What did you say? Nasha, Nashka, what did you say?’
‘Want to go again,’ she repeated, putting her arms round his neck as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. The Count, holding her tightly, looked across her at Anne, his mouth laughing, while his eyes quite independently went on crying.
‘Did you hear that, Annushka?’ he said. ‘She wants to go again. Did you hear?’
Anne nodded, knowing that if she spoke she would sound as drunk and foolish as he. She patted Natasha’s back with a helpless gesture, and the Count encircled her with his free arm and drew her against him too, holding them both tightly against him until he could stop trembling.
Natasha didn’t say anything else, but she was plainly unhurt: she moved freely and smiled normally, and the minutest search on Anne’s part could find no injury beyond a slight bruise on one cheek. Her infant limpness and the bundling of her clothes must have protected her and cushioned the fall. Once they were in the troika going home, she fell asleep on her father’s lap. Anne wondered anxiously if she might be concussed, but it seemed a perfectly natural sleep, and even Lolya was heavy-eyed after all the exertion and excitement.
‘I shan’t feel easy until she has been seen by a physician,’ Uncle Petya said. ‘Oh God, if only I hadn’t taken her down the third time! I’ll never forgive myself if she’s been hurt!’
‘Don’t,’ the Count said shortly. He looked bone weary, and Anne, beside him, longed to touch him, to comfort him in some way. ‘It wasn’t your fault. She’ll be perfectly all right after a good night’s sleep.’
‘Yesilev’s a good physician,’ Uncle Petya went on, twisting the end of his beard between his fingers. ‘He took care of the young Fralovskys when they had the measles. Shall I send for him?’
‘Tomorrow,’ the Count said. ‘Tomorrow will be soon enough. Look, you see there’s nothing wrong with her. She’s sleeping naturally.’
‘Oh God, pray it’s so,’ Petya said, uncomforted.
Vasky opened the door to them, and the Count, carrying Natasha, headed straight for the stairs. ‘Where’s her ladyship?’ he asked.
‘Her ladyship retired early to bed, sir. She felt rather tired. Has something happened, sir?’
‘A slight mishap, nothing serious,’ the Count said, already half-way up the first flight. Anne, hurrying behind him with Yelena, heard Uncle Petya begin a voluble explanation.
In the nursery, Nyanka, tutting but blessedly calm, took over her charge and undressed her and put her to bed without waking her, and then took Lolya off, promising her a hot bath, a bowl of bread and milk, and a story too, if she was good. Left alone, the Count and Anne stood for a while watching the sleeping child. Her fair eyelashes lay in a thick fan on her pink cheek, and her curled fingers rested beside her lightly-parted lips. She looked healthy and peaceful.
‘I think she’ll be all right,’ the Count said, and then looked up at Anne. ‘It did happen, didn’t it? I didn’t dream it? Nasha did speak?’
‘Yes,’ Anne said with a faint smile. ‘Her first words.’
‘Not particularly special ones, considering how long we’ve waited for them,’ he said, ‘but thank God for them, all the same. No matter how often one reassures oneself–’
‘Yes, I know,’ Anne said. ‘But she’s perfectly normal. A perfectly normal little girl.’
He looked down at the sleeping child. ‘Little Nemetzka,’ he said with a rough tenderness. ‘Her first words, Anna!’ He looked up. ‘I’m glad you were there to hear them.’
She met his eyes, shining with tiredness and emotion, and felt too much, and tried to cover it up. ‘Before long, she’ll be chattering so much, you’ll long for her to be silent again,’ she said with an attempt at lightness.
The Count took her hand and lifted the fingers to his lips for an instant before turning away. ‘And now,’ he said, ‘I had better go and see if my wife is still awake and break the news to her before some servant scares her out of her wits with tales of horror. Will you go and keep poor Petya company, Anna? I’ll be down soon. Try to stop him beating his breast, will you?’
The next morning Anne hurried to the nursery as soon as she was dressed. Natasha was being dressed by Nyanka, and she ran to Anne as soon as she saw her and gave her a silent hug around the knees, turning her eyes up to her with her usual golden smile.
‘She’s all right,’ Nyanka said gruffly. ‘No bones broken. What’s this Lolya is telling me, that my baby spoke last night?’
‘Yes, it’s true,’ Anne said. ‘Isn’t it, Nasha?’ She ruffled the tumble of mouse-fair curls, and Natasha nudged against her hand like a cat before running back to Nyanka to offer a foot for a stocking.
‘Well, if you say so, Barishnya, it must be so,’ Nyanka said grudgingly, ‘but she hasn’t spoken to me.’
She didn’t speak to the physician who came later that morning, either, or to anyone else. The words of the night before, jarred out of her, perhaps, by the shock of the accident, remained her sole venture into the world of speech, and once again Nyanka was driven to fall back on her old comfort of ‘she’ll speak when she’s ready’.
The physician pronounced Natasha unharmed, but recommended that she be kept quiet for a day or two, with no undue exertion or excitement. ‘There may be some nervous reaction,’ he said. ‘Watch her carefully. I’ll send round a tonic I recommend in these cases, and I’ll call again tomorrow.’