The Diamond Horse

Anna was surprised by the coldness of her mother’s fingers, like icicles against her skin.

“Milochka,” her mother instructed. “I need you to do something for me.”

“Anything, Mama.”

“My black diamond necklace. You will find it in the top drawer of my dresser. Bring it to me?”

Anna did as her mother instructed, carrying over the necklace in its velvet case and placing it on the bedside.

“Open the box,” the Countess instructed.

Anna carefully prised it open and the Countess reached in and took out the priceless jewel. “The Orlov Diamond,” she said, “has been in our family for many centuries. My mother gave it to me and her mother before her …” She turned to Anna.

“And now milochka, it will be yours.”

Anna’s eyes filled with tears. “No, Mama, I do not want it any more.”

“Anna.” Her mother’s voice was gentle. “Please, let me see how it looks on you.”

Not knowing what else to do, Anna bowed her head in obedience as the Countess weakly raised herself up off the pillows to clasp the necklace round her daughter’s pale neck.

“So beautiful!” the Countess breathed. And then she added, “But it is not the first time you have worn it, is it? That night in my room. You tried it on.”

Anna nodded. “I did.”

“So you already know that this is no ordinary necklace.” The Countess nodded wisely. “Well, know this too, dear one. You must never seek to understand its power, and do not try to control it. Past and present and future all lie within this necklace, but it is the stone that decides what you will see.”

The Countess looked very sad, and then gripped her daughter’s hand even more tightly. “Anna,” the Countess said. “Your father …”

“He is coming, Mama,” Anna tried to reassure her. “We have sent for him, he is on his way!”

The Countess shook her head. “No, my dear one, I know he is not. He will not come for me.” The Countess’s expression was dark. “I know your brother too. He is so different from you, Anna. I wonder how it is that I could have raised two children, one so lovely and one so …” the Countess drew a sharp breath and began to cough. Anna had to help her sit up, adjusting the pillows so that she could breathe again.

“Look to Katia,” the Countess whispered the words. “Katia will care for you. If you are ever in any doubt about what to do, go to her. You can trust her with your life …”

“Mama …” The tears rolled down Anna’s cheeks. “Please do not talk like this. You are going to be fine, you will get well again …”

It was Katia who found them.

Anna was slumped and sobbing, still clutching her mother’s cool hand. Katia raised the white sheet of death over the Countess’s face and hugged and comforted Anna. Ivan was nowhere to be found.

“I went hunting,” he told Anna when she asked where he had been. “It would have made no difference if I had been here, would it? It was always you that she loved.”

Anna was shocked. “Do you really think Mama didn’t love you?”

Ivan laughed harshly. “What do I care? Anyway it was a good hunt. I bagged a deer. So don’t try and make me feel guilty about it.”

“You do not care that she died without you or father beside her?” Anna said.

“Our father is Admiral Lord Commander of the Black Sea,” Ivan sniffed. “He does not run to his wife’s bedside like a weakling when there is a war to be won.”

With no mother and no sign of their father’s return, Ivan took it upon himself to rule the Khrenovsky estate. He started wearing the Count’s greatcoat inside the house, even though he must have been baking hot. The huge garment swamped his lean thirteen-year-old frame. He would stalk the corridors, laughing to himself and barking ridiculous orders at the serfs. And the servants began to call him “Ivan the Terrible” behind his back. As for Anna, she avoided her brother as best she could, spending most of her time down at the stables with the horses and Vasily. It was there that she heard the news that her father was finally coming home.

The war, in fact, had been over for some time. Count Orlov could have sailed home several months ago, but instead had delayed his return by deciding to travel overland. The reason for his change of plans was a horse.

“His name is Smetanka,” Vasily told Anna. “It has taken his men almost a year to walk him through the mountains from Turkey into Russia. The Count joined them on the coast of the Black Sea and he is personally escorting the horse on the final leg of the journey home.”

“My father didn’t come home to my mother because he was walking a horse?”

Vasily tried to soften the blow. “Smetanka is not ordinary horse. He is purebred Arabian stallion. They say he cost Count Orlov 60,000 roubles!”

The price of Count Orlov’s Arabian was the talk of the palace. At the stables the grooms spoke of nothing else. “What kind of horse could be worth such money?” Yuri, the head groom, could not disguise his scorn. “I could buy a hundred of the best stallions in Russia for that!”

“If he is truly great stallion he will be worth it,” Vasily replied.

“Did I ask your opinion?” Yuri had snapped back.

Yuri resented the junior groom’s gift with horses and yet he could not get rid of him. Vasily was the most talented horseman in the Count’s stables. So Yuri made him work twice as hard as the rest. It was Vasily alone whom the head groom charged with the task of preparing the stable for the Arabian’s arrival. And Vasily who was sent out to meet Count Orlov’s party at the gates of the estate.

Anna went with him, desperate to see this “very special” horse that had kept her father away during their darkest days. For hours she stood at Vasily’s side as the snow fell, and then finally when the night was drawing in, she saw riders in the distance. There were about a dozen men on horseback. Count Orlov rode at the head of the party and when Anna saw the horse that her father sat astride she was bitterly disappointed.

Smetanka looked so plain! A chestnut with a narrow chest, Roman nose and stocky limbs “He does not look like he is worth a hundred roubles even!” Anna muttered.

“Oh no, Lady Anna.” Vasily shook his head. “That horse, he is not Smetanka! Look! The grey stallion, in the middle with no rider, that is him …”

The Count was not foolish enough to ride his valuable new acquisition on treacherous roads. Instead, he had reined Smetanka in the midst of his riders, surrounded by a cluster of mounted soldiers. The ruse was pointless, however, because alongside the soldiers’ ordinary, thickset carthorses, Smetanka’s singular, exquisite beauty stood out like a shining star, so bright it eclipsed them all.

He was the colour of highly polished silver and his coat looked as if it had been buffed to the sheen of precious metal. His neck arched like a fountain, and his limbs were so fine and delicate it seemed impossible that those slender legs had journeyed over the mountainous terrain of Turkey. And yet even though he had been travelling for the better part of a year, Smetanka strutted out with the flamboyance of a dancer, as if he were sashaying to some unheard music, sinew and muscle rippling under his glistening coat.

Just as she had been instantly intoxicated by the sight of the Siberian tigers, Anna now found herself falling in love all over again. It was not just the physical beauty of the stallion that drew her, but something deeper. His dark eyes spoke to her deeply and she was reminded of the way she had felt gazing into the black teardrop diamond for the first time.

Instinctively she felt for the necklace at her throat, grasping the stone tight in her fingers. It was a reflex, a habit she had developed to soothe herself ever since her mother passed away. Had it really been a whole month since her death? Anna had been so desperately lonely without her. She had not seen her father in almost a year.

The horses shook their manes, bits clanking in their mouths. They were snorting and blowing from their long journey. Count Orlov, his cape dusted with snow, fur hat pulled down low across his brow, dismounted from the narrow-chested chestnut and walked towards his daughter. For a long while, he said nothing at all, and Anna did not dare to speak. Any words she might have wanted to say were knotted tight in her throat.

“You have grown,” Count Orlov said, without any emotion in his voice. “And yet, with my blood I would have expected you to be taller still.”

A look of annoyance crossed his face. “Why are you here, child? And where is my son?”