The Star of Kazan

‘The Freiherr von Tannenberg. Your mother’s father. Your grandfather, I suppose.’

The man who had been so strict and fierce that her mother had not dared to bring her baby home!

‘We had some marvellous riding horses then. Rocco is the only one left.’

‘Is that what he’s called? Rocco?’

‘Yes.’ They had stopped in front of a stable with an open door. ‘I’m going to groom him now,’ he said.

‘Can I help? Have you got more than one brush?’

Zed looked at her curiously. ‘If you like.’

He handed her a brush, and showed her how to use it, moving away from the horse’s head in slow, steady strokes. Then he took down a wisp of plaited straw and began to rub Rocco’s flank. After a while he said, ‘You’ve been used to work, I see.’

Annika stopped, her brush in mid-air. ‘Oh no, don’t say that. I’m not supposed to help. I tried to help Bertha carry a basket of logs and it’s the wrong thing to do because my mother doesn’t want people to know I was brought up as a servant.’

She looked so upset that Zed said, ‘Well, I’m a servant too. It seems to me that servants are the only people who can actually do anything. It’s who you choose to serve that matters.’

‘Yes, I know . . . only I have to learn to be a von Tannenberg.’ But she had taken up the brush again. ‘It’s going to be difficult – I’m so used to working. I’ll have to be careful.’

‘No one will see you down here.’

‘I know. But I’ve only just found my mother. I don’t want to disobey her even in secret.’

They went on grooming in silence for a while. Then she said, ‘When I saw you riding this morning it reminded me of seeing the Lipizzaners in Vienna. I know they were white and they were dancing . . . but they seemed happy like your . . . like Rocco. Sort of light and floating . . .’

Zed had wheeled round to face her. ‘You’ve seen the Lipizzaners? The ones in the Spanish Riding School?’

‘Yes. I went for my last Found Day . . . I mean I went with the people I lived with. I don’t know anything about horses, but there are things you can see . . . like the way they do everything so willingly when they must be strong enough to break away.’

‘Were they using Maestoso Fantasia? Is he still the lead stallion?’

‘Yes. He’s old, but the Viennese love him.’

‘Lipizzaners don’t get old for years. What about Pluto Nobilia? He had a tie-back operation last year.’

Annika nodded. ‘They used him for the “airs above the ground”. When he did his caprioles everyone cheered.’

But some of Zed’s eager questions were difficult to answer. Had the riders used stirrups for the quadrille? Did they use the long rein or the short rein for the piaffe at the pillars?

As she answered him she was frowning, trying to remember everything that had happened on the day of her treat. Then suddenly the remembering went wrong. She forgot the horses and felt Ellie’s warm bulk beside her, and remembered the way she had stood up at the end and said, ‘It makes you proud to be Austrian.’ She remembered Pauline, hanging over the balustrade . . . and afterwards the meal at Sacher’s, where the professors had told her that she was to call them uncle. And her eyes filled with tears, which she tried in vain to hold back.

‘It’s the wind,’ she said angrily, and Zed agreed that it was the wind.

‘There’s always a wind here,’ he said politely. ‘Even in the stable.’

She wiped away her tears and for a while they went on working in silence while Rocco blew contentedly through his nostrils. Then Zed put down his brush and said, ‘Come on. I’ll show you where I live.’

Where he lived, of course, was in the house with the storks on the roof. The birds were still on their nest, managing to looking both absurd and regal.

‘You’re so lucky to have storks! Why aren’t there any at the big house?’

‘Storks go where they want,’ said Zed.

He opened the door and she stepped into a tiny, dark room with a scrubbed, flagged floor, plants on the window sill – and a big tiled stove, which was alight and gave off a marvellous warmth. Round the stove was a wooden bench on which lay a neatly folded blanket.

‘Bertha sleeps there,’ he said. ‘It’s her house. I sleep out at the back on a truckle bed.’

Annika was looking round her with pleasure. The house she had thought of as a hovel was cosy and in a way familiar. Ellie too had a pot of chives on the window sill and a picture of the emperor on the wall – only this was the Emperor Wilhelm, whose expression was much fiercer than that of the Austrian ruler.

‘Is Bertha your grandmother then?’

Zed shook his head. ‘She’s no relation. She was the Master’s nurse; she came when he was a baby. The Master asked me to . . . look out for her – that’s why I’m still here.’

‘She seems very old to do the work she does up at the house. I suppose she doesn’t want to retire?’

‘She wants to all right. Sometimes when she comes back she can hardly walk, her joints are so stiff. But no one else will work up there for nothing.’ He went over to the table and lifted the muslin cover from a blue jug. ‘Here, drink this. We don’t have much, but there’s always milk.’

‘Thank you.’