The Diamond Horse

CHAPTER 2

The Moscow Spectacular

In the wings behind the velvet curtains, Valentina Romanov was dashing up the rungs of the rope ladder. Through the curtains she could see the spotlights beginning to circle, seeking her out. The drums were rolling.

When she reached the platform at the very peak of the big top, Valentina rose to her feet and stood curling her toes over the edge before looking down. She was twenty metres above the ground with nothing to hold on to and no safety net. Below her she could see the tigers prowling out of the ring, their shoulders hunched as if in a sulk, their performance over for the evening. Now, it was her turn.

The music swelled and the spotlights swooped up to expose her to the audience at last. Valentina struck a pose: one hand raised in a flourish above her head, the other grasping the wooden bar of the trapeze. And then, without hesitation, she leapt.

She flew out into mid-air and then felt the jerk of the trapeze snatching her back again. The spotlight followed Valentina as she swung back and forth like a pendulum. When she reached the highest point of her arc she suddenly let go of the wooden bar. She twisted her whole body high in the air so that her hands now gripped the bar facing the other way. Then, with her elbows locked into position, she executed a half-pike, turning and flipping her knees over the bar to dangle upside down.

As she felt the blood rush to her head the music changed to a familiar tune that signalled the arrival of the clowns.

Valentina could never figure out why people liked clowns. She found their white greasepaint faces and gigantic red lipstick smiles disturbing. What was funny about the way they charged around like idiots, pushing each other and falling over their own feet?

Yet their antics instantly brought on gales of laughter from the audience. The clowns ran into the ring below her, leaping up on top of each other’s shoulders to make a human pyramid, juggling batons and knocking each other off stilts, and all the while Valentina swung high above them, waiting for her moment.

The spotlights suddenly flew skywards and Valentina grasped the bar and performed a double-flip, pushing up so that she was almost doing a handstand. She twisted round and round, somersaulting in mid-air, and on the third twist her hands suddenly slipped loose from the bar.

There was a horrified gasp from the crowd. Valentina looked down as the ground came hurtling up to meet her and automatically braced, going into a tumble roll. In the ring below, the clowns sprang into position, forming a circle and pulling the firemen’s net taut between them.

She landed smack in the centre, curling like a ball on impact and rebounding up into the air. As she flew upwards she did a knee tuck like a diver on a high board, and then, with an easy grace, she reached up to grasp the red silk sash dangling from the rooftop.

The crowd, now realising the fall had been a part of the act, began to clap enthusiastically. Valentina wrapped herself in the sash and started to twirl, rotating one way and then the other, unwinding like a spinning top. She did the splits, throwing her head back and arching her spine, as if being held by an invisible tango partner. The silver spangles on her costume sparkled like a mirror ball in the spotlight and then, in a flash, there were three more spotlights, their beams illuminating the ring below. The clowns had disappeared and the lights traced patterns on the empty space. The drumroll quickened, the lights circled faster and then the velvet curtains were flung to one side as Sasha made his grand entrance.

So far tonight the audience had witnessed a snarling ambush of golden tigers, a bear on a unicycle, and monkeys in waistcoats and top hats riding dogs in tutus. All the same, when a pink horse came cantering into the ring, they truly thought their eyes were deceiving them. Surely the strange colour must have been a trick of the light? But as the spotlights cast their beam on the horse it became clear that he really was pink – the softest, most delicate shade of rose, with a silvery mane and tail.

Despite his pretty colour, Sasha was clearly a stallion, with a heavy crested neck, broad chest and powerful shoulders. Standing at almost seventeen hands, he seemed even taller due to the silver plume he wore that stood straight up in a stiff crown between his ears. On his back he wore a matching silver saddle blanket, surcingled round his belly with two vaulting handles attached on either side of his withers.

The extraordinary horse cantered straight into the ring and immediately settled into a big loping stride, circling the perimeter. Above him, Valentina began to swing from the red silk sash in circles matching the circuits of the horse below, manoeuvring herself into position. Then she let go once more and plummeted down.

She landed on Sasha’s back with feline grace, gripped the handles on the vaulting pad and pushed herself into a handstand. She held the pose for an entire lap of the ring as the crowd applauded loudly. Then she dropped back down, put her feet on Sasha’s rump and straightened up, so that she was standing on the hindquarters of the horse as he continued his steady canter.

With a backward flip Valentina dismounted and did two brisk cartwheels, bounding across the sand to meet Sasha on the other side of the ring and vault back up again. This time she swung herself up into the saddle so that she was sitting back to front, facing his tail. She stood up with her hands above her head and leapt into the air, doing sideways splits before landing with her feet on the horse’s broad rump and sliding down his tail to hit the ground running.

The crowd were cheering her on, and with every backflip and somersault Valentina and Sasha won them over.

As the pink horse reared up on his hind legs and pirouetted in a circle as if he were dancing in time with the music the big top audience went wild with applause. Valentina leapt down to take a bow and the audience roared with delighted laughter as Sasha nodded and then bowed beside her, dropping down to his knees, one foreleg outstretched, head lowered in reverence. Then the horse and the girl were on their feet again, Valentina smiling and waving goodbye as they ran from the ring and into the wings.

“Valentina!” Sergei the ringmaster was waiting for her. It had been a pitch-perfect performance tonight – their act had been utterly faultless.

She smiled at the ringmaster. “Yes, Sergei?”

“There is elephant dung by the caravans,” Sergei said. “Clean it up before you feed the tigers.”

Valentina felt her cheeks flush pink with shame. Had she really been stupid enough to think he was going to praise her? The ringmaster never had a kind word for anyone, least of all his star trapeze artist and her pink horse.

Sergei was a tiny man, short and squat, not much bigger than the circus dwarves, with a downturned grouper mouth and pale rheumy eyes. He had been Valentina’s guardian ever since her mother died.

“I could have left you on the orphanage steps,” he liked to remind her. “A snot-nosed gypsy girl like you should be grateful I gave her such a home.”

Three performances a day including matinees: that was the price of Valentina’s “home” at the Moscow Spectacular. For this she received no pay, but she had bed and board in a dilapidated caravan that she shared with the contortionist, Irina. She had nothing in the world of her own. No clothes apart from her leotards and a dirty old tracksuit that she wore while she cleaned out the animal trailers. No toys and no dolls and no books. She had never been taught to read or add or subtract. Valentina was not allowed to go to school.

“A circus is never in one place long enough,” Sergei had dismissed her pleas. “Besides, a girl like you has no need for education.”

Valentina knew nothing about art, history or the countries of the world. She wouldn’t even have been able to locate Moscow on a map. She was thirteen and she could barely scrawl her own name.

And yet her talent and abilities shone as bright as the spangled costumes she wore for her performances. She had a photographic memory and would only need to run through a routine once before it was imprinted in her mind so that she would never forget it. Compared to the other circus kids – Irina the contortionist, or Magda the fortune-teller’s brood of sallow-skinned, dark-eyed children, the lantern-jawed offspring of the strong man and his fierce red-faced wife – Valentina stood out as clever, brave and resilient, able to tumble from the trapeze to the nets and bounce back up again with a smile on her face. But it was her way with the animals that truly marked Valentina out as unique. She would sit for hours and watch the circus beasts in their cages. She could read their moods so well that before she was even ten years old she was being trusted to care for the tigers by herself. While the other performers shrank back in fear of their snarling jaws and razor-sharp talons, Valentina thought nothing of taking hefty, meaty bones and thrusting them through the cage bars. Her favourite tiger, Mischa, would even take meat straight from her hand, though she rarely fed him like this when Sergei was watching.

“You are no good to me without hands!” he would admonish without any humour. It was never too late to be dropped off at the orphanage, according to Sergei.

The tigers padded up to the bars of their cages and smooched and preened like pussycats whenever she came near, and it was clear to Valentina that they would never harm her. All the animals in the circus adored her, but it was Sasha alone that she truly loved. She had known the horse all her life.

He had been an ungainly-looking colt, with a huge head attached to a long neck, and an even longer body, legs like a giraffe and great slabs of knees and dinner-plate hooves. But when he began to move, there was something completely mesmerising about him. He was trainable too. Valentina had taught him to bow by taking a carrot and passing it down between his forelegs until Sasha dropped to his knees and lowered his head to reach the tasty treat. It had taken him one day to master this.

By the time he was three, Valentina’s stallion had been able to rear and pirouette on cue. Soon, it was Sasha and Valentina whose faces appeared on the circus posters. Sergei understood the allure of the tiny blonde girl and her gigantic pink horse, and he made them his headline act.

“The stars of the circus,” Valentina murmured as she led Sasha back to his tiny yard. “How lucky we are.” The pink horse shook out his mane and blew through his wide nostrils as if in agreement.

Valentina had a long night ahead of her feeding the other animals and cleaning out the trailers, but first she took care of Sasha. She mucked out his yard, gave him fresh hay and refilled his water. Then she mixed his feed, oats and chaff and barley, giving the horse twice as much as Sergei permitted. The ringmaster kept all the animals on starvation rations to save money. “Your horse eats my profits!” he would often tell Valentina. “And still its ribs stick out.”

Valentina hated the way Sergei spoke of the animals as if they were nothing more than props for his circus performances. She did the best she could to protect Sasha and the others, to make their miserable lives better than they were. Sometimes, when she saw the shackles on the elephant’s ankles, or the frustration on the faces of the poor monkeys cooped up in their tiny cages all day, she found herself weeping.

“You are too soft. They are just animals,” Irina would say when she found Valentina in their caravan, her cheeks wet with tears.

A scrawny waif with hollow eyes and grey skin, Irina had the rare ability to be double-jointed in both her elbows and knees, which made her a brilliant contortionist. She had been ten years old when she ran away from the orphanage to join the Moscow Spectacular.

“I have fallen on my feet here,” Irina would often say. It was an ironic turn of phrase because in fact Irina never fell on her feet – she usually fell on her backside. This was why Sergei would not let her even be Valentina’s understudy on the high wire. The girl had no poise or balance, so that even the clowns held their breath with concern every time she went up the trapeze.

Sergei had put Irina in Valentina’s caravan and they soon became best friends. Irina, however, was not an easy room-mate. Valentina would often find her practising her contortionist’s tricks, curled up like a pretzel on the floor, or walking on her hands and using her feet to make a cup of gypsy tea. At night they slept in twin beds side by side and Valentina would often be woken by Irina whimpering in her sleep. The whimpers would grow more intense until their caravan echoed with Irina’s sobs, growing louder and more panic-stricken until suddenly the girl would sit bolt upright and start screaming. Then Valentina would hurry over to her friend’s bedside and hug her, rocking her from side to side until her night terrors subsided.

Once, after a particularly bad episode, Valentina had asked her friend what it was that she dreamt about that was so frightening.

“Oh, but it is not a dream!” Irina said. “That is the problem, don’t you see? I am not dreaming. I am remembering. In my mind I am back at the orphanage. I can smell the stench of the babies in their dirty nappies. I hear the hungry cries of the other children and I see the sickly ones lying in their cots alongside me. That is when I wake up and thank God that I escaped and found my way here.”

Irina thought the circus was the best place in the world and never understood Valentina’s urge to run away from it.

One night, Valentina had shown Irina the sheet of paper that she kept hidden beneath the loose floorboard in their caravan. On it there was a picture of a horse, a very beautiful creature being ridden in a grand arena. The rider wore a top hat and tails, and the horse had its mane braided. Beneath the image there was writing.

“What does it say?” Irina asked.

Valentina could not read the words but she knew what the sheet of paper said – she had memorised it long ago. “It is the application form for the Federation Dressage Academy,” she said. “This is the greatest dressage school in the whole of Russia. The Olympic team train here. This is where Sasha and I are going to go.”

Irina looked at her, totally baffled. “But you do not ride dressage! You are circus!”

Valentina shrugged. “I taught Sasha how to stand on his hind legs and dance; how much harder can these dressage tricks be?”

“Sergei would never let you go,” Irina looked worried. “Oh, Valentina, please do not have such dreams! They will only disappoint you.”

Valentina loved Irina and felt terribly sad that the fear of ending up back in the orphanage was enough to keep the girl at the circus. Sergei’s clever manipulations meant Irina had lost all hope of any other kind of life. And Valentina could not persuade her friend to think otherwise. When the time to leave came, it would be only her and Sasha, and she dared not tell anyone else.

That night when Valentina got back from cleaning up the tigers’ cages Irina was already asleep. She snored loudly, snuffling and wheezing like an old man. Valentina worked quietly, so that her room-mate would not waken, as she jimmied up the floorboard beside her bed and pulled out the treasured piece of paper. She traced her fingers over the words, remembering how her mother had read them out to her, with Valentina on her knee.

“This is your destiny, milochka,” she had told her daughter. “You will have a big life, a grand life! You will go to places and see things that will astound you. You cannot even imagine the world that is out there waiting for you, Valentina. You are going to be a superstar far greater than this circus has ever seen.”

Valentina put her hand beneath the floorboards once more and this time she lifted out a velvet bag with a tasselled drawstring. Inside was the only other memento she had of her mother, the gift she had given her before she died. Apart from Sasha, the contents of this bag meant more to her than anything else in the world.

In the dim light of her bedside lamp, Valentina sat down on her bed, clasping the velvet bag to her chest. On the wall by her pillow she had hung a small mirror, slightly cracked in one corner. She looked at her reflection and saw a dirty, unloved circus girl. Then, from the velvet bag she withdrew the necklace. She raised her hands behind her neck and fastened the silver filigree clasp so that the black teardrop-shaped stone fell at her throat. In the cracked mirror, the magnificent necklace sparkled brightly, and Valentina was suddenly in a giant stadium. There were thousands of people rising to their feet, applauding, and Sasha danced beneath her, glorious and perfect as he trotted to the music.

Valentina knew in that moment that this was no a dream. It was real and true, and all she had to do was make a leap of faith. Throw herself into the air and forget the safety net. Somehow, she would make it happen.

CHAPTER 3

Black Diamond

The arrival of two Siberian tigers at the Khrenovsky estate was the talk of the palace and the entire staff gathered on the lawn to greet the new additions to Count Orlov’s menagerie.

Anna stood beside Katia as the tigers arrived in a steel-barred crate on a carriage towed by eight horses. Three times the size of the Amur leopards, the striped beasts swiped their paws menacingly at the assembled crowd and let loose growls that sent the younger maids running and shrieking across the lawn. The servant boys fell back from the cage in terror too. Only Vasily kept calm, walking right past the snarling beasts to unharness the carriage horses.

The horses had been rendered rake-thin and exhausted by their long journey. “Poor things.” Vasily shook his head in dismay. “How gruelling it must have been to hear the constant, inescapable growl of tigers at their heels no matter how fast they ran … It must have driven them mad.”

“They will be all right, won’t they?” Anna asked.

Vasily looked even more serious than usual. “I will do my best for them, Lady Anna,” was all he said. While Vasily led the weakened carriage horses away to the stables the serfs pondered the problem of how to unload the tigers without getting near them. Eventually they decided to use wooden poles, passed through the steel-barred crate so that ten men on either side could lift it in unison. They would then carry the steel crate and the tigers inside it to the gilt cage that would be their new home. Tempting slabs of meat had been placed in their golden prison to lure the tigers from one cage to another.

If Count Orlov had been at Khrenovsky he might have ordered that the tigers live in the palace, despite the terror that the man-eaters inspired. Fortunately the Empress had sent her Lord Admiral of the Black Seas to destroy the Turkish navy, and until the Count returned, the tigers were confined in their gilt cage on the lawn.

Even after the beasts were behind golden bars the serfs were afraid of them. At mealtimes they refused to get close and instead would throw the bones from a distance at the tigers. Soon there was a scattering of meat bones that had bounced off the bars, littered around the grass surrounding the cage.

Only one person in the palace was brave enough to approach them. Each day, Anna would quietly creep closer and closer to the tiger cage. She calmly faced the snarling beasts, letting them get slowly accustomed to her presence. And then one day she summoned up the courage to pick up one of the wasted bones and gently push it between the bars.

If her pulse quickened at this act, it was purely from excitement at being so close to such glorious creatures. Anna began to feed the tigers daily, and afterwards she would sit cross-legged right outside their cage as if they were the sun and she was basking in their light. She loved the feline grace of their movements, the way they padded about their enclosure, so enormous and yet so silent, their hips swaying gently, long stripy tails trailing out behind them. Her heart was so full of joy at their beauty there was no room left in it for fear.

The tigers seemed to sense Anna’s kindred nature. Veronika and Valery, named so by Anna, lay down on the floor of their golden prison, barely twitching their tails while she lay on her belly on the other side of the bars. They were utterly content in each other’s company. Unlike the bears, the tigers also seemed to be well matched. Anna could see from the way they rubbed against one another and gave each other playful cuffs with their enormous paws that they had a happy relationship.

It was easy to tell them apart. The male tiger was far larger and his face was broader. The female was smooth and sleek with a distinctly regal beauty. The black stripes of her arched eyebrows reminded Anna of the kohl brows her mother drew on as part of her make-up for dinner parties.