The Diamond Horse. Stacy Gregg

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СКАЧАТЬ a messenger to your father, Count Orlov,” Anna overheard the head physician telling Ivan. “He must return immediately if he wants to see his wife alive.”

      As the Countess’s condition deteriorated Katia was a constant presence at her mistress’s side, mopping the Countess’s brow and holding her hand to ease the pain.

      It was Katia who came to Anna, her face ashen, and told her that her mother was asking for her. Anna found herself walking as if in a dream, towards her mother’s chambers. The Countess looked so thin and frail from her illness, but still beautiful.

      “Is that you, milochka?” Anna’s mother raised her head from the pillow and put out her hand to clasp her daughter’s fingers.

      “It’s me, Mama,” Anna said, her voice trembling.

      The Countess smiled. “Dearest one. Come here and take my hand.”

      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 СКАЧАТЬ