by Stacy Gregg
At its entrance, the doorman in the golden costume insisted on announcing her to the room in the formal fashion:
“Lady Anna of Khrenovsky!” To Anna’s great surprise, the entire dining room rose from their tables and rose to their feet to clink their glasses with their forks and applaud.
“What is all this about?” Anna wondered. “Why do they cheer for me?”
Then Count Smirnov took it upon himself to stride across the room and greet her warmly, bowing and grinning as if she were his long-lost best friend.
“How perfect that you should arrive at this moment, Lady Anna.” He gestured towards the table. “We have just been talking about you. Or I should say we were talking about your horse. I have just agreed terms with your father to bring my mares to Khrenovsky in the spring. They shall be put into foal by the magnificent stallion, Drakon!”
Count Petrov had also sprung up to her side. “Do not think you can jump the queue, Smirnov,” he scolded. “The greatest horse in all of Russia will serve my mares first. I shall have many Orlov Trotters in my stables before long!”
For despite Anna and Drakon’s failure to win the race, the brilliance of Drakon was celebrated by all who had seen his display on the black ice of the Voronezh river. This strangely conformed horse had led out at such speed that he left all other competitors in his wake, crossing the taiga with an exhibition of stamina that certainly would have won the race had misfortune not intervened. And then there was the loyalty of a horse who would protect his mistress by risking his own life against a pack of timber wolves, fighting valiantly side by side with a Siberian tiger!
“Lady Anna?” It was the Empress’s chief aide. He leant past Smirnov and Petrov to take her by the hand with a gracious bow. “Her Majesty requests that you accompany me to join her. You will be the guest at her right hand this evening.”
Anna looked across the room to see the Empress sitting at the head of the table. She was wearing a teal and peacock-blue gown, trimmed with lace round the neckline, her hair powdered in a vibrant shade of lilac.
“Are you sure?” Anna could not believe it. “She has requested me?”
“Yes, my lady,” the aide replied. “Her Majesty desires your presence immediately; dinner is about to begin.”
Anna felt certain as she walked through the dining room that she was going to stumble or fall and make a fool of herself somehow.
When she sat down next to Empress Catherine, her hands were shaking so badly she hoped dinner would never come because she could not pick up her cutlery.
“Are you nervous, dear one?” Empress Catherine placed her own hand on top of Anna’s and gave it a comforting squeeze. “It is such a delight to have you to myself tonight. We shall talk about a great many things …” The Empress smiled. “But first let me attend to the formalities.”
Tapping her raised glass with her fork, the Empress engaged the room and all the assorted company rose to their feet. “Ladies and gentlemen, it is wonderful to enjoy such a feast with you on this cold winter night. I am sure you will join me in offering congratulations to Count Petrov, whose chestnut stallion was the winner of yesterday’s race across the taiga.”
The Empress paused. “And to Count Orlov. Truly he has proven himself to be breeder of the finest horses in all of Russia! And he has provided us with this marvellous feast, so … Bon appétit!”
Count Orlov, sitting to the left of the Empress, looked delighted with this acknowledgement. As Her Majesty took her chair once more, she leant across to him and said loud enough for Anna to hear, “You have always boasted of the bloodlines at the Khrenovsky estate, Count Orlov, but you did not tell me that your own flesh and blood were so talented too. You must be very proud of your daughter.”
Count Orlov looked taken aback for a moment.
“My daughter,” Count Orlov replied, “is but a child. Stubborn, impetuous and wilful.”
Then he raised his eyes and he looked straight at Anna with an expression on his face that she had never seen before.
“It is my Orlov blood that makes my daughter so.” The Count smiled. “She has achieved tremendous things with her stallion, Drakon. And I could not be any prouder of her.”
At that moment the waiters swept in bearing platters of caviar and blini for the entrée and Count Orlov was distracted by the need to resume giving orders to his staff. A hubbub of conversation struck up along with the clatter of knives and forks. In this busy atmosphere, surrounded by the buzz of the other diners, Empress Catherine focused her attention on Anna.
“I have been at the stables this morning,” she said. “Drakon really is a most impressive horse. His groom tells me that you were the one who trained him.”
Anna nodded. “Your Majesty, Drakon has the most wonderful nature. Sometimes I think he is more human than horse.”
The Empress nodded sagely. “Then again,” she mused, “I find that some humans amongst us do not have the easiest natures …” The Empress looked about the room. “Your brother, Ivan, is absent tonight. I have been watching him since I arrived at the palace. He seems an ambitious sort of boy.”
“Ivan is … very different from me,” Anna said tactfully. Then, letting her guard down, she admitted, “We don’t really get on, Your Majesty.”
“Is that so?” the Empress said. “Then perhaps you will not be sad to hear that he departs under the auspices of the Lord Commander of my military tomorrow. A boy like Ivan, with his intellect and cunning, would be useful in my armed forces. So I am stationing him in Outer Siberia.”
The very remotest reaches of the Russian realm. Anna felt her heart soar, her cheeks flush with relief.
“I hope you will not miss him too greatly. He will be gone for rather a long time,” the Empress said as she gave Anna’s hand an affirming squeeze.
The servants came and cleared the plates ready for the main course. Empress Catherine dabbed her mouth with a napkin, and then she turned to Anna once more. She reached out, and her dainty fingers brushed the filigree silver chain that held the black diamond at Anna’s throat.
“Did I tell you that I was great friends with your mother?” the Empress said. “She gave you this diamond, didn’t she? When she was not long for this world.”
Anna nodded again. “Yes, Your Majesty. She said it is a family heirloom.”
“Oh, it is far more than that!” Empress Catherine smiled. “It is the Orlov Diamond! A black teardrop, one of the largest stones in the world, and immensely rare. It is very beautiful and ancient.”
The Empress leant in close, whispering conspiratorially. “Guard this necklace well, Anna Orlov. Keep it close always, for it is precious beyond measure. There is much power in this gemstone. One day you too will hand it down to your daughter as your mother did to you. Who knows what gifts it may yet bestow on future generations.”
***
That night, Anna sat at her bedroom window, peering outside at the snowy realm beyond the glass, unable to sleep. Igor had no such problems and was snoring gently at her feet. She had come back from dinner to find the hound looking rather pleased with himself. Anna’s brother never turned up for dinner that evening. Katia told Anna later that the young Count Orlov had been feeling unwell and had gone straight to his room to pack. He would be leaving for Siberia first thing in the morning.
Anna put her face up so that her nose was pressed to the cold pane of the glass, and thought about the Empress’s words. Against the inky blackness, she saw the moonbeams shimmering off the snow, and then in the pale light a shadow was cast, a slinking shape moving swiftly across the snowy lawn. For a moment she caught a glimpse of something, a blur of black and orange, a shock of brilliant stripes against the pure white.
“Boris?” As Anna spoke his name, her breath frosted the glass, turning it misty and opaque. By the time she had wiped it clean again, her tiger was gone.
“Farewell, Borenka,” Anna said softly. She reached forward to press a kiss to the glass, a last goodbye to her beloved protector.
And when the dawn came and thawed the frost on the windows, the shape of Anna’s heartfelt love remained, sparkling like a diamond in the snowy morning light.
Epilogue
My name is Anna Orlov and this has been my story. It is also inspired by the true story of Russia’s greatest horse breed, the Orlov Trotter.
My father, Count Orlov, is famed for creating nearly 70 different breeds of animal, including Igor, my beloved borzoi wolfhound. However, it is for his horses that he became best known. When my father paid 60,000 roubles for the mighty foundation sire, Smetanka, it was the talk of the royal court! His men really did journey Smetanka overland from Turkey, taking almost a year to bring the horse home to the Khrenovsky estate. Smetanka’s reign at the palace stables was short-lived as the winter cold of Russia proved too brutal for his hot blood. Yet thanks to Smetanka, this one remarkable stallion, my father founded the Orlov line. Under the rule of the great Empress Catherine, Count Orlov’s Trotters became a favourite of the Russian nobility, renowned for their surefootedness over the black ice of the rivers in Moscow and St Petersburg.
My father was infamous too, in much darker ways. He was a self-confessed murderer, having killed Peter the Third so that Catherine could take the throne. They say it was for this brutal act of loyalty that Her Majesty rewarded my father with our estate. You have heard my descriptions of him and I am not exaggerating when I say my father was a giant of a man, with a hideous scar disfiguring his cheek that earned him his name: Le Balafre. He was often away at war, fighting as the Empress’s Lord Commander of the Black Sea, but whenever he came home again I lived in his dark shadow. Being a girl, I always thought he considered me lesser than my brother, Ivan. In the end though it was my ability with horses and my love for the animals that bonded us. When my father died it had been expected that Ivan, as the man of the house, would be bequeathed the Khrenovsky estate. Instead, it was I who took control. Over the years that followed, with the help of the groom, Vasily Shishkin, I established a breeding programme so that today the bloodlines of the Orlov Trotter continue. These horses are my legacy.
Anyone who owns an Orlov will tell you that they are not like other horses. They possess both a remarkable inner courage and a superior intellect. Many of their traits are almost human. The greatest of their gifts is loyalty. Such a one was the famous pink Orlov that you know as Sasha, inspired by the real-life horse, Balagur.
Like Sasha in this book, Balagur was an abused circus horse, and after that a police horse too! With his talented young dressage rider, Alexandra Korelova, and their coach George Theodorescu, this unlikely combination took on the elite world of international dressage. “I was embarrassed,” Alexandra admitted, “because nobody took part at the dressage riding shows on Orlov Trotters!”
This young Russian girl and her pink Orlov defied everything the dressage world had ever known.
The pink Orlov, Balagur, was the only horse at the European Games to earn a perfect ten for his piaffe. He won his first medal at the Olympic Games in 2004 and then competed again at the Games in 2008. His fans became so devoted they followed him around the world.
I hope with all my heart that Balagur is not the last great Orlov. However, the breed is now very rare, even in Russia. You will still see them though, sometimes even performing in Moscow circuses. You will know them when you see them because they are unmistakeable, with their long legs and elongated bodies – they really do have an extra rib compared to other horses. It is the head though that really marks the Orlov as special, the narrow muzzle and flared nostrils and the broad slab of a jaw that makes them resemble a dragon. To my mind, there is no other horse in the world quite so strange or so beautiful.
As for the Orlov Diamond: in actual fact there are two of them. The White Orlov can be viewed in the Kremlin in Moscow, where it is set in the jewelled sceptre of Catherine the Great. The Black Orlov, my diamond, was believed to carry a curse that brought death to whomever possessed it – but as you now know, it meant something very different to me. It was last seen on display at the UK’s Natural History Museum in 2005.
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Other books by Stacy Gregg:
The Princess and the Foal
The Island of Lost Horses
The Girl Who Rode the Wind
The Pony Club Secrets series:
Mystic and the Midnight Ride
Blaze and the Dark Rider
Destiny and the Wild Horses
Stardust and the Daredevil Ponies
Comet and the Champion’s Cup
Storm and the Silver Bridle
Fortune and the Golden Trophy
Victory and the All-Stars Academy
Flame and the Rebel Riders
Angel and the Flying Stallions
Liberty and the Dream Ride
Nightstorm and the Grand Slam
Issie and the Christmas Pony
Pony Club Rivals series:
The Auditions
Showjumpers
Riding Star
The Prize
www.stacygregg.co.uk
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