The Diamond Horse

And with that, the two women left the room.

Anna waited until their footsteps had receded down the corridor and then she sat herself down at the Countess’s dressing table.

She twisted up her dark blonde hair and secured it in a loose bun on top of her head, revealing the pale ivory skin beneath, just like her mother’s.

As the diamond teardrop fell against her breastbone, Anna admired its darkness. It contrasted against the whiteness of her skin, the light glowing from inside the stone as if it were on fire. For a moment she was lost in its beauty, and then she raised her eyes to see her reflection. But the eyes that returned Anna’s gaze were not her own. There was a girl looking back at her from the mirror who Anna had never seen before.

The girl in the mirror was blonde too, her ice-white hair twisted in a braid on top of her head, her alabaster skin glimmering as if it had been dusted with stars. She wore a glittering costume that shone like a star, covered with silver spangles. She was leaning into the mirror and painting on make-up, lining her lips with a brilliant scarlet.

Anna stared at the girl. And, holding Anna’s gaze, the girl in the mirror smiled right back at her! Then she smacked her red lips together and adjusted her glittering costume, wriggling the straps so that her silver spangles shimmied. Then the ice-white blonde reached out to the dresser in front of her and lifted a black diamond necklace to her throat. It was identical to Anna’s. They were both wearing the same necklace!

Anna reached out her hand to the mirror glass. The girl smiled again and then she stood up. There were voices in the distance calling out her name:

Valentina, Valentina, it is time …

CHAPTER 2 (#ucc3282a3-c5c1-5645-8ad5-c1f0a8495e8d)

The Moscow Spectacular (#ucc3282a3-c5c1-5645-8ad5-c1f0a8495e8d)

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.