Eva Ibbotson - The Star of Kazan

‘You’ll find me in my office,’ said the manager. ‘I’ve got a rather good bottle of Tokay.’

Though he was so small, the child was not shy. He took the Master’s hand and led him with absolute assurance to a part of the farm the old man had not seen before, and into a stone barn with clean whitewashed walls and high windows through which the sun shone on to the deep yellow straw. About twenty mares were tethered in a line along the walls, resting or suckling their foals. The foals wandered freely among them; the more curious ones came up to the Freiherr and the boy, exploring, nuzzling their clothes.

‘Watch,’ said the boy.

They stood still in the middle of the barn for what seemed to be a long time. There were foals of all colours, dappled greys, roans, bays, some new-born, others already confident on their long legs.

After a while the boy turned his head to look at the Master. ‘Do you see?’ he said.

‘There are several which—’

‘No,’ said the little boy, and the assurance in his voice was almost comical. ‘There is only one.’

The Master went on watching. He was beginning to see what the boy saw but he was not yet sure. Zed waited till the foal came closer.

Then, ‘That one,’ he said.

The foal was tawny with big lustrous eyes, curious and eager. There were other foals almost as curious, as eager and trembling with life. Almost, but not quite.

‘He’s the best,’ said the child. And then, ‘If your grandson is nice. His name is Rocco.’

Rocco was not ready to leave his mother, nor to make the long journey by train to Spittal. The Master left a deposit, drank a glass of Tokay and waited. In the event it was nearly six months before the colt could be sent to Spittal. The Master went to the station; the guard opened the door of the van, the groom led the horse down the ramp. In a dark corner, a pile of straw moved and a small head appeared.

‘I came too,’ said Zed.

‘Where is your father?’

The child turned his face away.

‘He died.’

The groom explained. ‘He tried to stop a fight… there were knives.’ He shrugged. They were so common, these pointless drunken fights. ‘There’s a woman at the stud who’s happy to adopt the boy, but he wanted to come to you.’

The Master nodded. He examined the colt, shook hands with Zed.

They went home.

The first two years Zed spent at Spittal were happy ones. He lived with Bertha in a flat above the stables in the courtyard, he worked with the horses, he made himself useful on the farm and went to the village school. But often in the evening the Master took him into his room, showed him his books and his maps, or told him stories between puffs on his long-stemmed pipe. Bertha looked after the boy as she had looked after the Master, but really he needed very little care.

And the colt grew and became tame and was handled, ready for Hermann.

Then everything changed. Edeltraut’s husband, Franz von Unterfall, sold his estate and she brought him and her son back home to live at Spittal. When Hermann came, Zed, who was two years older, thought it was his job to help and protect him, but Hermann soon made it clear that he didn’t want a stable boy for a friend.

A year after Edeltraut’s return, the Freiherr had a stroke. He lived for two more months, unable to speak, helpless. Bertha and Zed nursed their Master, willing him to recover, but he got steadily weaker. They were both at his bedside when he died.

After the funeral, Bertha and Zed were sent to the hut in the farmyard, allowed to work in the big house but not to sleep in it. A few weeks later, Edeltraut’s husband sailed for America. From then on she dropped her married name and ran the estate on her own.

Annika had been at Spittal for a nearly a week. It was still bitterly cold, both outside the house and inside, where the only stoves that were lit in the morning were in the kitchen and her mother’s boudoir. The last of the ice had thawed from the hollows, which meant that not only the fields but most of the paths were flooded, and Annika’s feet were permanently wet. She had resisted all Ellie’s efforts to buy her waterproof overshoes in Vienna — no one who cared how they looked could wear galoshes. But now she decided to ask her mother if they could buy a pair the next time they went to the shops.

More birds had come from Greenland — skeins of wild geese and flights of teal, for which the red-bearded Oswald waited each dawn in his punt. He was a good shot — seldom bringing in fewer than half a dozen birds, which were hung in the outside larder and cooked, sometimes still full of lead shot, by the only other servant who worked in the house, a sulky silent girl called Hanne from a village on the other side of the lake. Hanne had been taught to bang the gong in the hall loudly before each meal, but when the ear-splitting noise had died away, the food that awaited them in the dining room was always the same. The charred legs of geese, stewed duck, pieces of blackcock fried in lard, made up both lunch and dinner, sometimes with turnips and potatoes, sometimes alone.

The family from the hunting lodge came over often, usually for lunch, and ate hungrily. Mathilde still looked desperate and tried to take her sister, Edeltraut, aside to whisper in her ear.

Zed had suggested that Annika should ask her mother if she could learn to ride.

‘You’d do less harm than Hermann,’ he had said.

But when Annika had put the question to her mother, Edeltraut had shaken her head.

‘Not at the moment, dear. There’s only Hermann’s horse just now and he has to be able to ride whenever he needs to so that he will be able to keep up at St Xavier’s. But it will all change soon, I promise you.’

Annika had also asked if she might go out in one of the boats, if she stayed near the shore.

‘I can swim,’ she said, ‘and I’d be very careful. Maybe Hermann would come and we could fish?’

But there were only two punts; one leaked and was dangerous, the other had to be kept free for Uncle Oswald.

Because she had fared badly over the riding and over going out in a boat, Annika had been careful not to ask if she could go to the farm. She would never have disobeyed her mother, but the days, with no school and no real occupation, were long, and down there she was happy. Zed not only did not mind her helping, he refused to let her stand about and watch with idle hands. She had taken over the egg collecting and he was teaching her to milk.

‘Why does nobody go to school here?’ she asked him, for she had seen children with satchels making their way down the lane towards the village.

Zed was stirring swill for the pigs. ‘Hermann doesn’t go to school because he’s not allowed to mix with the common children, and nor is Gudrun. I don’t go to school because there’s no one to do my work if I go. And you don’t go because you have to learn to be a stuck-up von Tannenberg instead of a servant girl.’

‘My mother isn’t stuck-up. She’s—’

‘All right, I know. You’re quite right to defend your mother. I’d be the same with mine if she was still alive.’

Though he answered general questions easily enough, Zed had told her very little about himself. Now though he said, ‘She was a gypsy… a Romany.’

So Hermann had been telling the truth.

‘There are a lot of Romanies working in Vienna, mostly playing in the cafes,’ said Annika. ‘They’re marvellous musicians.’ She sighed. ‘I miss music… not that I could play anything, but we used to sing at school, and there was always music coming out of the buildings.’ She grinned. ‘And of course Aunt Gertrude’s harp.’

‘Well, you’ll hear some music next Friday. You’re going into Bad Haxenfeld and there’s a bandstand there.’