‘She must learn to balance, since she can’t grip,’ he explained to Anne.
Rose had looked at the pony rather doubtfully at first, and Mile Parmoutier had begged Anne to forbid what must be of the gravest danger to her Lamb. But Professor von Frank, of the University Medical Faculty, whom Kirov had engaged to take care of Rose’s health, since Grubernik could not be tempted away from Petersburg, had said he thought there was no harm in it; and once Adonis had shown Rose how to feed the pony on bread and carrots, and how to brush its long mane and forelock, she had lost all fear of it, and was eager to ride.
Adonis merely held her round the waist and walked the pony round a few times; and when he lifted her off, saying that it was enough for a first time, Rose was eager for more. To Anne he said afterwards, ‘Leave her always wanting more – that way she will learn quicker. Never let her go on until she’s tired.’
‘Why are you telling me this? You are her teacher,’ Anne said, amused, but impressed with his wisdom, and with the gentleness of this tough mercenary towards the crippled child.
‘I cannot always be here, mistress. You forget I am a soldier, and under command. The little one must ride regularly, every day, and when I am not here, it must be you who teaches her. But do as I do – don’t try to make her do too much, out of your own pride.’
Little by little, Rose learnt. At first she had to be held on to the pony’s back; then she could balance for herself, holding the neck strap; then she could balance without holding, and learnt to use the reins. The pony was ideally suited to the task: small and sure-footed, patient and obedient, yet remarkably intelligent. Anne had seen him sometimes look round and fix his small rider with a considering regard from those great brown eyes.
‘I’m sure he knows that she’s a child, and weak. Look how carefully he moves with her, and how he stops at once if she begins to lose her balance.’
‘Of course he knows,’ Adonis said, rubbing the mealy muzzle affectionately. ‘He’s taking care of her. You can trust him.’
Anne and Mile Parmoutier between them made Rose a pair of Cossack trousers to ride in, and the Count had a pair of soft boots made for her in the town. Rose was delighted with her new outfit, because it hid her leg braces. The Count laughingly promised her a Cossack hat for her birthday, and she smiled at him shyly – the first time she had really warmed to him.
‘She will always have to ride cross-saddle,’ Adonis told Anne, watching her sideways for reaction. Anne merely nodded. ‘And trotting I think will not be possible. When she is older and stronger, she may learn to canter. For now, walking, always walking.’
By the middle of June, Marya Vassilievna could ride her pony confidently round the field at the walk, and Adonis told Anne with tears of pride in his eyes, that his little English Rose was even beginning to hold on with her knees in the proper fashion.
‘She’s grown shockingly brown,’ Anne said to Nikolai one night in bed, ‘but it makes me so happy to see her, I can’t mind it. I never thought she would be able to ride at all. Adonis is a wonderful man.’
The Count, holding her in his arms, smiled into the darkness above her head. ‘I think he approves of you, too. He offered, when this campaign’s over, to murder your husband for me so that I could marry you.’
Anne laughed nervously, not sure how far it was a joke. ‘I wish we could be married,’ she said after a moment. ‘Then we could have Sashka with us, too.’ She hated the fact that because she was, in effect, his mistress, she was no longer respectable enough to take care of the child she had once bathed and dressed and played with and taught his letters and his numbers.
He kissed the top of her head and held her closer. ‘When this war is over, we’ll find a way to marry, I promise you. Something will be done. Until then–’
‘Until then,’ she said, nudging closer and sighing contentedly, ‘I am so happy just to be with you. If I have nothing else for the rest of my life, I shall have had this.’
‘There’s plenty more to come,’ he said. ‘It’s only just beginning.’
Professor von Frank had a young wife, and the young wife had a fine operatic soprano voice. Though only an amateur, she was famed throughout Lithuania, and as the Emperor had graciously expressed an interest in hearing her sing, a concert was arranged for one evening in the middle of June. It was fortunate that the cellist, Bernhard Romberg, was also visiting friends nearby, and was delighted to receive an Imperial invitation; and with the addition of a tolerable pianist, and an excellent string quartet, a very good programme was arranged, quite as good, Anne thought, as anything she had heard in Moscow.
Nikolai was unable to attend, his duties having taken him to Novi Troki, a village about twelve miles or so closer to the border, where it was rumoured that a senior French officer had been taken prisoner and was being held in a barn. Though it seemed likely to prove false, it was necessary for someone to go and investigate; Anne had therefore gone to the concert in the company of Madame de Tolly, who was frequently without her hardworking husband on such occasions.
After the concert, the two women were waiting at the door for Madame de Tolly’s carriage to be called. A prolonged clattering on the cobbles down the street heralded a troop of cavalry of some kind, and everyone hastily cleared the way for them. Troops were moving about Vilna all the time, arriving and departing with new orders, and Anne was paying no particular attention, until Madame de Tolly said, ‘Oh, look, more Cossacks! I do love their clever little horses, don’t you? Mikhail says they think with their feet.’
Anne smiled. Evidently the good Madame de Tolly thought that her husband had originated the phrase; but it was a commonplace that Cossack ponies thought with their feet, to which Nikolai had added pungently, ‘Unlike certain members of the Emperor’s staff, who usually think with their bottoms.’
‘They’re wonderful creatures,’ she replied, thinking gratefully of Rose’s pony Mielka, and turning to look at the troop, she saw a familiar tall bay horse with long ears, the mount of the officer commanding. ‘Nabat!’ she whispered in surprise; and her eyes travelled on upwards to meet, in the instant in which he passed, the startled gaze of Sergei.
He was gone, posting fast up the cobbled street at the head of his troop. The horses clattered past, ridden by brown-faced, hawk-nosed, Tartar-cheeked Cossacks, with the long moustaches of the Caucasus, and wearing the distinctive black burkas which Anne remembered so well – the mountainman’s protection from heat, cold, rain and the damp of the earth by night. The horses were all well splashed with mud, right up to their girths, and the Cossacks’ boots were muddy too – they had travelled hard that day. Now they were past, Anne began to wonder if she really had seen Sergei at the head of the troop, or whether she had imagined it. There was nothing so very surprising about it really, she told herself as the carriage pulled up and she stood aside to let Madame de Tolly climb in: troops were being brought in from all over Russia; but she had thought he was far away in Azerbaijan with General Tormassov.
The next morning while she and Rose and Mile Parmoutier were taking a late breakfast on the terrace, Sergei arrived to call on her. The butler showed him out to them, and hovered in case extra covers were required.
‘Good morning, Madame Tchaikovsky,’ Sergei began unpromisingly. ‘I trust I don’t disturb you? But I thought I ought at least to pay my respects, as I find you here so unexpectedly.’
Anne looked at him with guilt and pity. There was no trace any more of the laughing, fair boy who had teased Lolya, carried Natasha pick-a-back, played chess with his father and minded not winning, flung himself flushed and shy at her feet with an untouched heart for her taking. This Sergei was a solidly built, muscular young man with a strong jaw, an uncompromising mouth, and hard eyes, which just now were looking flintily past her left ear. The sun frown between his brows had evidently become habitual even when there was no sun, and the lines at either side of his mouth were not good-humoured. His skin was very tanned, and the front of his hair was bleached fair, and above one temple it had been shaved back to the scalp, evidently in the treatment of a wound, which had left a jagged scar running out from his hairline and down his forehead.