The Star of Kazan

32 Ragnar Hairybreeks

The professors and Ellie had been away for three days. The only telephone in the square was in the Eggharts’ house, and the Eggharts were still on holiday. Sigrid and Gertrude told each other that it was nothing to worry about, and became more and more worried. What could have happened at Spittal? What had kept them away so long?

Zed had his own anxieties, which he tried to keep to himself. He knew he could not stay in Vienna much longer however much he wanted to — yet he felt he could not leave till he knew what was happening to Annika.

Whatever troubles the humans had, Rocco did not share them. Life in Vienna suited him and he was making more and more friends. An old mare between the shafts of one of the cabs in the Keller Strasse seemed to think he was her long-lost son; the man who sold newspapers in the square behind the opera saved sugar lumps for him. Traffic did not trouble Rocco; he trotted serenely past honking motors and swaying trams. Children began to point him out.

‘Look, there’s Rocco,’ they told each other. ‘Rocco and Zed.’

Even the Lipizzaners, stepping proudly out of their princely stable, would often now return Rocco’s greetings, as though they knew that he was beginning to belong.

Then something happened which made Zed realize that he must leave the city and leave it fast. It was his own fault, he told himself. He had grown careless, taking Rocco out by daylight instead of waiting for the cover of night — but he’d been helping Pauline’s grandfather unpack books all morning and longed to be outside. So he shook off a handful of little Bodeks, saddled Rocco — and set off for the Prater.

This was not the funfair part of the Prater but the Royal Park, with its ancient trees and meadows, which had once belonged only to the emperor but which the people of the city were now allowed to use.

And on this fine spring afternoon, the people were certainly using it. Soldiers on leave walked with their girlfriends on their arms; old people whizzed along in bath chairs, propelled by their relatives; groups of pretty girls in their new Easter hats giggled together on the grass — and everywhere there were children. Children in prams, children pulling toys on wheels, children bowling hoops…

Two men in sober dark-brown uniforms stood out from the crowd. One was very tall and thin and wore his cap pulled down over his head; the other was small, with a ginger moustache.

There was a stretch where the cinder track for the horses ran beside the turf path on which the people walked. It was permitted to gallop in the Prater, but with so many people about, Zed kept Rocco to a canter.

On the path beside the track, a tired woman pushed her baby in a basketwork pram. With her free hand she pulled along a tiny, plump boy in a sailor suit.

‘Keep hold, Fritzi,’ she said. ‘Hang on to the pram.’

But Fritzi was bored. He let go of the handle and ran forward. Another child came towards him kicking a large red ball. They met head on.

‘My ball,’ said Fritzi, trying to grab it. ‘Mine.’

‘No, mine!’ said the other child — and he kicked the ball hard on to the cinders.

‘Stop, Fritzi,’ screamed his mother. ‘Stop, STOP!’

But Fritzi did not stop.

‘Ball,’ he cried passionately — and trotted on his fat little legs right across Rocco’s path — and fell.

Zed didn’t have time to think. Rocco gave a shrill whinny of fear, and then he reared up… and up on his hindquarters with his hoofs pulled under him…

The child’s mother screamed again, there were cries from the bystanders, a soldier let go of the girl on his arm and moved forward.

Rocco’s hoofs were poised over the little boy’s body as he lay tumbled in the earth. But they did not come down. Rocco still held his levade and Zed gave no command, only adjusted the weight of his body imperceptibly to help the horse to stay as he was.

A levade can only be held for seconds, even by the strongest and most experienced horse, but these were long seconds. When Rocco came down again, slowly, carefully, the soldier had run out and snatched the little boy to safety.

After that there was pandemonium. People shouted and cheered; there were cries of ‘Did you see that?’ and Fritzi’s mother burst into tears of relief.

But Zed was watching two men only: the tall man in his dark-brown uniform and the man beside him with the ginger moustache. They were staring intently at the horse, but not in an excited way like the people in the crowd. The tall man had taken the other’s arm and they looked serious and businesslike.

‘We’ll have to look into this,’ Zed heard him say, and his companion nodded and took out a notebook and pencil. ‘A bay stallion. It all fits.’

‘I’ve seen him before,’ said the other man.

Zed heard no more. He urged Rocco into a canter — but as he made his way back to the square he realized that time was running very short. The two officers had looked like policemen. Not ordinary ones, they were too smart for that, but officers perhaps in one of the special units which flushed out people who had no right to be in the city: spies for one of the Balkan countries intent on destroying the empire, anarchists wanting to blow up members of parliament… and thieves… Horse thieves in particular. Frau Edeltraut must have issued a description of Rocco… he was distinctive enough with his single white star.

When he had stabled Rocco and rubbed him down, he made his way into the kitchen

‘Sigrid, I have to go soon. Tomorrow… I’m sure I saw two men in the park who guessed that Rocco wasn’t really mine. They looked like special police.’

But Sigrid was too preoccupied to worry about Rocco.

‘Professor Gertrude’s had a telegram from her brothers,’ she told Zed. ‘She’s in a dreadful state. Stefan’s up there now trying to calm her down; you go up too while I make some coffee.’

Gertrude was sitting in a chair holding the telegram in her hand. It was a long telegram and obviously very upsetting.

‘They want me to come to this place called Grossenfluss and give a harp recital. On my concert grand — the new one. They say I must come quickly; it’s urgent. There’s something about a child known to us all.’

‘Annika,’ said Zed instantly, and Stefan nodded.

‘Yes, but why do I have to go and play the new harp? It isn’t ready yet. And why do I have to play military music? I never play military music: it isn’t what I play,’ said poor Gertrude. She looked at the telegram again. ‘And there’s something about a man called Ragnar Hairybreeks. It all seems to be in code.’

But Pauline, hurrying in from the bookshop with The Dictionary of Myths and Legends under her arm, solved this particular problem.

‘I’ve found it,’ she said. ‘It’s in the Saga of the Nibelungen. Ragnar Hairybreeks was a Viking warrior whose wife was hidden in a harp. There’s a lot more, but that’s the bit that matters.’

The children looked at each other. They were beginning to understand.

But Professor Gertrude was desperate. ‘I can’t go all that way with the instrument. I can’t carry it by myself.’

‘I’ll come with you,’ said Stefan quietly.

Sigrid came in then with a tray of coffee, and a second telegram, which had just been delivered. Gertrude tore it open eagerly. Perhaps her brothers had seen sense and she did not need to go.

But the message was simple.

‘Bring Emil’s stomach powders,’ it said.