The Star of Kazan

And she brought him one of her grandfather’s most prized volumes, On the Art of Horsemanship, written by the famous Greek general Xenophon more than 2,000 years ago.

Zed had seen it in the Master’s hands at Spittal. Now he picked it up reverently. There was a picture on the cover of Xenophon astride a black stallion on the shores of the Black Sea. His hands were thrown up as he gave thanks to the gods after a 2,400-kilometre march with his soldiers – and he rode without stirrups!

Zed opened the book.

On horses such as these even gods and heroes will appear, and men who know how to work well with them will look magnificent!

He was still reading by the light of the paraffin lamp, long after Pauline and her grandfather slept.

But when it came to looking after Rocco and admiring him, Pauline made it clear that real horses made her nervous.

‘Rocco’s just a person who happens to be a horse,’ said Zed – but Pauline was not convinced.

To the little Bodek boys on the other hand, Rocco was a miracle of which they never tired. They burst out of their house as soon as they woke and went to the stable clutching carrots and pieces of apple which they begged from Ellie and which even Hansi only rarely ate himself. The baby, who had just learned to walk, threw up his hands and said, ‘Up, up!’ whenever he saw Rocco, and when Zed put him on his back he sat with his blue eyes wide with awe, and screamed horribly when he had to get down. Georg woke in the night, worrying in case Rocco, who liked to drink in the fountain, should swallow a goldfish.

Fortunately Stefan could control his younger brothers, but he did more than that. He took Zed to see his uncle, and the blacksmith shod Rocco and wouldn’t take payment. When there were odd jobs to be done, Stefan shared them with Zed and divided the money he earned.

Zed had told him that Rocco did not really belong to him, and Stefan, who was usually so placid, became quite cross.

‘Nonsense,’ he said. ‘Anyone can see he’s your horse. You might as well say Annika doesn’t belong to Ellie because Ellie isn’t her mother. People belong to the people who care for them.’

For Zed, who had fended for himself ever since the Master died, the kindness he was receiving was overwhelming. Sigrid tore up two of the professors’ old shirts and made him a new one. The lady in the paper shop gave him a rug for Rocco. Josef in the cafe saved the straw from his crates for Rocco’s bedding.

And Ellie cooked him noodle soup, and schnitzels so big that they covered the plate, and sat over him while he ate.

‘You’re too thin,’ she said. ‘We’ve got to build you up.’

Zed mostly exercised Rocco at night, trotting down the long Prater Strasse to get to the park where the emperors of Austria had ridden for centuries, and he could let the horse go in a gallop.

But he did not always go so far as the Prater. Sometimes he rode quietly through the streets and squares of the Inner City and learned the history of Vienna from its buildings.

Here was the house where Mozart wrote The Magic Flute and there the lodging where the deaf Beethoven had thumped his landlady’s piano to death. Outside the university were monuments to great philosophers and famous scientists and explorers . . . and everywhere there were men on horseback carved in stone.

There was the famous statue of Prince Eugene in the Heldenplatz, the weight of his horse resting on a single hoof. The Archduke Charles, on a great charger, rode nearby, and Field Marshal Radetzky guarded the streets behind the town hall.

And often now Zed saw the real horses descended from the fabulous steeds these warriors rode. In the open-air compound beside the Hofburg Palace he saw the Lipizzaners being exercised – not dancing now, walking quietly with a groom leading one horse and riding another. Once at sunset, he met a procession of white stallions, blanketed in red and gold, returning to the Stallburg after a rehearsal in the riding school.

Rocco, when he saw them, always whinnied a greeting, but Zed would take him to task.

‘Don’t get ideas above your station, Rocco,’ he told his horse. ‘We’re bound for a very different life.’

He was growing anxious. Each day he stayed in Vienna would make it harder to leave. Then, just a week after Zed came, the professors received a telegram from Emil.

The only Herr Grotius in Zurich is a shoemaker living on the north shore of the lake, who has definitely not died. No other Grotius, dead or alive, exists in the city.

‘Well, that’s half the evidence,’ said Professor Julius. ‘It seems that Frau Edeltraut was definitely lying.’