The Dragonfly Pool (24 page)

“Someone ought to recite a poem,” said Barney. “Something noble.”

And one and all they looked at Julia.

“You can do it,” said Barney.

“No!” Julia's voice was anguished. “Not in front of all those people.”

“This isn't about you,” said Tally. “It's for the king. Say the piece we did in class, about the hunter coming home from the hill.”

Julia looked around the circle of children waiting in silence.

“Please,” said Tally.

Julia did not fold her hands or step forward. She only lifted her head and began to speak the words that Robert Louis Stevenson had written for a much-loved friend. The poem that began:

 

No one needed to know English to understand what she said. Julia's voice did it all.

When she had finished there was complete silence. Then suddenly a tall boy in a tunic and leather boots began to click his fingers. A second boy joined in—and a row of boys formed, resting their arms on each other's shoulders. Music came now from an accordion and a drum, and now the girls broke ranks and twirled in and out of the men. This was not national dancing now; it was dancing that broke all the barriers. It was dancing for everybody who had ever sorrowed and lost somebody they loved.

“Now,” whispered Tally—and Borro picked up his bundle, ready to run for the gate.

And then everything changed.

They heard the roar of motorcycles coming up the path behind them, and three men in police uniforms dismounted. They were part of the new force recruited in readiness for the takeover.

“What's going on here, then?” said the tallest. “You're not supposed to be out.”

“There's a curfew,” said the second man. “You're breaking the law.”

The children clustered around. In a babble of languages they explained what they were doing.

“We are honoring the king.”

“We are performing a funeral dance.”

“It is what we do in our country.”

The policemen, if they understood what was being said, took no notice.

“You must stop this nonsense now, at once, and go back to your campsite or you'll be in serious trouble.”

The tallest of the policemen lifted his billy club. “Let's get going,” he ordered threateningly.

There was nothing to do but obey. As slowly as they dared, the children began to walk down the hill. But the Deldertonians had not started to move yet; they lingered still near the gate but how long could they hang back? One of the policemen was making his way toward them.

And then suddenly a truly terrible scream came from the front of the procession and everybody stopped. A second scream followed, more dreadful than the first, and two little girls could be seen rolling over and over each other, pounding each other with their fists. A third joined in; they were the smallest and frailest of the dancers, wearing flounced petticoats with ribbons in their hair, but now they fought and clawed and kicked like maniacs.

The scuffle turned into a fight and spread. Two tall youths in crimson sashes attacked each other with the flags they carried. These children, who had lived together in harmony ever since they came, were shouting appalling abuse at each other.

“You're a garlic-eating peasant!”

“Everybody knows that in your country they cook babies and turn them into soup!”

“You're nothing but a fascist beast!”

And all the time the fighting got worse—two boys were pounding each other with their fists. Another came up behind a youth and wrestled him to the ground.

“Look out, he's got a knife,” shouted a girl, her face contorted with fear.

There were cries of “She's bleeding!” and “Oh help, help—he's coming for me!”

The policemen abandoned the loitering Deldertonians and ran downhill toward the disturbance. It was only what they had expected—that these unruly foreigners would start attacking each other. They waded into the middle of the fight, taking the youths by the scruff of the neck, pulling the little girls apart.

Musical instruments were tossed aside, the furry horn let out a frightful cry as they stepped on it with their heavy boots. As soon as they had quieted one group of children, a scuffle broke out somewhere else.

No one took any notice of the children left on the meadow at the top. No one saw a boy run into the forest with a bundle of clothes under his arm, or another boy come out and join the dancers.

It took a long time to control the fighting. Dusk had set in by the time everything was quiet.

“If there's any more fuss you'll be locked up,” threatened the policemen.

The children obeyed. They knew that their diversion had worked; Karil had had time to join the Deldertonians, and they marched proudly down the hill and into their tents.

And Karil, on the day his father died, somehow managed to march with them.

Matteo watched till they had gone. Then he slipped through the trees and made his way toward the back entrance of the palace. There were things he wanted to know before he left Bergania on the following day.

It was after midnight when he returned. Karil was lying in a sleeping bag in the boys' tent. Tod lay beside him wrapped in an old blanket; he had insisted on giving his sleeping bag to the prince.

Karil was sobbing, trying to stifle the sound he made, and Matteo was relieved. The boy's silent grief had been dangerous. He slipped off his shoes and lay down across the entrance to the tent, but he made no attempt to comfort him. A whole ocean of tears would not be enough to wash away what the boy had endured that day.

T
hey packed up before daybreak.

The children dressed in silence—they had decided the night before that they would travel in their dancing clothes; the hats festooned with ivy gave some measure of disguise. If they looked mad and disheveled, all the better. They already had a reputation for being the sort of people it was best to keep away from, and they meant to keep it like that.

There was time only for Tally to whisper her thanks to the little girls who had started the fight on the hillside and saved the prince. They looked smaller than ever, like sleepy butterflies in their flounced dresses, and it was hard to believe that they could have screamed so loudly.

Then the buses came, and the children piled inside.

They had been afraid of what would happen at the station—there had been no time to buy a ticket for Karil—but the sudden evacuation had put everything in a state of muddle and confusion. The stationmaster didn't take tickets or examine passports—his instructions were to get rid of the foreigners as quickly as possible and, along with their friends from the other groups, the Deldertonians were pushed on to the train. Safe in their compartment, they clustered together in as small a space as possible, pushing Karil in between Barney and Tally and making as much mess as they could, spreading out comics, putting their feet on the seats, living up to their reputation as hooligans.

More and more children climbed onto the train, and adults, too—people who were no longer desired by the new order in Bergania. There was an atmosphere of tension and bustle. The contrast with the hope and happiness that had marked their arrival four days ago was heartbreaking.

Matteo, who had been keeping watch in the corridor, let down the window.

“Listen!” he said to Magda, who stood beside him.

Carrying toward them from the mountainside was one of the most dreaded sounds in the world—that of a pack of baying bloodhounds following a scent.

The guard blew his whistle. The train began to move.

On the tower of the palace on the hill the flag was at half mast, but Karil did not turn his head. The vineyards and orchards flashed past as lovely as ever, but there were signs that Bergania was now a threatened land. They could see armored vehicles on the road, and clumps of soldiers.

“You'll be all right now, you'll see,” said Tally, putting a hand on Karil's arm. “In less than two hours we'll be at the border.”

But before he could answer her, the train plunged into the famously long tunnel.

The sudden darkness sent the boy's thoughts plunging down. The thunder of the carriages, the bare black wall, forced him into a world without hope. His face, reflected in the sepulchral window, was that of a stricken ghost—and still there was no glimmer of light.

Then at last it was over—but as the train emerged the door of the carriage was thrown open and everybody gasped, for it was as though the person who stood there had gathered all the darkness of the tunnel into herself. Dressed entirely in black, scowling furiously as she stared into the compartment, was the Countess Frederica.

Instantly the children sitting next to Karil drew closer, trying to shield him, but Karil made no attempt to hide behind his companions. The woman who had looked after him since he was four years old would know him instantly wherever he was and whatever clothes he wore. And of course she would give him away. She would see to it that he was stopped at the border and brought back to the palace and it would all go on again: the scolding, the etiquette . . . She would never let him go.

The Scold's black eyes were raking the compartment. Barney's shoelaces were undone; Kit's comic had fallen to the floor. Verity's bare feet rested on the seat opposite. Magda had handed out her egg sandwiches, but in the agitation of the night before she had not boiled the eggs hard enough and the children were dabbing at their clothes.

“I thought I had made it perfectly clear,” said the Scold, fixing Karil with her steely gaze, “that sandwiches may only be eaten if a clean napkin is first spread across the knees. Both knees.” She took a large starched handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to Karil. “You may return this when we reach Switzerland. I shudder to think what Carlotta would say if she could see you now. And if you continue to sit hunched up in your seat you will get a crooked back. Posture is everything for those of royal blood, as I have told you many times before.”

And she slammed the door shut again and marched away down the corridor.

For a while after the countess left everyone was silent. Tally had recognized the witchlike woman she had seen at the barred window of the palace and a shiver went down her back. But what she said was, “Who's Carlotta?”

Karil wiped the egg yolk off his trousers and said, “She's a sort of cousin of mine. She has ringlets and wears white dresses and smiles a lot.”

“Do you like her?”

“I've never met her.”

But now, for the first time since the death of his father, he thought about where he might be going if he reached England safely, and it seemed as though it must be his grandfather's house in London.

“She lives with my grandfather.” And then wearily: “I suppose that is where I shall have to live if I get across the border. It's full of my relations.”

“No, you don't have to,” said Tally. “Not unless you want to. You can come to Delderton with us. You'd like it.”

The others nodded.

“There's lots going on. You could have an animal to keep,” said Barney. “I've got an axolotl.” He was about to say that the axolotl's name was Zog and then thought better of it. After all, Karil himself was now a sort of Zog.

“We're going to do a play of
Persephone
next term,” said Verity.

“Matteo gives amazing biology lessons,” said Tod.

“And there's a river with otters,” said Tally. “It's almost as nice as your dragonfly pool. And even the awful lessons are quite funny, like when you have to be a fork or boil up motherwort.”