The Dragonfly Pool (32 page)

The Duke and Duchess of Rottingdene had had four daughters and all of them had made brilliant marriages.

The eldest daughter, Diana, had married a Russian prince; the second one, Phyllis, had married a European archduke; the third daughter, Millicent, had captured the heart of a South American ruler who governed a country the size of France.

And the youngest daughter, Alice, had married a proper king—Johannes of Bergania.

But the map of the world had changed cruelly, and one by one the proud Rottingdene daughters came home as their husbands were deposed or hounded out of their country or fell victim to sinister plots.

In Russia, Prince Dmitri, who had married Diana, had to flee his country after being attacked by peasants with pitchforks when the tsar was overthrown.

In central Europe, Archduke Franz Heinrich, who had married Phyllis, had to leave his land and his castles when his country became a republic. And in South America, Millicent and her husband only just escaped being slaughtered in one of the bloodiest uprisings the country had known.

Only Alice did not return home but lay in the soil of Bergania beside her husband.

The daughters who came home did not come alone. They brought their husbands—proud men with mustaches or monocles, who were used to drinking the best champagne and smoking the rarest cigars and clicking their fingers at their valets when they wanted anything. Some came with ancient relatives, who had never in their lives put on their own stockings and would have starved to death if they had had to boil an egg. Some brought nurses or governesses, who had to be crammed into distant attics and boot cupboards where they coughed and quarreled and cried.

Prince Dmitri's mother, the old Princess Natalia, brought a small, low-slung dog with a topknot and an ancient pedigree. Pom-Pom was descended from a long line of Outer Mongolian pedestal (or snuggle) dogs, which had been bred to warm the feet of the Great Khans in their drafty palaces and now wheezed through the corridors of Rottingdene House, seeking the dark, familiar world of legs and shoes and toes.

Don Alfonso, the South American ruler, brought a monkey which shivered and gibbered from morning to night—and Franz Heinrich brought that treasured jewel, a pearl beyond price, his daughter, Carlotta.

And spying on everybody, controlling everything, was the ancient, bullying, terrifying Duke of Rottingdene. The duke's teeth rode up and down when he chewed, his hearing aid fell regularly into the soup, and one of his legs was largely made of metal, but he missed nothing that was going on.

It was to this house, full to the brim with discontented rulers, underpaid servants, and disturbed animals, that Karil was brought after his flight.

There was a knock at Karil's door and a footman in the Rottingdene livery of purple and gold stood in the doorway.

“Your Highness is requested in the Red Salon immediately.”

“Thank you.”

Karil knew why . . . Neville Chamberlain, the prime minister, was going to make a speech—and there was little doubt about what he was going to tell the nation.

The Red Salon was packed with his relations. Uncle Dmitri sat on one enormous sofa with Aunt Diana and his aged mother, the Princess Natalia, who clutched Pom-Pom on her knee. On another sofa sat Uncle Franz Heinrich and Aunt Phyllis, and on two satinwood chairs sat Uncle Alfonso, Aunt Millicent, and the monkey, looking as always as though it was about to die of misery and cold. The duke sat in an imposing carved chair, closest to the wireless, and scowled. Lesser relatives were dotted about the room.

“Here, Karil,” came Carlotta's voice, “sit next to me.”

Carlotta looked flushed and excited, and had dressed for the expected announcement of war in a white dress with a big lace collar. The man who came to take the photographs that were sent to Karil in Bergania had told her that she resembled an angel when wearing white, and on important days like this she took care to be angelic.

Karil took the place she offered. At the beginning he had tried to keep his distance from his cousin, but he was getting very tired, and his future here in this place was so bleak that Carlotta could hardly make things worse.

The prime minister came on the air. It was, as everyone had known it would be, an announcement of war. When it was over, the royal uncles got to their feet and saluted the wireless set, and Karil followed suit. In his high-backed chair the ancient duke harrumphed and shook his head, and Pom-Pom coughed.

So that was that, thought Karil. Bergania, occupied as it was by Hitler, was now as far away as the moon; there would be no letters and no contact with his native land.

He was still thinking about this when the air-raid alarm sounded—and at once the seemingly moribund relatives jerked into activity.

“Down into the basement,” shouted the duke, “but in an orderly manner.”

Prince Dmitri seized his wife and his mother and made for the door, reaching it at the same time as Archduke Franz Heinrich and Phyllis. Don Alfonso and Aunt Millicent only paused to catch the monkey before they caught up with them. Carlotta had run on ahead, looking pale and giving little cries of terror.

“Come along, Karil,” said Countess Frederica. Although Karil was in a house full of relations, she still saw him as her responsibility.

He was about to follow her when Pom-Pom freed himself from the arms of the old Princess Natalia and dived under the piano. The old lady tried to catch him, stumbled, fell under the piano on top of him and found she could not get up again.

“Go on! I'll be all right here,” she cried.

But the people nearest the door turned back. No one minded about the old princess—she had had her life—but Pom-Pom was different. He was waiting to be united with the only other Outer Mongolian pedestal dog still in existence, a bitch now living in Brazil. When this happened, and puppies were born, they would be worth a fortune, and no one wanted him to be hit by a bomb before this happy event could come to pass.

But after a moment fear won over greed and they hurried down to the basement, where another problem awaited them. The servants who were assembled there had to be removed, since it was out of the question that they be allowed to shelter in the same place as their masters. By the time this had been done the all clear sounded and everybody trooped back upstairs, where they found the old Princess Natalia still lying under the piano with her dog.

Karil's arrival at Rottingdene House had caused some serious problems for the duke and his household. It hadn't taken long to move out the two governesses who occupied a bedroom on the top floor and give it to Karil, and the boy did not look as though he would be expensive to feed.

No, the problem was that of precedence. Nobody had been absolutely certain whether the son of a king, even a king who was dead, should be served first at table, or go ahead of the others into the dining room. Was he more important than Prince Dmitri, who had a crest with sixteen quarterings, or Archduke Franz Heinrich, whose family had ruled over Lower Carinstein since 1304, or Don Alfonso, who was descended from a long line of Spanish conquerers?

While the matter was being looked into, the uncles and Karil took it in turn to go ahead of the others into the dining room.

The first supper after the declaration of war was much like the other meals Karil had endured at Rottingdene House. The duke sat at the head of the table in an ancient dinner jacket which smelled of mothballs, and slurped his soup. Don Alfonso appeared in one of the twenty or so military uniforms he had brought from South America and fed tidbits to the monkey, and Carlotta, who had changed her dress for the third time that day, simpered and smiled.

On the whole the uncles were pleased about the war, because they thought that once it was over they would become rulers once again. Uncle Dmitri would return to his estate in Russia with ten thousand peasants doing his bidding; Uncle Franz Heinrich would be back in his turreted castle in Lower Carinstein, and Don Alfonso would once more have charge of his vast lands on the Pacific coast. Of course it was a pity that so many people might be killed first, but if it ended with them restored to power it was all worthwhile.

They were kind, too, to Karil, assuring him that once Hitler was defeated, the people of Bergania would clamor to have him back as king.

“It will all be over soon, my boy,” they said, “and then you will be back on the throne where you belong.”

And Karil, who had begun by trying to tell them that he did not want to become king, had long since given up trying to explain.

After dinner everybody retired to the Red Salon to take coffee—and then came the ritual that took place every night, and for which Karil, when he first came, had waited with such eagerness.

A footman entered with a silver salver which he placed on a gilt-legged table—and on it were the letters that had come by the afternoon post.

When he first came, Karil had always jumped up and looked at the tray, sure that there would be a letter from Tally and his other friends. He had never doubted that they would write straightaway and tell him what was happening at Delderton. When nothing had come, either by the morning or the afternoon post, he had told himself that they must be busy returning to school and catching up with their work, but as day followed day and the salver disgorged letters for everyone but him, his hopes had faded and died.

He himself had written straightaway, long letters that he had been careful to seal tightly before he laid them in the brass bowl in the hall where all letters were put for the footman to stamp and carry to the letter box. It was a relief to know that Rottingdene House had a system for posting letters, because he had no money and even buying stamps would have been difficult. He had told Tally about Pom-Pom, who had to be accompanied by two footmen, one at each end, when he went out, in case he was kidnapped by anarchists and eaten. He had told her about the monkey, who looked sweet but bit as soon as one came too close, and about the duke's hearing aid, which had fallen into the soup but not actually been swallowed. Gradually he found it harder to think of lighthearted things to write—he had begun to plead a little for an answer to his letters, and then to tear them up and try again because he did not want to seem to be making a fuss or admitting his unhappiness.

But as the weeks passed and there was only silence, Karil realized he had been wrong to trust his friends so utterly—and he remembered his father's words when he asked if he could meet the children who had come to his country.

It never works trying to make friends with people outside our world,
he had said.
You'll only get hurt.

The king had been right. Karil had got hurt, and it served him right for being such a fool. Yet tonight, because the outbreak of war was after all not an ordinary day, he got up and walked over as he had done at the beginning, to look at the envelopes laid out on the salver.

But there was nothing. Nothing from Tally—nothing from Barney or Julia or Tod. Nothing from Matteo, who had been his father's friend.

It was a long time before he slept, that first night of the war, and when he did he found himself floating through a dark sky trying to chase a giant tray—a silver salver from which torn pieces of paper fell and whirled downward. When he managed to catch one it melted like a snowflake and he was left with nothing except a sense of misery and dread.

D
aley sat in his big room overlooking the courtyard and watched the children arrive. The headache he always had at the beginning of term was magnified tenfold—he had already swallowed four aspirins, but the throbbing in his temples was no better and even looking at the cedar tree gave him no comfort.

On his desk were the Blackout Regulations for Schools and Institutions and the First Aid Instructions in the Event of Casualties.