The Dragonfly Pool (42 page)

“Here, you have the window seat,” said the boy who had accompanied Karil into the carriage. “My name's Hamilton. Roderick Hamilton. If I can do anything to help you, I'll be very pleased.”

He looked at Karil with eager admiration mixed with curiosity. The same look was on the faces of the other boys in the compartment, and Karil realized that once again he was back to being a freak, a person set aside by his birth, to be fawned on to his face and sneered at behind his back. One boy handed him a bag of crisps, another offered to put his bag up in the luggage rack. All stared at him as though he was somebody out of a zoo.

“There's someone you'll like,” the boy called Hamilton went on. “The Prince of Transjordania. He's in the next carriage—I can fetch him for you; I'm good friends with him.”

“No, it's all right, thank you. Don't bother him,” said Karil, who needed the Prince of Transjordania like he needed a hole in the head.

“Oh, it wouldn't be a bother—not for you.”

Karil was silent. It was as bad as he had feared—or worse. These boys had been brought up to be snobbish and servile and nothing he could do would break through the barrier.

How was it going to end? How would he ever get away? Escaping from Foxingham would be harder even than getting away from his grandfather's house. Already, as the boys were marched onto the platform by their teachers, he saw that it was a place where ruthless discipline prevailed. And the ridiculous uniform with its ferocious red-and-yellow stripes would make him a sitting target for his pursuers.

He turned his head to look out of the window—and found himself gazing straight into Tally's eyes.

“What is it?” asked Julia. “What's the matter?”

Tally had given a little gasp and was staring transfixed at the railway carriage beside their own.

“It's Karil,” she said.

Julia followed her gaze and, as they looked, Karil's arm went up in greeting. It was the same gesture he had made when he was with Carlotta at Rottingdene House, or driving through the streets at home. The only greeting that he knew. A royal wave.

Tally turned her head away. “That does it,” she said. “He's going to Foxingham to be a prince.”

It wasn't till she finally gave up hope that Tally realized how much she minded. Fortunately Julia had a handkerchief—and the others hadn't seen. When she looked up again, Karil had gone.

“The train opposite,” said Karil, completely bewildered. “Where does it go?”

“Oh, that's another school train,” said Roderick. “It goes to a really weird place called Delderton. We could pull down the blind if you like so that they can't see us.”

Karil shook his head. “It's all right, thank you.”

“Would you like to borrow my comic?” said another boy. “I'd be very pleased.”

Karil stared at him blankly. Then he clutched his stomach.

“Excuse me . . .” he said. “I have to go.”

The others made way for him. “It's at the end of the corridor,” they said, realizing that a prince would not be able to utter the word toilet—and opened the door for Karil.

As soon as he was out of their sight Karil began to run. Then he jumped down onto the platform, and as he did so he tore off his blazer and his cap and threw them on the ground. The train was wreathed in clouds of steam—no one seemed to have noticed him. He ran for dear life, ran and ran—and now he unwound his scarf and pulled his jersey over his head, and still he ran. He had reached the barrier, which was unmanned now that the train was ready to leave, and cut across to Platform 1 where the Delderton train still waited. Not once did he look behind him; he could not afford to lose a second—but he managed to pass his hand through his hair so that it looked disheveled and unkempt. Anyone seeing him run now would see a boy in dark trousers and a white shirt who could belong anywhere.

He was on the right platform now, and the Delderton train still stood there, though the doors were being slammed and the guard had his flag at the ready. He was raising his whistle to his lips just as Karil managed to wrench a door open and leap onto the train—and the guard cursed him. Those unruly Delderton savages were always late.

The train began to move as Karil made his way along the corridor, looking for the right compartment. Then he found it—and banged on the window, and as Barney pulled back the door he almost fell into the carriage.

No one spoke at first. Then Kit said, “You've still got your tie. It won't go down the hole—I tried flushing mine. You'd better give it to Tally; she kept mine for me.”

As Karil took off his tie and handed it to her, the door slid open again and Magda stood there with her clipboard and her list.

She peered shortsightedly at the children.

“Oh, good, you've found the new boy,” she said. “I'm pleased to see you, Stephen. I'll just tick off your name.”

But on the way out she turned her head and winked.

E
ven before he opened his eyes Karil knew that he was happy. He had never before trusted the day, but now he sat up and stretched and looked at his little room with its small desk and the single chair and the view out onto the courtyard and the cedar tree, and though he never forgot the death of his father he knew that he was in the one place he wanted to be, and with exactly the people that he cared for.

The door opened a crack and Tally put her head around it.

“Hurry up—we're going over to breakfast. I'm just going to wake Barney.”

Karil had been fortunate. Stephen Bellingham had not ended up in Wales like Augusta, but he had chicken pox and would be late coming to school, so Karil had been given his room, two doors down from Tally and Julia.

Everything was right for Karil. Armelle was at her most extraordinary this term, asking the children to be bursting seeds about to germinate or the gaping mouths of roots as they thirsted for water, but Karil went along with her cheerfully. He would have been the gaping mouth of a cheese grater if she had asked him to, surrounded as he was by his friends.

He thought dipping sheep's wool into vats of strangely smelling dyes was splendid, and helping in the kitchen, especially when Clemmy was in charge, was the greatest fun—the warmth, the interesting smells and friendly clatter were delightful. Karil had been lonely all his life, but he was never lonely now.

Whatever lessons they did fired his imagination: in chemistry classes he wanted to be an inventor, in art he thought it would be wonderful to be a painter. When the professor asked him what instrument he would like to learn Karil wanted to say, “All of them. The oboe and the clarinet and the fiddle and the double bass—every instrument there ever was.”

In the pet hut he was among old friends: the axolotl, the outsize rabbit . . . and the present that Barney had bought for him and that he had expected never to see.

“We didn't give him a name—we thought you should do it,” Barney said.

Karil did not have to look long at the strange creature, with its blown-out cheeks and moist pop eyes.

“Mortimer,” he said. “No doubt about it—he's a Mortimer. That's my grandfather's name—he has those bulging eyes. But it's odd that something as nice as a tree frog can look like somebody as nasty as my grandfather.”

As soon as he found out how Karil had come to Delderton, Daley had asked Matteo to come and see him.

“I'll have to send the boy back,” he had said. “I can't possibly be part of a deception like that. The duke must be informed and so must the headmaster of Foxingham.”

Matteo did not answer at once. He stood gazing out of the window with his back to his old friend. When he turned he looked as though the last minutes had aged him, and he spoke with more feeling in his voice than Daley could ever remember hearing before.

“I understand your position,” he said. “No one could fail to do so. But I would ask you to wait. To do nothing for a short time. I would ask this as a last favor.”

Matteo was due to leave at the end of the month. His mission would be dangerous; Daley knew this.

“I have a plan,” Matteo went on. “It may come to nothing, but if it worked it would clear you completely of responsibility. Give me three weeks—I won't ask for more than that. I have seen Karil happy for the first time, and I know that the king . . .” Matteo's voice broke, and Daley, knowing the guilt Matteo felt about Karil's father, did not interrupt. “Probably it's no good,” he went on, “and the duke will trace him very soon, but I won't be able to forgive myself if I haven't done my best. It's hard to explain the horror of the setup at Rottingdene House.” His expression changed and he came to stand beside Daley. “I'm bigger than you,” he told the headmaster. “I can tell them that I threatened to knock you down or blackmail you if you didn't do as I asked!”

Daley smiled. “Very well. You're in the wrong, as you know, and you're exposing me and the school to all sorts of risks. But . . . it isn't often you see a child so much in his element as that boy. I'll wait.”