The Dragonfly Pool

  Then the king stood up. He had written a short speech in Berganian, saying all the proper things. Now he tore it up. He looked once across the square, and when he spoke it was in English, but there was not a person listening who failed to catch the joy behind his words.

  For Johannes was giving thanks.

  He said that today had been a special day for him because a friend he had loved as a boy had returned.

  “And he did not come alone,” said the king. “He came with children from all over Europe who have brought support and encouragement to our country. We are accustomed to using big words: Cooperation Between Nations, International Treaties, Political Solidarity . . . But cooperation begins with one thing: with friendship between ordinary people, with the love we bear one another—and with citizens who refuse to hate, or to judge.

  “It has not been easy to stand firm in these hard times, but I am the most fortunate of men because I rule over people who understand this. Who are tolerant and forgiving and good.

  “And because of this, we shall prevail!”

  He stepped forward to the edge of the platform. “And now let us forget wars and threats and invasions, and celebrate. I declare the Bergania Folk Dance Festival open. Let the dancing begin!”

  Cheers rang out over the square, and curious faces turned to look at Matteo. The band began to play again and the king made his way to the steps.

  Only the people sitting close by heard anything—a short crack, nothing more. The king paused on the top step for a moment. Then he stumbled and missed his foothold. His arms came out and slowly, very slowly, almost as though time had stopped, he began to fall.

  It was so strange and unexpected that no one could take in what had happened. No one except Matteo. With a few bounding steps he reached the king almost as his crumpled body came to rest on the ground.

  He loosened the glittering tunic, saw the blood seeping through the fabric—and the king tried to push his hand away.

  “There is . . . nothing to be done, Matteo. It is . . . over.”

  “No!”

  But he had seen the wound now.

  The king tried to speak, and Matteo put his ear to the king’s mouth.

  “Do you . . . remember?”

  “I remember everything,” said Matteo. “Everything.”

  But there was one last desperately important thing that had to be said, and with a tremendous effort the dying man forced out the words.

  “I have a son, Matteo. Will you . . .?”

  His breath was failing; with his eyes he entreated his friend.

  “Yes,” said Matteo. “I will. I swear it.”

  And he stayed on his knees beside the man he had loved beyond all others as a boy, while the storm broke about him and men came from everywhere and there were shouts of “Get a doctor!” and “Call an ambulance!”

  Till a great wail of despair ran through the crowd and from a thousand mouths came the unbelieving cry: “The king is dead.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Finding the Prince

  It was Tod who couldn’t stop being sick. He hung over the basin in the toilet block, retching and shaking. His room at Delderton was hung with posters of fierce revolutionaries attacking palaces; he had thirsted for the blood of kings—but now, seeing the real thing, he was helplessly ill.

  Tally sat on the grass with her hands over her knees and tried to stop shivering. It wasn’t cold; the sun shone as it had done every day since they had come, but she was cold through and through.

  At first she hadn’t taken it in . . . the tall figure of the king breaking, Matteo’s incredible leap to be by his side . . . It had seemed like something out of a film.

  But it had happened. It was real.

  Julia crouched beside her—one of her plaits had come undone; her freckles stood out dark against the pallor of her face.

  The children still wore their dancing clothes, but now, with their exhausted tearstained faces, they looked more like sad clowns than dancers.

  Two girls came over from the French tent.

  “So we are not to dance at all,” said one, “and we have worked so hard.”

  Everywhere on the campsite groups of children huddled together, trying to grasp the fact that all their efforts and preparations had come to nothing. For the festival had been canceled; there would be no dancing—and all foreigners were to leave the country on the following day.

  “We should begin to pack,” said Magda.

  But nobody moved. They were waiting for Matteo.

  “Take them back,” he had said hurriedly to Magda. “I’ll be along as soon as I can. Keep them together whatever you do.”

  After the ambulance came and the king’s body was carried away, there was complete uproar in the square. People cried and screamed; some struggled to their feet. The guests on the platform pushed their way in an untidy scrum to the door.

  Then the loudspeakers took over, telling everyone to leave the square and go home in an orderly manner.

  “Keep calm; the situation is under control,” the voice kept repeating.

  But the people of Bergania did not feel calm. They wanted to know who had done this terrible thing. Even when the procession had returned in confusion to the palace and the mounted police came to clear the square, groups of angry people re-formed on every street corner.

  No one could believe it. In the Blue Ox, Herr Keller was unashamedly weeping. The waitress who had brought flowers to the statue stood with her hands over her eyes. She had been a maid in the palace when the queen was still alive.

  In the middle of the uproar Mr. Stilton came quietly downstairs, paid his bill, loaded his case of samples into his car—and drove away.

  The fee from Stiefelbreich was in his pocket and his expression was cheerful and serene; everything had gone without a hitch. The first bullet fired from the attic window had hit its target; it was no wonder, he thought, that he was now considered to be the best assassin in the world.

  On the campsite, the children waited. Augusta Carrington ate her last banana. A Norwegian girl in a blue skirt twirled alone outside her tent. She had spent hours sewing on the braid.

  Then came a fanfare on the loudspeaker. There was going to be an announcement in the square. Baron Gambetti, the foreign minister, would address the people.

  Gambetti had been in a state of terror since the assassination—all he wanted to do was to run home and hide under his bed.

  “I didn’t want him to be killed,” he quavered. “Not killed.”

  “Well, he has been, you lily-livered coward,” snapped his wife. “And you’re going to be in charge, so get up there and do what Stiefelbreich tells you.”

  So now Gambetti was pushed onto the platform. He was still shaking with fear, but he managed to read the speech which Stiefelbreich had prepared for him, addressing the weeping population with much emotion and stopping every so often to wipe his face with his handkerchief.

  “People of Bergania,” he began, “I come to offer you the deepest sympathy for the vile deed that has been perpetrated here today against the beloved ruler of our country. I promise you faithfully that the person who was responsible for this crime will be brought to justice and that all revolutionaries and anarchists will be hunted down without mercy. Meanwhile, the German people are prepared to offer you protection and to ensure that order will be maintained. There will be further bulletins every hour but for now please go quietly to your homes. A state of emergency has been declared.”

  From the crowd came a shrill voice.

  “Where is the prince? What has happened to the prince?”

  Gambetti threw a frightened glance at Stiefelbreich, who whispered something in his ear.

  “The prince’s whereabouts are being kept secret for his own protection,” said Gambetti.

  But this was a lie. The prince was nowhere to be found.

  “What do you mean, he’s disappeared?” said Stiefelbreich furiously.

  He had moved to a room in the German e
mbassy, which had already filled up with SS officers and Nazis in brown shirts.

  “No one knows where he is,” said Earless. “They’re running through the palace like maniacs, calling and looking.”

  Theophilus sneezed and squirted something up his nose. “The head groom says the prince stabled his horse, but the master-at-arms swears his horse came in alone. There was such uproar after the king was shot that no one knows anything for certain.”

  Stiefelbreich’s jaw tightened. “He must be found at once,” he shouted, thumping the table. “At once, do you hear?”

  Everything had gone according to plan. Gambetti would be allowed to strut about as a figurehead until the king was buried. Then, when suspicion was lulled, he would be got rid of, the German troops already mustered on the border would march in, and the thing was done.

  But the prince must on no account be allowed to go free—there could be nothing more dangerous. Berganian patriots could use him as a rallying point, or there could be an attempt, now or later, to restore the monarchy.

  “Somebody has blundered and will be punished,” said Stiefelbreich. “I made it perfectly clear that the prince was to be seized immediately after the assassination. Our plans for him have been in position from the start: he is to be taken to Colditz and kept there as a prisoner of the German Reich.”

  Earless and Theophilus looked at each other. The bodyguards had heard of Colditz—everyone in their business had heard of the grim fortress in east Germany from which no one could escape. It had been a mental hospital for years; the cries of the patients incarcerated there were apparently still heard at night by superstitious peasants who lived nearby. Since the Nazis had come to power, Colditz had been used to shut up all the people who had displeased Herr Hitler: social democrats, gypsies, Jews. No place in Europe was more feared.

  “The prince will be well treated,” said Stiefelbreich. “There is a special part of the castle kept for political prisoners. Later, if he cooperates with our plans for Bergania, he may be released, but if not . . . Well, children do sometimes have to be sacrificed to a Greater Cause. But he must be found, and quickly.”

  “The trouble is,” said Theophilus, “we’ve only seen him from a distance, riding in the procession, and there are hardly any photographs, so if he’s hiding on purpose it might be tricky. He seems to be a very ordinary-looking boy—brown hair and brown eyes, they say, but that doesn’t tell you much. Now, if he belonged to the Royal House of Hapsburg it would be easy. The Hapsburgs are so inbred that their upper lips reach right up to their nostrils—you can recognize a Hapsburg anywhere, especially if you see them trying to eat. And if we were looking for a Bourbon, like in the Royal House of France, we’d be searching for someone without a chin. But as it is . . .”

  “I suppose he doesn’t have a birthmark?” said Earless hopefully. “They’re a big help, birthmarks are.”

  But Stiefelbreich had lost patience. “You can question the palace servants—no doubt you’ll find ways of making them talk. But if the boy isn’t found and brought here in the next twenty-four hours, God help you both.”

  Matteo returned to the camp in the late afternoon, looking as though the devil was at his heels.

  “He’s vanished,” he told the children. “There’s no sign of him. If he falls into the hands of those traitors . . .” He broke off. And under his breath. “Oh God, where is the boy?”

  Julia brought him a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese and he took it, but it was obvious that he had no idea what he was eating.

  Then Tally put a hand on his arm.

  “I think I know where he might be,” she said.

  Matteo went so fast, scrambling up the side of the waterfall, that Tally could hardly keep up with him.

  He knew the place so well; his happiest times had been at the pool with the king. The woods surrounding it, the creatures in its depths, had helped to make him a naturalist.

  They reached the top and the pool lay before them. There was nobody there. The water was as still as glass; the water lilies might have been carved in stone.

  Then, behind a large boulder on the other side of the pool, something stirred.

  Karil had not been crying. The boy was a long way beyond tears, in a state of shock so extreme that he could barely connect with the world, but after a moment he recognized Tally, and Matteo was glad that he had brought her in spite of his misgivings.

  “We came to help,” she said, taking his hand.

  Matteo waited, letting Tally talk quietly to the boy. Then came the moment when he focused on Matteo and said, “I saw you in the square. You were my father’s friend, and . . .” But he could not go on.

  Matteo knelt down beside him. It was time to tell his story.

  “Yes, your father was my friend, the truest friend I ever had. We shared a tutor, we rode together, we went climbing together. I looked up to him, but really we were like brothers. We used to come here and talk about all the things we were going to do. He knew he’d be king one day, and he was going to be a different kind of ruler—give his people more freedom and more say in how the country was governed. Bergania was going to be a model for the world.

  “When the time came to go to university we went to Basel in Switzerland. It was a heady time for Johannes—for your father—it was like the door of a cage opening. He was so happy to be free of the bowing and scraping. We met all sorts of people—idealists and dreamers and poets who wanted to make everybody free. And Johannes was going to do that, with me to help him. I suppose most people guessed who we were—but it didn’t matter; we were students first and foremost.

  “And then, while we were in our last year, the old king—your grandfather—died and Johannes had to go back to Bergania to be crowned.

  “From the moment the courtiers came to fetch him, calling him ‘Your Majesty’ with every second breath, everything changed. To me it seemed that he became cut off from his people, giving in to ceremony and pomp. But I had promised to help him and I stayed.

  “Then a young hothead we’d known as boys got into trouble. He’d been giving out leaflets about the Brotherhood of Man, saying there shouldn’t be kings.”

  “Like Tod,” said Tally.

  Matteo nodded. “They put him in prison, and I went to see the king to ask for his release—he was only a boy—and the king refused to see me. He was in consultation with his ministers.

  “You have to know what friends we were to understand what happened next. I have a temper; when I found that Johannes wouldn’t see me I went home, packed a bag—and went.” He paused. “That was fifteen years ago, but I’ve never been back. And then when I returned to Europe I learned what he had done, how brave he had been, standing up to Hitler, and I was ashamed of having deserted him. I realized, too, that he must be in danger and I longed to see him again. So I came back.”

  “But too late,” said the boy.

  “Yes, Karil. Too late.”

  The boy could not blame him more than he blamed himself, thought Matteo. He should have made himself known to the king as soon as he arrived, but he had wanted to find out who the conspirators were and how serious the danger to Johannes. So he had hidden from those who might recognize him—the minister of culture, the waitress at the Blue Ox—and pursued his inquiries in secret. By the time he spoke to the king he knew where the danger lay—but not that it would come so soon.

  Karil had been listening intently, but it was a tremendous effort: his eyes clung to Matteo’s face almost as though he was lipreading.

  “I saw how my father held you . . . how he wanted to be with you. I will remember.” He looked around at the trees and the pool as though wondering where he was. “Now I must go back.”

  “No!”

  Matteo spoke more loudly than he meant to and Karil shrank back. “I must,” he repeated. “I must see my father buried.”

  “No,” said Matteo again, making an effort to speak calmly. “No, you must come away with us. You must carry on somewhere else. It is what
your father would have wished.”

  “I don’t want to go on being a prince,” said the boy in a thread of a voice.

  “You don’t have to be a prince—only the person that you are and the man you will become.”

  But the boy shook his head.

  Matteo changed his tack. He took him by the shoulder. “Listen, Karil, the men who killed your father are not isolated criminals. They are part of a conspiracy that will take over Bergania and perhaps the whole of Europe. Once they have you in their power they will do one of two things. They will use you. Or . . .” He paused deliberately, judging how much the boy could take. “Or they will kill you.”

  There was silence after that. Tally looked aghast at Matteo, then at the boy still deep in shock. But Karil had understood.

  “I have to trust you,” he said. “I see that. But . . .” He made a hopeless gesture.

  Matteo turned to Tally. “I’ll take him over the mountains. You’ll have to make your way back with Magda. We can stay overnight with the king’s old nurse.”

  But as soon as he had said it he realized it would not do. Old Maria’s hut would be searched straightaway by anyone looking for the boy.

  “No,” said Tally, “you’ll be caught.” And then: “There are better ways of getting Karil out of the country.”

  Matteo was about to cut her short. Yet it was uncanny, the feeling she had had about Bergania from the start. Perhaps she deserved to be listened to.

  “Karil said he had to trust you,” Tally went on. “Well, you have to trust us. All of us. Barney and Julia and Borro . . . even Verity.”

  Matteo waited.

  “It’s quite simple,” she said. “Karil must become a Deldertonian.”

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The Last Dance

  As soon as she returned to the campsite Tally was surrounded.

  “Where have you been?” everyone wanted to know. And then, lowering their voices: “Did you find him?”