They followed him into a large room. The blinds were drawn and the lights shining from gilded chandeliers lit up the busts of people who had mattered in the guild. Facing the rows of chairs was a wide platform, and the wall behind the platform was hidden by a black curtain.
Everybody filed in and sat down. Barney and Kit were on either side of Karil, then came Tally and Julia. The others were in the row behind.
A number of guild members came on to the platform and everybody clapped. Then the most portly member made a speech. This was in Swiss German, which even Karil found hard to understand, but it was obviously about the importance of the occasion.
Then everybody clapped again and two men came in from a side door. The lights went out, the curtains were drawn aside, and spotlights flashed on to the large painting which was now revealed.
And a great sigh, a kind of general “aah” of enthusiasm, came from the audience.
Because here was the absolute essence of all that was best and most beloved in their country.
On one side of the picture stood a dairy cow, white and plump and peaceful, with a splodge of amber on her flanks. On the other side, in a meadow studded with all the loveliest flowers of the Alps—gentian and rock roses and edelweiss—grazed two eager goats. But in the center stood a girl holding a golden globe and smiling—a great wide smile as though she was blessing everything in the world: the Swiss people, the mountains, the meadows, but most of all the Guild of Cheese Makers, who kept the citizens of their country so gloriously supplied with their favorite food.
Her amber eyes glowed with love, her russet hair tumbled down her shoulders, so that its curling fronds made a frame for the globe which she was holding to her breasts.
And what was it, this perfect globe? Not a small sun, though it might well have been; not a golden ball, like the maidens of ancient Greece played with in their palaces—but a pure, round, absolutely unsullied Gruyère cheese.
The audience went mad. Anyone who thought that the Swiss were reserved and did not show their feelings had made a big mistake. They stamped their feet, they clapped, they whistled. One and all had fallen in love with Clemmy.
“You see what I mean?” said Barney, turning to Karil. “And when you think that even now she’s probably feeding my axolotl.”
“Yes, I do,” said Karil, and it seemed to him that a school where this marvelous creature could be one’s housemother was a place apart.
“Gosh, I feel quite homesick, don’t you?” said Julia, and Tally nodded.
But Kit did not share in the praise and pride. He had overdone the cheese tasting. His face looked green. “I feel sick,” he said. “I have to go to the toilet.”
Barney made room for him. “Do you know where it is?”
“No, I don’t.” Kit was feeling very sorry for himself. “I don’t know what ‘Gents’ is in German. I’ll go into the wrong one.”
“I’ll come with you,” said Karil.
The two boys slipped out and made their way out of the hall across a wide landing, down two flights of stairs, and into the dimly lit basement.
Kit was getting desperate, clutching his stomach.
“It’s around the corner . . . Look, here we are.” Karil opened the door and Kit rushed in.
At this point a furious yell could be heard in the distance.
“Karil, what are you doing? Come back at once. You cannot go into a public toilet!”
The Scold waited, but the prince remained out of sight around the corner. Furious, she made her way back to the hall.
Karil waited for a while, then pushed open the door.
Kit had finished being sick and was leaning over the washbasin, shivering. He had reached it too late and there was a considerable mess.
Karil took off Borro’s blue jersey. “Here, put this on and go back to the others. You can find the way back, can’t you? I’ll clear up a bit.”
“Thanks.” Kit slipped on the sweater and made his way out into the corridor.
Karil, wiping the floor with a mop he had found in a cupboard, was remembering Tally’s words. “It isn’t so terrible being a prince,” she had said—and while he didn’t agree with her, it was true that at this point he wouldn’t have minded ringing for a valet and walking away.
He reached the hall as the speeches were coming to an end.
“Where’s Kit?” he whispered.
“I don’t know. Isn’t he with you?” said Barney. “Maybe he’s gone out for some fresh air.”
There was a last burst of clapping and everyone filed out of the hall.
“He can’t have got lost coming up the stairs,” said Tally. “Not even Kit . . .”
But it seemed he had. He wasn’t downstairs in the cheese-tasting hall or in any of the corridors or out in the street.
Frantically they searched the building again and again, they asked the attendants, they called out Kit’s name . . .
But he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
A Mistake Is Made
The two men had driven north out of Zurich toward a grassy hill where they expected to get a good signal for their radio and make contact with the SS patrols who were to pick up the prince and take him to Colditz.
Everything had gone well. They’d followed the children from the hotel to the Cheese-Makers’ Guild and bided their time till they could isolate the boy. Their chance had come at the end of the unveiling, when they saw him slip from the room and tracked him to the corridor down in the basement. He stood out clearly enough in his blue jersey, even in the gloom, and if there had been any doubts, the shrieks of the Countess Frederica when she saw him would have put them to rest. If anyone could recognize the prince even at a distance, it was that appalling woman who had looked after him since he was a baby.
Waiting till he came out and grabbing the boy in that deserted corridor had been child’s play. As of an hour ago, both men were richer by a considerable sum.
Now they drove the Mercedes into a ruined shed at the bottom of the hill and Earless opened the sack which lay covered under a blanket in the backseat.
“ ’Ere, come and look at this,” he said to Theophilus. “Not very princely, is he?”
Theophilus came over and peered into the sack. “No, not what you would call princely at all,” he agreed.
What they saw was a weeping, moaning blob curled up at the bottom of the sack, calling for his mother, though everyone knew that the queen had been dead for many years.
Yanking the howling boy out by his shoulders, they examined him.
It was extraordinary how far the squirming little boy was from any idea of a royal personage. Or from the two faded photos of the prince that they had been shown.
“Now don’t you get in a fuss, Your Highness,” said Earless. “We’re taking you to a place where you’ll be safe and looked after properly. Colditz it’s called, and only important people go there. Very safe, Colditz is.”
“I’m not a highness,” wailed the terrified boy. “I’m Christopher Hargreaves and my father is Patrick Hargreaves and my mother is Amelia Hargreaves and I live in Dene House in West Witherington.”
Theophilus leaned over him. “It would be best not to waste our time.” He shook his sleeve and took out a thin-bladed knife with a mother-of-pearl handle. “We’ve got work to do.”
“I’m not at all like the prince. He’s much—” He broke off, trying for a moment to be brave and protect Karil, but the knife was moving ever closer to his throat.
Earless turned to Theophilus. “He’s fatter than I remember.”
“Yes, I am,” gulped Kit. “I’m very fat. Princes are never as fat as me.”
“Let’s get him out into the light.”
They lifted him out and dumped him on the grass. Doubts were beginning to creep in.
“Speak to him in German,” suggested Earless. “Tell him you’ll set him free if he promises to serve Herr Hitler, and see what he says.”
Theophilus spoke a few words in German, but this only brought on another storm of weeping.
“I don’t speak anything except English. I’m not clever . . . I’m not clever at all.”
His terrified eyes were fixed on the two men. Tear-washed and swollen as they were, their color, now that they could be seen in the stronger light, was an unmistakable and vivid blue. The prince could have dyed his hair blond, but he could hardly have dyed his eyes.
“You said you’re not at all like the prince,” said Theophilus. “So you know what the prince is like?”
“Yes, I do.” Kit’s moment of heroism had definitely passed. “He’s very nice. He took me to the toilet and lent me his jersey.”
The two men looked at each other. It was clear now what had happened.
And it was clear, too, that this moaning lump had to be disposed of, and quickly, so as to give them a chance to get back and snatch the real prince before he got on the train.
If this boy was allowed to live he could give a description of them to the police.
“Why don’t we just stick a knife in him?” said Earless. “We can dump him here.”
But Theophilus did not care for this. “Messy,” he said. “All that blood, and it just takes one stray dog to set off the alarm.”
But the word “dog” had reminded him of something. For a moment he stared into space. Then his evil face became softer, and his scarred lip curled into a smile. He had remembered some of the happiest hours of his childhood, when he had come out of the library for playtime and helped with the drowning of unwanted dogs.
“Big ones, some of them,” he told Earless. “Saint Bernards or Great Danes or wolfhounds. We’d muzzle them first and tie them in a sack and throw them in the river. It was so funny seeing them struggling, and the sack heaving and bobbing in the water—and then a gurgle or two and down they went.” He shook his head at the fond memories. “Those were good times,” he said wistfully.
“Well, the river’s close by,” said Earless, “and we’ve just passed a bridge. So what are we waiting for?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
A Hero Is Born
The children sat huddled together in the dormitory at the hotel. It had not been necessary for Matteo to show his fury—they already felt as guilty and wretched as they could be for having disobeyed him and gone out by themselves.
Now they waited for news of Kit—no one could do anything; they scarcely had the energy to talk among themselves. It was incredible how much they missed the infuriating little boy and how much they feared for him.
Matteo had shut them into their room and gone to the police station. He had been there twice already and the officer in charge had promised to let him know if there was any news, but he found it impossible to keep away.
There were less than four hours to go before the night train to Calais was due to leave from the Central Station.
“I wasn’t nice to him,” said Tally. “I got so impatient.” And the others told her not to be silly.
“He used to follow you around like a half-hatched duckling,” said Julia. “He wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t been nice.”
But then they realized they were talking of Kit as though he was already dead, and they fell silent once again.
Karil sat apart from the others, on his bed. He did not doubt for a second that he was responsible for what had happened to Kit, that whatever fate had befallen Kit had been meant for him.
At the police station, the clerks sat behind their desks scratching with their pens; clocks ticked.
The phone rang and then rang again, and there was no news. The third time, the chief constable came out of his office and came over to put a hand on Matteo’s shoulder.
“We’ve found him,” he said.
Matteo took a deep breath. “Dead or alive?” he managed to say.
“Alive. They’re bringing him in now. A fisherman found him in the river, tied in a sack. The sack got caught on a shallow bank of gravel. He can’t have been in the water more than a few minutes.”
And to Matteo, the police station, with its slow clerks and the ticking clock, looked suddenly like a room in Paradise.
Kit was carried in wrapped in a red blanket; his soaked clothes had been taken away to be dried. When he saw Matteo he stretched out his arms to him, and as Matteo took him, he began at once to pour out his adventures. Surprisingly this boy who was afraid of almost everything did not seem to be in a state of shock. It was as though he realized that he had become a person of immense importance, and sitting in the constable’s office, with an interpreter taking down his words, Kit told his story clearly and well. What he described most chillingly were the two men who had kidnapped him.
“One had pale eyes and a scar on his lip and you could see his gold tooth glinting. And the other one was huge and he had only one ear. When he bent over you, you could just see a horrible hole.”
“You can take him back now,” said the constable when Kit had finished. “We’ve got a good account of the men; they won’t get away from us. Only there’s one thing I don’t understand: why did they kidnap the boy in the first place? Will you ask him if he has any idea?”
Matteo put the question to Kit—with a warning eyebrow raised—and Kit understood and said, “I think they thought I was somebody else. Someone with rich parents who would pay a ransom, and when they found I wasn’t they decided they had to get rid of me.”
Back in the hotel Kit was surrounded and hugged and praised, all of which he thought was only right and proper.
“I was a bit heroic, I suppose,” he said carelessly—and was put right by Tally.
“Not a bit heroic,” she said, “absolutely heroic. Like someone in a Greek myth.”
Magda, who was always so good when things had been sad and difficult, rubbed Kit’s wrists and ankles and borrowed a hot-water bottle for him from the hotel, and it was agreed that no one would ever be cross with him again. But when Karil said, “It was me they were after, wasn’t it?” Kit, after a glance at Matteo, told the truth.
“They kept calling me Your Highness . . . and they said I would be all right with them because they were going to take me somewhere coldish. Or something like that.”
“Colditz,” said Karil under his breath. He knew about Colditz only too well.
So Matteo had been right about what he had said at the dragonfly pool. The men who had assassinated his father would stop at nothing till he, too, was in their possession.
“I’m sorry,” Karil said to Kit. “I’m really sorry. I wish I could make it up to you.”
In the old days it would have been easy: his father would have conferred some kind of honor on Kit or his family—a medal, a financial reward. All Karil had to offer the little boy now was concern and friendship, but perhaps it was enough.
The Central Station in the late afternoon was exceptionally busy. News of the takeover in Bergania was splashed over all the newspapers, and many people, thinking that war was very close now, wanted to be home.
The Swiss police might have been slow at first, but when they realized the seriousness of what had happened they could not have been more efficient. The children arrived in two police vans and were escorted to two locked compartments, while the superintendent and a constable kept watch with Matteo on the platform.
“We’ve put an alert out all over the city and its surroundings. With the description the boy gave us, they won’t get away,” said the superintendent.
They waited while luggage was loaded into the van, and newspaper and fruit sellers walked up and down the platform.
Then, when the engine was beginning to let off steam and there were only ten minutes to go before departure, a police sergeant came running up to the superintendent.
“We’ve got them, sir,” he said, saluting hurriedly. “Two men exactly like the boy described. They were sighted in a beer cellar. One hung up his hat—and there it was—or rather it wasn’t—his ear, I mean. We’ve sent for reinforcements to pic
k them up when they come out. They haven’t a chance.”
The superintendent’s face lit up. “Good. Good man.” He turned to Matteo: “Your lot will be safe now. I’ll let you know what happens, of course.”
He shook hands and hurried away, wanting to be in at the kill, and Matteo made his way to the compartment and the anxious children who awaited him.
“It’s all right,” he said. “They’ve found them.”
He looked at Kit, who was leaning peacefully against Magda, eating a piece of Swiss chocolate.
The boy was safe. The danger was over.
Matteo closed his eyes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Night Train to Calais
The Countess Frederica was traveling first class. She even had a sleeper—but she was not asleep.
Now that the danger to the prince was over she could think about the future—and the future meant Rottingdene House and that sweet child who always took such care to be pretty, and to please. Once Karil was married to Carlotta, her own work would be done and she could rest.
The children from Delderton were not traveling first class, nor did they have sleepers. They were curled up uncomfortably on the seats, dozing as best they could. Karil, sandwiched between Tod and Tally, was glad of the stuffy compartment, the huddle of people. He felt as though he never wanted to be alone again.
After a while he disentangled himself and made his way out into the corridor. He had expected it to be empty, but Matteo was standing there, his back to the compartment full of sleeping children, keeping watch.
“Can’t you sleep?” he asked, and Karil shook his head.
“Well, it’s not surprising,” he said, letting his arm rest on the boy’s shoulder. “Your father could never sleep on trains either. In fact, he was a lousy sleeper altogether. We used to creep out of the palace at night sometimes—he had the key to the secret door at the back.”
“How did you get to know him? ”