The Dragonfly Pool

  In the darkness, Matteo smiled.

  “It was at Johannes’s seventh birthday party. They’d asked a whole lot of suitable children, all scrubbed up and wearing their most uncomfortable clothes. Chosen to be the right kind of friends for him, you know. They made me come—my parents had an estate on the other side of the mountain and I lived a very rough life, more like a peasant boy. I didn’t want to come and I threw a tantrum when they made me dress up in a tight collar. And your father was in a bad temper, too. They tried to organize us into playing party games, but by then we’d caught each other’s eye and—well, we just knew we were going to be friends. And we crept out and found a chicken in the kitchen quarters and climbed on to the roof and made it flutter down the chimney. There wasn’t a fire, of course, and it was a good strong hen and it landed all right, though I wouldn’t do that now. The ladies of the bedchamber, those aunts of yours, were all in their sitting room doing their embroidery, and there was this soot-black squawking chicken rushing around the room! Meanwhile, the people who were organizing the party were frantic, looking for Johannes. After that they said I wasn’t a suitable friend for their future king, but Johannes dug his heels in. It ended with us sharing a tutor and more or less being brought up together.”

  “Did you do other things like that . . . like the chicken?”

  “Oh yes, plenty. We smuggled a piglet into a council meeting once, and there were all the usual things that children do—toads in the beds, and booby traps, and pretending to be vampires at night. But mostly we just escaped whenever we could. Your father was absolutely fearless—once we climbed to the top of the gabled roof on the palace and Johannes said we wouldn’t come down unless they stopped asking him to eat semolina forever and ever.”

  “I think it must have worked,” said Karil, “because I never got semolina to eat, not once.”

  He looked gratefully up at Matteo. Hearing about his father as a boy was the best comfort he could imagine. And as if Matteo could read his thoughts, he said, “He really enjoyed life, your father. That was why I was so angry when he became imprisoned in all that kingship. But I was wrong to be angry—he grew up to be a brave and honorable man.”

  But after Karil had gone back to the compartment, Matteo stood silent and perturbed outside. He had promised his friend to look after Karil and he would do so while there was breath in his body—but this war which was growing ever closer would impose duties on every able-bodied man.

  “But somehow I will do it,” he vowed. “Whatever it costs.”

  When Karil slipped back into his seat he saw that Tally was awake.

  “I was thinking about the play we’re going to do next term,” she whispered. “Persephone. I sort of feel I know quite a lot about the Underworld now and the sort of people who go to Hades. Like Gambetti—he belongs there all right. We could make it really good with the right kind of music. You absolutely have to help us do it.”

  “I’ve never done anything like that.”

  “You don’t know what you can do yet; you’ve never had a chance with all those processions and people bowing and scraping. We’re going to try to persuade Julia to act in it. There’s so much we’re going to do at Delderton and you need to be there.”

  Karil was silent. There was nothing he wanted more than to join his friends in this strange school of theirs. Because they were his friends. A few days ago they had been specks seen through a telescope and now they mattered more than anyone. But would he be allowed to go? His future was a blank; he had no right to make plans. And yet . . . Julia had told him about Tally’s determination to come to Bergania.

  “She just bullied us all,” Julia had said, “making us invent the Flurry Dance—she seemed to know we had to come.”

  So now, when Tally told him that he had to be with them at Delderton, Karil began to wonder if she might be right, and he felt hope begin to stir in him.

  “I was so angry with my father when he told me I had to go away to school,” Tally went on. “I really loved being at home, with my aunts and my friends. And London. We had a silver barrage balloon up over our house; it was like having a giant sausage to look after us.”

  For a moment both children were silent, thinking about this war which everyone expected and which they had forgotten in the excitement of escaping from Bergania.

  “I tried to fight him,” Tally went on, “but he won and I’m glad he did, though I miss him horribly. You’d really like him, Karil. He’s the best doctor for miles; everyone wants to come to him, and of course he doesn’t charge his patients nearly enough, so we’ve always been poor but it doesn’t matter. You can’t imagine how proud I am of him.”

  “I’m not surprised. Being a doctor must be wonderful.”

  “Yes.” She turned to him. “You could be a doctor if you wanted to.”

  “I suppose I could.” And then: “Yes, I could. I could be anything.”

  “You could be a great scientist.”

  “Or an artist,” said Karil, “or an engineer.”

  “You could learn anything at Delderton and get ready. I can’t describe it, Karil, but it’s such an interesting place—you have to come.”

  As the train ran on through the night Karil’s dreams, above the sorrow of his father’s death, took flight. He could be a great explorer, discovering the source of an African river; he could invent a cure for cancer, or write a monumental symphony. He could own a rare and exotic animal—an aardvark or a cassowary.

  Afterward, looking back on his escape, he thought that this hour in the train, when everything was possible, was the one he would most like to have again.

  The luggage van of the train carried the usual consignment of suitcases, trunks, wooden boxes, and other things too bulky to go into the compartments. There was also a crate with a goat in it. The animal’s yellow eyes peered through the bars and occasionally it let off a desperate bleat.

  The two ladies who had smuggled themselves into the van were very strangely dressed. One was a woman of most unusual size, wearing a knitted bonnet pulled over her face, and a spotted pinafore. She had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her bruised and hairy toes.

  “I’m not spending the night in here,” she said in a surprisingly deep voice. “That animal gives me the creeps.”

  “I could pick the lock,” said her companion, who had a feather boa thrown over her shoulder and wore a straw hat trimmed with cherries, “but we’d only run into that blasted bandit standing guard in the corridor. He never lets those kids out of his sight.” She looked up at the ventilation grating. “When we’re over the border into France, we’ll get a radio signal and alert the Gestapo. There’ll be a crowd of people making for the boat and we’ll be able to grab the prince. It’ll be our last chance—once he’s aboard we have to let him go.”

  “He won’t get aboard,” said the outsize lady, with a snarl.

  The woman with the feather boa groped in her handbag and took out a syringe with which she squirted disinfectant onto her tonsils. “They must be crazy, thinking we’d be trapped in a beer cellar,” she said. “As though we’d drink anywhere with only one exit. Still, that’s the police for you.”

  All the same, it had been a rush: driving through the town, finding a secondhand clothes shop, outfitting themselves, and dumping the car.

  “I’m hungry,” said the giant in the woolen bonnet.

  “Try milking the goat,” said her companion.

  And the train thundered on through the night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Reaching the Boat

  It was extraordinary, stumbling out of the stuffy carriage, feeling the wind suddenly on their faces and seeing, in front of them, the harbor and the clean white world of the boats and the seagulls and the lighthouse.

  The train had come to rest on the sidings beside the boat they were to catch to England. They only had to cross the tracks and make their way toward the gangway and in two hours they would be home in Britain, and safe. On the way out they had take
n it for granted, traveling in a British boat, knowing they were protected, but now the ferry with her brightly painted funnels and cheerful flag seemed to be a vessel that had sailed in from Camelot to carry them over the sea.

  The harbor was full of bustle and noise. Fishing boats chugged in and out between the ferries; crates of fish and lobsters were piled up on the quayside waiting for transportation; there were coils of rope and barrels of tar and nets—and everywhere, wheeling and shrieking and diving, the fearless, hungry gulls.

  The children shivered in the sudden wind and turned their faces toward the SS Dunedin. They were among the last to leave the train. The first-class passengers had already embarked, with the Countess Frederica in the lead, shouting instructions to her porter as she strode up the gangway.

  The other passengers followed, the throng gradually thinning; then came the Deldertonians in Magda’s charge.

  “Go straight to the boat,” Matteo had ordered. “No dawdling. I’ll catch you up.”

  They did not exactly dawdle, but Borro and Barney needed to examine the recently caught fish; Verity wanted to try out her French on a good-looking fisherman, and Tally was telling Karil about the white cliffs of Dover.

  “They’re not really as white as all that, but all the same when you see them you get a lump in your throat.”

  Matteo watched them go and paced the train once more. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he picked up his bundle and jumped down onto the platform. He could see the children ahead of him. They had reached the boat at last.

  He was just crossing the track when he heard the sound of pounding footsteps and turned to see two extraordinary-looking people running toward him. One was huge and massively built, and the remains of a spotted apron clung to his baggy trousers. The other was smaller, wearing the remnants of a feather boa, and there was a scar on his upper lip.

  They were almost level with him, running hell for leather for the boat in a last effort to snatch the prince.

  Matteo kicked aside a fire bucket, threw down his pack . . . and charged.

  The children, with Magda, had begun to make their way up the gangway. Standing near the top was the first mate in a smart blue uniform with brass buttons and a peaked cap. And on either side of him were two men in black leather coats and jackboots. Their hats were pulled down low, and what could be seen of their faces made the blood run cold.

  “Stop!” said one of them, speaking in a strong German accent. “This is the group I have told you about. There is an extra child here—you will see. There is permission only for four boys—and if you count you will see there are five. And one of them—this one—” he pointed directly at Karil—“is the boy we are seeking. He is a runaway—a petty criminal—and he must come with us.”

  The children felt as though they were turned to stone. All the color had drained from Karil’s face. He had seen enough in the last weeks to know that the men were from the Gestapo.

  “It isn’t true,” said Magda, putting her arm around Karil. “All these children are traveling with me—they’re from Delderton School in Devon. We’ve been on a folk dance festival and we’re trying to get home.”

  “Can I see your passports?” said the first mate.

  “They’re with the gentleman who is in charge of—” Magda turned around to look for Matteo, but he had disappeared.

  “You see, it is a lie. This boy is a dangerous troublemaker—we have a car here ready to take him back to his home. He has run away and must be returned. I have a permit from the German police. Here it is.”

  The first mate examined it and handed it back.

  “He is rather young to be a criminal,” he said, looking at Karil’s white face, his stricken eyes.

  “He must not travel,” said the other man in jackboots. “You must hand him over now. At once.”

  The first mate had been traveling the route between Britain and France for the past three years and there were things that increasingly upset him. He had seen refugees staggering onto the boat in tears—Jewish children, people with pathetic bundles from the countries Hitler had overrun—and he was getting angry. On the crossing before this one, an old man had sat in silence on the deck, tears running down his face.

  “I was growing apricots,” he had said. “Such apricots. If you could have seen my garden! And then they came and said I had to leave, I was a dirty old Jew.”

  “I’ve no time for this now,” he said to the jackbooted men. “If the boy’s papers aren’t in order it can be sorted out at the other end.” And to Karil: “Get on board, boy!”

  Tally began to breathe again. Barney took hold of Karil’s hand. “Come on,” he said.

  It was all right. They were safe. The leather-clad men were scowling, one tried to grab Karil’s arm—and the first mate pointed at the upper deck, where a couple of sailors were sluicing the timbers. The sailors, too, had seen things they did not care for on their recent trips and now they put down their buckets and came forward to the railings.

  The men from the Gestapo shrugged. They had been told to avoid trouble with the British navy and now they made their way back to their car, parked on the quay.

  The children were almost on board. The first mate stood aside. And then an extraordinary thing happened. Karil let go of Barney’s hand, turned—and ran back down the gangway, onto the docks.

  Back into certain danger . . .

  “Come back, Karil!” yelled Tod.

  But Karil ran on. And then they saw why. On the quayside, close to the edge of the water, Matteo was caught up in a horribly unequal fight. He was grappling with one man, trying to stop him from pulling out a knife, while a second man, a giant dressed like a pantomime dame, circled around the struggling pair, landing indiscriminate blows.

  And Karil, seeing this, had shaken off the fear and exhaustion of the last days and was running like the wind to help his father’s friend.

  For Earless, turning his head at Tod’s shout, the sight of the prince running toward him was a miracle. He abandoned Matteo and took a step toward the boy. His big, stupid face was lit up with triumph. He had only to carry the boy to the car where the Gestapo men still waited and the thing was done.

  “Come on then, Your Highness,” he jeered. “Let’s be having you!”

  Karil, blind with rage, threw himself at the huge man’s chest. He might as well have thrown himself at an oak tree. Kicking, struggling, punching, he found himself picked up, thrown over the giant’s shoulder and held there in a grip of steel.

  Still grinning crazily, Earless skirted the edge of the quayside and set off toward the car.

  But the other children had understood what was happening. They rushed down the gangway and, as heedless as Karil, began to attack the giant. It was ludicrous, pitting their strength against him, but there were a lot of children and there was only one of him. From carrying a single struggling boy to the waiting car, Earless found himself hung with children like a Christmas tree.

  Barney was clutching one leg and Tod the other, and though he kicked them away they came back. Julia and Tally were behind him, dangerously close to the water’s edge, tugging at his arms.

  They were nothing—puny little flies—but Earless had to shift the weight of the boy on his shoulders. Doggedly the giant waded forward, shaking off children as he walked. Augusta had found a bucket, which she hurled at his ankles. He kicked it away, but the ground was slimy with fish scales and seaweed and for a moment he stumbled, only to right himself again.

  Kit had joined in the fray even though he had recognized the men at once as his kidnappers. Now he, too, came at Earless, and he and Verity took hold of Karil’s legs and tried to pull him free so that Earless had to adjust his grip again, bringing Karil up against the side of his face.

  And at this point Karil threw off the last shreds of his upbringing. He swiveled around and in a single ferocious act he sank his teeth deep into the big man’s ear.

  The effect was instantaneous.

  “Not my other ear! N
o, no . . . not my other ear!” Earless roared, and brought one hand up to his bloodied lobe, while Belinda’s tearful, disappointed face swam before him.

  He was still holding on to Karil with his other arm—but there was one Deldertonian who had not joined in the fight. Borro had been sorting quietly through the freshly caught seafood waiting in the crates. When he had found what he wanted, he unwound the muffler from his throat and inserted a large and exceedingly spiky crab into its folds. Then he swung the muffler once, twice, three times above his head—and let fly.

  His aim was true. The crab landed full in Earless’s face. The sharp edge of the shell temporarily blinded him, gouging his eye; the salty liquid and smelly grunge inside the creature ran down his face.

  And this was too much. Earless brought up his other arm to clear the debris from his eyes; the children pulled Karil’s legs and he tumbled to the ground.

  “He’s free!” shouted Tally. “Come on—all together.”

  One and all they ran forward and pushed. Even so they would not have succeeded, but as Earless stepped backward he slipped on a patch of regurgitated fish left by the gulls. And with a monumental splash, he was gone!

  As they looked into the water, Matteo came up behind them. There was blood on his arm, which he had bound up with a handkerchief, but he seemed very pleased with himself.

  “What happened to the other one?” asked Augusta. “Did you kill him?”

  “I don’t think so,” said Matteo, “but one can never be certain.”

  In the water they saw a second head and caught a momentary glint of gold before it disappeared again under the waves.

  Just then they heard the screech of tires as the black Mercedes driven by the Gestapo’s men did a U-turn and disappeared.

  As they made their way back up the gangway and onto the boat, they found the Countess Frederica blocking their path.

  “This way, Karil,” she said. “I have secured seats for us in the first-class lounge.”