“Something must really be troubling him,” said Tally. “Perhaps the War Office is sending him to certain death and he’s so upset he can’t remember how to teach properly.”
She was right, up to a point. Something was troubling Matteo, but it was not his interview with the War Office, which had been courteous and brief. They were recruiting a body of men who spoke several European languages for a mission behind enemy lines, the details of which were still being worked out. This first interview was simply to discover whether Matteo would be willing to risk his life in such an enterprise, and when he had said that he would, the conversation had turned to the position in Bergania and ended with an excellent dinner in the Travelers Club.
If Matteo had then returned to Delderton, the children in his class would not have been writing an essay on amphioxus or avoiding him when they met him in the courtyard, but he had not. After a night with a friend he had made his way to Rottingdene House, given his name to the sentry in the box guarding the front door, and rung the bell.
While he waited he looked up at the gloomy gray building with its shrouded windows where Karil now lived. The flag with the duke’s crest hung limply from the top of the flagpole, so the owner was at home.
The door was opened by a footman in an ornate but shabby livery of purple and tarnished gold.
Matteo presented his card. “I would like to see Prince Karil, please.”
The footman’s eyes flickered. “The prince is not at home,” he said.
“Very well. Then I would like to see the Duke of Rottingdene.”
“The duke never sees anyone without an appointment.”
Matteo took a step forward. He did not raise his arm, he scarcely moved a muscle, but the footman retreated.
“I will go and see.”
He returned and said, “His Grace will see you for five minutes only. He has an engagement.”
Matteo followed the footman up a broad staircase with a carpet patterned in fleurs-de-lis. Everything was both shabby and oppressive, and there was a smell of some ointment that Matteo, who did not suffer from rheumatism, could not identify.
The duke’s study was even darker and gloomier than the rest of the house. All the wall space that was not taken up by antlers was covered in bad paintings of horses: pedigree hunters with flaring nostrils and rolling eyes. The duke had bred these on his estate in Northumberland in his younger days. Under the painting of a particularly fearsome hunter he read the name ORION. It was this horse which the duke had had shipped out to Bergania to his daughter Alice as a birthday present. The horse had kicked his stable to pieces and thrown his groom, but Alice had been too afraid of her father not to ride it. If it wasn’t for Orion, Karil’s mother would still be alive.
The duke, sitting behind a claw-foot desk, did not trouble to rise or offer his hand.
“Since you insist on seeing me, I want to make one thing clear. You may have brought Karil to England but this does not give you any right now to interfere in his life. Karil will live here under my roof until he is ready to return to Bergania as the country’s rightful king.”
Matteo tried to steady himself.
“I am perfectly aware that as his grandfather you have the right to determine Karil’s upbringing. The law is on your side, I don’t dispute that. But his father’s dying words to me were about Karil. He asked me to look after him. If I can’t do that, I would at least like to show the boy that I am still here as his friend.”
The duke tried to rise from his chair, collapsed and tried again. His gnarled red hands grasped the sides of the desk.
“His friend!” he spat. “Do you seriously imagine that I would allow my grandson to be friends with an outlaw, a vagabond, a man who travels with a group of mad children without discipline or restraint? You think I know nothing about your journey here but the Countess Frederica has given me details of behavior that makes the blood run cold.”
“Did she perhaps also tell you that we were escaping from men who would have killed your grandson without compunction?”
“I do not deny all that—it is because of this that I admitted you to my house instead of having you thrown out. But you will not come here again. Not ever. An Englishman’s home is his castle, as you are aware, and if I see you here again I will have you evicted and call the police. Moreover, I know something about your past. You were responsible for the king’s early escapades, a bad influence from the start. It was because of you that Johannes wanted to be one of those namby-pamby rulers who pretend that a king can consult his people. A king is a king, an absolute ruler, and one of my tasks before I die is to see that Karil does not forget this.”
For a moment Matteo saw red. He was within an ace of springing forward and fastening his hands around the raddled throat of the old bully. But he managed to get control of himself. There was one thing he still had to do, and it meant being polite when he wanted to kill.
“I shall abide by your decision,” he said, “but I would like to see Karil once to say good-bye. I’m going off to war soon and I may not return.”
“Karil is not at home,” lied the duke.
“I am not in a hurry. I will wait till he returns.”
“No, you won’t,” screeched the duke. He was suddenly crimson, a pulse going in his throat. “You will leave my house this instant.” He pressed a bell on his desk and the footman who had admitted Matteo appeared. “Get Henry and show this man out. Make sure the door is bolted behind him. Hurry.”
During that moment while Matteo waited for the second footman, he felt that anything would be worthwhile—prison, a hangman’s noose—if he could kill the panting, slobbering tyrant glaring at him from behind his desk. He had to call up the image of Karil exposed to scandal and horror to prevent himself from leaping on his enemy.
The footmen came just in time—feeble lackeys daunted by their instructions. Matteo knocked away the arm of the first one, pushed the second one hard against the wall—and left the building.
The hour Matteo spent in the station waiting for the train back to Delderton was one of the darkest of his life. He saw Johannes’s face turned to his, begging him to look after his son. Well, this was how he had looked after Karil. Left him with a power-mad imbecile who would train him to be the kind of tyrant Europe would disgorge in an instant after the war. Karil abandoned in that wretched dark house—and Matteo was powerless. He had betrayed Johannes by leaving Bergania. Now he had betrayed his son.
His rage against himself and the duke only grew on the journey back to school. He gave his lesson on the life history of amphioxus in a black cloud of fury that embraced everything and everyone on earth—and afterward could not recall what he had said.
It was two days before any of the children dared to approach him. Then suddenly he was himself again—and at dawn on the third day he got everybody out of bed to go and look at a badger sett by the river where three cubs were hunting for wasps’ nests.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Duke Is Enraged
By the beginning of November shortages and restrictions caused by the war were beginning to bite, and among the things that were in short supply was petrol for private motoring.
The duke needed the Daimler to drive to the Whitehall Bank, of which he was a director, so that the afternoon outings Karil took with Carlotta and the Scold became even shorter and less interesting. As often as not now they spent the time taking tea with whatever family lived close by and was considered worthy of knowing the duke of Rottingdene and his dependents.
Sometimes they even went on foot, with one of the servants walking behind them, to whatever entertainment was suitable, and free.
And one of these places was the National Portrait Gallery. The sides of the building were sandbagged and only three of the galleries were open, but it was a perfectly respectable place, with no danger of seeing pictures of people with nothing on, and would provide, the Scold thought, suitable history lessons for Karil and Carlotta since the paintings were mainly of
people who were both important and dead.
For Karil the hour they spent there was interesting. He had expected to see mostly kings and statesmen and governors of the far-flung empire, but he found faces that intrigued him. There were scientists and explorers and other people who had done real things: Florence Nightingale, who had nursed the dying soldiers in the Crimean War, and David Livingstone, who had beaten his way through the African jungle looking for the source of the Nile, and Shelley, who had written great poems about freedom before meeting his death at sea.
Karil had thought that Carlotta would be bored, but she came out with a rapt expression and at first she did not answer when they spoke to her, for the truth was that she had had an inspiration.
They had passed a number of paintings of little girls—the daughters of noblemen and wealthy citizens from all over the land. The girls in the pictures wore sumptuous clothes and sat on thronelike chairs—and their portraits were set in heavy golden frames—yet none of them was more important or had a brighter future than she had herself.
To Carlotta, as she came down the steps of the gallery, it was absolutely clear. She, too, had to have her portrait painted, and soon. It would be a surprise for Karil—a Christmas present perhaps—and when she returned with Karil to Bergania the picture would hang in the palace.
First, though, she had to persuade her parents.
“I’m afraid that would cost too much, my little kitten,” said her father as she sat on his knee and played with his mustache.
“Oh please, Papa,” she wheedled. “It would be such a nice present for Karil. Think how pleased he would be.”
“I know, my angel, but really it isn’t necessary, since Karil is here now and can look at you every day.”
“But I want it to happen. I want it. Royal people always have their portraits painted.”
“You’ve no idea how much a good painter would charge, and a bad one wouldn’t do justice to my sweetheart,” said the archduke, tweaking her ringlets.
But Carlotta didn’t want to have her ringlets tweaked, she wanted to have them painted.
“I’m being very unselfish,” she pointed out, “because you have to sit very still to be painted, and you can get quite uncomfortable; and if I can promise to sit still, then at least you and Mama should find the money. Or Aunt Millicent—she’s got a diamond-studded garter left. I know because her maid told me so.”
Her father stood firm for several days, and then Carlotta began to refuse her food. She did not refuse it completely but often she had only one bun for tea, or a single helping of custard with her pudding, sighing ostentatiously and saying she did not feel well.
“Why can’t we sell Pom-Pom if he’s got such an important pedigree?” she said. “He’ll never get to Brazil now that there’s a war, and anyway he’s far too old to be a father.”
The old princess began to lift Pom-Pom out of Carlotta’s way when she came near him, and the other relatives hid the few valuables they still had as best they could. But when Carlotta had three biscuits instead of four for her mid-morning snack her mother became alarmed. She shut herself up into her bedroom and turned out her drawers and her underclothes and her makeup boxes. There was hardly any jewelry left, but she did find one shoe buckle studded with sapphires. She had been saving it for emergencies, but Carlotta going off her food was a kind of emergency. There was no need to sell it yet—the portrait might not turn out satisfactory or the artist might be persuaded that painting Carlotta von Carinstein was enough of an honor to undertake the work without payment, but at least they could get the portrait underway.
As soon as she had what she wanted, Carlotta got down to the problem of what to wear. Since the picture was to be a surprise for Karil she could not consult him, but she appeared every few hours in a different dress: pink with a broderie-anglaise collar, yellow with appliquéd buttercups, green with a row of velvet bows—and pirouetted in front of mirrors or asked advice from her relatives, which she instantly ignored. Sometimes she thought she would look best holding something—a kitten perhaps, or a bunch of flowers, but there were no flowers to be had in that dark house, and the kitten she brought up from the servants’ quarters scratched and refused to sit still, so she prowled through the rooms of the aunts and the governesses, seeing what she could beg or borrow or simply steal. Bracelets tinkled on her wrists, glittering headbands appeared on her hair, necklaces circled her plump neck—only to be rejected as not good enough.
“I think it would be best if I sat in that big chair in the Red Salon,” she said. “If it was draped in brocade it would look almost like a throne.”
The next thing was to choose a painter and Uncle Alfonso, who was artistic because of designing all his uniforms, went to his club and asked around, and came back with the name of an artist who was highly thought of and not too expensive.
The painter was approached and said he would do it—and Carlotta, for a few days, was thoroughly happy and as nearly good as she was able.
Karil, on the other hand, was in disgrace. The misery of being shut indoors all day was more than he could bear and one morning, when the servants were busy, he had slipped out of the back door and into the street.
The next two hours were spent blissfully alone in the city that was now his home and that so far he had hardly seen.
He wandered through St. James’s Park, enjoying the sight of the waterfowl and watching men digging trenches. There had been a group of people filling sandbags and Karil had stayed to help them for a while; they had been friendly and cheerful. He passed Buckingham Palace, but the sight of the enormous building in which he knew the two little princesses were incarcerated lowered his spirits, and he had made his way up Whitehall and stood in Piccadilly, with its shrouded fountain, and drank in the bustle, the traffic, the advertisements . . . At last for a while he was free and part of the real world.
He would have slipped back again unnoticed—the servants would not have betrayed him—but Carlotta had been looking for him, and when he returned she was there with her shocked accusations.
“You know that people like us aren’t supposed to go out alone,” she said. “I’m afraid Grandfather is very angry.”
And Grandfather was.
“You don’t seem to understand, Karil, that you are not like other people. You are a future king and—”
“No.” The cry came from Karil without him being aware of it. “I’m not . . . I’m just a person. No one knows what will happen in Bergania—even if Hitler is defeated the people might not want a king again and anyway it could be years. I’ve got to have some air . . . I’ve got to learn something. I can’t live like this.”
“Can’t!” roared the duke, and a shower of spittle came from his mouth. “How dare you defy me? While you are under my roof you will do exactly as I order.” His great hands gripped Karil’s shoulders like a vice. “From now on I shall see to it that you are watched at all times. What’s more, you will be locked into your bedroom at night.”
“No! Please. I’ve never been locked in. My father never punished me like that.”
“It would have been better if he had,” said the duke—and he sent for the servants straightaway and gave his instructions.
Under this regime, Karil became more and more desperate. He even wondered if he was beginning to lose his reason—for he had been sure that he had seen Matteo, a few days earlier, walking across the courtyard away from the house. He had been standing at an upstairs window, and by the time he’d managed to pull back the curtains and struggled with the heavy sash cords, the man had gone.
“Was Matteo here?” he had asked his grandfather—and the duke had scowled and told him not to be stupid.
“The sooner you realize that those vagabonds you came over with have forgotten you, the better,” he said.
Karil did realize it. He was too proud to show his grief, but his body began to let him down. He developed a cough that did not go away, he lost weight, and found it difficult to sleep.
&
nbsp; At night, the sound of the key turning in the lock seemed to set the seal on a life to be lived without love, or endeavor, or hope.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
The Painting
It was not only David Prosser who was in love with Clemmy. The children at Delderton were used to seeing young men standing outside the school with their motorbikes, hoping she would go out with them. But Clemmy had a boyfriend to whom she was absolutely faithful. She had known him since she started work as a model and she loved not only him but his work. Francis Lakeland was a landscape painter who did quiet and very beautiful paintings of the countryside. People liked these and they were shown in exhibitions, but no one bought them very much because they were too peaceful and didn’t have anybody being set on fire or dismembered or sitting with their mouth open, screaming.
So, to make some money, Francis Lakeland took on commissions to paint portraits of society people who wanted their wives and daughters to look beautiful.
A week after half term, Clemmy had a letter from Francis in which he asked her to come up to London for a weekend because he expected to be called up for the army.
“It won’t be straightaway,” he wrote, “but I want to see you badly and I need to talk to you about a piece of work I’ve been asked to do.”
The idea of Francis in the army made Clemmy’s stomach crunch up in a most alarming way. He was a gentle, scholarly man, serious about his work but funny about everything else. It wasn’t easy to think of him as a soldier.
All housemothers had a free weekend each month, and a week after she got his letter Clemmy arrived in London. She and Francis wandered hand in hand through the city and it was when they were sitting in one of their favorite places, a bench in St. James’s churchyard in Piccadilly, that Francis told her about his commission to paint Carlotta von Carinstein, the daughter of an exiled archduke.