When she had gone Daley sat for a while, looking out at the courtyard while Tally’s words went on sounding in his head.
I told him it was a place where you can find out who you are, she had said—and it was as though she had given him back the vision he had had when he first came to Delderton. He had spent ten years making a place where children could be themselves. And suddenly he found that he had come to a decision, and he carried the letters to the parents over to the wastepaper basket and tipped them in.
He and his children would stay.
It was getting too cold to meet on the steps of the pet hut, so the children sat inside on upturned wooden boxes while they discussed Karil’s future. It made life difficult for Augusta, who had to wear a gauze face mask, but she was used to being uncomfortable.
“Someone should blow up the duke,” said Tod, who had reverted to anarchism again.
But Julia, who was sensible about everything except her mother, said that she saw what Daley meant.
“A school can’t just kidnap a pupil,” she said, and Barney, who was convinced that the tree frog was very intelligent and was trying to train it to walk up and down its ladder, said he thought that Karil might have to arrange his own escape.
Tally, however, was deaf to common sense.
“People said we couldn’t get to Bergania with the Flurry Dance but we did, and it looked as though we couldn’t get Karil away from those thugs but we did. So we can do this if we have to. It’s meant that Karil should be here. I knew it straightaway.”
In the staff room Magda, who had grown very fond of the prince on the journey, wondered about his Uncle Fritz, the minister of culture. “Isn’t an uncle an important relative, too?” she asked Matteo. “Perhaps he could do something.”
“I’ve been trying to get in touch with him—and von Arkel, too. They got out of Bergania, but no one knows where they are now. And I don’t know how long I’ll be here—I’ve had another letter from the War Office and things are moving.”
But Tally listened to nobody who told her that Karil might not come. If she could, she would have told the badgers and the foxes that the prince was on his way. And so, with less than three weeks to go till the Christmas holidays, she concentrated on the play.
To everyone’s surprise Tally did not want to act—she wanted to help with the lighting and the production, but she had no desire to take a part, which Julia thought was a bit much: “When you do nothing but nag me.”
But Tally said that was different. “Karil may want to act though. He could be the king of the Underworld perhaps.”
“He won’t want to be the king of anything, not even Hades,” said Borro. “I’ll bet my last sixpence on that.”
“And anyway, he may not be any good,” said Verity.
But the next thing was to get word to Karil—and now Tally wrote a letter to Kenny, who had taken over his father’s vegetable round and was driving Primrose through the London streets.
Kenny was a good friend; he had never failed her yet.
It was a particularly cold winter, the winter of 1939. Coming back for the Christmas holidays, Tally found the aunts bundled into cardigans, looking like koala bears and huddled over the oil stove in the kitchen. In her father’s surgery a single bar of the electric fire stopped the patients from turning blue before they got to the doctor. Aunt Hester had to bandage the pipes in the bathroom to stop them from freezing—but Tally and Maybelle and Kenny went skating on the frozen pond.
The Russians had invaded Finland, where the temperature was minus forty degrees and the soldiers fought on skis. A German patriot had thrown a bomb at Hitler but it missed him, which was a shame. Skirmishes on the Western Front suggested that the war was beginning to gather pace.
All the same, Christmas was lovely—it always was in the doctor’s house. Tally went with Kenny on his rounds with Primrose, delivering holly and mistletoe to his customers, and came back with armfuls of greenery with which to decorate the rooms. Aunt May cooked the turkey which the butcher had saved for them, though meat was getting scarce. The lady with the German sausage dog sent a Christmas tree from her brother’s market garden, and Dr. Hamilton’s patients trooped in with strange presents they had made for him. Though the aunts had been worried that the king’s stammer would trouble him, with the war on his mind, he got through his speech on Christmas Day with hardly a stutter, and in the evening they went to hear The Messiah at the Albert Hall.
Tally did her best not to spend time with Roderick and Margaret during the holidays, but a week before the Delderton term began again, her Aunt Virginia rang up to say how much her children were longing to see their cousin, and Tally was invited for tea.
This usually meant that Roderick and Margaret wanted to show off something that they had bought, or brag about something they had done, and this time was no exception. Though they had been equipped with brand-new uniforms the last time Tally had seen them, a great deal of shopping had been done since then. Margaret had two new Sunday dresses and a new dressing gown with a St. Barbara’s crest on the pocket. What’s more, the girls of St. Barbara’s did not carry their gas masks to school in cardboard boxes like common children, but had special cases in the school colors of blue and green.
“And I’m getting kid skating boots—they’re being sent from Harrods,” said Margaret. “It’s that very soft leather and it’s incredibly expensive. Some of the girls just have ordinary leather ones, but Mummy wanted me to have the best because my ankles are so sensitive.”
Roderick’s bed was again piled high with clothes striped in ferocious red and yellow. It had been necessary to replace his blazer and his cap, and he had an entire new kit for rugger on which he had left the price tags so that Tally could see them.
“Pretty steep, aren’t they?” he said proudly.
But what he particularly wanted to boast about was the kind of pupils that were coming to Foxingham. Not only was the Prince of Transjordania still there but his younger brother was going to join him, and so was a great-nephew of the Kaiser who was third in the line of succession to the Prussian throne should it ever be restored.
“I’ve made good friends with Transjordania,” said Roderick carelessly. “He’s not really stuck up at all, not when you get to know him. Of course he doesn’t bother with everybody, but I know how to treat him.”
If it wasn’t for the amazingly good tea which her aunt Virginia served, Tally would have found the afternoon almost impossible to get through. Virginia was the sort of person who always seemed to be able to get hold of sugar and chocolate and all the other things that were in short supply. She had come back from Torquay when the expected bombs did not fall on London, but she had kept her flat down there so that if air raids did start she would be able to get away at once.
“It’s all so terribly trying,” she said wearily. “Now the maid wants to go and join the ATS. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through all the work myself. But there it is—servants never know when they’re well off.”
“I tell you, it’s no good,” said Kenny, sitting on an upturned crate in the storeroom behind his father’s shop. “It’s a fortress, that place. I took the cart around like you asked me to, but they didn’t want any vegetables and they just shut the door in my face. I had some mistletoe and chestnuts for roasting and all sorts of stuff, but they said no one celebrated Christmas there and I can believe it. You’ll never get a message through to Karil like that. Just give it up, Tally.”
But giving up on things was not one of Tally’s talents. “Couldn’t we try once more? Please. If you take me there I might get an idea. I just want to let him know that it’s all right about the scholarship and he can come. There must be some way I can get a note to him.”
Kenny shrugged. “I’ll take you if you like, but not with the cart. There’s nowhere to leave Primrose—it’s all posh streets with snooty people.”
So the following Saturday they took the Underground to Trafalgar Square and walked down the Mall t
o Rottingdene House.
The huge gray building with its spiked railings was a grim sight. They walked all around it, but there was no side door other than the one that Kenny had tried; it was the most sealed-up and unapproachable place Tally had ever seen.
But when they came around to the front of the house, they found a small group of people waiting on the pavement.
“It’s about now they come out,” said a woman in a purple headscarf.
“Who?” said another bystander. “Who is it comes out?”
The woman wasn’t sure, but she thought it was royalty. “My sister saw them last week; she said they were ever so friendly.”
Tally waited, keeping out of sight behind Kenny and stamping her feet on the pavement to try to keep the blood flowing.
It seemed most unlikely that anyone would come out of those forbidding iron gates, but after half an hour the sentry in the box stood to attention, the front door with its heraldic crest was thrown open and three people emerged.
She saw Karil first; he was exactly the same in spite of the cap pulled over his ears against the cold. Behind him came the Scold, black as ever in a fur coat the color of ink . . . and between Karil and the Scold came Carlotta.
Tally recognized her at once. She wasn’t wearing a white dress—or if she was, it was hidden under her velvet-collared coat—and she wasn’t holding flowers. But her long blond ringlets, her simpering smile, were exactly as they had been when she peered out of the window of the Daimler on the quayside at Dover.
It was Karil though who held Tally’s gaze. He had put his arm around Carlotta’s shoulders in a chivalrous and protective way, as though he was sheltering her not just from the cold but from anything bad that life might throw at her, and now he adjusted her scarf so that it covered her throat more securely and the Scold, looking down, nodded in a pleased way.
Then a footman came out of the back of the building and took his position behind them and they set off slowly toward the gate. The sentry saluted, the gate swung open and the bystanders stood aside to let the important people through.
“Long live Your Highness,” cried the lady in the purple headscarf, and Karil smiled and lifted his arm once, and twice, and three times, in that gracious wave that princes learn from infancy. Then he nodded to the footman, giving the signal that they were ready to set off, gave his arm to Carlotta, and they moved away.
Karil had not seen her and Tally stood stock-still in the icy cold. There was no escaping what she had seen. If ever there was a boy who was doing what he was best at, leading the life he was born to, it was Karil.
“Come on,” said Kenny.
And she tore up the note she had written and followed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Future King
Although Karil had long ago given up expecting anything good to happen in his grandfather’s house, even he was surprised by the sheer awfulness of the Rottingdene Christmas. There was no tree, no candlelight, no exchange of gifts, no music. The duke took morning prayers, the cook sent up two underdone chickens—and that was that.
Still, it meant that he was not expected to find a gift for Carlotta. Karil was used to hard work, but being nice to Carlotta was one of the most grueling tasks he had ever undertaken. Her treachery, her vanity, her lies seemed to grow rather than lessen with each day that passed, and yet somehow he managed to act the part of a devoted cousin and a prince who wished her to share his life.
And still he did not know yet whether his plan was going to work. His uncles now treated him with respect, the servants scuttled past him, and the governesses curtsied when he came into the room.
But it was the duke that mattered, and two days after what passed for Christmas his grandfather sent for him.
“I have to tell you, my boy,” he said, “that I have been most pleasantly surprised by your behavior in the last few weeks. I understand from Carlotta that you have seen the error of your ways.”
“Oh, I have, sir, I have,” said Karil fervently. “I can’t believe now how foolish I have been. And how ungrateful, when you have given me a home and a chance to fulfill my destiny. From now on I shall devote all my waking hours to preparing for kingship. I want to learn to be a proper ruler, not one of those weak kings who can’t make up his mind and has to keep consulting his ministers. A king should be an absolute ruler and his subjects should obey him without a moment’s hesitation.”
“Quite so. Quite right. I must say, I thought you would never see where your duty lay. What brought you to your senses?”
Karil was ready for this.
“I had a dream, sir. A dream of my future in the palace at Bergania. I was being crowned in ermine and at my side was . . . Carlotta.” Here Karil nearly forgot his script, because even mentioning Carlotta’s name made his gorge rise. But he gathered himself together. “It made me realize how fortunate I am to be here—and how lucky I am to have someone who, in good time, will share my life.”
The duke nodded, thinking of the double line of Rottingdene blood that would flow into the restored kingdom of Bergania.
“Yes, indeed. She will make an excellent queen. There are people who think that twelve is too young to decide about one’s future bride, but that’s just poppycock. Where duty is concerned, one can never begin too young.”
“Indeed, sir, indeed,” said Karil, and stood waiting with his head humbly bowed. Was it going to work or had this whole charade been in vain?
The duke cleared his throat. He harrumphed and considered.
Then he said, “Well, well, we all make mistakes. I think it’s time I called off the watchdogs. I’ll get the whistles back and tell the servants you no longer need to be followed.”
“And my room at night, sir? The locked door? Of course I know I deserved it, but it is a little humiliating.”
The duke hesitated, and Karil felt his heart hammering in his chest. Everything depended on this one thing.
Then: “Very well,” said the duke. “I’ll tell the servants it’s no longer necessary.”
Left alone, Karil flopped down on his bed and punched the pillows in triumph. Stage one was completed! Once he was no longer watched and could get out of his room at night he could plan the next part of his escape. For from the moment he had read the letters Carlotta had stolen, he had had only one idea—to escape from this house of snobbery and deceit and arrogance and join his friends.
His troubles were far from over, but he would let nothing dismay him. Among the many unreadable books in the duke’s library were some that were not unreadable at all: the stories of Oliver Twist and David Copperfield and Nicholas Nickleby by Charles Dickens. All these boys had run away from cruel employers with almost nothing in their pockets, and all of them had reached safety. One of the obstacles was simply getting out of the house. The back door was bolted and barred at night and the keys kept by whichever footman was on duty. To ask a servant to help him would be to risk getting him into trouble, but luck was on Karil’s side. The housemaid George loved so hopelessly left to work in a munitions factory, and soon afterward George announced that he, too, was leaving, going to join the Ambulance Corps.
If he was going anyway, thought Karil, perhaps he could be persuaded to leave the back door unlocked the night before he left.
Everything Karil did now had only one aim: to help him get away. He had taught himself the route to Delderton; it was nearly three hundred miles, but anything was possible when one was desperate. It was no good arriving when the school was empty, but as soon as the Christmas holidays were over he would make a break for it, and he began to assemble things he would need to disguise himself. He found some of Princess Natalia’s hair dye in a bathroom, and a pair of wire spectacles that could be made to stay on his nose—and when Countess Frederica came with his fruit juice and rusks he thanked her nicely but he did not eat the rusks; he hid them in a shoebox in his cupboard. They had infuriated him ever since he stopped teething but now they had their uses. Rusks do not go moldy and
he could chew them on the journey.
This was the stage he had reached in his preparations when the duke sent for him again.
If he expected that his grandfather had seen through his deception, Karil’s fears were laid to rest as soon as he entered the room. The old tyrant looked as affable as he was able, and sitting near him were the three uncles. They, too, looked friendly and relaxed, and even before the duke began to speak Karil was ready to receive good news.
And it was good news! It was incredible, wonderful, and amazing news!
“I have to say, Karil, that up till now I have been utterly opposed to the idea of sending you away to be educated,” the duke began. “Your behavior was such that I didn’t think you could be allowed to leave this house. But in the last weeks you have changed so completely that I think you may be trusted to conduct yourself properly even when you are not under my roof, so I have decided to send you to boarding school.”
He stopped to clear his throat and the uncles nodded and beamed. If Karil went away they would no longer have to give him lessons, or lift their behinds from their chairs when he came into the dining room. Only the monkey, who did not know what was going on, continued to look sad.
“As you know,” the duke went on, “many of the world’s rulers were educated at one or other of Britain’s famous schools—but one of the obstacles has been money. These schools are exceedingly expensive and the cost of supporting all the people in my household is crippling. Not to mention the burden of income tax. The amount of tax I am forced to pay by those scoundrels in Whitehall is outrageous.” The duke’s face became crimson as it always did when he spoke about income tax, but he pulled himself together. “However, Karil,” he went on, “I have just received the most gratifying news. One of the best schools in the country has offered you a scholarship. The headmaster has just written to me.”