The Dragonfly Pool

  The rest of the casting went without a hitch. Borro was Hermes, the messenger chosen to bring Persephone back, and a tall senior whose voice had broken reliably played Zeus, King of the Gods.

  And the scenes in Hades were easy. Being horrible or tortured or weird is always popular. Tod was Sisyphus, endlessly pushing his rock up a hill, Barney made an excellent Tantalus, never quite allowed to sip the water that reached to his mouth—and no one felt like refusing Kit when he asked if he could be the man whose liver was pecked out by an eagle, even though he belonged to a different myth.

  As for Cerberus, the three-headed dog who guarded the gates of Hades, there was a stampede of juniors all wanting to be one of his heads. Since the heads did not speak and would be covered in masks it was difficult to choose, so they drew lots—but the good thing about Hades is that it is always full, and those children who were not picked to be a head could still gibber and wail and wobble across the stage.

  Karil and Tally were joint stage managers and were incessantly busy. “Bossy” was the word Verity used, and she had a point, but there was so much to remember.

  O’Hanrahan directed, never raising his voice but holding the play completely under his hand. At the beginning Tally had been put in charge of the script; she was to gather up ideas and make notes, ready for the actual writing. So she had gone to the library, found a book called Greek Myths for Schools—and gone back, puzzled, to O’Hanrahan.

  “It’s not like you told it to us,” she said. “It’s sort of flat. You must have made an awful lot up. All that about Persephone’s delicate ankles, and Demeter tearing off her headband in grief . . .”

  O’Hanrahan shook his head. “No, I didn’t make it up. The words are all there in the original Greek, just as they were nearly three thousand years ago.”

  And he went to his bookcase and began to read. The musical words, serious but beautiful, went straight into Tally’s soul. Understanding no word of the ancient language, she yet sensed the story’s depth and resonance.

  The next day she took Greek Myths for Schools back to the library—and they began to write their play.

  Now, as rehearsals began, she was eagle-eyed, watching for missed lines—a fierce prompter protecting every syllable of the script.

  As for Karil, he was everywhere, attending to the lighting, assembling props, checking the thunder sheets, experimenting with the sound of rain. To serve the play after years of being served, to be part of something and yet not singled out, was his greatest joy. He knew he was on borrowed time—any day now the duke would find out where he was, but meanwhile there was the present, there was this day—and Karil set himself to live in it.

  Like all plays that take off, Persephone reached out into every activity in the school.

  Clemmy knew all about the Greeks; she had posed for a dozen painters who had tried to show the beauty of the ancient world.

  “You’ve got to realize that the Greeks really adored their flowers and their trees and their countryside. They absolutely worshipped them.”

  She found pictures of the flowers that Persephone had been picking when she was carried away, precise botanical drawings full of detail and loving care, and she stood over the scene painters.

  “Remember this was Arcadia, it was Paradise. Everything was flooded with light—that blue is far too muddy.”

  Josie and the housekeeper, with a team of helpers, ran up the costumes, and the old professor left his ancient manuscripts long enough to be really helpful about the music.

  “We want dreamy music for the beginning and scary music of course for Hades and a lament for when Demeter is roaming the earth, but at the end there has to be something glorious—a proper hymn praising the gods,” said Tally.

  “Full of triumph,” said Karil.

  “Oh, there does, does there?” growled the old man.

  “Couldn’t you compose one?” they asked him.

  “No, I could not. If I could compose triumphant and glorious music, I wouldn’t be here teaching a lot of hooligans.”

  But he found a chorus from a Handel opera, which made the hair stand up on the nape of one’s neck—and he bullied the school choir into learning it.

  As the weeks passed, O’Hanrahan began to look tired.

  “You’re working too hard,” Clemmy told him.

  But she knew what was happening. It was possible that what they had here was not just a school play—it was a play. A number of things were coming together. The children acting in it had had a real experience: a king had died; a war was beginning.

  And there was Julia. But about Julia’s performance, nobody would speak.

  Matteo had reported to the War Office and received his instructions. Now he walked down Piccadilly, turned into Old Bond Street, and made his way toward Grosvenor Square. He passed Polish cavalry officers in their glamorous uniforms, come to join the Allies, sailors on leave from a British submarine, high-ranking American servicemen from the embassy nearby.

  But he saw none of them. What he saw in his mind was a huddle of children, some tearstained, who had got up at dawn to say good-bye.

  Barney, whom he had turned into a biologist . . . Tally, whose problems seemed always to be about other people . . . Julia, whose mother he had mentally throttled many a time . . .

  And Karil, Johannes’s son . . .

  If his plan misfired . . . if the people he was now seeking out refused to help him, or had not yet arrived, then Karil’s future was bleak indeed.

  In front of a tall, narrow house, he stopped and rang the bell. The house, though in the fashionable area inhabited by embassies and diplomats, was shabby, and the servant who opened the door wore no uniform, only a leather apron. He had gray hair and a weather-beaten face and looked like a man who had spent his life out of doors.

  Matteo spoke a few words and the man’s face lit up.

  “Yes,” he said, answering in the same language, “they are here.

  Please come upstairs, Your Excellency.” And then: “I remember your father.”

  Matteo followed him up the uncarpeted stairs and into a room with a scrubbed wooden table and a few upright chairs. As he entered, the two men standing by the window turned. A man with long silver hair and light blue eyes, and an old man with a wise face and a full white beard, who came forward with both his hands stretched out.

  “Welcome, Matteo, welcome!” he said in Berganian. “As you see, we have reached safety.”

  It was von Arkel, the faithful prime minister who had served the king for so many years, and with him was the king’s uncle Fritz, the minister of culture. The chief of the army was about to join them, they told Matteo, and together they meant to form a government-in-exile.

  “We shall have to see what we can do,” said von Arkel. And then: “You have news of the boy?”

  CHAPTER FORTY

  Dry Ice

  The headmaster of Foxingham School put down the cane with which he had been beating a boy called Widdrington and went over to his desk.

  Widdrington was a dreary little runt of a boy who seemed to have been made for punishment. Even before he came into the room he began to snivel and whimper, and already with the first whack on his bare bottom he was screaming the place down. It was quite difficult to stop after the regulation twelve thwacks—the temptation was to go on and draw blood, and there wouldn’t have been any trouble if he had. Widdrington’s parents were too grateful to the headmaster for accepting the boy at Foxingham. They were thoroughly vulgar, self-made people and desperately anxious to have their sons educated with the upper classes.

  He should have been beating young Hohenlottern next, thought the head. The boy had skived off the early-morning run, pretending to have a cold—but he was third in line of succession to the kingdom of Prussia if it was ever restored, and the headmaster preferred to deal with boys like that in other ways. Fortunately young Transjordania never gave any trouble. With his father ruling over one of the wealthiest countries in the Middle East, too much physic
al punishment might have been awkward.

  Thinking about these two boys made the head turn his thoughts to the prince of Bergania. He had been happy to give the boy a scholarship; if the war went the right way young Karil would become king, there was no doubt about that, and Foxingham’s reputation as a cradle for princes would be enhanced.

  But how long was he going to wait for the duke to send his grandson? Karil had had an attack of homesickness and run back to his grandfather, that much seemed certain. The other boys had all described how the prince had rushed out of the train, and there was really no other explanation. Probably Karil was very attached to his grandfather, who was reported to be an upright and excellent man. So far it had seemed reasonable to say nothing to the duke and wait for the prince to come—one didn’t want to expose the boy as a milksop—but the head had his honor and dignity to consider.

  He pressed the bell on his desk and his secretary, a gray-haired, sharp-nosed woman, entered the room.

  “Nothing in the post from Rottingdene, is there?”

  “No, sir, nothing at all. Matron was wondering how long she should keep his trunk—it’s more than three weeks now. Should she send it back?”

  The headmaster rose and went to the window. Outside, in the driving rain, the bottom form was doing PE. In their singlets and shorts they shivered with cold, and the headmaster was annoyed.

  “Silly ass, that Johnston. He’s not working them nearly hard enough. A couple of whacks on their legs and they’d soon warm up. I shall want to see him after the class.”

  Then he turned his attention once more to the problem of the prince of Bergania. The behavior of the namby-pamby PE teacher had soured his mood, and he found that his patience was exhausted.

  “I’ll write to the duke today. This nonsense has gone on long enough. Either he sends his grandson straightaway or the scholarship is canceled.”

  The duke picked this letter off the silver salver in the dining room—and the effect was spectacular. First he turned a brilliant scarlet—his breath came in gasps, he threw the letter across the table. Then he let out a roar which sounded through the entire household. The monkey scuttled for cover; Pom-Pom hid under the sofa.

  “You have had bad news?” said Aunt Diana, who was not very bright.

  The duke shot her a look of contempt and loathing.

  “I have been deceived. I have been made a fool of and I WILL NOT STAND FOR IT.”

  His fist came down on the dining table, and a glass ashtray slipped to the floor and shattered.

  “Oh poor little Pom-Pom! He will cut his feet,” cried Princess Natalia.

  “Poor little Pom-Pom can go to the devil!” shouted the duke.

  He had risen from his chair and was pacing the room.

  “It’s an outrage and an insult and I will not forgive it. I shall sue the headmaster—the idiot. Does he really think I would let my grandson skulk at home? I’m going to ruin him and ruin his school. And as for Karil . . . the boy is a deceitful monster. I suppose I should have expected it, with all that foreign blood.” He kicked a chair and swore—he had used the wrong leg, the one that wasn’t made of metal. “As soon as he’s back I’m going to break his will. I’m going to beat him within an inch of his life—and that will only be the beginning. Defying me, making a fool of me.”

  The uncles waited, hoping his rage would die down, but it didn’t. Eventually the Archduke Franz Heinrich said, “Where do you think the boy can be?”

  The duke stopped pacing and lowered his bull-like head.

  “He must have run away,” said Aunt Phyllis, “but where to?”

  The duke scowled at her. But it was true he had no idea where to search for Karil.

  Then Carlotta rose from her chair. She was wearing white, which was fortunate, for she might well have been a messenger from on high as she laid her hand tenderly on her grandfather’s arm.

  “I think I know where he might be, Grandfather,” she said, with her most winning smile. “I can’t be sure but I think so. You see, letters used to come for him from that dreadful school . . . from the children he came to England with. I thought Karil was cured, but now I think perhaps he’s run away to be with them.”

  The duke shook off her arm.

  “What?” he roared. “Those disgusting delinquent brats . . . those nudist anarchists . . . those gutter rats . . . It’s impossible. I won’t believe it. Even Karil cannot have sunk so low.”

  But the Scold now came to stand beside Carlotta. “I’m afraid the dear child may be right. I said at the time that they had a most dangerous effect on him. I could . . .” But the Scold fell silent. She had done everything she could to keep Karil away from Tally and her friends—but though she had scolded and bullied the boy for years, she had also loved him. Suddenly she did not want him hounded anymore.

  The duke stopped pacing.

  “I’m going to hunt the wretched boy down like the criminal he is—if it’s the last thing I do!”

  The day began so well.

  They were rehearsing the scenes in the Underworld. They had agreed that Hades should be a place of confusion and mist, with the trapped spirits looming in and out of the vapor.

  And that meant dry ice!

  The blocks of frozen carbon dioxide had arrived the night before, heavily packed in straw—a special consignment as a try-out before the play at the end of term. They had to be carefully lowered into a tin bath and warm water poured over them, and Karil, filling the buckets from the tap in the cloakroom, was in a state of bliss. The more water you poured, the mistier and more obscure the stage became.

  The three little girls who were the heads of Cerberus were near the front of the stage; their masks had not been finished yet, but their necks swayed alarmingly. Barney was on a ladder, trying to reach his jet of water. Other spirits dashed about moaning and beseeching.

  The ice was going so well that it was becoming harder and harder to make out the characters onstage.

  “Isn’t it amazing stuff?” whispered Tally, and Karil nodded.

  More mist floated onto the stage. And more figures blundered about. One was very large and used language that was not in the script as he tripped over a rock.

  “It’s a policeman!” cried one of the heads of Cerberus.

  “Two policemen,” called out the second head.

  The men were enormous, looming in and out of the vapor with their arms stretched out in front of them.

  For a moment, Karil was turned to stone. Then he threw a last bucket of water into the tub, ran out of the wings, jumped over the end of the stage, and raced the length of the hall.

  Straight into the arms of a third policeman, guarding the door.

  It was over so quickly, all the hope and the happiness. As he was led away by two of the policemen, it was all Karil could do to walk upright and hold up his head. Knowing what awaited him, he felt a despair so deep that he did not know how he would bear it.

  Behind Karil and the policemen came his friends. The officers tried to shoo them away, but they had been through too much with Karil to leave him now.

  Apparently he was not to be driven straight back to the hell of Rottingdene House. The policemen were making for the headmaster’s study, and Karil shivered. Had the duke come himself to clamp him in irons? Everything seemed possible.

  Daley was seated behind his desk. Yet another policeman stood beside him—a swarthy man with a mustache, holding a briefcase—but this was clearly a high-ranking officer, because the men who had held Karil saluted him.

  Karil’s friends had followed him into the room.

  “It’s no good throwing us out,” said Tally, “because we won’t go.”

  “Your manners are deplorable,” said Daley. “But as a matter of fact I wasn’t going to. Karil may be glad of your support.” And to Karil: “This is Chief Inspector Ferguson from Scotland Yard.”

  The inspector nodded at the policemen. “You can let him go now,” he said. He walked over to Karil. “You’d better sit do
wn, Your Grace. I’m afraid I’ve got some very bad news for you.”

  He pointed to a chair and Karil sat down, ever more confused and bewildered. Had the duke decided to send him straight to Borstal? The fact that the inspector was being so kind was surely ominous. And why was he calling him Your Grace? That was his grandfather’s title.

  “Perhaps a drink of water, sir?” suggested one of the policemen, and Daley poured out a glass from the carafe on his desk.

  Karil took it but could not bring himself to drink. His heart was beating so loudly that he thought it must be heard by everybody in the room.

  “What is it?” he managed to ask. “The bad news . . . ?”

  The inspector laid a hand on his shoulder. “You’d better prepare yourself, Your Grace. It’s as bad as could be. Your grandfather is dead.”

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

  The Play

  People had been streaming into the school all day: parents and sisters and aunts. Some came by train, some by car using their saved-up petrol coupons. The hotels in the neighborhood were fully booked, though some of the visitors were staying in the school itself or in houses in the village.

  It was the end of term; the parents would see a performance of Persephone and take their children home the following day.

  And it was spring. After days of grayness and rain, Delderton was bathed in sunshine; primroses and violets studded the hedgerows. In the pet hut the large white rabbit was molting; Borro’s cow had had her calf, and Delderton was in a festive mood. As well as the play, there were exhibitions of the children’s paintings, and the garments made out of Josie’s carded wool, and all the things that are made in school carpentry workshops the world over: bookends and small tables with wobbly legs and boxes into which things could be put (provided one didn’t need to shut the lid). But the play was what everyone had come for.