The Dragonfly Pool

  Should you feel able to comply with this request, please get in touch with me at the ministry.

  Yours sincerely,

  (Sir) Alfred Hallinger

  Daley folded up the letter and looked around at the meeting.

  “It’s quite an honor to be asked. As I say, I shall of course turn it down but—”

  “Why?”

  The clear voice carried to all parts of the hall. Julia grasped her friend’s arm, trying to quiet her but without success. The peppermint disappeared down Tally’s throat.

  “Why?” she said again. “Why would you refuse?”

  She had forgotten that she was not going to speak again. One word had leaped out at her from the letter that Daley read.

  “Bergania”—it was more than two weeks since she had seen the travelogue, yet she found she could remember the film in detail. She could see the snowy mountain range with the central jagged peak, and the fir trees running up the slope toward them. She could see the river and the spire of the church where St. Aurelia was buried, and the palace. She could see the proud king on his horse and, as clearly as if she was there, the young prince in his troublesome helmet trying to blow the plumes out of his eyes.

  “Why can’t we send anybody?” said Tally yet again. “The King of Bergania is very brave; he said no to Hitler.”

  “Because,” said the headmaster patiently, “we have never done folk dancing here at Delderton and it is less than a month till the festival. And there are other reasons.”

  “Just because we’ve never done it doesn’t mean we can’t do it. There’s probably a book about it; there’s a book about everything. It must be very difficult to stand up to Hitler. It wasn’t just that he said no about letting the troops go through his country, but he also won’t let Hitler dig up minerals in his mountains to use for armaments. And I know people like Tod think there shouldn’t be kings, but if there are and they’re brave and resolute then surely we should show them that we’re on their side.”

  “I don’t see how it would help the Berganians if we went and did folk dancing all over them,” said one of the senior girls, “especially when we haven’t any idea how to do it.”

  “It’s to do with just being there,” said Tally. “They invited us so they must want us to come, and refusing would be a snub.”

  She looked around the room for support but no one seemed ready to back her up. Even her own friends were silent.

  “Folk dancing’s silly,” said a boy with huge spectacles. “People wind ribbons around a pole and get tangled up.”

  “Or they wear idiotic clothes—trousers with bells on them and bobbles on their hats,” said Ronald Peabody.

  “Only sissies do folk dancing,” came Verity’s disdainful voice.

  “Really?” The deep voice came from the back of the hall. Matteo had appeared to be asleep. “You surprise me.” He uncoiled himself and moved forward to the center of the room, and the children made way for him. “You surprise me very much.”

  Everybody fell silent, watching him as he turned and faced the meeting.

  “You might of course call the Falanian Indians sissy. Certainly they do a folk dance before they dismember their enemies and nail them to trees. There are even bells—or rather gongs—involved, though not, if I recall, ribbons. It takes an Indian child five years to learn the steps, and they are not allowed to take part in it till they can crunch up the skull of a jaguar with their bare hands.

  “And there are the leopard hunters of Nepal. They do a folk dance to prepare themselves for the chase, which includes leaping over pits of burning cinders with a firebrand in their mouth. The steps go something like this.”

  And without any warning Matteo leaped high into the air, seemed almost to hang there, and came down with a bloodcurdling howl about a foot away from David Prosser, who stepped back with an agitated squeak.

  “I could give you more examples,” said Matteo, “but I just wanted to make the point that whatever folk dancing is, it’s not sissy.”

  Daley shook his head. That Tally wanted the school to march to the help of the Berganians was to be expected—but he had not thought that Matteo would stab him in the back.

  “I suggest you set up a working party to see if it can be done. You have one week to prepare a suitable dance.”

  Nothing would happen in so short a time; Daley was sure of that.

  CHAPTER TEN

  The Flurry Dance

  Tally was right. There was a book about folk dancing, several books in fact, but they were not very helpful.

  “There’s Scottish dancing and maypole dancing and morris dancing,” she said.

  But Scotland was a long way from Devon and they did not feel they had a right to pretend to be Scottish, and anyway the steps were difficult.

  “Maypole dancing looks nice,” said Julia. “All those ribbons.”

  But Barney said that disasters happened very easily with maypole dancing. In his village the vicar at the garden fête had been completely trussed up when one of the children had taken her ribbon in the wrong direction.

  “He had to be cut out in the end,” Barney said.

  So that left morris dancing, which was derived from the ancient sword dances of medieval England, only instead of swords the dancers had wooden sticks—and it was danced by men.

  “Well, we can’t have only boys,” said Julia. “We’d never get enough.”

  They had of course consulted Armelle, but she was so horrified at the idea of a dance that did not come spontaneously from inside the soul that she was not helpful at all.

  “It says here that they hit each other with the sticks—they’re called staves—at least they bang them together and they flap at each other with handkerchiefs,” said Tally, looking at the book. “And they have bells on their ankles, rows and rows of bells, and more bells tied around their knees so that their trousers look baggy.”

  “And they wear hats with flowers sewn onto them. There’s one dance called the Helston Flurry Dance, which is danced in Cornwall. Flurry means flowers,” said Tod. “It’s not exactly a morris dance, but it’s that kind of thing.”

  He had at first wanted to have nothing to do with the trip to Bergania. The king who had said no to Hitler might be brave but he was still a king, and all kings belonged in dungeons—preferably with their heads chopped off. But when his friends all became involved he had joined in and put in some very useful work in the library.

  “I don’t want to flap with my handkerchief,” said Kit, looking even more woebegone than usual.

  “There’s one person who rides a sort of hobbyhorse through the dancers,” said Barney. “The Devil, they think. Or maybe the Fool. It’s a very old dance. ‘Full of antiquity,’ it says here.”

  It certainly looked old from the few pictures they could find. Not only old but exceedingly odd.

  “What about the music? ” asked Borro.

  They went to consult the old professor who taught music and he said it would probably have been danced to pipes and tambours but perhaps a violin would do.

  “Augusta’s got a violin,” said Tally. “I remember when she came.”

  So they went to find Augusta, who was eating a banana and reading a detective story, and she said she could play the violin, but she couldn’t play it well.

  “I don’t really like the noithe it maketh,” she said.

  But she fetched it and played a slow tune full of double stops and they thought it would do if she could play it faster and maybe learn a more jigging sort of piece as well. Taking Augusta to Bergania would be complicated because of her only being able to eat so very few things.

  “But if we stock up with bananas you’ll be all right, won’t you?” said Julia, and Augusta agreed that she probably would. She was really a very good-natured girl and they were glad she had come back from Wales.

  “Of course, the other groups will probably have all sorts of instruments—an orchestra even—all those Swiss and Bavarian people in lederhosen slappi
ng their thighs will be terribly good—but we can’t compete with them. All we want is to be there,” said Tally.

  “I don’t,” said Kit. “I don’t want to be there.”

  “We could always alter it a bit and make a Devon version,” Tally went on. “ ‘The Delderton Flurry Dance.’ ”

  Getting a team together was the next problem. Tally’s immediate friends all rallied around, and Verity, after watching snootily for a while, said she would come, which was a pity but they couldn’t afford to be fussy. Kit of course was really too small, but they couldn’t get people who were matched in size; they would just have to make do with what they had.

  The next day the rehearsals began, and they did not go well.

  “Form a circle,” said Barney with the book in his hand. “Now pick up your sticks . . . Then bow to each other. Now lift the right foot . . .”

  Augusta took up her violin, and the dancers lifted the staves they had begged from the gardeners, who used them for staking peas.

  “Move toward the center . . . hold the sticks up high . . . now flap your handkerchiefs. One, two, three, and hop . . .”

  None of the children in Magda’s house had handkerchiefs; they flapped their headscarves or borrowed tea towels. Borro flapped his shirt.

  “Ow!” said Borro, as Tod’s stick went into his cheek.

  Kit said he couldn’t do it—it was too difficult. Augusta snapped a string on her violin.

  “We have to be able to do it,” said Tally. “We have to.”

  At night the Delderton Flurry Dance ran through their dreams. They thought of it as a kind of sick animal that had to be nursed into health.

  “It’s like those runts you get in a litter of piglets,” said Borro. “You know, the one that can’t feed itself.”

  They ran into each other’s rooms at all hours, suggesting changes—making the steps simpler. Nobody now would have recognized it as a known morris dance or anything else, but it didn’t matter.

  Gradually, very gradually, the children who had scoffed wandered away. The snooty Verity turned out to be the best at dancing, which was a pity but the kind of thing that happens in life.

  Matteo came past once when they had got into a hopeless coil. He gave some orders that freed them, but if they had hoped that he would stay and help, they were disappointed.

  Next came the clothes. White trousers or white skirts . . . bells . . . and flowers for their hats.

  “Real ones will wither,” said Julia.

  “We could buy artificial ones from Woolworth,” someone suggested. They were surprisingly expensive, but everyone gave up their pocket money.

  The girls looked very weird in their hats, so Clemmy suggested they make wreaths and wear the flowers in their hair, which gave Verity the chance to nab all the forget-me-nots because she said they matched her eyes.

  By the end of the week they were ready to show what they had done to the headmaster.

  They took him down to the playing field. Augusta struck up on her violin. Borro, who was the hobbyhorse rider, galloped around the circle. The dancers began.

  The Delderton Flurry Dance was bad. It was very bad indeed. But it was there.

  “All right,” said Daley wearily. “You’ll have to work on it solidly till you leave—but, yes, you can go.”

  It should have been a day of triumph and then suddenly everything went wrong. It was Verity of course who gave Tally the news that devastated her, but it was not really Verity’s fault; Tally would have found out anyway soon enough. But now she walked blindly away from the school and down the sloping, tangly path that led toward the river and sat down with her arms around her knees, trying to fight down the misery and wretchedness that engulfed her.

  She must fix her eyes on the things that were outside herself. The new beech leaves, with the sun on them . . . the bluebells shimmering like a lake through the trees . . . A thrush flew by with his beak full of twigs, and a water vole ran along the bank of the little stream.

  These were the things that mattered—not her own wishes and hopes and needs.

  But it didn’t work. Tears welled up under her eyelids and she felt completely desolate.

  From the moment she had seen those images of Bergania, she had felt as though the country somehow spoke to her. And now though her friends would go, she would stay behind.

  “You realize that all the parents have to pay thirty pounds for our fares,” Verity had said. “The school can’t afford them. Daley’s going to write a letter to everyone and explain.”

  Verity always knew things before other people.

  Thirty pounds. It was nothing to Verity’s parents, with their estate in Rutland, and most of the others came from well-to-do families. But Tally would never ask her father for so much money. His patients were poor; he had both the aunts to support. He mustn’t be asked in case he felt he had to make the sacrifice and, whatever Tally wanted from her father, it was not a sacrifice.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she told herself.

  But it was no good. Perhaps it didn’t matter compared to people dying in famines and earthquakes and wars, but it mattered to her.

  After a while she got up and brushed the grass off her skirt and made her way back up the hill to school.

  She would see if Matteo was free.

  She found him in his room, looking down a microscope on the windowsill, but when he saw her tearstained face he pulled out a chair for her at the wooden table.

  “I see you have a problem,” he said. “A proper one, for yourself.”

  “Yes, I do.” She felt better now that she was taking some action. “It’s . . . I want you to tell the headmaster not to write to my father about the fare to Bergania. Verity says it’s thirty pounds—that’s right, isn’t it?”

  “It sounds about right. Why?”

  “Well, I know my father can’t afford it, and I don’t want Daley to ask him in case he . . . I don’t want him to be asked. I don’t have to go. I can show one of the others how to take my place.”

  “I see. But you want to go, don’t you?”

  Tally wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “Yes, I do. I wanted to go from the minute I saw the travelogue about Bergania. But—”

  “Why?”

  Matteo had spoken sharply. Tally blinked at him. “I don’t know really. It’s very beautiful . . . the mountains and the river . . . And the procession. Usually processions are boring, but the king . . .”

  “Yes?” Matteo prompted her. “What about the king?”

  “He looked so strong and . . . brave—except I know you can’t really look brave just for a moment in a film. Only he did. But tired, too. And there was the prince . . . he was hidden by plumes . . . feathers all over his helmet. I was sorry for him.” She shook her head. “I don’t know . . . there was a big bird flying above the cathedral.”

  “A black kite, probably,” said Matteo. “They’re common in that part of the world.” But he seemed to be thinking about something else. Then: “I’ll speak to the headmaster.”

  “You’ll tell him not to write to my father about the money?”

  “Yes, I’ll tell him that.”

  As Matteo knocked on the door of Daley’s study, four children came out—Julia and Barney and Borro and Tod.

  “You’ve had a deputation, I see,” said Matteo. “Not connected with the trip to Bergania?”

  “Yes,” said the headmaster. “They want the school to pay for Tally’s fare to Bergania—they don’t think her father could afford it. I must say that girl has made some very good friends in the short time she has been with us.”

  “And will the school pay it?”

  Daley looked worried. “The trouble is if you do that kind of thing once you have to do it again, and we simply don’t have funds for that.”

  “So it would have to come out of the Travel Fund. The fund that exists for worthy cultural exchanges to broaden the minds of the young and all that.”

  Daley looked at him blankly. “There isn’t such
a fund.”

  “There is now,” said Matteo. “I shall pay in thirty pounds this afternoon.” And as the headmaster continued to stare at him he said, “Don’t worry, I have the money—after all, I got paid last month. Who are you sending with them?”

  “I thought Magda should go—her German is fluent, of course, and she also speaks Italian and French. But one will need somebody who can actually cook because they’ll be camping some of the time, and I can’t send Clemmy—I shall need her here to look after the children left behind in Magda’s house. And I’ll want a man as well. O’Hanrahan is rehearsing a play for the younger ones and the professor is too old. I thought maybe David Prosser.” The headmaster sighed. “It has to be someone who can be spared.”

  Matteo nodded. Prosser could certainly be spared. He was famous for being the most boring man in the school, and for being in love with Clemency—but for not much else. There was a pause. Then: “I can cook,” said Matteo.

  “Good God!” said Daley, staring at him. “Don’t tell me you meant to go yourself all along?”

  “Only if the children had been serious. Only if they really meant to work. Not just Tally, all of them.”

  “And if they hadn’t been?”

  Matteo shrugged. “Who knows?” he said.

  Part Two

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Prince Awakes

  It was a very large bed—a four-poster draped in the colors of

  Bergania—red, green, and white. Green was for the fir trees that hugged Bergania’s mountains, red for the glowing sunsets behind the peaks, white for the everlasting snows. On the head-board were carved a crown and the words THE TRUTH SHALL SET THEE FREE, which was the country’s motto.

  The bed was too large for the boy who now woke in it—but then everything in the palace was too large for him. His bedroom could have housed a railway carriage; in his bathtub one could have washed a company of soldiers. Even his name was longer than he needed it to be: Karil Alexander Ivo Donatien, Duke of Eschacht, Margrave of Munzen, Crown Prince of Bergania.