The Dragonfly Pool

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.