The Dragonfly Pool

Now that the danger to the prince was over she could think about the future—and the future meant Rottingdene House and that sweet child who always took such care to be pretty, and to please. Once Karil was married to Carlotta, her own work would be done and she could rest.

The children from Delderton were not traveling first class, nor did they have sleepers. They were curled up uncomfortably on the seats, dozing as best they could. Karil, sandwiched between Tod and Tally, was glad of the stuffy compartment, the huddle of people. He felt as though he never wanted to be alone again.

After a while he disentangled himself and made his way out into the corridor. He had expected it to be empty, but Matteo was standing there, his back to the compartment full of sleeping children, keeping watch.

“Can’t you sleep?” he asked, and Karil shook his head.

“Well, it’s not surprising,” he said, letting his arm rest on the boy’s shoulder. “Your father could never sleep on trains either. In fact, he was a lousy sleeper altogether. We used to creep out of the palace at night sometimes—he had the key to the secret door at the back.”

“How did you get to know him? ”

In the darkness, Matteo smiled.

“It was at Johannes’s seventh birthday party. They’d asked a whole lot of suitable children, all scrubbed up and wearing their most uncomfortable clothes. Chosen to be the right kind of friends for him, you know. They made me come—my parents had an estate on the other side of the mountain and I lived a very rough life, more like a peasant boy. I didn’t want to come and I threw a tantrum when they made me dress up in a tight collar. And your father was in a bad temper, too. They tried to organize us into playing party games, but by then we’d caught each other’s eye and—well, we just knew we were going to be friends. And we crept out and found a chicken in the kitchen quarters and climbed on to the roof and made it flutter down the chimney. There wasn’t a fire, of course, and it was a good strong hen and it landed all right, though I wouldn’t do that now. The ladies of the bedchamber, those aunts of yours, were all in their sitting room doing their embroidery, and there was this soot-black squawking chicken rushing around the room! Meanwhile, the people who were organizing the party were frantic, looking for Johannes. After that they said I wasn’t a suitable friend for their future king, but Johannes dug his heels in. It ended with us sharing a tutor and more or less being brought up together.”

“Did you do other things like that . . . like the chicken?”

“Oh yes, plenty. We smuggled a piglet into a council meeting once, and there were all the usual things that children do—toads in the beds, and booby traps, and pretending to be vampires at night. But mostly we just escaped whenever we could. Your father was absolutely fearless—once we climbed to the top of the gabled roof on the palace and Johannes said we wouldn’t come down unless they stopped asking him to eat semolina forever and ever.”

“I think it must have worked,” said Karil, “because I never got semolina to eat, not once.”

He looked gratefully up at Matteo. Hearing about his father as a boy was the best comfort he could imagine. And as if Matteo could read his thoughts, he said, “He really enjoyed life, your father. That was why I was so angry when he became imprisoned in all that kingship. But I was wrong to be angry—he grew up to be a brave and honorable man.”

But after Karil had gone back to the compartment, Matteo stood silent and perturbed outside. He had promised his friend to look after Karil and he would do so while there was breath in his body—but this war which was growing ever closer would impose duties on every able-bodied man.

“But somehow I will do it,” he vowed. “Whatever it costs.”

When Karil slipped back into his seat he saw that Tally was awake.

“I was thinking about the play we’re going to do next term,” she whispered. “Persephone. I sort of feel I know quite a lot about the Underworld now and the sort of people who go to Hades. Like Gambetti—he belongs there all right. We could make it really good with the right kind of music. You absolutely have to help us do it.”

“I’ve never done anything like that.”

“You don’t know what you can do yet; you’ve never had a chance with all those processions and people bowing and scraping. We’re going to try to persuade Julia to act in it. There’s so much we’re going to do at Delderton and you need to be there.”

Karil was silent. There was nothing he wanted more than to join his friends in this strange school of theirs. Because they were his friends. A few days ago they had been specks seen through a telescope and now they mattered more than anyone. But would he be allowed to go? His future was a blank; he had no right to make plans. And yet . . . Julia had told him about Tally’s determination to come to Bergania.

“She just bullied us all,” Julia had said, “making us invent the Flurry Dance—she seemed to know we had to come.”