The Dragonfly Pool

Matteo had stamped up and down the classroom reciting facts about an animal called amphioxus in a manner which would not have disgraced Smith, the teacher Tally had first mistaken for him. He told them to copy things out of a book, he gave them a test on the lesson he had just given and, unbelievably, for homework set them an essay that had to be at least three pages long.

“What’s the matter with him?” asked Barney, utterly bewildered. “He never sets tests except if we have to sit a state exam.”

“And he thinks amphioxus is a waste of time,” said Borro. “I’ve heard him say so. It’s an animal that examiners mind about but nobody else.”

This was true. Matteo had classified a group of what he called formaldehyde animals: creatures that lived in pickle for the benefit of lazy teachers and no one else.

“Something must really be troubling him,” said Tally. “Perhaps the War Office is sending him to certain death and he’s so upset he can’t remember how to teach properly.”

She was right, up to a point. Something was troubling Matteo, but it was not his interview with the War Office, which had been courteous and brief. They were recruiting a body of men who spoke several European languages for a mission behind enemy lines, the details of which were still being worked out. This first interview was simply to discover whether Matteo would be willing to risk his life in such an enterprise, and when he had said that he would, the conversation had turned to the position in Bergania and ended with an excellent dinner in the Travelers Club.

If Matteo had then returned to Delderton, the children in his class would not have been writing an essay on amphioxus or avoiding him when they met him in the courtyard, but he had not. After a night with a friend he had made his way to Rottingdene House, given his name to the sentry in the box guarding the front door, and rung the bell.

While he waited he looked up at the gloomy gray building with its shrouded windows where Karil now lived. The flag with the duke’s crest hung limply from the top of the flagpole, so the owner was at home.

The door was opened by a footman in an ornate but shabby livery of purple and tarnished gold.

Matteo presented his card. “I would like to see Prince Karil, please.”

The footman’s eyes flickered. “The prince is not at home,” he said.

“Very well. Then I would like to see the Duke of Rottingdene.”

“The duke never sees anyone without an appointment.”

Matteo took a step forward. He did not raise his arm, he scarcely moved a muscle, but the footman retreated.

“I will go and see.”

He returned and said, “His Grace will see you for five minutes only. He has an engagement.”

Matteo followed the footman up a broad staircase with a carpet patterned in fleurs-de-lis. Everything was both shabby and oppressive, and there was a smell of some ointment that Matteo, who did not suffer from rheumatism, could not identify.

The duke’s study was even darker and gloomier than the rest of the house. All the wall space that was not taken up by antlers was covered in bad paintings of horses: pedigree hunters with flaring nostrils and rolling eyes. The duke had bred these on his estate in Northumberland in his younger days. Under the painting of a particularly fearsome hunter he read the name ORION. It was this horse which the duke had had shipped out to Bergania to his daughter Alice as a birthday present. The horse had kicked his stable to pieces and thrown his groom, but Alice had been too afraid of her father not to ride it. If it wasn’t for Orion, Karil’s mother would still be alive.

The duke, sitting behind a claw-foot desk, did not trouble to rise or offer his hand.

“Since you insist on seeing me, I want to make one thing clear. You may have brought Karil to England but this does not give you any right now to interfere in his life. Karil will live here under my roof until he is ready to return to Bergania as the country’s rightful king.”

Matteo tried to steady himself.

“I am perfectly aware that as his grandfather you have the right to determine Karil’s upbringing. The law is on your side, I don’t dispute that. But his father’s dying words to me were about Karil. He asked me to look after him. If I can’t do that, I would at least like to show the boy that I am still here as his friend.”

The duke tried to rise from his chair, collapsed and tried again. His gnarled red hands grasped the sides of the desk.

“His friend!” he spat. “Do you seriously imagine that I would allow my grandson to be friends with an outlaw, a vagabond, a man who travels with a group of mad children without discipline or restraint? You think I know nothing about your journey here but the Countess Frederica has given me details of behavior that makes the blood run cold.”

“Did she perhaps also tell you that we were escaping from men who would have killed your grandson without compunction?”