The Dragonfly Pool

He wandered through St. James’s Park, enjoying the sight of the waterfowl and watching men digging trenches. There had been a group of people filling sandbags and Karil had stayed to help them for a while; they had been friendly and cheerful. He passed Buckingham Palace, but the sight of the enormous building in which he knew the two little princesses were incarcerated lowered his spirits, and he had made his way up Whitehall and stood in Piccadilly, with its shrouded fountain, and drank in the bustle, the traffic, the advertisements . . . At last for a while he was free and part of the real world.

He would have slipped back again unnoticed—the servants would not have betrayed him—but Carlotta had been looking for him, and when he returned she was there with her shocked accusations.

“You know that people like us aren’t supposed to go out alone,” she said. “I’m afraid Grandfather is very angry.”

And Grandfather was.

“You don’t seem to understand, Karil, that you are not like other people. You are a future king and—”

“No.” The cry came from Karil without him being aware of it. “I’m not . . . I’m just a person. No one knows what will happen in Bergania—even if Hitler is defeated the people might not want a king again and anyway it could be years. I’ve got to have some air . . . I’ve got to learn something. I can’t live like this.”

“Can’t!” roared the duke, and a shower of spittle came from his mouth. “How dare you defy me? While you are under my roof you will do exactly as I order.” His great hands gripped Karil’s shoulders like a vice. “From now on I shall see to it that you are watched at all times. What’s more, you will be locked into your bedroom at night.”

“No! Please. I’ve never been locked in. My father never punished me like that.”

“It would have been better if he had,” said the duke—and he sent for the servants straightaway and gave his instructions.

Under this regime, Karil became more and more desperate. He even wondered if he was beginning to lose his reason—for he had been sure that he had seen Matteo, a few days earlier, walking across the courtyard away from the house. He had been standing at an upstairs window, and by the time he’d managed to pull back the curtains and struggled with the heavy sash cords, the man had gone.

“Was Matteo here?” he had asked his grandfather—and the duke had scowled and told him not to be stupid.

“The sooner you realize that those vagabonds you came over with have forgotten you, the better,” he said.

Karil did realize it. He was too proud to show his grief, but his body began to let him down. He developed a cough that did not go away, he lost weight, and found it difficult to sleep.

At night, the sound of the key turning in the lock seemed to set the seal on a life to be lived without love, or endeavor, or hope.

CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

The Painting

It was not only David Prosser who was in love with Clemmy. The children at Delderton were used to seeing young men standing outside the school with their motorbikes, hoping she would go out with them. But Clemmy had a boyfriend to whom she was absolutely faithful. She had known him since she started work as a model and she loved not only him but his work. Francis Lakeland was a landscape painter who did quiet and very beautiful paintings of the countryside. People liked these and they were shown in exhibitions, but no one bought them very much because they were too peaceful and didn’t have anybody being set on fire or dismembered or sitting with their mouth open, screaming.

So, to make some money, Francis Lakeland took on commissions to paint portraits of society people who wanted their wives and daughters to look beautiful.

A week after half term, Clemmy had a letter from Francis in which he asked her to come up to London for a weekend because he expected to be called up for the army.

“It won’t be straightaway,” he wrote, “but I want to see you badly and I need to talk to you about a piece of work I’ve been asked to do.”

The idea of Francis in the army made Clemmy’s stomach crunch up in a most alarming way. He was a gentle, scholarly man, serious about his work but funny about everything else. It wasn’t easy to think of him as a soldier.

All housemothers had a free weekend each month, and a week after she got his letter Clemmy arrived in London. She and Francis wandered hand in hand through the city and it was when they were sitting in one of their favorite places, a bench in St. James’s churchyard in Piccadilly, that Francis told her about his commission to paint Carlotta von Carinstein, the daughter of an exiled archduke.

“Oh Francis, do you have to?” asked Clemmy, for she knew how much he disliked the fawning and flattery that went with painting the children of rich and snobbish people.