The Dragonfly Pool (35 page)

“Well, how goes it?” asked Matteo as Tally came to his room for her tutorial. “Any problems?”

“No, not really. I'm all right.”

Matteo looked at her. He knew that she was not all right and he knew why. The other members of staff, though they watched over Tally with concern, were sure she would soon get over her disappointment.

It was a mistake that he did not make. He and Johannes had met when they were seven years old and they had known in an instant that they were going to be friends. Till Matteo was in his twenties his life had been bound up with that of the king—his best ideas and most selfless visions of the future had come from this relationship—and when he cut himself off and stormed away from Bergania some part of him had died.

His friendship with Johannes had lasted for fifteen years. Tally and Karil had known each other only for a few days, but that made no difference. Sometimes you meet someone—and it can be at any age or time—with whom you should go forward into the future. All the children had warmed to Karil, but for Tally the friendship had been special. She had believed totally in Karil and his wish to live a life that was honorable and free—and she believed that in this life she had a part to play. Now the ground had gone from under her feet. She was not the sort of child to pine, but Karil's silence had hurt her very deeply.

Matteo glanced at the sackbut propped up in a corner of the room. He had not played it since he came back from Bergania.

Then he said, “Karil is safe, I can tell you that. Nothing bad has happened to him. He is with his family.”

Would this make it better for her? In one way yes, but in another way no. She must surely think that an able-bodied boy could write a letter and put it in a box.

There were other things he kept to himself: his visit to a lawyer who told him that there was nothing legal he could do to take Karil away from his grandfather; and the message he had sent to old von Arkel, who was supposed to have fled Bergania and be on his way to England.

Two days later a letter arrived from the War Office addressed to Matteo and he took it to Daley to ask for leave to go to London.

Even though the letter had been seen only by Matteo and the head, its contents mysteriously went around the school and everybody knew that Matteo had been summoned.

“They'll want him to do something very important and secret,” said Tod. “Maybe they'll recruit him to be a spy—he speaks enough languages.”

“Or they'll drop him behind enemy lines by parachute,” suggested Borro.

Barney thought they might want him to be a code breaker. “That wouldn't be much fun: you just sit in a sealed house somewhere and decipher things, but it's terribly important.”

Matteo, needless to say, showed no inclination to discuss his coming visit, and at the end of the week he took the train to Paddington.

The children had said good-bye to him with a mixture of pride at the thought of having a teacher who might be facing a heroic fate and sadness at the thought of losing him. But when he returned it was in such a vile temper that the idea of doing without him seemed an excellent idea.

He came back in the afternoon, in time to give his biology class, and when they came out of it the children were stunned.

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?”

“I do not deny all that—it is because of this that I admitted you to my house instead of having you thrown out. But you will not come here again. Not ever. An Englishman's home is his castle, as you are aware, and if I see you here again I will have you evicted and call the police. Moreover, I know something about your past. You were responsible for the king's early escapades, a bad influence from the start. It was because of you that Johannes wanted to be one of those namby-pamby rulers who pretend that a king can consult his people. A king is a king, an absolute ruler, and one of my tasks before I die is to see that Karil does not forget this.”

For a moment Matteo saw red. He was within an ace of springing forward and fastening his hands around the raddled throat of the old bully. But he managed to get control of himself. There was one thing he still had to do, and it meant being polite when he wanted to kill.

“I shall abide by your decision,” he said, “but I would like to see Karil once to say good-bye. I'm going off to war soon and I may not return.”

“Karil is not at home,” lied the duke.

“I am not in a hurry. I will wait till he returns.”

“No, you won't,” screeched the duke. He was suddenly crimson, a pulse going in his throat. “You will leave my house this instant.” He pressed a bell on his desk and the footman who had admitted Matteo appeared. “Get Henry and show this man out. Make sure the door is bolted behind him. Hurry.”

During that moment while Matteo waited for the second footman, he felt that anything would be worthwhile—prison, a hangman's noose—if he could kill the panting, slobbering tyrant glaring at him from behind his desk. He had to call up the image of Karil exposed to scandal and horror to prevent himself from leaping on his enemy.

The footmen came just in time—feeble lackeys daunted by their instructions. Matteo knocked away the arm of the first one, pushed the second one hard against the wall—and left the building.

The hour Matteo spent in the station waiting for the train back to Delderton was one of the darkest of his life. He saw Johannes's face turned to his, begging him to look after his son. Well, this was how he had looked after Karil. Left him with a power-mad imbecile who would train him to be the kind of tyrant Europe would disgorge in an instant after the war. Karil abandoned in that wretched dark house—and Matteo was powerless. He had betrayed Johannes by leaving Bergania. Now he had betrayed his son.

His rage against himself and the duke only grew on the journey back to school. He gave his lesson on the life history of amphioxus in a black cloud of fury that embraced everything and everyone on earth—and afterward could not recall what he had said.