The Dragonfly Pool

CHAPTER ELEVEN The Prince Awakes

It was a very large bed — a four-poster draped in the colors of

Bergania — red, green, and white. Green was for the fir trees that hugged Bergania’s mountains, red for the glowing sunsets behind the peaks, white for the everlasting snows. On the head-board were carved a crown and the words THE TRUTH SHALL SET THEE FREE, which was the country’s motto.

The bed was too large for the boy who now woke in it — but then everything in the palace was too large for him. His bedroom could have housed a railway carriage; in his bathtub one could have washed a company of soldiers. Even his name was longer than he needed it to be: Karil Alexander Ivo Donatien, Duke of Eschacht, Margrave of Munzen, Crown Prince of Bergania.

He was twelve years old and small for his age, with brown eyes and brown hair and an expression one does not often see in the portraits of princes: the look of someone still searching for where he belongs.

Now he stretched and sat up in bed and thought about the day that faced him, which was no different from other days. Lessons in the morning, inspecting something or opening something with his father in the afternoon, then more lessons or homework… and always surrounded by tutors and courtiers and governesses.

For a moment he looked out at the mountains outside the windows. On one peak, the Quartz Needle, the snow never melted entirely, even now in early summer. He imagined getting up and escaping and walking alone up and up through the fir woods, across the meadows where there were marmots and eagles… and up, up till he reached the everlasting snow and could stand there, alone in the cold clear air.

There was a tap on the door and a footman entered with his fruit juice and two rusks on a silver tray. Not one rusk, not three, always two. After him came the majordomo with the timetable for the day, and then another servant to lay out his clothes: his jodhpurs and riding jacket, his fencing things, and the uniform of the Munzen Guards which Karil particularly hated. The stand-up collar rubbed his neck, the white trousers had to be kept spotless, and the plumes on the helmet got in his eyes.

And now came the woman who would scold him and hover over him and criticize him all day. Frederica, Countess of Aveling, was tall and bony and dressed entirely in black, because someone in the Royal Houses of Europe had always died. She was in fact a human being, but she might as easily have been a gargoyle that had stepped down from the roof of a dark cathedral. Her ferocious nose, her grim mouth, and jagged chin looked as though they could well be carved in stone.

Officially she was the First Lady of the Household, but she was also the prince’s second cousin and had come over from England after the death of the prince’s mother in a riding accident when he was four years old.

Queen Alice of Bergania had been British — the daughter of the proud and snobbish Duke of Rottingdene, who lived in London, in a large gray mansion not far from Buckingham Palace. Although English was the second language of the Berganian court, the duke did not trust foreigners to supervise the education and behavior of his grandson and had sent the fiercest of his unmarried relatives to see that the boy behaved correctly and with dignity at all times — and never forgot exactly who he was.

In the palace, and to Karil himself, she was known as the Scold, because scolding was all she seemed to do.

“Good morning, Your Highness,” she said, and curtsied. She always curtsied when she greeted him in the morning, and from the depth of her curtsy Karil could tell how badly she was going to scold him. The more displeased she was, the deeper did she sink toward the ground. This morning she practically sat down on the floor, and sure enough she began to scold him straightaway.

“I really must speak to you about the way you have been waving to children when you are out driving. Of course, to extend your arm slightly and bring it back again is right and proper. It is expected. But the way you greeted those children outside their school yesterday was quite inexcusable, leaning out of the window. You cannot expect your subjects to keep their distance if you encourage them like that.” She broke off. “Are you listening to me, Karil?”

“Yes, Cousin Frederica.”

“And when will you realize that servants are not to be addressed directly except to give orders to? I heard you yesterday asking one of the footmen about his daughter in a way that was positively chatty.”

“She was ill,” said Karil. “I wanted to know how she was getting on.”

“You could have sent a message,” said the Scold. She moved over to the chair on which the valet had laid out the prince’s uniform, picked up the helmet and peered at it suspiciously. There had been a most shocking incident once when Karil had cut the plumes off the helmet of the Berganian Rifles just before an important parade.

“I haven’t done anything to it,” said Karil. “It was only once, because I wanted to be able to see.”

“I should hope not. Cutting the ends off valuable ostrich feathers! I’ve never heard of anything so outrageous. However…” the Scold’s face changed and took on a coy and simpering look, “I have something here that will please you. A letter from your cousin Carlotta. It encloses a photograph which I will have framed so that you can have it in your room.”

She handed Karil a letter which he put down on a gilt-legged table.

“Well, aren’t you going to read it?”

“Yes, I will — later. I want to go outside for a moment before breakfast.”

“I’m afraid that won’t be possible.” She consulted a large watch on a chain which she wore pinned to her blouse. “We are already four minutes late.”

Karil sighed and took out the photograph. Carlotta von Carinstein was a year younger than the prince and very pretty, with ringlets down to her shoulders. She was wearing a floating kind of dress with puffed sleeves and holding a bunch of flowers, and she was smiling. Carlotta always smiled.

He already had three of her photographs.

The countess controlled her irritation. It was obvious that Carlotta and Karil would marry in due course and it was time that the boy realized this. Carlotta lived in London with Karil’s grandfather, the Duke of Rottingdene. Of course, both the prince and Carlotta were very young but it was sensible in royal households to have these things understood from the beginning.

“Now, Karil,” she said, “here is the program for the day: math and French with Herr Friedrich as usual, then history and Greek with Monsieur Dalrose. At luncheon you will sit next to the Turkish ambassador’s wife — she has asked to meet you because she has a son your age, and you will talk to her in French. Your fencing lesson with Count Festing is at the usual time, but your riding lesson has been put forward to allow you to change for the inspection of the new railway station at which you will accompany your father.”

“Are we riding or driving?”

“You are driving. Your father will be in the Lagonda; you go in the next car with the Baron and Baroness Gambetti.”

Karil tried to hide his disappointment. He saw his father so seldom — rarely before dinner and often not then. Days passed when he did not see him at all. Even though he was not allowed to chat in the royal car, it was good to be beside him. His father was a stern and conscientious ruler, and he seemed to care for nothing except his work. Sometimes Karil felt that his father had really turned into that bewhiskered, solemn person — King Johannes III of Bergania — whose pictures hung in the schools and public places of his country.

But the countess was still scolding. “And I don’t want to have to tell you again that your manner to Baron Gambetti is not satisfactory.”

“I don’t like him.”

“Like him? Like him? I hope you don’t imagine that princes of the blood can have likes and dislikes. You are entirely above such things.”

“He wants us to give in to the Nazis. And his wife sleeps with a picture of Hitler under her pillow.”

“I beg your pardon? I dare not wonder how you have come by that piece of tittle-tattle. Now hurry up and get dressed.”

Breakfast was taken in a room that overlooked the moat and had a view down the hill to the town and the river which wound through it. Karil had it in the company of his Cousin Frederica and three ladies of the bedchamber, who were also the king’s aunts: plump turnip-shaped ladies with big bosoms and short legs, like roots, on which they tottered around the palace giggling and gossiping and finding fault. Karil’s uncle Fritz was also at breakfast: a vague-looking man with long silver hair and dreamy pale blue eyes. Nobody had known quite what to do with him, so the king had made him minister of culture. It was a job he took very seriously, organizing singing competitions and literary events and folk festivals. The politicians in the cabinet laughed at him behind his back, but Karil was very fond of him.

The king never breakfasted with his family. He had a tray sent to his bedroom and started to work on state papers as soon as he woke.

Conversation at meals was supposed to be “improving” and to show Karil what was happening in the world and today there was plenty to discuss. Hitler had again sent envoys to Bergania asking the king to allow troops to march through the country in case of war, and the king had again refused. Bergania had always been neutral, he said, and neutral it would remain.

“It was very brave to refuse a second time,” said the oldest lady of the bedchamber, slicing the top off her egg. “Very brave indeed.”

“Perhaps a little foolhardy,” said the second lady. “Hitler is not to be trifled with.”

“And look at what happened to poor Zog,” said the third.

All three ladies shook their heads, thinking of poor Zog of Albania, who had lost his throne and was now having a miserable time in a villa in Spain without proper drains.

“There were other demands,” said Uncle Fritz. “Hitler wanted all the refugees returned — the people who had fled Germany and come here, and that’s quite out of the question. The leader of our orchestra is a German Jew and the best musician we’ve ever had.”

Cousin Frederica broke her roll in half with her bony fingers. “Herr Hitler has might on his side.”

Karil looked at her across the table. “But my father has right on his.”

It was not a big procession — opening a railway station is not as important as signing a treaty or welcoming a foreign ruler. All the same, the schoolchildren were let out of school early, people lined the streets, there were flags and bunting among the flowers in the window boxes, and at least five cars filled with various dignitaries stood ready to set off.

Karil had hoped to get a chance to talk to his father before the procession left, but the king was flanked by the prime minister and the mayor and escorted to his favorite car, the Lagonda, with the royal pennant fluttering on the bonnet. Following in the Rolls-Royce with Baron Gambetti, Karil tried hard to be civil. Gambetti was a thin man with a yellow skull, sneering lips, and a pointed beard like a goat’s stuck on the end of his chin. Everyone knew that he was trying to persuade the king to give in to Hitler and that the baroness egged him on. Trying to be polite, trying not to wave too enthusiastically to the children lining the route, kept Karil busy till they reached the station and there it all was: the red carpet, the officials with their chains of office and their medals, the band of the Berganian Rifles breaking into the national anthem…

A small girl in a white dress came forward to curtsy and give the king a big bouquet of lilies, and an even smaller girl was pushed forward and gave Karil a posy of sweet peas — and then the speeches began.

Karil had liked the old wooden station, with its single waiting room hung with posters of Italy and Austria and Spain, and a black iron stove. The new one was of brick, faced with yellow stucco, and had a fanciful blue roof, and the architect who had designed it was presented to the king and made a speech and so did the mayor and the director of railways.

Karil found it difficult to concentrate on the speeches; they always seemed to be the same, whether it was a railway station being opened or a football team being presented or a bishop being buried, but he managed to stand up very straight and not to blow the ostrich feathers out of his eyes even though a breeze had sprung up and they were tickling him badly. Then the king cut the pink ribbon stretched across the platform and declared the station open, and everyone got back in their cars for the drive home. As they made their way along the promenade beside the river Karil noticed some workmen putting up bell tents on the level ground at the edge of the park.

“What are those for?” he asked Baron Gambetti.

“Oh, some nonsense of your uncle Fritz,” sneered the baron, who made no secret of his contempt for the minister of culture.

“A folk-dance festival or some such thing — children coming from all over the place.”

“I hope they will behave,” said the baroness. “There are some from one of those free schools in England. They will carry on like savages, no doubt.”

Karil looked at the tents, imagining them full of busy children from all over the world. But it wouldn’t help him. Maybe one child would be scrubbed clean and presented to him for a few minutes, but he would never know what was really going on in their lives… or make a friend.

When he was younger and had read fairy stories, Karil had always been angry with all those goose girls and milkmaids who wanted to marry a prince.

“Don’t do it!” he had wanted to shout at them. “Don’t go and live in a palace. You’ll be bored and bullied, and everybody you meet — absolutely everybody — will be old!”

Back at the palace Karil changed out of the detested uniform, but the working day was still not over. A professor came from the College of Heraldry to give him a lecture on the different methods of saluting and showed him pictures of the exact angle of the hand in relation to the lobe of the ear. This was followed by the visit of a sculptor who wanted to measure Karil’s head for a bust which the Youth Center had ordered for their sports hall.

“Do I have to do this now? There’s time for a ride before dinner,” said Karil.

“Certainly you have to do it now,” said the Scold. “You really must stop making an unseemly fuss about this kind of thing.”

It was true that Karil hated being painted and photographed and modeled. It had begun when he was small and a photographer’s flashlight had exploded in his face — but even now he was frightened by the way his father had turned into a portrait and his mother had become a marble statue in the park.

The king was not at dinner. A special meeting of his cabinet had been called to deal with Germany’s new demands and it was still going on.

“Couldn’t I go and say good night to him?” asked Karil. “Just for a minute?” He had not spoken a single word to his father all day.

“Now, Karil,” said the Scold, “you know you mustn’t disturb him in a meeting.”

The meeting had already lasted for four hours. The king looked gray and tired. Baron Gambetti, the foreign minister, sat next to him, leaning forward. His goatee waggled on his chin; his yellow skull glistened with sweat as he stabbed his pencil against the paper.

“In my view it would be extremely unwise to refuse Herr Hitler his requests. He has made Germany into a great power and those who oppose him will be crushed.”

On the other side of the king, the elderly prime minister, Wolf-gang von Arkel, shook his head. A loyal and faithful servant of the king for many years, von Arkel supported his master in his stand against the German Führer.

“Giving in to bullying has never been a wise policy,” he said now, stroking his long white beard. He turned to the king. “I have to assure Your Majesty that your people are behind you.

No one wishes to see storm troopers marching through our country. As for forcing those people who have sought shelter with us back into Nazi hands, it is not to be thought of by decent men.”

Gambetti snorted. “A sensible compromise in which we grant a few of Herr Hitler’s demands in exchange for—”

“In exchange for what?” put in von Arkel. “Empty promises and then more demands.”

The king leaned back in his chair. He agreed with his prime minister, a good man whom he trusted absolutely. The head of the army was behind him, too. But there were others… He looked at his watch. There was time still to say good night to his son. He half rose to his feet and then sat wearily down again. He could not afford to let Gambetti bring the waverers around to his point of view.

The day ended as it had begun, only in reverse. A footman came to turn down Karil’s bed, a second one brought two rusks and a glass of fruit juice on a silver tray. The uniform of the Munzen Guards was put back in the cupboard and the uniform of the Berganian Rifles was taken away to be pressed for the following day. The countess came with Carlotta’s latest picture in a frame and put out the light.

Left alone, Karil got out of bed again and drew back the curtains. The mountains were dark against the sky; the rosy light of sunset was gone. He went over to the other window and looked down at the river and at the row of lamps on the promenade. He could make out the bell tents, and inside them a glimmer of moving lights as the workers finished the preparations for the Folk Dance Festival.

He turned, startled, as the door suddenly opened. Someone had come in with a firm stride and without knocking.

In a second Karil had run forward to embrace his father. He had come to say good night after all, and at once the world seemed to be a different place.

The king did not ask his son whether he had had a good day. He knew full well about Karil’s day; he had had so many days of his own like that when he was a boy. Days when he felt trapped and weary and wanted nothing except to escape into the hills and never return.

“When this crisis is over we’ll go out together, you and I, and hide,” he said, “and they can look for us as much as they want.”

Karil nodded. “Can we go to the dragonfly pool?” he asked. “It’s the right time of year.”

“Yes. That’s where we’ll go.”

For a moment the king stood looking down at his son. The dragonfly pool belonged to his own childhood, before he was weighed down by duties. To the days when he had had a friend to share adventures with. The friend had betrayed him in the end, but the memory of those days still warmed his heart.

After the king had left, Karil stood by the window, looking down at the tents in the park below. Perhaps he would not always be cut off from real people and real life. Perhaps he would get to know the children who were coming. Those few moments with his father had given him courage and hope.

CHAPTER TWELVE Arrival in Bergania

The Deldertonians came by train through one of the longest tunnels in Europe and suddenly they were in a valley that seemed to be a kind of garden because everywhere there were flowers — in the window boxes of the little houses, trailing around lampposts, hanging down from verandas. Yet when one looked upward, leaning out of the windows of the train, there were the mountains, cold and majestic and very, very high.

For Tally it was as though the newsreel she had seen in the cinema had burst into color and life. She had wanted to come to Bergania because of the bravery of the king and his people, but now she was just glad to be there, in a country she had never dreamed of seeing.

“Make sure you leave nothing behind,” said Magda — and Tally and Julia exchanged glances, for it was Magda who left things behind: her handbag when they changed trains in northern France, her scarf on the boat. As long as she had her briefcase with her notes on Schopenhauer in it, she felt herself fully dressed.

The children scrambled for their belongings. Kit had sat on a tomato sandwich and Julia dabbed at him with a paper napkin. Verity was tossing out her hair — it had to be untidy in just the right way and this took time. Matteo was out in the corridor. Whenever Tally woke in the night he had been standing there with his back to the crowded compartment, looking out at the landscape.

The children from Delderton had three compartments in the front of the train. Then came the group from Germany — well-behaved, good-looking children in dark blue shorts and spotless white shirts. In the second carriage were the Swedes and the French; then came the Italians, the Norwegians, the Spaniards… They had all just begun to make friends at Innsbruck, where the train had halted for a couple of hours.

The station came in sight, its pillars wreathed in roses. As the children got out they were greeted by a blast of music.

“My goodness, they’ve sent a band to welcome us,” said Barney.

At the end of the platform stood a distinguished-looking man with long silver hair, wearing a loden jacket, flanked by two officials with badges and golden chains.

“A reception committee,” said Borro. “Well, well. They must think we’re important.”

“We are important,” said Tally firmly. “We’re here because of goodwill between nations and all that.”

All along the train, children tumbled out on to the platform and re-formed in a line beside their teachers. The Delderton children, who were not used to standing in line, stayed in a huddle, blinking in the warm sunshine.

The band, which had played various national anthems, broke into “God Save the King.” Then the distinguished gentleman with the long gray hair, flanked by the mayor and his aldermen, came down the platform, greeting each group, shaking hands. It was the minister of culture, Prince Karil’s uncle Fritz, who had come in person to welcome them.

When he reached the Deldertonians he spoke to them in perfect English.

“We are particularly glad to welcome you to Bergania,” he said, “because as you may know our beloved queen came from your country. The links between Bergania and Britain have always been strong.”

Everyone looked around for Matteo, expecting him to reply, but he had vanished and Magda was silent, overcome by shyness. But the minister had seen the book under her arm and reached out for it.

“Ah, Schopenhauer,” he said. “You are interested in his work?”

Magda blushed. “I am writing a thesis on his stylistic influences,” she said.

“How interesting. I myself have always been fascinated by his views on Reason and the Will, but alas there is so little time to pursue such things.” He pulled himself up. “Now here is the program for the week,” he said, handing Magda a brochure. “There will be two days to rest and to see our beautiful country. Then on Monday the festival will be opened officially and the dancing will begin. We have buses ready to take you to your camp, and tonight there will be dinner at the Blue Ox. Here you have a map of the city, a timetable, and a list of excursions.”

It was only as they were making their way to the buses waiting in the station forecourt that Matteo came to join them.

“Where have you been?” asked Barney. “You were supposed to greet the minister.”

Matteo gestured to a clump of aspens on the embankment.

“The perfect habitat for the poplar moth. I saw one as long as my thumb.”

The children did not ask if he had brought it back. Matteo never killed the butterflies he found…

The field in which the dancers’ bell tents had been pitched was a pleasant place — by the side of the river and adjoining the park with its bandstand and pavilion and its pool full of carp. At the far end of the park, the ground sloped upward toward the hill where the palace stood. Behind the palace — as everywhere in Bergania — one could see the mountain peaks.

Each group of dancers had been given two tents, and there was a flag on top of the tent poles to show which nationality they belonged to. The British were in the tents next to the bridge which crossed the river on to the promenade and into the town. Beside them were the Germans, with the other nationalities strung out along the bank. There was a washhouse and toilet block shared by all the groups. The Yugoslavs, who had arrived earlier on a bus from the south, were already busy splashing and showering and singing, while their teachers, two large and cheerful ladies, were rinsing their feet in the sinks meant for washing up.

A wooden platform had been erected close by so that the visitors could practice their dances, but the actual festival would be held in the town’s main square. Fortunately Matteo had stopped chasing butterflies and looking at the view, and in a short time the sleeping bags were arranged in the two tents, with Magda and the girls in one, and Matteo and the boys, with the boxes of costumes, in the other, and it was time to cross the bridge and make their way to the Blue Ox for supper.

The Blue Ox was on the promenade: an old-fashioned hotel and inn which was the favorite gathering place for the people of the town. It had a big terrace overlooking the river, and tables with red-and-white checked tablecloths were set out under a chestnut tree. Inside, everything was very large and very solid and made of wood. The benches gleamed with polish, there were stands with salted pretzels on the tables, and the walls were covered in antlers and the stuffed heads of mountain goats.

The landlord, Herr Keller, was the kind of man one would expect an innkeeper to be: genial and burly with a big stomach and a loud laugh.

It was clear that he was a staunch royalist, because for every pair of antlers or stuffed goat, there was a portrait of the king. Johannes III was pictured with whiskers and before he had grown them. He was pictured on horseback and at the head of a procession and just standing very straight in his uniform with his decorations on his chest. There were a number of pictures, too, of Queen Alice but these were draped in black crepe and had been for the last eight years, since she died.

Herr Keller spoke a little English and, with Magda translating, the children were made acquainted with the history of the Royal House of Bergania.

“What about the prince?” asked Tally. “Aren’t there any pictures of him?”

Herr Keller frowned and said that His Highness hated to be photographed.

“Why?” asked Verity. “Is there something wrong with him?”

“Certainly not,” said Herr Keller, offended. “He is a very nice-looking boy. I can show you a picture in the smoking room.”

But the picture was of a very small boy in a sailor suit, his face hidden by an enormous sun hat.

He led them into the dining room, where the other children were already sitting.

The food was delicious, and the waitresses were very helpful about bringing a plate of boiled rice for Augusta Carrington. Only the head waitress, a middle-aged woman with ginger hair and a square, plain face, behaved oddly; they caught her again and again staring at Matteo and it was not till he glared at her angrily that she stopped.

“Perhaps she just wanted you for a friend,” suggested Tally, who was sitting next to him, but then he turned and glared at her instead. Well, he can suit himself, thought Tally as she helped herself to a gigantic pancake oozing with apricot jam.

When the Deldertonians returned to the camp, the German children were already in their tents, their belongings stacked neatly outside. From inside their tent came the sound of an old Bavarian folk song sung in perfect harmony.

“Why are they so good at everything?” said Julia irritably. “If they weren’t so nice one would be really annoyed.”

But the German children were nice: friendly and helpful and kind. They could not have been less like those Hitler Youth Corps one saw on the newsreels, saluting and stamping and marching about.

“Right, it’s time for bed,” said Matteo.

One by one they crawled into their sleeping bags. Magda and Matteo stayed up a while, talking very quietly, but at last all the tents were silent.

Tally fell asleep at once, but two hours later Verity turned over in her sleep and kicked her. The soles of Verity’s feet were very hard from walking barefoot even in Paddington Station, and Tally was jerked into instant wakefulness. She tried to go back to sleep again but she was overtired; images from the journey kept running through her brain, and presently she gave up the attempt.

Matteo had insisted that everyone bring a torch, which they put beside their pillow. Now, as she slipped into her gym shoes and put on a jersey over her pajamas, she reached for hers and crept out of the tent.

But when she got outside and straightened up she found there was no need for a torch, because she had come out into a world of silvery brightness: the moon was full over the mountains; the single snow-covered peak dazzlingly white; the trees in the park standing out black against the sky.

She left the tents behind and made her way toward the little pavilion, built like a Greek temple, but her eyes kept being drawn upward to the moonlit palace on its hill. Now, in the night, it looked like the impenetrable fortress it must once have been, not a place of pleasure.

The statue appeared before her suddenly as she crossed a foot-bridge and rounded a bend on the path. It was very white in the moonlight, and when Tally got close to it she saw that the woman was wearing a long white dress, and in her hair was a kind of tiara — or was it a crown?

Tally switched on her torch. The woman was very beautiful, though her face was sad. In her hands, which were loosely clasped, was a bunch of flowers. At first, because of the unreal white light Tally thought they were made of marble like the rest of the statue, but as she went closer she saw that the flowers were real; she could even smell, very faintly, the scent that came from them. Someone must have brought them and put them in the statue’s hands.

At the base of the statue was a plaque. Like all the notices in Bergania it was in three languages — Berganian, English, and Italian.

Tally switched off her torch. The marble face looked down at her, thoughtful and sad. The prince had been four when his mother died, so he would remember her, thought Tally, but only just. She herself had no memories of her mother, but one could manage without a mother if one had a good father, and both she and the prince had that. The prince would be all right.

She was turning away when she heard footsteps and saw, coming over the little bridge, a man in dark clothes. He was walking very fast, almost running, and from his hurrying figure there came a sense of menace. He looked dangerous and angry.

Tally braced herself. She was quite alone. There was nothing to do except wait and hope he would go past.

But he did not go past.

“What the devil are you doing out here alone?” came Matteo’s furious voice. “You must be out of your mind. Surely it’s obvious that you should stay in the camp?” He shone his torch, infinitely stronger than her own, and transfixed her in a beam of light. “You’re in a strange country — anything could happen to you.”

But Tally stood her ground. “I don’t feel as though I’m in a strange country,” she said. “I feel as though I’m in a place where nothing bad could happen.”

But Matteo was not appeased.

“There is no place where nothing bad could happen,” he said. “Not in the world we live in now.”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN The Prince Watches

Karil had removed the latest photograph of Carlotta from the table by the window so that he could rest the arm with which he was steadying the big telescope he had borrowed from the library. Usually when he looked down at the town he used the binoculars his father had given him for his birthday, but to make out actual people he needed a stronger magnification.

But even with the telescope he saw the children only as scurrying ants, not as individuals. The British tents were the closest, next to the bridge; the other tents were partly screened by the trees that grew along the river, but he could see the wooden platform which had been put up so that the dancers could practice.

There was a group there rehearsing now, stamping and swirling. They were brightly dressed in red and yellow — Spanish perhaps, or Portuguese? He could hear very faintly the sound of guitars and tambourines.

He directed the telescope back to the British tents. The children there seemed to be doing chores, shaking out sleeping bags and fixing a clothesline. Two boys were banging wooden sticks together — one girl, small as a grasshopper, was taking a little boy through the steps of a dance. Karil tried to follow her with the telescope, but she was like quicksilver and he kept losing her.

An angry voice behind him made him turn around.

“May I ask you what you are doing, Karil, staring out of the window when Monsieur Dalrose is waiting to give you your history lesson?” said Countess Frederica. She walked over to the window. “And where is the photograph of Carlotta? What have you done with it?”

“It’s on the chest of drawers.” Karil sighed and put down the telescope. Actually it seemed to him that the whole room was full of pictures of Carlotta. She was like those earthworms that one cut in half and each half grew again. “I only wanted to see what the folk dancers are doing. Especially the British ones.”

“The less said about the British team the better,” said Countess Frederica. “I saw the Baroness Gambetti this morning and she told me that their behavior is shocking.”

Karil turned away from the window. “How? How is it shocking?”

The countess drew her ferocious brows together. “I’m afraid I can’t tell you that. But I can only say that you can stop showing an interest in what appear to be ruffians with no discipline and no manners.”

The Scold did not normally spend time with the Baroness Gambetti. Whether the wife of the foreign minister did or did not sleep with a picture of Hitler under her pillow, she was certainly a woman who disagreed with the king, and whatever the countess’s faults she was utterly loyal to Johannes. But they had met in the salon of the dressmaker who made clothes for the court, and the baroness had been full of gossip and indignation.

“The British rabble have no uniform — they came with a ragbag of clothes and not one of them can curtsy. And they call their teachers by their Christian names. But that’s not all — they wear nothing in the shower rooms.” She lowered her voice. “Nothing at all.”

Countess Frederica had tried to be fair. “Of course, it would not be sensible to shower in one’s clothes,” she pointed out.

“No, of course not,” snapped the baroness. “But it is customary to slip off one’s bathrobe at the very last second, whereas these children just wander about in the washroom till it is their turn. They have no modesty and no shame. And the man who is in charge of them looks like a bandit. My husband says his face is familiar — he’s probably wanted by the police.”

There had been no time to hear more about the British children but the countess had learned enough.

“Put the telescope away, and put Carlotta back in her rightful place, please.”

But at lunchtime Uncle Fritz seemed to be very pleased with the way things were going down in the park.

“Everyone has settled in very well,” he said. “It’s so good to have young people.” He sighed.

“They’re going to have a tour of the town today,” he went on. “They’ll come to the palace — only the staterooms, of course, and the ramparts — but if you look out of the window you’ll be able to see them. Fortunately they seem to be getting on very well, the different teams. That’s because it’s not a competition, just people coming together to make music and dance,” said Uncle Fritz happily.

But the best news was still to come. After the meal was over, an equerry sent for Uncle Fritz and asked him to come to the council chamber because His Majesty wanted to speak to him. When he came back he was beaming.

“Your father will come himself to the opening ceremony,” he told Karil. “It is quite unexpected — no one thought the king would have time to open what is after all only a children’s festival. You will accompany your father, of course. The master of ceremonies is arranging the details now.”

But if Uncle Fritz was delighted and the prince, too, the chief of police and the head of the army were appalled.

“It’s madness — trying to arrange proper security at such short notice. Two days! My reservists will be away at camp,” said Colonel Metz.

“We’ll have to use the trainees,” said the chief of police. “And he’s going on horseback — both he and the prince will ride. He thinks the children will prefer it. What’s got into the king — and just now when everything is so tense?”

The king himself could not have told them what had got into him. He only knew that after yet another week of endless meetings, threatening telegrams from the German chancellor, heckling and nagging from Gambetti and his followers, he was reaching the end of his tether. He had forgotten what it was like to be a human being, to have a son whom he loved, to live in a world where children came together to make music and to dance.

That night he left a meeting of his defense committee early and made his way to Karil’s room.

“Is it true?” was the first thing his son said. “We’re going to open the Folk Dance Festival together?”

“Yes, Karil. We’ll give them something to remember! I’m calling out the Mounted Guard. And I shall see that the children are presented to you.”

The prince was silent for a moment. Then: “Couldn’t I actually meet them? Not just have them presented — meet them properly?”

It was the king now who was silent. “Karil, it never works, trying to make friends with people from outside our world. Believe me — I know what I’m talking about.” His face was somber as he looked out at the mountains. “You will only get hurt.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Perhaps we shouldn’t put it off any longer, going to the dragonfly pool. I can’t promise, but there are no meetings tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN Sightseeing

The Berganians had done their best to make the campsite comfortable for the visiting teams, but camping is camping — there is nothing to be done about that.

Kit found a toad on the slatted floor of the shower and came back to tell Tally that he did not like it. He did not like it at all. Then there was breakfast. Matteo had gone off early, no one knew where, and Julia and Tally tried to light the Primus while Magda was still in the shower, but it was an ancient, temperamental contraption with a will of its own and, however much they pumped, it wouldn’t get going.

“I can perhaps help?” said a boy from the German tent. He had a mass of brown curls and a friendly smile, and with him came his sister, whose hair was even curlier and whose smile was as broad.

And he did help, without any fuss, so that in a few minutes the stove was roaring like a furnace.

At this point Magda appeared and decided that she would make the porridge, and she began well, stirring the pot with a big ladle — only then she had an important thought about Schopenhauer — you could tell when this happened because her eyes glazed over — and the ladle moved more and more slowly, and though Barney rushed to take it from her, it was too late.

“It’s funny — you can eat burned toast and it isn’t too bad at all,” said Borro, “but burned porridge!”

After breakfast they started on their chores. Augusta Carrington must have swallowed something which disagreed with her — perhaps a piece of meat that had got stuck to her plate of rice — and had come out in lumps on her back, and Verity needless to say did nothing to help but wandered past the tents of the other children, showing them how beautiful she was, but the rest of them worked with a will.

The Deldertonians were in their ordinary clothes, but most of the children wore their national costumes and the campsite was a blaze of color — the orange and yellow of the Spaniards and the Italians, the cool blue and white of the Scandinavians… the fierce black-and-red embroidered shirts of the Hungarians…

The buses that were to take them on a tour of the town were not due till eleven, and while they waited some of the teams took turns rehearsing on the wooden platform. The Germans had gone through their dance early. It was beautiful and didn’t involve anybody hitting themselves on their own behinds, though there was a certain amount of yodeling.

“But yodeling is a good thing really because it’s how people call each other in the mountains,” said Barney.

After the Germans came the Yugoslavs, whose dance was very ferocious with a lot of stamping, and music from a very strange instrument which was covered in fur and had a horn sticking out of each end.

“Do you think we should be stamping more? ” asked Julia anxiously but Tally said no, she didn’t think the British did much in the way of stamping.

“It’s no good worrying about the poor Flurry Dance — it may be odd but it got us here,” said Tally. “And the people are pleased to see us; they really are.”

This was true. The assistants in the shops, the waiters in the Blue Ox, mothers strolling through the park pushing prams — all greeted them and said how good it was to see children from other countries.

“You really like it here, don’t you?” said Borro. “I mean, really.”

“Yes,” said Tally, “I really do.”

The Swedes were on the platform, their blue skirts swirling gracefully as they waltzed, when the two buses drew up on the other side of the bridge.

They drove to the cathedral first. Tally and Julia remembered it from the newsreel — a solemn Gothic building with a tall spire. Inside, among the dark paintings of crucifixions, was a portrait of St. Aurelia, the saint whose birthday the Berganians had been celebrating in the film.

“She was so young when she died,” said Anneliese, the curly-haired German girl whose brother had helped them to light the Primus. “Only thirteen. I would not wish to die so young.”

After the cathedral they drove to the covered market, where they seemed to be selling everything in the world. There were cake stalls piled high with gingerbread hearts, and meat stalls where enormous pink sausages swayed like Zeppelins, and fruit such as the children from the Northern countries had never seen properly ripened: peaches and apricots, nectarines and great succulent bunches of purple grapes.

Then back into the buses for a drive to the town’s main square, the Johannes Platz, named for the king.

It was very large and covered in cobbles. On the north side was the Palace of Justice, on the west side the town hall, with a famous clock tower from which carved figures of the Twelve Apostles came out one by one as the hours struck, and on the south the Blue Ox, with its beer garden and terrace.

But what the children from Delderton were staring at with dismay was the wooden platform in the center of the square that had been put up specially for the festival.

It looked as though the whole town meant to come and see them dance.

They had lunch in a café in a side road and then everybody got into the buses again for a tour of the royal palace. By now the children had all mixed. Borro was talking to a pretty French girl with long blonde hair. They sat with their heads close together, discussing milk yields and grazing acreages, because her parents kept a herd of Charolais cows on their farm in Burgundy. At the back of the bus the Danish girls were cutting up bunches of grapes with their nail scissors and handing them around. Verity was flirting with an Italian boy, who listened to her politely but seemed more interested in the mountains they could see out of the window.

Matteo was not on the bus. He had counted everybody in, exchanged a few words with Magda, and walked away.

“He’s getting really good at not being here,” said Tally.

They drove through a sun-drenched valley covered in vineyards and orchards, and past little wooden houses with flower-filled balconies, and the people they passed all waved. It seemed to her that she had never been in a happier place.

The palace appeared and disappeared as the road snaked around the side of the hill. It was not a big palace, just as Bergania was not a big kingdom, but everything was there: turrets and towers, a moat, and a flagpole with the royal standard raised to show that the king was in residence. There were two sentry boxes, striped red, green, and gold in the Bergania colors, and a soldier stood guard on either side of the tall, gold-spiked gate.

As they drove into the forecourt an eagle soared up over the battlements and Tally, her head tilted to follow its flight, gave a sudden intake of breath.

“What is it? What’s the matter?” said Julia.

Tally could not answer. What she had seen had both frightened and shocked her.

A figure dressed in black was pulling someone roughly away from a high barred window. She could not make out the person who was being dragged away; it was someone small, a child probably — and already out of sight — but the black-clad figure stood for a moment looking out through the bars. It was a woman — but a woman out of some cruel and ancient story: a witch, a jailer. Even so far away, one could see the anger that possessed her.

Tally was right about the anger. Inside the tower room, the Countess Frederica had lost her temper and lost it badly.

“What is the matter with you, Karil?” she shouted. “Why do you do this — stand and look out like an orphan waiting to be adopted instead of a prince of the blood? Have you no pride?”

It’s insufferable, she thought. She knew the boy to be physically brave: he rode fearlessly in spite of his mother’s accident; he was a skilled rock climber and a talented fencer… but this ridiculous need to belong to children who should be proud to black his boots was not to be endured.

Carlotta would not behave like this. Carlotta knew her worth.

She lingered for a moment, watching the children spill out of the buses and make their way toward the gates. Then she turned to speak to the prince again, but he had gone.

Tally’s mood had changed. It was such a strange image — the black-clad woman pulling someone away from a window as though looking out was a crime. Were there things she did not understand about Bergania? It had seemed to be a sort of paradise, but perhaps she was wrong. She remembered Matteo’s words in the park, his grimness.

They were led through the palace by a guide who spoke in three languages, and those children who understood English or German or French translated for the others. The staterooms were very grand, but the truth is that one ballroom is much like another, with mirrors on the walls, a dais for the musicians, and crystal chandeliers. The state dining room had what all state dining rooms have — a massive polished table, set with exotic place mats and gold-edged plates — and the library, like most royal libraries, was lined with bookcases that kept the leather-bound books firmly hidden behind a trellis of steel.

“They have put the books in prison,” said a little Finnish boy, and his friends nodded and translated what he had said.

“It’s absolutely ridiculous,” said Tod, “one family living in all this space. It ought to be given to the workers of the country.”

But Tally, thinking of the trim pretty houses they had passed in the town, wasn’t so sure that the workers would want to live in the palace. As they walked from one grand impersonal room to another, passing dark paintings of Berganian knights in armor and courtiers in ruffles, she found it difficult to keep her attention on the guide’s patter. What would be interesting would be to make one’s way down one of the corridors that was barred to visitors by a red satin rope and a notice saying: NO ADMITTANCE PAST THIS POINT. Tally longed to lift up the rope and slip under it and see where real people lived — where the king slept, where the prince did his lessons and ate his breakfast, and the servants cooked their meals. Once she even went across to one of the ropes and lifted it but immediately a guard came and spoke to her sharply and she put it down.

As they trooped out again Barney called to her. “Look,” he said. “This is the best bit.”

Barney was standing by a large window at the end of a corridor, and as Tally came to join him she saw what he meant.

The window faced the town below, and one could make out everything. The river with its sheltering lime trees and the people taking the air; the spires of the cathedral and the clock tower and — amazingly clear — the field with their tents and the practice dance floor… even the marble statue of the queen.

“If I lived here I’d spend most of the time looking out of the window,” he said.

Tally gave a little shudder.

“What’s the matter?”

Tally didn’t answer. She had remembered the woman in black and her gaunt arm as she pulled away someone who was probably doing just what she was doing — looking out.

He climbed steadily; there was no need to seek the way. The fifteen years he had spent away from his country had not blotted out any memories.

The sights were familiar: the way the clouds were massed above the high peaks, the exact shade of azure of the sky, the shape of the clump of pines that edged the meadow he was crossing. The flowers were the same: the vetches in their tangle of blue and yellow, the delicate harebells growing out of sparse pockets of earth between the rocks, and now, as he gained height, the edelweiss, which no one was supposed to pick then, as now, because it was so rare.

There had been a burrow by the side of the path made by a family of marmots — and the burrow was still there. A kestrel circled, lost height to show its chestnut plumage, and rose again. As a boy he had watched such birds a hundred times.

The sounds were the same, too: the soughing of the wind in the pines, the droning of the bees clustering in the clover. And the scents, too, were utterly familiar: pine needles warmed by the sun, the tang of resin…

His feet made their own way, recognizing now the roughness of stone, now the softness of the earth as he walked through a patch of woodland. His time in the Amazon, in the Mato Grosso, might never have been.

Now he could see the hut; not the kind of place a woman of such great age should be living all the year round — isolated, exposed to the weather, often snowed up in the winter — but no one had been able to persuade the king’s old nurse to come down off the mountain and settle in the town.

He left the path and followed the track to the hut. For a moment he was afraid. She had been old when he left Bergania — anything could have happened.

Then the door opened and she came out carrying a basket of washing. She had not seen him yet, and he watched as she began to hang up her aprons — checked aprons in red and white, hemmed with a row of cross-stitch. She had always worn them to work and suddenly he remembered the comfort of their clean and starchy smell.

But now he moved out of the shadow of the tree and she saw him. Would she remember, after so long?

She remembered. She looked at him in silence — she did not shout or exclaim or drop the pillowcase she was putting on the line. She just looked. Then as he came up to her, she opened her arms and called him by his name.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN Treachery

The man who sat in the best bedroom of the Blue Ox could not be mistaken for anyone but a very high-ranking army officer — and a Nazi officer at that. Though he was still eating breakfast, Reichsgruppen Führer Anton Stiefelbreich was fully dressed in a khaki jacket so covered in medals that they dazzled and caught the eye, and afterward people who met him never quite remembered his face. His cap lay ready beside him, adorned with the swastika of the party he now served, and he wore jackboots even while buttering his roll.

As much as Karil detested his uniforms, with their scratchy collars and showy buttons and infuriating plumes, so did Colonel Stiefelbreich love his. Back in Berlin, where he now worked at the headquarters of the Gestapo, he had a whole cupboard of uniforms. That was one of the many things he valued in his new job — the job of stirring up trouble in those countries that did not understand how important it was to cooperate fully with Herr Hitler’s dreams for a united Europe. United, of course, under the German flag.

And to impress foreigners one had to be properly dressed. The colonel was waiting for Gambetti, the Berganian foreign minister, who was coming to see him on a private visit here in his room. Meanwhile, to make certain that his bodyguards were in place, he walked silently to the door and opened it.

The two men who had been sitting in chairs in the corridor got to their feet.

“Got any jobs for us to do, Colonel?”

“Not at the moment. But stay in position — I’m expecting the foreign minister. Make sure no one follows him upstairs.”

The two men Colonel Stiefelbreich had recruited as his bodyguards could not have been more different, nor were they simply bodyguards. They were more by way of being spies and sleuths and he used them for all the work that he wanted to be kept secret.

One of them was good at his job simply because of his enormous size and strength. He was one of those people who seemed to be made of something inorganic like iron or stone — in fact his huge, stupid face might well have been carved from granite, except that granite, when it catches the light, sometimes sparkles, and the thug’s face had never sparkled in its life. He was known as Earless, because he had lost his left ear in a fight. He had lost a lot of other things, too — the tip of one finger, part of a nostril, and more teeth than he could count — but it was his ear he worried about because his wife, Belinda, had been fond of it. She was a tiny blonde woman and Earless, who would throttle someone with his bare hands without thinking twice about it, was completely soppy about Belinda.

The other man was called Theophilus Fallaise, and he had been brought up in a library where his father was Keeper of the Books. One can read about all sorts of wonderful things in a library but the things that the young Theophilus had chosen to read about were not wonderful. He read about the tortures they had used in the olden days: the rack and the iron maiden and thumbscrews — and about the punishments they had used in foreign countries like China, where people were driven mad by having water dripped on to their skull.

The library was in a castle belonging to an eccentric nobleman in a country about which Theophilus never spoke, and because the boy had hardly ever gone outdoors, but only deeper and deeper into the basements in search of more and more horrible books about inflicting pain, he had grown up very unhealthy. His skin was pale and clammy, he blinked in the light and his upper lip was lifted by a wrinkled scar that parted to show a filled gold tooth.

But as a sleuth and a spy he was second to none. He could see in the dark, because of the years he had spent underground, and wriggle through the narrowest spaces — and there was nothing he didn’t know about the more silent and sinister ways of getting rid of someone.

The two bodyguards did not like each other. Theophilus thought that Earless was a stupid thug — which he was — and Earless thought that Theophilus was a slimy creep — which was true also — but the two men made a good pair. One had brains and the other had brawn — and Stiefelbreich had taken a lot of trouble to get hold of them for his latest assignment in Bergania.

Baron Gambetti arrived in Stiefelbreich’s room through the back entrance of the Blue Ox. He was extremely nervous; his goatee beard trembled slightly and he was sweating, but when he entered the room and saw the colonel he took heart. The bodyguards at the door, the glittering medals, the man’s air of importance were reassuring. In encouraging the Gestapo to come to the aid of Bergania he was doing the right thing, Gambetti told himself. He was saving his country from the king’s foolish obstinacy. The future lay with the people that Stiefelbreich represented.

“Heil, Hitler!” said the colonel, and Gambetti cleared his throat and said, “Heil, Hitler,” in a slightly squeaky voice.

“I have messages for you from our headquarters. The chief of the Gestapo is appreciative of the information you have sent to us. I take it there has been no change?”

“Not as far as I know, Colonel,” said Gambetti.

“Good. Good. In that case I think it is time for us to act for the good of your beautiful country. We have great affection for Bergania — I used to come skiing here with my family when the children were small. It will be a pleasure for us to rescue the country from the king’s obstinacy and folly.”

Baron Gambetti nodded. “It seems impossible to make him see that there is no future for countries that oppose the might and strength of Germany. We must join the great German Reich or be trampled underfoot. But the king is obstinate — his prime minister, too, old von Arkel. He will never give in to Herr Hitler’s demands, which are, after all, not unreasonable. As a Berganian patriot I feel it is my duty to help you,” he said.

“Quite so,” said Stiefelbreich. “In that case we had better get down to details.”

An hour later Gambetti let himself into his villa behind the botanical gardens and found his wife in her dressing room.

“I hope you didn’t weaken, Philippe,” she said. “If we dither now, we are lost.”

“No, I didn’t weaken. But I hope he means what he says. That everything will be… civilized… an orderly takeover without any bloodshed or violence.”

“Of course he means it,” said his wife, taking the curlers out of her dyed blonde hair. “It will be perfectly simple. And you will at last have the honor and glory you deserve. I’m sure he promised you your reward.”

“Yes, he did. Only…”

“Only what? For heaven’s sake — why can’t you be a man?”

“I am being a man,” said Gambetti plaintively. “But it isn’t easy to do this — the king has been good to me.”

“Bah! Milksop,” said the baroness. “Thank goodness you are married to somebody who isn’t afraid of a bit of adventure. Now pass me my hairbrush, please.”

Back in the Blue Ox, Stiefelbreich was questioning his bodyguards.

“Find out if Stilton has arrived — he should be here by now.”

“He has, sir,” said Theophilus. “Checked in to room twenty-three, on the third floor. Next to the attic…”

Stilton, like Earless, was an Englishman. He had led a perfectly normal life for many years, working as a sanitary engineer who specialized in bathroom fittings, so that he earned good money, but after a while he decided it was his duty to travel around the simple peasant houses of Europe and persuade their owners to get rid of their old-fashioned outdoor toilets — just a hole in a wooden bench — and order a proper, indoor, flush sanitation system.

But that wasn’t all he did. Stilton had a hobby — more of a skill, really — and it was because of this that Stiefelbreich had tracked him down. Now, hearing that Stilton had arrived safely, the Nazi smiled and rubbed his hands, knowing that everything would go exactly as planned.

There was only one more thing for Stiefelbreich to do. He picked up the phone and put a call through to the German consulate.

“I take it you have my instructions about the German children at the campsite? I have made inquiries and they are quite unsuitable. Children like that should never have been sent to represent our glorious country and the new order that Herr Hitler has established.”

He listened, frowning, to the voice on the other end. The man seemed to be arguing, almost pleading.

“I’m afraid that has nothing to do with it,” Stiefelbreich barked. “Please see that my orders are carried out without delay.”

Satisfied that the matter was settled, he ordered a large beer. The middle-aged waitress with ginger hair who brought it to him was unfriendly — but it didn’t matter. This infuriating country was about to get a lesson it would not forget.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN The Dragonfly Pool

They had worked all morning but now, the last day before the festival began, everyone was relaxing. Tally and Julia had finished untangling the wreaths and straightening the flowers for their costumes and were playing cards on the grass with Anneliese, the curly-haired German girl who had befriended them. Borro was demonstrating slingshots to his French friend, whirling his scarf around his head and sending missiles unerringly into the river. Kit and two Dutch boys were trying to catch a carp, lying on their stomachs by the pool and using willpower to make the fish come to the surface.

Matteo was organizing a game of football on a patch of level ground farther along the bank, and Magda was playing chess with the teacher in charge of the German group. He was a serious young man with horn-rimmed spectacles and reminded her of Heribert, the professor she had hoped to marry.

It was a glorious day, sunny and still.

A woman carrying a posy of sweet peas came out of the Blue Ox, and crossed the river and made her way toward the marble statue of the queen. She removed the withered flowers and put the fresh ones in the statue’s hand. As she came back she smiled at the children. It was the middle-aged waitress who had stared at Matteo.

From the Spanish tent came the sound of a guitar, and the dancers in their bright red skirts and yellow boleros made their way to the wooden platform for a last rehearsal. Their music drew a few of the other children to the platform. Those who had been dozing lifted their heads.

“We did it,” said Tally happily. “It worked — here we all are from everywhere.”

And their new friend nodded and taught them a German word: Bruderschaft. “It means a band of brothers — and sisters, too,” she said.

It was at that moment that they looked up and saw three men in uniform come across the bridge — and with them was the minister of culture. His silver hair was disheveled and his face pale. Two of the men were in the light blue uniform of the Berganian police and one — who walked in front with a swagger — wore khaki with a swastika on the sleeve. It was this man who marched up to Magda and the teacher with whom she was playing chess and said sharply, “Where are the German children? Which tent?”

The teacher stood up and looked about him. “They are everywhere,” he said, startled by the sudden command.

And indeed they were. Some were playing football with Matteo. A little girl with a crown of flaxen pigtails, her arm around her new friend from Portugal, was sitting on the steps of the platform listening to the music.

“Call them at once,” barked the Nazi officer. “Get them together. Why are they not in an orderly group?”

The teacher looked bewildered. “They have made friends,” he said. “It is—”

“Round them up,” repeated the officer. “They have one hour to get ready. A bus will take them to the station.”

“But—”

“They are leaving. The king of Bergania has again insulted the people of Germany and no child of the Fatherland will remain in this country. Hurry!”

The minister of culture had taken Magda aside.

“A directive has come from the Gestapo in Berlin,” he said hurriedly. “I’ve tried to make them listen but it’s impossible.”

On the platform the music ceased; the dancers came to rest. The sudden silence was ominous. The two policemen stood by, looking embarrassed. Gradually, as they understood what was happening, the German children, one by one, came toward their tent. At the same time the other children, in every language, expressed their indignation.

“We want them to stay.”

“They’re our friends.”

“They haven’t done anything.”

And repeated again and again: “It isn’t fair!”

Only the German children were silent. They had lived for too long in an oppressed country. They knew there was no hope. The small girl with flaxen pigtails was crying. Her friend from Portugal tried to comfort her and was turned away by one of the policemen.

Then Tally saw red. She ran up to the Nazi officer and began to pummel him with her fists. “You can’t do this,” she yelled. “You can’t, you can’t!”

Strong arms pulled her back. “Stop it, Tally,” said Matteo. “Stop it at once.”

Within an hour the tents had been stripped and the German children herded away.

Karil woke in high spirits. For once it was going to work; he was going to have a whole day alone with his father in their favorite place. The Scold had gone to visit a friend — there was nothing in the way. The king, when he came to fetch him, looked more relaxed than he had done for a long time. He carried his hunting bag filled with their picnic, and his collapsible fishing rod.

They made their way out of the palace by the secret door the guards had opened for them and set off along the turf path that led up toward the mountain.

“Look, a lammergeier,” said the king.

Karil, following his pointing arm, saw a tiny speck in the sky.

“How can you tell, so far away?”

“It’s the flight pattern and…” He shrugged. “I had a friend once who could identify birds that I could hardly see with the naked eye. He was uncanny — he could lead you up to a stone in a place he’d never been before and tell you what was underneath it. Almost exactly. It was as though he’d placed the creatures there himself.”

“Like giving you a present,” said Karil.

The king looked at him, startled. “Yes, exactly like that.”

“What happened to him?”

The king shrugged. “He went away, just when I needed him most. People do that with us.”

They walked for a while in silence. Then Karil said, “We’re sort of freaks, aren’t we? I mean because we’re… royal or whatever. It’s not real, being a king or a prince.”

The king turned to him. “Good heavens, Karil! Is that how you feel?”

Karil nodded. “When I wake up in the morning I think, why me? Why did it happened to me, being kept apart? Why didn’t I just get born as an ordinary person? Well, I am ordinary, but nobody realizes that. Why can’t I be like anyone else and belong?”

“There are good things, too,” said his father. “Sometimes we can help. Not often, but when we can…”

They came to a division of the path. The main track led up to the high meadows, to old Maria’s hut and the peaks. The smaller one veered off to the left, toward the hunting ground. This was a green and shady place of great trees and running water, of moss and unexpected pools. Nowadays it was more of a nature reserve. The king had little time for hunting; the dappled deer roamed without fear, and the hares when disturbed sat up and gazed at the intruders before lolloping away.

They passed a wooden lodge, now boarded up, and plunged into the cool greenery of the forest. There was a place here to which the king had come as a boy, a hidden pool known only to the foresters and groundsmen who worked there. He had taken his queen there when she came from England; Karil had taken his first steps on its mossy banks and caught his first trout in its waters. The dragonfly pool was outside time: safe, beautiful, and private.

They had not walked more than a few hundred meters into the forest when they heard the sound of hoofbeats. Turning, they saw a palace messenger riding a black mare and leading a second horse.

The messenger slid to the ground and bowed to the king.

“Your Majesty, there has been a crisis. The prime minister requests your presence most urgently.”

The king frowned. “Not today, Rudi. I’m going into the woods with my son.” And again, firmly, “Not today. Tell von Arkel I’ll deal with the matter tonight.”

The messenger leaned forward and whispered in the king’s ear.

Karil caught a few words. “Troops mustering… urgent telegram from the border station…”

The king’s face changed. All the weariness and strain of the last weeks returned.

“This is serious, Karil. You will understand; I have no choice.” He laid a hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Next Sunday, by God’s grace — next Sunday we will go.”

But the boy pulled away and would not look at him.

“Please, Karil,” said the king. “Please try to understand.”

“All I understand is that you don’t care about me,” muttered Karil. “You care about everybody in the world except me. A few hours can’t matter; there’s always a crisis. Always.”

The king’s voice was suddenly the voice of an old man.

“A few hours can topple a kingdom, Karil.”

“Then let it,” said the boy furiously, and began to walk off between the trees.

The king stood for a moment, looking after him. The weight on his chest was almost more than he could bear.

“You must come back and fetch him, Rudi,” he said to the messenger. “He shouldn’t be out alone.”

And he took the second pair of reins and mounted, and they rode away.

Left alone, Karil walked without any sense of direction. His anger was like cold steel going through his body. He hated his father. All his life the king had put anything and everything before his son. The thought of this day had meant so much to Karil — they had begun really to talk — and then it was over before it began.

“But I don’t care,” he said aloud. “I’m not going to try anymore. I’m going to learn to be completely on my own. People you love just die or ignore you.”

He had cut a switch from a hazel branch and slashed at the undergrowth in a relentless and sullen rage. He wouldn’t make his way to the pool — what was the point? But he would not return home either. Not yet. They could worry about him if they wanted to, but they wouldn’t. What would his father care, busy in useless meetings and conferences that led nowhere?

Without thinking, he had turned away from the forest and come out on the meadows. The sun was very hot, but what did it matter if he got sunstroke? Who would be sorry if he died? Nobody — nobody at all.

He had not gone far when he saw, sitting by the side of the track, a small hunched figure. Coming closer, he made out a girl about his own age. She had light hair cut in a fringe and wore shorts and a blue shirt. Not a local then — probably one of the folk dancers. As he came up to her she lifted her head and he saw that she had been crying.

“Are you all right?” he asked in English.

For a moment she looked at him blankly, and he was about to try another language when she focused on him.

“No,” she said furiously. “No, I’m not all right. How can one be when things like that go on?”

“Like what?”

“The Nazis. Hitler. I’m so tired of Hitler. I’m so terribly tired of him.” She began to cry again. “We were all so happy. I thought we had done it.”

“It’s when you’re happy that God strikes you,” said Karil.

She shook her head angrily. “It’s nothing to do with God. It’s people who spoil things.” She went to wipe her eyes on her sleeve and Karil felt in his pocket for a handkerchief, which he gave her.

“Thank you. I really like my school and I really like Magda — she’s our housemother and very clever — but she can’t manage handkerchiefs.”

“Keep it,” he said. “I’ve got another one.”

“Two?” said Tally, momentarily diverted. “Lucky you!”

“No,” he said vehemently. “I’m not lucky. I’m not lucky at all.” He looked away, then turned back to Tally. “You’re from the camp, aren’t you? One of the folk dancers?” He thought now that he had seen her through the telescope, helping a little boy. “It looked so nice down there. What happened?”

“They came and marched all the German children away. They said the king had insulted Hitler again, but I don’t see how you can insult Hitler enough. There was a horrible Nazi… There’s been a crisis.”

“There’s always a crisis,” said Karil bitterly.

“They were so sad to go, the German children. There was a very little one with plaits wound around her head who couldn’t stop crying. I went for the Nazi, and Matteo — he’s in charge of us — pulled me away and I was so angry I just ran off. There’ll be a row — we’re not supposed to leave the camp alone.”

“No, children are never supposed to do anything sensible alone.” He hesitated, then made up his mind. “I’ll take you to a place where no one will find you. You’d better come out of the sun. Then you can tell me… if you want to. But you needn’t.”

She followed him willingly. He was surprised at himself: the dragonfly pool was his secret and his father’s — yet he was going to show it to an unknown girl. But then, what was the point of sharing anything with his father? What did his father care?

They plunged into the cool of the forest. He led her down a mossy path, along a stream in which a heron stood on one leg, fishing. The path was dappled with pigeon feathers, and small fir cones lay on the ground; there was the faintest of breezes. The relief of the shade and moisture after the heat of the meadow was overwhelming.

Karil turned along beside a smaller stream; Tally heard the sound of rushing water and they came to a waterfall, tumbling down between rocks. Running up its side was a narrow track almost hidden by creepers and overhanging bushes. Still following the boy, she scrambled up to the top — and stood there, silent and amazed.

They had come to a pool so still and dark and deep that it hardly seemed to belong to the real world. The branches of great trees spread their arms over the surface of the water; a bright green frog plopped suddenly from a leaf into its depths. A kingfisher flew off with a flash of blue and emerald.

And over the surface of the water there danced and swooped and circled a host of dragonflies. Shafts of sunlight turned them every color of the rainbow and in the silence she could make out, very faintly, the dry clatter of their wings.

She said nothing, just shook her head in wonder — and Karil knew that it was all right to have brought her here. He could not have borne it if she had gushed and exclaimed.

“There’s a place there behind those boulders where no one can see us.”

He led her along the side of the pool and they scrambled over the flat stones into a kind of hollow soft with fallen leaves and moss.

“Are there otters?” she asked.

Karil nodded. “You have to come at night to see them.”

“I think this must be the most beautiful place I’ve ever seen,” said Tally as they sat down side by side, resting their backs on the cool stone. “But then, this is a marvelous country. I knew it would be. I wanted to come from the moment I saw it on the newsreel.”

“You’re with the British team, aren’t you?”

Remembering the rumors he had heard about the British “savages” he smiled, and Tally stared at him. He looked quite different when he was no longer serious and stern.

“Yes. We’re very bad — in fact we’re terrible — everyone’s going to laugh at us. We invented this thing called the Delderton Flurry Dance and it’s really weird, but it was the only way we could get here.”

“Why did you want to come here so much?”

Tally had been watching a tiny spider crossing the stone.

“It was because of the king.”

“What king?” said Karil, startled.

“The king of Bergania, of course. I saw him on the newsreel and he looked so strong and brave — but tired, too. And when they wrote and said they wanted people to come to a festival, I sort of bullied everyone into coming.”

“But what could you know about the king?”

“I knew he had stood out against Hitler…” She saw the spider safely into her hole and went on. “We have a king, too, in England and he’s really nice — absolutely decent. George VI he’s called…”

Karil nodded. Carlotta had played with his daughters in Buckingham Palace.

“He has a stammer, and when he makes his speech on the wireless at Christmas my aunts get terribly worried in case he’s going to break down and not be able to finish. They sit there clutching their sherry glasses, just willing him to go on. But he’s not like the king of Bergania. He’s not a ruler.”

“I can’t see how you could tell what he’s like just from watching a film.”

Tally shrugged. “I don’t know… but I felt it. I was sure. Perhaps it’s because of my father. He’s not a king, of course, he’s a doctor, but he’s like that. He knows what’s right and he does it whatever it costs. I get annoyed when he’s back late and I wanted to be with him, but I wouldn’t want him to be someone who had nothing to do except look after me. Anyway, when I saw Bergania and the king I wanted to come here. I felt I had to. And I thought Matteo was behind me — he persuaded the others that folk dancing wasn’t sissy — but he’s been so odd since we came. He never seems to be there when you want him; it’s as though he’s hiding all the time. And just now he was furious with me for attacking the Nazi.”

“Well, of course. You could have got into serious trouble.”

“He can’t want me to just let things happen without fighting.”

Karil had been pulling the seeds out of a fallen pinecone. Now he threw it into the water. “Tell me again about the Bergania film. Tell me exactly.”

“I was with my friend Julia. She wanted me to come to the cinema and we saw an awful film — but before that there was this travelogue. And it was as though the country sort of spoke to me — it was so beautiful. It was silly, because I’d only been at school half a term and I was still settling in — progressive schools are hard work — but I knew I had to come.”

“Because the country was beautiful?” he asked.

She shook her head. “No, I’ve told you. It was because of the king. Because he was brave and true to what he believed in and wouldn’t let himself be bullied. Because he knew that if you have power you must use it well and not be afraid.”

Karil said nothing. Something inside him was changing… a knot was dissolving.

She turned to him. “You live here,” she said. “You must know. Is he like that?”

Karil took a deep breath. “Yes,” he said joyfully. “He is like that,” he said. “That is exactly what he is like.”

They were silent for a while, watching the ripples made by a fish as it jumped for a fly. Then he turned to this unknown girl who had given him back his father and said, “Thank you. Thank you very much.”

“For what?” she said, surprised.

“Oh… just… never mind.”

She had taken out the handkerchief and was flattening it on the stone. She had not guessed, yet when she saw the initials and the crown embroidered in the corner, she was not surprised.

“Of course,” she said. “I’ve been an idiot. I know who you are.”

He braced himself, waiting for a fuss — she would be too respectful, or angry — or back away, make him feel “different.”

“You’re Karil,” she said — and because she had used only his name and not his rank he allowed himself a moment of hope.

“I would have liked us to be friends,” he said, looking down at the ground. “I would really have liked that.”

“Well, of course we’re going to be friends. That’s obvious. It’s what’s going to happen.”

He shook his head. “It won’t work,” he said wearily. “They read my letters and the doors are locked and… Oh, you’ve no idea what it’s like.”

“Look, Karil, if I want to be friends with someone, nobody is going to stop me. Absolutely nobody. Perhaps I should tell you that I’m named after my great-grandmother who washed the socks of tramps in the London Underground. She came over as a young girl from America to marry my great-grandfather and she used to go up to these fierce men, some of them dead drunk, and make them take off their socks and give them to her to wash. Now that is difficult.” She folded up the handkerchief and put it in her pocket. “And I think you should stop feeling sorry for yourself. It’s not the end of the world, being a prince.”

In the palace the king came out of his emergency meeting with a lagging step. It seemed there was no end to the bullying his country had to endure. More than anything he wanted to see his son, but he had left Karil in a temper. Perhaps it was better to let the boy calm down in his own good time.

He had taken only a few steps down the corridor when he was almost knocked off his feet by someone who had been waiting half hidden by the velvet curtains.

“Karil! Are you all right?”

“Yes. I’m absolutely all right. And I’m sorry — I’m very, very sorry I was angry. It won’t happen again. I’d like to help more… if you tell me… I’m…” He swallowed. “I’m so proud of what you do.”

The king put his arm around the boy’s shoulders. Just when one thought one couldn’t carry on any longer something happened to make life bearable.

“And I’m proud of you, Karil. Prouder than you can imagine.”

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN The Festival Begins

The town square had been bustling with people and carts and carriers since dawn. Everybody seemed to be involved in the preparations for the folk-dancing display and for the opening ceremony that preceded it.

Workmen hammered, putting finishing touches to the platform on which the important people of the town would sit and from which the king would declare the festival open. The wooden stage for the dancers at the other end of the square was bedecked with flags and bunting; extra tubs of flowering trees had been brought in and there was hardly a windowsill or lamppost which was not festooned with greenery.

At the Blue Ox the waiters hurried from the kitchens to the restaurant and the beer garden, bringing bottles of champagne or lemonade or jugs of coffee and cream. There was a good view to be had from the windows of the inn and all available tables were taken very early in the day.

In his bedroom Colonel Stiefelbreich put the finishing touches to his uniform. He had been offered a seat on the platform and was making sure that every single medal was polished and in place. His bodyguards were going to mingle with the crowd, but Mr. Stilton did not intend to leave the Blue Ox. He had spent the previous day trying to persuade some peasants to buy his indoor flush toilets, but they had behaved in a very stupid way and told him that they preferred the wooden huts they had always used. It gave them some peace from their families, they told him, to go across the fields with their newspapers. Well, if they wanted to go on living like savages, let them, thought Stilton; he had other things to do, and now he left his room and made his way up a narrow flight of stairs to an empty attic which had an uninterrupted view across the square to the town hall. He would get a much better view of the procession from here than jammed in a crowd of unwashed yokels.

Once inside, he locked the door behind him. Then he opened his case, took out a packet of sandwiches — and certain things which had absolutely nothing to do with lavatories — and settled down to wait.

Countess Frederica, who would be sitting near the front of the platform, stood before her mirror, wondering whether to add a touch of color to her outfit. Her dress was black of course and so were her vest and her knickers, but she could perhaps add a colored scarf. Karil seemed to set great store by this occasion — and it was quite a long time since anyone had died. But in the end she decided against it; there was no need to dress up for a lot of unruly children.

Everyone else, though, seemed to be in their best clothes. The Baroness Gambetti was dressed like a peacock in a gaudy blue and orange two-piece and as much jewelry as she could get around her neck. She was in excellent spirits but her husband, who was trying to eat his breakfast, looked like a ghost, only yellower.

“He promised me it will all be very civilized,” he kept muttering, “a peaceful takeover,” while his wife told him to shut up and finish his egg.

In the square, the brass-band players rubbed up their instruments, workmen sprinkled sawdust along the route of the royal procession, policemen put up ropes. Wooden benches were brought and set out for those who wanted to watch the dancing, and colored lights were strung between the trees — for the evening would end with a great open-air party for anyone who cared to come.

The Berganians had always been good at celebrations.

Now that the festival was really upon them everyone felt better. Even if they made fools of themselves it would soon be over. Tally, helping Kit fix the bells onto his ankles, had quite forgotten her black mood of the day before, and now that they were all dressed they didn’t look too bad. In fact, suddenly they looked unexpectedly nice, and this was because of Magda.

Magda had stopped having Important Thoughts about Schopenhauer long enough to notice that the girls’ wreaths had not really recovered from their bashing in the luggage van of the train and had suggested they go to the market early in the morning and buy some fresh flowers to fill up the gaps.

“But have we enough money?” Julia had wanted to know.

And again Magda had surprised everyone, by groping about among her notes and card indexes and extracting her purse.

So Tally and Julia had got up very early and come back with roses and lilies of the valley and cornflowers still moist with dew, and everyone had set to healing the poor wreaths.

“What about our hats?” Kit wanted to know. “Don’t the boys get any flowers?”

So Julia pinned a hyacinth to the brim of his hat and, though it would probably fall over his nose once he began to dance, he was pleased.

“We may look a bit odd, but no one can say we’re not fresh and floral,” said Tally.

And for the first time they wondered whether after all it might turn out all right, this Flurry Dance which had given them all so much trouble.

The broken staves had been mended, Augusta’s bananas had been stowed in her violin case, and Matteo, looking more like a bandit than ever in a black corduroy shirt and dark trousers, had assembled his sackbut, so there was hope that he would come in with his oom-pa-pa at important moments.

It was still difficult not to be upset by the empty German tent, but the other teams, all dressed now in their dancing clothes, looked really festive. The Italians with their sashes and bright kerchiefs, the French girls with their white headdresses… the Yugoslavs in goatskin jackets with feathers in their caps… Lots would be drawn after the ceremony to decide the order in which the teams would dance.

They made their way over the bridge, joined by crowds of people in their best clothes and children waving flags. In the square they were given their places. The Deldertonians were in the front, against the ropes that marked off the route the king would take as he rode toward the platform on which the distinguished guests would sit. The visitors would come on through the double doors of the town hall, but the king and the prince would mount by special wooden steps from the square.

The crowd was in a party mood, wanting to forget the crises and threats that beset their country.

Now the great doors opened and the mayor, in his gold chain, took his seat on the platform, followed by the lord chief justice and the prime minister. When Gambetti appeared with his wife there was some booing in the crowd, but it was quickly hushed — today was not a day for politics.

Stiefelbreich marched on in his jackboots. For a moment his face turned toward the attic of the Blue Ox and then away again. More and more people filed on to the platform. The clock in the tower on the north side of the square struck eleven, and eleven apostles came out, marched woodenly out of their niches and went back again.

“We’ve got a really good view,” said Tally.

“Matteo hasn’t,” Julia pointed out.

This was true. Matteo was standing behind an exceptionally tall and heavily built policeman in a brass helmet, one of a whole contingent who was lining the route.

“There’s room here,” called Tally, but Matteo only raised a hand and stayed where he was.

There was the sound of rousing music, a rustle of excitement from the crowd — and the procession which had set off from the palace entered the square.

“We’ll give them something to remember,” the king had told his son, so he rode the gray Thoroughbred that was kept for state occasions and wore his most dazzling uniform, that of the Berganian Rifles in scarlet and white and gold. The prince, riding his favorite chestnut, was hardly less grand. Ignoring the discomfort of the scratchy braid around his throat and the ludicrously tight trousers, he had chosen the uniform of the Mountain Cuirassiers because here was something worth dressing up for: not a dead saint or a railway station but a festival made by children who had come together from everywhere — and a girl who had brought her friends to honor the king.

Behind them rode Uncle Fritz, the minister of culture, then came the household cavalry, the men-at-arms, the band of the fusiliers…

There were shouts of “Long live the King!… Long live Johannes!” People climbed up lampposts to see better. There had never been such enthusiasm for this ruler, who had become a hero to his people.

The procession was drawing level with the place where the children from Delderton were standing. Everything was going as expected — the marching men, the trotting horses, the band…

Then the burly policeman who was standing in front of Matteo shifted to one side — and everything changed.

The king reined in his horse and came to a stop — and as the king stopped so did those who were behind him. The sound of the band spluttered and died away, and in the silence that followed, the king’s words rang loud and clear.

“Seize that man!” he cried. “Hold him! Don’t let him go!”

And he pointed directly at Matteo, standing very straight among the children he had brought.

The policeman who had been standing in front of Matteo grabbed his arm, and a second officer came forward to help restrain him. Matteo did not struggle. All the time he stood erect and looked steadily at the king.

“Bring him here,” ordered the king.

While the crowd murmured and wondered and craned their necks to see the criminal, Johannes dismounted and handed the reins to his son.

Then he stepped forward and lifted the rope that separated him from the crowd and let it fall, and at the same time Matteo freed himself and moved toward the king.

There was a moment of total silence. Then the king’s arms came around Matteo and the two men embraced. The throng of people might not have existed; they saw only each other.

“My God, Matteo,” said the king. “It’s been so long.”

No one could hear the words the men now spoke.

“Later,” said the king, freeing himself reluctantly. “As soon as this is over.”

Then Matteo went back to stand beside the children and the king with his son rode to the platform and dismounted and climbed the wooden steps — and old von Arkel, the prime minister who had served him for many years, thought that Johannes looked as he had not looked since before his wife had died.

The ceremony began. The lord mayor made a speech. The Countess Frederica scowled and speculated. Who was this bandit whom the king had embraced so publicly, and how could she make Karil behave as he should when his father so forgot himself?

Then the king stood up. He had written a short speech in Berganian, saying all the proper things. Now he tore it up. He looked once across the square, and when he spoke it was in English, but there was not a person listening who failed to catch the joy behind his words.

For Johannes was giving thanks.

He said that today had been a special day for him because a friend he had loved as a boy had returned.

“And he did not come alone,” said the king. “He came with children from all over Europe who have brought support and encouragement to our country. We are accustomed to using big words: Cooperation Between Nations, International Treaties, Political Solidarity… But cooperation begins with one thing: with friendship between ordinary people, with the love we bear one another — and with citizens who refuse to hate, or to judge.

“It has not been easy to stand firm in these hard times, but I am the most fortunate of men because I rule over people who understand this. Who are tolerant and forgiving and good.

“And because of this, we shall prevail!”

He stepped forward to the edge of the platform. “And now let us forget wars and threats and invasions, and celebrate. I declare the Bergania Folk Dance Festival open. Let the dancing begin!”

Cheers rang out over the square, and curious faces turned to look at Matteo. The band began to play again and the king made his way to the steps.

Only the people sitting close by heard anything — a short crack, nothing more. The king paused on the top step for a moment. Then he stumbled and missed his foothold. His arms came out and slowly, very slowly, almost as though time had stopped, he began to fall.

It was so strange and unexpected that no one could take in what had happened. No one except Matteo. With a few bounding steps he reached the king almost as his crumpled body came to rest on the ground.

He loosened the glittering tunic, saw the blood seeping through the fabric — and the king tried to push his hand away.

“There is… nothing to be done, Matteo. It is… over.”

“No!”

But he had seen the wound now.

The king tried to speak, and Matteo put his ear to the king’s mouth.

“Do you… remember?”

“I remember everything,” said Matteo. “Everything.”

But there was one last desperately important thing that had to be said, and with a tremendous effort the dying man forced out the words.

“I have a son, Matteo. Will you…?”

His breath was failing; with his eyes he entreated his friend.

“Yes,” said Matteo. “I will. I swear it.”

And he stayed on his knees beside the man he had loved beyond all others as a boy, while the storm broke about him and men came from everywhere and there were shouts of “Get a doctor!” and “Call an ambulance!”

Till a great wail of despair ran through the crowd and from a thousand mouths came the unbelieving cry: “The king is dead.”

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN Finding the Prince

It was Tod who couldn’t stop being sick. He hung over the basin in the toilet block, retching and shaking. His room at Delderton was hung with posters of fierce revolutionaries attacking palaces; he had thirsted for the blood of kings — but now, seeing the real thing, he was helplessly ill.

Tally sat on the grass with her hands over her knees and tried to stop shivering. It wasn’t cold; the sun shone as it had done every day since they had come, but she was cold through and through.

At first she hadn’t taken it in… the tall figure of the king breaking, Matteo’s incredible leap to be by his side… It had seemed like something out of a film.

But it had happened. It was real.

Julia crouched beside her — one of her plaits had come undone; her freckles stood out dark against the pallor of her face.

The children still wore their dancing clothes, but now, with their exhausted tearstained faces, they looked more like sad clowns than dancers.

Two girls came over from the French tent.

“So we are not to dance at all,” said one, “and we have worked so hard.”

Everywhere on the campsite groups of children huddled together, trying to grasp the fact that all their efforts and preparations had come to nothing. For the festival had been canceled; there would be no dancing — and all foreigners were to leave the country on the following day.

“We should begin to pack,” said Magda.

But nobody moved. They were waiting for Matteo.

“Take them back,” he had said hurriedly to Magda. “I’ll be along as soon as I can. Keep them together whatever you do.”

After the ambulance came and the king’s body was carried away, there was complete uproar in the square. People cried and screamed; some struggled to their feet. The guests on the platform pushed their way in an untidy scrum to the door.

Then the loudspeakers took over, telling everyone to leave the square and go home in an orderly manner.

“Keep calm; the situation is under control,” the voice kept repeating.

But the people of Bergania did not feel calm. They wanted to know who had done this terrible thing. Even when the procession had returned in confusion to the palace and the mounted police came to clear the square, groups of angry people re-formed on every street corner.

No one could believe it. In the Blue Ox, Herr Keller was unashamedly weeping. The waitress who had brought flowers to the statue stood with her hands over her eyes. She had been a maid in the palace when the queen was still alive.

In the middle of the uproar Mr. Stilton came quietly downstairs, paid his bill, loaded his case of samples into his car — and drove away.

The fee from Stiefelbreich was in his pocket and his expression was cheerful and serene; everything had gone without a hitch. The first bullet fired from the attic window had hit its target; it was no wonder, he thought, that he was now considered to be the best assassin in the world.

On the campsite, the children waited. Augusta Carrington ate her last banana. A Norwegian girl in a blue skirt twirled alone outside her tent. She had spent hours sewing on the braid.

Then came a fanfare on the loudspeaker. There was going to be an announcement in the square. Baron Gambetti, the foreign minister, would address the people.

Gambetti had been in a state of terror since the assassination — all he wanted to do was to run home and hide under his bed.

“I didn’t want him to be killed,” he quavered. “Not killed.”

“Well, he has been, you lily-livered coward,” snapped his wife. “And you’re going to be in charge, so get up there and do what Stiefelbreich tells you.”

So now Gambetti was pushed onto the platform. He was still shaking with fear, but he managed to read the speech which Stiefelbreich had prepared for him, addressing the weeping population with much emotion and stopping every so often to wipe his face with his handkerchief.

“People of Bergania,” he began, “I come to offer you the deepest sympathy for the vile deed that has been perpetrated here today against the beloved ruler of our country. I promise you faithfully that the person who was responsible for this crime will be brought to justice and that all revolutionaries and anarchists will be hunted down without mercy. Meanwhile, the German people are prepared to offer you protection and to ensure that order will be maintained. There will be further bulletins every hour but for now please go quietly to your homes. A state of emergency has been declared.”

From the crowd came a shrill voice.

“Where is the prince? What has happened to the prince?”

Gambetti threw a frightened glance at Stiefelbreich, who whispered something in his ear.

“The prince’s whereabouts are being kept secret for his own protection,” said Gambetti.

But this was a lie. The prince was nowhere to be found.

“What do you mean, he’s disappeared?” said Stiefelbreich furiously.

He had moved to a room in the German embassy, which had already filled up with SS officers and Nazis in brown shirts.

“No one knows where he is,” said Earless. “They’re running through the palace like maniacs, calling and looking.”

Theophilus sneezed and squirted something up his nose. “The head groom says the prince stabled his horse, but the master-at-arms swears his horse came in alone. There was such uproar after the king was shot that no one knows anything for certain.”

Stiefelbreich’s jaw tightened. “He must be found at once,” he shouted, thumping the table. “At once, do you hear?”

Everything had gone according to plan. Gambetti would be allowed to strut about as a figurehead until the king was buried. Then, when suspicion was lulled, he would be got rid of, the German troops already mustered on the border would march in, and the thing was done.

But the prince must on no account be allowed to go free — there could be nothing more dangerous. Berganian patriots could use him as a rallying point, or there could be an attempt, now or later, to restore the monarchy.

“Somebody has blundered and will be punished,” said Stiefelbreich. “I made it perfectly clear that the prince was to be seized immediately after the assassination. Our plans for him have been in position from the start: he is to be taken to Colditz and kept there as a prisoner of the German Reich.”

Earless and Theophilus looked at each other. The bodyguards had heard of Colditz — everyone in their business had heard of the grim fortress in east Germany from which no one could escape. It had been a mental hospital for years; the cries of the patients incarcerated there were apparently still heard at night by superstitious peasants who lived nearby. Since the Nazis had come to power, Colditz had been used to shut up all the people who had displeased Herr Hitler: social democrats, gypsies, Jews. No place in Europe was more feared.

“The prince will be well treated,” said Stiefelbreich. “There is a special part of the castle kept for political prisoners. Later, if he cooperates with our plans for Bergania, he may be released, but if not… Well, children do sometimes have to be sacrificed to a Greater Cause. But he must be found, and quickly.”

“The trouble is,” said Theophilus, “we’ve only seen him from a distance, riding in the procession, and there are hardly any photographs, so if he’s hiding on purpose it might be tricky. He seems to be a very ordinary-looking boy — brown hair and brown eyes, they say, but that doesn’t tell you much. Now, if he belonged to the Royal House of Hapsburg it would be easy. The Hapsburgs are so inbred that their upper lips reach right up to their nostrils — you can recognize a Hapsburg anywhere, especially if you see them trying to eat. And if we were looking for a Bourbon, like in the Royal House of France, we’d be searching for someone without a chin. But as it is…”

“I suppose he doesn’t have a birthmark?” said Earless hopefully. “They’re a big help, birthmarks are.”

But Stiefelbreich had lost patience. “You can question the palace servants — no doubt you’ll find ways of making them talk. But if the boy isn’t found and brought here in the next twenty-four hours, God help you both.”

Matteo returned to the camp in the late afternoon, looking as though the devil was at his heels.

“He’s vanished,” he told the children. “There’s no sign of him. If he falls into the hands of those traitors…” He broke off. And under his breath. “Oh God, where is the boy?”

Julia brought him a piece of bread and a hunk of cheese and he took it, but it was obvious that he had no idea what he was eating.

Then Tally put a hand on his arm.

“I think I know where he might be,” she said.

Matteo went so fast, scrambling up the side of the waterfall, that Tally could hardly keep up with him.

He knew the place so well; his happiest times had been at the pool with the king. The woods surrounding it, the creatures in its depths, had helped to make him a naturalist.

They reached the top and the pool lay before them. There was nobody there. The water was as still as glass; the water lilies might have been carved in stone.

Then, behind a large boulder on the other side of the pool, something stirred.

Karil had not been crying. The boy was a long way beyond tears, in a state of shock so extreme that he could barely connect with the world, but after a moment he recognized Tally, and Matteo was glad that he had brought her in spite of his misgivings.

“We came to help,” she said, taking his hand.

Matteo waited, letting Tally talk quietly to the boy. Then came the moment when he focused on Matteo and said, “I saw you in the square. You were my father’s friend, and…” But he could not go on.

Matteo knelt down beside him. It was time to tell his story.

“Yes, your father was my friend, the truest friend I ever had. We shared a tutor, we rode together, we went climbing together. I looked up to him, but really we were like brothers. We used to come here and talk about all the things we were going to do. He knew he’d be king one day, and he was going to be a different kind of ruler — give his people more freedom and more say in how the country was governed. Bergania was going to be a model for the world.

“When the time came to go to university we went to Basel in Switzerland. It was a heady time for Johannes — for your father — it was like the door of a cage opening. He was so happy to be free of the bowing and scraping. We met all sorts of people — idealists and dreamers and poets who wanted to make everybody free. And Johannes was going to do that, with me to help him. I suppose most people guessed who we were — but it didn’t matter; we were students first and foremost.

“And then, while we were in our last year, the old king — your grandfather — died and Johannes had to go back to Bergania to be crowned.

“From the moment the courtiers came to fetch him, calling him ‘Your Majesty’ with every second breath, everything changed. To me it seemed that he became cut off from his people, giving in to ceremony and pomp. But I had promised to help him and I stayed.

“Then a young hothead we’d known as boys got into trouble. He’d been giving out leaflets about the Brotherhood of Man, saying there shouldn’t be kings.”

“Like Tod,” said Tally.

Matteo nodded. “They put him in prison, and I went to see the king to ask for his release — he was only a boy — and the king refused to see me. He was in consultation with his ministers.

“You have to know what friends we were to understand what happened next. I have a temper; when I found that Johannes wouldn’t see me I went home, packed a bag — and went.” He paused. “That was fifteen years ago, but I’ve never been back. And then when I returned to Europe I learned what he had done, how brave he had been, standing up to Hitler, and I was ashamed of having deserted him. I realized, too, that he must be in danger and I longed to see him again. So I came back.”

“But too late,” said the boy.

“Yes, Karil. Too late.”

The boy could not blame him more than he blamed himself, thought Matteo. He should have made himself known to the king as soon as he arrived, but he had wanted to find out who the conspirators were and how serious the danger to Johannes. So he had hidden from those who might recognize him — the minister of culture, the waitress at the Blue Ox — and pursued his inquiries in secret. By the time he spoke to the king he knew where the danger lay — but not that it would come so soon.

Karil had been listening intently, but it was a tremendous effort: his eyes clung to Matteo’s face almost as though he was lipreading.

“I saw how my father held you… how he wanted to be with you. I will remember.” He looked around at the trees and the pool as though wondering where he was. “Now I must go back.”

“No!”

Matteo spoke more loudly than he meant to and Karil shrank back. “I must,” he repeated. “I must see my father buried.”

“No,” said Matteo again, making an effort to speak calmly. “No, you must come away with us. You must carry on somewhere else. It is what your father would have wished.”

“I don’t want to go on being a prince,” said the boy in a thread of a voice.

“You don’t have to be a prince — only the person that you are and the man you will become.”

But the boy shook his head.

Matteo changed his tack. He took him by the shoulder. “Listen, Karil, the men who killed your father are not isolated criminals. They are part of a conspiracy that will take over Bergania and perhaps the whole of Europe. Once they have you in their power they will do one of two things. They will use you. Or…” He paused deliberately, judging how much the boy could take. “Or they will kill you.”

There was silence after that. Tally looked aghast at Matteo, then at the boy still deep in shock. But Karil had understood.

“I have to trust you,” he said. “I see that. But…” He made a hopeless gesture.

Matteo turned to Tally. “I’ll take him over the mountains. You’ll have to make your way back with Magda. We can stay overnight with the king’s old nurse.”

But as soon as he had said it he realized it would not do. Old Maria’s hut would be searched straightaway by anyone looking for the boy.

“No,” said Tally, “you’ll be caught.” And then: “There are better ways of getting Karil out of the country.”

Matteo was about to cut her short. Yet it was uncanny, the feeling she had had about Bergania from the start. Perhaps she deserved to be listened to.

“Karil said he had to trust you,” Tally went on. “Well, you have to trust us. All of us. Barney and Julia and Borro… even Verity.”

Matteo waited.

“It’s quite simple,” she said. “Karil must become a Deldertonian.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN The Last Dance

As soon as she returned to the campsite Tally was surrounded.

“Where have you been?” everyone wanted to know. And then, lowering their voices: “Did you find him?”

Tally nodded and told them what had happened.

“Matteo’s with him. But we have to get him down from the hill and into our tent. And then smuggle him back to England. We’re going to pretend he’s one of us.”

Magda frowned. “Does Matteo agree to this?” she asked.

“He didn’t like it, but there’s no other way. Matteo wanted to take him alone over the mountains, but they’ll already be watching the borders.”

“There have been announcements the whole time on the loudspeakers,” said Barney. “Everybody is to keep off the streets.”

“But do they say anything about keeping off the mountains?” asked Tally.

“How are we going to bring him down without being seen?” Julia was very worried. “I suppose in the dark—”

“No, we’re not going to wait for the dark. And we’re not going to creep about or slink. I’ve had an idea.”

Julia sighed. “I wish you’d stop having ideas.”

“This one is about trust. Karil said he’ll trust Matteo, and I told Matteo he’ll have to trust us. And we’ll have to trust the other children here. We’ll have to tell them what we’re doing so that they can help us and know what to do.”

“And what are we going to do?” asked Borro.

“We’re going to do what we came to Bergania to do. We’re going to dance.”

There was a pause while the others stared at her.

“All of us,” Tally went on. “In full costume. And we’re going to sing, too, and maybe recite — I don’t know exactly; we may have to improvise. It’ll be a sort of homage to the king, a… a rite for his passing. Only the point is, there’ll be so many of us that no one will notice if we come down with one more person. There’s a meadow by the entrance to the hunting ground that’s almost flat — that will make a kind of dancing floor. We’ll wear our Flurry clothes and make sure that we’re closest to the entrance, and while the ceremony is going on, Karil can slip out and join us. Only we’ll need some clothes for him.”

“I’ve got a spare shirt,” said Tod eagerly. “And he can have my white trousers — I’ll find something else.”

He was desperately keen to help the prince.

“He can have my hat,” said Kit. “It’s got the most stuff on it. It’ll hide his face.”

“There’th a lot of ivy under the bridge,” said Augusta. “We can drape our headth so that you can hardly see our faces. Ivy’s uthed a lot for funeralth.”

But the most important thing was to get the other groups to join in, because Tally’s plan depended on a swirling mass of people in which one extra dancer would not be noticed and it was this that everyone was worried about.

“There must be more than a hundred children here,” said Julia. “We can’t trust so many children not to give anything away.”

“Why not?” said Tally. “Why should anyone betray the prince when they know he is in danger? Why do there have to be traitors?”

“Not traitors,” said Barney, “but idiots who blab.”

“We have to trust them,” repeated Tally. “We have to. If they don’t know what’s happening, they won’t be able to cover up if anything goes wrong.”

But the others still looked doubtful.

“Do we know them well enough?” Borro wondered.

“How long does it take to know whether people are decent?” Tally demanded. “One can make friends in a minute. Look at the little German girl with the pigtails around her head and Conchita? They only knew each other for a day and Conchita’s still crying. When I was six I fell on the pavement outside my father’s surgery and Kenny came past driving Primrose and stopped to pick me up — and that was that. I’d trust him with my life.” She looked around entreatingly. “Only we haven’t got much time,” she said. “Matteo is sure it was the Gestapo who organized the shooting of the king, so the prince is in dreadful danger.”

“I could ask Lorenzo,” said Verity — and for the first time she spoke about the Italian boy she had been flirting with without her usual simper.

“I’ll talk to Jacqueline,” said Borro, thinking of the French girl who had been so informative regarding the milk yield of her mother’s dairy cows.

Barney said the Scandinavians would join in, he was sure. “They’re really keen on justice and things being fair.”

“The Spaniards did that lovely saraband when they were practicing,” said Julia. “That would work beautifully for a funeral dance.”

“You see, we do know them,” said Tally joyfully. “Even after two days we know they’ll help. Only we must hurry — any minute now they could be closing in on the prince.”

And they did hurry. Even Augusta who didn’t speak much because of her lisp, even Kit who was so easily frightened of people, ran to the other tents. Magda watched them go, crouching on her camp stool, desperately worried. The whole plan seemed mad and dangerous to her, but the headmaster had made it clear before they left Delderton that it was Matteo who was in charge of the trip, and if Matteo knew what was going on, there was nothing she could do.

Not all the teams could come — some of them had packed up already, some had teachers who refused. But less than an hour later, a most unexpected cavalcade set off across the park and made its way up the hill.

The Deldertonians were in the lead; they had draped their hats in so much ivy that it was almost impossible to see their faces. Borro, who was the hobbyhorse rider, carried a bundle shaped like the medieval bladders that jesters used to hit each other with. It contained the clothes that Karil would have to change into before he joined the dancers.

Behind them came the others. Some of the boys had found black scarves, which they had tied around their throats; some of the girls wore black ribbons around their sleeves or in their hair.

At first they walked in silence. Then from the group of children in red skirts and boleros there came a lone voice, singing a song: fado, the saddest, most heartrending music in the world.

And with this lone song, the whole ceremony became real. The children did not forget that they were here on a quest to save the prince, but they remembered, too, that a just and noble king had died that day.

When the voice of the singer died away, there came a hymn from the heartlands of Sweden, sung by the children in blue and white, and after that, from the Yugoslavs, the mournful wail of the fur-covered horn, like an animal in pain.

And as they made their way up the hill, every single child in the throng knew exactly what they were doing and why they were there and was proud to be helping the boy whose father had died so cruelly before their eyes.

“Look!” said Herr Keller, standing on the terrace of the Blue Ox. “It’s the foreign children.”

“They’re paying homage to the king,” said his wife, and the waitresses nodded and said, “Yes, they are honoring the king.”

But if the decent people of Bergania understood what the procession was about, the Gambettis were horrified.

“It’s an outrage — the noise, the disrespect,” said the baroness, peering out of her bedroom window. “They must be stopped at once. Look at those British savages in the front.” She turned to her husband. “You must do something. Call out the police.”

But Gambetti, who had been getting steadily feebler and more afraid since the king’s death, said he had no instructions to call out the police. “And Stiefelbreich’s in a meeting and mustn’t be disturbed.”

“Well, if you won’t call out the police, I will,” said the baroness, and reached for the phone.

“Listen,” said Matteo. “They’re coming.”

Karil crouched beside him on the bare wooden floor of the boarded-up hunting lodge. Matteo had pried aside a couple of planks and they had crawled inside: it was closer to the entrance of the hunting ground than the pool. Matteo had wrapped the prince in his own jacket and was talking to him quietly, telling him stories about his father as a boy. Karil, fixing his eyes on Matteo’s face, tried to listen, but he was still so deep in shock that he heard only the words, not their meaning. The uniform that Karil had worn had been tied around a stone and dropped into the water; everything was ready.

The music came closer. They could make out the sound of Augusta’s violin as she played a Celtic lament.

Matteo pried open another board and now Karil could see them: a whole hillside of children coming to fetch him away. Tally was near the front; she looked very small down there.

“Are they really coming for me?”

Matteo nodded. “You’ll be safe with them. Just join in and do what they tell you, and you’ll be in our tent in no time. And in the morning we’ll get you away to England.”

It was what Karil had longed for as he looked down at the lighted tents from the palace — to belong to the children that lived in them. Now he wanted nothing in the world except to have his father back.

The procession had reached the meadow. Now they formed a circle with the Deldertonians closest to the gates of the hunting ground and the wooden lodge. Soon Borro would slip in with Karil’s clothes and bring him.

But the farewell for the king had taken on a life of its own. Here on the dancing ground Johannes III had to be honored and now everyone was looking to the children from Delderton, who had brought this ritual into being.

“We absolutely can’t do the Flurry Dance,” whispered Tally. “It isn’t suitable at all.”

But what could they do?

“Someone ought to recite a poem,” said Barney. “Something noble.”

And one and all they looked at Julia.

“You can do it,” said Barney.

“No!” Julia’s voice was anguished. “Not in front of all those people.”

“This isn’t about you,” said Tally. “It’s for the king. Say the piece we did in class, about the hunter coming home from the hill.”

Julia looked around the circle of children waiting in silence.

“Please,” said Tally.

Julia did not fold her hands or step forward. She only lifted her head and began to speak the words that Robert Louis Stevenson had written for a much-loved friend. The poem that began:

No one needed to know English to understand what she said. Julia’s voice did it all.

When she had finished there was complete silence. Then suddenly a tall boy in a tunic and leather boots began to click his fingers. A second boy joined in — and a row of boys formed, resting their arms on each other’s shoulders. Music came now from an accordion and a drum, and now the girls broke ranks and twirled in and out of the men. This was not national dancing now; it was dancing that broke all the barriers. It was dancing for everybody who had ever sorrowed and lost somebody they loved.

“Now,” whispered Tally — and Borro picked up his bundle, ready to run for the gate.

And then everything changed.

They heard the roar of motorcycles coming up the path behind them, and three men in police uniforms dismounted. They were part of the new force recruited in readiness for the takeover.

“What’s going on here, then?” said the tallest. “You’re not supposed to be out.”

“There’s a curfew,” said the second man. “You’re breaking the law.”

The children clustered around. In a babble of languages they explained what they were doing.

“We are honoring the king.”

“We are performing a funeral dance.”

“It is what we do in our country.”

The policemen, if they understood what was being said, took no notice.

“You must stop this nonsense now, at once, and go back to your campsite or you’ll be in serious trouble.”

The tallest of the policemen lifted his billy club. “Let’s get going,” he ordered threateningly.

There was nothing to do but obey. As slowly as they dared, the children began to walk down the hill. But the Deldertonians had not started to move yet; they lingered still near the gate but how long could they hang back? One of the policemen was making his way toward them.

And then suddenly a truly terrible scream came from the front of the procession and everybody stopped. A second scream followed, more dreadful than the first, and two little girls could be seen rolling over and over each other, pounding each other with their fists. A third joined in; they were the smallest and frailest of the dancers, wearing flounced petticoats with ribbons in their hair, but now they fought and clawed and kicked like maniacs.

The scuffle turned into a fight and spread. Two tall youths in crimson sashes attacked each other with the flags they carried. These children, who had lived together in harmony ever since they came, were shouting appalling abuse at each other.

“You’re a garlic-eating peasant!”

“Everybody knows that in your country they cook babies and turn them into soup!”

“You’re nothing but a fascist beast!”

And all the time the fighting got worse — two boys were pounding each other with their fists. Another came up behind a youth and wrestled him to the ground.

“Look out, he’s got a knife,” shouted a girl, her face contorted with fear.

There were cries of “She’s bleeding!” and “Oh help, help — he’s coming for me!”

The policemen abandoned the loitering Deldertonians and ran downhill toward the disturbance. It was only what they had expected — that these unruly foreigners would start attacking each other. They waded into the middle of the fight, taking the youths by the scruff of the neck, pulling the little girls apart.

Musical instruments were tossed aside, the furry horn let out a frightful cry as they stepped on it with their heavy boots. As soon as they had quieted one group of children, a scuffle broke out somewhere else.

No one took any notice of the children left on the meadow at the top. No one saw a boy run into the forest with a bundle of clothes under his arm, or another boy come out and join the dancers.

It took a long time to control the fighting. Dusk had set in by the time everything was quiet.

“If there’s any more fuss you’ll be locked up,” threatened the policemen.

The children obeyed. They knew that their diversion had worked; Karil had had time to join the Deldertonians, and they marched proudly down the hill and into their tents.

And Karil, on the day his father died, somehow managed to march with them.

Matteo watched till they had gone. Then he slipped through the trees and made his way toward the back entrance of the palace. There were things he wanted to know before he left Bergania on the following day.

It was after midnight when he returned. Karil was lying in a sleeping bag in the boys’ tent. Tod lay beside him wrapped in an old blanket; he had insisted on giving his sleeping bag to the prince.

Karil was sobbing, trying to stifle the sound he made, and Matteo was relieved. The boy’s silent grief had been dangerous. He slipped off his shoes and lay down across the entrance to the tent, but he made no attempt to comfort him. A whole ocean of tears would not be enough to wash away what the boy had endured that day.

CHAPTER TWENTY Good-bye, Bergania

They packed up before daybreak.

The children dressed in silence — they had decided the night before that they would travel in their dancing clothes; the hats festooned with ivy gave some measure of disguise. If they looked mad and disheveled, all the better. They already had a reputation for being the sort of people it was best to keep away from, and they meant to keep it like that.

There was time only for Tally to whisper her thanks to the little girls who had started the fight on the hillside and saved the prince. They looked smaller than ever, like sleepy butterflies in their flounced dresses, and it was hard to believe that they could have screamed so loudly.

Then the buses came, and the children piled inside.

They had been afraid of what would happen at the station — there had been no time to buy a ticket for Karil — but the sudden evacuation had put everything in a state of muddle and confusion. The stationmaster didn’t take tickets or examine passports — his instructions were to get rid of the foreigners as quickly as possible and, along with their friends from the other groups, the Deldertonians were pushed on to the train. Safe in their compartment, they clustered together in as small a space as possible, pushing Karil in between Barney and Tally and making as much mess as they could, spreading out comics, putting their feet on the seats, living up to their reputation as hooligans.

More and more children climbed onto the train, and adults, too — people who were no longer desired by the new order in Bergania. There was an atmosphere of tension and bustle. The contrast with the hope and happiness that had marked their arrival four days ago was heartbreaking.

Matteo, who had been keeping watch in the corridor, let down the window.

“Listen!” he said to Magda, who stood beside him.

Carrying toward them from the mountainside was one of the most dreaded sounds in the world — that of a pack of baying bloodhounds following a scent.

The guard blew his whistle. The train began to move.

On the tower of the palace on the hill the flag was at half mast, but Karil did not turn his head. The vineyards and orchards flashed past as lovely as ever, but there were signs that Bergania was now a threatened land. They could see armored vehicles on the road, and clumps of soldiers.

“You’ll be all right now, you’ll see,” said Tally, putting a hand on Karil’s arm. “In less than two hours we’ll be at the border.”

But before he could answer her, the train plunged into the famously long tunnel.

The sudden darkness sent the boy’s thoughts plunging down. The thunder of the carriages, the bare black wall, forced him into a world without hope. His face, reflected in the sepulchral window, was that of a stricken ghost — and still there was no glimmer of light.

Then at last it was over — but as the train emerged the door of the carriage was thrown open and everybody gasped, for it was as though the person who stood there had gathered all the darkness of the tunnel into herself. Dressed entirely in black, scowling furiously as she stared into the compartment, was the Countess Frederica.

Instantly the children sitting next to Karil drew closer, trying to shield him, but Karil made no attempt to hide behind his companions. The woman who had looked after him since he was four years old would know him instantly wherever he was and whatever clothes he wore. And of course she would give him away. She would see to it that he was stopped at the border and brought back to the palace and it would all go on again: the scolding, the etiquette… She would never let him go.

The Scold’s black eyes were raking the compartment. Barney’s shoelaces were undone; Kit’s comic had fallen to the floor. Verity’s bare feet rested on the seat opposite. Magda had handed out her egg sandwiches, but in the agitation of the night before she had not boiled the eggs hard enough and the children were dabbing at their clothes.

“I thought I had made it perfectly clear,” said the Scold, fixing Karil with her steely gaze, “that sandwiches may only be eaten if a clean napkin is first spread across the knees. Both knees.” She took a large starched handkerchief out of her pocket and handed it to Karil. “You may return this when we reach Switzerland. I shudder to think what Carlotta would say if she could see you now. And if you continue to sit hunched up in your seat you will get a crooked back. Posture is everything for those of royal blood, as I have told you many times before.”

And she slammed the door shut again and marched away down the corridor.

For a while after the countess left everyone was silent. Tally had recognized the witchlike woman she had seen at the barred window of the palace and a shiver went down her back. But what she said was, “Who’s Carlotta?”

Karil wiped the egg yolk off his trousers and said, “She’s a sort of cousin of mine. She has ringlets and wears white dresses and smiles a lot.”

“Do you like her?”

“I’ve never met her.”

But now, for the first time since the death of his father, he thought about where he might be going if he reached England safely, and it seemed as though it must be his grandfather’s house in London.

“She lives with my grandfather.” And then wearily: “I suppose that is where I shall have to live if I get across the border. It’s full of my relations.”

“No, you don’t have to,” said Tally. “Not unless you want to. You can come to Delderton with us. You’d like it.”

The others nodded.

“There’s lots going on. You could have an animal to keep,” said Barney. “I’ve got an axolotl.” He was about to say that the axolotl’s name was Zog and then thought better of it. After all, Karil himself was now a sort of Zog.

“We’re going to do a play of Persephone next term,” said Verity.

“Matteo gives amazing biology lessons,” said Tod.

“And there’s a river with otters,” said Tally. “It’s almost as nice as your dragonfly pool. And even the awful lessons are quite funny, like when you have to be a fork or boil up motherwort.”

She described the gentle countryside, the cedar tree in which a thrush sang every morning, the white-painted rooms, one for each child, which they could decorate in any way they liked. “Of course, being free can be exhausting, but you soon get used to it.”

“I can’t imagine being free,” said Karil, “being allowed to do what you want.”

Kit, however, felt that something should be made clear. “We don’t play cricket. Not ever. You’d have to put up with that.”

But Karil did not mind about cricket, which was not played much in Bergania.

“Would they let me come?”

“Of course.” As far as Tally was concerned the matter was settled. “Even if you haven’t got any money, the headmaster will probably give you a scholarship. I’m on a scholarship, so why not you?”

“You wait till you see Clemmy,” said Barney. “She teaches art and she’s the best cook in England.”

The train steamed on toward the border and Karil closed his eyes, dreaming of a place where one could wake each morning among friends, and choose one’s day. And Matteo would be there — the man who had been his father’s friend.

Tally, on the other hand, was thinking of Carlotta.

Should I smile more? she wondered. But it wouldn’t really help. There was still the question of the ringlets. Aunt May had tried to curl her hair once and the results had been disastrous.

And she had never in her life worn a white dress, let alone owned one.

It had not taken long for the people in the palace to realize that the prince was not in a safe place for his own protection, but quite simply missing, and a great search had begun.

The Countess Frederica had rampaged through the rooms, lifting the lids of chests, opening cupboard doors, scouring basements and attics. The king’s turnip-shaped aunts searched, too, calling and imploring. So did Uncle Fritz and those of the servants who had not run away in terror after the assassination — for order and discipline were breaking down fast.

After a few hours the countess had swallowed her pride and gone to see the Baroness Gambetti.

“If you know anything about the prince, please tell me,” she begged. “The king put him in my charge, as you know.”

But the Baroness Gambetti knew nothing. “The wretched boy’s hiding somewhere, I suppose,” she said. “As though there wasn’t enough trouble. Poor Philippe is at the end of his tether.”

And indeed Gambetti could be heard in the bathroom, groaning and being sick.

When the countess returned to her room in the palace she found two army officers who informed her that she would be put on a train and sent back to England first thing in the morning.

“British subjects are no longer welcome in this country,” they said.

“I’m not leaving without the prince,” she had said. “It’s out of the question.”

The officers belonged to the new order: men who supported Stiefelbreich.

“You can take one suitcase,” was all they said, and left, locking her into her room.

The countess fought all the way to the station. Her shoes were as spiky as her elbows and her nose; one of the officers who manhandled her had thin legs. Now, sitting in her compartment, the countess allowed herself a sour smile as she recalled his yelps of pain.

Even on the platform she went on struggling. Then, in the crowd of children making their way to the train, she saw a boy wearing an absurd ivy-wreathed hat and surrounded by a group of hooligans who seemed familiar. And at that point she had ceased to struggle and allowed herself to be escorted to a first-class compartment at the front of the train and locked in.

“The guard will open the door when the train is under way,” said one of the officers. “But I warn you: if you attempt to return to Bergania it will cost you your life.”

The door slid open and, looking up, the countess saw the bandit who now had Karil in his charge.

“What happened?” Matteo wanted to know. And when she told him: “What about the bloodhounds? Were they out for the boy?”

“Yes. There are two lackeys of Stiefelbreich’s — vile-looking men who look as though they will stop at nothing. They set them off.”

“Can you describe them?”

“One is huge, with a missing ear. But the other one is worse — a slimy little worm of a man with a scar on his lip and a gold tooth.”

Matteo nodded. It was what he had expected.

“But at least they still think that Karil is somewhere close, which gives us a little time.” He turned to the countess. “You do realize, don’t you, that once they suspect that the boy is fleeing the country you will be followed. They know how close you were to the prince.”

The countess drew her fierce eyebrows together. “Thank you, it is not necessary for you to tell me this. I am perfectly aware that it would not be wise for me to be seen with the prince when other people are nearby. But whenever it is safe for me to do so I shall appear and do my duty toward him as I have always done. Even on a short journey it is possible for a boy to get into bad habits, and this I shall prevent with all the power that I have. You may expect to see me again in Zurich.”

Left alone again, the Scold allowed herself to lean back against the cushions. She was not a woman who gave in to her feelings, but now she closed her eyes and permitted a few tears to well up behind her lids. She wept for Bergania and the dead king, for old von Arkel, who had been taken away for questioning… Above all she wept for the boy who was now an orphan and eating egg sandwiches among children who walked without clothes on toward the showers.

But she did not weep for long, for it was clear that she had one overriding duty and that was to take Karil to Rottingdene House, where his grandfather would keep him safe. Things were done properly there; there was no place where rules were stricter or etiquette was enforced more strongly — and the boy would be surrounded by nobly born relations to make sure that he did not lapse. In Rottingdene House, with dear Carlotta at his side, Karil would be safe until this nonsense was over and he could return to Bergania to be crowned as the country’s rightful king.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE The Pursuit

The campsite was deserted. A colored kerchief caught in the branches of a tree, a mouth organ forgotten in the grass were the only signs that a few hours ago children had stayed here and been happy. Soon workmen would come and surround the site with barbed wire — the tents were going to house soldiers of the occupying army.

In the cathedral the king’s body lay in state, ready for burial.

So everything was going according to plan. Yet in his room in the German consulate, Colonel Stiefelbreich paced the floor, angry and frustrated. His thoughts were on one thing and one thing only.

Where was the prince?

Every nook and cranny in the palace had been gone over; the king’s aunts — tiresome women who would have to be sent to a convent to get them out of the way — had been questioned. The mountain hut of the king’s old nurse had been searched, and every stick and stone of the surrounding countryside had been scoured. On the hill, the bloodhounds had drawn a blank.

This meant trouble for Stiefelbreich. He was supposed to hand the prince over to his superiors as soon as they entered Bergania — failure to do so would have serious consequences. A radio message had just come through from the commandant at Colditz to say that everything was ready to receive the prince. A cell had been prepared for him in the High Security Block, the commandant had said. Not that it mattered whether it was a high-security block or not — the whole of Colditz was high security. No one had escaped from that doomed fortress and lived to tell the tale. Stiefelbreich picked up the telephone.

Earless and Theophilus were resting in their room after their all-night search. They were not pleased with the accommodation they had been given above the consulate garages. Theophilus was worried about the effect of the fumes from the cars on his lungs and was spraying disinfectant up his nose.

Earless was sitting on his bed, which sagged under his weight, and worrying about Belinda. There was a man who served in the corner shop at the bottom of their street at home who smiled at Belinda in a way which Earless did not like. He thought of writing to Belinda and warning her, but reading and writing were very difficult for him and as so often before he thought how different things would be if he still had his other ear. The man in the corner shop wouldn’t have had a chance if Earless had both his ears.

But when they heard that Stiefelbreich wanted them, both men cheered up. There is nothing like work for taking your mind off your troubles.

“Tell me again exactly what happened with the bloodhounds,” he said when the men stood before him.

“They followed the scent easily enough into the hunting ground, up to that lodge by the gates, but then they started going all over the place, running down the hill and coming back. But that’s not surprising — there was a whole stampede of kids up there last night,” said Theophilus.

“Exactly,” said Stiefelbreich, rubbing his chin. “So I think we must face the fact that the prince may have been among them, that somehow he has sneaked out of the country with the children that left on the train this morning. He can’t have gone on his own — the passes have all been watched and the roads checked. And if so, it’s likely that he might be trying to get to Great Britain — after all, his mother was British.”

“So we’d be looking out for that man the king spoke to in the square perhaps,” said Theophilus.

Stiefelbreich nodded. “Or that woman who looked after him. Mind you, she still thought the boy was here when we put her on the train, so she didn’t know anything then. But the main thing is that you must leave at once.”

“Trouble is, they’ve got a good start on us, on that train,” said Earless.

Stiefelbreich shook his head. “I’ll let you have one of the consulate cars — a Mercedes. The train will go slowly — everything’s disrupted; we’ve seen to that, and it stops altogether in Switzerland. But he mustn’t get away. If he reaches the Channel and gets over to England, we’ve lost him. The Führer doesn’t want any trouble with the British government — or the Americans.”

“And if we find him—” began Theophilus.

“Not if,” snapped the colonel. “When.”

“When we find him,” said Theophilus, “do you want him brought back here?”

Stiefelbreich shook his head. “You’ll be in radio contact with the SS patrols; they’ll take him straight to Colditz. As soon as you have the prince, arrange with them to hand him over. You’ll get your bonuses just the same.”

But Theophilus had one more question: “If there’s any difficulty… there might be a struggle perhaps… I take it you want the boy alive?”

“Certainly we want him alive,” snapped Stiefelbreich. “Unless…” He walked over to the window and stood looking out. “He mustn’t get across the Channel,” he said. “But yes, if possible, we want him alive.”

Left alone again, Stiefelbreich sent a message to the commandant at Colditz.

“Expect prisoner hourly. Inform time of arrival,” it said, and it was signed with his code name, which was Iron Fist. It was a good name, thought Stiefelbreich; he had chosen it himself.

CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO The Berganian Mountain Cat

The train was traveling more slowly now. The stops grew more frequent; convoys of army trucks passed on the road. The time for Bergania to be “protected” by the brave soldiers of the German Reich was coming very close.

In their compartment the children waited anxiously. The ordeal that faced them was not far away now. At the border with Switzerland there was a checkpoint where passports and permits were examined. The Deldertonians were traveling on a group passport. It contained photographs of Matteo and Magda; the rest were mentioned only by name: four girls, four boys…

Only now there were four girls and five boys. Somehow they would have to lose a boy or confuse the customs officials and persuade them that the numbers were right.

As the train reached the beginning of the Altheimer Pass, which crossed the last mountain range into Switzerland, it stopped in a final sort of way and the guard came down the corridor and said everyone was to get out. The rest of the journey was to be completed by bus.

Everyone grabbed their belongings and piled out of the train. At the other end of the platform, keeping her back to them, they saw the Countess Frederica standing with the other first-class passengers.

They waited for nearly an hour and then three buses appeared labeled ZURICH. The first-class passengers were led to one of them, the children scrambled into the others and they set off.

The pass was dramatically beautiful; the bus climbed and snaked and climbed again. The land below them was neutral and safe as it had been for centuries. Switzerland had kept out of the last war; it had given sanctuary to thousands of refugees in the centuries that had gone by. It wasn’t just chocolate and cuckoo clocks and cheese that the Swiss were famous for, but safety and peace.

Then as they approached the top of the pass the buses drew into a lay-by and stopped. The drivers got out and stretched and lit cigarettes. They seemed to be waiting for orders.

Inside the bus, Matteo suddenly spoke. “Out,” he said. “All the Deldertonians out. Quick.”

The children stood up. This was how their biology lessons began — with Matteo ordering them out. Matteo strung his binoculars around his neck and said a few words to the driver, who shrugged and turned back to his colleagues. Then he turned to the children.

“We’re going up the path to that rocky ledge. No one must make a sound.”

“What is it?” whispered Barney.

“Probably nothing,” said Matteo below his breath, “but possibly — just possibly — one of the rarest mammals in Europe: the Berganian mountain cat.”

The wind at this height was piercing; the quartz in the rock sparkled; the sun beat down. Tally was completely bewildered. Was this part of the prince’s escape or was it a biology lesson?

It was a biology lesson. Nobody was allowed to talk, anyone not picking up their feet was glared at, and strangely, all of them, in spite of what they had gone through, were focused on one thing and one thing only: the snow leopard of the Alps, the Berganian mountain cat. Matteo had described it. Fur pale as honey, black tufted ears like a lynx… a predator that could leap a hundred meters down on to its prey…

They climbed until the buses below them had turned into toys. Tally and Julia tried to keep Karil between them — shielding him had become a habit — but the boy moved at speed. Even in his exhausted state he knew exactly where to put his feet; the mountains were his home — and when Augusta stumbled it was he who steadied her.

They saw marmots and goats and an ibex — and found the nest of a kestrel from which the young had just flown — but they did not see a Berganian mountain cat.

They had reached the top of the pass now with a clear view of the valley they had driven through. Matteo, who had been raking the mountainside with his binoculars, suddenly became very still and they all froze, trained as they had been not to interrupt his moments of concentration. But whatever Matteo had seen it was not something he meant to show them, and down below they could see the tiny figure of their driver waving his arms and heard the tooting of horns.

As they ran down the hill Karil stopped for a moment and bent down to pick up something from the path. Not a valuable stone or a rare plant… just an ordinary pebble of Berganian quartz.

“Is it to remind you?” asked Tally.

“I shan’t need reminding,” said Karil.

It was not until they were back in the bus and had been driving for several kilometers that Barney spoke.

“How is it you never mentioned the Berganian mountain cat to us all the time we were there? Or before we went? And how come it’s not mentioned anywhere in the guidebooks if it’s so famous?”

Matteo did not answer. When they were safely over the border he would explain, but to confess now that the noble and rare animal had come out of his own head would be to explain why he had invented it, and he was not ready for that. He had needed a chance to reconnoiter and what he had seen through his binoculars had relieved his mind. The road behind them had been clear; there was no sign of a black Mercedes of the kind that the Germans had brought to Bergania. He would never relax his vigilance, but so far at least there was nobody on their tail.

The buses stopped at the checkpoint and everyone scrambled out. They had expected to go all the way to Zurich in the same transport but now there was a change of plan again. The buses were required by the army in Bergania, so they would travel on in charabancs provided by the Swiss on the other side of the border post.

“So for goodness sake make sure you have all your belongings,” the teachers instructed their charges. “We can’t go back once we’re through.”

The children grabbed their bags and books and scarves and the souvenirs they had bought in the market and made their way to the customs shed. It was a small building, not accustomed to receiving hordes of people, and the officials manning the three gates looked startled at the mass of children rushing in.

This was the last chance that all the different groups would have to say good-bye properly; after that they would be driven to different destinations: some to trains going west or north, some to bus stations for the journey south.

And it was the last chance for the children who had danced the prince down from the hill to give their help.

The first-class passengers were allowed through straightaway, and Countess Frederica marched off with her ramrod back and got on to the waiting bus. Then came the folk dancers.

The Deldertonians were by Gate 2. Magda and Matteo stood in front, the rest bunched behind them. Matteo showed his group passport. The official counted the children.

“It says here, four boys and four girls. You only have three boys,” he said in his strong Swiss German dialect.

Magda looked around. There were black rings under her eyes from thinking about Schopenhauer in the night and she blinked at the customs official like a troubled owl.

“Oh dear,” she said. “We have lost a boy. Tally, see if you can find him.”

Tally came back with Barney and Karil.

“Here they are,” she said.

“That is two boys,” said the customs official. “Which one is with you?”

Magda pointed to Karil. “This one,” she said. “Look, here is his name.” And she pointed to Tod’s name on the list.

One of the Swedish boys now came running up and took Barney’s arm.

“Hurry up, Lars,” he said in his own language. “We’re just about to go through.”

Barney went with him, but now there was a fuss at Gate 3, where there were too many Yugoslavs. Two of the boys from Italy had got into the wrong queue.

The teachers were getting rattled.

“Keep still,” they shouted. “Stand by your group.”

But the children did not stand still. Verity broke away and rushed at Lorenzo, throwing her arms around him. Two French girls came hurrying up to Tally, waving address books. A Spanish girl started to cry noisily and abandoned her group to hug a girl from Norway.

The Swedish boy who had fetched Barney away called, “Lars! Where are you, Lars? Come over here,” but “Lars” was nowhere to be seen.

The Italians now had too many children whereas the Dutch had too few, and still the children swirled about and merged and parted while the harassed customs officials counted and recounted.

The Deldertonians, by Gate 2, at least had the right number — four boys, four girls.

“All right, you can go through,” said the man in charge of the gate. He lifted the barrier and they rushed out and climbed into the nearest of the waiting charabancs.

One by one the children in the other groups gathered themselves together and passed through into Switzerland.

The customs officials wiped their brows and closed the gates. It was the end of their shift and they were going for a beer.

And at that moment a boy with long hair and desperately untidy clothes came running into the shed from the Berganian side.

“Wait!” he called. “Wait for me! Don’t close the gates. I had to go back to the bus — I left my camera.”

He held out a Brownie box camera, and the customs men glared at him.

“Who do you belong to?” they asked.

Barney, disheveled and distraught, said, “I’m British. I come from England. Look, I belong to those people over there — they’re waiting for me. Please let me through. His face puckered up; he looked as though he was going to cry.

The men muttered together. “I counted the British,” said one.

“You can’t have done.”

The men conferred. Should they call everybody back and count them again?

From the buses waiting to depart came the tooting of a horn, and now a man leaned out of the nearest one and yelled angrily.

“What do you think you’re up to, Barney?” Matteo sounded like a public schoolmaster of the sternest sort. “Get over here at once. I told you you couldn’t go back to the buses. You’re holding everybody up.”

The customs men gave up. They opened the gate.

“Yes, sir, I’m coming, sir,” called Barney and scrambled on to the bus. It was the first time he had called anybody sir and he thought it sounded rather good.

“We did it,” said Tally exultantly when they had been driving for some time, and they patted Barney on the back, because it had been his idea to get left behind and confuse the guards still further.

“Everybody did it,” said Barney.

“Yes.”

Karil was silent. He had expected to feel devastated as he left his country behind, perhaps forever, but what he felt was gratitude and wonder that all these strange children had conspired to help him.

They drove on steadily toward the clean and shining city lying beneath them in the valley. Their thoughts were with the future; no one looked back, not even Matteo, who was busy planning the next stage of their journey.

So no one noticed the black Mercedes, with smoked windows, snaking behind them down the hill.

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE The Cheese-Makers’ Guild

What a good job I learned about having feasts in the dorm,” said Tally, “because this seems to be what we are having. The important thing is not to step on the sardines.”

But actually there weren’t any sardines.

There were rollmops and there were slices of Gruyère cheese and there were crunchy rolls and boxes of dates and apples — all of them bought in the market which was being held in the square down below.

They had been driven straight to the Hotel Kaiserhof, where they were to spend the night. Their travel arrangements had been disrupted by their sudden departure from Bergania, and the through train which was to take them to catch the boat at Calais did not leave till the following afternoon. Matteo had been at the British embassy arranging for their tickets and visas.

Meanwhile they had been given vouchers for a large room with two rows of beds on the top floor, and a small sitting room. Looking out, they could see the beautiful city of Zurich and the Limmat River which flows through its heart.

They had wanted to go out and eat in a restaurant but money was tight — and though Matteo was reasonably certain there was no one following the prince, he wanted to keep Karil safely indoors and out of sight.

So Tally and Julia had stayed in the hotel with Karil while the others went shopping and came back with bags of delectable food.

“It’s a pity it isn’t midnight,” said Tally when everything was spread out, “but you can’t have everything. Let’s hope Matron doesn’t come in in the middle and spoil everything.”

Kit knew about feasts in the dorm, too. His friend in the school where they played cricket had told him about them. “You have pillow fights.”

“So you do.” Tally looked at Karil. “But not when your father has just died.”

Karil had been sitting quietly on his bed. Now he lifted his head and said, “No, that’s wrong. It’s when your father has died that you have pillow fights. It’s when your father’s died that you do everything he used to do.”

And he picked up the big, spotless pillow from the nearest bed and hurled it across the room at Borro.

There was a moment of silence. It seemed to the other children that they had witnessed someone behaving very well. Then Borro picked up his pillow and hurled it back. Soon the room was full of flying pillows and feathers. Julia managed to save the Gruyère cheese and Augusta Carrington’s bananas, but the plateful of rolls tumbled to the floor.

Then the door opened and everybody stopped dead — because what Tally dreaded had come to pass. Glaring into the room, fierce and furious, was Matron. At least, she looked exactly like the pictures of Matron in the books: thin and black-haired and scowling, and she was within an inch of stepping on the rollmops.

“Karil — are you mad? Have you totally forgotten yourself?” said the Scold. “And what is that that you are wearing?”

Karil put down his pillow. “They’re Tod’s pajamas,” he said.

The countess curled her lip.

“You cannot possibly sleep in rags like those,” she said. “And all that food on the floor — I never thought I would live to see the day.” She raked the room with her eyes. “Is that a girl I see over there?”

“Yes,” said Tally. “It is, and it’s me. And this is Julia and those are Verity and Augusta; they’re girls, too…”

“It’s outrageous! Karil must have his own room. Where is the woman in charge?”

“She’s with Matteo next door. They’re doing the accounts,” said Barney.

But at that moment Magda came in to say it was time for everyone to wash and get into bed, and was instantly attacked.

“Ah! You there. I demand that the prince has his own room. It is out of the question that he should share a bedroom with these savages.”

“I’m afraid we only have one big room for everyone. Matteo and I are sleeping on sofas next door.”

“Well then, you must erect a shelter so that the prince’s bed is screened from the rest and he can sleep in privacy.”

“I don’t want to sleep in privacy. I want to be with my friends,” said Karil.

The countess ignored him. “It should be perfectly possible to put up a shelter using a blanket — it can be suspended from a hook above the window.”

Magda blinked at her hopelessly. She could have climbed Mount Everest more easily than she could have erected a shelter made of a blanket suspended from a hook. “We don’t believe in segregating children,” she said.

“We are not dealing with children,” snapped the countess. “We are dealing with the Crown Prince of Bergania. And please remember that His Highness requires exactly two centimeters of toothpaste to be spread on his brush, and he invariably has two rusks and a glass of juice at bedtime. Not one rusk. Not three rusks. Two. Moreover—”

She was interrupted by an angry voice. “I think I have asked you already, Countess,” said Matteo, coming into the room, “not to appear to be traveling with us. We may still be being followed, and you being the closest person to the prince would certainly be under suspicion. Once we are in Britain it will be different of course, but for now Karil must travel as one of our party and behave as our party behaves.”

“Like a savage, you mean,” barked the Scold.

But she turned and left the room, and they could hear the lift door clashing shut as she was carried down to her apartment on the ground floor.

“I want everybody to stay here till I get back,” said Matteo the next morning, as he set off for the British embassy.

Magda had had a bad night, dreaming that she had to cover Schopenhauer with a blanket suspended from a meat hook, and had a migraine, so she went back to lie down on the sofa in the sitting room.

In their dormitory the children settled down to read or play cards. It was a beautiful day; from their windows they could see white birds wheeling over the river, the green and gold domes and spires of churches and museums and a glimpse of the lake which edged the western side of the town.

Time passed very slowly. The church clocks struck the hours and still Matteo did not come.

“We’re going to be cooped up in the train all night,” said Verity. “It’s ridiculous not to go out and stretch our legs. I’ll bet the shops are fabulous.”

“Matteo said we were to stay,” said Borro.

“No, he didn’t. He said he wanted us to stay,” said Tod. “That’s not the same thing.”

They waited another half hour. A soft breeze came in through the open window. Then the chambermaid came to clean their room.

“We’re in the way,” said Tally. And then: “It’s sort of our duty not to hinder people who are trying to work, don’t you think? If we went out just for half an hour?”

“But let’s not wake Magda,” said Julia. “She might think she had to forbid us and that would make her sad.” She turned to Karil. “Unless you’d rather stay?”

But Karil was as keen as anyone to get out of the stuffy room.

They set off along the left bank of the river, across the famous Cathedral Bridge, and down the wide streets that led into the commercial quarter. Beyond making sure that Karil was always flanked by at least two people, they had quite forgotten that there could be any danger.

It was a marvelously prosperous city; the shops were like museums, full of exquisite jewelry and high-precision watches and leather handbags; the pavements were wide and shaded by trees, and everything was so expensive that even Verity was not tempted to try to shop.

And keeping out of sight behind them marched the Countess Frederica.

They were walking down a particularly imposing street when Barney stopped suddenly in front of a notice set out on a wooden stand beside a big carved door.

SWISS GUILD OF CHEESE MAKERS, it said. And underneath: FREE CHEESE TASTING, FOLLOWED BY THE UNVEILING OF THE NEW PORTRAIT BY THE BRITISH PAINTER FERDINAND PONSONBY-SMITH, COMMISSIONED BY THE GUILD TO MARK ITS TWO HUNDREDTH ANNIVERSARY.

The notice was in German, but when Karil had translated it Barney became very excited.

“I thought I recognized the name. Don’t you remember? It’s the picture Clemmy posed for. They said she had to be the Spirit of Cheese, and there was a row because the artist painted her as a lot of abstract cubes and the Cheese Makers were very upset and sent it back and he had to paint it again with Clemmy looking like herself. She charged a lot of money for modeling because she had really retired.” He turned to the others. “We have to see Clemmy unveiled.”

Not only Barney but all of them suddenly felt really homesick for Clemmy. She seemed to represent all that was best at Delderton: the safety, the art classes, the pancakes…

The unveiling was at ten o’clock, and it was half past nine. It really seemed as if it was meant that they should go.

The Swiss guilds are very important institutions. There are guilds of watchmakers and guilds of woodcarvers and guilds of yodelers — but the cheese-makers’ guild is perhaps the wealthiest and most important of them all. For where would the country be without its Emmental and its Appenzeller — and its world-famous Gruyère, that classic cheese which is so whole and perfect on the outside and so amazingly full of holes once it is cut.

The children found the imposing building just off one of the main boulevards, and they followed the people going in.

The cheese samples were laid out on a number of tables in the hall. There were little red-skinned cheeses and pale cheeses wrapped in silver foil and soft cheeses rounded into pats. All the cheeses were served with small biscuits and there was a bottle of sparkling water and some glasses on each table.

The Deldertonians set to. They were very hungry. Augusta had thought that there might be one kind of cheese she could eat without coming out in lumps, but when she got closer she decided to be sensible and just looked.

The room was very crowded — no one was rude or jostled but everybody was determined to taste as much cheese as possible in the shortest amount of time.

Karil had not eaten much so far on the journey, but the little nibbles of cheese were very inviting. He was wearing Borro’s blue jersey and a little color had come into his cheeks.

The Countess Frederica had followed them into the hall but stayed near the exit, hidden by a pillar. Needless to say, she did not stoop to tasting anything: nibbles were never eaten by the upper classes.

After about half an hour a bell rang and then a very prosperous-looking man with a comfortable paunch got on to the dais and said everybody was now invited upstairs for the unveiling of the new portrait.

They followed him into a large room. The blinds were drawn and the lights shining from gilded chandeliers lit up the busts of people who had mattered in the guild. Facing the rows of chairs was a wide platform, and the wall behind the platform was hidden by a black curtain.

Everybody filed in and sat down. Barney and Kit were on either side of Karil, then came Tally and Julia. The others were in the row behind.

A number of guild members came on to the platform and everybody clapped. Then the most portly member made a speech. This was in Swiss German, which even Karil found hard to understand, but it was obviously about the importance of the occasion.

Then everybody clapped again and two men came in from a side door. The lights went out, the curtains were drawn aside, and spotlights flashed on to the large painting which was now revealed.

And a great sigh, a kind of general “aah” of enthusiasm, came from the audience.

Because here was the absolute essence of all that was best and most beloved in their country.

On one side of the picture stood a dairy cow, white and plump and peaceful, with a splodge of amber on her flanks. On the other side, in a meadow studded with all the loveliest flowers of the Alps — gentian and rock roses and edelweiss — grazed two eager goats. But in the center stood a girl holding a golden globe and smiling — a great wide smile as though she was blessing everything in the world: the Swiss people, the mountains, the meadows, but most of all the Guild of Cheese Makers, who kept the citizens of their country so gloriously supplied with their favorite food.

Her amber eyes glowed with love, her russet hair tumbled down her shoulders, so that its curling fronds made a frame for the globe which she was holding to her breasts.

And what was it, this perfect globe? Not a small sun, though it might well have been; not a golden ball, like the maidens of ancient Greece played with in their palaces — but a pure, round, absolutely unsullied Gruyère cheese.

The audience went mad. Anyone who thought that the Swiss were reserved and did not show their feelings had made a big mistake. They stamped their feet, they clapped, they whistled. One and all had fallen in love with Clemmy.

“You see what I mean?” said Barney, turning to Karil. “And when you think that even now she’s probably feeding my axolotl.”

“Yes, I do,” said Karil, and it seemed to him that a school where this marvelous creature could be one’s housemother was a place apart.

“Gosh, I feel quite homesick, don’t you?” said Julia, and Tally nodded.

But Kit did not share in the praise and pride. He had overdone the cheese tasting. His face looked green. “I feel sick,” he said. “I have to go to the toilet.”

Barney made room for him. “Do you know where it is?”

“No, I don’t.” Kit was feeling very sorry for himself. “I don’t know what ‘Gents’ is in German. I’ll go into the wrong one.”

“I’ll come with you,” said Karil.

The two boys slipped out and made their way out of the hall across a wide landing, down two flights of stairs, and into the dimly lit basement.

Kit was getting desperate, clutching his stomach.

“It’s around the corner… Look, here we are.” Karil opened the door and Kit rushed in.

At this point a furious yell could be heard in the distance.

“Karil, what are you doing? Come back at once. You cannot go into a public toilet!”

The Scold waited, but the prince remained out of sight around the corner. Furious, she made her way back to the hall.

Karil waited for a while, then pushed open the door.

Kit had finished being sick and was leaning over the washbasin, shivering. He had reached it too late and there was a considerable mess.

Karil took off Borro’s blue jersey. “Here, put this on and go back to the others. You can find the way back, can’t you? I’ll clear up a bit.”

“Thanks.” Kit slipped on the sweater and made his way out into the corridor.

Karil, wiping the floor with a mop he had found in a cupboard, was remembering Tally’s words. “It isn’t so terrible being a prince,” she had said — and while he didn’t agree with her, it was true that at this point he wouldn’t have minded ringing for a valet and walking away.

He reached the hall as the speeches were coming to an end.

“Where’s Kit?” he whispered.

“I don’t know. Isn’t he with you?” said Barney. “Maybe he’s gone out for some fresh air.”

There was a last burst of clapping and everyone filed out of the hall.

“He can’t have got lost coming up the stairs,” said Tally. “Not even Kit…”

But it seemed he had. He wasn’t downstairs in the cheese-tasting hall or in any of the corridors or out in the street.

Frantically they searched the building again and again, they asked the attendants, they called out Kit’s name…

But he seemed to have vanished off the face of the earth.

CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR A Mistake Is Made

The two men had driven north out of Zurich toward a grassy hill where they expected to get a good signal for their radio and make contact with the SS patrols who were to pick up the prince and take him to Colditz.

Everything had gone well. They’d followed the children from the hotel to the Cheese-Makers’ Guild and bided their time till they could isolate the boy. Their chance had come at the end of the unveiling, when they saw him slip from the room and tracked him to the corridor down in the basement. He stood out clearly enough in his blue jersey, even in the gloom, and if there had been any doubts, the shrieks of the Countess Frederica when she saw him would have put them to rest. If anyone could recognize the prince even at a distance, it was that appalling woman who had looked after him since he was a baby.

Waiting till he came out and grabbing the boy in that deserted corridor had been child’s play. As of an hour ago, both men were richer by a considerable sum.

Now they drove the Mercedes into a ruined shed at the bottom of the hill and Earless opened the sack which lay covered under a blanket in the backseat.

“ ’Ere, come and look at this,” he said to Theophilus. “Not very princely, is he?”

Theophilus came over and peered into the sack. “No, not what you would call princely at all,” he agreed.

What they saw was a weeping, moaning blob curled up at the bottom of the sack, calling for his mother, though everyone knew that the queen had been dead for many years.

Yanking the howling boy out by his shoulders, they examined him.

It was extraordinary how far the squirming little boy was from any idea of a royal personage. Or from the two faded photos of the prince that they had been shown.

“Now don’t you get in a fuss, Your Highness,” said Earless. “We’re taking you to a place where you’ll be safe and looked after properly. Colditz it’s called, and only important people go there. Very safe, Colditz is.”

“I’m not a highness,” wailed the terrified boy. “I’m Christopher Hargreaves and my father is Patrick Hargreaves and my mother is Amelia Hargreaves and I live in Dene House in West Witherington.”

Theophilus leaned over him. “It would be best not to waste our time.” He shook his sleeve and took out a thin-bladed knife with a mother-of-pearl handle. “We’ve got work to do.”

“I’m not at all like the prince. He’s much—” He broke off, trying for a moment to be brave and protect Karil, but the knife was moving ever closer to his throat.

Earless turned to Theophilus. “He’s fatter than I remember.”

“Yes, I am,” gulped Kit. “I’m very fat. Princes are never as fat as me.”

“Let’s get him out into the light.”

They lifted him out and dumped him on the grass. Doubts were beginning to creep in.

“Speak to him in German,” suggested Earless. “Tell him you’ll set him free if he promises to serve Herr Hitler, and see what he says.”

Theophilus spoke a few words in German, but this only brought on another storm of weeping.

“I don’t speak anything except English. I’m not clever… I’m not clever at all.”

His terrified eyes were fixed on the two men. Tear-washed and swollen as they were, their color, now that they could be seen in the stronger light, was an unmistakable and vivid blue. The prince could have dyed his hair blond, but he could hardly have dyed his eyes.

“You said you’re not at all like the prince,” said Theophilus. “So you know what the prince is like?”

“Yes, I do.” Kit’s moment of heroism had definitely passed. “He’s very nice. He took me to the toilet and lent me his jersey.”

The two men looked at each other. It was clear now what had happened.

And it was clear, too, that this moaning lump had to be disposed of, and quickly, so as to give them a chance to get back and snatch the real prince before he got on the train.

If this boy was allowed to live he could give a description of them to the police.

“Why don’t we just stick a knife in him?” said Earless. “We can dump him here.”

But Theophilus did not care for this. “Messy,” he said. “All that blood, and it just takes one stray dog to set off the alarm.”

But the word “dog” had reminded him of something. For a moment he stared into space. Then his evil face became softer, and his scarred lip curled into a smile. He had remembered some of the happiest hours of his childhood, when he had come out of the library for playtime and helped with the drowning of unwanted dogs.

“Big ones, some of them,” he told Earless. “Saint Bernards or Great Danes or wolfhounds. We’d muzzle them first and tie them in a sack and throw them in the river. It was so funny seeing them struggling, and the sack heaving and bobbing in the water — and then a gurgle or two and down they went.” He shook his head at the fond memories. “Those were good times,” he said wistfully.

“Well, the river’s close by,” said Earless, “and we’ve just passed a bridge. So what are we waiting for?”

CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE A Hero Is Born

The children sat huddled together in the dormitory at the hotel. It had not been necessary for Matteo to show his fury — they already felt as guilty and wretched as they could be for having disobeyed him and gone out by themselves.

Now they waited for news of Kit — no one could do anything; they scarcely had the energy to talk among themselves. It was incredible how much they missed the infuriating little boy and how much they feared for him.

Matteo had shut them into their room and gone to the police station. He had been there twice already and the officer in charge had promised to let him know if there was any news, but he found it impossible to keep away.

There were less than four hours to go before the night train to Calais was due to leave from the Central Station.

“I wasn’t nice to him,” said Tally. “I got so impatient.” And the others told her not to be silly.

“He used to follow you around like a half-hatched duckling,” said Julia. “He wouldn’t have done that if you hadn’t been nice.”

But then they realized they were talking of Kit as though he was already dead, and they fell silent once again.

Karil sat apart from the others, on his bed. He did not doubt for a second that he was responsible for what had happened to Kit, that whatever fate had befallen Kit had been meant for him.

At the police station, the clerks sat behind their desks scratching with their pens; clocks ticked.

The phone rang and then rang again, and there was no news. The third time, the chief constable came out of his office and came over to put a hand on Matteo’s shoulder.

“We’ve found him,” he said.

Matteo took a deep breath. “Dead or alive?” he managed to say.

“Alive. They’re bringing him in now. A fisherman found him in the river, tied in a sack. The sack got caught on a shallow bank of gravel. He can’t have been in the water more than a few minutes.”

And to Matteo, the police station, with its slow clerks and the ticking clock, looked suddenly like a room in Paradise.

Kit was carried in wrapped in a red blanket; his soaked clothes had been taken away to be dried. When he saw Matteo he stretched out his arms to him, and as Matteo took him, he began at once to pour out his adventures. Surprisingly this boy who was afraid of almost everything did not seem to be in a state of shock. It was as though he realized that he had become a person of immense importance, and sitting in the constable’s office, with an interpreter taking down his words, Kit told his story clearly and well. What he described most chillingly were the two men who had kidnapped him.

“One had pale eyes and a scar on his lip and you could see his gold tooth glinting. And the other one was huge and he had only one ear. When he bent over you, you could just see a horrible hole.”

“You can take him back now,” said the constable when Kit had finished. “We’ve got a good account of the men; they won’t get away from us. Only there’s one thing I don’t understand: why did they kidnap the boy in the first place? Will you ask him if he has any idea?”

Matteo put the question to Kit — with a warning eyebrow raised — and Kit understood and said, “I think they thought I was somebody else. Someone with rich parents who would pay a ransom, and when they found I wasn’t they decided they had to get rid of me.”

Back in the hotel Kit was surrounded and hugged and praised, all of which he thought was only right and proper.

“I was a bit heroic, I suppose,” he said carelessly — and was put right by Tally.

“Not a bit heroic,” she said, “absolutely heroic. Like someone in a Greek myth.”

Magda, who was always so good when things had been sad and difficult, rubbed Kit’s wrists and ankles and borrowed a hot-water bottle for him from the hotel, and it was agreed that no one would ever be cross with him again. But when Karil said, “It was me they were after, wasn’t it?” Kit, after a glance at Matteo, told the truth.

“They kept calling me Your Highness… and they said I would be all right with them because they were going to take me somewhere coldish. Or something like that.”

“Colditz,” said Karil under his breath. He knew about Colditz only too well.

So Matteo had been right about what he had said at the dragonfly pool. The men who had assassinated his father would stop at nothing till he, too, was in their possession.

“I’m sorry,” Karil said to Kit. “I’m really sorry. I wish I could make it up to you.”

In the old days it would have been easy: his father would have conferred some kind of honor on Kit or his family — a medal, a financial reward. All Karil had to offer the little boy now was concern and friendship, but perhaps it was enough.

The Central Station in the late afternoon was exceptionally busy. News of the takeover in Bergania was splashed over all the newspapers, and many people, thinking that war was very close now, wanted to be home.

The Swiss police might have been slow at first, but when they realized the seriousness of what had happened they could not have been more efficient. The children arrived in two police vans and were escorted to two locked compartments, while the superintendent and a constable kept watch with Matteo on the platform.

“We’ve put an alert out all over the city and its surroundings. With the description the boy gave us, they won’t get away,” said the superintendent.

They waited while luggage was loaded into the van, and newspaper and fruit sellers walked up and down the platform.

Then, when the engine was beginning to let off steam and there were only ten minutes to go before departure, a police sergeant came running up to the superintendent.

“We’ve got them, sir,” he said, saluting hurriedly. “Two men exactly like the boy described. They were sighted in a beer cellar. One hung up his hat — and there it was — or rather it wasn’t — his ear, I mean. We’ve sent for reinforcements to pick them up when they come out. They haven’t a chance.”

The superintendent’s face lit up. “Good. Good man.” He turned to Matteo: “Your lot will be safe now. I’ll let you know what happens, of course.”

He shook hands and hurried away, wanting to be in at the kill, and Matteo made his way to the compartment and the anxious children who awaited him.

“It’s all right,” he said. “They’ve found them.”

He looked at Kit, who was leaning peacefully against Magda, eating a piece of Swiss chocolate.

The boy was safe. The danger was over.

Matteo closed his eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX Night Train to Calais

The Countess Frederica was traveling first class. She even had a sleeper — but she was not asleep.

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.”

So now, when Tally told him that he had to be with them at Delderton, Karil began to wonder if she might be right, and he felt hope begin to stir in him.

“I was so angry with my father when he told me I had to go away to school,” Tally went on. “I really loved being at home, with my aunts and my friends. And London. We had a silver barrage balloon up over our house; it was like having a giant sausage to look after us.”

For a moment both children were silent, thinking about this war which everyone expected and which they had forgotten in the excitement of escaping from Bergania.

“I tried to fight him,” Tally went on, “but he won and I’m glad he did, though I miss him horribly. You’d really like him, Karil. He’s the best doctor for miles; everyone wants to come to him, and of course he doesn’t charge his patients nearly enough, so we’ve always been poor but it doesn’t matter. You can’t imagine how proud I am of him.”

“I’m not surprised. Being a doctor must be wonderful.”

“Yes.” She turned to him. “You could be a doctor if you wanted to.”

“I suppose I could.” And then: “Yes, I could. I could be anything.”

“You could be a great scientist.”

“Or an artist,” said Karil, “or an engineer.”

“You could learn anything at Delderton and get ready. I can’t describe it, Karil, but it’s such an interesting place — you have to come.”

As the train ran on through the night Karil’s dreams, above the sorrow of his father’s death, took flight. He could be a great explorer, discovering the source of an African river; he could invent a cure for cancer, or write a monumental symphony. He could own a rare and exotic animal — an aardvark or a cassowary.

Afterward, looking back on his escape, he thought that this hour in the train, when everything was possible, was the one he would most like to have again.

The luggage van of the train carried the usual consignment of suitcases, trunks, wooden boxes, and other things too bulky to go into the compartments. There was also a crate with a goat in it. The animal’s yellow eyes peered through the bars and occasionally it let off a desperate bleat.

The two ladies who had smuggled themselves into the van were very strangely dressed. One was a woman of most unusual size, wearing a knitted bonnet pulled over her face, and a spotted pinafore. She had taken off her shoes and was rubbing her bruised and hairy toes.

“I’m not spending the night in here,” she said in a surprisingly deep voice. “That animal gives me the creeps.”

“I could pick the lock,” said her companion, who had a feather boa thrown over her shoulder and wore a straw hat trimmed with cherries, “but we’d only run into that blasted bandit standing guard in the corridor. He never lets those kids out of his sight.” She looked up at the ventilation grating. “When we’re over the border into France, we’ll get a radio signal and alert the Gestapo. There’ll be a crowd of people making for the boat and we’ll be able to grab the prince. It’ll be our last chance — once he’s aboard we have to let him go.”

“He won’t get aboard,” said the outsize lady, with a snarl.

The woman with the feather boa groped in her handbag and took out a syringe with which she squirted disinfectant onto her tonsils. “They must be crazy, thinking we’d be trapped in a beer cellar,” she said. “As though we’d drink anywhere with only one exit. Still, that’s the police for you.”

All the same, it had been a rush: driving through the town, finding a secondhand clothes shop, outfitting themselves, and dumping the car.

“I’m hungry,” said the giant in the woolen bonnet.

“Try milking the goat,” said her companion.

And the train thundered on through the night.

CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN Reaching the Boat

It was extraordinary, stumbling out of the stuffy carriage, feeling the wind suddenly on their faces and seeing, in front of them, the harbor and the clean white world of the boats and the seagulls and the lighthouse.

The train had come to rest on the sidings beside the boat they were to catch to England. They only had to cross the tracks and make their way toward the gangway and in two hours they would be home in Britain, and safe. On the way out they had taken it for granted, traveling in a British boat, knowing they were protected, but now the ferry with her brightly painted funnels and cheerful flag seemed to be a vessel that had sailed in from Camelot to carry them over the sea.

The harbor was full of bustle and noise. Fishing boats chugged in and out between the ferries; crates of fish and lobsters were piled up on the quayside waiting for transportation; there were coils of rope and barrels of tar and nets — and everywhere, wheeling and shrieking and diving, the fearless, hungry gulls.

The children shivered in the sudden wind and turned their faces toward the SS Dunedin. They were among the last to leave the train. The first-class passengers had already embarked, with the Countess Frederica in the lead, shouting instructions to her porter as she strode up the gangway.

The other passengers followed, the throng gradually thinning; then came the Deldertonians in Magda’s charge.

“Go straight to the boat,” Matteo had ordered. “No dawdling. I’ll catch you up.”

They did not exactly dawdle, but Borro and Barney needed to examine the recently caught fish; Verity wanted to try out her French on a good-looking fisherman, and Tally was telling Karil about the white cliffs of Dover.

“They’re not really as white as all that, but all the same when you see them you get a lump in your throat.”

Matteo watched them go and paced the train once more. Satisfied that the coast was clear, he picked up his bundle and jumped down onto the platform. He could see the children ahead of him. They had reached the boat at last.

He was just crossing the track when he heard the sound of pounding footsteps and turned to see two extraordinary-looking people running toward him. One was huge and massively built, and the remains of a spotted apron clung to his baggy trousers. The other was smaller, wearing the remnants of a feather boa, and there was a scar on his upper lip.

They were almost level with him, running hell for leather for the boat in a last effort to snatch the prince.

Matteo kicked aside a fire bucket, threw down his pack… and charged.

The children, with Magda, had begun to make their way up the gangway. Standing near the top was the first mate in a smart blue uniform with brass buttons and a peaked cap. And on either side of him were two men in black leather coats and jackboots. Their hats were pulled down low, and what could be seen of their faces made the blood run cold.

“Stop!” said one of them, speaking in a strong German accent. “This is the group I have told you about. There is an extra child here — you will see. There is permission only for four boys — and if you count you will see there are five. And one of them — this one—” he pointed directly at Karil—“is the boy we are seeking. He is a runaway — a petty criminal — and he must come with us.”

The children felt as though they were turned to stone. All the color had drained from Karil’s face. He had seen enough in the last weeks to know that the men were from the Gestapo.

“It isn’t true,” said Magda, putting her arm around Karil. “All these children are traveling with me — they’re from Delderton School in Devon. We’ve been on a folk dance festival and we’re trying to get home.”

“Can I see your passports?” said the first mate.

“They’re with the gentleman who is in charge of—” Magda turned around to look for Matteo, but he had disappeared.

“You see, it is a lie. This boy is a dangerous troublemaker — we have a car here ready to take him back to his home. He has run away and must be returned. I have a permit from the German police. Here it is.”

The first mate examined it and handed it back.

“He is rather young to be a criminal,” he said, looking at Karil’s white face, his stricken eyes.

“He must not travel,” said the other man in jackboots. “You must hand him over now. At once.”

The first mate had been traveling the route between Britain and France for the past three years and there were things that increasingly upset him. He had seen refugees staggering onto the boat in tears — Jewish children, people with pathetic bundles from the countries Hitler had overrun — and he was getting angry. On the crossing before this one, an old man had sat in silence on the deck, tears running down his face.

“I was growing apricots,” he had said. “Such apricots. If you could have seen my garden! And then they came and said I had to leave, I was a dirty old Jew.”

“I’ve no time for this now,” he said to the jackbooted men. “If the boy’s papers aren’t in order it can be sorted out at the other end.” And to Karil: “Get on board, boy!”

Tally began to breathe again. Barney took hold of Karil’s hand. “Come on,” he said.

It was all right. They were safe. The leather-clad men were scowling, one tried to grab Karil’s arm — and the first mate pointed at the upper deck, where a couple of sailors were sluicing the timbers. The sailors, too, had seen things they did not care for on their recent trips and now they put down their buckets and came forward to the railings.

The men from the Gestapo shrugged. They had been told to avoid trouble with the British navy and now they made their way back to their car, parked on the quay.

The children were almost on board. The first mate stood aside. And then an extraordinary thing happened. Karil let go of Barney’s hand, turned — and ran back down the gangway, onto the docks.

Back into certain danger…

“Come back, Karil!” yelled Tod.

But Karil ran on. And then they saw why. On the quayside, close to the edge of the water, Matteo was caught up in a horribly unequal fight. He was grappling with one man, trying to stop him from pulling out a knife, while a second man, a giant dressed like a pantomime dame, circled around the struggling pair, landing indiscriminate blows.

And Karil, seeing this, had shaken off the fear and exhaustion of the last days and was running like the wind to help his father’s friend.

For Earless, turning his head at Tod’s shout, the sight of the prince running toward him was a miracle. He abandoned Matteo and took a step toward the boy. His big, stupid face was lit up with triumph. He had only to carry the boy to the car where the Gestapo men still waited and the thing was done.

“Come on then, Your Highness,” he jeered. “Let’s be having you!”

Karil, blind with rage, threw himself at the huge man’s chest. He might as well have thrown himself at an oak tree. Kicking, struggling, punching, he found himself picked up, thrown over the giant’s shoulder and held there in a grip of steel.

Still grinning crazily, Earless skirted the edge of the quayside and set off toward the car.

But the other children had understood what was happening. They rushed down the gangway and, as heedless as Karil, began to attack the giant. It was ludicrous, pitting their strength against him, but there were a lot of children and there was only one of him. From carrying a single struggling boy to the waiting car, Earless found himself hung with children like a Christmas tree.

Barney was clutching one leg and Tod the other, and though he kicked them away they came back. Julia and Tally were behind him, dangerously close to the water’s edge, tugging at his arms.

They were nothing — puny little flies — but Earless had to shift the weight of the boy on his shoulders. Doggedly the giant waded forward, shaking off children as he walked. Augusta had found a bucket, which she hurled at his ankles. He kicked it away, but the ground was slimy with fish scales and seaweed and for a moment he stumbled, only to right himself again.

Kit had joined in the fray even though he had recognized the men at once as his kidnappers. Now he, too, came at Earless, and he and Verity took hold of Karil’s legs and tried to pull him free so that Earless had to adjust his grip again, bringing Karil up against the side of his face.

And at this point Karil threw off the last shreds of his upbringing. He swiveled around and in a single ferocious act he sank his teeth deep into the big man’s ear.

The effect was instantaneous.

“Not my other ear! No, no… not my other ear!” Earless roared, and brought one hand up to his bloodied lobe, while Belinda’s tearful, disappointed face swam before him.

He was still holding on to Karil with his other arm — but there was one Deldertonian who had not joined in the fight. Borro had been sorting quietly through the freshly caught seafood waiting in the crates. When he had found what he wanted, he unwound the muffler from his throat and inserted a large and exceedingly spiky crab into its folds. Then he swung the muffler once, twice, three times above his head — and let fly.

His aim was true. The crab landed full in Earless’s face. The sharp edge of the shell temporarily blinded him, gouging his eye; the salty liquid and smelly grunge inside the creature ran down his face.

And this was too much. Earless brought up his other arm to clear the debris from his eyes; the children pulled Karil’s legs and he tumbled to the ground.

“He’s free!” shouted Tally. “Come on — all together.”

One and all they ran forward and pushed. Even so they would not have succeeded, but as Earless stepped backward he slipped on a patch of regurgitated fish left by the gulls. And with a monumental splash, he was gone!

As they looked into the water, Matteo came up behind them. There was blood on his arm, which he had bound up with a handkerchief, but he seemed very pleased with himself.

“What happened to the other one?” asked Augusta. “Did you kill him?”

“I don’t think so,” said Matteo, “but one can never be certain.”

In the water they saw a second head and caught a momentary glint of gold before it disappeared again under the waves.

Just then they heard the screech of tires as the black Mercedes driven by the Gestapo’s men did a U-turn and disappeared.

As they made their way back up the gangway and onto the boat, they found the Countess Frederica blocking their path.

“This way, Karil,” she said. “I have secured seats for us in the first-class lounge.”

The others waited.

“I’ll stay with my friends,” Karil said and, ignoring the scowls of the Scold, he made his way to the pile of luggage on the deck which the Deldertonians had made their headquarters.

The crossing was calm and uneventful. Magda bandaged Matteo’s arm and he stood alone by the rails, looking at the water. It was time to relax now; the hunt for the prince had come to an end, and he was so tired he could hardly keep on his feet.

Squashed between the canvas bags that held the dancing clothes, Tally and Karil were making plans.

“There’s only another five weeks of term but you could stay with us in the holidays; there’s lots of room in our house.”

“I’d like that,” said Karil. “If I don’t bring trouble.”

“You won’t. You can be ordinary now. We’re very ordinary. Barney’s family has a big house, too, and his parents sound nice, if you didn’t want to be with us all the time — though Matteo will probably want to see you, too.”

“Thank you. I’d like to stay with you very much.”

They were three-quarters of the way across when they saw the chalk cliffs above the harbor at Dover — and though it was true they were not exactly white — more a sort of pale and slightly dusty gray, all the children, even those who had been dozing, came to the rails to look.

The boat docked smoothly, but they waited for a while in the harbor before the passengers were allowed to disembark. Then, as they crossed over to the customs shed, Karil stopped dead.

Waiting on the other side of the road was a large black Daimler with an elaborate painted crest on the doors: the coat of arms of the Duke of Rottingdene picked out in gold. And leaning out of the window was a stunningly pretty girl with fair ringlets, wearing a blue velvet beret and waving.

“This way,” she called. “This way, Karil!”

The boy stared at her. Behind him stood the Countess Frederica and two men in the duke’s livery. She had sent a cable from the boat.

“Say good-bye to your friends, Karil,” she said. “You won’t be seeing them again.”

Karil said nothing. For a moment he wondered whether to make a run for it, but what would be the use? The Duke of Rottingdene was his grandfather, not a thug or an assassin.

Tally stared at the ground, unable to bear the sight of her friend driven off into captivity. Surely there was something he could do. Run, fight… he had been so brave on the quayside. But after all, he was going to his grandfather’s house. He had a family. She had been stupid not to remember that.

Matteo certainly had remembered it. He made no attempt to hold Karil back but came and hugged him — and then the children shook hands one by one and said good-bye.

“This way, Your Highness,” said one of the footmen, and Karil got into the car and was driven away.

The last thing Tally saw was the smug-looking girl with ringlets putting her arm around his shoulders.