Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

“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…