Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

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.”