Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

“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.”

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.