Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

The next two hours were spent blissfully alone in the city that was now his home and that so far he had hardly seen.

He wandered through St. James’s Park, enjoying the sight of the waterfowl and watching men digging trenches. There had been a group of people filling sandbags and Karil had stayed to help them for a while; they had been friendly and cheerful. He passed Buckingham Palace, but the sight of the enormous building in which he knew the two little princesses were incarcerated lowered his spirits, and he had made his way up Whitehall and stood in Piccadilly, with its shrouded fountain, and drank in the bustle, the traffic, the advertisements… At last for a while he was free and part of the real world.

He would have slipped back again unnoticed — the servants would not have betrayed him — but Carlotta had been looking for him, and when he returned she was there with her shocked accusations.

“You know that people like us aren’t supposed to go out alone,” she said. “I’m afraid Grandfather is very angry.”

And Grandfather was.

“You don’t seem to understand, Karil, that you are not like other people. You are a future king and—”

“No.” The cry came from Karil without him being aware of it. “I’m not… I’m just a person. No one knows what will happen in Bergania — even if Hitler is defeated the people might not want a king again and anyway it could be years. I’ve got to have some air… I’ve got to learn something. I can’t live like this.”

“Can’t!” roared the duke, and a shower of spittle came from his mouth. “How dare you defy me? While you are under my roof you will do exactly as I order.” His great hands gripped Karil’s shoulders like a vice. “From now on I shall see to it that you are watched at all times. What’s more, you will be locked into your bedroom at night.”

“No! Please. I’ve never been locked in. My father never punished me like that.”

“It would have been better if he had,” said the duke — and he sent for the servants straightaway and gave his instructions.

Under this regime, Karil became more and more desperate. He even wondered if he was beginning to lose his reason — for he had been sure that he had seen Matteo, a few days earlier, walking across the courtyard away from the house. He had been standing at an upstairs window, and by the time he’d managed to pull back the curtains and struggled with the heavy sash cords, the man had gone.

“Was Matteo here?” he had asked his grandfather — and the duke had scowled and told him not to be stupid.

“The sooner you realize that those vagabonds you came over with have forgotten you, the better,” he said.

Karil did realize it. He was too proud to show his grief, but his body began to let him down. He developed a cough that did not go away, he lost weight, and found it difficult to sleep.

At night, the sound of the key turning in the lock seemed to set the seal on a life to be lived without love, or endeavor, or hope.

It was not only David Prosser who was in love with Clemmy. The children at Delderton were used to seeing young men standing outside the school with their motorbikes, hoping she would go out with them. But Clemmy had a boyfriend to whom she was absolutely faithful. She had known him since she started work as a model and she loved not only him but his work. Francis Lakeland was a landscape painter who did quiet and very beautiful paintings of the countryside. People liked these and they were shown in exhibitions, but no one bought them very much because they were too peaceful and didn’t have anybody being set on fire or dismembered or sitting with their mouth open, screaming.

So, to make some money, Francis Lakeland took on commissions to paint portraits of society people who wanted their wives and daughters to look beautiful.

A week after half term, Clemmy had a letter from Francis in which he asked her to come up to London for a weekend because he expected to be called up for the army.

“It won’t be straightaway,” he wrote, “but I want to see you badly and I need to talk to you about a piece of work I’ve been asked to do.”

The idea of Francis in the army made Clemmy’s stomach crunch up in a most alarming way. He was a gentle, scholarly man, serious about his work but funny about everything else. It wasn’t easy to think of him as a soldier.

All housemothers had a free weekend each month, and a week after she got his letter Clemmy arrived in London. She and Francis wandered hand in hand through the city and it was when they were sitting in one of their favorite places, a bench in St. James’s churchyard in Piccadilly, that Francis told her about his commission to paint Carlotta von Carinstein, the daughter of an exiled archduke.

“Oh Francis, do you have to?” asked Clemmy, for she knew how much he disliked the fawning and flattery that went with painting the children of rich and snobbish people.

“I don’t have to — but the money would be useful. Only I have to go tomorrow and set it up and I wondered if you could possibly come along and pretend to be my assistant. She’s supposed to be an absolute horror and you know how good you are with children.”

“Yes, of course I’ll come. Where does she live?”

“It’s a place called Rottingdene House — a great gloomy mansion. Her grandfather’s the Duke of Rottingdene — why, what’s the matter?”

Clemmy had frowned. She knew the name of Rottingdene House only too well. The children had spoken of it when they came back from Bergania — and she could see the name now on the envelopes that Tally left for the postman.

And she didn’t want to go there. She understood how easy it must have been for Karil to get drawn back into his former life, but he had hurt his friends.

“What is it?” asked Francis.

“Nothing. It’s all right. Of course I’ll come.”

It would be as well to keep an eye on Francis, she thought. He had a temper and had walked out of more than one sitting when his subjects had thrown their weight about.

And after all, they were most unlikely to meet the prince: painters in those sorts of places were not usually admitted by the front door.

So the following day, carrying Francis’s easel and his box of paints, they made their way down Pall Mall toward Rottingdene House.

As Clemmy had expected, they were shown in by the back door and told to wait in a small cold lobby. No one offered them a cup of tea or suggested that they should sit down, and they saw no member of the household. When they had waited for nearly half an hour, they were shown into a stuffy and overfurnished drawing room and into the presence of Carlotta’s mother, the Archduchess of Carinstein.

“My daughter is preparing herself,” she announced. “She will be with you in five minutes.”

Again they waited — not for five minutes, but for fifteen. Then Carlotta swept in, followed by one of the mournful governesses, and stretched out her hand so that Francis could bow over it. At the same time her eyes swiveled over to Clemmy, waiting for her curtsy.

She waited in vain. The painter said, “Good morning”; his assistant smiled — and that was all. It was an outrage, and for a moment Carlotta thought of sweeping out again. But the vision of her picture framed in gold on the wall of the Berganian palace stopped her, and she walked over to a large carved chair, draped in a piece of brocade.

“This is where I’m going to sit,” she informed them.

She had decided in the end to be angelic, and wore a white lace dress and a white ribbon in her hair.

“I’m afraid there won’t be enough light with the chair at that angle,” said Francis. “It will have to be moved closer to the window.”