Eva Ibbotson - The Dragonfly Pool

He shook his head. “I thought I saw him, but when I asked my grandfather he said it wasn’t him.” He wiped his eyes and put his handkerchief away. “When I didn’t hear anything from Delderton I thought maybe it was a sign that I must forget about trying to lead my own life. That I have to follow in my father’s footsteps and learn to be a king… that that’s what he wanted…”

“Is that what they say? That your father would have wanted that? ”

“All the time.”

Clemmy looked down into his face. “Karil, your father was a good man, I’m sure of that. Matteo has talked to me about him a lot since he came back from Bergania. I saw a picture of him once in a gallery; I’ve never forgotten his face. That was a man who wanted one thing and one thing only for his son — and I’ll swear to that with my last breath.”

Karil’s eyes held hers.

“What? What would he have wanted for his son?”

“That he should be happy. That he should follow his star.”

Are you feeling all right, Karil?” asked Countess Frederica nervously.

Karil looked up from his plate of lumpy breakfast porridge.

“Yes, thank you. I’m absolutely all right. I’m fine.”

The Scold frowned. That was what was worrying her. Karil looked different; he had not smiled like that since before his father’s death. She was pleased of course, but it was… strange.

“Your cough seems better,” said Aunt Millicent, the kindest of the aunts.

Karil nodded and agreed that his cough was better, and the two women exchanged puzzled glances.

For really it was extraordinary that a bad cough should almost disappear in twenty-four hours, and it wasn’t just unlikely but impossible that Karil, in that short time, could have got fatter — yet the boy’s face had completely lost its pinched and undernourished look.

Yet nothing, surely, had changed. Karil had not been there the day before when Carlotta had stamped out of the room and thrown over the easel of the painter who had treated her so rudely. By the time the Scold returned from the park Karil was in his room, and since then his routine had been as usual. Yet something was making her uneasy and she went on peering at him throughout the meal.

But nothing could touch Karil. He was in a different universe since he had talked to Clemmy. He could have leaped into the air and stayed there, or climbed the church steeple outside his window without a backward look. It seemed to him that the waterbirds in the park no longer screeched, they sang; the grass was greener and the sky a brighter blue. Because every moment there was a voice inside him saying, “Your friends have remembered you.”

The first day and the second after Clemmy’s visit, Karil was too happy to consider any plan of action, but on the third day he set his mind to finding out what had happened to the letters he had written to Delderton and those his friends had written to him.

Somebody had deliberately destroyed them — but who?

The duke himself? Would he have acted in secret? Or the Scold? No, she was strict but not deceitful like that. Surely they would just have told him that letters were forbidden? Karil was in constant trouble for talking to the servants but it was the servants who could help him — and he waited till he could get George alone, as it was George who brought up the silver salver with the letters. At last he managed to speak to him as he refilled the decanters on the sideboard in the dining room.

“George, I’ve been wondering about the letters that come here. I’ve been expecting to hear from some friends.”

George was surprised. “You’ve had a pile of letters, Your Highness. More than anyone. They came thick and fast at the beginning — wouldn’t they be the ones you mean?”

Karil stared at him. “They may have come to the house, but they never came to me.”

George shook his head. “The little baroness always asked for them as soon as they came in. She said you were in a hurry and she’d take them up to you. I’m not allowed in the drawing room till the supper’s been cleared, but she said you couldn’t wait.”

So it was as easy as that.

“And what about the letters that go out of here? The ones we put in the hall,” asked Karil.

“They go out with one of the men at nine o’clock to the post office — punctual as anything.”

“But they’re in the hall overnight?”

George nodded. “Have been ever since I came.”

“I see. Thank you. Don’t say I’ve been asking, will you?”

“No, Your Highness. I won’t say a thing.”

For a few minutes after George left, Karil was overcome by a murderous rage. He wanted to put his hands around Carlotta’s throat and squeeze till she fell to the ground. But killing Carlotta wouldn’t really help in the long run. The letters were gone.

Or were they?

He was pushing open the door of her room before he was aware of what he was doing. Carlotta slept in a small room next door to her parents. It had been a dressing room and there were two huge mirrors on the wall and a third mirror on the table beside her bed, so that Karil saw her reflected threefold as she fixed a brooch onto the collar of her dress.

“Oh, Karil,” she said, turning around and simpering a little, for her cousin had never before visited her in her bedroom, “you can help me choose which—” and broke off, because Karil had grabbed hold of her, turning her away from the mirror, and was digging his fingers viciously into her shoulders.

“Where are the letters?” he demanded. “Where are the letters from my friends that you stole?”

“You’re hurting me,” she whined. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Yes, you do. And if you don’t tell me what you’ve done with them, I really will hurt you. I’ll hurt you as you’ve never been hurt before.”

“Ow! Stop it. You’ve gone mad.”

“And I’ll go madder. Where — are — the letters?” he said slowly through clenched teeth.

“I don’t know… I’ve thrown them away. I did it for your sake.”

But Karil had seen her eyes swivel to the bureau beside her bed.

“Get them,” he ordered.

She crossed the room, crying noisily now, and he watched as she unlocked the bureau.

“I can’t find—” she began, and whimpered as Karil came up behind her and grabbed her arm. “Don’t! Let me go.”

She opened another drawer and brought out a thick bundle of letters addressed to him. He saw at once that they had been opened.

“You won’t tell?” she said, sniffing.

Karil didn’t answer. As soon as he had the letters in his hand, Carlotta had ceased to exist.

Back in his room he pulled a table across the door and began to read.

There were close on fifty letters. There were letters from Barney, telling him about the tree frog he had bought for him, and letters from Borro about the farm. Tod had written, and Julia, and even Kit, who was no letter writer, all looking forward to what they would do when Karil came. There was a letter from Matteo — brief but very heartening.

Most of the letters were from Tally. At first they were excited, hopeful, telling him about the play, about an otter cub which had become separated from his mother and they had to take back, and about Armelle who was trying to put them in touch with their internal organs — but always looking forward to when he came. Not “if” he came. Only and always “when.”

The letters went on through the summer holidays, describing the aunts and Kenny, who was trying to take over the vegetable round with Primrose because his father had become an air-raid warden — but the letters were shorter now, and he could sense her hurt as she asked why he didn’t write back. Then a last letter written in the autumn term — a letter that did its best to be funny about the new gardener who seemed to be about ten years old.