The Dragonfly Pool Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Part one

  CHAPTER ONE - Balloons over London

  CHAPTER TWO - Rich Cousins

  CHAPTER THREE - The Train

  CHAPTER FOUR - Delderton

  CHAPTER FIVE - Becoming a Fork

  CHAPTER SIX - London Interlude

  CHAPTER SEVEN - Matteo’s Moan

  CHAPTER EIGHT - Biology at Dawn

  CHAPTER NINE - Trash Cans and a Festival

  CHAPTER TEN - The Flurry Dance

  Part Two

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - The Prince Awakes

  CHAPTER TWELVE - Arrival in Bergania

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - The Prince Watches

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - Sightseeing

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - Treachery

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - The Dragonfly Pool

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - The Festival Begins

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - Finding the Prince

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - The Last Dance

  CHAPTER TWENTY - Good-bye, Bergania

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - The Pursuit

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - The Berganian Mountain Cat

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - The Cheese-Makers’ Guild

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - A Mistake Is Made

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - A Hero Is Born

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - Night Train to Calais

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - Reaching the Boat

  Part Three

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - September the Third

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - Rottingdene House

  CHAPTER THIRTY - New Term

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE - Karil and Carlotta

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO - Matteo’s Visit

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - The Duke Is Enraged

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - The Painting

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - Karil Sees His Way

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX - Christmas

  CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN - The Future King

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT - The Stripy Boys

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE - Arcadia

  CHAPTER FORTY - Dry Ice

  CHAPTER FORTY-ONE - The Play

  Epilogue

  ALSO BY EVA IBBOTSON

  The Beasts of Clawstone Castle

  The Star of Kazan

  The Haunting of Granite Falls

  Not Just a Witch

  The Great Ghost Rescue

  Journey to the River Sea

  Dial-a-Ghost

  Island of the Aunts

  Which Witch?

  The Secret of Platform 13

  A Company of Swans

  A Countess Below Stairs

  A Song for Summer

  The Morning Gift

  DUTTON CHILDREN’S BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, U.S.A. Penguin Group (Canada), 90 Eglinton Avenue East, Suite 700, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4P 2Y3 (a division of Pearson Penguin Canada Inc.) | Penguin Books Ltd, 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England | Penguin Ireland, 25 St Stephen’s Green, Dublin 2, Ireland (a division of Penguin Books Ltd) | Penguin Group (Australia), 250 Camberwell Road, Camberwell, Victoria 3124, Australia (a division of Pearson Australia Group Pty Ltd) Penguin Books India Pvt Ltd, 11 Community Centre, Panchsheel Park, New Delhi—110 017, India | Penguin Group (NZ), 67 Apollo Drive, Rosedale, North Shore 0632, New Zealand (a division of Pearson New Zealand Ltd.) | Penguin Books (South Africa) (Pty) Ltd, 24 Sturdee Avenue, Rosebank, Johannesburg 2196, South Africa | Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Text copyright © 2008 by Eva Ibbotson Illustrations copyright © 2008 by Kevin Hawkes

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system now known or to be invented, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer who wishes to quote brief passages in connection with a review written for inclusion in a magazine, newspaper, or broadcast.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  CIP Data is available.

  Published in the United States by Dutton Children’s Books,

  a division of Penguin Young Readers Group

  345 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  www.penguin.com/youngreaders

  eISBN : 978-1-101-09802-8

  10987654321

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  I would like to thank my son Toby Ibbotson

  for the help he gave me in the writing of this book.

  Part one

  CHAPTER ONE

  Balloons over London

  I don’t think you ought to be crying at your age. People of fifty-two don’t cry,” said Aunt Hester sternly.

  “I’m not crying,” said her sister, May. “Not really. And anyway, I heard you blowing your nose three times last night when you went to the bathroom.”

  “Anyone can blow their nose,” said Hester.

  “Not three times. And you’re older than me.”

  But then they stopped arguing and clung to each other because the news their brother had given them the night before was so awful that they could only bear it if they were standing side by side.

  “The house is going to be like a tomb without her,” said May. “She’s far too young to go away.”

  “Of course we knew she’d go away to get married,” said Hester.

  “But people don’t marry when they’re eleven years old.”

  “Except in the olden days, perhaps. And in very hot countries.”

  But England was not a hot country. Now, on a fine spring day in 1939, it was only pleasantly warm. The men digging trenches in the little park opposite had not removed their shirts, and a fresh breeze stirred the silver barrage balloons that floated over the houses. The government was trying them out to protect the people of London against enemy aircraft if the war, which everyone was expecting, really came.

  Tally loved the barrage balloons.

  “They’re like really kind great-uncles,” she said, “only a nicer color.”

  All the children of Stanford Street walked home with their heads turned to the sky when the balloons went up.

  The war against Hitler seemed likely to come; no one really thought now it could be prevented—the poor man could be heard raving on the wireless, his mad eyes and loathsome mustache appeared each day in the newspapers on Mr. Pepper’s paper stall. But it was not the thought of the war that was upsetting May and Hester now. They had been quite excited when they were issued a stirrup pump to put out the flames from incendiary bombs—and the air-raid shelters delivered in sections to the houses in the street were a great comfort, though nobody could quite work out how to put them up. Hitler was nasty; if there had to be a war, they would put up with it. But this was different . . .

  “Help me to make her see what a chance this is for her,” their brother James had begged them. “Help me to keep her cheerful.”

  The aunts had kept house for their younger brother since his wife had died, leaving him with a baby less than a week old. For nearly twelve years now that baby had been the center of their world.

  “We’d better do something about our faces
,” said Hester, looking in the mirror. “She mustn’t see we’re upset. She’ll be home from school soon and James wants to tell her himself.”

  But the only powder they could find was some talc that May used on her feet in hot weather, and once they had covered their faces with it they returned to the bathroom to wash it off. It would not help Tally to stand up under the blow that awaited her to be greeted by two white-faced clowns.

  It was a friendly, bustling little street, shabby but cheerful. The houses sloped a little downhill in the direction of London’s river and the dome of St. Paul’s Cathedral, which you could see from the attic window on a clear day. There was a row of shops—a greengrocer, a butcher, a cobbler, and a baker—and at the end of the street a small park with a slightly muddy pond and ducks. On the other side of the road from the little shops was a row of terraced houses. The end one of these—14 Stanford Street—was the one everybody knew. It was a tall house with a wrought-iron balcony and built on to it on the ground floor was a red-brick surgery, where the patients waited. For number 14 was the Doctor’s House; it belonged to Dr. James Hamilton, and to see him, rather than other, more fashionable doctors, the people of East Stanford would have walked miles. But the people were poor and Dr. Hamilton charged them only what they could afford. So in the Doctor’s House the rugs were threadbare, the fires were lit as late in the day as possible, there was only a cook general to serve the house, instead of the maid and cook and handyman that other houses in the terrace kept. None of which mattered to the people who came there because, lighting up the house with her warmth and her energy and her laughter, was the doctor’s daughter.

  There was unrest among the patients waiting in the afternoon surgery. The plain little room was packed because Dr. Hamilton was the doctor on duty and not his partner, but there were mutterings and murmurings of discontent.

  No one knew if it was true for certain, but if it was, it was bad news indeed.

  Joe Smithson sat with his sore leg stuck out in front of him, thinking about his wife. Mrs. Smithson was an invalid; she seldom left her room and Tally came to read to her—actually more to read with her. They were in the middle of The Prisoner of Zenda—both of them liked sword fights and plenty of swashbuckling and people leaping off parapets. On the afternoons that Tally came after school his wife was always cheerful. Should he ask the doctor if the rumors were true? Well, they’d know soon enough—nothing stayed secret in the street for long.

  Old Mrs. Dawson, whose chest was bad again, stared at the notices pinned to the wall and thought about her dog. Tally took the dog out for her and said she didn’t want to be paid, because she liked dogs. She even liked Horace, who was a dachshund and that was not a popular breed just now. Tally had punched a boy who’d sneered at him for being a German sausage dog. There wasn’t anyone else who’d take him out for free, and Mrs. Dawson’s budget was tight. Surely the rumors couldn’t be true? Everyone knew that the doctor thought the world of his daughter. Why, it would break his heart to part with her.

  “Next patient, please,” said the receptionist, Miss Hoy, and Mrs. Dawson made her way into the doctor’s room. She’d ask him whether it was true—after all, she had a right to know.

  “Have you heard?” said Mr. Cooper as his son Kenny came in from the park. Kenny was the same age as Tally; they’d played together all their lives.

  “Yes,” said Kenny and went past the cabbages and the sacks of Brussels sprouts and out of the back of the greengrocer’s shop into the mews. He’d be going to the stables, thought his father. When things were rough with him, Kenny often went to talk to Primrose. She was only an old Welsh cob who pulled the vegetable cart, but she was one of those horses that understood things.

  Tally’s friend Maybelle, at the corner shop, was angry when she heard the news. She became angry easily, and now she picked up the trowel with which she’d been spooning lentils from a sack and threw it across the room. Tally wouldn’t fight, Maybelle knew that. She wouldn’t bite and kick and lie down on the floor till she got her own way. Not where her father was concerned. It was going to be a nuisance, doing without her friend. And she’d miss Maybelle’s debut as a powder puff in the Summer Show at the Hippodrome.

  “Come on, girl,” said her grandmother. “We’ve got all those bags to tie up before tomorrow.”

  “Shan’t,” said Maybelle, and she marched out of the shop and past the butcher’s and the cobbler’s till she came to the greengrocer’s. She’d see if Kenny knew.

  Why can’t children be left alone? thought Maybelle angrily.

  The nuns were used to children being taken away.

  “But I shall be sorry to lose her,” said Mother Superior.

  Sister Felicia, who produced the end-of-term plays in the convent, was feeling guilty. I should have let her be the Virgin Mary, she thought. She was always a sheep or a cow coming to the manger. I know how much she wanted the star part but she was so good at controlling the little ones.

  Tally, coming down the hill like a lamb to the slaughter, was the last person to know. She was carrying a rolled-up sheet of paper with a one-side painting of St. Sebastian stuck with arrows, and a diagram of the life cycle of the liver fluke on the other. The nuns were poor, and one sheet of paper had to go a long way.

  Dr. Hamilton came in from the surgery and made his way into the house. A thin, dark-haired man with a high forehead and concerned brown eyes, he was looking very tired. Friday was always a long day: the surgery stayed open till eight o’clock so that patients who came from the factories and the dockyards could come without missing work.

  He was a man who told his patients exactly what to do—to eat regularly, take exercise, get plenty of fresh air, and go to bed early—and he himself did none of those things. He snatched meals between the surgery and his sessions at the hospital where he went two days a week, he went out on night calls that often turned out to be unnecessary, and stayed up till the small hours catching up with the new medical research.

  The hallway was dark—his sisters, so much older than him, were good about saving electricity. Supper would be left for him in the dining room, but he wasn’t hungry. He’d come in late like this so often, looking forward to an hour with his daughter before she went to bed. He could hear her upstairs, talking to the aunts. Well, he’d better get it over.

  “Ask Tally to come and see me in my study,” he said to the cook general.

  Five minutes later the door opened and his daughter came in.

  Oh Lord, I can’t do it, thought Dr. Hamilton. What will there be left when she is gone?

  Already as she stood there in the lamplight he was memorizing her face. The pointed chin, the straight fawn hair lapping her ears, the inquiring hazel eyes. Her fringe had a nibbled look—Aunt Hester insisted on cutting it herself.

  When his wife had died of puerperal fever a week after their daughter’s birth, Dr. Hamilton had been completely overwhelmed by guilt and grief. How could it be that he, a doctor, could not save the woman that he loved so much? For several weeks he scarcely noticed the baby, fussed over by his sisters and a nurse. Then one day, coming in late, he passed the nursery and heard a sound coming from his daughter’s room. It was not a cry, nor was it a whimper. It was the sound of . . . conversation. His five-week-old daughter was talking to the world.

  He walked over to the cot. The baby’s eyes, properly focused now, were wide open. She did not smile at him; she looked.

  What an idiot I’ve been, he thought. This is a person.

  Things had happened to this person in the weeks he had ignored her that he might not have permitted if he’d been aware of what was going on. For example, her name . . . His sisters had had the child christened Talitha, after their grandmother.

  “She was a saint,” they reminded their brother. “She used to wash the socks of the tramps she met on the London Underground. Wash them and dry them and give them back.”

  Dr. Hamilton would have preferred to call his daughter something simpler: Ann, perhaps,
or Jane. Yet as she grew, her name seemed entirely suitable, for in order to wash the socks of tramps you have to get them to take their socks off, and it was the kind of determination this would need that Tally showed from a very early age.

  Tally meanwhile had crossed the room and come over to his chair to give him a hug. She could see that he’d had a bad day—he looked like that when a patient at the hospital died who should have lived, or when the pile of bills on his desk became unmanageable, or, lately, when he had been listening to Hitler raving on the wireless, and she was already thinking of ways to cheer him up. Sometimes they played chess, and sometimes she told him about something funny that had happened at school, but today she had a feeling that neither of these things would work.

  “I’ve got something to tell you, Tally,” he said, putting his arm around her shoulders.

  “Is it important?” she said apprehensively. She had learned early in life that important things were usually not nearly as nice as unimportant ones.

  “Yes . . . I suppose it is. At any rate, it’s good news,” said the doctor resolutely.

  Tally looked at him suspiciously. She knew his face better than she knew her own, and the lines around his mouth and the furrows on his forehead did not seem to indicate good news.

  “Perhaps I’d better explain. I have a patient at the hospital—I won’t tell you his name but he is someone important in education—a professor and a very nice man. He thinks I saved his life, which is rubbish, but it’s true we were able to help him. Afterward, while he was waiting to be discharged, we talked about you, and . . .” Dr. Hamilton paused, looking at the window, which was just a square of darkness now, “he told me about a school he knows—he’s on the governing board, and he thinks very highly of the staff and the ideals of the school. It’s in the country, in South Devon, not far from the sea.”