That night he left a meeting of his defense committee early and made his way to Karil’s room.
“Is it true?” was the first thing his son said. “We’re going to open the Folk Dance Festival together?”
“Yes, Karil. We’ll give them something to remember! I’m calling out the Mounted Guard. And I shall see that the children are presented to you.”
The prince was silent for a moment. Then: “Couldn’t I actually meet them? Not just have them presented — meet them properly?”
It was the king now who was silent. “Karil, it never works, trying to make friends with people from outside our world. Believe me — I know what I’m talking about.” His face was somber as he looked out at the mountains. “You will only get hurt.” He put his hand on his son’s shoulder. “Perhaps we shouldn’t put it off any longer, going to the dragonfly pool. I can’t promise, but there are no meetings tomorrow. I’ll see what I can do.”
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Sightseeing
The Berganians had done their best to make the campsite comfortable for the visiting teams, but camping is camping — there is nothing to be done about that.
Kit found a toad on the slatted floor of the shower and came back to tell Tally that he did not like it. He did not like it at all. Then there was breakfast. Matteo had gone off early, no one knew where, and Julia and Tally tried to light the Primus while Magda was still in the shower, but it was an ancient, temperamental contraption with a will of its own and, however much they pumped, it wouldn’t get going.
“I can perhaps help?” said a boy from the German tent. He had a mass of brown curls and a friendly smile, and with him came his sister, whose hair was even curlier and whose smile was as broad.
And he did help, without any fuss, so that in a few minutes the stove was roaring like a furnace.
At this point Magda appeared and decided that she would make the porridge, and she began well, stirring the pot with a big ladle — only then she had an important thought about Schopenhauer — you could tell when this happened because her eyes glazed over — and the ladle moved more and more slowly, and though Barney rushed to take it from her, it was too late.
“It’s funny — you can eat burned toast and it isn’t too bad at all,” said Borro, “but burned porridge!”
After breakfast they started on their chores. Augusta Carrington must have swallowed something which disagreed with her — perhaps a piece of meat that had got stuck to her plate of rice — and had come out in lumps on her back, and Verity needless to say did nothing to help but wandered past the tents of the other children, showing them how beautiful she was, but the rest of them worked with a will.
The Deldertonians were in their ordinary clothes, but most of the children wore their national costumes and the campsite was a blaze of color — the orange and yellow of the Spaniards and the Italians, the cool blue and white of the Scandinavians… the fierce black-and-red embroidered shirts of the Hungarians…
The buses that were to take them on a tour of the town were not due till eleven, and while they waited some of the teams took turns rehearsing on the wooden platform. The Germans had gone through their dance early. It was beautiful and didn’t involve anybody hitting themselves on their own behinds, though there was a certain amount of yodeling.
“But yodeling is a good thing really because it’s how people call each other in the mountains,” said Barney.
After the Germans came the Yugoslavs, whose dance was very ferocious with a lot of stamping, and music from a very strange instrument which was covered in fur and had a horn sticking out of each end.
“Do you think we should be stamping more? ” asked Julia anxiously but Tally said no, she didn’t think the British did much in the way of stamping.
“It’s no good worrying about the poor Flurry Dance — it may be odd but it got us here,” said Tally. “And the people are pleased to see us; they really are.”
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.