During that moment while Matteo waited for the second footman, he felt that anything would be worthwhile — prison, a hangman’s noose — if he could kill the panting, slobbering tyrant glaring at him from behind his desk. He had to call up the image of Karil exposed to scandal and horror to prevent himself from leaping on his enemy.
The footmen came just in time — feeble lackeys daunted by their instructions. Matteo knocked away the arm of the first one, pushed the second one hard against the wall — and left the building.
The hour Matteo spent in the station waiting for the train back to Delderton was one of the darkest of his life. He saw Johannes’s face turned to his, begging him to look after his son. Well, this was how he had looked after Karil. Left him with a power-mad imbecile who would train him to be the kind of tyrant Europe would disgorge in an instant after the war. Karil abandoned in that wretched dark house — and Matteo was powerless. He had betrayed Johannes by leaving Bergania. Now he had betrayed his son.
His rage against himself and the duke only grew on the journey back to school. He gave his lesson on the life history of amphioxus in a black cloud of fury that embraced everything and everyone on earth — and afterward could not recall what he had said.
It was two days before any of the children dared to approach him. Then suddenly he was himself again — and at dawn on the third day he got everybody out of bed to go and look at a badger sett by the river where three cubs were hunting for wasps’ nests.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
The Duke Is Enraged
By the beginning of November shortages and restrictions caused by the war were beginning to bite, and among the things that were in short supply was petrol for private motoring.
The duke needed the Daimler to drive to the Whitehall Bank, of which he was a director, so that the afternoon outings Karil took with Carlotta and the Scold became even shorter and less interesting. As often as not now they spent the time taking tea with whatever family lived close by and was considered worthy of knowing the duke of Rottingdene and his dependents.
Sometimes they even went on foot, with one of the servants walking behind them, to whatever entertainment was suitable, and free.
And one of these places was the National Portrait Gallery. The sides of the building were sandbagged and only three of the galleries were open, but it was a perfectly respectable place, with no danger of seeing pictures of people with nothing on, and would provide, the Scold thought, suitable history lessons for Karil and Carlotta since the paintings were mainly of people who were both important and dead.
For Karil the hour they spent there was interesting. He had expected to see mostly kings and statesmen and governors of the far-flung empire, but he found faces that intrigued him. There were scientists and explorers and other people who had done real things: Florence Nightingale, who had nursed the dying soldiers in the Crimean War, and David Livingstone, who had beaten his way through the African jungle looking for the source of the Nile, and Shelley, who had written great poems about freedom before meeting his death at sea.
Karil had thought that Carlotta would be bored, but she came out with a rapt expression and at first she did not answer when they spoke to her, for the truth was that she had had an inspiration.
They had passed a number of paintings of little girls — the daughters of noblemen and wealthy citizens from all over the land. The girls in the pictures wore sumptuous clothes and sat on thronelike chairs — and their portraits were set in heavy golden frames — yet none of them was more important or had a brighter future than she had herself.
To Carlotta, as she came down the steps of the gallery, it was absolutely clear. She, too, had to have her portrait painted, and soon. It would be a surprise for Karil — a Christmas present perhaps — and when she returned with Karil to Bergania the picture would hang in the palace.
First, though, she had to persuade her parents.
“I’m afraid that would cost too much, my little kitten,” said her father as she sat on his knee and played with his mustache.
“Oh please, Papa,” she wheedled. “It would be such a nice present for Karil. Think how pleased he would be.”
“I know, my angel, but really it isn’t necessary, since Karil is here now and can look at you every day.”
“But I want it to happen. I want it. Royal people always have their portraits painted.”
“You’ve no idea how much a good painter would charge, and a bad one wouldn’t do justice to my sweetheart,” said the archduke, tweaking her ringlets.
But Carlotta didn’t want to have her ringlets tweaked, she wanted to have them painted.
“I’m being very unselfish,” she pointed out, “because you have to sit very still to be painted, and you can get quite uncomfortable; and if I can promise to sit still, then at least you and Mama should find the money. Or Aunt Millicent — she’s got a diamond-studded garter left. I know because her maid told me so.”
Her father stood firm for several days, and then Carlotta began to refuse her food. She did not refuse it completely but often she had only one bun for tea, or a single helping of custard with her pudding, sighing ostentatiously and saying she did not feel well.
“Why can’t we sell Pom-Pom if he’s got such an important pedigree?” she said. “He’ll never get to Brazil now that there’s a war, and anyway he’s far too old to be a father.”
The old princess began to lift Pom-Pom out of Carlotta’s way when she came near him, and the other relatives hid the few valuables they still had as best they could. But when Carlotta had three biscuits instead of four for her mid-morning snack her mother became alarmed. She shut herself up into her bedroom and turned out her drawers and her underclothes and her makeup boxes. There was hardly any jewelry left, but she did find one shoe buckle studded with sapphires. She had been saving it for emergencies, but Carlotta going off her food was a kind of emergency. There was no need to sell it yet — the portrait might not turn out satisfactory or the artist might be persuaded that painting Carlotta von Carinstein was enough of an honor to undertake the work without payment, but at least they could get the portrait underway.
As soon as she had what she wanted, Carlotta got down to the problem of what to wear. Since the picture was to be a surprise for Karil she could not consult him, but she appeared every few hours in a different dress: pink with a broderie-anglaise collar, yellow with appliquéd buttercups, green with a row of velvet bows — and pirouetted in front of mirrors or asked advice from her relatives, which she instantly ignored. Sometimes she thought she would look best holding something — a kitten perhaps, or a bunch of flowers, but there were no flowers to be had in that dark house, and the kitten she brought up from the servants’ quarters scratched and refused to sit still, so she prowled through the rooms of the aunts and the governesses, seeing what she could beg or borrow or simply steal. Bracelets tinkled on her wrists, glittering headbands appeared on her hair, necklaces circled her plump neck — only to be rejected as not good enough.
“I think it would be best if I sat in that big chair in the Red Salon,” she said. “If it was draped in brocade it would look almost like a throne.”
The next thing was to choose a painter and Uncle Alfonso, who was artistic because of designing all his uniforms, went to his club and asked around, and came back with the name of an artist who was highly thought of and not too expensive.
The painter was approached and said he would do it — and Carlotta, for a few days, was thoroughly happy and as nearly good as she was able.