This usually meant that Roderick and Margaret wanted to show off something that they had bought, or brag about something they had done, and this time was no exception. Though they had been equipped with brand-new uniforms the last time Tally had seen them, a great deal of shopping had been done since then. Margaret had two new Sunday dresses and a new dressing gown with a St. Barbara’s crest on the pocket. What’s more, the girls of St. Barbara’s did not carry their gas masks to school in cardboard boxes like common children, but had special cases in the school colors of blue and green.
“And I’m getting kid skating boots — they’re being sent from Harrods,” said Margaret. “It’s that very soft leather and it’s incredibly expensive. Some of the girls just have ordinary leather ones, but Mummy wanted me to have the best because my ankles are so sensitive.”
Roderick’s bed was again piled high with clothes striped in ferocious red and yellow. It had been necessary to replace his blazer and his cap, and he had an entire new kit for rugger on which he had left the price tags so that Tally could see them.
“Pretty steep, aren’t they?” he said proudly.
But what he particularly wanted to boast about was the kind of pupils that were coming to Foxingham. Not only was the Prince of Transjordania still there but his younger brother was going to join him, and so was a great-nephew of the Kaiser who was third in the line of succession to the Prussian throne should it ever be restored.
“I’ve made good friends with Transjordania,” said Roderick carelessly. “He’s not really stuck up at all, not when you get to know him. Of course he doesn’t bother with everybody, but I know how to treat him.”
If it wasn’t for the amazingly good tea which her aunt Virginia served, Tally would have found the afternoon almost impossible to get through. Virginia was the sort of person who always seemed to be able to get hold of sugar and chocolate and all the other things that were in short supply. She had come back from Torquay when the expected bombs did not fall on London, but she had kept her flat down there so that if air raids did start she would be able to get away at once.
“It’s all so terribly trying,” she said wearily. “Now the maid wants to go and join the ATS. I don’t know how I’m supposed to get through all the work myself. But there it is — servants never know when they’re well off.”
“I tell you, it’s no good,” said Kenny, sitting on an upturned crate in the storeroom behind his father’s shop. “It’s a fortress, that place. I took the cart around like you asked me to, but they didn’t want any vegetables and they just shut the door in my face. I had some mistletoe and chestnuts for roasting and all sorts of stuff, but they said no one celebrated Christmas there and I can believe it. You’ll never get a message through to Karil like that. Just give it up, Tally.”
But giving up on things was not one of Tally’s talents. “Couldn’t we try once more? Please. If you take me there I might get an idea. I just want to let him know that it’s all right about the scholarship and he can come. There must be some way I can get a note to him.”
Kenny shrugged. “I’ll take you if you like, but not with the cart. There’s nowhere to leave Primrose — it’s all posh streets with snooty people.”
So the following Saturday they took the Underground to Trafalgar Square and walked down the Mall to Rottingdene House.
The huge gray building with its spiked railings was a grim sight. They walked all around it, but there was no side door other than the one that Kenny had tried; it was the most sealed-up and unapproachable place Tally had ever seen.
But when they came around to the front of the house, they found a small group of people waiting on the pavement.
“It’s about now they come out,” said a woman in a purple headscarf.
“Who?” said another bystander. “Who is it comes out?”
The woman wasn’t sure, but she thought it was royalty. “My sister saw them last week; she said they were ever so friendly.”
Tally waited, keeping out of sight behind Kenny and stamping her feet on the pavement to try to keep the blood flowing.
It seemed most unlikely that anyone would come out of those forbidding iron gates, but after half an hour the sentry in the box stood to attention, the front door with its heraldic crest was thrown open and three people emerged.
She saw Karil first; he was exactly the same in spite of the cap pulled over his ears against the cold. Behind him came the Scold, black as ever in a fur coat the color of ink… and between Karil and the Scold came Carlotta.
Tally recognized her at once. She wasn’t wearing a white dress — or if she was, it was hidden under her velvet-collared coat — and she wasn’t holding flowers. But her long blond ringlets, her simpering smile, were exactly as they had been when she peered out of the window of the Daimler on the quayside at Dover.
It was Karil though who held Tally’s gaze. He had put his arm around Carlotta’s shoulders in a chivalrous and protective way, as though he was sheltering her not just from the cold but from anything bad that life might throw at her, and now he adjusted her scarf so that it covered her throat more securely and the Scold, looking down, nodded in a pleased way.
Then a footman came out of the back of the building and took his position behind them and they set off slowly toward the gate. The sentry saluted, the gate swung open and the bystanders stood aside to let the important people through.
“Long live Your Highness,” cried the lady in the purple headscarf, and Karil smiled and lifted his arm once, and twice, and three times, in that gracious wave that princes learn from infancy. Then he nodded to the footman, giving the signal that they were ready to set off, gave his arm to Carlotta, and they moved away.
Karil had not seen her and Tally stood stock-still in the icy cold. There was no escaping what she had seen. If ever there was a boy who was doing what he was best at, leading the life he was born to, it was Karil.
“Come on,” said Kenny.
And she tore up the note she had written and followed him.
CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN
The Future King
Although Karil had long ago given up expecting anything good to happen in his grandfather’s house, even he was surprised by the sheer awfulness of the Rottingdene Christmas. There was no tree, no candlelight, no exchange of gifts, no music. The duke took morning prayers, the cook sent up two underdone chickens — and that was that.
Still, it meant that he was not expected to find a gift for Carlotta. Karil was used to hard work, but being nice to Carlotta was one of the most grueling tasks he had ever undertaken. Her treachery, her vanity, her lies seemed to grow rather than lessen with each day that passed, and yet somehow he managed to act the part of a devoted cousin and a prince who wished her to share his life.
And still he did not know yet whether his plan was going to work. His uncles now treated him with respect, the servants scuttled past him, and the governesses curtsied when he came into the room.
But it was the duke that mattered, and two days after what passed for Christmas his grandfather sent for him.
“I have to tell you, my boy,” he said, “that I have been most pleasantly surprised by your behavior in the last few weeks. I understand from Carlotta that you have seen the error of your ways.”
“Oh, I have, sir, I have,” said Karil fervently. “I can’t believe now how foolish I have been. And how ungrateful, when you have given me a home and a chance to fulfill my destiny. From now on I shall devote all my waking hours to preparing for kingship. I want to learn to be a proper ruler, not one of those weak kings who can’t make up his mind and has to keep consulting his ministers. A king should be an absolute ruler and his subjects should obey him without a moment’s hesitation.”