King and Joker by Peter Dickinson Read Free Book Online

power than hers in the room now.
    â€œHere, you!” barks the Prince. “You’re doing that too roughly. It is not the child’s fault that her hair has knots in it. You—you’re doing nothing. You brush the Princess’s hair.”
    Vicky tiptoes across to Durdon, too intelligent not to dread the consequences, despite the immediate relief. Durdon doesn’t even dare to look at Bignall. This’ll make it happen, she thinks as she begins to brush, What’ll she do? What’ll I do? She’ll wait till we’re back in England. Then she’ll … yes, she’ll go to Duchess May with a bottle of “tea” and say she found it in my drawer. She’ll say she found it up here, so she’ll go the moment we get back. I won’t have time to prove anything. It’ll be her word against mine. Vicky would bear me out, but I can’t …
    A sudden giggling scream and a man’s deep chuckle. Durdon, though she is tense as a terrier, manages not to jerk at Vicky’s hair as she looks round. Catriona appears to be having a fit, throwing her arms about and wriggling her whole body like a snake. Her cheeks are as red as a ripe apple and her giggles are made worse by her efforts to control them. Only her feet somehow remain respectful of the royal presence, as if they were glued to the floor. Rosie is crowing with laughter, Vicky smiling, Louise looking disgusted.
    â€œWhat happened?” whispers Durdon.
    â€œGranpapa put some ice down the back of her dress,” breathes Vicky.
    Bignall stalks slowly forward, a black pillar, a storm.
    â€œSir, I must request you to leave my nursery,” she says. “The children are over-excited.”
    The Prince swings round, amazed. His cod-like eye stares at her and wavers. In the instant given her Durdon raises her right hand to her lips and tilts her wrist with her fingers cupped round an invisible glass. At once she turns back to the thicket of dark ringlets.
    â€œStand closer to me,” snaps the Prince’s voice.
    â€œSir?”
    â€œDo what you’re told, woman. Now breathe in. Out. Again. You’ve been drinking. I thought so. Get out of the room.”
    â€œSir!”
    â€œGet. Out. Of. The. Room.”
    Footsteps. A gasping sob. The door. His voice again.
    â€œYou there. What’s your name? Durdon, Come here.”
    Fully calm she puts the brush down and walks across to him, stopping when there is barely a foot between them. He is not a tall man, but her eyes are level with the first diamond stud of his gleaming shirt-front and she has to raise her head to his. She takes slow, deep breaths and lets them out, as if showing the Princesses how to do their regulation breathing exercises at the window each morning. The Prince’s breath smells of his cigar, and something else, musky and fierce.
    â€œRight. You take charge for the moment,” he says. “I will write to the Duchess tonight. Now, you, girl. What’s your name?”
    â€œCatriona McPhee, Sir,” whispers the child.
    â€œCome here. I shan’t hurt you. Stand there.”
    He puts his dumpy little hands on her shoulders.
    â€œNow breathe in,” he says. “Out. Again. Hm. I like a sweet breath.”
    They stand there for some seconds, the Prince staring at the girl and the girl looking back at him with her head half turned away, her bosom rising and falling under the snowy stiff linen. Suddenly he grunts, a slow and meditative sound, then wheels away to the door. At once Vicky, usually so hesitant, darts across the floor and catches at his sleeve, pulling him down so that she can whisper in his ear. When he straightens, his cold opaque-seeming eyes stare at Durdon. He nods and goes.
    As the door closes Rosie, inexplicably, bursts into tears.
    Time-drift again, but not far, not far. The current that floats Miss Durdon into the first two of those sharp-lit bays now always nudges her into their