The Secret Prince (18 page)

“Oh, right.” Adam said.

Before the students knew it the half-term exams were upon them. Everyone crowded miserably into the library and hunched over thick stacks of notes, muttering terms and verbs and dates.

“What’s an example of a passive periphrastic?” Adam whined.

Henry looked up from his protocol notes. “Sorry. What?”

“Passive periphrastic,” Adam repeated.

“Er, how about
‘Nordlands delenda est’
?” Henry suggested.

Across the table Derrick and Rohan collectively snorted into their own Latin books.

“I wish you’d stop making jokes in Latin,” Adam muttered.

“Would you rather I made them in French?” Henry asked.

For a moment Adam thought Henry was being serious.

“Sorry,” Henry said quickly. “But that was a real example. You can substitute any name. It’s just the
‘delenda est’
part that you need to know.” He turned his attention back to his protocol notes and was trying to decipher a hastily scribbled line that couldn’t possibly say something about fish custard—although it certainly looked as though it did—when a whispered argument broke out at a nearby table.

Theobold and Crowley were trying to get a look at Valmont’s military history notes. “Bugger off!” Valmont whispered. “Look at your own notes.”

“But yours are so much more complete,” Theobold said with a grin. “I think we should trade.”

“I don’t,” Valmont returned.

“Maybe you didn’t hear what Theobold said,” Crowley spat. “Hand them over.”

“Go rot, Crowley,” Valmont said, slamming his notebook.

Crowley looked furious, but Theobold merely held up a hand. “I don’t know what’s gotten into you lately, Fergus,” Theobold said icily. “Maybe you want to call off our deal?”

“Maybe I do,” Valmont muttered, but he sounded unsure.

“Don’t be hasty now,” Theobold said. “Think it over. You have until supper.”

Crowley grinned and kicked the side of Valmont’s chair with his boot. Valmont fumed silently.

When Henry crept down to the battle society room after supper for a spot of target practice, he found Val-mont already in the room, landing blow after blow to the sack of flour they’d strung up as a makeshift punching bag.

The battle society was coming along better than Henry could have hoped. Meetings were far less formal now; students worked on archery, broadsword, or hand-to-hand
combat as they chose. Gone were the easy nights in the common room, the free hours spent exploring the castle or watching cricket practice.

And when Henry did have a spare moment, he mostly used it to peruse the books he’d rescued along with

Pugnare
. One book in particular was filled with oddly useful tidbits. Henry was reading it the night before the military history exam when he came across a note on how coins could be used as throwing darts if their edges were sharpened against a whetstone.

“Hmmm,” Henry said aloud.

“What?” Adam asked, looking up from his bed, where he was sprawled on his stomach and glaring at his military history notes.

“Nothing. Sorry,” Henry muttered. He supposed he ought to be studying for Lord Havelock’s examination, but he’d already memorized his notes, and anyway, there were only twenty minutes until lights-out.

He pulled on his boots.

Rohan glanced up from his desk, where he’d been sitting and writing out practice essays, an exercise that Henry considered unnecessarily torturous. “Going to practice?” Rohan asked with a frown.

Henry shook his head. “Kitchen.”

“Bring me back something?” Adam asked hopefully.

Henry snorted.

“What do you want?”

“Another orange. I ate mine,” Adam admitted.

“You’re not supposed to eat them,” Henry said.

“I was hungry,” Adam protested.

Henry paused with his hand on the doorknob. “I’ll see if they have something chocolatey as well,” he said.

Adam grinned triumphantly.

The oranges had been Conrad’s idea, actually. The fencing master at Easton had made the boys sit and manipulate oranges with their fencing hands as a way to strengthen their grips. Conrad had mentioned it in an offhand sort of way over lunch two days before, when everyone had been fretting over the languages exam.

The moment the exam had been over, Henry had gone to the kitchens and begged a bowl of oranges. He felt rather silly sitting and turning an orange around in circles, but it wasn’t difficult to do while studying.

The kitchen, when he reached it, was freshly scrubbed, the lights dim. Liza sat with her stocking feet propped upon a stool, reading the
Tattleteller
and eating a chocolate biscuit with apparent relish.

“It’s just me,” Henry said, but Liza jumped anyway.

“Master Henry, you gave me a fright!” she said, putting her hand to her heart as though checking to make sure it hadn’t quietly stopped working.

“I’m sorry,” Henry apologized with a deep bow, knowing how much Liza enjoyed it. “I just came to see if you’d heard any more gossip—and to use the whet-stone.”

“O’ course I heard more gossip. I’m always hearin’ things. But what I’m hearin’ ain’t always worth repeatin’.”

“Tell me the best of it, then,” Henry said, locating the whetstone and taking a handful of pennies from his pocket.

Liza watched suspiciously as Henry wrapped a tea towel around his hand and began to sharpen one of the coins. “Wha’s that for?”

“Er, extra credit for Medicine. It’s just an experiment to do with, er, scalpel width,” Henry fibbed, gingerly touching the edge of his sharpened coin. It drew blood.

“Oh,” Liza said, suddenly disinterested. “Have you ’eard about the medical experiments?”

“Medical experiments?” Henry asked, sharpening another coin.

“In the Nordlands. People keep disappearin’, an’
when they come back, they ain’t right. They’re missin’ fingers or toes or worse.”

“You think people are being kidnapped and experimented on in the Nordlands? Why would anyone do that?”

Liza took a bite of her biscuit and sighed with annoyance. “Ain’t no need for a
reason
.”

“Actually, there is,” Henry argued. “Experiments have a
purpose
. Otherwise it’s just torture.” Henry carefully put the sharpened pennies into his pocket.

“Do you have any more oranges, Liza?” he asked.

Liza huffed and pretended to be annoyed, but told Henry he could help himself to the fruit in the larder. He took a few pieces and wrapped them in his blazer.

“An’ you can take these back for yer friends,” Liza said testily, handing Henry a stack of chocolate-covered biscuits.

“Thank you,” Henry said.

“Get out of here,” she muttered, but her frown quickly gave way to an indulgent grin.

Henry walked back down the darkened corridor with his armload of oranges and biscuits, hurrying because of lights-out. He wondered what made Liza so certain that the Nordlands were carrying out medical experiments.
Experiments needed motive; they were for building or developing something. Henry was suddenly reminded of the series of articles about the Nordlandic mental asylum and how the patients had been found with their tongues split down the middle—torture, or another medical experiment?

No. Henry shook his head and told himself to be reasonable. But the more that he thought about it, the less far-fetched it seemed that the Nordlands were working on something very sinister indeed.

“Caught you!” a voice called, and Henry nearly cried in fright before realizing that he wasn’t doing anything wrong. He turned.

Frankie sat on the bench outside the archway to the first-year corridor, with a dark lantern at her side and a triumphant grin.

“Doing what?” Henry asked mildly.

“Sneaking,” Frankie said. “I knew you were up to something, and I told you that I’d find out sooner or later.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” Henry said. “It isn’t even lights-out.”

At that moment Lord Havelock emerged from his room wearing a spectacularly mauve dressing gown
emblazoned with golden lions. Henry gulped and squeezed himself onto the bench next to Frankie, hoping their head of year couldn’t see around the corner.

“Shut your lights, gentlemen,” Lord Havelock ordered, flipping the switch that dimmed the electric wall sconces in the corridor to a dull flicker.

Thankfully, their head of year disappeared back into his room. Henry breathed a sigh of relief. And then realized that he was sitting uncomfortably close to Frankie. In a dark hallway. Alone.

He scrambled to his feet and regarded Frankie coldly. She scowled up at him.

“I have to go,” Henry said. “I have an exam in the morning.”

“Not until you show me what you’re hiding in your jacket,” Frankie said, making a grab for Henry’s school blazer. She caught the sleeve, and oranges bounced everywhere. The biscuits dropped to the floor and crumbled. Frankie turned bright red.

And then Lord Havelock’s door opened.

“Quick!” Henry cried, pressing Frankie back onto the bench. Neither of them dared to breathe. Henry was suddenly quite aware that Frankie was—well, a girl. Their biggest problem wasn’t being caught in the corridor
after lights-out. It was being caught in the dark together on a bench.

Frankie clung to him, her eyes wide with fright.

After an eternity Lord Havelock’s door creaked shut. Henry breathed a sigh of relief, but he didn’t feel relieved at all—he’d done nothing wrong. Frankie was forever getting him into trouble by acting as though she were one of the boys.

Henry shot Frankie a brutal glare and gathered the oranges. “Come on,” he whispered, opening the door to his room.

Adam and Rohan were both in bed, although Adam was trying to study beneath the covers, which he’d pulled into a tent over his head.

“Frankie!” Rohan exclaimed, none too enthusiastically.

Adam emerged from the tent and waved hello. “Oh, good,” he said cheerfully. “Are we friends again?”

“Definitely not,” Henry said.

“Not a chance,” Frankie retorted at the same moment.

“Two things,” Henry told her. “The first is that I want an apology. You had absolutely no right. And the second is that you’re leaving through the window. It’ll
only cause more trouble if you’re caught wandering around the school corridors at this hour.”

“Fine,” Frankie mumbled. “I’m sorry. I made a mistake.”

“Obviously,” Henry said. “What did you
think
I was doing?”

“I don’t know,” Frankie muttered. “I thought—I—I’m sorry, all right?”

“I suppose,” Henry said, shrugging.

Frankie boosted herself onto the window ledge. “Nice pajamas,” she called, grinning at Rohan, who gave a long-suffering sigh.

“
Good night
, Frankie,” Rohan said pointedly.

Frankie hopped out the window and then leaned her head back in. “One last thing,” she said. “Just because you weren’t sneaking tonight doesn’t mean I was wrong about your sneaking.”

14

S
upper the next evening felt like a celebration, as half-
term exams were over. The tension that had built over the previous two weeks magically evaporated, leaving a gloriously free weekend in its wake.

Henry meant to shut himself in the now empty library and finish translating
Pugnare
after supper. But as he was leaving the dining hall, someone called his name.

Professor Stratford was hurrying toward him across the crowded dining hall.

“Hallo,” Henry said, trying to calculate how many weeks it had been since he’d paid his former tutor a visit. Too many, he realized belatedly.

“Don’t suppose you’ve forgotten about me?” Professor Stratford joked, but Henry wasn’t fooled. He could see the professor was hurt, and he felt awful about it.

“Sorry,” Henry muttered. “There were exams—”

“Oh, I know,” Professor Stratford said dryly. “I haven’t missed the celebrations.”

Henry grinned. Peter had led some of the third years through a boisterous round of raunchy pub songs over supper until Sir Franklin had shushed them.

“I’d enjoy having you over for tea tomorrow afternoon,” Professor Stratford persisted. “Bring your friends, if you’d like. New friends, even.”