The Secret Prince (31 page)

“I say, that was in rather poor taste,” Rohan whispered to Valmont on the way to Medicine that morning.

“What are you talking about?” Valmont snapped.

“The fleur-de-lis. You know,” Rohan said.

Valmont stopped short in the corridor, forcing Edmund and Luther to have to walk around him.

“That wasn’t me,” Valmont whispered. “I thought it was you.”

Rohan shook his head and held open the door to their medicine classroom. “Well, we’ll find out who called the meeting soon enough,” he said.

* * *

The twenty-nine remaining members of the secret battle society milled around the basement room, whispering nervously. Lanterns and candles flickered from the stairwell, creating a cascade of light and cloaking the room with eerie shadows.

With a sigh and a pointed glance at his pocket watch, Valmont cleared his throat and stepped to the front of the room. “Thank you for coming,” he said. “Will whoever called this meeting please step forward and explain?”

It took all of his nerve to stand there calmly, staring out at the sea of incredulous students, at the center of a situation completely beyond his knowledge and control.

And then Derrick Marchbanks, hands in his pockets, strolled out from the crowd, as cool as you please.

“Right, gentlemen,” Derrick said. “I didn’t call you here to train but to talk, and if you’d rather head on back to your beds, I won’t keep you. Although I think you’ll be interested in what I have to say.”

A couple of boys shifted restlessly but kept their places.

“We’ve all heard the rumors,” Derrick continued. “Grim and Beckerman are quite obviously missing, and
have been for four days. I think it’s time to set the record straight about where they’ve gone.”

“Can I talk to you?
Now?
” Valmont snarled, grabbing Derrick by the arm.

“Be a sport. This won’t take more than a few minutes,” Derrick returned, calmly removing Valmont’s hand from the sleeve of his jacket.

And then Geoffrey cleared his throat and called, “I think we all know what Grim is doing.” Jasper laughed uproariously at this, and a handful of second years snickered.

“And what would that be?” Derrick asked coolly.

“I’ll spare you innocent first years the details. Don’t think Sir Robert has explained them to you yet.” Geoffrey made a lewd gesture and then added under his breath, “The lucky sod.”

Valmont’s face soured.

Rohan sighed.

“Oh, how droll,” Derrick said dryly. “That’s precisely the sort of rumor I want to make certain no one walks out of this room believing. Because we owe it to them to be gentlemen about what’s happened, not to mock them behind their backs. You see, Grim and Beckerman took the fall for us, lads.”

“What do you mean, ‘the fall’?” Edmund called.

“They were caught returning the sabres to the armory after our last meeting,” Derrick clarified, and then he continued to tell the tale, explaining how he’d encouraged Henry and Adam to join a short-staffed envoy to the Nordlands. He explained how they’d expected to find proof of preparations for war, or at the very least, something they might use in order to have the conscription laws repealed immediately.

The members of the battle society listened, and even Valmont had to admit that the Ministerium brat had a way with words. “I know that rumors spread treacherously, and I felt as though everyone in this room deserved to know the truth,” Derrick continued. “No matter what cover story Headmaster Winter or our heads of year are going to come up with, that’s what happened.”

After Derrick had finished, the room was silent, everyone considering what they’d just heard. And then Edmund raised his hand as though in lecture.

“Yes, Merrill?” Derrick called.

“What are we going to do about it?” Edmund asked.

“Beg pardon?” Derrick frowned.

“We’re still here, the lot of us. There has to be something we can do,” Edmund said.

“What, like hop on the next train to the Nordlands?” a third year asked.

“No,” Edmund retorted. “Like keep the battle society going.”

Headmaster Winter announced that Henry and Adam had taken seriously ill and had been sent to a hospital in the city, but no one believed it.

Rohan watched the students file out of the chapel that morning, and more than once he caught the eye of another member of the battle society, but no one stopped to speak with him. He asked Derrick about this at breakfast.

Derrick topped off his tea and shrugged. “Well, every one might be thinking that you’re a bit of a coward,” Derrick admitted.

“A c-coward?” Rohan spluttered.

“Your friends all went off to prevent a war and change the laws, and you sort of … stayed here and disapproved.”

“
Of course
I stayed here and disapproved. It was the only sensible option,” Rohan returned. “I didn’t think everyone would consider them heroes for behaving recklessly.” And then he caught sight of Theobold, who was straining to hear their conversation from the other end of the table.
Theobold grinned. “Feeling a bit under the weather, Mehta?” Theobold asked loudly.

“Not at all,” Rohan said.

“If I were you, I’d be terribly nervous about coming down with that awful illness your roommates seem to have caught,” Theobold continued, and then he raised his voice even more, to make certain everyone would hear. “I do hope you’re not contagious.”

Rohan took a bite of a scone, trying to ignore Theobold, who was still watching him with narrowed eyes—or rather, watching Derrick and James, who sat on either side of him. They sighed and tried to ignore Theobold as well. Rohan realized their mistake almost at once, and paled.

“Interesting,” Theobold remarked, “how March-banks and St. Fitzroy don’t seem to think you’re contagious.” He paused and took a sip of his tea before ominously adding, “Or maybe they know where your nasty little roommates have really gone.”

Later that afternoon, during the hour free, Rohan took a walk around the school grounds. The trees were beginning to blossom, and the weather was, if not wholly pleasant, at least tolerable.

After breakfast they’d had drills for the first time that week, and Admiral Blackwood had pulled aside Conrad and James, the drill leaders. When the boys had returned, they’d shifted the formation, closing the gap in the ranks caused by Henry and Adam’s absence. Rohan had pressed James about this at lunch, but James had only shaken his head and shrugged. “Blackwood didn’t say why. I think he’s nervous because the parade is in three weeks.”

But Rohan wasn’t sure. Had Admiral Blackwood simply wanted to patch a hole in the formation should Henry and Adam not return in time for the parade, or did he know that they weren’t coming back?

Rohan agonized over this as he tramped along the perimeter of the quadrangle, soiling his boots and wishing he weren’t stuck with the largest and loneliest single room on the first-year corridor.

He was fretting over the indignity of Adam having left his things a mess, when a chauffeured automobile pulled up to the front of the headmaster’s house. Rohan stiffened and thought to turn back the way he’d come. But then the chauffeur hopped out and ran around the brass front of the car, opening the door and extending an arm to the passenger.

It was Grandmother Winter.

22

F
irst days can be disorienting. They are rather like
skipping ahead in a trusted textbook, only to find the material impossible to grasp. And yet with perseverance you will wake up one day and find yourself staring at what had once seemed so baffling, and without quite knowing what has changed, you will understand it all without a second thought.

Such went life for Henry, Adam, and Frankie in the servants’ quarters and kitchens of the Partisan School. The days fell into a routine of tasks: They polished boots, prepared and served meals, washed dishes, scrubbed floors, brought coal for the schoolmasters’ fireplaces, and did any other odd jobs that might be sent their way.

Henry and Adam were frequently set to the same work, which was fortunate, as Adam was rather hopeless. Although, to his credit, he did try. And though Henry and Adam spent their days assigned to the same tasks, Frankie worked separately, in the staff kitchens and the laundry. Oftentimes they saw one another only in the evenings and, of course, at night.

The three friends met after the other servants had gone to bed, despite their own exhaustion. For the past two nights they had explored the castle systematically by candlelight, starting with the attics. They were determined to find evidence of combat training—the dummies with targets painted on, the halberds and crossbows, the equipment Henry had seen all those months ago, during the Inter-School Tournament.

And yet they had discovered nothing, except a mutual distaste for missed sleep. By Wednesday morning everyone was in low spirits.

“I think I’d rather sleep tonight, if you don’t mind,” Adam said after breakfast while they scrubbed the tables in the dining hall.

Henry wiped his hair back with his sleeve and continued scrubbing. “Fine,” he said.

“What do you mean, ‘fine’?”

“If you don’t want to come, don’t. And by the way, you’ve missed a spot in the corner there.”

“Blast the spot!” Adam said.

Henry couldn’t help it, he grinned. “You sounded like Derrick.”

Adam went over the spot he’d missed, and both boys were quiet for a long time, as scrubbing and thinking go well in hand.

“I miss school,” Adam admitted.

Henry glanced around nervously, but the other boys cleaning tables that morning were at the opposite end of the hall.

“Me too,” Henry said. “And I keep wondering after our marks on the half-term exams.”

“I don’t,” Adam said with a shudder.

“I thought you were doing better this term.” Henry wrung out his washrag.

“I am. I was hoping for an ‘excellent’ in ethics,” he confessed. “Sir Franklin’s never read the Talmud. He thinks I’m a bloody genius.”

Henry snorted.

“I’ve been thinking,” Adam went on, “about what I’m going to do if we’re expelled.”

“You’ll go home to your family, I’d expect,” Henry said sourly.

“Are you mad? After a disaster like this?” Adam dropped his voice to the barest of whispers. “They’ll send me back to the yeshiva. No more fencing lessons, but extra mathematics and private Torah study to make up for the year at the goy school.”

Henry winced in sympathy. He hadn’t thought about what would happen to Adam if he went home, about what it meant to have a family that expected things of you.

“That won’t happen,” Henry said with as much confidence as he could muster. “Tell them you want to try for a scholarship somewhere for next year.”

“It’s not about that,” Adam said. “I took the exam behind my parents’ backs, and when they found out about Knightley, they said I wouldn’t last a year. If they’re right, I’ll never hear the end of it.”

“It could be worse,” Henry said.

“Worse how?” Adam asked.

“You could be Rohan.” Henry tried very hard to keep a straight face. Though he felt awful about it, he couldn’t pretend that it wasn’t funny. He could just imagine Rohan’s panic at having two missing roommates and only Valmont and Derrick to confide in.

“Reckon he’s upset?” Adam asked innocently.

“Nah,” Henry said. Both boys grinned.

As they dumped the dirty buckets of water outside the kitchen, Henry took a good look at Adam. They were both exhausted, but it showed more on Adam somehow, the lack of sleep and irregular, meager meals.

“Are you still looking forward to going to bed early tonight?” Henry asked.

“Would you be upset?”

“What? If you were tired, or if you left me alone with Frankie?”

“Oh, that’s right. You two loathe each other.”

“We don’t loathe each other,” Henry snapped. And then he couldn’t resist adding, “She’s far more tolerable now that she’s stopped wearing a corset.”

One of the serving boys was missing.

This was all anyone talked about in the kitchen that afternoon. Henry and Adam silently sliced beetroots, listening to the news pass worriedly among the kitchen staff.

“Maybe he’s run off,” someone said.