Authors: Violet Haberdasher
“May I help you with something, Miss Winter?” he asked.
“Professor Stratford and Lord Havelock just got into an automobile together,” she said. “I think they’ve gone after Henry and Adam.”
“Are you certain?” Rohan asked.
“No. Maybe they went shopping for some nice lace curtains,” she said with a derisive snort.
“Thank you for telling me,” Rohan said, and then he hesitated. “Would you like to come in?”
“But, Mr. Mehta, you’re wearing pajamas,” Frankie mocked.
“Come through the corridor,” he said. “I’ll be dressed by then.”
Frankie knocked as Rohan was fastening his cuffs, and then she barged in.
“I say!” Rohan exclaimed. “I could have been putting on my trousers.”
“I would have fainted from the impropriety,” Frankie assured him, and then she sat down on Adam’s still unmade bed just because she knew it would make Rohan bristle.
Rohan bristled.
“How are they?” he asked. “You were together, weren’t you? In the Nordlands?”
Frankie’s shoulders slumped. “We were,” she said, her voice small. “I—Oh, Rohan, it was terrible. They were exhausted and half-starved. It wasn’t as bad for me. And it was all my fault. They stayed because I missed the train back. If it weren’t for me …” She looked up at Rohan, and sniffed.
He offered a handkerchief.
And then the door to the room burst open. It was Valmont. Frankie glared at him. Rohan sighed. “Is
everyone
going to come and go as they please?” he muttered.
“Uncle Havelock just left,” Valmont said. He was still in his pajamas and dressing gown.
“We know,” Rohan said. “Go away.”
“No,” Valmont said. “I’m part of this too. I want to know what you know.”
“What darling pajamas you’re wearing, Mr. Valmont,” Frankie said.
Valmont went red. He removed his spectacles and polished them on a corner of his dressing gown. “Thank you,” he said. “And now, if you’re quite finishing mocking me, can we please move on to why my uncle just left in a motor car with Professor Stratford?”
* * *
Professor Stratford stared nervously at the identity papers in his hand and fiddled with his borrowed cravat. Across from him in the private train compartment, Lord Havelock dozed, frowning even in his sleep.
The train slowed as they came to the border inspection, and Lord Havelock came awake with a start. Professor Stratford stared out the window at the squat, low building and the six men in the heavy wool uniforms of the Nordlandic Policing Agency who marched smartly in formation toward the train.
“Stop gawking, Stratford,” Lord Havelock ordered.
Professor Stratford nodded. He was so nervous he could hardly breathe.
And then a sharp knock sounded on the door to their compartment.
“Come in,” Lord Havelock called.
Two policing agents saluted. Lord Havelock returned the salute crisply, and Professor Stratford did his best, trying not to feel like a fraud. He was a terrible liar.
“Papers, please,” the policing agents demanded.
The men passed forward their identity papers, showing that they were the Lord Ministers Marchbanks and Flyte, and Lord Havelock handed them a sealed envelope explaining their business across the border.
“Just a minute, compatriots,” the larger of the two policing agents said. He and his companion disappeared into the corridor.
Professor Stratford watched through the window as the policing agents marched back into the station. Was something wrong? He nearly mentioned his concern to Lord Havelock, but caught himself. After all, he had never crossed the border into the Nordlands before; perhaps this was normal.
Ten minutes went by, and then twenty. The train still sat at the border, unmoving.
Lord Havelock’s frown deepened, and he disappeared behind his copy of the
Royal Standard
.
Finally the patrollers came back onto the train. There were eight of them now.
A knock sounded on the door of their compartment.
Lord Havelock calmly folded his newspaper. “You may enter,” he called imperiously.
The patrollers didn’t salute. They held their nasty-looking spiked batons in their fists, and they grinned menacingly. “Looks like ye’re not who ye claim,” one of the patrollers said. “Get up, both of ye.”
Professor Stratford stood, and was seized immediately, his arm twisted painfully behind his back, the
patroller’s baton poking painfully into his kidneys.
“Now march,” the patroller ordered.
Another patroller did the same to Lord Havelock. The two men were marshaled off the train and into the border inspection office, where they were thrown into a room that rather resembled a cell. There were no furnishings and no windows.
Professor Stratford sunk to the floor and put his head in his hands. “What went wrong?” he muttered.
Lord Havelock paced for a few minutes and then gave up and leaned against the wall, glowering. “If I knew that, Stratford, we wouldn’t be here.”
The men waited in silence for an hour, alone together with their thoughts. And then the door opened. Professor Stratford looked up, hardly daring to hope that they were being released.
The man in the doorway wore a pin-striped suit and a triumphant smile. His hands were hidden beneath a pair of white gloves; he carried a medical bag in one hand and a journal in the other, its cover a striking peacock blue.
“Hello, Magnus,” he said. It was Sir Frederick.
“Frederick,” Lord Havelock growled, “explain yourself at once!”
“Explain?” Sir Frederick frowned and set down his medical bag. “I should think it was obvious.” He opened his journal, which was not a journal at all but a cleverly disguised case. He removed a syringe filled with clear liquid and idly tapped his thumb against the plunger, sending a few droplets of the cocktail into the air.
Professor Stratford gulped as he found himself roughly seized by the same patroller who had man handled him earlier.
Sir Frederick took a step toward Lord Havelock, who was being similarly restrained. “I am here to collect what is due to me, Magnus,” Sir Frederick said, sticking the needle into Lord Havelock’s arm but hesitating before pressing the syringe, drawing out the horror. “You betrayed me and washed your hands of our alliance, but I have not forgotten how you wronged me back at Knightley, and finally I shall have my revenge.”
Sir Frederick depressed the syringe.
“High treason and conspiracy,” Lord Havelock said woozily.
Sir Frederick merely smiled. “ ‘Yea though we roar with the fire of a mighty dragon, we are but its scales, all cut from the same mold, and of equal worth.’” He calmly
wiped the syringe against his palm as Lord slumped forward, unconscious. Professor Stratford swallowed nervously, feeling his knees buckle as Sir Frederick advanced, removing a second vial of clear liquid from his case.
“Ah, Stratford,” Sir Frederick said. “A shame for you to have come here. I actually quite liked you. And how is little Henry these days, if I may ask?”
Professor Stratford gulped, realizing that he had to lie. “I wouldn’t know,” he said. “After the boy was expelled at the end of last term, he blamed me.”
“Liar,” Sir Frederick breathed. And then he grinned. “But I can make use of you yet, Stratford. I could send word of my triumph back to South Britain…. Yes, dread is better than surprise in this case. And you should do nicely.”
Professor Stratford felt a sting, and then a rush of coldness in his arm.
“I’ll deliver no messages for you,” he managed weakly. His heartbeat sped, and his breathing slowed, and spots danced before his eyes.
“As though ye have a choice,” Sir Frederick sneered.
And then everything went black.
* * *
On Monday night Henry was seated next to Mauritz in the hidden meeting room, helping the boy with his Italian homework before the meeting. They bent over the slim volume of Machiavelli, frowning.
Henry had warned Lord Mortensen that his Italian was out of practice, but the schoolmaster had thought he was being modest.
“Truly,” Henry had insisted, “I’ve barely even looked at anything that wasn’t French or Latin for a year now.”
“It will do ye good,” Lord Mortensen had said. “Both of ye. He needs the help.”
Mauritz
did
need the help. At first he’d tried to demand that Henry do the assignment, but Henry had quickly put a stop to that.
“I won’t do it for you. You have to learn this stuff,” Henry had said with a sigh.
They weren’t making much progress, as Mauritz puzzled over the simplest rules of Italian grammar.
“No,” Henry said, biting back his frustration, “look at the words you
do
know. Does anything look familiar?”
“‘ Arte,’”
Mauritz grumbled.
“Good,” Henry said. “Now underline the words that modify it.”
Mauritz hazarded a guess.
“No,” Henry said through his teeth. “Look at the pronoun agreement. It’s feminine, so you’ve got ‘
quella è sola
,’ see?
”
“Just translate it for me, if ye can,” Mauritz challenged.
“Fine,” Henry said with a sigh. “From the beginning: ‘Chapter Fourteen. That Which Is of—no, sorry—That Which Concerns a Prince on the Subject of War.’ As I’ve said, my Italian is rusty. Shall I continue?”
“If ye want to be punched in the face,” Mauritz grumbled.
“Sorry,” Henry whispered furiously. “This wasn’t
my
idea. But I gave my word to help, and if that means forcing Italian grammar down your throat, so be it.”
And then Garen burst into the chamber, out of breath and brandishing a copy of the
Common Comrade
.
“My lord,” Garen said, with a quick bow in the direction of Lord Mortensen, and a deeper bow toward the table where Henry and Mauritz sat. “My lord prince, there is news. A Brittonian man was caught crossing the border this weekend with forged identity papers. There is to be a hanging tomorrow in the square.”
Lord Mortensen frowned. “Let me see that, lad.”
Henry craned his neck as the paper passed to Lord
Mortensen. He noticed with surprise that the paper was wet, and in the spaces between the articles, violet letters were cramped onto the page.
“Sir, is that …?” Henry began.
“Only shows up if ye dab it with the right chemicals,” Garen said.
Lord Mortensen put down the paper, looking far older and far more tired than he had just moments before. “This could start a war,” he muttered.
“What’s happening?” Mauritz demanded.
Garen bowed and explained. A man had been caught crossing the border with forged diplomatic papers. He was being held at the prisoner’s asylum, and there was to be a public execution at dawn.
“No!” Henry said, surging to his feet. “He was coming to rescue us!”
“Ye don’t know that, lad,” Lord Mortensen said.
“I do!” Henry cried. “It must be Professor Stratford.”
Henry’s heart felt as though it might break his rib cage. He couldn’t sit. He couldn’t stay still. His hands shook as the horror of the situation washed over him.
It
was
Professor Stratford—he was sure of it. And if the professor had been caught, it was all his fault.
Public execution.
The phrase sounded like something out of a medieval nightmare. With a gulp Henry remembered the gallows in the public square, across from the statue of the chancellor. And then he remembered something else—Lord Mortensen’s explanation of what the chancellor did to prisoners.
“The doctor has him,” Henry muttered.
“Aye,” Garen said darkly. “Cure his health before he cure the man of his life.”
“Don’t say that!” Henry cried, running a hand over his face and trying to think. But all he could conjure up was a hideous image of Professor Stratford, his lips blue and his toes turning black, strapped to a table as a faceless man in a butcher’s apron asked him to describe the pain.
“I have to go,” Henry said. “We have to get him back.”
“That is not possible,” Lord Mortensen said sadly, shaking his head.
“Make it possible, then!” Henry retorted.
“I cannae do it, lad. An’ where would we hide a fugitive who cannae cross back to his own country? There are greater things at play here, an’ the risk is too high. Our rebellion must tread carefully if we are to succeed.”
“He’s the only family I have,” Henry said. “You said the doctor takes his patients to the old mental asylum. I’m going. If I can’t rescue him, at least I can say good-bye.”
“Stop him!” Lord Mortensen cried, but Henry was already forcing open the door to the hallway, and then he was running down the corridor and out of the castle.
The student guard took in Henry’s staff kitchen waistcoat and the expression on his face and pulled back the gate without comment. Henry slipped through, the cold night air of Romborough making him shiver. He passed the graveyard, that ominous place where men became slabs and memories, buried again over time, and he passed the church with its funny circular roof quartered by blackened beams, and the first of the pylons that loomed up ahead, marking the widening of Cairway Road.
The streets were rough at night, with gangs lurking in the entrances to the closes, and ladies calling after him from the skeletons of the market stalls.
And then he was in the square, with the bronze statue of Yurick Mors waving the banner of the revolution. There. The gallows.
Henry saw the gentle sway of the rope in silhouette,
and the gruesome stage, its stains buried deep beneath a layer of sawdust.
No.
This enormous statue of the chancellor couldn’t be the last thing Professor Stratford saw. Henry swallowed back a desperate sob as he crossed the square toward the small white building with no windows.
THE PRISONERS’ ASYLUM
, a sign read, hanging from the rusted gate.
Henry ignored the voice in his head that shrilled for him to turn back toward the castle, toward the hidden chamber where the rebellion convened at midnight, where they sat as old-fashioned knights loyal to the overthrown king, at a round table like something out of legend.
For the place he was about to enter was like something out of his nightmares. He took a deep breath and passed through the gates, but no one stopped him. He opened the door of the prison, where no one stood guard.