The Secret Prince (8 page)

H
enry arrived slightly late to supper and found
Rohan at the most crowded part of the table, deep in debate with James over fencing grips. Rohan looked up briefly and then returned to the argument. Feeling slightly hurt, Henry took an empty seat near Derrick and Conrad, two inseparable boys whose fathers held prominent positions in the Lords’ House at the Ministerium.

“Hallo, Grim,” Derrick said, passing the basket of rolls.

Henry, who’d barely exchanged two words with Derrick over the past term, nodded his thanks and took three rolls, stuffing two into a spare napkin. Conrad and
Derrick pretended very obviously not to notice. Henry realized his mistake immediately.

“Adam’s stuck in the library,” he explained. “You know—Lord Havelock’s essay. Didn’t want him to—”

“Right, of course,” Derrick said hastily. “Lord Badluck’s punishment for skipping the reading.”

“Lord Badluck?” Henry grinned.

Conrad leaned in conspiratorially. “It’s rather fitting, isn’t it? We overheard some second year using the name.”

“In any case, we can’t let Adam starve in the library stacks, can we?” Derrick said, tucking a spare napkin into the empty bread basket. “I don’t think this will be missed. Now, Grim, what did you do with those rolls?”

They cobbled together some sandwiches from the roast beef, and after they’d packed up a neat little picnic for Adam, the boys turned their attention to their own suppers.

Conrad regaled Henry and Derrick with a particularly funny story about his sister’s suitors and the over-active bladder of his mother’s prized terrier. Henry glanced up, his face red with stifled laughter, and caught Valmont glaring in their direction.

“Speaking of overactive bladders,” Derrick said, nodding his chin at Valmont.

“Sorry?” Henry asked, puzzled.

“His room’s next to mine,” Derrick explained. “Up twice last night, that one.”

Henry laughed, delighted. He’d expected Derrick and Conrad to be horribly snobbish, with their plummy accents and the way they always clubbed together, but they weren’t at all. In fact, they rather reminded Henry of his own roommates, how they gave nicknames to their head of year and told inappropriate stories.

Henry had always considered the other students largely uninterested in becoming friends with anyone whose family didn’t keep a Regent’s Hill town house. Now, however, he wondered if his impression hadn’t been an unfortunate combination of Theobold and Valmont’s bullying and a lot of unsure-what-to-make-of-the-common-students moments in the first few weeks of term.

After all, Rohan, whose perceptions were usually bang on, had named Derrick as one of the boys they ought to be friends with. Henry had instantly dismissed it, but perhaps Rohan had seen what Henry hadn’t—that Henry and his roommates weren’t outcasts at all. They had simply never tried to make friends.

Derrick offered round the mashed potatoes before
spooning the last of them onto his own plate. “How was your holiday, anyway?” he asked Henry.

“I’m sure it’s none of our business,” Conrad said with a meaningful glance at Derrick, as though he suspected Henry might be embarrassed to talk about his life outside the academy.

“Oh, I don’t mind,” Henry assured them. “Actually, I got in a fight with Valmont at Lady Winter’s holiday party. Lord Havelock caught us.”

“Do tell, Grim,” Derrick said gleefully.

And so Henry found himself once again telling the story of the boys down the alleyway, and of Frankie’s grandmother finding him in her kitchen, and of his brief but disreputable appearance at the holiday fete. Somehow the tale had become immensely funny, and Henry was aware of quite a few boys laughing along with Derrick and Conrad whenever he performed impressions of Lady Winter, Lord Havelock, and especially Fergus Valmont.

After supper Henry picked up Adam’s makeshift picnic basket and made his excuses to Derrick and Conrad—and Luther, who had joined them over dessert.

“Don’t be ridiculous, Grim. We’ll come with you,” Derrick said, clapping a hand to Henry’s shoulder.

“Yes, of course,” Conrad said, tucking a notebook under his arm and sniffling, in what was undoubtedly a very good impression of someone Henry had never met. “You’ll need a knight’s escort. Can’t have an important political figure such as yourself gallivanting about unprotected in such trying times.”

Derrick hooted with laughter, and even Luther cracked a smile. Henry was puzzled, until he realized that every group of friends has their own private jokes and references. Well, at least they wanted to come with him.

They found Adam fast asleep and drooling onto the pages of
Revolution Through the Ages
, which set them all off into hastily muffled hysterics.

Holding a finger to his lips, Henry tiptoed behind Adam and, in a terrifying impression of Lord Havelock, bellowed, “Ah, Mr. Beckerman, does my assignment bore you?”

Adam snapped awake, his face white. He turned around and found Henry, Conrad, Derrick, and Luther doubled over laughing.

“Aaahhhh!” Adam complained. “That was horrible. My heart stopped, I swear it did.”

“Brought you something.” Henry held out the basket.

“Better be a five-page essay in there, to make up for
that,” Adam complained, taking the basket. “Oh, sandwiches! Thanks.”

“No problem,” Henry said. “Just dropping them by. Finish your essay so I don’t have to bring you breakfast as well.”

“That would be a job,” Derrick mused, “smuggling scrambled eggs out of the dining hall. Wonder how you’d do it.”

“That’s easy,” Adam said, his mouth full of sandwich. “Use a teacup.”

“Now, there’s an idea,” Derrick said. “To the common room, lads. This library makes me feel as though I’m supposed to be whispering.”

“I think you
are
supposed to be whispering,” Luther said dryly as the librarian glared in their direction.

The common room was crowded, the best seats already claimed.

Rohan, who was playing cards with Edmund and James, waved them over.

Henry picked up a chess set with two buttons substituted for missing pawns. “Anyone for chess?”

Everyone was suddenly very interested in staring at either the floor or the ceiling.

“Sorry, Henry,” Edmund called, finding the whole thing immensely funny. “But no one likes to be slaughtered.”

“I’ll give a handicap,” Henry bargained. “Let’s say … a knight.”

Luther considered for a moment, and then shook his head. “Both knights. Or your queen,” he said.

Henry sighed.

And then a peal of loud cruel laughter came from the best chairs, which had been dragged into a circle around the crackling fire.

“Really, Valmont,” Theobold hooted. “There’s no need to be so
sensitive
about it. You’re like some swooning maiden.”

Valmont pushed back his chair, his face blotched red, his glasses flashing angrily in the light. “Shut
up
, Theobold,” said Valmont, his hands clenched into fists.

“Make me, you four-eyed charity case,” Theobold taunted. “We all know how your uncle had to—”

“Valmont, you interested in a chess match or what?” Henry interrupted.

Theobold stared disbelievingly at Henry, his mouth slightly open. Henry couldn’t believe it either—rather, he couldn’t believe
whom
he’d leapt in to rescue. The
common room was eerily silent for a long moment, and Henry fought the urge to fidget under the combined weight of his classmates’ stares.

“All right,” Valmont said casually, “but I don’t need a handicap to play against you.”

“Good, because I wasn’t offering,” Henry returned.

Valmont took the chair across from Henry, and the other students gradually resumed their conversations. With a dismissive sniff at the chipped paint and buttons for pawns, Valmont began arranging the chess pieces.

“Perhaps one day I’ll be able to afford a chess set as nice as this one,” Henry joked.

Valmont snorted and continued lining up pawns.

As the game progressed, it became clear that Valmont wanted desperately to win. He hunched over the board with a look of intense concentration, agonizing over each move.

“You’re making it easier for me to win, you know,” Henry said as he scooped up Valmont’s remaining bishop. “Don’t second-guess your moves so obviously. It gives away your strategy.”

“I don’t need your advice,” Valmont said, choosing to move a useless pawn. “And since when are you friends with those Ministerium brats?”

Henry glanced toward the nearby table, where his dinner companions had joined Rohan’s card game. “Conrad and Derrick? I’m not.”

“Looked pretty friendly to me.”

“Check,” Henry said, “and what does it matter to you, anyway?”

Valmont put a castle in the way of Henry’s attacking bishop. “I don’t like being made fun of.”

“I wasn’t making fun of you,” Henry said, capturing the castle. “Check, again.”

“Yes, you were,” Valmont said. “You were doing impressions.”

Henry went slightly red. It was true, he
had
been doing impressions.

“Who’s winning?” Theobold demanded, interrupting.

“It could go either way,” Henry lied as Valmont’s king retreated.

“Grim’s winning,” Argus Crowley grunted, peering at the board.

“Really?” Theobold said, delighted. He leaned in closer, crowding them.

“Do you
mind
?” Valmont said stiffly.

“It isn’t as though I’m bothering you,” Theobold
said, shifting so that he was leaning into Valmont’s back. “Because you’d let me know if I were, right, four-eyes?”

Valmont fumed silently.

Henry waited, expecting Valmont to defend himself, but he merely sat there, his jaw thrust forward, his hands clenched into fists, staring at the chessboard as though he wanted to hurl it across the common room. Henry dragged out his turn unnecessarily, hoping that Theobold would lose interest and wander away. Because what Theobold had nearly said about Valmont was a purpose fully off-target hit, the sort that wasn’t just rude but often caused injury. They were all students at Knightley Academy, and how they’d gotten in, or where they’d come from, was no longer newsworthy.

“Forgotten how?” Valmont whispered disdainfully.

“Sorry. I was preoccupied,” Henry said. “I met Theobold’s brother today and was trying to figure out if
everyone
in the Archer family starts to go bald and fat so young.”

Henry calmly raised an eyebrow at Theobold.

Theobold’s eyes blazed. “I don’t know, Grim. How about
your
family? How did mummy and daddy die? Hanged in the gallows as common criminals?”

Henry flushed with anger. After all, he’d been asking
for it, but that didn’t stop him from wanting badly to punch the smirk off Theobold’s face, to hear Theobold’s cry of surprise as he hit the floor from the sheer force of it.

The truth was, Henry didn’t know anything about his parents. He’d pestered the orphanage matron until she’d gotten cross with him, gone through one of those books that kept track of the aristocracy, dug up moldering copies of the
Midsummer Gazette
, and still, nothing. Anyway, it was better not to know—or so he’d tried to convince himself.

“I say, Archer, that was quite uncalled for,” Derrick said, throwing down his cards and pushing back his chair. “We’re all rather tired of your attitude.” “Are you now?” Theobold asked, somehow managing to pose the question to the entire common room.

“Yes, we are,” Derrick returned. “Especially with—Well, this isn’t the time to be fighting among ourselves.”

Theobold shot Derrick a look of disgust. “You don’t honestly believe that rot about the Nordlands, do you?”

“Maybe I do,” Derrick said, raising his chin. “What of it?”

Theobold seemed genuinely surprised at Derrick’s answer. He frowned, and the fight went out of his voice
as he said, “But your father’s the Lord Minister of—”

“The Lord Minister of Foreign Relations. Right,” Derrick said calmly. “Saw him about twice over the holiday, what with all those emergency sessions in the Ministerium. Or didn’t you notice the lights blazing at all hours from Parliament Hall?”

Henry shook his head in admiration at how neatly Derrick diffused what had quickly been becoming an explosive argument. But even more curious was what Derrick had said about fighting among themselves, and about the Ministerium being worried….

“It’s your go,” Valmont said roughly.

Henry glanced at the board. “Two moves until I have you in checkmate.”

“I know,” Valmont muttered.

“Listen,” Henry said, forgoing the final blows and handing Valmont back his captured pieces, “I’m sorry about earlier. I didn’t mean to make fun of you. I just got carried away when everyone laughed at my story.”

“What makes you think I care?” Valmont asked, picking up his queen and examining the chipped paint.

“What does Theobold have on you?”

Valmont’s shoulders stiffened. “Why do you think he has something on me?”

“Because,” Henry said, “you wouldn’t even stand up to him. You don’t take bullying like that from anyone else.”

“I don’t need your pity,” Valmont spat, standing up.

“Why would I pity you?” Henry asked, confused.

“Never mind. Just forget it.”

“Not likely.”

When Henry returned to his room that night, he hadn’t forgotten it. Instead he’d forgotten something else.

Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,
Frankie had said, and Henry had laughed and agreed. And sure enough, balanced outside their window, frozen and forlorn, was the cake Frankie had promised.

7