The Secret Prince

by Violet Haberdasher

  “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 c
ake Frankie had promised.

  7

  THE SUITOR’S BOW

  At chapel the next morning Henry squeezed into the pew next to Adam. “How’d it go?” Henry whispered under the cover of the pipe organ.

  “Ahjusurnitin,” Adam mumbled, yawning hugely.

  Henry pretended to misunderstand him. “You just came from confession?”

  Derrick, who was seated in front of them, snorted. “I just turned it in,” Adam repeated crossly, closing his eyes and slouching down in the pew. “Now leave me alone. I’m sleeping.”

  Henry tried to listen attentively to the service, as he didn’t fancy a detention should Lord Havelock look over in their direction, but so much had happened the day before, and he’d barely had a chance to wrap his mind around any of it.

  It’s a funny thing, the flavor of a new school term; unlike the price of a penny newspaper, it is entirely unpredictable. Back on the platform at Hammersmith Cross Station, juggling his too heavy suitcases, Henry had felt certain that very little would change—his three best friends would be up to their usual mischief, the other students would ignore them, his status as an outsider was signed and sealed.

  He’d thought Rohan’s idea of becoming friends with the other students was absurd—until he’d tried it. And suddenly he understood. Because smuggling sandwiches out of the library in a diversion of loud, joking classmates had been precisely what he’d hoped school would be like, before the terrible incidents of last term had made him certain that he was, and would always be, an outcast.

  But Rohan had been right. They didn’t need to walk past when their classmates were choosing teams, pretending they needed to borrow a book from the library. They could join in.

  Unfortunately—and this was the crux of Henry’s worries—in order to be included, he’d excluded Frankie. Of course it had been unintentional, but that’s what had made it even more hurtful—how, in the excitement over fitting in, Henry had forgotten that he’d promised to spend the evening with someone else.

  Every time he pictured it, he felt horribly guilty: Frankie, standing outside their window with a cake meant for a celebration, waiting for them to let her in, wondering where everyone had gone, and, finally, giving up.

  Henry glanced tentatively toward the front pew, where the headmaster and his family sat. Frankie glared in his direction, and he quickly pretended to be absorbed in the sermon.

  “I want to explain,” Henry said, approaching Frankie after the service.

  He was met with a polite curtsy. “Good morning, Mr. Grim. I hope you’re well?” she asked demurely.

  “I, er,” Henry said, caught off guard.

  They never spoke formally. Not unless Grandmother Winter was watching. But the adults weren’t paying them any attention. So, then, why was Frankie treating him according to his proper station as a Knightley student, and acting as though he were just another boy in a uniform decorated with an impressive school crest?

  “Er, I’m very well, thanks,” Henry said stiffly. “And yourself?”

  For a moment Frankie seemed as though she wanted to call the whole thing off, drag him outside and loudly accuse him of forgetting their plans.

  But she didn’t. Instead she giggled and twisted a strand of her hair.

  “How kind of you to ask, Mr. Grim. I am also well,” she said sweetly, but a slight curl to her lip betrayed the game they were playing and the challenge she’d set.

  “I trust you’re enjoying the lovely weather, Miss Winter,” Henry returned.

  At this, Frankie very nearly snorted, as it was slush again that morning, with clouds the color of charcoal. Henry straightened his tie with a smirk. They stood there in stalemate, the chapel emptying out around them.

  Frankie’s tone was blandly polite, but Henry wasn’t fooled. He could see that he’d hurt her, and that she’d rather hurt him back than hear his apology.

  “Would it be possible to speak in private, Miss Winter?” Henry pressed.

  Frankie fake gasped. “But that would be entirely improper, Mr. Grim. Whatever would your friends think?”

  Henry sighed in frustration.

  Fine, then. If she wanted to rub it in that he was becoming a proper student at Knightley, that at any moment she could call off their friendship without warning, he’d do the same to her. After all, he’d earned an “above average” in Protocol last term.

  “As you wish,” he said, and before he could lose his nerve, Henry reached for her hand, touched it to his lips, and gave a suitor’s deep bow. He excused himself to the dining hall, trying not to laugh at the look of outrage on Frankie’s face.

  By their first lesson Henry was sorely regretting the bow. Rather, he was regretting his classmates’ reactions. Edmund had been bouncing in his seat at breakfast with a dozen questions, and Derrick had clapped him on the back in congratulations.

  “It was a joke,” Henry tried to explain, but how could he tell these boys, whose families had attended Knightley for generations, that he’d only done it to get back at Frankie for acting as though they’d never been friends? It sounded ridiculous even in his head.

  “Listen,” Rohan whispered during the fencing warm-up, “maybe it’s better this way.”

  “Better how?” Henry returned. “How can we play cards with her? Or even say hello in the corridor? Everyone will talk.”

  “Exactly,” Rohan said smugly, executing a perfect practice lunge. “I suppose we’ll just have to spend all of our free time with the other boys in our year and not get expelled for having a girl in our room.”

  Henry settled into the on guard position, lowered his back arm to signal an attack, and glared.

  “I liked her first,” Adam complained on the way to languages.

  “It didn’t mean anything,” Henry repeated uselessly.

  “You know how Frankie is. She started it.”

  “Well, you certainly finished it,” Rohan put in, gloating.

  Adam glowered. “It isn’t fair,” he grumbled.

  “Adversus solem ne loquitor,” Henry said with a shrug, taking his usual seat.

  “There was reading for languages, too?” Adam looked scandalized at the injustice.

  “No, it’s Latin for—Never mind,” Henry said as Edmund, James, Luther, Derrick, and Conrad piled into the surrounding seats and Professor Lingua waddled into the room.

  The weather had warmed slightly, and the ominous clouds had retreated, giving way to a surprising late-afternoon sunshine that flooded through the windows of Professor Lingua’s classroom. Everyone was bent over his Latin exercise—except for Henry, who had finished early but was trying to look as though he hadn’t. Which was why he noticed when James discretely passed a note to Rohan.

  Rohan slid the note under his desk and tried to open it without glancing down. His hands fumbled, and the note slipped to the ground. He went grayish and twisted in his seat in a panic, nearly giving himself away to their professor.

  Henry scribbled “Reach down for a spare pen and put the note in your satchel” on the edge of his notebook and tilted it toward Rohan.

  Rohan nodded slightly and did as Henry told him.

  At the end of the lesson, James sauntered over. “Well?” he prompted.

  “Sorry,” Rohan said retrieving the unread note from his bag. “I didn’t have a chance to open it.”

  “Stop being such a prefect, Mehta,” James teased. “And anyway, you were meant to pass it on down the row.” James took the note and smoothed it onto the table. It was a list of students. For one horrible moment Henry was reminded of his midnight exploration of Partisan Keep—the hidden room filled with illegal weapons, the targets shaped like human torsos, and the lists of Partisan students with their ranks in combat.

  But then Rohan read the heading aloud with a grin. “ ‘Cricket trials.’ ”

  Henry felt ridiculous. Of course it was a sign-up list for cricket. Now that he looked closely, he saw James St. Fitzroy down as captain.

  “Who’s the other team, th
en?” Henry asked. “A group of second years challenged us to a match this Saturday,” James said. “Put your names down if you’re interested in playing. We’re having trials today on the quadrangle.”

  Rohan scribbled his name at the bottom of the list. “Shall I put you as well?” he asked Henry and Adam.

  “I’ve never played before,” Henry said, looking to Adam.

  “I’ll teach you,” Adam offered. “Put us both.”

  Adam tried to explain the rules on the way over to the quadrangle, but Henry was hopelessly confused.

  “Wait, so who gets run out? Didn’t you say something about partners?” Henry asked.

  “It makes sense if you see it played.”

  To Henry’s dismay, it didn’t make sense when he saw it played. He could barely keep the rules straight, never mind the terms for everything. The other boys dashed around the quadrangle, their ties and jackets draped haphazardly over one of the benches, playing seven-a-side as though they were practicing for professional scouts. Henry gave up about twenty minutes in.

  “Too distracted to play, Grim?” Conrad teased, nodding toward the rock garden.

  Frankie and her chaperone were taking a leisurely stroll through the grounds, clearly spying on the cricket trials. Henry shrugged and tried to ignore them. After all, Frankie had already caused him more than enough trouble that morning.

  Henry shuffled over to the sidelines, where he stood watching his classmates and brooding over the recent discovery of his inability to comprehend cricket. He didn’t notice Adam’s approach until his friend joined him on the sidelines.

  “You’re not playing?” Henry asked in surprise.

  “I’m rubbish,” Adam admitted. “I know how to play, but I haven’t really—I never—I mean, it’s not like there are parks in the East End.”

  Henry sympathized. He’d forgotten that Adam had been to school in the city and lived at home, while most of their classmates had been off at posh academies with private cricket pitches at their disposal.

  “Rohan seems to be enjoying himself,” Henry pointed out.

  “Yeah, he couldn’t wait to be shot of us.”