The Secret Prince

by Violet Haberdasher

  “Brilliant,” Derrick said, scribbling a note on the map.

  “What is this place?” Henry asked, fascinated.

  Rohan had wandered over to the cosmetics table and was frowning at the jars of pigment.

  “You know how we choose a specialty at the end of our second year?” Derrick began.

  “We don’t truly choose,” Rohan corrected. “They make us sit an exam.”

  “Of course,” Derrick said with a dismissive wave of his hand. “But it’s supposedly rather obvious which answers correspond with which specialty. Anyhow, I’d wager this is for those studying to become knight detectives. Looks like the art room.”

  “As in ‘art of disguise’?” Henry asked, holding a fake handlebar mustache above his lip.

  “Precisely,” Derrick said, laughing. “And you should hang on to that one, Grim. It makes you look like a dishonest barkeep.” Even Rohan grinned.

  “Do you reckon we can get in trouble for being up here?” Henry asked, swapping the mustache for a bushy gray beard.

  “Since when are classrooms off-limits?” Derrick threw an opera cape lined with crimson silk around his shoulders and admired it in the glass.

  “I suppose that’s true,” Rohan said, cheering visibly. “Look at this.”

  Henry looked up, still wearing the beard.

  “It’s got instructions for painting on real-looking smallpox.” Rohan held a jar of paint with a handwritten label.

  “Into your pocket with that one, Mehta,” said Derrick. “We can use it for getting out of drills.”

  “Exactly what I was thinking,” Rohan said dryly, putting the jar back where he’d found it.

  By the time they left the disguise classroom, the three boys were laughing and joking. They wandered into a few more rooms, which disappointingly housed nothing more than desks and chalkboards.

  “Reckon it’s time to head back?” asked Henry.

  “In a moment.” Derrick frowned as he stared back and forth between the end of the corridor and the map.

  “What is it?” Rohan asked.

  “Am I imagining things, or is there a wall where the map shows a staircase?”

  “Maybe Conrad copied it wrong,” said Rohan.

  “Maybe the tower collapsed ages ago,” said Henry. “I mean, this school’s ancient.”

  “Maybe,” Derrick called over his shoulder as he approached the offending wall at the end of the corridor.

  It was an ordinary trophy case with a glass front, although instead of trophies the case housed mostly cobwebs. A pair of forlorn oil paintings resided on either side, depicting serene landscapes that looked to be the work of a student rather than a master. It was the most deeply uninteresting wall Henry had ever seen. Which was why it gave him pause. The trophy case was old, but not as old as this section of the castle. However, it seemed to be built into the wall.

  With a frown Derrick rapped smartly against the wall with his fist. There was an echo. All three boys exchanged an uneasy glance; the wall was hollow. Derrick examined the stretch of wall behind one of the oil paintings, but it was entirely unremarkable.

  So, Henry thought, if there is a way through, it must have something to do with the trophy case. He ran his hand around the edge of the trophy case, looking for some sort of latch or hinge.

  “We should head back,” Rohan said suddenly.

  “I’m not going anywhere,” said Derrick.

  “Henry—,” Rohan began.

  “If you don’t want to be here, you know how to get back to the dormitory,” Henry said, tugging at the lock on the case.

  “Can you pick the lock?” Derrick asked.

  “With what?”

  Derrick patted his pockets and then shrugged.

  “We can come back after dinner,” Henry suggested.

  Derrick agreed.

  “Hold up,” Henry called, jogging to catch up with Rohan. Derrick joined them, rolling the map into a cylinder and playfully thwacking Henry and Rohan with it.

  “Listen,” Derrick said, “we shouldn’t say anything about the wall. Not until we know if there’s anything behind it.”

  “Or if there’s a way in,” said Henry.

  “Exactly.” Derrick dashed ahead of them on the staircase, brandishing the map as though it were a sword. “On guard, Nordlandic scum!” he cried, fighting off an invisible assailant.

  Henry shook his head, laughing. He rather suspected Derrick had been the one to start everyone fencing with rolls of paper last term.

  10

  THE FORGOTTEN CLASSROOM

  Conrad, Adam, and Edmund had discovered the way into the private corridor Headmaster Winter used to enter the dining hall. They were chattering excitedly about it when Henry arrived slightly late to supper, his hair still damp. Snug in his blazer pocket were a few lengths of wire, two matches, and a candle stub.

  “It runs parallel to the corridor with the suits of armor,” Conrad was saying through a mouthful of peas. “We think it used to be an escape route, in case the school was under siege.”

  “An escape route with a lovely mauve carpet.” Adam snickered.

  “A mauve carpet? Really?” Derrick asked, delighted.

  “Why, what did you lot find?” Adam asked.

  Henry and Rohan exchanged a brief glance before Henry cleared his throat and said, “There’s this brilliant classroom for the knight detective students …”

  It was easy to break away after supper. Derrick asked Henry a question about the Latin, and Henry invented a book in the library that he’d used to make sense of the ablative form.

  “It’s really dull,” Henry warned.

  “Not as dull as my summer holiday will be if I don’t earn an ‘excellent’ in languages,” said Derrick.

  They were halfway to the library before Derrick frowned and whispered, “You do know I wasn’t serious about the ablatives?”

  “Of course,” Henry whispered back.

  “So why are we going to the library?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Henry led Derrick into the study room on the balcony level, shut the door, and pushed the panel on the shelf that revealed the passageway Adam had discovered the previous term.

  “Where does it lead?” Derrick asked, his eyes bright with excitement.

  “To the hallway below Lord Havelock’s classroom.”

  “But that’s a shortcut.”

  “Exactly,” Henry finished. “Come on.”

  The staircase was just as dark as Henry remembered, and just as steep. Both boys were out of breath when Henry pushed aside the creepy unicorn tapestry and they climbed out onto the dimly lit fourth-floor corridor.

  If anyone had thought Henry and Derrick were up to anything, they would have seen only that the boys had entered the library, exactly where they’d claimed to be going.

  The hallway with the trophy case was on the other side of the castle, in the older part of the school. As they walked, Henry noticed the overhead beams become black with age and the floor grow slightly uneven. They approached the trophy case, and Henry removed the bits of wire from his pocket, kneeling as he fitted them into the lock.

  “That’s a useful talent,” Derrick said, craning his neck to see what Henry was doing.

  “Not really. I’m rubbish at this sort of thing.”

  Henry wiggled one of the bits of wire, getting a feel for the mechanism. Thankfully, the lock was old, which meant it would be easier to open.

  “How did you learn?” asked Derrick.

  “At the orphanage,” Henry admitted, and then, because he was concentrating on the lock, he continued without thinking. “I was eleven. They never quite gave us enough to eat, particularly that summer. It’s criminal, I know, but my stomach was growling so loudly that I couldn’t sleep. It took two nights before I figured out how to pick the lock on the cupboard, and—”

  He broke off, embarrassed. He’d just told Derrick Marchbanks, who had attended a secondary school so posh that even the composition book
s were embossed with gold leaf, how he’d practically been starved as a boy.

  “I used to sneak down to the kitchens myself,” Derrick said. “Less of a challenge when the school servants let you take what you want, though.”

  Henry bit his lip in response and gave the thicker piece of wire a satisfying twist.

  The lock clicked open.

  “This is why I like you, Grim,” Derrick said as they tugged open the great glass door to the trophy case. “Conrad would have gotten scared like your friend Rohan did.”

  “Rohan doesn’t like to break the rules,” Henry said as they scrutinized the inside of the trophy case. “Especially after being expelled for something he didn’t do.”

  “Hmmm,” Derrick said absently, pressing on a circular piece of paneling. “Conrad’s the same. Scared of getting into trouble and having it become a problem when we start at the Ministerium. Ugh. Why won’t this push in?”

  “Maybe it twists,” Henry observed.

  Derrick twisted, and nearly lost his balance. The trophy case was a door—or, rather, it had been built over a door. One that led, sure enough, up a twisting stone staircase.

  “Dare we, Grim?”

  “We’re not very well going to shut it and go down to the common room to play checkers,” Henry said, taking the candle stub and a match from his pocket. He struck the match against the stone floor and quickly lit the candle, passing it to Derrick.

  “It was your map,” said Henry. “You can do the honors.”

  “Trying to save yourself by going last, eh, Grim?” Derrick joked, but Henry could see that through the bravado Derrick was just as nervous as he was about what they would find. However, the staircase was perfectly ordinary. A bit dusty, but ordinary nonetheless.

  “What do you think is up here?” Henry asked, brushing aside a cobweb as he followed Derrick.

  They stood at the entrance to a tower classroom. A few desks were cloaked with white sheets, and a Gothic bookcase stood against the far wall, its shelves home to a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Beneath the grimy window were three moldering steamer trunks.

  Derrick held his candle stub to one of the wall sconces, lighting a cluster of tapers that burnt a sulfuric green.

  “Why go to all of that trouble to block off a classroom?” Derrick wondered.

  “Maybe it’s haunted?” Henry joked.

  “Must be. Or else this was the suicide tower for everyone who earned a ‘dreadful’ in military history.”

  Henry walked over to the window and looked out. Beneath them, dark and vast, were the woods at the border of the school grounds.

  “Did they even teach military history back then?” Henry asked. “I mean, this classroom was abandoned a long time ago.”

  “Not abandoned,” Derrick corrected, wandering over to the bookcase and extracting the few remaining volumes. “Closed off. And I wish I knew what for!” He placed the books onto one of the desks, and brushed off the coating of dust.

  “What subject are they?” Henry asked.

  “Don’t know. But this one looks like Latin,” Derrick said, passing it to Henry. Burnt into the parchment cover was the word “Pugnare.” The book was written in painstaking illuminated hand. Henry squinted at the words in the dim candlelight.

  “Si caballus pugnare possent,” he murmured, and then nearly dropped the book.

  “‘Caballus’? That’s something about knights,” Derrick replied.

  “ ‘If knights should be able to fight,’ ” Henry translated, flipping through the book, past careful drawings of horses and knights, diagrams of battle formations, and charts of constellations.

  “That can’t be—”

  “It is,” Henry said.

  The two boys stared down at the ancient training manual, a relic of the old Knightley Academy, where pupils studied fighting rather than French, and where aristocratic boys learned to lead common soldiers into battle.

  The rest of the books were thankfully in English, except for one collection of outdated maps with legends written out in Old French. Battle strategy, combat, navigation …

  Henry stared at the stack of texts, realizing that the books had been hidden for good reason. They were full of ideas that everyone was too scared to ponder. Full of ways to kill boys in battle who fought for the opposing side. Full of plans for the impossible.

  “Up for a bit of light reading?” Derrick joked, but his expression was quite serious.

  “What good are books?” Henry asked. Unlike Derrick, he didn’t find the stack of forgotten texts anything to joke about. “No, I mean it. Suppose that there’s a war coming. Suppose that all boys over the age of thirteen will have to fight. What good is it to know the names of ancient battle formations if the only weapons we’ve ever held are blunt-tipped practice foils?”

  “Books are better than nothing,” muttered Derrick.

  “Not to me,” Henry said fiercely. “When I worked in the kitchens, I had loads of books. Traded a few hours’ sleep for a few hours in the library. But sitting and wishing for everything to be different only makes you bitter. Memorizing books can’t change the way things are.”

  “So you think we should put these back on the shelf and go down to the common room?”

  “No, I think we should learn to fight.”

  Derrick stared at Henry in shock, and then laughed hollowly. “And how do you plan to do that?”

  “The Lance,” Henry said. He’d been thinking about it ever since that evening in the kitchen, but he hadn’t dared to admit it. Too late now. The words were out, and Derrick was waiting for an explanation. “One of the kitchen boys mentioned this pub, down in the village. They take bets on boxing. We could learn to fight there.”

  Derrick snorted. “You’ll get yourself killed. Or expelled. Probably in that order.”

  “Well, there has to be some way. If the Partisan students can prepare for war, so can we.”

  “What are you talking about, Grim?”

  And so Henry explained about what he had seen in the Nordlands, and how no one had believed him without proof. When Henry finished, Derrick stared thoughtfully at the copy of Pugnare, tracing the letters with his fingers.

  “That’s what we need,” Derrick said. “A combat training room.”

  “I think we’re standing in one,” Henry noted.

  “Yes, but this doesn’t count,” Derrick said. “It’s just an ordinary classroom. You said it yourself, we have nothing but some old books.”

  “And four desks, a bookcase, and three trunks,” Henry pointed out, as though it made a difference.

  “Hmmm.” Derrick sized up the steamer trunks, and then got to his knees, prying open the latch on the largest one. The lid creaked open and Derrick held the guttering candle aloft, peering inside. “Grim. Come look.”

  Henry put down the stack of books and went to see what Derrick had found.

  The trunk was filled with shields. Some were ancient, cast from heavy bronze, with fierce spikes. Others looked like hammered silver. Most were dented, and many were cracked. Together there must have been more than a dozen.

  Wordlessly Henry and Derrick each threw open one of the two remaining trunks. Henry’s was filled with quivers of practice arrows and ancient longbows. There was even a target, worn nearly to dust from hundreds of punctures. Derrick’s trunk contained an assortment of things: two crossbows, a scythe, the metal tip of what might have been a gisarme, a broadsword, a sabre covered in what the boys dearly hoped was rust, and a case of daggers, their points dulled with age.

  Henry and Derrick exchanged an uneasy glance. Now they knew why this classroom had been sealed off and forgotten. Back when Knightley Academy had closed down its archery ranges and tilting courses, the weapons hadn’t been destroyed. They had simply been left to gather dust—until needed.

  Derrick reached into the trunk and took out the broadsword, examining a dull black stone at the hilt. Henry removed a circular shield and the rusty sabre, guessing at the correct grip, since they
weren’t due to learn the weapon until second year.

  “Well, have a go,” Henry urged, and Derrick stared at him in shock. “Go on. Haven’t you always wondered?”

  “Not really, no,” Derrick said nervously, glancing back and forth between the broadsword in his hand and Henry’s shield. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come up here.”

  “It’s too late now.” They both knew that Henry wasn’t talking about their explorations of the school.

  “You could get hurt,” Derrick said.

  Henry shrugged. “I’ve seen you fence. We’re about the same level, and that sword looks three times as heavy as our practice blades.”

  Derrick hefted the weapon. “Four times,” he admitted.

  “If you land a hit, we’ll stop,” Henry promised.

  Derrick gave Henry a dubious look and began to settle into his on guard position, before realizing that the broadsword was too heavy to be handled like a foil. With a frown he choked up on the grip using both hands, as though it were a cricket bat.

  Henry gulped and positioned his shield, giving a couple practice slices with the sabre.

  “I can’t,” Derrick said, putting down his sword.

  “How can we lead the others if we can’t do it ourselves?”

  “Lead the others?” Derrick blanched.

  “You know, run a combat club—group—whatever you want to call it.”

  Derrick laughed hollowly, setting his weapon back in the trunk. “I can’t be in charge of something like that. Be serious, Grim. My father’s the Lord Minister of Foreign Relations. Can you even imagine the scandal?”

  “So what was all of this?” Henry asked angrily, his shield clattering to the floor. “Just a game? We’re too far in to stand around and laugh.”

  “Maybe you are, but I can’t tarnish my record with something like this. Imagine if word got out—a future lord minister running an illicit combat training ring.”

  “But—,” Henry said, his brain spinning to make sense of what had just happened. He’d thought that Derrick was different from the other boys, that Derrick was adventurous and daring and unusually perceptive. But when it came down to it, nothing bad or out of the ordinary had ever happened to Derrick Marchbanks.