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.
“He ain’t. He’s been taken.”
“Be careful, talkin’ like that, or the doctor’ll getcha.”
“’S the truth,” one of the younger boys protested, wiping his nose with the back of his hand before going back to the dough he was kneading. “He went out, and then he never come back. Same as the rest.”
At this, Henry’s stomach lurched, and not from the delicious aroma of raw beetroot.
This was the reason he and Adam and Frankie had been hired so quickly. The reason there were empty beds and the other servants seemed spooked to go outside after dark, even just to the coal stores or the pump.
“Same as the rest,” Henry whispered to Adam.
“I bloody loathe beetroot,” Adam muttered in response.
“One of the boys is missing,” Henry whispered, pulling Frankie aside. He’d volunteered to run to the staff kitchen for some onions.
“Cort, wasn’t it?” Frankie whispered with a superior smirk. “I found out hours ago. One of the girls is sweet on him, and she’s been sobbing into the butter churn all morning.”
“We have to find out what’s happened to him,” Henry said. “Everyone keeps saying that he’s disappeared ‘same as the rest,’ as though this has happened before.”
Frankie sighed. “I’ll ask some questions,” she promised.
“Thank you,” Henry said.
“Now take your onions and get out of here. Common kitchens and staff kitchens don’t mix,” Frankie joked.
“You say that”—Henry put his hand to his heart as though wounded—“but when I disappear, it’ll be you sobbing into the butter churn.”
Supper that evening was a solemn affair. Cort still hadn’t returned, although one of the boys had optimistically set the table for fourteen, which left an empty place, where everyone tried very hard not to look.
As Henry had been sweeping one of the hallways that afternoon, he’d overheard two of the students talking. They had been laughing and joking the same as the boys at Knightley, but the words had been different, and worryingly so. One of the boys hadn’t written his essay for their history course, which was due the next day.
“Ye should buy a paper off Carrow down at the Dragon’s Inn. Graduated last year. Keeps a collection o’ the things.”
“Wouldn’t Erasmus know the difference?”
“He might, but d’ye think he’d say anythin’?”
“S’pose not. But I’m not goin’ down to Romborough meself, not after dark.”
“What’s the matter, think the doctor’s gonna getcha?”
“Shut yer mouth, Soren.”
The students had drifted away after that, ribbing each other and joking, without so much as a backward glance at the boy their age who had been sweeping the corridor.
As Henry slowly worked his way down the corridor with his broom and dustpan, he’d puzzled over that conversation. The boys back in the kitchen had said the same thing. “The doctor’s gonna getcha.” At first he’d thought it was a servant’s superstition, but then he’d caught sight of the white stripes on the boy called Soren’s sleeve, and the badges gleaming on both boys’ coats.
The white stripes, Henry knew, marked the senior-ranked students—those boys who had earned distinction at sport or academics, and were granted certain privileges because of it. They were the boys whose boots Henry shined, the boys who left such a mess in their private study room in the library, and who spent Friday nights eating in the staff dining room with the professors.
And though the Nordlands pretended not to keep a class system, even after four da
ys, Henry could tell you that they did. Men whom Yurick Mors had put in power gave power and privileges to others for dubious distinctions, and denied it to others for reasons just as murky.
Henry was still puzzling over this at supper, as they bent their heads and Cook recited a prayer over the meal. After the prayer everyone bit hungrily into hunks of coarse bread, their eyes avoiding the empty place at the table the same way passersby would avert their gaze from a drunkard on the city streets.
They talked of the weather (overcast and gloomy as always) and of the students (haughty but manageable) until finally the conversation turned sinister.
“Happens without warnin’.” Cook growled, his mustache dripping with purple soup. “One day yer there, and the next, no one’s seen ’ide nor ’air of ye.”
“They always go out to Romborough first,” the youngest boy, who was called Isander, said. “An’ then they never come back. That’s what happened to Becky and Parl.”
Everyone at the table stiffened at the mention of those names.
“Becky came back,” a burly lad called Brander grunted.
“Missing a finger an’ with her toes all black!” Isander shrilled.
At the mention of black toes, Adam shuddered and looked down at the purple soup as though just remembering that he disliked it.
“Did she say what happened?” Henry asked.
Brander narrowed his eyes at Henry.
“Aye, she said,” he grunted. “Said the doctor came for ’er, and it was him that did it, writin’ down note of her ev’ry scream.”
At this, everyone shifted uneasily.
“The doctor?” Henry asked with a calculated frown, hoping for an explanation.
“Aye, you know the legend. He come for those unfortunates out after curfew, and when he’s done, they scream instead of sleep, and can’t bear the dark, and some are missin’ fingers or toes, an’ some are blackened or blistered, an’ no one knows why, but it’s the doctor that done it,” Brander said, and then he raised his bowl of soup to his mouth and slurped it like coffee.
“So if she came back, where is she?” Henry asked.
“Quit after a couple days,” Brander said. “No one had the heart to give ’er the boot, though she worked none and sat by the fire all night so close she nearly burnt the tip o’ her nose.”
Even though Henry was bursting with questions, he forced himself to keep quiet. After all, tension was running high at the moment, and he didn’t want to draw any unnecessary attention. That was all he needed, to be suspected of being an outsider. But there was something oddly familiar about what Brander had said …
And then it came to him, and he nearly dropped his spoon into his soup in surprise. Back in the kitchens at Knightley, Liza had talked about medical experiments in the Nordlands. What was it she’d said? Henry frowned, remembering: People keep disappearin’, an’ when they come back, they ain’t right.
Well, that settled the question of what had caused everyone to be so spooked. Henry had to admit, he was a bit unsettled himself. No wonder the servants at Knightley had been too afraid to go on the envoy.
As Henry and Adam collected the boots that night from outside the doors of the senior-ranked students, Henry mentioned what Liza had said about medical experiments in the Nordlands.
“So there’s a creepy bloke doing creepy things,” Adam said. “If you ask me, we should stay well away from it.”
“I know,” Henry said, grimacing over an absolutely filthy pair of boots that he was forced to toss into the basket by their laces.
“Good,” Adam said. “Because I don’t want to wind up like that bloke from our expulsion hearing.”
Henry stopped short. “What?”
“You know,” Adam said with a shrug. “That viscount who came up here after we told him about that combat training room.”
Henry stared at Adam in shock but couldn’t deny that Viscount DuBeous had gone up to the Nordlands in search of combat training rooms, and had come back with rope marks around his wrist, refusing to say what had happened.
The boys heard footsteps behind them and stiffened. Henry turned.
It was Frankie. She pushed back a few strands of hair that had escaped from her kerchief, and wrinkled her nose at the basket of boots. “Who’s been mucking around in the stables?” she asked.
Henry glanced at the basket and sighed. “Everyone, from the looks of it. You’d think they’d be afraid to go outside, what with the doctor on the loose.”
“So you’ve heard the stories too?” Frankie asked, joining their procession down the hall. They quickly compared notes.
“Is it possible,” Frankie asked thoughtfully, as they reached the end of the hall, “that what you saw last term was a torture chamber?”
“I think I can tell the difference,” Henry snapped, and then he frowned, considering. No, that was impossible. The room he’d seen had been filled with weapons, but also charts, ranking the students in armed and unarmed combat. Besides which, torture wasn’t a violation of the Longsword Treaty, strictly speaking. But combat training was. Why disguise a room as the far more dangerous choice?
Henry explained as much.
“I was only supposing,” Frankie muttered.
“And torture isn’t the same as medical experiments,” Henry said, nettled. “Medical experiments are investigative.”
“Maybe someone wants to investigate how much it hurts to chop off people’s fingers?” Adam asked.
Henry snorted. And then Adam gave a tremendous yawn, nearly dropping the basket of boots. Guiltily Henry remembered his promise to let Adam get some much needed rest.
“I can do the boots myself, if you want to get to bed early,” Henry offered.
Adam brightened and then, as though it pained him to do so, shook his head at the offer. “You’ve been cleaning up after me all week.”
“I didn’t think you’d noticed,” Henry admitted, embarrassed.
“Well, I didn’t want to boast about it,” Adam said. “Might give you a complex.”
“A complex?”
“That I’m so much better suited to the loafish lifestyle of the aristocracy,” Adam said.
Henry swung the basket of boots at him, and Adam ducked out of the way, grinning.
“Boys,” Frankie said, rolling her eyes. “If you’re quite finished?”
“Sorry,” they chorused.
In the end Adam did go up to bed, and Frankie kept Henry company in the scullery as he scrubbed and polished. She craned her neck at Henry’s task. “How can you stand it?”
They sat side by side on the stone steps, and Henry was scrubbing patiently at a boot that strongly wished to remain soiled. They were alone, aside from the beetles that scuttled along the floorboards. The castle was dark and quiet, and there was a sort of peacefulness to the rhythm of the task that Henry found oddly comforting.
“Because I’ve done it before, I suppose,” he said.
“I just can’t picture it,” Frankie pressed on. “I’ve spent five days in the company of the other servants, and all I keep thinking is, ‘How did Henry grow up doing this?’”
He shrugged. “I didn’t, really. It was only a year at the Midsummer School after I left the orphanage. And it wasn’t long before Professor Stratford started giving me lessons.”
“A year is a long time,” Frankie argued. “Think where we might be a year from now.”
Henry grimaced.
Frankie winced slightly and picked at a stain on her skirt. “I didn’t mean it,” she said. “Back at Knightley, about your dying in a war.”
“I know. But at least you were brave enough to say the words. No one else seems to be able to.”
Frankie nodded. She stared at Henry, who was intent on scrubbing the muck off those old boots, as though the task was in no way beneath his dignity. His hair was falling into his face again, but then he looked up, shook back his hair, and grinned, showing that all was forgiven.
“I don’t know how we’re going to
stand a month here,” Frankie said.
“It could be less. You did leave your bag on the train. Someone might have found it. Maybe the board of trustees is arranging a rescue mission at this very moment.”
“Or an engagement party, more like,” Frankie said mischievously. “I wonder, which of you boys should I claim as my corrupter?” She’d started off joking, but somehow the cold seeping from the basement walls and the way they had unconsciously sat so close to each other on the stairs made the joke into something quite serious.
“Are you finished yet?” Frankie asked with a pout.
“Almost.”
“I think Garen sounds perfectly hilarious when he speaks,” Frankie insisted a bit too loudly, scooting over on the step so that her skirts weren’t quite so near to Henry.
Henry considered this as he buffed a pair of boots. “You’re right, actually. It’s like his grammar is studied, but backward.”
“Backward?”
“He’s deliberate about his mistakes, not their corrections.”
“I just meant that he sometimes bleats when he’s nervous,” Frankie said.
Henry grinned. “That, too.”
“Well, you can do a Nordlandic accent perfectly. I’ve heard you speaking to the other serving boys,” Frankie said.
“I pick up languages quickly.” Henry shrugged. “Accents, too. Adam’s been ribbing me for spending too much time around Derrick.”
Frankie snorted. “Oh, frightfully sorry,” she said, her blue eyes mocking. “Please forgive that hideously improper lapse in behavior.”
Henry shook his head. “He doesn’t sound as bad as that.”
“Who said anything about Derrick? I was doing an impression of you,” she said innocently. “And how do you find the weather, Mr. Grim, this time of year?”
Henry threw a rag at her.
She spluttered indignantly before realizing it was one of the spares.
Henry finished with the boots soon after. His back ached as he stretched, and he wanted to do nothing so much as crawl into bed, but Frankie was wide awake, her blue eyes shining in anticipation of that night’s adventure.
The Secret Prince Page 23
