The Secret Prince

by Violet Haberdasher

“Did they now?” Compatriot Erasmus’s eyes gleamed at this news as Henry and Adam nervously took seats at the table. “And, Alfrig, can ye fetch a bottle of acid from the science laboratories?”

  The bespectacled boy nodded and hurried from the room.

  “Acid, sir?” Henry asked weakly.

  “Yes, lad. I wonder if ye have ever seen the effect of acid poured onto an open wound. It is not pleasant, but sometimes it is necessary.”

  Henry gulped.

  “Now,” Compatriot Erasmus continued, “who sent you?”

  “Sorry?” Henry frowned.

  “Don’t play games with me, lad. Are ye one of the chancellor’s men? Do ye report to Yascherov’s secret police? ANSWER ME!”

  Henry shot Adam a look of horror. They were in far over their heads.

  And then Adam put a hand over his face and began to pray. “Shiyr lamm’aloth esa eynay el-hehariym—”

  Henry elbowed him. Adam gulped and slid down in his chair until his eyes were level with the table. He looked ready to faint.

  “Please, sir, no one sent us,” Henry said in his true accent. “We’re students at Knightley. We came with the envoy last weekend as servants. We’d heard rumors that the boys at Partisan were being instructed in combat and preparing for war, and we wanted to see if it was true. But then we missed the train back and wound up stuck.”

  “Ye ‘missed the train’?” Compatriot Erasmus asked with a deadly smile.

  Adam explained about Frankie being a stowaway, and how they’d stayed because of her. “And then her blasted grandmother left us here to rot,” he said indignantly. “I knew I didn’t like that woman.”

  At that moment the boy called Alfrig returned with the bottle of acid. Henry noticed a gold ring glinting on his hand as he placed the bottle of acid on the table with a curt bow.

  “I believe that is no longer necessary, but I thank ye for gettin’ it,” Compatriot Erasmus said.

  “Aye, my—Aye, Compatriot Erasmus,” said Alfrig.

  “Ye boys have seen nothing here,” Compatriot Erasmus continued, turning to Henry and Adam. “It was an empty room ye found. Ye may leave, provided ye hold your tongues, or else they may be taken from ye as recompense.”

  “Yes, sir,” Henry said. “We understand. Come on, Adam.”

  Adam pushed back his chair, and Henry could see that he was still praying, his lips moving silently.

  “Just a minute there,” a boy said. He was older, perhaps eighteen, and terribly good-looking. He spoke as though he expected to be obeyed, and sure enough, every head in the room turned in his direction. “I’m not satisfied that they are who they say. What kind of Knightley students would pretend to be servants? I think they were sent to spy on us.”

  “Who would send us?” Henry retorted. “We’re first years and commoners.”

  “Commoners?” Compatriot Erasmus asked with a frown.

  Henry supposed that, with the difficulty of getting anything through the border, news of Knightley’s accepting common students had not made it to the Nordlands.

  “There are three of us this year at Knightley,” Henry said, quickly explaining the circumstances of how he had come to sit the Knightley Exam, and how Adam and Rohan had also been admitted.

  “Yer Nordlandic accent was very convincing, lad,” Compatriot Erasmus said, his expression inscrutable. “As though you were raised in … Manorly, perhaps?”

  “Little Hawkshire, more like,” Alfrig grumbled under his breath.

  “Right, well, we should be going,” Adam said nervously. “We’ll leave you blokes to your secret society—er, sorry, empty room where nothing at all is happening.”

  “What kind of secret society do you imagine this to be?” Compatriot Erasmus asked, leaning across the table with a wolfish grin.

  Adam gulped. Henry could tell that he was about to start praying in Hebrew again.

  “I want them gone!” the older boy demanded. “Erasmus, see to it!”

  “Wait!” Henry said. “Can’t we join?”

  Everyone looked up.

  “Join?” Adam asked, as though that were the very last thing he wanted to do.

  But Henry pressed on, without quite knowing what he was going to say. The words spilled out, a tumble of everything he’d seen and thought over the past six days at Partisan Keep.

  “Adam and I are stuck here for another three weeks. We could help with—well, whatever it is you’re doing. You have the school banner on the wall there, with the old motto, so I take you to be honorable men, and perhaps we’re after the same thing. Adam and I want to make certain that we are not forced to lead schoolboys off to battle if there’s another way. South Britain is afraid of an invasion, of Chancellor Mors seeking to rule not just the Nordlands but the whole of the Brittonian Isles. I saw those pictures in the restricted section of the library, and it was a wall of ghosts. I don’t want to be haunted by the ghosts of my classmates, and I don’t want to be haunted by the possibility that I didn’t do everything I could to find a way for there to be peace.”

  Henry sat back down in his chair, though he couldn’t recall how he’d come to be standing. He was dizzy with the momentum of what he’d just said, and the realization that he’d meant it. His heart pounded like a drum, and the candles flickered in their equal-armed cross, casting eerie shadows across the faces of everyone at the table.

  Finally Compatriot Erasmus spoke. “Ye may return here tomorrow night, if ye speak the truth.”

  Henry shakily climbed to his feet, realizing they’d been dismissed. “Yes, my lord,” he said without thinking.

  Compatriot Erasmus nodded slightly. “Ah, ye know me. But do ye know yerself?”

  25

  AN UNLIKELY ALLIANCE

  Professor Stratford burst into the sitting room where Grandmother Winter sat calmly drinking a cup of tea and reading that morning’s Royal Standard. She looked up witheringly and took another sip of her tea.

  “I am not entertaining visitors at the moment, Mr. Stratford,” she said, returning to her newspaper.

  “How could you?” Professor Stratford demanded.

  He’d woken in the middle of the night to hear voices in the parlor, and he’d come down the stairs to find the lights blazing and Frankie sitting miserably in a chair by the fire, looking for all the world like a forlorn little kitchen maid.

  But his joy at their safe return was short-lived. Now he was furious, and he wanted answers. He glared at the imposing gray-haired woman, not caring that he was overstepping his place or that she’d had him fired once before.

  “If you insist upon imposing yourself, take a chair, Mr. Stratford,” Grandmother Winter said frostily. “Do not presume that I will be offering you tea, as I do not wish to prolong your presence in my sitting room.”

  “Your son’s sitting room,” Professor Stratford said, taking a seat on the edge of the sofa. “This isn’t your house, and it wasn’t your place to leave those boys behind!”

  “Ah,” Grandmother Winter said. “I might have imagined you would misunderstand the delicacy of the situation, Mr. Stratford. Francesca’s bag had been found—only Francesca’s. I did not anticipate needing to forge identity papers for three children, and further more, the impropriety of those three running off together is shocking.’”

  “I—,” Professor Stratford spluttered. “The circumstances are irrelevant. You left those boys there in who knows what kind of danger. They’re barely fifteen!”

  “They are not my responsibility. Nor are they yours.” Grandmother Winter arched an eyebrow. “I don’t seem to recall your having any adopted children, Mr. Stratford.”

  Professor Stratford glared. He was certain Grandmother Winter knew perfectly well that it was impossible for him to adopt Henry—he was, after all, unmarried, poor, and not yet thirty.

  “You’re unforgivably heartless,” the professor spat. “How you could leave those boys in the Nordlands, scrubbing floors and half-starved, is beyond my comprehension. I bid you good morning.”
And with that, Professor Stratford stalked from the room. In the corridor he put his head in his hands and tried to regain his composure.

  “Professor Stratford, isn’t it?”

  The professor looked up. Lord Havelock was coming down the stairs with an armload of papers, his master’s gown swirling around his ankles.

  “Yes, it is,” said Professor Stratford.

  “I couldn’t help but overhear,” Lord Havelock said. “I am headed to my office while the students are still at breakfast. If you would care to join me?”

  Professor Stratford nodded.

  “It is not easy,” Lord Havelock continued, “to be responsible for arrogant boys who do as they please and think you blind to their deception and sneaking.”

  Professor Stratford realized belatedly that Lord Havelock was, of course, Fergus Valmont’s guardian, and that he was speaking of his own experience.

  “ ‘Deception’ and ‘sneaking’ are strong words for a bit of boyish rebellion,” Professor Stratford said.

  “You’re a fool, Stratford,” Lord Havelock growled. “Both Henry and Fergus have always been trouble. I’ve tried my hardest put a stop to their schoolboy rivalry, but it seems I’ve inadvertently inspired them to join forces and drag half the school into a dangerous combat training club.”

  Professor Stratford winced. “How long have you known?”

  “Since the beginning. And of course I looked the other way. It seemed inspired. A good way for the students to work out their frustration and learn to function as an army.” Lord Havelock shook his head, disgusted with himself. “I thought, ‘Let the boys teach themselves what little they can, before we are shuffling them into ranks and marching them toward the border with their names pinned into their coats, so that we might identify their bodies.’”

  Professor Stratford thrust his hands into his pockets, trying to disguise the slump of his shoulders. He felt hollow, not just from Lord Havelock’s brazen mention of war, but at the thought that both of them had known all along what the boys were doing and had sat there and done nothing.

  “Your silence makes for unfortunate company, Stratford,” Lord Havelock said.

  “Sorry.” Professor Stratford sighed. And then he explained what was troubling him—the knowledge that he had kept to himself, the thought that he’d been protecting the boys, when truly he had sent them to their doom.

  When Professor Stratford finished, Lord Havelock simply raised an eyebrow and unlocked the door of his office. The room had only the barest of furnishings, though they were of impeccable quality, and the walls were covered with maps. There were maps of ancient empires and of Roman battle encampments, of sea routes to the American states, and of constellations.

  “You’re planning to go after them yourself,” Lord Havelock said, dropping the armload of papers onto his desk. “I can see it in your eyes.”

  “I can’t live with myself any other way,” Professor Stratford said. “Tutoring Francesca, seeing her every day as a reminder—”

  “Enough,” Lord Havelock said with an impatient wave of his hand. He settled himself behind his desk and removed a pipe and a pouch of tobacco from a drawer. “You’ll get yourself killed if you’re not careful about it.”

  “Then, tell me how it can be done.”

  Lord Havelock tamped down the bowl and lit his pipe, filling the air with the spicy, sinister scent of his tobacco. He closed his eyes and blew a ring of smoke.

  “We shall leave for the city tomorrow morning,” Lord Havelock said. “Wear a good suit—if you own one.”

  26

  THE ARISTOCR ATS’ REBELLION

  I can’t believe you told them we wanted to join,” Adam whispered as they got dressed the next morning.

  “What other choice was there?” Henry retorted. “And if joining means answers, I want in.”

  Adam was about to say something in return, but Henry never found out what, as Garen appeared in the doorway to the boys’ bedchamber. Everyone turned.

  “Henry, Adam, can I see ye in the corridor?” Garen ordered.

  “Aye, Compatriot Garen,” they chorused, following him into the hallway.

  “Yer promoted to the staff kitchen,” Garen said, handing them each a striped waistcoat. This wasn’t what Henry had been expecting, but then, with Frankie gone, he supposed that kitchen was in need of staff.

  “Senior-ranked students dine with the staff on Fridays,” Garen reminded them, as though nothing at all had happened the night before. “Ye’ll be expected to serve a formal meal, and if ye have any questions of the protocol, ask them now. Come with me.”

  Henry and Adam hurried after Garen. Henry asked a lot of questions, mostly for Adam’s benefit. When they reached the staff kitchen, Garen appraised them critically, and then jabbed a finger into Adam’s chest.

  “Keep the heathen prayers to yerself,” he warned. “Ye don’t want to find out what happens to those that don’ keep the faith of the Nordlandic Church.”

  Adam gulped. “Aye, Compatriot Garen,” he said.

  The staff kitchen was rather a welcome surprise. They were given a hot breakfast of porridge and coffee, and then set to folding napkins and arranging coffee and cakes on the sideboard in the dining room.

  The rest of the serving staff took Henry and Adam’s presence in stride, although one of the older boys made it plain he’d preferred Frankie, or, as he put it, “the wee tasty lass.” Henry nearly hauled back and hit him, but mastered his temper and returned to ironing napkins with a sigh.

  * * *

  When Henry finished delivering the post to the schoolmasters’ offices later that morning, he made the turn that led him back to the main kitchens without thinking.

  And there, sitting on a stool in front of the fireplace, was Cort—the boy who had been missing for two days. His lips were a sickly shade of bluish-gray, and he shivered heavily despite the wool blanket wrapped around his shoulders.

  “What happened?” Henry asked, gently placing a hand on Cort’s shoulder.

  The boy continued to stare into the fire as though mesmerized.

  Henry frowned, and then bent down until he was eye level with the boy. “Can you look at me?” Henry asked. The boy’s eyes flickered toward Henry, but then they unfocused.

  “What are ye doing?” a voice demanded.

  Henry looked up guiltily. Brander’s arms were folded across his chest. He sneered at Henry’s waistcoat.

  “He’s ill,” Henry said.

  “Aye. The doctor cured his health,” Brander said, his lip curling sarcastically.

  “When did he come back?”

  “Stumbled through the door ’bout two hours ago, while ye were dinin’ on yer hot breakfast. Now get ye back to the staff kitchen. Yer no longer welcome here.”

  Henry made it a point to look in on Cort throughout the day. The boy didn’t move from the fire, though his color gradually returned. The maid who Frankie had claimed was sobbing into the butter churn at Cort’s disappearance resumed sobbing into the butter churn. The serving boys shot one another dark looks, as though Cort’s return had only confirmed their worst fears, and they wondered which of them would be next.

  Henry and Adam were made to serve supper along with two older boys. They stood at attention on either side of the door, refilling glasses of cider and wine and whisking away serving platters. There were twenty schoolmasters and twenty senior-ranked boys, but Henry was aware only of the presence of Dimit Yascherov, whom he had been fortunate enough to avoid during his life at Partisan so far.

  Yascherov was short and plump, with a heavy beard and wickedly pointed eyebrows streaked liberally with gray. His suit was cut in a military style and weighted down by badges and brocade. He wore no scholar’s gown, and his plump fingers were encased with glittering rings. He ate heartily, with a napkin tucked down his front to catch the frequent droplets of food.

  From his post by the door, Henry could see Compatriot Erasmus seated at Yascherov’s side, sipping a glass of cider and wincin
g every time Yascherov followed one of his own jokes with a booming laugh. Now Henry rather understood why Compatriot Erasmus was rumored to have frequent headaches, and what’s more, Henry didn’t blame him.

  Thankfully, dinner passed without incident, and Henry and Adam gathered the soiled linens and carried them down to the laundry.

  “Do you know,” Adam said cheerfully, “this staff kitchen isn’t half-bad.”

  “I’m glad Frankie was assigned here,” Henry said. He’d felt awful that he and Adam had been able to spend their days together, while Frankie’d been by herself in a different kitchen, but if she’d had to be alone, at least her work had been far more manageable than theirs. But Henry couldn’t shake off the suspicion that their transfer to the staff kitchen had something to do with the secret meeting they’d inadvertently stumbled upon the night before.

  The boys ate supper in the staff kitchen that night, and Garen joined them, along with a handful of other staff who otherwise never set foot in the kitchens. Though Henry and Adam were stuck with the dishes, they finished at a reasonable hour and joined a game of cards with the other serving boys.

  But on their way back to the servants’ quarters, Henry poked his head into the common kitchen, where he found Cort still in front of the fire, an untouched plate of supper at his feet. The boy’s face was flushed, and sweat stood out above his upper lip, but he still clutched the woolen blanket around his shoulders.

  “It’s time for bed,” Henry said.

  Cort didn’t react.

  Henry sighed and put a hand on the boy’s shoulder to rouse him from his stupor. The boy flinched. “Cort,” Henry said, his voice firm. “I need you to tell me what happened.”

  “Tell ye when I c-c-can’t stand it n-n-no m-more,” the boy muttered.

  “Good,” Henry said, although the boy was speaking nonsense. “Stand what? The cold?”

  “C-c-cold. So cold,” the boy said, and then he tilted his head and stared at the fire, and didn’t respond when Henry called his name again.

  As Henry and Adam crept past the door to the library that night, they were both caught up in their pwn thoughts. Adam had been grinning all evening, delighted by their new positions. But Henry’s expression was quite sober indeed, for he knew that their easier work had been bought, and that they were about to find out the price of the expected payment.