The Secret Prince Part 39

Henry shrugged the schoolmaster's hand off his shoulder.

"I have to go," Henry said. "I know, keep out of trouble. And thank you, for everything."

"The offer still stands, lad. I would be proud to adopt ye, should ye find life in South Britain no longer to your liking."

But they both knew that it was hopeless. With Sir Frederick at his hospital of horrors tinkering away at who knows what sorts of experiments, with Yascherov and his secret police keeping a watchful eye over the Partisan students, it was not safe for Henry to stay, even if he had wanted to leave his life behind.

"Take these," Lord Mortensen said, handing each boy a parcel. Henry's was small and flat, while Adam's was lumpy.

"What is it?" Adam asked, giving the parcel an experimental sniff.

"Fish jelly sandwiches," Lord Mortensen said. "For the train."

Adam gulped and smiled bravely. "My favorite."

Night fell as the train traveled through the Brittonian Isles, past the rocky cliffs and wobbling Cotswolds and gleaming city lights. But Henry and Adam, crouched behind crates in the storage car, knew only the jolt of the train tracks and the haunting presence of the corpse inside its pine box.

When the train rumbled to its final stop in Avel-on-t'Hems, Henry roused himself from the melancholy company of his thoughts and whispered, "Are we here?"

"I think so," Adam said.

Both boys climbed to their feet and stretched the stiffness from their limbs. They made their way onto the platform. It was late, and there were just a handful of pa.s.sengers alighting from the second-cla.s.s cars. The men went on their way with the brims of their hats pulled low and the collars of their coats turned up against the chill of the night. Beyond the rail station stood a funeral carriage, its driver dressed in mourning, reading the Royal Standard. Across the road, smoke curled from the three crooked chimneys of the Lance, and a few drunken patrons exited the pub, their laughter and revelry dwindling as they caught sight of the funeral carriage across the way.

Henry and Adam trudged silently past the Lance, through the narrow village streets, and up the hill to their school. Knightley Academy stood out against the moonlight in silhouette, a ramshackle collection of chimneys, turrets, and gables. Both boys stopped to take in the sight of the manicured lawns and tangled woods, the soaring chapel and ivy-covered brick of the head-master's house. They were home.

For this, Henry felt, was home. Not some foreign castle encircled by guard towers, but this cozy, bizarre a.s.sortment of buildings, with its gossiping kitchen maids and eccentric professors and clever students.

They crossed the quadrangle, and Henry took a deep breath before knocking on the door of the headmaster's house. Ellen opened the door with a sniff at the grubby-looking boys who stood there.

"Servin' staff around the back," she said, making to slam the door in their faces.

Henry caught it with his boot.

The maid put her hands on her hips and glared.

"We're here to see Professor Stratford," Henry said, and then bit his lip, waiting in dread of her reply.

"You and the whole Ministerium," she said with a sigh. "Come on."

But Henry had already pushed past her and was running up the stairs to the professor's study.

Ellen called angrily after him, but he didn't care. "Wait for me," Adam complained as Henry burst through the door.

"Professor!" Henry cried.

Professor Stratford sat at his desk. His face was bruised and his left arm was in a sling. An untouched cup of tea warmed his elbow as he read the latest issue of the Tattleteller. He dropped the magazine, gaping at Henry and Adam as though they were ghosts, and then he enveloped the boys in an enormous hug.

"I'm so glad," Professor Stratford said. "I thought-I-It's not important. Now sit down and tell me everything."

It felt strange to settle themselves in the chairs opposite Professor Stratford's desk, to be back in a place so familiar and safe. Henry and Adam exchanged a glance, and then, with a heavy heart, Henry began to tell the tale of their time in the Nordlands. Adam, to his credit, tried very hard not to interrupt.

When Henry got to the part about going to see Lord Havelock in the prisoners' asylum, Professor Stratford went gray. "You shouldn't have done that, Henry," he said.

"I thought it was you!" Henry replied. "What else could I do? Go to sleep and know that in the morning you'd be ..." Henry stared miserably at his lap, unable to finish the thought.

"Tell him about what happened next," Adam said. "That's the good bit."

Henry sighed. He didn't know if he'd call finding out that he had no choice over his future the "good bit." "Right," he said. "So, I've found out who my parents are. They were Nordlandic."

At that moment a small thump sounded outside the door to Professor Stratford's study.

"Francesca?" Professor Stratford called, narrowing his eyes.

Frankie appeared in the doorway looking guilty. "I thought I heard-Henry! Adam!"

"Hallo," Henry said, grinning in spite of himself.

Frankie padded over to the club chair by the window, arranging her nightgown so that it covered her bare feet.

"Er, Francesca," Professor Stratford began, "I don't really think you're dressed ..."

"That's all right," Adam said cheerfully. "We all slept up in the attic together."

"Somehow I think that makes it worse," Henry muttered.

"What? It's not like I said how you kissed her," Adam returned.

Henry and Frankie both turned crimson.

"Ah," Professor Stratford said, looking back and forth between Henry and Frankie with the faintest hint of a smile. "So I take it the fighting has ended."

Frankie scowled. "You were just getting to the good part," she said. "About your parents being Nordlandic."

"Thank you, Miss Winter," Henry said dryly, rolling his eyes at her for eavesdropping. And then he told Frankie and the professor what Lord Mortensen had said about his father being an earl, and how they planned to restore the monarchy.

"I just wanted to be a knight," Henry finished. "I didn't ask for this. It's just an unfortunate effect of my being the last one standing."

"You make it sound like you got picked last for cricket, mate," Adam said.

"At least with cricket I can choose to sit out the game and go do something else with my life," Henry snapped. He'd meant to say "something else with my time" but it was too late now.

"Oh, Henry," Professor Stratford said, as though they were back at the Midsummer School and Henry had once again been sent off to bed without any supper.

"Don't," Henry said evenly. "Don't try to make me feel better about it. This is my fault. If only I'd never gone to the Nordlands-If only I'd listened to everyone who said that it wasn't my responsibility, it b.l.o.o.d.y well wouldn't be!"

"Am I missing something?" Frankie asked. "How is this your fault? If anything, I'm the one who stowed away on that dratted train and decided not to stay hidden until its return. I'm the one who snuck off to the castle and then made you miss the envoy."

"You can't blame yourself for my doing reckless things because I wanted to rescue you," Henry said.

At this, Professor Stratford coughed delicately, and Henry realized what he'd just said. Because he did blame himself for Lord Havelock's death, in a way, even though there was no way he could have known what Sir Frederick was after, or that he had been lying in wait just across the Nordlandic border all this time.

But a tiny voice in the back of Henry's mind insisted that Professor Stratford was all right, and that Frankie and Adam had returned safely, and that, if anything, he had done what had been needed. It was unfortunate about Lord Havelock, yes, but every war begins with tragic and untimely death. For though Henry hadn't found evidence of a gathering army in the Nordlands, he knew more than enough to explain what was truly happening. Everyone had lived in blind fear for so long, and he could put a stop to it-if only someone would listen.

Chancellor Mors certainly wished to go to war, and was undoubtedly planning his attack, but the country was not yet mobilized to fight. The students at Partisan still spent their time studying Italian grammar, not combat techniques, and though some of them might have been sneaking off to teach themselves to fight in the old stables, Henry couldn't blame them, as he and his cla.s.smates had done the very same thing.

But what worried Henry deeply was Sir Frederick; those medical experiments had a dark and sinister purpose, one that Henry knew was undoubtedly connected to Chancellor Mors's plans for war. Perhaps those old rumors about new technologies, about Mors finding a way to attack without violating the Longsword Treaty, were more than just hearsay....

"So," Frankie said, breaking the silence, "just to be clear on this point, you do know that you'd be-sorry, it's just too good-King Henry the Eighth?"

"It's not funny," Henry snapped, as Frankie and Adam snickered.

29.

THE PRINCE AND THE PAUPER.

Lord Havelock had not been a beloved professor. He'd been, beyond everything else, unpleasant. He bullied, and he played favorites, and he gave notoriously low marks. But the hastening of death is a melancholy affair, and to treat the abrupt end of a man's life as anything other than tragedy would be unchivalrous indeed.

Because while Lord Havelock had been prejudiced and certainly elitist, he had not been wicked. He had cared for Valmont, raising the boy without complaint and without wanting. He had spoken on Henry, Adam, and Rohan's behalf so that they might not be expelled after they had proven themselves to be apt pupils, and he had looked the other way when the boys had formed their battle society. And, perhaps most telling of his character, he had died selflessly and with honor.

But Lord Havelock's students did not know any of this. They knew only what they saw: the military history master's body returned to Knightley Academy in a pine box etched with the inscription: "Yea though we roar with the fire of a mighty dragon, we are but its scales, shed when no longer needed, and lost without mourning as the great beast marches on."

Valmont had gone white at the news, and then quietly turned and walked back down the first-year corridor, closing himself inside his room. There he stayed for three days, refusing to take his meals in the dining hall or to attend his cla.s.ses. Ollie was sent up with food, and the first years watched the scrawny serving boy knock repeatedly before leaving the tray outside Valmont's door in defeat.

Henry thought about going to speak to Valmont himself, to explain what had happened, and perhaps lessen some of the unfortunate guilt he, Henry, felt over Lord Havelock's death. But he never quite managed to summon the courage, and even if he had, he wouldn't have known what to say.

Henry and Adam had quietly rejoined their cla.s.smates on Headmaster Winter's orders, as though pretending their absence had never happened would make it any less of a curiosity. They spent their nights in the library, making up their missed a.s.signments under the watchful eye of Professor Turveydrop, and trying to repair the distance that had appeared between themselves and Rohan.

For though Rohan was overjoyed to have them back, there was a new coolness to their friends.h.i.+p. Rohan had been left behind twice now, and so many things seemed to divide them-a fear of Sir Frederick, whom Rohan had known only as a kindly professor; the drudgery of serving work; the horrible journey home from the Nordlands in the company of Lord Havelock's corpse.

And then there were the marks on Henry's and Adam's arms. Rohan had balked at the sight of them, claiming such marks were only fit for pirates.

"Really?" Adam had asked brightly. "Girls like pirates, don't they? Do you reckon I should get an earring to go with it?"

"It might clash with your yarmulke," Henry had said, barely able to keep a straight face.

"Oh, right." Adam's face had fallen. "Maybe if I just carried around a sword instead?"

"But then they might mistake you for a knight," Henry had pointed out.

Rohan had shaken his head, left his roommates to their preposterous antics, and gone off to find James.

The morning of Lord Havelock's funeral dawned unseasonably warm. Henry grimaced as he looked out the window at the bright sunlight, wis.h.i.+ng the weather might have conducted itself with appropriate decorum.

But it was too late for it now. The students gathered solemnly in the school chapel, and only a few of them noticed that the pine box had been replaced by a fine coffin made of yew.

Valmont sat in the front pew of the chapel, next to a woman in an enormous black mourning hat and veil, whom Henry took to be his mother. She sobbed theatrically through the service in a way that made Henry suspect she had spent the entire weekend shopping for the perfect funeral bonnet.

The board of trustees came, and a handful of lord ministers. They sat somberly in the back, and Sir Robert joined them.

Headmaster Winter spoke, and then Fergus Valmont, though Henry couldn't have told you what either of them said, just that they both seemed to have experienced a profound loss, which had shaken them to their very souls. He was acutely aware of a number of students realizing for the first time that Lord Havelock had been Valmont's guardian.

Henry stared down at the gold ring he now wore; it had been inside the parcel from Lord Mortensen, along with three letters: one for him, one for Headmaster Winter, and one for Lord Minister Marchbanks. Henry had kept his letter unopened and had given the others to Headmaster Winter, who had revealed nothing of their contents. But then, what could the letters possibly say that he didn't already know?

Henry listened to the dirge of the pipe organ and twisted his ring, reading the inscription etched around its band: Que mon honneur est sans tache.

"Let my honor be without stain."

Well, he thought grimly, it's a bit too late for that.

The service ended somberly, and as the students spilled out of the chapel, Henry felt a hand on his shoulder. He turned.

Valmont's face was drawn, and purplish smudges beneath his eyes betrayed his lack of sleep. Unlike the rest of the students, he didn't wear his formal uniform but rather a neat dark suit. He swallowed thickly and glared at Henry through his spectacles.

Henry had been expecting this. He followed Val-mont over to a stone bench, but neither of them made any move to sit. They stared at each other, and then Valmont broke the silence.

"You did this," he accused.

Henry merely bowed his head.

Encouraged, Valmont continued. "I wish it had been you instead. You or your precious Professor Stratford."

Henry felt anger welling up inside him, and he struggled to master it. "I'm sorry," he said hotly. "I truly am. I never meant it to happen. I didn't know-I thought Sir Frederick was gone. I thought he blamed me. I never thought it was going to be your uncle in that cell. I tried to save him; it was just too dangerous, and I ..." Henry trailed off miserably.

"What are you talking about?" Valmont demanded.

Henry frowned. Valmont didn't know? "How Sir Frederick killed Lord Havelock," Henry said.

Valmont paled, and Henry realized that Valmont had stayed locked inside his room refusing to come out, that he had heard only of his uncle's death, and not of the circ.u.mstances.

The one thing Henry remembered about the funeral was that Lord Havelock's death had been called n.o.ble, but it had not been explained. Henry had told Headmaster Winter in excruciating detail what had happened, and he didn't think he could bear to tell the tale another time. But then he saw the look on Valmont's face and knew that he had to.

"Come on," Henry said, nodding toward the woods.

"I'm not going anywhere with you, you murderer," Valmont spat, and then he looked instantly sorry.

"Suit yourself."

"Fine. Let's go, servant boy."

Henry told him everything that had happened, up until he'd left Lord Havelock's cell. Valmont was quiet for a long while. He unearthed a half-buried stone with the toe of his boot.