The Secret Prince (12 page)

F
or the remainder of the weekend, a dismal atmosphere
settled over the dormitory. The first years had lost appallingly at cricket, and, to make matters worse, Jasper Hallworth had taken bets on the match.

Henry tried to listen sympathetically to Rohan’s outraged play-by-plays, as he felt guilty for missing it, but by Sunday afternoon his sympathy had worn thin. As soon as lunch ended, Henry ducked off to a quiet corner of the castle, built himself a fortress out of his textbooks, and settled in for an afternoon of reading.

Twenty arduous pages of Latin later, Henry abandoned the dry recounting of the Trojan War and stared across the way at the antique suits of armor, idly
wondering if knights really had worn them in battle.

Well, they certainly weren’t an art installation, he thought, noticing one suit of armor that would have easily encompassed even Professor Lingua’s enormous girth. But if there were so many suits of armor, what had happened to the weapons? Henry frowned, remembering his visits last summer to the Royal Museum. He didn’t recall any collections of antique halberds and crossbows, although he
had
seen a prototype of an ancient firearm—nonworking, of course—beneath a thick panel of glass. He’d been fascinated, as firearms were known to be the most evil weapon ever invented, although he suspected Frankie would have argued a fair point for corsets or irregular verb conjugations.

Verbs. Henry sighed, staring down at the dense print of his Latin textbook. He returned to his homework until the sun was slanting through the latticed windows and his legs had gone stiff from sitting.

To everyone’s horror they had drills first thing Monday morning. Admiral Blackwood spent a painful hour rotating the students alphabetically as drill leaders, all the while scribbling notes on a clipboard.

When it was Henry’s turn, he couldn’t quite bring
himself to shout orders at his classmates. “Er, halt,” Henry mumbled, embarrassed.

Conrad, who was leading the drill along with Henry, snorted. “You have to be more forceful, Grim,” he said. “First years! Halt!”

Everyone came to a neat stop.

“Good, Flyte!” called Admiral Blackwood, scribbling a note. “Now swap out, lads. Next three!”

Conrad, Henry, and Pevensey jogged back into formation.

Finally the last of their classmates had rotated through commanding the drill, and Admiral Blackwood called them all back to the thatch-castle thing.

“Right, lads. Let’s see how you do marching with flags.”

Two school servants struggled into the quadrangle, carrying a dozen heavy wooden poles between them. Each pole ended in a sharp point, like an old-fashioned jousting lance, and featured a dingy flag made from what looked suspiciously like a mended tablecloth.

Derrick snickered and muttered something to Luther about knights waving table linens.

“These are practice flags,” Admiral Blackwood said, hefting a pole from the top of the pile and unhooking
the tablecloth. “A bit sturdier than the real thing, I daresay. Good for building muscles. You’ll be learning the basics first, but I suppose an advanced demonstration couldn’t hurt.” Admiral Blackwood began to whirl the practice flag with surprising agility for a man of nearly sixty. Henry and the other first years watched in awe as the drills master went through a complicated series of twists and turns that were anything but laughable.

Henry had been half-expecting a feeble display of flag waving, but Admiral Blackwood’s demonstration was far tougher and more intimidating than he’d imagined. It was almost … warlike. As soon as he thought it, Henry realized why Admiral Blackwood had
really
come to Knightley Academy. On the first night of term, Headmaster Winter had warned them about changes to the curriculum. Henry had thought Headmaster Winter had simply meant that the professors would be teaching them about war, but this was far more serious than the fencing master’s offhand lesson about the strategy behind an attack. Because Admiral Blackwood wasn’t preparing them to march in a parade any more than Professor Lingua was preparing them for a fulfilling career composing Latin verse. No, Admiral Blackwood was
instructing them in combat—combat disguised as flag twirling.

Henry watched Admiral Blackwood whirl the pole through an elaborate defensive pattern and knew that he was right. He glanced over at Derrick, who was no longer snickering or making snide comments about flag twirling knights. Derrick’s expression was quite sober indeed.

By Monday afternoon a full-blown cold front settled over the school, and the eaves dripped with icicles.

“It’s nearly February,” Adam complained at supper.

“I thought you liked the snow,” said Rohan.

“This isn’t snow,” Adam pointed out. “It’s ice and slush.”

He was right. It
was
ice and slush, and rather a lot of it. The threat of snow hung over the castle’s thatched roof and clung to the turrets of the surrounding cottages, but each morning brought nothing more than frigid wetness.

No one ventured outdoors if he could help it, and drills were canceled for the rest of the week, much to the chagrin of Admiral Blackwood. The fencing master grudgingly allowed students use of the armory for open
bouts during the afternoons—but of course the second and third years quickly laid claim.

And so Henry and his friends spent a few restless afternoons playing cards and checkers in the cramped common room before Derrick suggested they explore the castle. Conrad, who was good at art, copied maps of the main building from a book he’d found in the library.

“We’ve got two maps,” Derrick said, taking charge as usual. “I’m claiming the upper floors and towers. Who’s coming with me?”

“I will,” Henry said, and was surprised when Rohan decided to join them.

They spent the better part of an hour following the map through the upper classrooms. More than once their conversation lapsed into uncomfortable stretches of silence. Henry wondered how Conrad, Edmund, and Adam were fairing.

And then Rohan opened the door to an odd tower classroom, and they stepped into what appeared to be an immense wardrobe. There was an entire shelf of nothing but top hats, ranging in material from the most expensive silk to the cheapest felt. Below that was an assortment of spectacles: half-moons and pince-nez and wire-framed with the lenses tinted bottle green. A rack
of opera capes sat next to a selection of worn traveling cloaks, and one table was covered with pots of what looked suspiciously like ladies’ cosmetics.

“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

C
onrad, 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?”