The Secret Prince (40 page)

Henry gulped. He hadn’t considered it like that. He was stuck no matter what happened. If there was a way to prevent war, or even if they fought, the goal was the same: to do away with Chancellor Mors and the horrors they had all endured from his bloody rise to power. To reinstate the monarchy—him.

His entire life was crumbling away before his eyes: graduating from Knightley, joining the knight detectives, moving into a flat in the city and spending his days solving crimes and his nights in the Royal Archives, bent over his research. Joining his friends in the drawing rooms of high society, perhaps with Frankie at his side …

All of it gone.

If only he’d never gone down the corridor that night during the Inter-School Tournament—if only he’d left that trunk of weapons where Derrick had found it—if only he’d let the envoy go to the Nordlands short staffed—he might have been back at Knightley Academy at that very
moment, spending a carefree night with his friends.

Shamefully Henry realized that there were tears on his cheeks, and he wiped them away. He wasn’t crying only for himself but for his dead parents and for Lord Havelock calmly awaiting the gallows, and for Professor Stratford, who could be anywhere, enduring who knew what sort of torture.

“Ye could stay, lad,” Lord Mortensen said. “In the Nordlands. I could adopt ye, and next year ye could start school at Partisan, if the peace holds till then.”

The offer was unexpected. Stay in the Nordlands?

It would be like starting over—being adopted by a kindly schoolmaster, studying alongside the students whose meals he had served and boots he had shined, and knowing that, back in South Britain, life at Knightley went on without him, until it was as though he had never been there at all.

“I can’t,” Henry said firmly. “I have to go back. Everything’s left unsettled, and I gave my word to Lord Havelock. I’m sorry, Lord Mortensen, but I don’t belong here.”

“An’ I am sorry, lad, about your Professor Stratford,” Lord Mortensen said kindly.

And Henry realized that he had never explained. He
had simply run off, shouting about rescuing the professor.

“Henry,” Adam said suspiciously. “What’s happened?”

Henry sighed and explained.

“Blimey,” Adam said when Henry was finished. “Sir Frederick. That bloke just keeps coming back to haunt us, doesn’t he?”

Henry sighed and shook his head. “I hope Professor Stratford’s all right,” he said. “He might have been sent back, if it was revenge Sir Frederick wanted. The newspaper said one man had been captured, not two.”

“Henry,” Lord Mortensen said gently.

“No!” Henry said. “He’s fine, I know it. Sir Fr—the doctor—sent him back.”

“He may have done, lad,” Lord Mortensen said, “but he might still make the connection and come after ye and Adam next. This school is Yascherov’s. He would think nothing of handing over two boys to another of the chancellor’s men.”

Henry related Lord Havelock’s plan to the table of men, how he had promised that they’d hide away on the train. They could go back home before Sir Frederick realized their whereabouts.

At this, Lord Mortensen nodded gravely. “It is not safe for you here, lad, with an enemy such as the doctor.
I had wanted ye to stay, but it matters not where ye are, only that ye are kept safe.”

And then Adam yawned. “Sorry,” he muttered.

“Is that the hour?” Lord Mortensen said, checking his pocket watch. “Off to bed with ye boys, before the dawn catches up with us.”

Back in the servants’ quarters, Henry and Adam unlaced their boots and changed into their nightshirts. Everyone else was long asleep.

“Good night, my lord prince,” Adam joked as he climbed into bed.

“Don’t,” Henry said tiredly. “That isn’t funny.”

“Actually, mate, it is,” Adam insisted. “I’m rubbish at foreign history, but even
I
know that there have been seven Nordlandic kings called Henry.”

“Oh, that’s just wonderful,” Henry said. “Just what everyone needs. Another King Henry the Eighth.”

“You won’t be.” Adam yawned. “For one thing, he had six wives, and you’re hopeless with girls.”

“Well, you’re rubbish with secrets,” Henry retorted. “I thought you were going to burst out with it at the meeting tonight.”

“I wish I had,” Adam said. “Maybe then you would have laughed.”

“Somehow I don’t think even
you
could have made it funny,” Henry said, pulling up the ragged blanket and closing his eyes.

The hour crept forward, until gray dawn stretched over the city of Romborough. But no one on the streets stopped to wish their neighbors good morning. They kept their heads down in dread of the sight that awaited them in the main square. For there, across from the market stalls, under the stern gaze of the bronze statue of the chancellor, the toes of Lord Havelock’s boots made gentle circles in the sawdust beneath the gallows.

The passengers on the platform crossed themselves and averted their gaze from the pine box that the four patrolmen carried.

Henry and Adam stood on the platform as well, dressed in the rumpled shirts and trousers that had sat at the bottom of their satchels for the past week and a half. Lord Mortensen stood between them, a hand on each boy’s shoulder, his black suit somber and somehow appropriate as they watched the coffin loaded onto the steam engine.

“Ye have your tickets, lads?”

Both boys nodded. Lord Mortensen had bought them third-class passage to Alberforth, a town they would never see, as by the time the train pulled into Alberforth Station, they were to be hidden away in the storage car.

“Henry,” Lord Mortensen said.

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 passengers alighting from the second-class 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 assortment 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 bloody 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 classmates 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….