The Secret Prince Part 38

"What don't ye understand, lad?" Lord Mortensen asked as they pa.s.sed by the gallows. He shivered and made the sign of the cross.

"You said it was too dangerous," Henry said. "And yet you came."

"Too dangerous for ye, not for an old man such as myself."

Henry frowned. "But, sir-"

"Don't argue with me, lad. That was a foolish thing ye did. Foolish, yet n.o.ble."

"I had to see for myself," Henry said. "I-Oh, G.o.d, everything is ruined. I never should have come here."

"Listen to me, Henry," Lord Mortensen said fiercely, putting a hand on the boy's shoulder. They were outside the gate to the graveyard, and the moonlight glittered on the roof of the old church. "Coming here is the best thing ye could have done."

"How can you say that?" Henry asked, angrily brushing the hand from his shoulder.

"Come back to the meeting room, lad, and I shall explain everything."

Adam knew.

That was Henry's first thought when he saw the look on his friend's face. Whatever it was that Lord Mortensen wasn't saying, he could see the secret threatening to burst from Adam at any moment. Everyone was a.s.sembled around the candlelit table, and they went silent as Henry and Lord Mortensen entered. Adam bit his lip and didn't meet Henry's gaze.

Was it that bad?

"Sit, lad," Lord Mortensen urged.

"No," Henry said, folding his arms across his chest.

"Very well." Lord Mortensen gave Henry a grave look, and one by one the men around the table rose, even Mauritz, who shot Henry a reproachful glare.

"Why is everyone standing?" Henry asked.

"Because you stand," Lord Mortensen said.

Henry snorted. That didn't make any sense. Experimentally he took a seat.

"Thank ye, lad. The walk has tired me," Lord Mortensen said, lowering himself into a chair with a grimace.

"Will someone please tell me what's going on?" Henry demanded.

Lord Mortensen reached into his pocket and removed a daguerreotype, pa.s.sing it to Henry. It was the picture from the restricted library, the one with Lord Mortensen as a boy, and with the youth who looked so like Henry.

"This is my father," Henry said.

Lord Mortensen nodded.

"You knew him?" Henry asked.

Again Lord Mortensen nodded.

"So this was back when he was a student at Knightley," Henry said.

Lord Mortensen smiled sadly and shook his head. "Turn it over, lad."

Engraved on the back of the picture was a list of the champions.

"I don't know his name," Henry said.

"Will," Lord Mortensen said. "Wilhelm."

"But-," Henry began, and then he saw it, like some cruel joke. ORATORY CHAMPION: WILHELM GRIMAULDI. PARTISAN SCHOOL. "What?" Henry said. "No. I can't be Nordlandic."

"I dunno, mate. You are rather tall," Adam said with a shrug.

"Thanks," Henry said, rolling his eyes. He appreciated Adam's attempt to lighten the mood, as he suspected there would be nothing more to laugh at for a long while.

"So my father went to Partisan," Henry said, and then he looked up. "He's dead, isn't he? He and my mum?"

"Aye, lad. I'm sorry," Lord Mortensen said.

"How-," Henry began. "How long have you known who I was?"

"I suspected," Lord Mortensen continued. "They had a son called Henry. He'd be your age, and the resemblance is striking. You're left handed, for one, and that speech you made was so like your father. And the way Adam called you *Grim.' Your dad went by the same."

"It isn't a nickname," Henry said. "That's my name. It's Henry Grim."

"Grimauldi," Lord Mortensen corrected gently.

"No," Henry said. "I have a birth certificate. *Baby boy found on church steps' or something."

"Have ye seen this certificate, lad?"

"Well, no," Henry admitted with a frown. "But the orphanage said they had a copy." And then a thought occurred to Henry. "If I'm Nordlandic, why was I brought to an orphanage in South Britain?"

"Ah," Lord Mortensen said, lacing his fingers. "Good, lad."

Henry glanced at Adam, who squirmed in his chair, still unable to meet Henry's eye.

"Your father was a speech writer," Lord Mortensen continued. "A scholar. He preferred the company of his books to the applause of an audience. Does this sound familiar, lad? We were all fighting against the rise of the Draconian party, but speeches are dangerous things, and words have a way of being traced back to their maker. Before your parents died, they told me they were taking ye where your life might not be touched by the revolution. They were killed just days after they returned without ye. It was a profound loss."

"Thank you," Henry murmured, overwhelmed. He had never known his parents, and yet the story Lord Mortensen told made Henry feel as though he were staring at their freshly packed graves. And then Henry realized why his parents had hidden him away-to save him. After all, Midsummer was little more than an hour's train ride from the Nordlandic border. And if his father had attended the Partisan School ... If his family had died during the revolution ...

"My father was a lord," Henry said, looking to Lord Mortensen for confirmation.

"No, lad," Lord Mortensen corrected. "Your father was an earl."

Back at Knightley, Professor Turveydrop had tested them on the different levels of the peerage in a protocol exam. An earl, Henry knew, ranked below a duke but above a viscount.

"But you said that everyone was killed," Henry accused. "The royal family and the dukes and earls and barons and their heirs."

"Aye, and the lesser lords could renounce themselves and live in shame," Lord Mortensen said sadly. "So ye see, lad, we are fortunate ye have come."

At this Mauritz sighed loudly and rolled his eyes once again, and Henry realized with sudden, horrible clarity exactly what was going on.

"No," Henry said, pushing back his chair.

One by one the men around the table did the same.

"Stop that," Henry cried. "I can't-I'm the-No. This is absurd. I spent my whole life scrubbing floors and dreaming of becoming a knight, and I finally got the chance to attend Knightley. Not Partisan. Knightley."

Henry sunk back into the chair, burying his face in his hands. He'd worked so hard to learn all he could so that he might have the chance to rise above his miserable lot in life. He'd never even dreamed he would be admitted to Knightley, much less that he would excel at his studies and find friends among his aristocratic cla.s.smates.

Even now, the thought of Derrick and Conrad helping him to smuggle a picnic out of the dining hall, of nights playing chess in the common room, of midnight forays to the kitchens with Adam and Rohan, of Frankie climbing through his window-even of Valmont and the battle society. He was painfully aware of how wonderful all of it had been, and how much he didn't want it to end.

"What happens now?" Henry asked dully.

"We go forward in our plans to do away with Yurick Mors and his men. We restore the monarchy," Lord Mortensen said.

"You mean me."

"Yes, lad. Mauritz is the younger son of a minor viscount. You supersede him in his claim as the heir presumptive to the Nordlandic throne."

Henry glanced accusingly at Adam, who shrugged and bit his lip.

"If we are successful in removing Chancellor Mors and his Draconians from power," Lord Mortensen continued, "ye would ascend the throne. And if we are too late, or we dinnae succeed and the chancellor invades South Britain, there would come a great and terrible war, which the chancellor must not win. But do ye think old King Victor would want the responsibility of rebuilding this country? And I dinnae think the Nord-landic people would let him rule in protectorate, when they could have their independence restored under their own monarch."

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 b.l.o.o.d.y 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 pa.s.sengers 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-cla.s.s pa.s.sage 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.