Lord Marchbanks’s frown disappeared, and Henry breathed a sigh of relief. The story was plausible, but more than that, it was boring.
“I’ll thank you to speak the King’s English from now on,” Lord Marchbanks said, losing interest.
“Yes, sir,” Henry said as the door to the compartment opened and a Nordlandic patroller stepped inside.
“Inspection,” he barked.
Lord Marchbanks picked up his copy of the Royal Standard and promptly disappeared behind it.
Henry flattened himself against the wall, realizing that at any moment Frankie could be discovered.
But the patroller, in his thick wool uniform and tall, furry hat, merely glanced at the lord minister, his secretary, and Henry before retreating back into the corridor and slamming the door behind him.
“Well, that was unpleasant,” Lord Marchbanks said. “That will be all, er, Harry.”
“Yes, sir,” Henry said with a polite but carefully unschooled bow.
Once the train was moving again, Henry couldn’t help but grin triumphantly, despite his recent humiliation. Frankie had gotten through the border inspection. They weren’t caught. Lord Marchbanks thought he was Harry, a down-on-his-luck boy with too many mouths to feed. And in just a half hour more, the train would arrive at Partisan Keep.
Henry ducked back into the storage car, bringing the half of his lunch he’d saved. “It’s me,” he whispered.
The tarp rustled, and Frankie peered out at him. Her hair was coming down from its neat pins, and she looked pale and frightened. “Are they gone?” she asked. “We’ve started moving again.”
“We’ll be there in about fifteen minutes,” Henry said.
“That was terrifying,” she said. “I thought they were going to find me.”
“Well, they didn’t,” Henry said, sitting down on a crate and passing Frankie the bundle of food.
She eagerly unwrapped it, and then her face fell. “Is this all?” she asked.
Henry winced apologetically. “It’s half of mine. Plus two biscuits left from Lord Marchbanks’s tray.”
At this, Frankie bit her lip. “It’ll do,” she mumbled. “Thank you.”
“Don’t mention it,” Henry said uncomfortably.
Frankie took a bite of the bread.
“So,” Henry finally said. “Are you going to tell me why you ran away?”
“You know why.”
“I think I do,” Henry admitted.
“Then guess.”
“The battle society, and your chaperone, and, well, me.”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Frankie muttered.
“So I’m wrong?”
“No.”
Henry nodded slowly, digesting this piece of information.
“You’re the first boy who has ever talked to me like I was a person,” Frankie continued. “And then when we started fighting that day after chapel and everything got so complicated, I just thought—Never mind.”
“Thought what?” Henry pressed.
“Why are you going out of your way to help me?” Frankie asked suddenly.
“I don’t know,” Henry said, considering. “I suppose because Adam’s practically in love with you.”
“Wh-what?” Frankie spluttered.
The train began to slow.
“I have to—” Henry grimaced and glanced toward the door.
“I know.”
“I’ll be back if I can, but if not, I’ll bring food with me tomorrow. Can you manage until then?”
Frankie gave Henry a mournful look, her lower lip trembling. “Oh, God, I’ve made a mess of everything, haven’t I?” she said as the reality of the situation hit her full force.
“No, not at all.” Henry gingerly reached out and patted her shoulder. “You’re the only girl Fergus Valmont is afraid of. You can beat some of the best boys in our year at fencing, and you speak Latin. If there’s anyone who’s brave enough and clever enough to get through this, it’s you.”
Frankie looked up at him, her eyes brimming with tears. “Do you mean that?”
“It’s the truth,” Henry said. “I—I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Good luck spying,” she whispered.
“Thanks,” Henry said, retrieving his and Adam’s satchels from where they’d stashed them earlier.
“You make a ridiculous servant, by the way,” she said. “You’re all wrong for it.”
“I’d like to see you do better,” Henry retorted, closing the door.
19
THE COMMON COMR ADE
The Partisan School was an ancient stronghold left over from the days of the Sasson conquerors, with slits for windows to deflect the course of harmful arrows, and a moat gone to sewage. Instead of modern electric light, Partisan used old-fashioned torches, which lit the way up dozens of sagging stone steps and through an enormous wooden door that rather resembled a drawbridge.
But Henry and Adam didn’t enter through the enormous wooden door. Instead they carried the envoy’s bags from the train station up through a grubby back entrance to Partisan Keep and deposited them in the east wing guest rooms.
After the third and final expedition, they were exhausted. Adam flopped onto what was to be Lord Priscus’s bed, burying his face in the quilt.
“Get up!” Henry whispered fiercely. “What if someone sees?”
Adam whined but slid off the bed, patting the covers straight. “I’m exhausted,” he complained.
“Well, we’re not getting much sleep tonight.” Henry neatened the stack of luggage. “Come on. Time to find out where we won’t be sleeping.”
To Henry’s and Adam’s horror, their sleeping quarters turned out to be a small, narrow room off the scullery with two sets of bunk beds. Having taken both of the top bunks, Jem and George grinned when Henry and Adam pushed open the door.
“Did yeh have a good time with the bags?” George asked, pillowing his head in his hands. Henry shook his head and angrily slammed his satchel onto the bunk below George.
Adam gingerly approached the bed beneath Jem. “Oi, there isn’t a pillow,” he said.
“Sorry.” Jem grinned nastily.
“Borrowed it.” “Hey, Adam,” Henry called. “Need me to fetch you some more pillows?”
And even though it wasn’t funny, really, the two boys shook with laughter. They ducked into the scullery to get it under control.
“I’m going to kill you,” Adam muttered, gasping.
“With what, Jem’s knife? Or were you planning to smother me with your pillow?” This set them off again. It felt wonderful to laugh, even for just a moment, at the horrible indignities of their day. After all, they were in the Nordlands, dressed as Ministerium Hall lackeys while the rest of their friends were back at school—except for Frankie.
“Do you think Frankie’s all right?” Henry asked nervously.
“She better be,” Adam said.
They had the next hour free, as the envoy was sequestered in a meeting room with Yascherov. Henry and Adam had planned to poke around Partisan Keep, but they hadn’t bargained for it being Saturday, or the weather turning rainy.
Partisan students choked the corridors and sat on staircases, laughing and joking, playing harmonicas or penny whistles, and flipping through magazines.
When they caught sight of Henry’s and Adam’s ridiculous livery, they leered.
“Er, maybe this was a bad idea,” Adam muttered, admitting defeat. “We’re not exactly inconspicuous, mate.”
“I know,” Henry said, running a hand through his hair in anguish. “Ugh, this is useless.” They headed back in the direction they’d come, but as a last-minute thought, Henry held open a door that led out the side of the castle.
“What are you doing?” Adam whispered.
Henry shrugged. “Aren’t you curious?”
“About what?” Adam asked.
“Well, this is the capital.”
They started down the steps carved into the hill, which took them through
a twisting stone passageway flanked by two crumbling watchtowers. The passageway ended abruptly, blocking their path with a heavy iron gate topped in nasty spikes. A hulking boy in a Partisan School uniform, his chest decorated with gleaming badges, peered out of the watchtower.
“Aye?” he called. “Ye want to pass?”
“We’ve been sent on an errand in the city,” Henry called back.
The boy shrugged and twisted what looked like a ship’s wheel made of metal, sliding the gate aside just narrowly enough for Henry and Adam to squeeze through.
And just like that, they were in Romborough.
It was an ancient city, with buildings still intact from the time of the Sasson conquerors, and ruins that dated back even earlier. At the bottom of the hill, as if in miniature, they could see the steam engine idling in the station, gleaming alongside two dingy Nordlandic cargo trains.
“What do you want to do?” Adam asked.
“Count the seven pylons?” Henry joked.
Adam snorted. After the Romans had disassembled Stonehenge, seven of the pylons had been erected to form the border of what was now known as the Old City, the most ancient part of Romborough. As they headed down the central road, they passed the first of the pylons, erected outside a rolling and ancient graveyard. Beyond the graveyard was a stone church, its roof perfectly round, its windows simple slits.
Most of the buildings were festooned with the Nordlandic flag, the three serpents and the star, which billowed over the packed dirt road. A horse-driven omnibus clattered past, crammed full of miserable-looking passengers and squalling babies.
Many of the shop fronts bore portraits of the chancellor, with his dark pointed beard and cruel gaze. Still more shop fronts were boarded up, or closed for no discernible reason.
Perhaps because of the gray sky, very few people stopped to linger in the streets. They scuttled along, disappearing into the entrances of the narrow closes—the covered alleyways that lined Cairway Road. Henry and Adam received more than a few odd glances due to their livery, but everyone seemed too afraid to be caught staring.
The road widened the farther they went from Partisan, and stalls began to appear on opposite sides. Barefoot children ran across the road, and vendors cooked sausages and nuts, which everyone stared at longingly, Henry and Adam included. The stalls sold all sorts of things—secondhand clothing, mended crockery, even sullen-looking vegetables that had refused to grow to their full potential.
A few ragged girls sold matches on the doorsteps, and other things, perhaps, though Henry didn’t care to find out.
At the end of the market, they reached a square where a more prosperous market bustled with patrons. In the center of the square stood an enormous bronze statue of Yurick Mors waving his serpent flag, dressed in the defiant long coat and armband of the revolutionary he had once been.
“ ‘Yea though we roar with the fire of a mighty dragon, we are but its scales, all cut from the same mold, and of equal worth,’ ” Henry quoted, nodding toward the statue. It was the refrain of the revolution, a verse used long ago to open the clandestine meetings where Mors and his associates had plotted to overthrow the monarchy and publicly behead all aristocrats who would not renounce their titles and land at his behest.
And then the piercing cry of a newspaper boy made Henry jump.
“Common Comrade! Get yer free Nordlandic news!” he cried. The newsboy stood cheekily at the base of the statue, waving an armload of newspapers.
“Want one?” Adam asked.
“Do you even have to ask?”
The newsboy balked at the sight of them, but Henry smiled and held out his hand.
“We’ll each take one,” Henry said.
The newsboy hesitated a moment, deliberating, and then handed over the papers.
“Is this the only newspaper in the city, or are there others?” Henry asked.
The newsboy scowled. “Ain’t nothin’ aside the Comrade.”
With the newspapers under their arms, Henry and Adam hurried back toward the castle.
The kitchen bustled with the Partisan School staff in their thin, plain uniforms when Henry and Adam arrived, out of breath, having just stashed the newspapers under their mattresses, but something seemed wrong somehow.
Henry puzzled over this, his stomach growling as he watched the serving boys arranging platters of food, and kitchen maids preparing dessert, their hair twisted up into tightly knotted kerchiefs. He remembered what Frankie had said about women dressing differently in the Nordlands, and he supposed the hair scarves and loose, long dresses with high collars were a bit different from the aprons and mobcaps Liza and Mary wore.
And then Henry realized what was bothering him. “They’re not making enough food,” he whispered to Adam.
Adam’s stomach grumbled loudly in response. “When do we eat?” he whined.
“After we serve the envoy,” Henry whispered back.
Across the kitchen Henry caught sight of Jem, who made a show of reaching into his pocket, removing his knife, and flipping it open with a grin.
“Excuse me,” Henry said to one of the Nordlandic servants who passed by.
The boy turned, terrified.
“Is this the only kitchen?” Henry asked.
The boy shook his head. “We cook fer the teachers an’ visiting compatriots,” he snapped.
Henry raised an eyebrow at this news. For a country that prided itself on equality, it didn’t seem fair, and it certainly didn’t seem in line with the motto of a “common good,” if the people who preached such things had a private kitchen where their meals were prepared separately. But, then, many things in the Nordlands were contrary to the values that they preached. At least the kitchen seemed familiar, despite the strange uniforms and the unfamiliar foods.
Henry and the other boys with the envoy waited to be handed serving platters to take to the sideboard in the private dining room where Yascherov was entertaining the guests.
And then a serving girl who was grating potatoes dropped one, and it bounced across the kitchen, coming to a stop near Henry. He bent to retrieve it, and the girl rushed over. When Henry caught sight of her, he nearly lost his hold on the slippery potato as well.
It was Frankie.
Henry nudged Adam, but Adam had already noticed. His eyes were wide and frantic.
“What are you doing here?” Henry whispered, handing her back the potato.
Frankie grinned and shook some potato peelings from her smock. “Well, I wasn’t going to wait in the storage car all weekend,” she whispered back fiercely.
Henry shook his head in annoyance and glanced at the rest of the kitchen to see if anyone else was watching. Jem and George were.
“Can we help with the potatoes?” Henry asked in a low tone.
Frankie nodded, and they followed her to the mound of potatoes, forming a circle around the peelings bin.
“Well,” Adam said, “this is a surprise.”
“And by ‘surprise’ he means ‘horrible idea,’ ” Henry whispered.
“What’s horrible about it?” Frankie retorted. “I signed on as a maid, and I’ll sneak away tomorrow to meet the train. In the meantime I’ll have proper meals and a bed to sleep in, and a bath, thank you very much.”
“This is really dangerous,” Henry pressed. “What if someone finds out who you are?”
“In the next twelve hours?” Frankie asked with a derisive snort. “No one suspects anything. Besides which, it’s just supper, then some cleaning and then bed.”
Henry had to admit that she had a fair point.
“Why didn’t you tell us what you were planning on the train?” Adam asked.
Frankie scowled. “Because I knew he’d be against it.” She pointed her potato accusingly at Henry.
“Of course I’m against it,” Henry said. “You don’t know the first thing about being a maid. You could complicate everything.”
“Well, I won’t,” Frankie said.
“You might.” Henry g
lared.
“Stop it,” Adam said. “Listen, Frankie, we’re going to have a look around the castle tonight. Can you meet us outside the kitchen at midnight?”
“I’ll try,” Frankie said, and then shot Henry an enormous mocking grin. “If I haven’t blown all of our covers by then.”
“You’re unbelievable,” Henry snapped, slamming a perfectly peeled potato into the basket.
* * *
“I can’t believe you invited her,” Henry accused.
Adam shrugged and continued transferring dirty plates onto the serving trolley. The envoy had just finished supper, and before Henry and Adam could eat, they had to clear plates.
Jem and George were serving brandy and cigars in one of the reception rooms, and thankfully, supper had passed without incident.
“Why shouldn’t I have invited her?” Adam retorted.
“Don’t stack the plates that high. They’ll fall,” Henry chided. “And I can think of about a hundred reasons.”
“Well, sorry, but I’m too hungry to think,” Adam shot back.
“Here,” Henry said, passing Adam half a roll that had been left on the table.
Adam stuffed it into his mouth. “What do we do now?” he asked thickly.
“Dishes,” Henry said, nodding toward the cart piled high with soiled serving platters and dirty plates.
“Oh,” Adam said, his face falling.
Back in the kitchen the rest of the servants were eating supper together at the long wooden table by the fireplace. Stools and overturned crates were crammed together, and everyone ate silently, hungrily piling food into their mouths. No one looked up when Henry and Adam came in. Next to the sink were four meager plates of food, meant for them.
Henry rolled up his sleeves to scrub dishes, but his gaze fell on the salt and pepper shakers sitting among the dirty serving platters, and he grinned.
“Do we get to eat now?” Adam asked hopefully as Henry picked up the salt.
“Even better,” Henry said, handing Adam the pepper. “We get to enact our revenge.” Henry liberally tipped the salt over two of the plates of food.
Adam grinned, enthusiastically adding pepper.
The Secret Prince Page 19