"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 cla.s.srooms off-limits?" Derrick threw an opera cape lined with crimson silk around his shoulders and admired it in the gla.s.s.
"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 cla.s.sroom, 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 gla.s.s 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 sc.u.m!" he cried, fighting off an invisible a.s.sailant.
Henry shook his head, laughing. He rather suspected Derrick had been the one to start everyone fencing with rolls of paper last term.
10.
THE FORGOTTEN CLa.s.sROOM.
Conrad, 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 cla.s.sroom 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?"
"Of course," Henry whispered back.
"So why are we going to the library?"
"You"ll see."
Henry led Derrick into the study room on the balcony level, shut the door, and pushed the panel on the shelf that revealed the pa.s.sageway Adam had discovered the previous term.
"Where does it lead?" Derrick asked, his eyes bright with excitement.
"To the hallway below Lord Havelock"s cla.s.sroom."
"But that"s a shortcut."
"Exactly," Henry finished. "Come on."
The staircase was just as dark as Henry remembered, and just as steep. Both boys were out of breath when Henry pushed aside the creepy unicorn tapestry and they climbed out onto the dimly lit fourth-floor corridor.
If anyone had thought Henry and Derrick were up to anything, they would have seen only that the boys had entered the library, exactly where they"d claimed to be going.
The hallway with the trophy case was on the other side of the castle, in the older part of the school. As they walked, Henry noticed the overhead beams become black with age and the floor grow slightly uneven. They approached the trophy case, and Henry removed the bits of wire from his pocket, kneeling as he fitted them into the lock.
"That"s a useful talent," Derrick said, craning his neck to see what Henry was doing.
"Not really. I"m rubbish at this sort of thing."
Henry wiggled one of the bits of wire, getting a feel for the mechanism. Thankfully, the lock was old, which meant it would be easier to open.
"How did you learn?" asked Derrick.
"At the orphanage," Henry admitted, and then, because he was concentrating on the lock, he continued without thinking. "I was eleven. They never quite gave us enough to eat, particularly that summer. It"s criminal, I know, but my stomach was growling so loudly that I couldn"t sleep. It took two nights before I figured out how to pick the lock on the cupboard, and-"
He broke off, embarra.s.sed. He"d just told Derrick Marchbanks, who had attended a secondary school so posh that even the composition books were embossed with gold leaf, how he"d practically been starved as a boy.
"I used to sneak down to the kitchens myself," Derrick said. "Less of a challenge when the school servants let you take what you want, though."
Henry bit his lip in response and gave the thicker piece of wire a satisfying twist.
The lock clicked open.
"This is why I like you, Grim," Derrick said as they tugged open the great gla.s.s door to the trophy case. "Conrad would have gotten scared like your friend Rohan did."
"Rohan doesn"t like to break the rules," Henry said as they scrutinized the inside of the trophy case. "Especially after being expelled for something he didn"t do."
"Hmmm," Derrick said absently, pressing on a circular piece of paneling. "Conrad"s the same. Scared of getting into trouble and having it become a problem when we start at the Ministerium. Ugh. Why won"t this push in?"
"Maybe it twists," Henry observed.
Derrick twisted, and nearly lost his balance. The trophy case was a door-or, rather, it had been built over a door. One that led, sure enough, up a twisting stone staircase.
"Dare we, Grim?"
"We"re not very well going to shut it and go down to the common room to play checkers," Henry said, taking the candle stub and a match from his pocket. He struck the match against the stone floor and quickly lit the candle, pa.s.sing it to Derrick.
"It was your map," said Henry. "You can do the honors."
"Trying to save yourself by going last, eh, Grim?" Derrick joked, but Henry could see that through the bravado Derrick was just as nervous as he was about what they would find. However, the staircase was perfectly ordinary. A bit dusty, but ordinary nonetheless.
"What do you think is up here?" Henry asked, brushing aside a cobweb as he followed Derrick.
They stood at the entrance to a tower cla.s.sroom. A few desks were cloaked with white sheets, and a Gothic bookcase stood against the far wall, its shelves home to a thick layer of dust and cobwebs. Beneath the grimy window were three moldering steamer trunks.
Derrick held his candle stub to one of the wall sconces, lighting a cl.u.s.ter of tapers that burnt a sulfuric green.
"Why go to all of that trouble to block off a cla.s.sroom?" Derrick wondered.
"Maybe it"s haunted?" Henry joked.
"Must be. Or else this was the suicide tower for everyone who earned a *dreadful" in military history."
Henry walked over to the window and looked out. Beneath them, dark and vast, were the woods at the border of the school grounds.
"Did they even teach military history back then?" Henry asked. "I mean, this cla.s.sroom was abandoned a long time ago."
"Not abandoned," Derrick corrected, wandering over to the bookcase and extracting the few remaining volumes. "Closed off. And I wish I knew what for!" He placed the books onto one of the desks, and brushed off the coating of dust.
"What subject are they?" Henry asked.
"Don"t know. But this one looks like Latin," Derrick said, pa.s.sing it to Henry. Burnt into the parchment cover was the word "Pugnare." The book was written in painstaking illuminated hand. Henry squinted at the words in the dim candlelight.
"Si caballus pugnare possent," he murmured, and then nearly dropped the book.
"*Caballus"? That"s something about knights," Derrick replied.
" *If knights should be able to fight," " Henry translated, flipping through the book, past careful drawings of horses and knights, diagrams of battle formations, and charts of constellations.
"That can"t be-"
"It is," Henry said.
The two boys stared down at the ancient training manual, a relic of the old Knightley Academy, where pupils studied fighting rather than French, and where aristocratic boys learned to lead common soldiers into battle.
The rest of the books were thankfully in English, except for one collection of outdated maps with legends written out in Old French. Battle strategy, combat, navigation ...
Henry stared at the stack of texts, realizing that the books had been hidden for good reason. They were full of ideas that everyone was too scared to ponder. Full of ways to kill boys in battle who fought for the opposing side. Full of plans for the impossible.
"Up for a bit of light reading?" Derrick joked, but his expression was quite serious.
"What good are books?" Henry asked. Unlike Derrick, he didn"t find the stack of forgotten texts anything to joke about. "No, I mean it. Suppose that there"s a war coming. Suppose that all boys over the age of thirteen will have to fight. What good is it to know the names of ancient battle formations if the only weapons we"ve ever held are blunt-tipped practice foils?"
"Books are better than nothing," muttered Derrick.