awoke two hours before morning announcements and, yawning, dressed in his uniform. Tiptoeing past the still sleeping Sander, he collected the all-too-familiar bucket and towel and, starting with the astronomy tower, began cleaning the blackboards.
After the tower, he tackled the science laboratories, frowning as he remembered falling asleep every night over the bone-dry biology textbook last term. Next he moved into mathematics, where complex equations filled each blackboard with their exponents and limits. He’d suffered through this subject too. After that was history, all dates and names, and then languages, repetitive phrases written across the board in a half-dozen tenses. And finally, English. Usually, Professor Stratford was not awake before chapel, and often he dozed into his teacup at breakfast, but that morning, Henry found him sitting at his desk, nose deep in a popular gossip magazine.
“Erm, Professor?” Henry knocked on the doorframe, not wanting to interrupt.
“Oh, Henry!” Professor Stratford looked up from his magazine—the front page of which screamed: deadly pies! daily gossip! and secret armies of the nordlands revealed!—and smiled warmly. “Come in, come in! I was just, well—oh, no need to erase the board today. We’re continuing yesterday’s discussion of Marlowe. Now, what was I saying?”
“You were going to tell me about the article you’re reading,” Henry said, biting back a smile.
“Quite right.” Professor Stratford held his copy of the Tattleteller aloft. “ ‘Secret Armies of the Nordlands Revealed.’ The most significant political news of the last century, right here, opposite an advertisement for wart removal cream.”
“Really, sir?” Henry asked, failing to hide his smile. “Should we be expecting an invasion before tea?”
“Probably not. But you never can tell.” The professor shrugged and grinned good-naturedly.
Professor Stratford wasn’t yet thirty and, despite being a celebrated expert on the modern eighteenth-century poets, was largely regarded by the other masters as something of an overgrown schoolboy.
“I’ll challenge you to raise the alarm, sir. This is serious news, indeed.”
Professor Stratford nodded gravely, playing along. “Challenge accepted, Sir Henry.”
Henry rolled his eyes at the professor’s sarcasm. “Well, tomorrow’s the exam. We’ll find out who’s accepted then.”
“I have a feeling about this year,” Professor Stratford said. “Sixth time’s the charm.”
“Really, sir? Where did you read that? In the Tattleteller as well?” Henry joked.
Professor Stratford burst out laughing and then nervously glanced toward the doorway, as if he really were a schoolboy and at any moment would be chastised for his outburst.
Reflexively, Henry looked too.
“There’s no one coming, sir,” Henry said, relieved.
Although he read the textbooks, Henry was not a student, and his friendship with Professor Stratford was dangerous to them both. For a moment, Henry thought the professor might change his mind and call off their secret tutoring sessions—taking away the only happiness that Henry knew. The silence hung there for an uncertain moment until Professor Stratford cleared his throat and, trying to pretend he was cross, grumbled, “Oh, get out of here, Grim! Same time this evening? And don’t forget that essay I set you on the Greeks.”
“If I forget, will you punish me by making me scrub the blackboards?”
“Don’t be silly, Grim. We have servants to do those sorts of things.”
Smiling at the joke, Henry said, “No, sir. I won’t forget.”
And, realizing that Cook might throw away his breakfast if he was any later, Henry dashed off to the kitchens.
***
At half past eleven that morning, a small black dot appeared in the distance. Upon further scrutiny, this dot gradually took the shape of an automobile, and finally the automobile began its clanging, spirited assent of the hill upon which the Midsummer School was perched.
“Move your arse, Porter!”
“Shove off, Hobson, you’re standing on my foot.”
“S-s-sorry, Valmont.”
The year-eight students jostled their way into line, elbowing and pushing for the best positions. Each of the boys wore full academic dress, which itched in the heat. They sweated beneath formal tailcoats, pin-striped trousers, starched white shirts, high collars, black bowties, and traditional Midsummer School top hats.
The headmaster and professors stood behind the boys, pretending they were deaf to the complaints and bullying.
Suddenly, the chrome front of an expensive black automobile nosed its way over the top of the hill and through the centuries-old iron gates.
Everyone tensed.
A driver hopped out and ran around the front of the car to open the door.
The examiners had arrived.
A couple of the boys exchanged looks out of the corners of their eyes, not quite daring to stop facing forward. Instead of imposing, crusty old windbags, the examiners were cheerful-looking men in plain black suits, almost as young as Professor Stratford.
“Welcome,”