on ‘the plague’?” Lord Havelock asked with a threatening smile.

Up close, Henry could see the graying stubble on Lord Havelock’s cheeks, could smell a sinister, spicy pipe tobacco clinging to the professor’s tweeds.

“No, sir,” Henry said. “Specifically, I wrote about how Eastern and Western military conquest led to the opening of trade routes, which, in turn, brought the plague to the West and thus killed so much of the population that anyone left over was no longer restricted by the rigid class system, because there was no competition for land or resources.”

Lord Havelock frowned. “I received no such essay from you.”

Henry was horrified. What had happened to the essay? He’d worked so hard on it, staying in the library even long after Adam had left, and Adam always took forever because he pooled ink when he was nervous.

“Well, I turned it in, sir, yesterday, along with everyone else.”

Henry tilted his chin up, eyes meeting Lord Havelock’s, willing the professor to believe him.

“I received no such essay from you,” Lord Havelock said again, and Henry hung his head.

He wouldn’t be kicked out of Knightley Academy—he’d flunk out. Just like the letters had warned. Just like Valmont wanted.

“But there has been some tomfoolery as of late,” Lord Havelock continued, and Henry glanced up, hardly daring to hope, “and from your description, I have no choice but to conclude that you did indeed complete the assignment and hand it in on time.”

“Thank you, sir,” Henry said, feeling a rush of gratitude toward Lord Havelock.

“However,” Lord Havelock said with that dangerous smile, “as I have nothing to grade, you must do the assignment again. And I’ll want a different topic. Whatever happened to your essay, I’m sure its disappearance was provoked, and this will teach you not to let it happen again.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said, relieved and yet exhausted at the thought of redoing the essay. “When shall I rewrite the paper?”

“Tonight,” Lord Havelock said. “I shall inform our librarian that you are to stay as late as you’d like past curfew.”

“Yes, sir,” Henry said.

And then Henry spent a far from delightful free hour in the library, going through the books to find a new topic for his essay.

At supper, Rohan asked Henry where he’d been.

“The library,” Henry said with a sigh, indicating the pile of books at his side.

“I’m guessing this has something to do with Lord Havelock?” Rohan asked.

“And Valmont,” Henry said darkly, stabbing violently at his pork tenderloin until it was full of little holes from the fork tines. “It seems my quarter-term essay was misplaced, so I’ll have to do it over, on a different topic.”

“That’s really awful, mate,” Adam said. “If I had to do mine over, I’d die.”

“I worked so hard,” Henry said. “It isn’t right. It isn’t as though he got in trouble for the textbook either. I mean, he said it himself: we did him a favor. So he does me this nasty turn in response?”

Henry shook his head, upset and disgusted at Valmont. The letters he could take. The letters were nothing, really. But this? He could have been expelled.

“At least Lord Havelock didn’t give you a zero,” Edmund said, sliding closer on the bench so that he joined Henry and his friends.

“True,” Henry said. “But that isn’t the point. Just look at him over there, drinking his cider like he hasn’t a care in the world.”

They all looked.

“He’s only a bully,” Edmund said, shaking his head. “Theobold’s by far the worse of the two. I promise you.”

“How do you mean?” Rohan asked, but Edmund just shook his head.

Henry wrote his essay in the study room off the second level of the library, the one Edmund had told him about. It was a small room, the size of his dormitory, with an oval table and squashy upholstered chairs going bald in the seats. There was one small window near the ceiling, heavy wooden paneling, and a wall of bookshelves nearly bare save for a few dictionaries and a decaying book of maps.

Hours passed, and Henry fell into the rhythm of his paper, not noticing that the cup of tea he’d brought had gone cold hours before, not noticing that a moth fluttered in the corner by the dictionaries, not noticing that the side of his hand had become gray with ink stain.

Finally, Henry capped his pen and read over his essay.

It was good. Possibly even better than the first. And he was exhausted.

If Henry owned a pocket watch, he would have checked the hour. Instead,