Free The Last Banquet by Jonathan Grimwood

stripped bare by the time le Régent arrived. I had no idea why they didn’t take the horse. Looking up, I realised I still had the room’s attention whether I wanted it or not. ‘By peasants. The duc d’Orleans hung them.’
    ‘Le Régent?’
    ‘He found my mother and father dead.’
    ‘And you?’ Jerome asks. ‘You were where?’
    ‘Eating beetles.’ Seeing his surprise, I say, ‘I was hungry. I was five.’
    They nod, the boys in that room. They nod and mutter comments from the corner of their mouths, and someone offers me a slice of cake, as if I might be hungry still. The talk turns to what they’ve brought from home – cakes and cheeses, fresh bread, dried dates, a sweetmeat made from egg white and candied fruit – and I realise this school, this college, has proper holidays and pupils who have real homes. Emile no longer seems so exotic.
    ‘I didn’t know we were allowed to bring food,’ he whispers.
    ‘You will next time.’
    The fight that night is fierce and ritualised.
    The bigger boys face off against each other, the smaller boys match themselves – those, like Emile, who don’t really want to fight at all, find others who feel the same and pretend. We let them creep into our dorm an hour after lights out and then throw ourselves from our beds before the attack can properly begin. It is a night campaign and we fight in furious silence by the light of the moon through three long windows along one wall. A thickset boy punches me and flinches as I punch back. He hesitates and I punch again, seeing him clasp his hand to his mouth and look for an easier target. My stomach is a knot and my legs are shaking. I feel no excitement at the fight. I want to hide.
    It is over in a handful of minutes.
    Charlot stands, unbloodied. Jerome stands beside him with a swollen lip and a ferocious look on his face, his hands clenched into huge fists. He has the build of a cart horse. I stand slightly behind them, not ferocious and not unbloodied, but standing and ready. The rest crowd behind us and wait to see what happens next.
    A boy with curls to his shoulders steps forward. ‘You,’ he says, looking at Charlot. ‘What’s your name?’
    ‘De Saulx,’ Charlot says. ‘This is de Caussard, and this d’Aumout . . .’
    The boy scowls as if wanting to match our names to our faces. ‘This is Richelieu,’ he says, naming the house to which we’ve been assigned. ‘We win. We win at everything. You let us down and we’ll be back.’
    ‘And we’ll be waiting,’ Jerome says heavily.
    ‘We won’t let the house down,’ Charlot says. The boy takes it that Charlot speaks for all of us and that’s fine because he does. The older boys file out in silence and we hear them on the stairs. Common sense makes us wait to see if it’s a feint and they plan to return to finish what they’ve started but that’s it, the battle is done. None of the masters ask about our bruised lips and black eyes but I see the colonel at a distance in a corridor and he smiles.
    Unlike my last school the masters change according to subject. They are severe, mostly military, and leave us alone if we do our work and give the right answers. I follow Charlot’s example and read the books I’m told to read, work out what is likely to be asked and read enough to answer those questions only. My marks are good. My horsemanship, almost as bad as Emile’s when we start, improves week by week. I enjoy sword work – the clash of steel, the noise of our practise, the chatter of the showers and the lazy exhaustion that takes us afterwards. They work us hard. They work us hard at everything.
    That Christmas I spend with Emile and his family. A quiet week filled with questions about the academy and our new friends. Madame Duras seems content with our answers and impressed with the casual way Emile talks about the marquis de Saulx and the vicome de Caussard and a few of the others, as if they’re the closest of friends. Just occasionally I feel