Chapter 1

No Going Home

“You there! Come here!”

Choi Minho turned to see who was being called and who was doing the calling. There were hundreds of pupils standing in the bright sunlight outside the Deepdene International School for Boys that morning, dressed in immaculate school uniform and each with a leather-strapped wooden chest or an over-stuffed pile of luggage sitting in front of him like a loyal dog. Any one of them might have been the target. The Masters at Deepdene made a habit of never referring to the pupils by name – it was always ‘You!’ or ‘Boy!’ or ‘Child!’ It made life difficult and kept the boys on their toes, which was probably the reason why they did it. Either that or the Masters had given up trying to remember the names of their pupils long ago; Minho wasn’t sure which explanation was the most likely. Perhaps both.

None of the other pupils were paying attention. They were either gossiping with the family members with who had turned up to collect them or eagerly watching the school gates for the first sight of the carriage that was going to take them home. Reluctantly, Minho swung round to see if the malign finger of fate was pointing his way.

It was. The finger in question belonged in this instance to Mr Jong, the Latin Master. Don’t ask him why a Korean would be the master of such language. Mr Jong had just come around the corner of the school, where Minho was standing apart from the other boys. His suit, which was usually covered in chalk dust, had been specially cleaned for the end of term and the inevitable meetings with the fathers who were paying for their boys to be educated, and his mortar board sat straight on his head as if glued there by the Headmaster.

“Me, sir?”

“Yes, sir. You, sir,” Mr Tulley snapped. “Get yourself to the Headmaster’s study quam celerrime. Do you remember enough of your Latin to know what that means?”

“It means ‘straight away’, sir.”

“Then move yourself.”

Minho cast a glance at the school gate. “But sir – I’m waiting for my father to pick me up.”

“I’m sure he won’t leave without you, boy.”

Minho made one last, defiant attempt. “My luggage…”

Mr Jong glanced disparagingly at Minho’s battered wooden trunk – a hand-me-down from his father’s military travels, stained with old dirt and scuffed by the passing years. “I can’t see anyone waiting to steal it,” he said, “except perhaps for its historical value. I’ll get a prefect to watch it for you. Now cut along.”

Reluctantly, Minho abandoned his belongings –  the spare shirts and underclothes, the books of poetry and the notebooks in which he had taken to jotting down ideas, thoughts, speculations and the occasional tune that came to his head –  and walked off towards the columned portico through the crowd of pupils, parents and siblings while still keeping an eye on the gateway, where a scrum of horses and carriages were all trying to get in and out of the narrow gate at the same time.

He wove in and out of people, ignored by everyone, and eventually found himself exiting the throng and entering a corridor that left the entrance hall. The Headmaster’s study was a few yards down. He paused on the threshold, drew a breath, dusted down his lapels and knocked on the door.

“Enter!” boomed a theatrically loud voice.

Minho twisted the doorknob and pushed the door open, trying to quell the spasm of nervousness that shot through his body like lightning. He had only been in the Headmaster’s twice before – once with his father, when he first arrived at Deepdene, and once again a year later with a group of other pupils who had been accused of cheating in an examination. The three ringleaders had been caned and expelled; the four or five followers had been caned until their buttocks bled and allowed to stay. Minho – whose essays had been the ones being copied by the group – had escaped the caning by claiming that he knew nothing about it. In fact, he had known all along, but he had always been something of an outsider at the school, – despite when being in P.E. session that is – and if letting the pupils copy his work got him tolerated, if not accepted, then he wasn’t going to raise any objections. On the other hand, he wasn’t going to tell on the copiers either – that would have got him beaten and, perhaps, held in front of one of the roaring fires that dominated the dormitories until his skin began to blister and his clothes to smoke. School life was like that – a perpetual balancing act between the masters and the other pupils. And he hated it.

The Headmaster’s study was just the way he remembered – vast, dim, and the smelling of a combination of leather a pipe tobacco. Mr Tomblinson was sitting behind a desk large enough to play bowls on. He was a portly man in a suit that was slightly too small for him, chosen presumably on the basis that it helped him believe he wasn’t quite large as he obviously was.

“Ah, Choi is it? In, lad, in. Close the door behind you.”

Minho did as he was told, but as he pushed the door shut he caught a sight of another figure in the room: a man standing in front of the window with a glass of sherry in his hand. The sunlight refracted in rainbow shards from the cut glass of the schooner.

“Onew?” Minho said, amazed.

His elder brother turned towards him, and a smile flickered across his face so rapidly that if Minho had blinked the wrong moment the he might missed it. “Minho. You’ve grown.”

“So have you,” Minho said. Indeed his brother had grown taller. He looked a little thinner compared to when Minho last saw him though.   

“You came in Appa’s carriage.”

Jinki, or as Minho calls him, Onew raised an eyebrow. “How on Earth did you deduce that, hmm?”

Minho shrugged. “I noticed the parallel creases in your trousers where the upholstery passed them, and I remember that Appa’s carriage has a tear in the upholstery that was repaired rather clumsily a few years ago. The impression of that repair is pressed into your trousers, next to the creases.”

He paused.

“Onew-hyung, where’s Father?”

The Headmaster harrumphed to attract attention back to him. “Your father is–”

“Appa won’t be coming,” Jinki interrupted smoothly. “His Regiment was sent out to India to strengthen the existing military force. There has been some unrest in the North west Frontier region. You know where that is?”

“Yeah. We’ve studied India in Geography and History.”

“That’s my smart bro~”

“I didn’t realize the natives there were causing problems again,” the Headmaster rumbled. “Not been in The Times, that’s for sure.”

“It’s not the Indians,” Jinki confided. “When we took the country back from the East India Company the soldiers out there transferred back under Army control. They’ve found the regime to be a lot… stricter than the one they were used to. There’s been a great deal of bad feeling, and the government has decided to drastically increase the size of the force in India to give them an example of what real  soldiers are like. It’s bad enough to have Indians rebelling; a mutiny inside the British Army is unthinkable.”

“And will there be a mutiny?” Minho asked, feeling his heart sinking like a stone dropped into a pond. “Will Appa be safe?”

Jinki shrugged his shoulders. “I don’t know,” he said simply. That was one of the things Minho respected about his brother. He always gave a straight response to a straight question. No honeying the pill. “Sadly, I don’t know everything.”

“But you work for the government,” Minho pressed. “You must at least have some idea of what might happen! Can’t you send a different Regiment?  Keep Appa here in England?”

“I’ve only been with the Foreign Office for a few months,” Jinki replied, “and although I am flattered that you think I have the power to alter such important things, I’m afraid I don’t. I’m an advisor. Just a clerk, really,” He continued with a sad smile.

“How long will Appa be gone?” Minho asked, remembering the tall man dressed in a dark brown jacket, who laughed easily and lost his temper rarely. He could feel a pressure in his chest but he held his feelings in check. If there was one thing he learned from his time at Deepdene School it was that you never showed any emotion. If you did, it would be used against you.

“About nine months I guess.”

“Nearly a year…” He bowed his head for a moment, composing himself, then nodded. “Can we go home now?”

“You’re not going home,” Jinki stated.

Sherlock just stood there, letting the words sink into him, not saying anything.

“He can’t stay here,” the Headmaster muttered. “The place is being cleaned.”

Jinki moved his gaze away from Minho and on to the Headmaster. “Our mother is… unwell,” he said. “Her constitution is delicate at the best of times, and this business with our father has distressed her greatly. She needs peace and quiet, and Minho needs someone older to look after him.”

“But I’ve got you!” Minho protested.

Jinki shook his head sadly. “I live in London now, and my job requires me to work many hours each day. And considering my age, I’m not much of an adult. I would not, I’m afraid, be a fit guardian for a boy, especially an inquisitive one such as you.” He turned to the Headmaster, almost as if it was easier to give him the next piece of information than to tell Minho.

“We have relatives in Farnham, not too far from here. Two uncles. Minho will be staying with them over the school holidays.”

“No!” Minho exploded.

“Yes,” Jinki said gently. “It is arranged. Uncle Donghae and Uncle Hyukjae have agreed to take you in for the summer.”

“But I’ve never even met them!”

“Nevertheless, they are family, Minho.”

Jinki bade farewell to the Headmaster while Minho stood ther blanky, trying to take in the enormity of what had just happened.

No going home. No seeing his father and his mother. No exploring in the fields and woods around the manor house that had been home to him for fourteen years. No sleeping in the old bed in his room under the eaves of the house where he kept all of his books. No seeking into the kitchens where Cook would give him a slice of braed and jam if he smile at her. Instead, weeks in staying with people he didn’t know, being on his best behaviour in a town, in a country which he didn’t know anything about. Alone, until he return to school.

How was he going to manage?