Everyone hurried around to get the instruments they needed and they formed an orchestra around me. It was a bare bones orchestra, but it was all we needed to make this work and sound good.
"John, you're going to have to give it some puff to be heard amongst all that," Carter said and then raised his hands to conduct.
Silently he counted us in and then I began to play. We ran it though without issue, every note was prefect and we had an audience outside by the time we finished. It was the senior staff of the school, the board of governors, some politicians, press and the king. I hadn't seen any of them arrive even though we were facing them. They all started applauding apart from the press who took photos, and then they walked into the room. Master Carter stepped forward, and was quickly introduced to the King.
King Christian was a tall, broad shouldered man with closely cut brown hair, light brown eyes and a thin face that lit up and looked a decade younger than his forty something years when he smiled. Ben definitely took after his mother, but there was something that was just like his father in his stance, the way he saw people and his relaxed manor.
"This is the first class of the year?" I heard him ask our master. His voice had a deep, resonant timbre that held warmth. He looked away from Carter and over to us, specifically me. "You're Grace, right? Ben's friend?"
"Yes, Your Majesty," I said and carefully curtsied.
He smiled. "That's a mean bit of skill you have there. How long have you been playing?"
"Since I was four, Sir," I said.
"Grades?"
"I got my eighth about a year ago."
"A certain dicky bird tells me you also do Bond theme songs?"
"Ben told you about that? Clara did the vocals, Sir," I said and gestured to her.
She stepped forward after giving her cello to Andre or Rupert to hold steady for her. She curtsied perfectly, it was like she'd practiced.
"He said your voice is something," King Christian said. "Could we perhaps trouble you for a song?"
"If, Your Majesty, I get the other half of C to come in we'll have all the instruments we need," Carter suggested. "I know the boys know it. We did it just before summer. And all the girls can sight read."
"By all means, do it Master Carter," the king said.
We quickly organised ourselves. We moved ourselves to the window at the king's suggestion which meant we were in the lightest part of the room which was good for reading the music. We all efficiently set music stands up, took our seats and were ready to go with very little discussion. The other group was mostly girls which made up for the minority of them in my group. I was allowed to stay on violin and with our maestro conducting we began to play.
I was instantly hit with the burning rush of excitement that performing gave. I noticed that we were a little ropy as we hadn't all played together before, but to the untrained ear I knew it would sound good. I caught the eye of the girl I was sat next to and saw the same excitement in hers. She grinned at me and then turned back to her music.
Before we all knew it the song was over and we were called to a stop. Again there was a round of applause and photos, the camera crew following me around got everything down on film and praise was given all around.
"What say to a bit of competition, Dad?" Ben asked appearing out of nowhere.
"Ben," the king frowned and turned to his son. "What are you doing here?"
"Division master was late," he shrugged. "Though to be fair he apparently looked like death last night. So, competition, Dad?"
"What are you thinking?"
"Who can play Rule Britannia the fastest," Ben said and shot me a grin. He just wanted to see me play trumpet again. "Boys or girls."
The king leaned on his son's shoulder. "You know what, Benji, I think a little friendly competition might be good."
Before we could let our masters say anything we all began moving seats to sit with our own gender. Clara went to get her cello and I walked with her as it was next to my trumpet.
"You know what he's doing," she murmured to me.
"Making me pay for the comment last night?" I asked and took my jacket off.
She rolled her eyes when she thought I couldn't see. "Sure."
I didn't know what she'd been thinking, much less I didn't care, so I just went back to where we were sat amidst grumblings that this was unfair and swayed in the boys' direction as they'd played together before. I took my jacket off and put it over the back of my chair.
"Oooh, look guys. Grace is getting all serious," Ben said.
I looked over to him wondering if he was four. "You have no idea how hard what you're asking is, do you?"
He shrugged. "No."
I sat down and looked our two teams' instruments over and saw that they had the most brass instruments, we had the most string but we had equal amounts woodwind. Together we would sound like an orchestra so maybe this wasn't going to sound too terrible.
The plan laid out by Carter was to let us girls lead, then the guys would join in and when gestured to each side would speed up. The girls were all going to take their cue from me as my trumpet would stand out the most and when called in the guys would try to beat our tempo. We were only going to do the chorus bit and a couple of bars either side though to speed things along some what.
We let maestro count us in for the first time, but that was about it. After that all pretences of niceness were obliterated, the gloves came off and a war of music started. The music was barely looked at, determined eyes locked with determined eyes, fingers moved in a blur and deep breaths were taken in the shortest of moments. Faster and faster the music went and then things started to fall apart in my camp. First of all the flautist lost track, then the violins, I didn't have enough breath left to get to the end of the bar and that was that. We flopped pretty spectacularly and Clara slowed her playing down as we very quickly got worse and worse.
That did have the advantage of making the guys burst into laughter. Some of the girls did too, but I was more focused on not falling off my chair through being light headed. I sat back, my eyes closed and breathing deeply. I was hot, a little sweaty and I really needed a drink.
"Hey, do you need to go see the Dame?" Joshua asked me. He put a hand on my knee.
I shook my head.
"She just needs to breathe," John said. "You string people wouldn't know a thing about breathing technique. What she did was pretty something alright."
"Here, take this," the king said and put a bottle of water in my hands.
The cap had been taken off, but it was full and a little cool. I sipped at it as I got my breathing back under control very aware that this was being caught on three separate cameras and was going to be shown on at the very least the Eton show which I later learned was going to be aired every Monday at seven starting on the fourteenth of September. Not the Monday coming, but the one after.
"Thank you," I said to the king. He was knelt on the floor next to me.
He smiled. "I didn't think the competition would be that fierce."
I smiled a little too. "When you're in the zone, Sir."
Ben was busy talking to one of the guys who'd been on the French horn – Claude – and Christian quickly joined them. The other big wigs in the room mingled with everyone for a few minutes before leaving. Ben went with them getting in some time with his dad before the coronation tour started tomorrow.
We got back to work and I was put with Joshua, Clara and Goodluck to do Schubert, the guys on double bass and me and Clara on cello. Then it was off to dance which was in a building close by. It was another new one which was very old on the outside but very new on the inside. The dance studio we used was upstairs, had an oak floor, a wall of mirrors with a bar and white walls. There were changing rooms a little down the corridor that had showers as well.
The dance kit was nearly completely black – a half sleeved leotard with a mid-thigh length skirt and white dance tights. We had a ten minute warm up leaving half an hour for actual dancing. I quite liked shorter dance lessons, I found that I remembered more of the choreography. I'd met the dance instructor before. Her name was Rachel Evans and she'd come to see a couple of performances I'd been in as the theatre I did them at was close to where she lived. She used to be in the Royal Ballet, but had to leave for whatever reason when she was twenty. After that she went to university to do dance, trained to be a teacher and here she was. Now thirty five years old she still had a ballerina's grace, but had short spiky hair that was the exact opposite of ballerina.
"Ok, class, let's get straight to it," the other dance teacher Master Bezukladnikov, a man who'd formerly been in the Russian National Ballet, said and clapped his hands together. He was tall and lithe, only thirty years old and had thick, blonde hair which he kept in a side parting that had a wave at the front. Blue eyes looked out at us with a merry twinkle.
There were only eight of us in the class, an even split of boys and girls which meant one thing and one thing only – lots of duets. Josh from my music class was sat on one side of me and Chi was on the other. She looked cute as a button in her kit. All of us were in ballet shoes. All the other girls had plain white ribbons, but I had one pale green, the other pale blue so that when I was learning new bits of choreography I could easily see which foot was where.
"By some luck," Master Bezukladnikov continued, his Russian accent not thick, but stronger than just a lilt, "all of you have done ballet before. The boys in the Sunday class I teach and the girls outside of school. All of us from the same early age too, so we should all be at the same level, yes? Well," he clapped his hands together again not giving us a chance to answer his question. "What better way to get to know each other than the Romeo and Juliet duet? For this week though we're going to be doing technique to make sure you are all up to scratch and so that Master Evans and myself can decide to who pair all of you up with. Once we've decided your pairs we'll split you up into two classes of four, so two pairs. We'll be doing this for about, ar, six weeks. So eighteen hours plus whatever you may decide to do outside of class time. Ok, let's get going. Two lines of four, but stagger yourselves so we can see all of you. Master Evans..." he gestured for our other teacher to lead us through the technical warm up.
We worked solidly for the next half hour and spend the last five minutes doing a cool down. The whole lesson had been really easy just doing foot- and arm- work and didn't even work up a sweat.
Then, finally, it was back to Walpole for chambers. I dumped my morning stuff in my room first, changed back into my uniform after, got the books I needed for literature and then headed down to the dining room for food. It was a round of toast and a cup of tea or juice each. Chi and I met up with Clara in the tea queue and then we found Ben and Tarq sat at a table with George, the house captain.
"Hey, after dinner can you three come into the big lounge?" George asked. "We're going to have a chat about the competition on Sunday. All the musical people are going to be there."
"Sure," Clara said. "Any ideas yet?"
"I'm not musical really, I just have to be there because I'm captain. I think Master and Dame Clarke are putting all the thinking into it. How's Eton so far?"
"Great!" Clara exploded. "Music is really good. We had a competition with the boys of who could play Rule Britannia the fastest and Grace nearly fainted."
"Yeah, the king told me to check on you when I saw you," he said. "He also said it had a lot to do with his son," he turned his eyes to Ben.
He shrugged. "She decided to not breathe, not me."
"You ok, though?" George asked.
I nodded. "Fine, thank you."
"And your other class?"
"I had dance with Chi and then music again."
"I can't wait until next week," Chi said. "Technique and deciding who to pair us with is all well and good. But I want to dance."
"What are you going to be doing?"
"Ballet duets. Romeo and Juliet."
"I went to see that a few months ago with Mum and Dad on long leave. It's a good one."
"I've seen it a bunch of times. I love it," she said a little dreamily. "My aunt and uncle take me."
"Parents not into ballet?" he asked.
"They live in a small village in Japan making silk. My aunt and uncle took me in when I was born because they can't afford to look after me. But I go back for the holidays. This is actually my first time boarding."
"Why don't your parents come here?" Ben asked softly.
"Mum's parents. Mum and Dad care for them, but they can't fly." She shrugged, but I saw the same internal struggle within her as I often felt. Her parents had to do it and she understood it, but she didn't like it. "My aunt and uncle pay for their internet bill and any computer repairs they might need. I get to video call them once a week."
"So you'll be up early on Sundays then?"
She nodded. "They stay up a little late. I get up early. It's not ideal, but it works."
"George, come and see this!" someone across the room called.
George left and we chatted about classes to each other. Ben was doing literature, history, law and politics. I wondered how much that had to do with him liking the subjects and how well they fit together compared to his role as the future king. It hit me just then, as he was taking me to my painting and drawing class, that I was talking to the future king. We'd all left chambers early so that we could find our way to our next classes and Ben had offered to walk me to mine. He could take a slightly round about rout to get to law from here.
"You ok?" he asked.
"Oh, yeah. Fine."
"The realisation hit you?" he asked a little meanly. "Oooh, I'm talking to the future king." He kicked a stone into the road dinging it off the wheel of a parked car. "Surprised it didn't happen in music. With all you girls here everywhere I go people stare at me."
"I'm sorry. I just..."
"You just what?" he demanded and stopped right in front of me. He looked down his nose at me, eyes narrowed and lips a thin line. I'd never seen him angry before since I hardly known him, but there was a video clip of his father being angry with one of Ben's distant relatives and he'd gone all thin lipped scary looking too. Ben might have his mother's face, but the rest of him was all his father. It wasn't surprising since the queen had died in childbirth.
I took a step back from him and looked at the floor for a moment so that I didn't cry. When I looked up he was walking back the way we'd come. The camera that was following me was focusing on him.
"Oh, come on, leave him alone. Once he's done university he's got a life time of cameras following him," I said to the guy who was on the camera. I'd completely forgotten his name.
"She's got a point," Jessica said to him and he swung the camera round. "We'll cut that bit out as well."
"Thank you. Now, do you have any idea where art is?"
"I've got a map," the camera guy said. He pulled it out of his pocket and passed it to me.
I spent a few moments studying it and then started walking. It took about ten minutes to get there as I kept referring to the map. In that class we were put straight to work doing a sketch book and artist research, much like the classes I took at Park. The cameras didn't have much to film so they left after about fifteen minutes. I let out a sigh of relief when they went. No doubt they were going to be back for literature as I shared that with Ben. Chi and Clara were in the lesson too.
When I got there Ben was already sat with some boys from another house. When he saw me walk in his eyes narrowed a little and he shot a look across the room to where Chi and Clara sat with a couple of guys and chatting to them in soft tones. The camera crew were already stationed near them sort of making me want to sit somewhere else. I knew they'd only follow me though so I sat with them. The room was done up like a lecture hall, but a really fancy one. It was all done in really old wood that had been carved on the front and had bits of metal on the corners and around the bottom. There was an interactive white board at the front though.
"I'm Gerard," the guy I was sat next to said. He was pretty tanned, though the tell tale pale area around his eyes told me it was from being on holiday. Brown hair was cut short and sharp and grey eyes squinted a little behind really thick glasses. "I'm in Chi's sculpting class. You're Grace, right?"
I nodded. "Yeah. Nice to meet you."
Someone else came in, apologised to the teacher for being a little late and then the lessons began. Copies of Dracula were handed out. I grinned thinking back to my interview.
"We're not going to actually read any of this today," the teacher, a really old guy called Master English said from behind his desk. "But I want you to have read the first diary entry for tomorrow. Today we're going to go over themes that we'll encounter and some historical context as well as a little about Bram Stoker. First of all, has anyone read it before?"
My hand went up, but no one else's.
"Your name?" he asked.
"Grace Bennett, Sir."
"Grace, can you tell us when the book was first published?"
No was the answer to that. Not exactly. "Eighteen ninety... six?"
"Close. Ninety seven."
We all made a note of that and then Sir launched straight into historical context and what themes those individual things would bring up. That lasted pretty much the whole lesson and then it was dinner (here meaning lunch) time. All the way back to Walpole, it wasn't far, Ben stayed as far away from me as possible and when he saw Tarq up ahead he left us altogether to catch up with him.
"What's up with him?" Chi asked and looked directly at me. Clara did too.
"How do you know it's my fault?" I asked.
"Because he was fine at break, he took you to art and has been off since?" she asked. "And it's you he's not talking to."
"I didn't talk either."
Clara sighed. "Grace, what happened?"
I clutched my books and the art supplies I'd been given closer to my chest. "Have you had the 'he's our future king' realisation yet?"
They were both silent for a moment as we walked. They looked at one another and then Clara said, "We've both already met him. My dad's in the army. The Grenadiers. Once when Ben was younger, like seven, he was hit by a car near my house. Not badly, just sort of clipped."
I remembered it being all over the news. I nodded. "I remember it happening."
"His body guard brought him to my house just across the road. I don't think he remembers that I was there though. Since then he's kinda just been the kid who balled his eyes out all over my dad," she said with a shrug.
"And he visited Concorde last year," Chi said. "He joined in with my sculpting class. I taught him how to make a clay pot on a wheel."
"Oh," I said and looked to the ground.
"Why do you ask?" Clara asked.
I sighed. "I realised earlier and he sort of got a bit annoyed. Then he went on about everyone staring at him and walked off."
"Well, I bet being stared at is pretty annoying," she said.
"It is," I huffed. "When he was showing me around on interview day I got annoyed with the people staring as we walked passed them."
"He's probably also a bit upset with not being able to see his dad for about a year," she continued. "Think about it, he won't even see him during the holidays unless he flies out to wherever he is. Even then he's not going to have his dad to himself. He'll be meeting people, going to posh dinners or whatever, giving speeches, have cameras following him around and all that."
"He probably didn't really mean it," Chi said. "He's just got a lot going on."
I sighed. "Yeah."
We got back to the house then and Chi dashed to catch the door before it shut. We were asked to gather in the girls' lounge. Once we were all gathered Mrs. Clarke told us what happened every day after classes. We were on a rolling basis going to be doing sport activates this term. There were different ones we could choose from and we could pick two. We'd spend three days a week doing each of them and which day was dependant on our year. We were also encouraged to pick up at least two clubs to be a part of. We were given lists and had to give our options into her within five minutes.
There were a lot of team games, but I'd never been all that good at sport so I looked for the individual ones. There were quite a few, but that was mostly because the athletics things were listed separately. In the end I went with yoga as a minor sport and water sports (river). The clubs I picked were choir (not church) and orchestra.
"Ok," Mrs. Clarke said and looked over her list. "Water sports three times a week – Monday, Wednesday and Friday for two hours, clubs are both on Saturday either side of lunch." She wrote everything down for me. "You've got twenty minutes to get to the pool. You've got to pass a test before you can go in the river."
"Ok, thank you, Ma'am."
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Updated on time this time! Phew! Hope you like the chapter! :D