FOXES, page 15
And someone was.
Shafeen, I thought. I’d half expected him. That kiss had been an invitation, as surely as a card pushed beneath a door. Even Henry couldn’t keep us apart for long.
But then I saw the bone-white curve of a naked back, and the blond hair like silver in the moonlight. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my room.’ There it was, that cut-glass upper-class English voice. ‘Can I get in? It’s jolly cold.’
‘I guess if it’s your room, it’s your bed. Just … just keep your distance.’
He got under the covers and we faced each other, my head on one pillow, his head on the other.
I looked at him, he looked at me. Here was Greer MacDonald, there was Henry de Warlencourt. We didn’t touch. We didn’t do anything, we just looked, each drinking the other in. In the near dark this Henry didn’t look like himself – the gold hair silver, the blue eyes black. This was the Henry from the other side of the Looking Glass, the Henry from the ether. Did everyone look like this in the Valley of the Shadow of Death?
He took my hand. He was warm for a ghost. Then he did something odd. He raised it to his face, found my branded thumb and kissed it. Then it came to me.
I’d done this to him.
I’d let him fall Through the Looking Glass.
I was a Manslayer.
I looked at our hands together, clasped tightly. I remembered then the top of the waterfall – his fingertips grazing mine as he fell back into space.
And then I said something I’d been thinking about a lot, something I’d wanted to say for a year. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t save you. Even though you were a monster.’
He smiled. ‘If I was a monster, why did you try?’
I thought about this. ‘Because if I didn’t, that would have made me a monster.’
‘Then what’s this?’ He waggled my thumb.
I didn’t pull it away, but I said, ‘I’m not a killer.’
‘I’m not a killer either.’
‘Then why did you want to kill me?’
Before he could answer there was a sound at the door – that familiar little grate of metal on metal as an unseen hand turned the handle. Henry sat up with a start, backing away in terror. I’d never seen him afraid before, even when he met his end. The blond hair was ruffled, and there was a sheen of sweat on his moonlit skin.
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘It’s only your mum. She still comes in to kiss you goodnight, you know.’
The handle turned back on itself and footsteps trod away. He lay back down, smiling, and put his hands behind his head. I could see the dark shadow of hair under his arm. ‘Dear mater.’
‘Your father misses you too.’
The smile disappeared. ‘I doubt that.’ He turned once again to face me. ‘Ask him about my childhood. Ask him about his “parenting” style. See what he says to that.’ Henry’s voice was heavy with scorn.
‘Are you saying it was somewhat … Medieval?’
‘You said it.’
I remembered then what he’d said before, that other dream-Henry by my hospital bed, hinting at the horror of his childhood, by way of some explanation as to how he’d become what he had become. I remembered, too, the poor baby elephants tied to obedience by a puny rope. By the time they were old enough to break free, they no longer wanted to.
I tried to recall how Rollo had been when he’d spoken of Henry. ‘But he seemed quite tearful when he was talking to Shafeen. About a man and his heir.’
‘Well, he has one now, doesn’t he? Louis, Lord Longcross. Sounds rather well, doesn’t it? A good bit of alliteration.’ The scorn was back.
Then I remembered. ‘In the hospital you said it suited you to let Louis be the heir for a little while longer. What if he enjoys being the lord? What if he doesn’t let you back in? Like Mosca?’
‘He will.’
‘Henry?’
‘Greer?’ It always shook me when he spoke my name.
‘Do foxes mean anything to you?’
‘What a funny question.’
‘If it’s funny,’ I said, ‘then humour me.’
‘They are reddish dog-like creatures that one chases across the countryside,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘Why?’
‘Ty said: See if you can find out anything about Foxes.’
‘Who is Ty?’
‘Louis’s … girlfriend.’ Then I remembered something else. ‘She’s actually got a scholarship to STAGS in your name.’ In all the madness, that suddenly struck me as funny.
‘Ah yes.’
‘Did you meet Ty at Longcross?’
‘Meet? No. I was keeping somewhat of a … low profile.’
Then I twigged. I rose up on my elbow and studied him. ‘Why didn’t you ask me who Mosca is?’
‘What?’
‘You asked me who Ty is, even though if you were at Longcross you’ve actually seen her. I imagine she stood out quite a bit at the twins’ party. But you didn’t ask me who Mosca is.’
‘All right. Who is Mosca?’ he drawled, amused.
‘A character in Ben Jonson’s Volpone, as if you didn’t know.’ I was perfectly sure he did know. ‘Someone’s been reading the play. Downstairs in the library. Was it you? Were you getting ideas?’
He looked amused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Shh.’ He put a thumb to the lips he’d once kissed. Not a finger, but a thumb. It was all a bit Cape Fear, but hot. Officially, of course, I should have been outraged. Man shuts up woman by putting his thumb over her lips. But it just felt tender and fond.
‘Go to sleep now.’
And I must have done, because I don’t remember anything else.
When I woke up, of course he was gone. Dreams don’t hang around in the daytime. There was no impression of a Henry head on the opposite pillow, no golden hairs in the bed. Groggily and, if I’m honest, a bit regretfully, I got up and dressed for breakfast.
26
Cornellisen’s was the most Diagon Alley shop I’d ever seen outside of the Harry Potter movies.
We’d had a polite breakfast with the countess, at which I’d found it really hard to look at Shafeen. I hadn’t actually done anything with Henry (and, duh, it was all in my own subconscious), but the dream did feel kind of … cheaty. So I was extra affectionate as we took the Tube to Central London, almost to the point where I probably pissed Nel off a bit.
We’d got off at Tottenham Court Road, straight into the mental Christmas shopping mayhem that seems to grip everyone the week before Christmas. We then walked for a bit, and just as we got to a pretty part, the snow – as if on cue – started to fall. That gave the shop when we found it even more of a movie-set feel. The outside was painted a lovely aqua colour, with square Dickens-type shop windows, like in The Muppet Christmas Carol. When we went in the door, a little bell chimed above us, bobbing on a curl of bright brass.
Entering Cornellisen’s was like stepping into a rainbow. The walls were stacked high with every colour of paint in the spectrum, in tubes and pots and blocks and palettes. Not just paint, but pencils, crayons, pastels and every size of paintbrush from huge hairy ones down to the thinnest little whisker. There were also reams of multicoloured paper and shelves of sketch books from ring-bound to leather-bound. The smell was a weird hybrid; partly chemical, partly animal. Paint and bristle, ancient and modern, Medieval and Savage. It was all very cool, but my heart sank a little. We weren’t going to learn anything from picking up art supplies for the countess’s boredom-busting hobby.
The shop was empty except for this chilled-looking hipster behind the counter. Not for him the manic Christmas crowds. He wore a check shirt, had long hair twisted into a man-bun and this amazing waxed moustache, which looked not unlike two paintbrushes repurposed as face furniture. He looked oddly appropriate as a staff member for that place – like he’d just stepped out of Victorian times. Behind him, floor to ceiling, were rows of square black drawers set into the wall and numbered in gold like an advent calendar. It gave the place an even more Christmassy look.
‘Greetings,’ said the hipster, getting out of the chair reeaaally slowly. ‘Can I help you?’
‘We hope so,’ said Shafeen. As this had been his idea, we’d agreed he would do the talking. He handed over the little card we’d found in Volpone. De Warlencourt 21/12.
‘Ah yes,’ said the chilled-out fellow. He opened one of the drawers behind him – number seventeen, it was – pulled a volume out of it and brought it back to the counter.
As soon as he laid it down, I recognised it.
Although it was brand new it looked really old, with one of those aged greenish-black leather covers that on books they call ‘morocco’. The hipster stood the book on its end and showed us the spine. The black leather was inscribed with a decade tooled in gilt numbers.
Our decade.
Then he laid the book tenderly on its back and opened it at random. The dark volume was as creamy white inside as the wound of an axe. He riffled through the pages, and the paper was as thick as quality, smelling freshly milled and slightly chemical. That was the modern tang lying within the antique leather aroma of the shop. The pages were blank and unlined, ready to be inscribed with death.
It was a game book.
None of us looked at the others. We all just looked at the book. We all knew what it meant.
It was the hipster who broke the silence. ‘Is it OK?’
‘Yes,’ said Shafeen softly. ‘Yes, I imagine that’s exactly what’s required.’
‘Cool,’ said the hipster.
We all smiled politely as the guy started getting bits and pieces together to wrap the thing up. It suddenly occurred to me, with a lurch of panic, that we might be required to pay for this prince among books, but the hipster wrapped it obligingly in this lovely paisley paper, securing it with a golden sticker saying L. Cornellisen, without asking for any of our cash. I guessed it was all pre-paid. ‘Need a bag?’
I was about to say yes, as a book as precious as this could easily get trashed in the snow, but Shafeen said no so abruptly that I fired him a glance. I’d never picked him for a massive eco-warrior, but he turned down the plastic bag like he was Greta Thunberg. He took the package in his hands, just as it was, and made as if to head for the door. Nel and I were still standing there like fools when he turned back.
‘Actually, you know what? I think we might pop to the British Museum, since we’re in the area and all that. So can we come back and pick it up after?’
‘Sure,’ said the hipster calmly. ‘We’re open until five.’
‘Great,’ said Shafeen, placing the package tenderly back on the counter. ‘But in case we miss you – you know, if the exhibition is really amazing or something – can my … uncle pick it up another day? We’ll tell him it’s ready.’
‘No worries,’ said the hipster, sinking back in his chair again and opening his book. ‘Catch you later. Or not. Whatever.’
Nel and I shared a WTF look, but there was nothing else to do but follow Shafeen out of the shop.
‘Shafeen, what the actual?’
‘Shh,’ he said. ‘Let’s go towards the British Museum in case he’s watching.’
‘You mean he’s not nailed to that chair?’
We walked the short distance down the road to the great grey frontage of the British Museum. It looked not unlike the Ashmolean – pillared portico, grand sweeping steps – but this was way bigger: epic and impressive, the daddy of all museums. We sat on the steps, among the sea of selfie-takers, and when we were settled on the chill stone Nel said, ‘What was all that about?’
Shafeen turned up his collar against the cold. ‘It occurred to me that if we pick up the book, and then they go to get it and it’s not there, there might be some awkward questions.’
I saw. And he’d been quite clever with that little fake-out that he was going to take the book, but then turning back to leave it. ‘There still might be anyway. What if Rollo goes in and the hipster says, I met your Indian nephew the other day?’
Shafeen shrugged. ‘He might. But he didn’t strike me as a massively chatty type.’
‘And,’ added Nel, ‘unless they get it soon, we’ll be long gone.’
‘Well …’ I said.
They turned to me, both with wary expressions. I saw that they knew what I was about to say.
‘We have to go back there. You know we have to go back there.’ I didn’t have to say where there was. They both got it.
‘They’ve got the book. They’ve got the victim. They’ve got the meet all arranged. Rollo even bent the law so they can have a jolly good Boxing Day hunt. We can’t leave Ty to her fate.’
Shafeen exhaled, his breath winter white. He spoke to the air. ‘She’s right, you know.’
‘We’ll just ask them tonight if we can go,’ I said, reminding myself of the night I’d begged Louis to let us go to Longcross.
‘Well.’ Shafeen slapped his hands decisively on his knees. ‘That’s settled then.’ He hauled me to my feet, and I helped Nel up in turn. We didn’t even go in the British Museum but turned our back on the building and everything in it – a big colonial toy box we didn’t have the heart to play with today.
We all walked sombrely down the steps, walking away from history, walking towards it, a little funeral procession.
For me, every step was a sigh.
I’d known all along, really, that I wasn’t done with Longcross.
27
At dinner that night we asked if we could go to the Boxing Day meet.
We all agreed that Shafeen – the golden boy – should do it, because it honestly didn’t feel like Rollo would refuse him anything. And indeed he didn’t.
‘Capital!’ Rollo exclaimed, and from my short acquaintance with him I knew this was his highest expression of joy. This calls for a bottle of fizz. Bates –’ he summoned the butler – ‘the Veuve Clicquot ’84.’ As Bates left the room, Rollo rubbed his hands until the knuckles cracked. ‘This is really wonderful. This could be the making of you, Hardy. I mean, Shafeen.’ He leaned forward and tapped his nose. ‘And I’ll tell you why. I just had word that one of the royal princes will be there, and quite a few of the cabinet too.’
He was all smiles, as was his wife. It was odd, I reflected, sitting there in my red dress, having dinner with psychopaths – and not, of course, my first time. Odd that they were perfectly good company, just as their son had been. Odd that we knew they were planning a manhunt, or woman-hunt, and we could all just sit here, shooting the breeze, waiting for Bates to bring up the special bottle of champagne, instead of running from the room screaming. I was reminded of my day fishing with Henry. It was one of the most fun days of my life – right up until the bit when he pushed me in the lake.
Henry’s father eyed us all fondly. ‘I suppose you can ride, all of you?’
We’d discussed this on the way back from town. Nel, of course, had her own pony (called Gary, which I thought was just the best thing in the world). Shafeen had been riding, bareback and saddled, since he was old enough to hold his head up. And I’d learned in a most peculiar way, but entirely in keeping with my strange itinerant life with my dad. One summer holiday, when I was in Year 7, my dad had been filming in Austria, a documentary about those Lipizzaner stallions. You know the ones? They are these really amazing horses which are born black, then turn completely white when they are grown, then they get taught how to dance. It sounds really circus-y, but it’s not – it’s sort of grand and noble. Those little black foals end up as white stallions in golden ballrooms in Vienna, rearing and revolving in a ghostly kind of ballet. Anyway, the point of all that is that I had to stay at the Lipizzaner stud farm for the whole summer, so my dad got me riding lessons while I was there. I got pretty good – I mean, I can ride, and jump, and basically stay on a horse, but whether or not the Austrian style I was taught would pass the test at the hoity-toity Longcross meet was another matter.
‘We stable some horses in Hyde Park,’ said Rollo. ‘Why don’t you ride out tomorrow? Unfortunately I have some business in town.’ We looked at each other nervously, all hoping that the ‘business’ wasn’t picking up the game book from Cornellisen’s. ‘But Caro’ll take you. Won’t you, old girl?’
The countess didn’t look old at that moment at all, but about twenty-five. She had that shining Christmas-tree look about her, just as she had the day we’d met. ‘Of course,’ she said keenly. ‘I need to get my eye in before the meet, just like the rest of you.’
Bates came back in – without the champagne, I noticed. I guessed they’d run out of Rollo’s fave. But Rollo didn’t seem to mind. ‘Bates – could you call the livery stables and have the horses ready for tomorrow? Four mounts.’
‘Very good, my lord.’
Caro turned to us. ‘We’ll go directly after breakfast. The weather should be perfect for it. It will be such fun.’ She looked entirely happy and sounded entirely sane.
For the rest of the meal Henry’s parents were utterly charming. They were the consummate hosts, and they had this positive air about them that I struggled to define. After thinking about it really hard, I could only describe their air as triumphant. And I came away from that dinner feeling that our asking to go to Longcross wasn’t really a surprise to them at all.
28
When I got back to my room I texted Ty again. This time I was more specific.
We think the Boxing Day meet is a Ty hunt
And then,
Hold on
We’re coming to get you
I waited for a moment, staring at the bright little screen. There was no reply, as I knew there wouldn’t be. I lay flat out on the bed, fully dressed, as Reynard the fox watched from the wall. I was so tired that it took me some time to realise there was something on my pillow. There, in the golden circle of light from the bedside lamp, lay a dog rose.
I picked it up and studied the velvet curling petals, and clutched it to my heart, the thorns piercing the material of my frock. I caught sight of a movement in the mirror, turned in a panic and saw only myself.
