STAGS 2, page 15
We all stared at the panelling behind it.
What we’d expected to find was a manuscript.
What we found was a door.
Scene viii
We all stood back in a little semicircle. For a moment no one moved. Then Cass stepped forward and laid her hand on the wrought-iron latch. It lifted with an ancient creak.
The mouth of the doorway was blacker than black, and a smell came from inside, an ancient, damp, stoney smell, which told us that the door hadn’t been opened for centuries.
Ty was the first to speak. ‘Are we going in?’
‘Of course we’re going in,’ I said, putting those dumb girls in horror movies firmly out of my mind.
‘But shouldn’t we wait until morning?’ asked Nel a little nervously. ‘Bring some more lights?’
‘No,’ said Cass, with the voice of command she’d been using ever since we’d come to Longcross. ‘We go now.’
And she took the hurricane lamp from my hand and walked into the dark. Louis followed, just one step behind her, face set as if he were on a mission. Ty went after him, as they seemed joined at the hip these days, and I followed Ty, with Nel bringing up the rear.
Our feet first met a winding staircase, taking us down and down into the bowels of the house. The stone steps were slippery, and when I touched the walls to steady myself they felt damp. At times, Cass would be a turn of the stair away from the rest of us, and the light receded completely for a few terrifying seconds until we caught up. But eventually the passage straightened out into what was clearly a subterranean tunnel. At this point the passage began to smell more earthy than stoney and became more natural, if that makes sense, with crumbly walls of soil and the odd tree root poking out of the ceiling. I would have been afraid of the earth falling in if it wasn’t for these strong supporting beams every few feet, ancient timbers but strong as steel, holding up the tunnel.
We trudged along the passageway for ages, and I got so used to it that I almost stopped feeling afraid. We even started to chatter and giggle a little, in staccato, nervous bursts. I was just getting used to the notion that we’d be walking all night when Cass stopped ahead of us. We all barrelled into the back of each other, comically, as if we were in the Scooby-Doo movie.
‘What’s up?’
‘Door,’ she said succinctly, and we all bunched up to see.
It was a pretty heavy-duty door. With a keyhole. But no key. If I’d had to take a guess, I would say it was made of oak, and it had those wrought-iron studs that the doors had at STAGS. The kind of door that says if someone doesn’t want you to get through it, you ain’t getting through it. And our way was blocked by something even more sinister: there was no handle on our side of the door. No handle at all, not even a rope, or a hole to put a finger in. The keyhole wasn’t big enough to get any leverage, which we tried, and in any case it was blocked by a key inserted from the other side. We tried everything – pushing, pulling, all of us, one of us. But it was no use. ‘Great.’ I said. ‘Now what?’
‘Well, we can’t get through to wherever it is,’ said Cass in a voice of frustration.
‘Can you guess where we might be,’ I asked, ‘from how long we’ve been walking, and the direction and stuff?’
‘Not really,’ she said, ‘except that the library is in the north tower, so we’ve probably walked under Longwood. Although it’s hard to tell from the twists and turns of the staircase; it might have put us back in quite the other direction.’
‘Guess we found one of those old priests’ holes then,’ said Ty.
‘Yes,’ said Cass. ‘But clearly you had to be let out of this tunnel, by whoever was on the other side of this door. I guess there was some special knock or something.’
‘Shall we try it?’ asked Nel. ‘We might be able to guess the right one.’
‘Don’t be a dumb bunny,’ I said, remembering her crack about Esmé Stuart. ‘There’s not going to be anyone there now. Who d’you think is waiting for us? That crumbly old knight from Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade?’
‘I dunno, do I?’ she said defensively. ‘What do you suggest then?’
‘We’ll just have to go back,’ I said, ‘and try to figure out where the tunnel goes in the morning. Maybe there are old maps, you know, in that estate room that we –’
Just at that moment I was interrupted by the most chilling sound I think I’ve ever heard in my life.
It was coming from the tunnel behind us, and it was the unearthly howl of a dog.
Scene ix
The sound was distant but growing louder, echoing down the tunnel.
We froze for a second as the realisation that we were trapped and we couldn’t go back reached us all. Then, as one, we turned and started desperately shoving at the door. I had one eye on Nel, as I knew that if I was this terrified, it must be so much worse for her, with her (now very understandable) dog phobia.
‘It must be Brutus,’ I hissed at Cass as we pushed. ‘He’s Perfect’s dog. Can’t you get Perfect to call him off?’
‘Yes, Greer, I’ll just go back and explain that to Brutus, shall I?’ she panted. ‘And Perfect’s probably not even with him. He does a circuit of the house every night to check it’s secure; Brutus probably saw the open door and came down it to follow our scent.’
‘Jesus.’
Brutus, if it was him, didn’t seem now like a huge, slightly scary dog who’d been lolloping along beside Perfect in snowy Longwood. He now seemed like some supernatural hellhound, bent on our destruction. I could see him in my mind’s eye, galloping down the tunnel, jaws wide, eyes afire.
Fire. ‘We’ll just have to break the hurricane lamp in his face when he gets here,’ I said, with courage I didn’t possess. ‘Then we can maybe overpower him.’
And then, of course, the light blew out, snuffed by some unholy draught swirling round the tunnel like demonic breath, probably caused by the movement of a running hound coming for us. We were in total darkness, pushing desperately on a door to nowhere.
Then, over all the row and panic, Nel shouted, ‘Look!’
We looked. In the new and total darkness, we could see a narrow band of light glowing under the door.
Someone was on the other side.
As one, we all started hammering and shouting.
‘Help!’
‘Let us in!’
‘Open the door!’
Nel clutched at her neck and started to scream hysterically, a jumble of words about hounds and hunts and Brutus and the fact that he was coming for her and he would tear her throat out. It was horrific. The canine footsteps came closer, and the howl was loud enough to curdle the blood. Now you could actually hear dog claws skittering on the earthen floor. Surely he was just around the next bend.
And then, a miracle.
The door gave way.
Some unseen hand had opened it from the other side.
We all piled through, honour and courage abandoned, pushing and shoving in a desperate scramble, and I fell into the arms of …
Shafeen.
Shafeen.
After a one-second embrace of utter relief and delight, he threw me aside and shoved the door shut, locking it at once with the wrought-iron key that at any other moment I’d have found comically large. A moment later, Brutus’s mass slammed against the door with a force and a howl that made us all jump back. And even that door, hardcore as it was, bulged inwards with the impact. ‘Everyone, hold the door!’ yelled Shafeen, and we all – except for Nel, who cringed away, gibbering with fear – pressed our weight against the door. We seemed to be there for eons, waiting for the next terrible bodyslam, but eventually the noise of barking subsided and, with a whimper, the beast turned and padded away.
Shafeen closed his eyes and put his forehead against the door. After a long moment he turned and slid down it until he was sitting on the stone floor, still with his eyes closed. A thousand and one questions crowded my mind. One of them, ridiculously, was how did he feel about me? ‘Don’t take this the wrong way, but what the hell are you doing here?’
He opened one eye and smiled, quite the old Shafeen.
‘Pleased to see you too, Greer.’
‘Of course I’m pleased.’ I was. I was really delighted. I’d missed him loads. ‘It’s just … how … who … when …?
‘I invited him,’ said Cass.
Of course. He’d said as much in our last row. Of course he had. I had forgotten. I turned to look at her.
‘He said he couldn’t travel with us because he had revision to do, but if I could send a car he would come up after dinner. So I did. And he did.’
I looked back at Shafeen, who had both eyes open now and was watching me with something like amusement. He did jazz hands as if to say ta-dah, like he’d performed some magic trick. Cass looked from Shafeen to me. ‘I assumed you knew he was coming …?’
There was not much I could say to that without totally letting everyone else know our business. ‘Of course I knew he was coming to Longcross,’ I bluffed. The others all looked at the floor as if they didn’t want to intrude on a private conversation. ‘I was just wondering what he was doing here.’
‘I came to pay my respects,’ he said sombrely. ‘Remember, we were too young to come to Henry’s funeral because we weren’t eighteen – only the Medievals could go, and the Old Abbot. When I got here it was too late for dinner so I thought I’d stroll over to the church and … pay my respects.’
‘What do you mean, “pay your respects”?’
He did one of those little nods, which means look.
I did a 180 and looked properly at where we’d ended up.
We were in a stone room with a cross-ribbed ceiling, just like the undercroft at STAGS where the choir practised. There were frescoes of saints, little shrines and carved memorial plaques on the walls with the name De Warlencourt and dates from centuries ago. Tombs loomed from the ancient shadows and at one end of the room stood a little altar, draped in a cloth of gold, with a silver cross standing on it.
‘It’s the secret chapel,’ I breathed.
Cass set the lamp aside. We didn’t need it now, because the place was a forest of lit candles. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Well – yes, in a way. I guess the priests and the family must have snuck out here to worship in secret. But they were actually hiding in plain sight – this is the crypt of a church. We’re in Longcross church.’
It clicked. Pay my respects. Longcross church. ‘Where Henry was …’
She nodded. ‘Yes. It’s also the family mausoleum.’
That explained the hundreds of white candles. I pointed at them. ‘Who lit these?’
‘The priest of Longcross. Father Wright. He says Masses for Henry’s soul. Told you, didn’t I? Catholic to the hilt.’
‘For Henry’s soul?’
‘That’s right. He’s here.’
She put a hand on the nearest, largest tomb.
When I’d thought about Henry’s funeral – and I’d thought about it a lot – I’d watched in my head the scene play out in a graveyard, with mourners in black throwing handfuls of earth and red roses onto a hardwood coffin at the bottom of a six-foot hole, like that scene in The Godfather: Part III. I hadn’t computed that rich people, really rich people, have tombs, so they can all live together after death, a jumble of wealthy bones. This tomb was an ornate thing, carved around the sides with running stags. The lid (if that’s the right word) had a pair of stone antlers carved into it and a list (if that’s also the right word) of names. All of them were de Warlencourts. I recognised some of the Christian names. First on the list, Conrad. The penultimate name: Nazereth. And newest of all: Henry.
I walked forward and bent my head over Henry’s silent stone. I hadn’t expected to see him again like this. I put my hand on the cold marble. ‘Hello,’ I said. I moved my fingers across the whole of his carved name, HENRY CHARLES PHILIP ARTHUR GEORGE DE WARLENCOURT 1999–2017. And there was more writing too, across the very bottom of the tomb. It was easy to make out, because of the sunburst of candles. It said:
MISERERE MEI, DEUS, SECUNDUM MAGNAM MISERICORDIAM TUAM
As I murmured the phrase out loud to myself, it seemed vaguely familiar. ‘What does it mean?’ I asked.
‘No idea,’ said Cass tightly. And I remembered how much she’d loved Henry too, and so I didn’t ask any more. I suddenly felt incredibly sad, and knew in another moment I would cry. It was hard to believe Henry was there, under that cold slab, under my hand.
I was not the only one thinking that.
Louis, demonic in the candlelight, said, in a voice far too loud to be used over a coffin, ‘You claimed you never saw the body, didn’t you? Let’s see it now, shall we?’
Ty laid a hand on his arm ‘Louis –’
He shrugged off the hand. ‘No. Let’s find out once and for all.’
And then, unbelievably, he put all his weight against the lid of the tomb and began to shove it sideways.
I looked at Cass. Everybody looked at Cass. How was she taking this horrific turn of events?
She stood, still as one of the statues, with an unreadable look on her face. Then she did the last thing I would’ve expected. She put her shoulder to the tomb and pushed. Then Shafeen, Shafeen, put his shoulder next to hers and pushed too. Then Ty lined up next to Louis. I looked at Nel, who shrugged and added her weight too. I looked at them all, shoving as if overtaken by some spell, some dark enchantment, and then, led by a strange compulsion beyond my control, I walked forward like I was in a dream. I bent my shoulder to the cold stone and started to shove. I was suddenly seized by a desperate desire to see what was inside. To see him.
My strength, puny as it was, was evidently the catalyst. For as soon as I started to push the stone answered, grating a fraction of a centimetre off its alignment with a gravelly, echoing groan. The entire top of the tomb sheared sideways, releasing a triangle of darkness within and a breath of the grave. Dust and decay and a smell I’d never inhaled before, which I realised, with a chill, must be the smell of death. We shoved the tombstone sideways until it almost formed an X with the casket, then stopped before it could fall off.
We all stood back, silent, looking at each other, unable to believe what we’d done. Unable to look. Even Louis, who’d started this madness, hung back. In the end it was me who took a warm candle in my hand, stepped forward and leaned over the dark.
I don’t know what I expected to see – Henry, perfect and embalmed as if he slept, some shredded Dawn-of-the-Dead zombie or a picked-clean skeleton from Jason and the Argonauts. I saw none of those things.
Disbelievingly, I reached in my hand and lifted out the only thing that was in that tomb.
Loosely bound in blood-red ribbon, it was a quill-written manuscript.
Scene i
I held the pages high as if they were the baby Lion King, so everyone could see.
Shafeen, Nel and Ty wore treasure hunters’ expressions of wide-eyed excitement. But neither of the de Warlencourt twins were looking at the manuscript. They were staring down into the casket, and their expressions couldn’t have been more different.
Cass looked incredibly joyful.
Louis’s face was a mask of horror.
I couldn’t think about their family matters right now, or the implications of what we’d found – or rather not found – in the casket. I was just, A) relieved I didn’t have to see Henry’s bones, and B) made up to have found, at last, what must be Act Five.
Despite my excitement, I slid the blood-red ribbon carefully from the edges of the manuscript, aware of the value of what I was holding.
I looked at the first page, front and back. Then the second. Then the third. Then lost all care and riffled through the rest of the pages like they were cards. ‘What the hell?’ I exclaimed.
‘What is it?’ asked Nel. ‘Is it Act Five?’
‘I don’t know. It’s just a jumble of letters.’ I looked up disbelievingly. ‘They’re in code.’
‘We can’t see properly here,’ said Shafeen. ‘Let’s go upstairs to the church. There’s electric light there.’
I’d forgotten he’d come from upstairs. His idea seemed a good one, so, having replaced the lid of the tomb as respectfully as possible, we went up a stone stairway into the church proper.
At any other time, it would have been a pretty village church. At nearly midnight on a late-November night, it was creepy as hell, even when Louis found the light switch and turned the electric lights full on. The stained-glass windows were blank and black, the air as cold as stone. We all huddled together on one of the pews and looked properly at the pages. They were all gobbledegook. We took a couple each and perused them under the stark light. ‘Look for words you can recognise,’ I said. Not a single intelligible word was written on any of mine. ‘Anyone?’ I asked hopefully.
‘Nope.’
‘Nada.’
‘Nothing.’
‘Sorry, Greer.’
Louis didn’t answer. Instead he thrust his pages back at me impatiently and jumped to his feet. ‘I can’t waste time with this play tonight. There are bigger things at stake.’
‘Where are you going?’ asked Ty quickly.
‘I’m going to wake Father Wright. I want to know where my cousin’s body is.’
‘I’m coming with you,’ said Cass, getting up too.
‘Shall I come?’ offered Ty, her voice full of concern.
‘No,’ said Louis, his face set. ‘This is a family matter.’
And she shrank back, like a dog kicked by her beloved master.
As the great door of the church slammed shut, Shafeen put a comforting hand on Ty’s shoulder. ‘Don’t take it to heart,’ he said. ‘It’s quite a big deal, losing your cousin’s body. They have to sort it out.’
‘They’ll never be able to see the priest at this hour though, will they?’ asked Nel. ‘It must be nearly midnight.’
‘They’re the de Warlencourts,’ I said, ‘and he’s their priest. They can see him at whatever time they like.’
‘I wonder where he is,’ mused Ty.
