STAGS 5, page 19
‘Come in.’ Shafeen dragged me inside. The little sitting room was warm, since the fire was still glowing, and Shafeen’s sheets and blankets were all over the sofa. He swept them away. ‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘I’ll make you some coffee.’
‘No time,’ I said agitatedly, and stayed standing.
The others filtered into the room in ones and twos, wearing variously T-shirts, pyjama bottoms and tartan blankets.
‘What’s going on?’ asked Nel.
‘Henry’s gone to fight a duel with Louis,’ I repeated. ‘And I don’t know where.’
Ratio, bless him, got the point straight away. ‘We’ll send the HAWK up,’ he said. He grabbed the drone and phone from the console and we all headed outside. Ratio activated the drone from the palm of his hand in the Savage version of what Henry did with Regina, when he’d flown the falcon from his wrist. The HAWK mounted into the sky, high, high over the Peel Tower. It banked as he sent it over the castle and towards the cliffs. We all huddled round the phone, which Ratio held landscape-wise in his hands. He had it on infrared, the mode which had saved his own life the night before. Desperately I squinted at the screen, willing the heat signature of a figure to appear, a body I now felt I knew as well as my own. After a few roundish blobs of warm oranges and reds made my heart leap – ‘Deer or sheep,’ said Ratio – we saw two similar-sized figures striding towards open ground. One was taller than the other. ‘That’s them!’ I exclaimed. ‘Where are they?’
Ratio studied the picture-in-picture of a real-time map of Skye in the corner of the screen. ‘They’re going north along the cliff walk, past the castle. It looks like they’re heading to Dunvegan Viewpoint. Quickest route would be to go through the castle – past the walled garden and then the round garden.’
‘Right,’ said Shafeen, cramming his feet into his trainers. ‘Let’s get moving. Remember, this isn’t a fair fight.’
‘What?’ said Ratio.
‘It isn’t a fair fight,’ Shafeen repeated. ‘It’s rigged. Both those pistols are designed to kill the same person.’ Shafeen turned to me. ‘Don’t you remember? In my father’s diary, when he was at Longcross in 1969. Rollo de Warlencourt and his own bunch of Medievals did this kind of haunted-house thing where they put out all the lights and scared my father half to death. He was so freaked that he took a duelling pistol from the wall and shot at Rollo in the Long Gallery.’
‘You’re absolutely right,’ I said. ‘The pistol backfired, and Aadhish nearly shot his own ear off.’
‘That’s it. And do you remember what Rollo said? He said Aadhish used the Judas pistol. And then Gideon (who grew up to be the Old Abbot) said, If he’d used the Jesus one you wouldn’t be standing here.’
‘I’m not following,’ said Nel.
‘The de Warlencourts own a pair of antique duelling pistols,’ said Shafeen. ‘They used to hang on the wall at Longcross.’
‘Then they were moved to Castle MacLeod after the fire,’ I continued. ‘Cass told me.’
‘One of them, the Jesus pistol, fires true,’ said Shafeen, explaining as rapidly as he could. ‘The other one, the Judas pistol, is designed to backfire and kill anyone who shoots it.’
‘How do you tell the difference?’ asked Ty.
‘The Jesus one has a little cross on the handle, right way up,’ I said. ‘The Judas one has the same cross, but upside down.’ The details were ingrained in my memory.
‘And do the duellists know about this difference?’ Nathaniel asked the crucial question. ‘Louis and Henry, do they know?’
‘We don’t know.’ I looked at Shafeen, eyes wide. ‘We’ve got to go. Now.’
‘Yes,’ said Ratio. ‘Go. I’ve got you covered. The HAWK will be watching.’
‘And we’ll be right behind you,’ said Nathaniel, ‘with the police.’
Shafeen and I ran.
33
The short distance to the castle now seemed like an incredibly long way.
We just had to hope there were some formalities to get through before you fought a duel – maybe some trash talking between the two combatants like they did before boxing matches, or maybe measuring out the ten paces or something. Because if they got straight to it, we’d already be too late. As we ran, too breathless to speak, I thought, out of nowhere, about Ben Jonson. The playwright had fought a duel in Hoxton Fields with Henry’s ancestor and killed him. Jonson was thrown in Newgate Prison and branded on his thumb with an M for Manslayer, the same brand that I bore on my own thumb. But Henry had no such brand. He wasn’t a manslayer – yet. And Henry had never, despite the dark games of the Order, killed anyone. Jonson had saved himself from the noose by reciting the ‘neck verse’, but if Henry got the Jesus pistol and killed Louis, there would be no release on a technicality for him. He would definitely be going to jail for the rest of his life. I was pretty sure that outside the rarefied little world of London’s STAGS Club (where I remembered they’d built an underground passage expressly for the purpose), duels were illegal. This was a lose/lose for Henry. If he got the Jesus pistol he would surely shoot Louis dead, as he was such a crack shot. But if he got the Judas pistol, he would shoot himself. As I ran I clenched my own left thumb in my fist, hard enough to hurt. I wasn’t a manslayer either. I’d been tried for the murder of a person who was still alive – for the moment. But if Henry died today, had I killed him after all? I’d been the one to set him on the path to goodness, and that had led to his downfall.
And crucially, did they know about the Jesus and Judas pair? The pistols had hung on the walls of Longcross Hall for centuries, until it burned down in the Boxing Day fire and the guns were moved to Castle MacLeod. Had the boys played with them as children? Had they been told by concerned parents of the pistols’ secrets? Did Louis realise he could rig the duel so that he would win either way, or was he, in his crazed and misplaced notion of honour, convinced that the righteousness of his cause would win the day?
As the sun lightened the eastern skies, we raced north as fast as we could. Past the walled garden, past the round garden, past the castle itself. We ran towards the cliff and the viewing point that Ratio had identified.
On the horizon, and in the dim of the dawn and the mist of the meadow, I could see the outline of a bulky figure – then, in the next instant, I realised it was two figures back to back. The figure cleaved in two and I thought I could identify Henry, but in the fog the two figures were so close in appearance that it was impossible at this distance. They began to pace away from each other and Shafeen and I began to yell and gesture wildly. I had no idea what I was shouting. My thudding heart and running feet outpaced their slow march, but we were still too far away to be heard. While my mouth screamed at them, another part of my brain – some cold, mathematical lobe – counted, inexorably, their steps.
One.
Two.
Three. The almost identical figures in tweeds walked in lockstep.
Four.
Five.
Six. Pistols held at their shoulders, pointing skywards.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine. Blond heads looking straight ahead, away from each other.
Ten.
The figures stopped and turned and time splintered and slowed. One of the figures raised his gun straight above his head, like a starting pistol, and, instead of pointing it at his opponent, pointed it harmlessly at the sky.
Alexander Hamilton, I thought.
It was Henry. Henry who had pointed his flintlock into infinity. Then I understood. He was attempting suicide by duel. He wouldn’t kill Louis, but he would allow Louis to kill him. I might have realised the terrible truth if I’d just stopped to think about it for one second. He’d had one first and last night with me and now he would rather die than go to jail. But it almost didn’t matter – if he had the Judas pistol, it didn’t matter where he pointed it. So long as he held it in his hand it would backfire the same way, the bullet travelling backwards along the line of his arm and into his brain.
‘No! ’ I screamed.
But it was too late. As I shouted, the deafening report of two guns going off sounded almost simultaneously, and twin flashes burst from the flintlock of each pistol, twenty paces apart. One blond young man fell to the ground, the other still stood, and for one dreadful, heart-stopping moment I could no longer be sure which was which.
Then, at last, we were upon them and we could see the truth.
Henry’s bullet had discharged harmlessly into the infinite blue of the sky.
Louis’s bullet had backfired, travelling along the line of his firing arm, through his right eye and into his brain.
34
I cannoned into Henry, enfolding him in a bone-crushing hug, face buried in his shoulder. ‘I thought I’d lost you.’
I felt my way down his arm and took hold of the hand that held the still-smoking gun and had to prise the frozen fingers apart to see the handle. There, on the silver scroll, was the design of a cross – right way up.
The Jesus pistol.
The flintlock fell to the grass and Henry closed strong arms around me, but I could feel him shaking. ‘It’s all right,’ he said, over and over, stroking my hair. As if he was soothing a hawk. As if I was Regina.
But it was not all right for Louis. Soberly, we walked together to where Shafeen was kneeling over him. There was no chance for him. His right eye was a horrible void; his left eye, blue as the sky, stared at the matching heavens. His pistol had fallen from his hand too. ‘Don’t touch it,’ said Shafeen, closing the single eye. ‘It’s evidence.’ But I didn’t need to. I could see from where I was standing the decorative scroll on the stock of the pistol. It featured an upside-down cross.
Louis had chosen the Judas pistol.
As we stood, heads bowed, the Peel Tower Rebels caught us up, panting.
Ratio said, ‘Should we get a doctor?’
Shafeen shook his head. ‘Too late for that,’ he said. ‘But someone should go for the inspector.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Nathaniel. ‘I know him best.’
‘I’ll come with you,’ said Nel.
As they ran Ratio landed the drone. There was an unspoken agreement that this was not something we should be filming. As the HAWK landed on his palm, Ty said, ‘Shouldn’t we cover Louis up?’
I shot a glance at her. I couldn’t imagine what she must be feeling. For a while she and Louis had been together, and even though she’d claimed later that she’d got together with him to infiltrate the family and bring them down, they’d still been close. And now her old boyfriend was lying at her feet, while her new boyfriend comforted her.
Ratio, to his great credit, began to remove his jacket to use as a shroud, but just then a commotion sounded in the direction of the castle.
There was a terrible, keening singing. A wavering, otherwordly voice sang an ancient air I’d heard once before. Nanny emerged from the mist, carrying a length of golden silk in both hands, walking in a strangely ceremonial way, singing as she came.
Unerringly, as if she suddenly had some supernatural ability to see, she walked forward with the Faerie Flag, sank to her knees and, without once pausing her eerie song, laid it gently and precisely over Louis’s dead face. Then she picked up his lolling head and cradled it in her lap, as she must have done so often when he was a baby, but this time the dark blood soaked and spread along the fibres of the golden silk, to meld and merge with the MacLeod blood of his ancestors.
As I averted my eyes from this deeply personal scene I saw an unmistakable silhouette resolve in the mist to the north of us. Four finely muscled legs, elegant as those of a racehorse, a noble head and magnificent antlers curving skywards.
A stag.
For a moment I thought it was Jeffrey, the venerable Imperial we had killed at the Red Hunt, come to gloat at the demise of his killer. But as the creature trod precisely forward I saw that, instead of a red pelt, his fur was completely white.
This, then, was a graveyard stag – the fabled creature who would visit at the death of the heir of the family. I watched him, slack-jawed, as he returned my gaze with wise and liquid eyes. Slowly I reached out both hands to tap Henry and Shafeen and point, but before I could alert them something spooked the pale stag and he turned to run, becoming one with the white mist as he disappeared, as if he had never even existed.
Then, in the other direction, we could see what had startled him: a group of people approaching from the castle. In the early-morning mist they resolved into Nathaniel, Nel and the Inspector of Police, followed by Cass, Lord Peregrine and Lady Fiona. They were doing that half-walk, half-run thing people do in a genuine emergency.
As the party approached, Henry and Ratio helped Nanny to her feet, and as she rose she took the bloodstained Faerie Flag off Louis’s face. ‘Here,’ she said. ‘It’s yours now.’ But instead of giving it to Henry, she gave it to Ratio.
I could understand the mistake – she was blind, she was old, she had two tall young men helping her up, she’d heard Henry’s voice and had obviously meant to give it to the new heir of the family, but she gave it to the wrong tall young man. I saw Henry’s and Ratio’s gaze meet over her head, blue eyes meeting blue eyes. Ratio gave the bloodstained banner to Henry. ‘This was meant for you.’ As their eyes met, their hands did too, joined for an instant by the Faerie Flag.
What I’d just seen seemed somehow hugely significant, but I had no idea why.
And then the party from the castle was upon us, and Lady Fiona saw Louis and began to scream and scream as if she would never stop.
35
We gathered in the library, like suspects in an Agatha Christie film, anxiously arranged around the room on various armchairs and sofas. And, just as in one of those movies, we’d been asked to wait there by the inspector, to be questioned in turn.
There were a few notable absences. Cass was nowhere to be seen. Lady Fiona was being treated by a local doctor for shock, and the coroner had been called from the mainland. Lord Peregrine was standing where I’d first seen him, warming his mustard cords by the fire, a glass of whisky in his hand and the open bottle before him on the mantel. His very presence, of course, meant that the rest of us maintained a sober silence.
The continuity of the scene, the lord of the manor by his fireside, meant things might have been normal. But they weren’t. The hands that he held out to the flame quivered, and his lip quivered too. He spoke, low and rapidly, as if to himself, a constant stream of self-recrimination. Should have secured the guns … Should have made sure they weren’t loaded … Fiona was right … Fiona will kill me … And the police … And the stag … and the Order … Storm coming. Should have secured the guns …
Henry looked at me and got to his feet. ‘Sir,’ he said gently, ‘wouldn’t you like to sit down?’
Peregrine looked at him distractedly, almost as if he didn’t recognise his nephew. Then he seemed to come to himself a little. He patted Henry on the shoulder and smiled, an almost childish smile. ‘No, my boy,’ he said. ‘For the first time in my life, I’m going to do the honourable thing.’ He took the bottle, left the glass and stumbled out of the room.
We all watched him go.
‘Where’s he off to?’ wondered Nel.
‘Sounds like he’s going to confess,’ I said.
‘To what?’ said Shafeen. ‘Having unsecured firearms?’
‘No,’ said Henry. ‘To the burning stag, the sacrifice. Everything.’
‘Well,’ said Nathaniel with an odd look on his face, ‘that would certainly make things easier.’
‘But we have the footage,’ protested Ratio.
‘Testimony in person will always give greater weight,’ said Henry.
If things weren’t so dire I might have thought this was funny. Ratio and Henry sitting in adjacent leather armchairs like mirror images. One Savage, one Medieval. One extolling the virtues of technology, one of the spoken word. One was all green hair, tattoos and the ‘OH, FOR FOX SAKE’ T-shirt, the other all tweeds and waistcoat and country colours. I noticed for the first time that as well as having the same blue eyes, they had the same catlike grace. If it wasn’t for the Joker hair they could have been brothers. I wondered, idly, what colour Ratio’s hair was under the green.
Then my mind did that odd fitting-stained-glass-pieces- together thing that it sometimes did, to make a full window. It had done it at the end-of-term Mass in my first year at STAGS, when I’d realised the Old Abbot was, in fact, the Grand Master. It had done it at the foot of the stairs to the North Tower when I’d realised the pistols were missing and that Henry and Louis were going to fight a duel. And it did it now – to fit together the pieces of what was perhaps the most significant discovery of all.
Suddenly I was back in Ratio’s techie bedroom in Glasgow. There, clear as day, was the Joker POP! figure on the console, oversized head sporting green hair, white face, red slash for a mouth. Then I heard Ratio’s soft Scottish voice:
Ratio is my given name …
Rollo pursued my mother …
Rollo paid for me to go to STAGS …
I gawped at him, eyes and mouth wide.
He looked at me quizzically, with those blue, blue eyes. ‘What?’
‘Louis wasn’t the Joker,’ I choked. ‘You are. You’re Arthur Fleck, aren’t you?’
He understood me at once. He would, wouldn’t he? But he was the only one in the room who did.
‘Care to explain?’ said Nel.
‘Arthur Fleck,’ I said, eyes never leaving Ratio’s face, ‘was Batman’s half-brother. He was the product of Bruce Wayne’s dalliance with a kitchen maid at Wayne Manor. And as Arthur was older than Batman, arguably he was the heir to Wayne Industries.’
Ratio said nothing. It was Ty, instead, who spoke. ‘Are you saying …? Are you telling us that Ratio is the heir to Longcross? And the earldom?’
‘I’m not the actual heir.’ Ratio spoke at last, almost with a sigh, as if a secret he had been holding close for so long could finally be released. ‘Rightful heir, maybe. But, like the Joker, I’m a bastard. An illegitimate child.’
