STAGS 5, page 2
‘Not just yet,’ he said. ‘But perhaps you know already.’ He looked pretty pleased with himself.
I didn’t, so I ignored his teasing manner and cut to the chase. ‘So what about these “others”?’ I probed. ‘Can you tell us about them?’
‘Jesus, Greer.’ Nel rolled her eyes. ‘I know this looks like the HQ of the Spanish Inquisition, but you don’t have to play the part.’
‘Thank you, Nel,’ the Abbot said to her, with an intimacy to his tone I hadn’t heard before. I wondered just how close they’d got while Shafeen and I were in India. ‘Is your fifth columnist coming, I wonder?’
He meant Henry, of course. He was changing the subject, but I let him – I didn’t want Nel getting all pissy with me again. ‘We told him in the letter,’ I said. ‘Midnight on Tuesday in the Crypt. I assume he knows what a crypt is.’
‘Oh, he’ll know,’ said Shafeen. ‘You couldn’t exactly get more Medieval than this, could you?’
And as he said this, Henry de Warlencourt walked down the stone stairs, stirring the candle flames as he came.
The Abbot walked forward to greet Henry. Henry was wearing mustard cords, an open-necked shirt, brown boots and a Barbour jacket, and he looked, as always, like a Burberry model. The two good-looking dudes shook hands guardedly, like two dogs sizing each other up in that split second when you’re not sure if they’re going to fight or start sniffing each other’s bums.
‘Nathaniel Ridley,’ said the Abbot.
‘Henry de Warlencourt. How d’ye do?’ said Henry, an archaic greeting which suited him well. He nodded at the rest of us, and I saw Ty staring at him like a deer in the headlights. I remembered that the last time they’d met he’d been hauling her out of a burning Longcross Hall.
‘Get here all right?’ asked the Abbot, as if Henry was some party guest.
‘Perfectly,’ said Henry. ‘Terribly obliging man of mine named Perfect drove me up in the estate car. You all remember Perfect, don’t you?’ He looked at us with a smile. I swallowed. I certainly did remember man-mountain Perfect, willing slave of the de Warlencourts since he was no more than a hillock, who’d stalked us around the estate with a shotgun. The mention of his name made it even more impossible to believe that Henry was now on the side of right.
‘Let’s sit,’ said the Abbot, obviously sensing some tension, and Henry and he sat at the end of two different pews, facing us, and we scooched up so we were all in a sort of circle.
Henry, who looked comfortable everywhere, threw his arm casually along the back of the pew and waited, looking faintly amused, for what was coming next.
‘As I understand it,’ said the Abbot, addressing him, ‘you have agreed to help end, once and for all, the heinous practices of the Order of the Stag.’
I don’t know if I’d expected denial, or excuses, but Henry offered neither. ‘You understand correctly,’ he said.
The Abbot nodded once. ‘We were hoping that an opportunity would present itself before this current cohort of “Medievals” – ’ he nodded at Shafeen, Nel and me – ‘leave the school. And it seems as if that opportunity is at hand. Greer?’ He shot a green-eyed glance at me. I brought the thing out from the sleeve of my Tudor coat, like someone cheating at cards, and handed it to Henry.
Henry read the front of The Invitation, then turned it over in his scarred hands and read the back. He raised one eyebrow like Roger Moore’s James Bond.
The Abbot said, ‘What can you tell us about it?’
‘Everything,’ said Henry. ‘Where do you want me to start?’
Shafeen leaned forward. ‘Let’s begin at the beginning,’ he said. Whatever had happened to improve things with Henry, he still couldn’t make his voice sound totally friendly when he addressed his old adversary. ‘What’s the Red Hunt?’
‘It’s a big deer-stalking event that takes place every August in Scotland. Always the principal stag of the herd, known as the Monarch of the Glen. The Monarch is always an Imperial, that’s a 14-point stag, the biggest size there is.’ He looked at Abbot Ridley. ‘It’s a hierarchy thing. The alpha male is dispatched each year so the young bucks can come through. It’s common throughout the animal kingdom.’ This was definitely a burn for Nathaniel. Henry knew, by now, all the gory details of the Abbot’s part in his family’s lives. Or rather deaths. Henry’s grandfather, Monty de Warlencourt, had been pulled from his horse by Nathaniel as the old soldier rode out from the Tiger Club in Jaipur. Then Henry’s father, Rollo de Warlencourt, had been thrown from his horse when the animal had been spooked by the same man, dressed as Guy Fawkes at the Boxing Day hunt at Longcross. I’d half expected Henry to do that Inigo Montoya thing from The Princess Bride – ‘Hello, my name is Henry de Warlencourt. You killed my father. Prepare to die.’ But that wasn’t strictly true. The Abbot may have knocked Rollo from his horse, but it wasn’t the fall that killed him. Rollo had been poisoned by an unknown hand. But I could still sense the tension between Henry and the Abbot. Which de Warlencourt alpha male would be the next to be lopped off? And would it be Nathaniel Ridley who did the deed for a third generation in a row? I got the feeling I wasn’t the only one heading for a dangerous summer.
‘And what makes the hunt red?’ asked Nel, who was still, understandably, a bit nervous of Henry since he’d once chased her down with a pack of dogs. ‘Blood, I suppose.’
For the first time Henry looked vaguely uncomfortable, and I knew he was feeling uneasy, because he was playing with the gold signet ring on his finger, the one with the deer antlers, the one they all wore. He looked at Nel, almost apologetically. ‘The deer,’ he said kindly. ‘They’re red deer.’
‘So far so standard,’ I said. ‘Huntin’ as usual. So what’s Castle MacLeod?’
‘A big old pile on the Isle of Skye, just off the west coast of Scotland,’ he said.
‘And it’s an actual castle?’ asked Nel.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘Considered to be one of the finest examples in Scotland.’
‘I’m sure the de Warlencourts would expect nothing less.’ Shafeen couldn’t help himself – his tone was decidedly acid.
‘Naturally, old boy,’ said Henry, all pleasantness. ‘But the castle actually belongs to the twins’ mother, Lady Fiona.’
‘Was she a MacLeod of the Clan MacLeod?’ I asked.
Of course, as a Medieval, Henry didn’t get the Highlander reference. He just looked vaguely impressed. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘She is. And she married Peregrine, my father’s younger brother.’
I glanced at Shafeen. When we’d read Aadhish’s diary in Jaipur, the teenage Rollo had mentioned the birth of a younger brother. That must have been Peregrine.
‘Well, now we know who the castle belongs to, that probably answers my biggest question: who sent The Invitation?’
‘I would think, almost certainly, Louis,’ said Henry, shifting slightly on the hard pew. ‘He still thinks he is the head of the family, and as such he will be invested into the Dark Order of the Grand Stag. My guess is that the DOGS know you know too much and can’t let you go off into the wider world with the knowledge you have. Remember, Piers and Cookson as well as Lara, Charlotte and Esme all ended up at Oxford. The Order can’t take the risk of you exposing them there.’
I felt a sudden chill, which seemed to be almost seeping from the ancient stones of the Crypt. At the Paulinus well I’d felt almost sorry to be leaving STAGS. Now I knew the ancient order which had founded this school was still out for my blood I couldn’t wait to get out of here. But then, as Henry had reminded me, the Order had a foothold at Oxford too. No, the only way forward for me was to destroy them utterly – that’s the only way I’d ever be safe. My fear made my voice more flippant than ever. ‘Well, it’s always nice to know where and when you’ll be hunted to your death.’
‘But we don’t know when,’ said Nel. She turned to Henry. ‘The Invitation says “Lammas weekend”. What’s Lammas?’
‘Lammas is an ancient Scottish pagan festival,’ he replied. ‘Lammas Eve is quite the party. Feasting, bonfires, folk music – you get the idea.’
‘Sounds a bit Midsommar,’ I said.
‘Well, it is the Scottish midsummer, pretty much,’ said Henry.
‘It’s a film about … never mind,’ I said. ‘Is Lammas always the same date, like Christmas?’ I asked. ‘Or does it jump about like Easter?’
‘It’s always on 1st August,’ he said.
‘OK,’ I said, doing the maths. ‘So the Friday the “coaches” leave must be 31st July.’ I goggled. ‘That’s this Friday.’
‘End of term,’ said the Abbot.
‘So what do we do? We can’t just let Greer go on her own,’ said Shafeen.
‘No, indeed,’ said Henry.
‘But no one else has been invited,’ said Nel. ‘It’s not like last time, when Shafeen and I were there too. Then we had each other’s backs.’
‘I’ll go,’ said Henry.
‘But Louis doesn’t know you’re alive,’ I said. ‘So presumably this Scottish branch of the family don’t know either.’
Henry smiled. ‘What better time for the big reveal?’
I could see that Shafeen wasn’t very happy with this idea, but he couldn’t exactly tell Henry he couldn’t go to his own uncle and aunt’s house. ‘Great. Now we just need a way to protect her from you,’ he said pointedly.
Henry laughed, which seemed to make Shafeen even madder. ‘And how do you propose to do that?’
‘Last time we had tech,’ said Shafeen stiffly. ‘Nel’s dad’s Saros phone. At least there was some way of keeping track of Greer’s movements on the fishin’ day, when someone tried to kill her.’
‘What about the FOXES?’ I suggested, trying to deflect from this dangerous subject. I addressed Abbot Ridley. ‘Isn’t this where your lot come in? If you’re the anti-STAGS, you should have the tech side of things sorted, shouldn’t you? They’re Medieval, you’re Savage; that’s it, isn’t it?’
‘Oh, we do have the tech side of things “sorted”, as you put it,’ he said confidently. ‘Or, at least, we know someone who does.’
He looked to Ty, who’d been so quiet all this time that I’d almost forgotten she was there.
‘Ty?’ I said. ‘Well, there’s no doubt she’s the Girl with the Dragon Tattoo when it comes to hacking.’
She spoke for the first time. ‘He’s not talking about me,’ she said. ‘He’s talking about Ratio.’
4
‘What’s Ratio?’
We all wanted to ask, but Shafeen was the first to get in there.
‘Not what. Who.’ Ty spoke clearly and distinctly, and I remembered the power of her performance as Queen Cynthia in The Isle of Dogs. ‘He’s someone I’ve been in contact with online. He’s very anti-STAGS – the school and the Order – and he’s been helping me in my attempts to bring them down.’
‘Could be a fifty-year-old creep,’ said Nel.
Ty ran her fingernail along a groove on the back of her pew. ‘I don’t think so. He sounds like an insider. He knows an awful lot about this school.’
‘Could still be a fifty-year-old creep,’ I said. ‘That’s how they groom kids, isn’t it? They find out a lot about your world.’
‘Well, he, she or it helped me loads last year,’ insisted Ty. ‘Surveillance is his thing. He seems to have eyes everywhere. In fact, he seems like an inside man. I wouldn’t have known half of what I knew, about the FOXES, or the de Warlencourt family, or what happened to my great-uncle, Leon, without him.’
‘Wait,’ said Henry, looking slightly discomfited for the first time. ‘This character knows my family?’
‘Inside out,’ she said. ‘He seems to be holding quite the grudge. And that’s what I mean about being an insider. He was one of you. Us.’
‘How do you mean?’ said Nel.
‘I mean he doesn’t just know a lot about the school. I think he went to the school.’ She looked round at us all. ‘Here. STAGS.’
‘The call is coming from inside the house,’ I mused. ‘How do you know?’
‘He told me.’
‘What?’
Ty nodded. ‘He said he was expelled.’
‘You keep calling him a him,’ Nel said. ‘How can you know he’s male?’
‘Oh, I’m pretty sure,’ said Ty. ‘You see, he was expelled for watching porn.’
‘I heard that story when I first came here!’ I exclaimed. ‘So it must have happened relatively recently.’
‘I remember something about it,’ said Shafeen. He turned to Henry, almost friendly. ‘Do you?’
‘Vaguely,’ said Henry. ‘Some big scandal in the senior school, when we were still in the juniors.’
‘I don’t know if it was the school that turned him or what,’ said Ty, ‘but he’s the most Savage of the Savages. I bet he’d know how to keep track of you up in Skye.’
‘But you’ve never met him?’ I asked.
‘All messaging,’ she said. ‘Never clapped eyes on the guy.’
‘Nor me,’ said the Abbot. ‘But he is one of the FOXES. He’s verified as one of our hacktivists. But like most hackers, he remains anonymous.’
‘Could we meet him?’ asked Shafeen.
Ty sucked her teeth. ‘I could try to locate him from his IP address.’
‘What on God’s green earth,’ said Henry, ‘is an IP address?’
‘Internet Protocol address,’ said Nel, who was also a Savage. ‘It’s a unique location that identifies a device on the Internet or a local network.’
‘Can you find it on a phone?’ I asked. We all still had our Saros smartphones, courtesy of Nel’s lovely dad.
‘Probably,’ said Ty. ‘But it’s easier to use this.’
From under the skirts of her Tudor coat, she produced a sleek rectangle – mean and metal and thin, it was covered in decals and had an apple logo. We Medievals were so unused to these things that we stared, mouths agape. I swear it took me a good few seconds to recognise the thing for what it was.
A laptop.
As she opened this ark of technology in the candlelit chapel, the screen backlit her face like Marsellus Wallace’s briefcase in Pulp Fiction.
‘How did you smuggle that in here?’ asked Nel admiringly.
‘I gave her permission,’ said the Abbot simply.
‘OK,’ said Ty. Then she went all Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, just as I’d said, her fingers a blur on the lighted keyboard. She muttered under her breath, ‘Ratio, where are you?’
I watched her proudly. ‘How did you find him, anyway?’
‘He found me,’ she said, without looking up. ‘When I started using the username mrs_de_warlencourt he just popped up in my DMs.’
‘And why is he called Ratio?’ asked Henry.
‘It’s a Twitter thing,’ Ty replied, just as if he was one of us. ‘When your replies outnumber your posts. Also, this is his username.’ She turned the screen round and we peered at the brightness.
:
‘A colon?’ I said.
‘Remember your maths?’ asked Ty.
It had been a while, so I was relieved when Shafeen spoke up. ‘That’s the symbol for a ratio. The colon separates the two relative values. You know, 1:1, 2:1, etc.’
‘I became pretty familiar with that little symbol last year, I can tell you,’ she said. ‘It was popping up the whole time. Look.’
She called up her chat history. There were pages and pages of messages and replies, as Ty, planning her spy mission to Longcross as Louis’s guest, had accepted the help of her mysterious ally.
: The back stairs of Longcross lead directly to the kitchen.
: Remember the secret passage to Longcross church is located behind the portrait of Esmé Stuart on the mezzanine of the library. Might be useful if you want to get in and out at night without using the main door.
: On Boxing Day the hunt will stop for lunch at the Trip to Jerusalem, a pub on Longcross land. They’ll be there for about an hour. The hunt servants will bring second horses, but Rollo will stick with his favourite hunter, Harkaway.
: The hunt will pass through Huntsman’s Covert to Longacre. Longacre leads into the east side of Longwood. There’s a beck where you can hide and intercept the hunt.
‘This Ratio seems to know Longcross inside out too,’ said Henry grimly.
‘Yep. He gave me –’ Ty looked to the Abbot – ‘us, lots of maps and directions and coordinates to intercept the Boxing Day hunt.’ She threw a glance at me. ‘That’s what I mean about helping to keep Greer safe. Ratio seems to have eyes in the sky. But he’s not the only one with a few tech tricks up his sleeve.’
She turned the screen around again and began to tap away at the keyboard, a concentrated look on her face.
‘What are you doing now?’ Shafeen asked. Ty was typing reams of incomprehensible code onto the screen.
‘I’m initiating a keystroke recorder,’ she said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world. ‘The messenger is telling me he’s online right now. The keystroke recorder will tell me what he’s typing.’
‘Who’s up at this hour?’ said Henry.
She smiled. ‘Geeks,’ she replied. ‘I’m actually hoping he’s internet shopping.’
‘Why shopping?’ Nel asked.
‘Because we need his address,’ said Ty. ‘Midnight to 2 a.m. is a spike time for online purchases.’
‘Jeez,’ I said. ‘Don’t nerds sleep?’
‘It’s not late everywhere, Greer,’ she smiled. ‘There’s a whole world out there. Yes! ’ She sat up. ‘Looks like he’s on an auction site – like an eBay-type portal – in the Far East. My guess is Japan.’ She looked up briefly. ‘Computer geeks like manga. Anime. Figurines. And it seems he’s no exception.’
We all crowded round the glow of the laptop like people would have huddled around a fire in medieval times. ‘What’s he buying?’
‘A rare Funko POP! figure of the Joker. It’s costing him £49.99.’
‘For a playing card?’ asked Henry.
‘No, Henry Tudor,’ I said, feeling safe enough to take the piss out of him now. ‘The Joker’s a baddie in the DC Universe. He’s Batman’s half-brother and nemesis. Funko POP! toys are those plastic action figures with big heads.’
