STAGS 5, page 20
‘Rollo didn’t hunt your mother,’ I said gently. ‘He seduced her.’
‘That’s putting it politely,’ he said shortly. ‘I’d call it rape.’ We all flinched at the brutal word.
‘That’s why you went after them, for all those years,’ breathed Ty.
‘Yes,’ said Ratio. ‘My mother was dazzled by Rollo. When she went to work at Longcross in the late nineties she was only sixteen.’ I thought about the woman we’d met at Ratio’s house; Lorna Rennie must be in her early forties now and was still beautiful – when she was sixteen she must have been stunning. ‘He overpowered her,’ said Ratio. ‘There was nothing she could do. He knew what he’d done, of course.’ He looked at Henry. ‘When your grandfather Monty sacked Mum, she got in touch with Rollo. She was brave. She made demands, stood up for herself. That’s why he agreed to support her, and he sent me to STAGS with his own money.’
‘But … but …’ My mind, having connected the dots, now seemed to be having trouble working. ‘They didn’t put you in the stag … the wicker stag, I mean … because of who you are?’
He shook his green head. ‘They don’t know. I think that was my own stupid fault, just like you said. When we sent you the Kevlar vest I signed it: Ratio and the Peel Tower Rebels. Just a silly gag really. Cass intercepted it and worked out that someone was living in her childhood den. Since they didn’t dare touch you on the day of the Red Hunt, probably because you were there –’ this to Henry – ‘they found a perfect human sacrifice in me – a trespasser, a Savage, a person that could not possibly be of any importance to anyone.’ He smiled bitterly. ‘But as for knowing who I am – no. No one knows I exist. That was the deal Rollo struck with my mother. He said I was to remain in hiding – “for the time being”.’ He shrugged his narrow shoulders. ‘I know what he meant by that. He meant in case he needed me one day. In case he needed an heir. Then, later in life, he met your mother Caroline,’ he said, still addressing Henry, ‘and had a legitimate heir. I wouldn’t be needed after all.’ There was no heat now, no resentment. Now the truth was out, his dislike of Henry seemed to have evaporated with the lies.
‘You guessed,’ I said, also turning to Henry. ‘Didn’t you? That morning when I was so desperate to go to the Peel Tower to talk to Shafeen, you wanted to talk to Ratio. Why?’
Henry said, ‘It was the morning when we met Louis in the hanging room, over the body of the stag. You talked then about Louis being mad and belonging in that asylum.’
‘Arkham,’ said Ratio and I together.
‘Yes. But that wasn’t the bit that was interesting to me. I wasn’t struck by the mental-illness part of that conversation, but the half-brother bit. I knew that my father had seduced maids at Longcross, when he was trying so hard to be something he wasn’t, when he was trying to prove to himself that he could sire an heir. And I knew my grandfather had sent some of the girls away, and it stood to reason that at least one of them might have been pregnant.’
‘And luckily my mother had the gumption not to let him get away with it,’ said Ratio. ‘She made him support us, and she agreed in return to call me Horatio. He never explained why.’
‘I think I could tell you,’ said Shafeen, speaking for the first time. ‘It was the name he gave to the best version of himself. When he was happy and in love – in love with my father. I think … I think the name means he wanted you to be happy.’
Nathaniel stood up. He also hadn’t spoken for some time, but he made up for it now. ‘If you’re the oldest son of Rollo de Warlencourt, we need to get you out of this castle and off this island. Now.’
‘Wait – why?’ said Nel, catching the urgency in his tone. ‘The danger’s over. The police are here.’
‘I’ll explain later.’ Nathaniel was already shrugging on his jacket. ‘Peel Tower contingent, let’s go. There’s not a moment to lose.’
‘But the police told us to wait here,’ I protested.
‘It’ll be fine,’ he said, and I thought then that he had some sort of agreement with the inspector. ‘Henry and Greer, get your things and meet us at the Peel Tower too.’
As the Peel Tower Rebels piled out of the library Henry spoke up. ‘Ratio.’ He corrected himself. ‘Horatio. Wait.’
Ratio turned in the doorway. ‘I’ll be right behind you,’ he told Ty.
He came back into the library and the two half-brothers stood facing each other on the hearthrug in front of the fire. Ratio was a little taller, a little older, but otherwise, now that I knew, the similarities were striking. No wonder he had always reminded me of someone, right from the first moment in his Glasgow bedroom. I wondered now how I’d been so dumb as not to have seen it before. I felt almost as if I shouldn’t be here, as though the brothers should be having this moment in private. I looked from one to the other. Who would speak first? What would they say? There was a lifetime of catching up to do. So much in common, and so little.
In the end it was Henry who began. He held out his hand, still clutching the banner of gold. ‘Here,’ he said. ‘I want you to have it. You are the true heir of the family.’
Ratio looked at the Faerie Flag, and then at Henry doubtfully. ‘I can’t take this.’
Henry, quite unexpectedly, laughed. ‘Good Lord. If I can’t convince you to take an ancient, bloodied banner, then how on earth am I going to get you on board with the rest of my proposal?’
‘Which is?’ Ratio looked suspicious.
Henry took a deep breath, as if he was about to dive off a waterfall. ‘I want you to have all of it. The earldom, the titles, Longcross. Everything.’
Both Ratio and I stared at Henry, open-mouthed.
‘You are my father’s eldest son,’ said Henry simply. ‘It is owed to you. And to your mother. Bring her to live with you. She deserves it.’
Ratio was speechless. For the first time since I’d met him, this sardonic, witty young Scotsman seemed to have nothing to say. Eventually he shook his head, as if he’d just received a blow. ‘How could I? How could I become part of the establishment I’ve spent my whole life hating?’
‘Well, you could take that stance, certainly,’ said Henry reasonably. ‘You could let the hate win, and then this whole cycle begins again and perpetuates itself. Or you could do the hard thing. The brave thing.’
Ratio looked at him warily. ‘Which is?’
‘You could change the establishment – from within.’
Ratio seemed to consider this. ‘But what about you?’
Henry looked at me. ‘Once my part in all this comes out, I don’t think I’ll be stuck for accommodation. I think I’ll be housed at Her Majesty’s pleasure.’
He meant jail. A cold hand seemed to clutch my heart. ‘But, Henry, you’ve helped blow this whole thing wide open. And the three of us who you hunted, shot and fished, well – we’re fine about it now.’
‘There’s still Gemma Delaney,’ said Henry. ‘Look. We’re talking about atonement. How can I right the wrongs my father did to Ratio’s mother if I don’t look at myself? You, Nel, even Shafeen have forgiven me for what I did to you at Longcross. The huntin’, the shootin’ and the fishin’, each of you in turn. But the year before you there was Gemma. I seduced her into coming to Longcross.’ He caught my expression. ‘I pretended to be interested in her, made her think there could be something romantic between us. Then, once she was there, we terrorised her for a whole weekend. I deserve to be punished for that. I’ll be out of circulation once all this comes out, and someone has to inherit the earldom. It won’t be Louis now, so who better than the rightful heir?’
Ratio was silent, clearly attempting to process this seismic change in his fortunes.
So I said, ‘What about your uncle?’
And just then, loud and unmistakable, the sound of a gunshot.
36
For perhaps a second we looked at each other in horror.
Then we sped out of the library in the direction of the sound. ‘The study,’ said Henry urgently, and he led us through a nearby door.
It was the ultimate Medieval man cave: leather-bound, gold-tooled books on the shelves, a window with a view of the calm summer sea, a mahogany desk sporting an antique globe, an inkwell.
And a human head, with a hole blasted in it.
Lord Peregrine sat slumped in his chair, forehead on the desk. In one hand was a revolver. In the other, his bottle of whisky.
We stood looking down at this latest Lammas horror. Henry raked his hand agitatedly through his blond hair. ‘God, I’m an idiot. He went to do the “honourable thing”. He even said it.’ He began to pace. ‘He went into his study with his service revolver and a bottle of whisky. The classic gentleman’s way out.’
Ratio, by contrast, was as still as a statue. ‘How,’ he said softly, ‘is this the honourable thing? To leave his wife and daughter, when they’ve just lost Louis too?’
Henry stopped pacing and looked down at his uncle as the dark mirror of blood pooled on the desk. ‘It isn’t. I see that now.’
‘What now?’ My question seemed intrusive, but it had to be asked.
It was Henry who took charge. ‘We go. We were never here. If we get mixed up in this too we’ll never get off the island, and Nathaniel seemed pretty clear that we should. Ratio, head to the Peel Tower – we’ll follow as soon as we can. Greer, get your stuff and I’ll meet you where the pistols used to be.’
We backed out of the room and closed the door on the scene.
Peregrine de Warlencourt had finally done something memorable, and it was destined to be the last thing he ever did.
I didn’t have much stuff to pack, so I was ready in less than five minutes. I wondered if Henry was serious about giving his birthright away. I might never again be in a place where everything was provided for you and therefore you pretty much only had to bring a toothbrush. It was such a trivial thing to think at that moment, but then when I got to the bottom of the stairs there was a timely reminder of the horrid reality right in front of my eyes.
The empty brackets on the wall where the flintlocks had once hung.
Presumably the guns were in evidence bags by now.
Henry arrived just after me.
‘Got everything?’ I asked.
‘Almost,’ he said. ‘Just one more thing. Come with me.’
The castle courts were deserted, and we didn’t see a soul as we walked to the mews. Regina was sitting on her hoop perch in the walled garden, shifting and preening in the morning sun. She gave a little throaty chuckle of pleasure when her keen amber eyes lighted on Henry.
Henry went to her and stroked her breast feathers, as he always did, with the back of his scarred fingers. I did the same, assuming that this was goodbye. Our fingers met and about a thousand volts of electricity went through me. Henry took my hand and turned it over, stroking the M for Manslayer brand on my thumb.
I whispered, ‘I thought it had come true. I thought I might have been a murderer after all.’
‘What do you mean?’ His voice was low, to match mine, and I could feel the warmth of his breath.
‘I thought I’d killed you.’
‘How would you have killed me? It would have been Louis. Or the pistol.’ For of course by now he knew all about the Judas pistol and its lethal trick mechanism.
I pulled my hand away. Being that close to him was dangerous. ‘There’s this great film called Léon,’ I said, as airily as I could, ‘about an assassin who always works alone. Then he meets this girl called Mathilda, and from then on – spoiler alert – he’s doomed. That’s when the police catch up with him.’
‘The similarities are striking,’ he said, with a certain dark humour.
‘The point is, once he let himself love, it made him vulnerable. For one thing, he was less nimble and agile. Before he was always just thinking about himself, but once he loved Mathilda then he had another person to look after. The other thing is …’
‘Well?’
‘He wanted to be a better person. For her. And that made him a less efficient killing machine. Arguably he would have survived if he’d never met her. If he’d been left alone.’
‘Like a hawk. A loner and a killer.’
I watched him stroke the peregrine and listened to the hawk’s bubbling sounds of pleasure. ‘But Regina cares about you. You can see she does.’
‘And she’s all I have now.’ It was a strangely desolate statement.
I shot a glance at him. ‘Did you mean what you said in there? That you’d give it all up?’
‘Well, let me ask you a question. If I go to prison, who should have the earldom? Ratio or Cass?’
I thought about this. Ratio, the rightful heir with the righteous hair. Or Cass. Cass the enigma, Cass the question mark. Cass who’d had a completely unreadable reaction to her brother’s death and hadn’t been seen since. ‘Wouldn’t Cass be in trouble too? She’s part of this whole thing, and this weekend I’m starting to think she isn’t as innocent as we thought.’
‘She’s done nothing that can be proven, I don’t think. She opened the bulletproof vest, and didn’t give it to you right away. She possibly gave Ratio’s whereabouts to the Order, so they could capture him, but that would be difficult to prove, particularly if she told her father and he’s now dead. But what else?’
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘I just get the feeling she’s been a bit more central to things than we thought. I used to think, Cass Good, Louis Bad, but now I’m not so sure.’
‘Well, if you’re right then you’re just making my point for me. Ratio should inherit. We can’t doubt that he’d be an honourable steward, and also that there’d be an end to the death hunts once and for all.’
He was right, of course. ‘Well, look, we should hurry up and join them.’ I didn’t want to rush the farewell, but we had priorities.
To my surprise Henry didn’t answer but ran into the mews and emerged with a hawk basket. He hooded Regina, untied her leash and settled her in the basket with one of her beloved chicken necks as a packed lunch. ‘She was my last piece of luggage,’ he said. ‘Now we can go.’ Then, quickly and quietly, we left the walled garden.
Again, I was surprised at just how easy it was to leave the castle. I’d expected two cops on the door at least. But no one stopped us going anywhere. I supposed by that time Peregrine’s body had been discovered and all the police attention was elsewhere. We walked right out of the courtyard and beyond the castle walls. No hand reached out to stop us and no voice stopped us in our tracks.
But once we were a safe distance away some nameless instinct made me look back.
From the top of the North Tower, where I’d met Henry on the night of The Gathering, the one remaining heir of the MacLeods watched the interloping MacDonald leave her castle.
Her cropped blonde hair was blowing in the wind, her expression too far away to see.
37
On the ferry back to the mainland we all stood at the rail at the back – the bow, I guess – like extras on Titanic.
We watched the black island recede into the distance across the silver sea. No one had stopped us as we’d hurried to the Peel Tower to meet the rebels and tell them the news of Peregrine’s end. And we’d had no trouble getting onto the boat – no spot checks, no questions, no nothing. I’d worried all the way on the drive from the Peel Tower to the terminal that we would be stopped at one of the checkpoints Nathaniel had threatened the Order with on Lammas Eve. The island, he’d said, was surrounded by an iron ring of police. But the reality was very different. The village of Armadale was full of happy summer tourists, traffic was moving as normal, and I didn’t see a single policeman anywhere. And so a little band of brothers (and sisters) who had flown the scene of two crimes walked onto the ferry like a group of day-trippers. As I didn’t want to jinx things I waited until we were safely on the ferry, and there was a broad channel of water between us and Skye, to ask Nathaniel just what exactly was going on.
‘We had to get Ratio off the island as soon as possible,’ he said bluntly. ‘There was a real threat of a further attempt on his life, particularly once his identity was revealed.’
‘But the police?’ I said. ‘Surely he would’ve been safe with all those Feds around?’
‘There were no policemen on Skye,’ he said, looking back at the island we’d left, brown curls stirring in the wind. ‘Either on it or surrounding it.’ I could swear he smiled a little.
‘What?’ we all chorused. All except Nel, who kept quiet. She’d known, of course. Nathaniel explained. ‘I – we – the FOXES, that is – do have significant contacts at Scotland Yard,’ he said, ‘but they said there was nothing they could do on a hunch. They couldn’t sanction the massive amount of manpower we needed to patrol the whole of Skye for the Lammas weekend. They told us to do some evidence gathering and come to them with a case. So that’s what we’ve done.’
‘But … but all the officers,’ said Shafeen, ‘the ones that turned up on Lammas Eve …’
‘All FOXES,’ Nathaniel said. ‘There’s a good chance that the local plods are in the pockets of the family. We couldn’t risk it.’
‘You’re right,’ I said. ‘At Longcross the family definitely had tame policemen – they were the ones who questioned us about the murder of –’ it felt crazy saying it now, with him standing there – ‘Henry.
‘There you go,’ said Nathaniel. ‘My colleagues – the FOXES agents on the island – were there primarily to keep you all safe. For instance, there were two “officers” guarding your staircase, Greer, and another four at the Peel Tower. But they’ve also been conducting interviews. They already have a number of signed and recorded confessions, elicited from perpetrators who believed that they are actual police. It seems that the Order have been very ready to testify against each other, in return for promises of anonymity that the real police couldn’t possibly give.’
‘So much for honour,’ muttered Ratio, and Henry shot him a look.
