STAGS 2, page 21
‘Maybe he never leaves the Scriptorium. He looks like he never leaves the Scriptorium. He’s practically got cobwebs on him.’
‘Yes, but still. Surely he goes somewhere to eat, and to sleep. Surely word would have reached him that you were staging the play, especially as he’s head librarian. Surely someone would’ve said, I say, old boy, you’ll never guess what. He must’ve been told. But he didn’t say a word to us. He just pointed us to the Dictionary of National Biography, nice as pie. And Ridley – why didn’t he take the pages off you as soon as you showed him The Isle of Dogs and call the British Library or wherever? But he didn’t. It’s ludicrous that he left a schoolgirl to look after something so priceless.’
‘Thanks very much.’
‘You know what I mean. This whole thing has been facilitated by them – the friars. They are all in on it – they must be.’
‘But in on what? What’s the plan?’
‘That’s just it,’ he said. ‘I don’t know. All I know is, even if they didn’t give you the play, they certainly want you to put it on. Why is the mystery.’
‘This is all dogshit.’ Nel appealed to me. ‘You don’t think Abbot Ridley’s in on this, do you?’
I thought for a moment. ‘No. If there is a Grand Stag now, and it’s a big, massive, giant IF, I don’t think it’s him.’
‘Well, whoever the Grand Stag is now,’ said Shafeen, ‘I think we can all agree who it was then.’ He lifted the candelabra again towards the painting.
I looked back at the portrait. ‘Christ. It can’t be true, can it?’
‘Yes. There’s your matriarchy. But not quite the one you would wish for.’
And that was when I’d had enough. I looked again at those deer feet sticking out of the queen’s silken skirt, greasy, gristly, every hair detailed with the thinnest brush, a dark, threatening sheen on each cloven hoof. Of all the things we’d seen and heard that weekend at Longcross, those feet were more scary than anything. Something about them well and truly spooked me. ‘Let’s go,’ I said. ‘Let’s go now.’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Just get our stuff, get in Nel’s car and leave.’
‘How?’ said Nel. ‘It’s blowing a gale. I don’t want a tree on top of my Mini.’
‘Also, we can’t just leave without a word. It’s just … it’s just not done,’ said Shafeen, as always the guardian of good manners. ‘And also, what about Cass?’ Not for the first time, I thought he liked her. I didn’t think it was romantic any more, I was secure enough for that, but I thought he wanted to kind of protect her. ‘She was in a pretty bad way.’
I calmed down a bit. I knew, when I really thought about it, that we couldn’t actually go, but it was not for any of the reasons they’d said. ‘No. It’s Ty we can’t leave.’ Even if she was in love with Louis, there was no way I was leaving her at Longcross, overnight, on her own. There was a pause while we listened to the storm and the dogs howling outside. I said, ‘We’ll go tomorrow first thing. We were going then anyway.’
Shafeen looked at his watch. ‘It’s pretty late now, so it’s just a matter of hours. Let’s get some sleep. But we stay together,’ he said, ‘all three of us.’
No one slept much in the Queen’s Chamber, so we were able to leave quite early in the morning. We all crept downstairs in our uniforms and took our stuff to the car. I had to briefly break my vow not to set foot outside the house again during my stay, but I practically ran the few steps to the Mini. Thankfully, there was no sign of Perfect or Brutus. I kept my eyes ahead as we bowled up the drive, literally leaving without a backwards glance.
I had no wish to say my goodbyes.
This time I was convinced that I would never see Longcross again.
Scene i
It was a sparkling winter morning as we drove back through the gates of STAGS.
In the sunshine it was hard to believe in last night’s storm. With the daylight, the idea of our whispered candlelit conference in front of that demonic painting seemed unbelievable. The portrait that had turned a queen into a chimera, the priest’s hole, the tomb, the neck verse, were like a fever dream. In the cold light of day all the events of that weekend at Longcross retreated like a nightmare into the shadows. STAGS looked amazing; it was England’s top independent school, and we were all privileged to be there. I wouldn’t have believed in any of the weekend, except for one thing. I had the coded manuscript, the cipher and our transcription of Act Five beside me in my deer-leather satchel.
We all went into the Refectory to catch the end of breakfast. Louis and Ty, who had followed us in one of the estate cars, sat with us. They were wrapped around each other, looking radiantly happy. I had a feeling their little sleepover the night before had gone pretty well. Cass, who had travelled with them, was, not surprisingly, feeling ‘unwell’, and had gone straight to her room.
We agreed that, as the director of The Isle of Dogs, I’d see the Abbot alone to tell him we had found the missing act – little point in all of us piling in there and barking at him at once. So as soon as the chapel bell had struck nine, I took my satchel and walked through the grounds to the Abbot’s study. STAGS looked fantastically beautiful that morning, and as I walked up the Hundred Stairs to the drawbridge and over the moat, I thought it looked peacefully benign after the dog-ridden, lightning-shot Gothic-ness of Longcross. I fell into the trap, once again, of thinking nothing bad could happen here.
I knocked on the door of the Abbot’s study and went in when bidden. The Abbot was sitting behind the huge mahogany desk, but even though the thing was massive, his height made it look the right size for him. He was writing something and looked up when I came in.
‘Write of the devil and she shall appear.’
I’d literally never been greeted like that before.
‘Eh?’
He indicated the form he was writing. ‘I’m just in the middle of writing your supporting statement for Oxford.’
‘All good, I hope,’ I joked weakly.
‘Oh yes,’ he said. ‘And I’ve got my old tutor, Professor Jennifer Nashe, to agree to attend our production of The Isle of Dogs. In fact, she can’t wait. She’s a world-famous Jonsonian scholar, so you can imagine, this is like Christmas for her.’
I’d forgotten his good looks, his straight gaze, his slightly northern accent. That, and the fact that he was in the middle of doing me a huge favour, convinced me once and for all that he was nothing to do with the Order of the Stag, Grand or otherwise.
He screwed the cap on his fountain pen – I suppose the nearest practical pen to a quill STAGS could issue – and used it to indicate the chair opposite him. ‘Did you have a good weekend?’
‘Ish,’ I said, sitting down in the chair.
He put the pen down on my form and clasped his hands. ‘Problem?’
‘I don’t honestly know,’ I said. ‘But what I do know is that we found Act Five.’
He almost shot out of his chair. ‘Where?’
I decided to edit the story slightly. ‘In the library at Longcross.’ And then, in case he didn’t know, ‘The de Warlencourt twins’ house.’
‘Good Lord. May I?’
I snapped open my satchel and gave him the decoded pages. ’We had to decrypt them,’ I said. ‘Sorry about the pick ’n’ mix handwriting.’
You can be sure I watched him very carefully as he read. If this was part of some grand scheme, he would somehow know what to expect from Act Five and be a bit of a cool customer about it. But whatever Shafeen’s conspiracy theories, I knew from the way the Abbot’s green eyes widened, his nostrils flared and his cheeks began to flush a little that he’d never seen this bit of the play before, had no inkling of what was going to be in it. He showed no more emotion than pure, uncut excitement. His hands even started to shake a little.
When he put the pages down, very carefully on the desk, he let his fingertips rest on the paper for a moment. ‘No wonder,’ he said softly, ‘it was considered to be so dangerous.’
‘I know, right?’
He looked up. ‘How exciting, Greer. How exciting for you. To perform this thing in front of your peers, the friars and Professor Nashe too. And there’s a good chance that, once we give it to the British Library, they’ll call it the Greer MacDonald Manuscript.’
I squirmed a bit. That sounded amazing, but I couldn’t take the credit. Plus, I wasn’t actually sure I wanted to be associated with such a dark text for the rest of my days. ‘Actually it should really be called the Cassandra de Warlencourt Manuscript. It turns out Cass found it first. At Longcross.’
He raised his eyebrows. ‘Your honesty does you credit. Although if it was found at Longcross, it may well end up being called the Longcross Manuscript. Things are often called after where they are found – the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on. Still, it’s going to be amazing for you – you’ll be the first person to direct it since Jonson himself.’
That was actually quite cool. ‘A bit more work for you though, if you don’t mind,’ I said, a bit hesitantly – it felt weird bossing around your head teacher.
‘How’s that?’
‘Well, you’ll be … if you don’t mind, that is … playing the Grand Stag. Because your character is, you know, dead. And, the stag is a kind of mutant Earl of Greenwich. Also, you’re the tallest person in the play. The tallest person I know, actually.’
He rubbed his clean-shaven chin, thinking. ‘Well, if you put it like that.’
He leafed through the pages, written out in our different scruffy handwritings. ‘Well, I suppose it’s really just that one big scene with the queen in the Underwood.’ He grinned. ‘And, to be frank, I would wrestle it out of the hands of anyone else.’ He shook the pages excitedly. ‘This will make history, Greer.’
At that moment, he didn’t seem much older than me. Which I guess he wasn’t, really.
‘Can I see the cipher?’ he asked. I handed it to him, with the original coded pages. He looked from one to the other, following what we’d done. He nodded as he read. ‘A plaintext attack,’ he said. ‘Very clever. And this is the keyword?’
‘DOGS,’ I confirmed. ‘What else?’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Well, Jonson was very much of his time. A cipher like this one was used in the Lopez Plot, just a few years before he wrote this play.’
‘Cool,’ I said.
‘All right then.’ He picked up his pen again. ‘So I’ll get back to your statement and I’ll see you for drama at noon. In the theatre for rehearsal, I presume?’
‘Yes. Thanks.’
Then I took a beat. I’d never heard of the Lopez Plot, even though I was doing history. But Abbot Ridley had. He did seem very clued up about history, not just drama. So why had he made that one crucial, howling mistake?
I was going to let it drop. I really was. I was actually on the way to the door. But my big mouth wouldn’t let me. I blurted: ‘Abbot Ridley?’
‘Mmm?’
‘When I was asking you about Ben Jonson, the first time, d’you remember we talked about Esmé Stuart?’
He’d already gone back to his paperwork – my paperwork – and spoke to the page in his hand. ‘Yes? What about him?’
‘Him?’
‘Yes.’ He put his pen down. ‘Are you talking about Esmé Stuart, 3rd Duke of Lennox, 7th Earl of Aubigny? Ben Jonson’s friend and patron?’
I couldn’t remember all the titles, but I was sure about the last bit. ‘Yes. I distinctly remember you said he was a woman. You said “friend and patroness”.’
He frowned. ‘Are you sure? You didn’t mishear? Perhaps you were confused because Esme is traditionally a girl’s name.’
I had thought that, because of the deadly Esme Dawson. But he’d definitely said she was a woman.
‘I’m a hundred per cent sure,’ I said.
‘Oh. Oh. Well, if I did, it was a slip of the tongue. Of course Esmé was a man. He and Jonson were very close, and Jonson didn’t like women much, I’m afraid. He said, “Women are but men’s shadows”.’
‘Huh,’ I said. Then I just stood there, eyes unfocused, thinking. Had I been mistaken? I was sure not. I’d even talked about Esmé being a woman to the others.
‘Was there anything else? I’m engaged in something terribly important.’ It was said with great charm, as he waved the Oxford form at me.
He was totally gaslighting me. I remembered what he’d said. I wasn’t going crazy. But he literally had my supporting statement for Oxford in his hand, half written. I wasn’t about to piss him off. So I just said, ‘Oh, OK. And thanks.’ I opened the door to go out.
‘Greer,’ he called after me. He had a smile in his voice. ‘History’s not carved in stone, you know.’
I thought that was an odd thing to say then, and I still do, if I’m honest. History might not be carved in stone, but surely whether or not a person from the past was a man or a woman was pretty, well … binary.
I was still thinking about what he’d said as I crossed back over the moat. Then I dismissed it as something that a freewheeling drama teacher would say, but a history teacher like Friar Camden wouldn’t say in a million years.
Still, I’m glad I remembered it.
Because it saved my life.
Scene ii
We all had a study period before drama, in which, technically, we should have been revising. But I went to see Cass.
I hadn’t seen her properly since – was it only the night before? – we’d put her to bed at Longcross. She was in a very shabby state then, so I expected to find her looking pretty green this morning.
Halfway across the Honorius Quad, I stopped next to the Jerusalem tree. It occurred to me that I didn’t actually know where to find her. It was an open secret among us Medievals that she’d been living in Louis’s room, but now I wasn’t so sure. Louis and Ty’s relationship seemed to have taken a big leap forward at Longcross, so I wasn’t sure Cass’s silken PJs would be on Louis’s bed any more.
I turned around and went back to Lightfoot, to Cass’s official room. I’d never known her be home, but as I lifted my fist to knock I thought, She must have used this room occasionally in the last few weeks. Specifically on Sunday nights when she was drip-feeding the play to me. Now I knew why I could never catch my mysterious messenger in the passageway. Cass was just a few doors down from me – she could have dropped the pages and been back in her bed before I’d even left my room.
I was surprised to hear quite a cheery, ‘Come in!’
I did. Cass was over by the windows, with a letter in her hand. She looked pretty well, considering. In fact, she looked very well. Her hair was shining in the winter light, her skin was clear and glowing and when she looked up her blue-grey eyes were shining. She waved the letter at me.
‘There was no body,’ she said. This was the second strange greeting I’d had today.
‘What do you mean?’
She waved the letter at me. I could see it was actually a document, quite a few pages stapled together. ‘The police report. They sent it here. Missing, presumed dead,’ she read. ‘Body never recovered.’
‘But … I saw an ambulance. With someone in it.’
‘But you said yourself. You didn’t see him. You saw a body bag.’
This much was true. ‘And you went to the funeral. There must’ve been a body.’
‘There was a coffin. But that’s not quite the same thing, is it?’
It wasn’t. ‘Didn’t you see the coroner? On the Sunday morning? And didn’t he tell you Henry was –’ it wasn’t easy to say – ‘cremated?’
‘Yes, but it was a new chap. Not the one who was in charge of Henry’s case.’
‘Where’s he gone?’
‘No one knows.’
‘What d’you mean?’
‘They’ve got a new chap, but the old chap disappeared.’
‘What?’
‘Well, not quite. He retired and moved abroad with his wife. Spain, they think. But no one can get hold of him.’
‘And what about the police inspector?
‘Same.’
‘He moved to Spain with the coroner’s wife?’
‘No. He’s vanished too. And no record of his registration with the police force.’
‘Wow.’
‘Yes. They are pursuing things with the mortuary, and trying to trace the paramedics who came with the ambulance. But that will take a bit of time.’
Ever seen a film called Catch-22? It’s about these airmen at a Mediterranean airbase in the Second World War. They had to fly eighty of these really dangerous missions before they were rotated out of duty, and that was the ‘catch’ of the title. The squadron’s doctor explains that you would have to be crazy to ask to fly more missions, but if you refused, that proved you were sane, and therefore fit to fly. My Catch-22 was this: I was as sure as I could be that Henry de Warlencourt was dead, because I had seen him die. In fact, I was the last one to see him alive as his hand had slipped from my grip. I had climbed that waterfall, with him in pursuit, and I, and only I, knew how Reichenbach-high they were. They must have been a good few hundred feet, with razor-sharp rocks all the way down. So no, I didn’t think he could possibly be alive.
BUT.
I couldn’t say that to Cassandra without giving myself away. I’d lied my ass off at Longcross, first a year ago to that nice inspector who had since mysteriously disappeared, and secondly to all the houseguests this year, saying I’d fallen in Longmere and then come back to Shafeen and Nel at the house. So now there was nothing else I could say without contradicting myself. I was stuck.
I looked back at Cassandra, and thought of the film again. She was either insane or giving a very good impression of it. ‘It’s a win-win,’ she said brightly. ‘Henry’s either still alive, or he’s dead and we bring him back with the play.’ She gave me a dazzling smile. This was a different Cass once again – the Day-One-at-Longcross Cass. She’d arrived at the house acting like a queen, and left as the underdog, crushed below the foot of her twin. Now she was on top of the world again.
I sank down on her bed, closed my eyes and pinched the bridge of my nose between my thumb and forefinger. In that moment I made the decision. I had to.
