STAGS 2, page 24
The Old Abbot fixed me with his eyes. The last time he’d spoken to me, I’d still thought him a lovely, twinkly Santa Claus-type guy; now his gaze was cold and judgemental. He lowered his ruby-ringed hand once more and pointed it right at my face.
‘Greer MacDonald,’ his voice rang out in the empty theatre. ‘By the power vested in me by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag, I convict you of the murder of one of our number, Henry Charles Philip Arthur George de Warlencourt. You will be hanged by the neck until you are dead, unless you enter a plea in mitigation.’
I couldn’t actually believe what he was saying. This was a nightmare. The noose tightened around my throat once more.
‘Have you anything to say?’
I had a million things to say. That I hadn’t murdered Henry – he had fallen. That I would never have wanted him dead. That I wanted him back, but the rope squeezed my throat to a choking silence.
It also again raised me slightly to the balls of my feet. I strained to ease the pressure.
‘For the second time, I ask you: have you anything to say?’
Red spots danced before my eyes. I tried and failed to push my fingers under the noose to loosen the grip of the rope. I was now on the point of my tiptoes, like some crazy ballerina, desperately scrabbling to keep some purchase on the ground.
‘For the third and final time, I ask you: have you anything to say?’
I was now in the air – my feet had left the stage. I knew if I blacked out now it was all over, but the darkness was falling over my eyes and it seemed that nothing could keep it at bay.
Then I had one of those moments that happen in movies, one of those montages that filmmakers think you have in the last moments of your life, like at the end of Requiem for a Dream.
But this wasn’t my life flashing before my eyes.
This was definitely edited highlights.
First, I was in the STAGS chapel at the Requiem Mass, the memorial for the very Abbot who was trying me now. I was listening to the chapel choir singing the Miserere, the cold clarity of the notes chilling my very blood. Then I heard Abbot Ridley’s voice saying: Greer, history’s not carved in stone. I was in the crypt of Longcross church among the graves, my fingers feeling the carved grooves in the marble of the family tomb, the deeply scored black letters resolving before my eyes. Carved in stone. Then I could no longer see, but I could hear Shafeen’s voice. ‘Greer!’ he cried out of the darkness. ‘You know what to say, Greer! You know what to say!’
He was right.
I knew what to say.
I opened my dry mouth and with the last of my breath I said it.
The neck verse.
‘Miserere mei, Deus, secundum magnam misericordiam tuam.’
Instantly the rope holding me up snapped, and, no longer supported, I fell to the stage. There was an unbearable, burning pain – in, of all places, my thumb.
And then everything went black.
Scene ix
When I woke up to white sheets and bright lights, I said the least original thing you could possibly say.
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in Alnwick Cottage Hospital.’
It wasn’t so much the answer that surprised me as the speaker.
For sitting by my bed, living and breathing, was Henry de Warlencourt.
He looked exactly the same. Hair so blond, eyes so blue. He wore a white shirt, open at the throat, a tweed jacket, blue jeans and dark-brown boots. He wasn’t maimed or scarred. He was perfect. I’d been wrong about Louis. He’d never looked like this.
‘You’re alive.’
‘And so are you.’
‘It worked then. The play – it brought you back.’
‘Is that what you were trying to do?’
I couldn’t take credit for that. ‘Not so much me as Cass. She knew all along.’
‘God love her.’ He smiled, and my heart just about stopped. ‘My sweet little cuz.’ Then his face got all serious. ‘What about you? Were you trying to bring me back?’
‘I’ll answer you that one if you answer me another. Did you die?’
He took hold of my hand, avoiding the dressing on my thumb. The gold signet ring, with the little antler design, was back on his finger. His grip was warm and strong and real.
‘What do you think?’
He felt very much alive to me. ‘OK then. Where did you go after you … fell off the waterfall?’
‘Maybe nowhere,’ he said. ‘If the play brought me back, maybe I was just … waiting, in the ether.’
‘But that’s impossible.’
‘Is it?’
He smiled again, then relented. ‘Where did Sherlock Holmes go after he fell off the Reichenbach Falls?’
I thought about this. ‘He went home.’
‘Exactly. He went home. To 221b Baker Street.’
‘Are you saying you went home? To Longcross?’
‘If you’re discounting the ether theory, that’s the only logical explanation, isn’t it?’
‘Well, it would explain why your room looked lived in. If it was. And that’s why Perfect wouldn’t treat Louis as the master.’
‘He’ll be master soon enough.’
‘How can he be? Either we brought you back or you never went away, but either way you’re here, so how can he be master?’
‘He has a piece of paper saying that I’m dead.’
‘Did that come from you?’
‘I don’t know what you mean.’
I narrowed my eyes. ‘Yes, you do.’
He smiled at that. ‘Let’s not fight. I’ll have to get you more flowers.’ He nodded at my bedside table. There was a bunch of beautiful red roses, the colour of blood.
‘From the stable-yard?’ I remembered them crowding over the stone arch, even in the snow.
‘Yes. They’re dog roses. I thought you’d enjoy the irony.’
I smiled. ‘Won’t Louis mind you taking them?’
‘It isn’t his eighteenth birthday until tomorrow. I’m still the heir to Longcross for another day, so those roses –’, he pointed – ‘are still my birthright.’
‘How can he inherit if you’re still around?’
‘I’ve been missing for more than a year and a day. Under the terms of the entail, he can legally inherit.’
‘That doesn’t seem very long.’
Henry stretched his long, be-jeaned legs. ‘That’s because it was written in an era when you were unlikely to live to see forty, and a nobleman was required to go off and fight crusades, foreign kings, the Scots, you name it. Louis will inherit on his birthday tomorrow. Unless –’ his eyes twinkled – ‘I make a guest appearance at the party.’
‘Why would you let him inherit like that?’
‘Let’s just say I might need to stay dead for a little while longer.’
‘Why?’
‘Greer,’ he said, spreading his hands, ‘I have to retain some mystery, don’t I?’
‘Tell me this then. Were you going to kill me? You said you were, at the top of the falls.’
That stopped him in his tracks.
I looked at him sharply. ‘Were you? You were going to kill Nel, and Shafeen. And Gemma Delaney the year before, and God knows how many others. What about the hunting books?’
‘Not in my time, Greer. Whatever the Order did before or since, I never killed anyone. It was just a bit of fun.’
‘Who for? Is this one of those “the fox enjoys hunting” conversations?’
He leaned forward and took my hand again, this time in both of his. ‘Didn’t you enjoy that weekend? If you are really honest with yourself? You came back to Longcross a second time, didn’t you? The thrill of the chase doesn’t just belong to the hunter, you know.’
I wasn’t going to let him get away with this. ‘That’s so twisted. You did some pretty bad stuff, Henry.’
Then he did something I’d never seen him do before. He put his palms over his eyes and spoke without taking them away. For the first time in this, the weirdest of conversations, he didn’t sound confident. He sounded broken. ‘You don’t know. You can’t know. You can’t understand what shapes a child.’
‘You’re surely not asking me to feel sorry for you. With all you’ve got?’
‘I’m just saying. You are bought up thinking things are normal, and you don’t find out they aren’t until you’re too old to change.’
Suddenly I thought of the baby elephants so used to being tied up with a piece of twine, so accepting, that it never occurred to them to break free as they grew. But I couldn’t pity Henry, could I? ‘You were going to kill me, and make it look like an accident. You said so to my face.’
He took the hands away. His face was deadly serious. ‘No, Greer. Not you. Never you.’
I looked him right in his eyes, the blue eyes I’d never forgotten. ‘You could do it now,’ I whispered. ‘I can’t really move.’ It was true. I was anchored by a monitor and a drip. ‘You could put a pillow over my face.’
He looked at me and I looked at him. It was a really strange moment, oddly intimate, the invitation to kill. But it was an invitation I only felt safe enough to offer because I knew he’d never do it.
‘No. I’m not a murderer.’
The moment had come and gone, and a strange lightness replaced it. ‘And if you are alive,’ I said, teasing now, ‘neither am I. Not even a manslaughterer,’ I said, remembering the word I’d once invented.
‘Better say manslayer. That’s what they branded Ben Jonson.’
‘So you’re saying I am a manslayer? Am I or not?’
‘Well, have you killed anyone?’
‘Besides you, you mean?’ It was such an odd thing to joke about, but here we were, bantering about bloodshed.
‘Only you have the answer,’ he said meaningfully.
‘God, you’re just as annoying as ever!’ I exclaimed. ‘Being dead hasn’t improved you.’
At that he threw back his head and laughed. ‘Speaking of coming back from the dead,’ he said, ‘I’d better go and tell them you’re awake.’
I panicked a bit, and grabbed for the hand I’d once let go of at the top of a waterfall. ‘You will come back, won’t you?’
‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘you’ll see me again.’ And before I could stop him, he leaned in and kissed me full on the lips.
Then, as he’d done a year before, he pulled his hand from mine and was gone.
Scene x
When I woke up to white sheets and bright lights, I said the least original thing you could possibly say.
‘Where am I?’
‘You’re in Alnwick Cottage Hospital.’
I got the biggest sense of déjà vu ever. You know when you are having a dream and you think you’ve woken up, but you’re actually still in the dream and then later you wake up again. I totally had that. This had happened to me before, except this time it wasn’t Henry who answered me. It was Shafeen.
‘Hello, you.’ He looked like he hadn’t slept – he was all stubbly and his hair was ruffled, but he looked absolutely lovely. He leaned in and kissed me on the lips still imprinted with Henry’s kiss. I blinked guiltily.
‘Did you see Henry?’ My voice was a crow’s croak, and my throat absolutely killed. So weird – it hadn’t hurt at all when I’d been talking to Henry.
‘Henry?’ He frowned.
‘He was here.’
Shafeen didn’t look shocked, jump up or run out into the corridor. He just smiled gently and held my hand, in the same way Henry had. ‘They said this might happen.’
‘That what might happen?’
‘They had you on some pretty serious drugs, Greer. An induced sleep, while the swelling in your windpipe went down. The nurse said there might be some confusion when you woke.’
‘How long was I out?’
‘Two days.’
‘So it’s … 16th December.’ The play had been on the 14th, the day we’d broken up. (Posh schools have really long holidays.) ‘Henry had said Louis’s birthday was on the 17th. Tomorrow. He was here today.’ I tried to raise myself on the pillows.
‘Hey, hey. They said you weren’t to get excited and you weren’t to talk too much. You’re doing both.’
‘What about the flowers?’
‘Those’ll be from the STAGS hothouses. Abbot Ridley said he was sending some from the students and staff. He’s a class act.’
‘You’ve changed your tune.’
Shafeen shrugged. ‘He was great when you were choking. I knew something was wrong and ran down to the stage. I lifted you up, but it was him who cut you down.’
‘How?’
‘He drew his Earl of Greenwich sword and sliced through the rope. I thought Nel was going to burst.’
I smiled, and even that was a bit painful. ‘Where is Nel?’
‘She’s been here the whole time too. But they only want you to have one visitor at a time at the moment. I got first dibs.’
‘Awww.’ I tried to sit up, and as soon as I put my left hand down to lift myself it hurt. ‘And did I burn my hand?’
‘I guess. Perhaps when you fell to the stage. There were lots of candles around.’
‘Yes. At the trial the Grand Stags were all standing inside them. Like a circle of fire.’
‘What trial?’
I goggled up at him. ‘My trial. By the Dark Order of the Grand Stag. And there are far more of them than we thought, by the way. The Grand Master must be a fixed-term office, like we guessed.’
‘Back up,’ said Shafeen. ‘Trial for what?’
‘For murder.’
‘Murder?’
‘Henry’s murder. But it’s OK. He’s alive. And so’m I, because I said the neck verse. You told me to.’
‘I did?’
He was starting to sound like an echo. ‘Yes. You shouted out.’
‘Greer,’ he said, looking concerned, ‘are you awake? You’re making no sense. What are you talking about?’ We stared at each other, both equally confused.
‘Look,’ I said eventually, ‘tell me properly what happened. What you saw, from the audience.’
Shafeen took a deep breath. ‘All right. So, you spoke the Epilogue – which was great, by the way – but by the last line you started to sound a bit strangled. But I’d never seen it in rehearsal, and I didn’t know about the noose thing and, sorry to sound like I’m your dad or something, but I never would have agreed to you doing that. Anyway, I saw your toes actually lifting off the ground, and your face started to go this strange purple colour. So that’s when I ran down to the stage and they drew the curtain over you. By this time most of the cast were onstage. Some of them were screaming – mostly Nel, if I’m honest – but you couldn’t hear a thing in the auditorium apparently because they were all cheering. The audience clapped through the whole thing, and you might want to know you got a standing ovation.’
‘Cool,’ I said wryly. ‘Glad everyone enjoyed my near-death experience so much.’
‘So I lifted you up, like I said, to ease the pressure on your throat, and Abbot Ridley cut you down, like some superhero, and somebody called an ambulance. You gave us quite a fright, you know?’ I could see he was understating it, and suddenly felt very sorry for what he’d been through.
‘How long was I out for?’
‘About two minutes, no more.’
‘Two minutes?’
‘Yes. Why?’
I told him about the trial, and the circle of Grand Stags dressed in red; the sentence and the neck verse.
‘No.’ He shook his head. ‘No judgements by age-old cults, sorry. I think I would remember. You came round almost at once. Then we kept you quiet onstage until the paramedics got there, and they gave you a shot straight away. And told us all to clear off. So we left you with them and they brought you here – they wouldn’t let anyone travel in the ambulance, but we followed in Nel’s car. You’ve been out since.’
‘And how did … the hanging … happen?’
‘The noose had been put on one of the candelabra winches by mistake and just raised you up when they were lifting the lights ready for the final curtain.’
‘That’s what I thought.’
‘Then they put you out because you’d suffered trauma to the throat and, like I told you, they wanted to reduce the swelling and bruising before they let you wake. Otherwise you might have found it hard to swallow. Oh yes, and breathe.’
He was trying to make a joke, and I could see what an effort it was. What a strain he’d been under. ‘Yeah. Pretty essential, that whole breathing thing,’ I joked back weakly.
Then I eased back on my pillows. ‘It was all a dream,’ I said, as though I was in some lame movie like Vanilla Sky. Obviously I was massively relieved that the trial had been a dream – well, a nightmare – but the thought that Henry must have been a dream too made me, stupidly, feel like crying. He did feel less real now; he was fading from sight, just as dreams do the longer you’ve been awake, as the real world takes over.
It all made sense. How could any of it be real? That would be nuts. I always knew logically Henry couldn’t have survived that fall from Conrad’s Force. My fevered brain had conjured him, just as it had invented that Gothic onstage trial by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag. Then I groaned. ‘Jeesus. What must everyone have thought?’
‘Nobody thought anything,’ said Shafeen. ‘You know STAGS. They are great at hushing stuff up. Centuries of practice. While we were all with the paramedics, old Ridley got some of the Friars to ply Professor Nashe with sherry. Once he knew you were going to be all right, he took her off to dinner. By the way, she sent a message through him that she would have loved to have met you but she understood you were tired after the play. That was the story Ridley fed her. She hoped you were “sensible of what a great achievement the play was”, and that she was looking forward to meeting you “when you went up to Oxford”. Not if, Greer, when. It looks like it might be a slam-dunk.’ He took both my hands now and his eyes were shining. The future seemed assured. ‘She’s gone now and taken The Isle of Dogs to submit it to the British Library. They’re going to call it the Longcross Manuscript.’
