S.T.A.G.S.

by M A Bennett

  We dropped Nel back at Cheviot and Shafeen walked me to my room. It was risky but Shafeen, as I was discovering, was the only real gentleman of the party.

  At the door he turned to go, hesitated and turned back. ‘You asked me why I came to Longcross,’ he said. ‘I came to protect someone. But it’s not Nel. I came because I wasn’t going to let them get you. And I won’t.’

  I swallowed. Did he like me in that way, in the way I’d thought Henry liked me? What he said gave me a warm feeling but I couldn’t process it just now. I was too afraid of tomorrow and what it might bring. I just hoped he was as good as his word. I opened the door to Lowther, but just before I went inside his voice stopped me.

  ‘And in case you’re wondering,’ he said awkwardly, ‘you are beautiful. That’s the one truth Henry told.’

  chapter twenty-five

  I was swimming in Longmere lake, desperately trying to get away from something.

  I looked back and saw the Medievals in boats with torches – the girls’ blonde hair draping down into the water, as if they were the ladies of the lake. The dark weeds below the surface were pulling at me, choking me, dragging me under. The water closed over my head and I was drowning. Shafeen’s head appeared above me. ‘We have to get her out,’ he said. ‘She’s beautiful.’ Then his dark head changed into Henry’s blond one, and Henry reached down to rescue me. But instead of hauling me up, he put out his index finger and pushed it into my mouth, curving it round into my cheek. Then the finger turned into a metal hook that pierced my flesh. Henry pulled and I jerked out of the weeds and rushed up and up, until I broke the surface of the water and my dream.

  I didn’t wake up hyperventilating and sweating, nor did I sit bolt upright like they do in movies. Just for a moment the dream and last night became confused. For a moment, lying there in my warm bed, I thought that it had all been a dream. The conversation on Shafeen’s bed, the discovery in the library, the plotting and planning in the estate room till the small hours. But then I saw Jeffrey’s head looming out of the half-dark. Today his eyes seemed to be asking me something. Pleading. It was time for the huntin’ to stop.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jeffrey,’ I said. ‘I’m on it.’ And I threw back the covers and sat up.

  The Cogsworth clock on the mantelpiece said ten to six, but I didn’t groan; I was relieved. There was something I had to do before the house was awake.

  I swung my legs out of bed and scrabbled under the bed for my rucksack. It was one of those outdoorsy ones made of thin tough camouflage material. My dad needed it on a shoot once and gave it to me. It wasn’t too bulky so I wrapped it round my waist. Then I grabbed the big white dressing gown from the hook on the back of my door and put it on over the rucksack. It reminded me of Shafeen. He’d been wearing one just like it last night. He was wearing it when he told me he had come to Longcross to save me. He was wearing it when he told me I was beautiful. I shook my head a little. I couldn’t think about that now.

  I padded downstairs to the Boot Room, the room where I’d first met Henry on Day One, the evening we’d broken up for Justitium. I remembered it well, all the fishing crap and the wellies and the yellowing sporting prints. Fortunately there was no one in there and I found what I was looking for almost at once. It had caught my eye that first day and again yesterday; it was one of the random things propped against the walls of the Boot Room like a discarded piece of junk. I grabbed it, folded it small and put it in my rucksack. Today that discarded piece of junk could save my life.

  I put the rucksack back under my dressing gown. The robe was a generous size but I still looked pregnant. I ran back up the stairs two at a time. Two maids were walking down as I went up, but they did no more than murmur, ‘Morning, miss,’ as I galloped past. They were too well trained to comment, and, as I knew from last night, there were stranger things to ignore at Longcross than a suddenly fat girl running up some stairs.

  I slipped into Lowther, ripped off the dressing gown, shoved the rucksack under the bed and dived under the covers. I’d just settled down to fake sleep when Betty knocked and entered. She walked straight to the windows and dragged back the curtains with a particularly vicious scrape, the cow. Light flooded in and I made a show of blinking, as if I hadn’t just minutes ago been running all over the house.

  ‘Morning, Betty!’ I said breezily.

  She shot me one of her evil looks. ‘Morning, miss. Shall I bring your tea up?’

  ‘Yes, please, Betty.’ I’d decided to revert to my previous manner with her. I didn’t want to bark orders like a Medieval. If all went well today, their reign would soon be over. Even a miserable hag like Betty deserved good manners. Everybody does.

  Betty brought my breakfast, and today there were bright orange kippers under the silver dome. ‘Seems in poor taste on a fishin’ day, Jeffrey,’ I said, trying to keep things light. My heart was hammering and my appetite levels were at zero, but I forced myself to eat as much as I could stomach of the bread and pastries. I needed to carb-load if things were going to go down as we expected today. No kippers though. I didn’t like the way they looked. Or smelled.

  Once I was dressed there was a knock on my door and I opened it to … Esme, Charlotte and Lara. ‘Well,’ I said, being Charlotte for a moment, ‘what an honour.’ They bundled in, sat on my bed while I got ready and were all incredibly chatty and friendly. Esme was surprisingly informative about fish: ‘We’ll be catching brown trout today,’ she said. ‘Longmere’s lousy with it. Good old salmo trutta.’ (Such a Medieval thing to do, to give the Latin name.) Lara was complimentary about my hair: ‘Gorgeous bob today, darling,’ she said in her bored voice. ‘So 1920s. The original Bright Young Thing.’ And Charlotte even said (if you’ll believe this), ‘Oh my God, you look so nice in your fishing clothes!’ A sentence I’m pretty sure had never been uttered before, ever, in the History of the World. The fishing gear wasn’t exactly sexy – it consisted of a flannel shirt, thick Aran sweater and waterproof wader trousers.

  I was pretty surprised that Lara, in particular, was being so nice, but then I remembered that there was no reason why she shouldn’t be. I was absolutely no threat to her and never had been. Henry had been toying with me, flattering me, keeping me on Team Medieval, keeping my Savage suspicions at bay. In all probability Henry and Lara would marry, live at Longcross and raise evil little blond rug rats together.

  Even if I hadn’t read the game books I like to think that the girls’ manner alone would have told me that something was going on. It was, well, fishy (sorry). Charlotte, in particular, had barely spoken to me since she’d come to do my Zoella makeover on the first night, and now here she was, acting like my best friend. Then, with a chill, I remembered the huntin’ day. They’d all done exactly the same to Nel. This was clearly their brief – to make the poor dumb victim feel secure on the day they were to become prey. I suddenly wondered how nice the boys had been to Shafeen on the shootin’ day.

  I grabbed my waterproof coat – and the all-important rucksack – and we all clattered down the grand stairs and out into the driveway. As we walked to the estate cars I looked back to the blank windows of the house. I suddenly remembered leaving STAGS for Justitium, and looking back and seeing faces at every window of the school. There were no faces today – and that had been agreed. We couldn’t let the Medievals know we were working together. But I knew my new friends were watching me, and knew exactly where I was at every single minute. Although I was going into the lions’ den alone, for the first time since the start of Michaelmas term I was not alone.

  I’m not saying that, as the Land Rovers set off for the lake, I wasn’t afraid. But I did take comfort in the fact that we Savages had three things the Medievals didn’t know we had.

  We had the Saros 7S.

  We had the contents of my rucksack.

  And we had each other.

  chapter twenty-six

  I’ve always thought that the expression ‘my heart missed a beat’ is utter horseshit.

&nb
sp; But once we’d all been decanted from the Land Rovers and taken the long walk down the hillside to Longmere lake, and I saw Henry coming towards me, I swear my heart stopped for a moment. I felt terror, excitement, regret; a whole mess of crap was swimming round in my head. The problem was that no one up there in my brain had bothered to tell my heart that I wasn’t supposed to like him any more.

  ‘Greer!’ he said in his usual surprised-to-see-me way. ‘I missed you after dinner last night. Where did you go?’

  ‘Bed,’ I said. ‘I was beat after all the drama, you know, what with Shafeen’s accident and all.’ Call it an accident. Act like Henry’s innocent. Put the plan into motion.

  I looked out at the long, long silver lake where a stag had once died. The purple hills loomed around us, and the orange trees frilled the water. I could see a long wooden jetty reaching out into the lake, with three neat little boats tied up beside it, and waxed-jacketed servants in waders loading up the boats with rods and plastic containers full of God-knows-what. Piers, Cookson and the three sirens were sorting themselves out into groups to head out in the boats. I just hoped to God I’d be with Henry. I began to walk towards the boats to force Henry to fall into step with me. I spoke low in his ear.

  ‘Listen. I wanted to say, well, that I was really emotional yesterday. It was a bit of a shock – I’ve never seen anyone get shot before. Even though I live in Manchester,’ I joked. ‘You’ve got to remember, I didn’t grow up with all this.’ I waved my arm, taking in the lake, the mountains and the trees of flame – but the gesture meant more than that. It meant privilege. It meant huntin’ shootin’ fishin’. ‘I think it’s probably different for you guys. I mean, like Cookson said, these kinds of accidents happen all the time. Inevitable, I suppose, with shotguns spraying those tiny little pellets everywhere, that someone’s going to get winged now and again. So I overreacted. I shouldn’t have yelled at you about the hospital. Your house, your rules, right?’

  His expression softened. ‘Thank you,’ he said with this little courtly bow. ‘I accept your apology, and I appreciate it very much. And I must stress that Dr Morand is an excellent doctor and very well used to dealing with any little incidents that might happen at shooting parties. He’s been treating the family since my father was a little boy.’

  Gasp. I really wasn’t surprised by that, considering how old Shafeen had said the doctor was. But I just nodded. ‘How is Shafeen?’ This too was part of the plan; I had to hide the fact that I’d even seen Shafeen since dinner, let alone spent half the night with him.

  ‘He’s fine.’ Henry raised a Roger-Moore-as-James-Bond eyebrow at me and smiled. ‘In fact, when I called on him after breakfast he seemed better than fine. He had a very pretty nurse already there. Chanel was attending him.’

  We’d planned this too: that Nel would go and have breakfast in Shafeen’s room, so that the servants or any Medieval who dropped by faking concern would see them, and the idea would be seeded that they were now together. Before last night I’d have said that there wouldn’t be much acting required. But underneath all the anxiety of what was to happen today, I held inside of me the warmth of Shafeen’s compliment from last night, the fact that he’d called me beautiful. I didn’t even know what to do with that, but I sure as hell couldn’t think about it now.

  ‘Yes, they looked very cosy together,’ Henry went on. ‘And as Shafeen can’t fish, obviously, with one arm –’

  ‘No epic contest today then,’ I said.

  ‘No,’ he said, just a tiny bit smugly. He’d eliminated the competition all right. ‘So Chanel’s stayed to look after him. I think they’re joining us for lunch at the boathouse.’

  I certainly hoped so, for this too had been agreed last night. Then I launched into the speech we’d planned. ‘I don’t think Chanel’s got the heart for any more blood sports, to be honest with you,’ I said conversationally. ‘She’s pretty shell-shocked after what happened the other day. With the hounds, I mean. She’s changed.’

  ‘How has she changed?’ Henry seemed genuinely interested.

  ‘She’s a bit … deflated somehow,’ I said. ‘I don’t think she’ll be flashing her cash quite as much.’ I glanced at Henry sideways. ‘Maybe their accidents kind of brought Shafeen and Nel together. Could be a good thing.’

  ‘How so?’

  ‘Well,’ I pretended to think. ‘Maybe Shafeen won’t be pulling that Indian-prince act any more. Maybe he won’t be answering you back now. Maybe they’ve both been, sort of, put in their place.’

  I saw an unmistakable look of satisfaction flit across his face. Good, I thought. It’d worked. We wanted Shafeen and Nel to have a good reason not to be with the fishing party, but at the same time allow Henry to think that his plan to suppress the plebs was working. We wanted him to think he’d broken them. But if he thought that, he was wrong.

  As we got closer to the jetty I could see that one of the waxed-jacket squad was Perfect. He came to meet us on the shingle beach and touched his cap to his master. I was well wrapped up, but just the sight of him made me go cold. I remembered him in the library last night, turning around with the shotgun on his shoulder, sniffing us out. I steeled myself to meet his eye, but nothing in his expression told me he’d seen us hiding. His pale eyes passed over me without interest.

  ‘Ah, Perfect,’ said Henry, ‘everything set?’ He turned to me. ‘Perfect’s going to be our gillie today.’ I had no idea what that was, but I guessed it meant that the headkeeper was coming with us, and so it seemed. ‘He’ll pilot the boat and help out just while you get the hang of the fishin’.’

  My heart sank like a stone. Perfect was much less frightening by day, but it was possible that his presence in the boat was going to ruin the plan we’d cooked up the night before.

  I drew Henry to one side. ‘I was kind of hoping that you and I would have some alone time?’

  He smiled and sort of rubbed his hand up and down the top of my arm. I hate to admit that I kind of liked it. I guess you just can’t switch off feelings, even if the boy you thought you liked is a homicidal maniac. ‘I was hoping that too,’ he said. ‘But he’ll be with us for the morning. This afternoon we’ll find a lonely stretch of water where we can be alone. Sound good?’

  ‘Wonderful,’ I said. ‘Just what I’d hoped.’

  As we walked along the shingle I had a heart-stopping moment when Henry took my bag from me. I hadn’t bargained on his chivalry. I clutched at it jealously for a moment but had to let it go – to make a big thing of it would’ve seemed really suss to him. ‘What’s in the bag?’ he said. ‘A life jacket?’

  He was almost right. ‘No,’ I over-laughed. ‘Just some spare jumpers. I got pretty chilly yesterday. And the day before, come to that.’

  We walked along the jetty to the first of the waiting boats. It was a little glossy wooden vessel with an outboard motor, one of those nice-looking ones you see in seaside postcards. I knew it was time to put another part of the plan into action. Henry got into the boat first, his weight making it rock precariously. He held out one of his hands, and Perfect, on the jetty, held my other hand. As they helped me into the boat I deliberately stumbled and slipped, clutching at Henry as I lurched. He steadied me and I sat down heavily in the bow, making sure, as I did so, that I was reunited with my rucksack. Perfect got in last and the boat pitched with his bulk. I made a show of clutching the sides of the boat nervously.

  ‘Actually, it’s a good job Perfect’s here,’ I said. ‘An extra pair of hands to haul me out.’

  ‘Oh?’ said Henry.

  ‘Yes. I can’t swim. Pathetic, isn’t it?’

  I was taking a bit of a risk here; I was relying on the fact that none of the Medievals had ever seen me in the pool at STAGS. But I didn’t think they had. I tend to get up pretty early to swim, because, having swum competitively, I hated having to stop for people pootling around and splashing each other. I’d certainly never seen any of them in the pool, so I didn’t think they could have seen me. Henry didn
’t call me on it anyway – he just said that most Medieval of words: ‘Gosh.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said ruefully. ‘Not much chance to learn in Manchester.’

  Actually there were tons of public pools in Manchester, for the ‘little people’ to learn to swim in, but I was banking on Henry’s innate snobbery, and him assuming that peasants didn’t swim. And it worked.

  ‘I suppose not,’ he said. ‘Well, it would be my pleasure to teach you that too.’

  I laughed a silly little laugh, a bit like Esme’s. ‘Not today, I hope!’

  ‘God, no,’ he said, laughing too. ‘Bit chilly, eh?’

  It sounds weird to say it, but I actually enjoyed the fishin’. I was pretty sure – all three of us plotters were sure – that nothing was going to happen to me that morning. (Even so, Shafeen and Nel were watching me closely, don’t you worry about that.) We thought we had the Medievals’ method bossed by now. Jolly morning of blood sports. Everyone very friendly to the prey, everything very relaxed. Look how nice we are. Look how beautiful the scenery is. Then a lovely lunch, tons of courses, tons of servants. Tons to drink. Then, in the afternoon, when the night was falling, the dark stuff happened. That was when I’d have to be alert.

  And I would be. But for now I had to just act as if nothing was different, as if I was having the time of my life, and as if I was in love with Henry de Warlencourt. I decided that the only way I could get through that morning without descending into the palm-sweating, stomach-churning panic that I was only just managing to keep at bay was to pretend I didn’t know what I knew. And it worked.

  The thing is, it worked a little too well.

  Henry spent the morning showing me how to fish. He really couldn’t have been nicer, or more normal. He was ever so patient with me; he took his time, and made sure I had fun. I watched as Perfect prepped the rods for us.

  ‘We’re after brown trout today,’ said Henry, ‘so we use a light spinning rod –’ he showed me the spooling wheel-thing on the rod’s handle – ‘which is best for browns. They’ve got really good eyesight so we use the finest line we can – this is monofilament.’ He showed me the line in his fingertips and you could hardly see it – it looked like a piece of glass thread.