S.T.A.G.S.

by M A Bennett

‘Drunks.’ This, ironically was Piers. ‘Scotland’s full of ’em.’ His voice was thick with the wine.

  ‘Naff off, Piers,’ said Charlotte fondly, an insult I’ve genuinely never heard before.

  Shafeen took no notice of this sideshow. He wasn’t done. ‘People have taken photographs. What about the famous Surgeon’s Photograph from the 1930s? The one that looks like a brontosaurus swimming – a big body and a little head on a long neck. That’s a photograph, Greer. Proof set down in black and white.’

  Black and white. The same words as he used to me last night, about the game book. Proof set down in black and white.

  ‘In The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes,’ I said, ‘the monster turned out to be a submarine.’

  ‘That’s fiction though,’ insisted Shafeen. ‘The guy who took the Surgeon’s Photograph was a gynaecologist. Scientists aren’t usually given to flights of fancy.’

  ‘It was a fake too though, wasn’t it?’ put in Lara in her bored voice. ‘I thought they proved it was doctored.’ I don’t think she noticed her pun. ‘The “monster” didn’t appear on the negative. Scientists may not be given to flights of fancy, it’s true, but they have been known to falsify data.’

  You could always rely on the Medievals for a good conversation. Once again I’d been guilty of forgetting how clever they were. I suppose in a way they’d been well trained – their minds had been nurtured and tutored at great expense; they didn’t spend hours staring at screens and they’d been holding their own at table ever since they’d been allowed to stay up to dinner.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Cookson, taking up the thread. ‘You can make circumstantial evidence prove anything.’ Once again I got the feeling that the Medievals knew exactly what we Savages were talking about. It was as if Cookson was deliberately casting doubt on what we had found in the game books.

  Now, at this point I should explain, as I wished I could’ve explained to Shafeen and Nel, that it wasn’t that I had lost my nerve. I still accepted that something was going on, and I was genuinely ready to tackle Henry about it. But I didn’t believe, in the light of day, that the Medievals were killers. Yes, they might be playing jokes, even playing dangerous games. There might even be initiation ceremonies, like you hear about at Ivy League schools in America, testing what lengths STAGS kids would go to for the opportunity to become a Medieval. But committing – or attempting – murder? I just couldn’t believe it.

  Shafeen looked straight at me, his dark eyes pleading. ‘Just because no one’s seen the monster in action, doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.’

  ‘You’re right,’ I said, trying to reassure him with my own eyes that I wasn’t about to drop the whole thing; I just wanted to go about it a different way. That’s a lot to say with your eyes, and I was sure he wasn’t getting it. But whatever Shafeen felt, I’d made up my mind I was going to take a bit of a left turn. When Henry and I were alone, I’d confront him with what the three of us knew and give him the chance, at least, to explain himself. I said to Shafeen, pointedly, ‘I just think the whole thing needs further investigation.’

  ‘That’s all very well,’ he said, ‘but the investigators should still take precautions. A dark lake, a monster. Poke around in those fathomless depths, they don’t know what they might find. They really don’t know what they’re dealing with.’

  It was unmistakably a warning. And under the table I could feel, nudging against my foot, the rucksack that I’d packed so carefully and guarded so jealously.

  I was pretty sure I wouldn’t need what was inside it. It seemed like an awful lot of trouble to use it, when I was now convinced I’d be in no danger from Henry that afternoon. We’d fish some more, we’d have dinner, and by tomorrow afternoon we’d all be back at STAGS. But in the end, more to stop Shafeen glaring at me than anything else, I excused myself to go to the toilet just as we’d planned. I went into the cubicle with a full rucksack, and came out with an empty one.

  chapter twenty-eight

  The late-afternoon light on the lake was beautiful.

  Henry took my hand as we walked along the shingle to the jetty. I wasn’t cold at all, too many layers for that, and even my somewhat restricted movement couldn’t ruin the stroll. The only thing ruining this idyllic movie I seemed to be living in – The Notebook maybe? Or The Lake House? – was Perfect striding ahead of us. I’d been promised we’d be free of his shadow this afternoon. I said to Henry, ‘Is he coming with us?’

  ‘No,’ Henry reassured me. ‘He’s just stocking the boat. I don’t think we need him any more. You’re quite the expert now. Besides, I think we need some alone time, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said. But not for the reason he thought. We had a lot to talk about.

  Henry jumped lightly into the boat and Perfect handed me in after him. We sat side by side, in the stern, Henry taking the tiller. Perfect cast off the rope and Henry started the engine. We idled out into the centre of the lake. The sun was sinking and the sky was turning a sort of rose gold. I thought of my dad – he would have loved this. Magic hour, they called it on his shoots. That precious hour at the end of the day when you had, for a brief time, the most beautiful light, the light the camera loves. I’d seen Dad’s work so many times – deer at bay like the one I’d murdered, murmurations of starlings like the jet beads on my mum’s dress. I realised, for the first time, that magic hour is so beautiful because it’s the last hour of the day. It’s precious because the day is dying.

  Far behind us I could see the other Medievals piling into the other boats, but we had quite the head start. Essentially Henry and I were alone in the middle of the darkening lake. The sun was setting for real and the lake was turning this amazing crimson colour.

  Blood, I thought suddenly.

  The temperature was dropping and the hills that surrounded us were bruising to black. The rods and the lures were neatly lined up in the bow of the boat, but neither one of us made a move to touch them. It should have been romantic, but there was a weird edgy vibe. Less Helen and Leonard in Howard’s End, and more Fredo and Neri in The Godfather II.

  The silence was freaking me out. ‘So,’ I said, wondering how to begin, ‘here we are then. Just the two of us.’

  He turned to me and took my hand, like he was going to propose or something. His thumb caressed my fingers, my knuckles, my wrist.

  And met, looped over my thumb, the tight cuff of a wetsuit.

  I looked at Henry, and he looked at me.

  And then I knew.

  It was just like that bit in Primal Fear when Ed Norton flips from angelic altar boy to homicidal maniac with just one look. He doesn’t say anything; it’s just the expression in his eyes that changes. Watch it and you’ll see. That look won Ed Norton an Oscar nomination and it’s chilling enough on screen. I watched Henry de Warlencourt do it for real, and I knew from that look that he was going to kill me. I absolutely knew, without him saying anything, that it was all true. All of it: the huntin’, the shootin’ and the fishin’.

  And now I was truly afraid.

  What if Shafeen had understood my message at lunch and abandoned the plan? I’d warned him off, and he’d been disappointed in me. What if he had thought that I wasn’t worth saving? What if he and Nel had just gone back to Longcross to pack and had ditched me?

  I looked into Henry’s ice-blue eyes and faced the fact that I was utterly alone.

  I braced myself for what I knew was coming.

  The moment stretched out for ages. Then Henry moved towards me and put out his arm. I thought for a moment he was going to change his mind and put it around me. But instead he threw it across me and flipped me backwards, knocking me out of the boat.

  The water was colder than anything I have ever known. I’m convinced that the shock would have killed me, if it wasn’t for the ace Henry had discovered up my sleeve; literally up my sleeve. The wetsuit saved me.

  The wetsuit that I’d seen on that first evening in the Boot Room, lying among the fishing rods like a disc
arded skin.

  The wetsuit my subconscious had clocked again yesterday when we laid Shafeen by the fire, and had stolen at first light this morning.

  The wetsuit I’d pulled on in the toilets after lunch, praying that Henry wouldn’t notice the bulkiness under my clothes.

  Don’t get me wrong – it was still freaking cold even with the wetsuit, so cold it was hard to catch my breath. I trod water for a minute, gasping with the shock, telling myself not to panic. Then my legs and arms remembered, as muscle memory kicked in, what they were supposed to do, but I had another problem to face. While the waxed jacket was actually quite buoyant, and had trapped some air in it during my fall from the boat, the heavy Aran sweater was becoming waterlogged and in another moment it would drag me down. I kicked off my boots and stripped off the jacket (easy) and the wide wader trousers (harder). Then I tried to push the sodden woollen jumper over my head, which was almost impossible. I had to use my arms, which meant I couldn’t use them for swimming, and immediately sank. I had to keep resurfacing and trying again. And here’s the weird thing. All the time Henry was sitting in the boat, a dark shape hunched against the sunset, watching me struggle, almost as if he was holding back until I was ready for the chase to start. I think that’s when I realised he was crazy: he was still being chivalrous, waiting until I was quite ready for him to kill me. It was like someone holding an elevator door open for you to fall down an empty lift shaft. At last I got free of the jumper and started to swim, and that’s when Henry fired up the engine and came after me.

  In the dark I worried that the bulky shapes of my clothes in the water would make it hard for Henry to see me. It was important that he followed me. But it was all right – he had a torch. No doubt the efficient Perfect had left it in the stern for him. I saw the broad white beam sweep the water, and I decided to help him a little. ‘Help!’ I spluttered, waving, not drowning. The torch beam found me, lighting my way. Gasping, but calm, I turned and struck out for the shore. I knew I had to go east, away from the boathouse, to the other side of the lake, as the three of us Savages had arranged.

  I hoped to God the plan would work. When we’d been plotting in the estate room our first idea had been that I would take the Saros 7S onto the boat with me and film whatever Henry did. But we had to abandon that idea when Nel had said that although the Saros had been designed to be water resistant – it would survive being dropped accidentally in the bath or the toilet – it couldn’t survive a prolonged immersion. So we’d made a Plan B: I was to lure Henry to a pre-arranged place where Shafeen and Nel would be waiting to witness my trial. And – hopefully – intervene before it was too late.

  We were confident that Henry would chase me. We had no doubt that he would do anything to defend his lifestyle. And we were right. He chugged after me, the boat idling quite slowly, not attempting to run me down. But he was relentless – he kept on coming.

  And the others came too. ‘She’s in!’ I heard him call out to the Medievals, his voice carrying across the water. I saw other torches go on, and multiple beams of light sweep the water, illuminating the blonde hair of the Medieval girls hanging over the side of the boats and almost sweeping the water’s surface as they looked for me. They were sirens for real today, evil nymphs who brought watery death. Well, I wasn’t going to let them claim me. Not today.

  I swam just fast enough to keep me ahead of the boats. I was making good headway to the shore when I heard a whistle and plop to my right. Surely they weren’t shooting at me? But no – the Medievals obeyed their own rules. Henry was casting a hook for me. He was still fishin’.

  I swam a little faster, but the next moment a wicked hook snagged the wetsuit at my left shoulder. I struck out strongly, diving under the surface for a moment, to pull the hook loose. I was free, for now, but as I glanced around I could see a jagged a little tear in my wetsuit, and feel a sting in my shoulder as if I’d been cut. I knew that if they all tried to catch me with their fishing hooks they could make a real mess of me.

  I swam faster.

  The three boats nosed towards me, and two of them pulled ahead of me, Piers and Cookson on one side, the girls on the other. I realised with a rush of panic that there was worse to fear than the fishing hooks. If they decided to surround me they could just wait till I drowned, wetsuit or no wetsuit.

  I was too tired to try to escape them.

  They had me trapped. I trod water in the middle of the enclosed triangle of boats, spinning this way and that in a panic, looking at each of their ghoulish, torchlit faces in turn. They didn’t say anything. They didn’t even look at me in an evil way. They were just watching me, with mildly curious, dispassionate expressions as if I was wildlife, a rare fish they’d been lucky to catch. I don’t know why I did this, but I held out a dripping hand so they could haul me up, hoping for a shred of humanity in any one of them. But no one took it.

  I realised then that our plan was lunacy, and I was finished. My limbs were frozen and tired, and I had no more strength left.

  And then, in that moment of despair, I saw a light far away on the shore. The light was piercingly bright. My panicked mind thought of the Bethlehem star, magically appearing in the Christmas night. Then I knew the truth.

  It was the white-hot torch of the Saros 7S.

  And, like the Bethlehem star, it was there to show the way. Like the Bethlehem star, it had risen in the east, where I was supposed to go. All I had to do was follow it.

  Suddenly energised, I jinked and dived under Henry’s boat, striking out desperately in the murky freezing depths. I surfaced again with nothing but clear water between me and the star. I swam for the shore until my muscles ached and my lungs burned. I could hear the boat engines behind me. I didn’t dare to turn, sure they would catch me up and run me down. I determinedly looked forward. If I can just reach the shore … If I can just reach the shore … Then at last I felt the scrape of shingle under my knees. I hauled myself out of the water, the wetsuit dragging me down, the water streaming from my body. I was standing in a little freezing brook, my feet blocks of ice. I stumbled upstream, wherever it took me, frantic to get away from the torch beams and the boats and the voices. I stumbled on for I don’t know how long, the Saros star always up and ahead of me, leading the way, until I came out into a wide pool. Beyond the pool I heard a rushing and a roaring and made my way towards the sound. Then I heard splashing footsteps behind me, and Henry burst out of the darkness, his torch swinging wildly. I turned and ran, and his broad torch beam illuminated a white wall of spray ahead of me.

  It was a waterfall.

  chapter twenty-nine

  This, I knew, was Conrad’s Force, and the light of the Saros was at the top of it.

  I knew now that Shafeen and Nel hadn’t abandoned me. They were waiting, like the faithful friends they were, at the meeting place we’d arranged last night: the packhorse bridge at the top of Conrad’s Force, which was the closest place to the lake that you could drive a vehicle. Shafeen and Nel were going to borrow a Land Rover to bring them to lunch and leave it there as my getaway car. Nel, who was full of surprises, already had her licence. (She’d passed her test on her seventeenth birthday and her dad had given her a brand-new Mini tied up with a big red bow.) On the map in the estate room the bridge had looked so close to the lakeshore. But what we hadn’t appreciated was the sheer height that those little jagged lines on the map had represented. I had expected some little ornamental fall like you see in public parks. This was the real deal, as high as a building, and as fierce as a flood. The bridge was close to the lake as the crow flies. But I wasn’t a crow. I was going to have to climb.

  I got myself as close to the falling water as possible, right at the edge of the spray. It was impossible to stand in the full force of the falls without the water beating me back down, so I sought out rocks and footholds up one side. I knew that Henry had to follow me – he couldn’t let me go now, knowing what I knew. But it was a relief to me that, because he was climbing too, at least he cou
ldn’t catch me with his vicious fishing hook. He’d have to abandon the rod and use both hands.

  That climb was probably the hardest thing I’ve ever done. My hands and feet were like ice. I cut them often on the rocks and tough gorse of the falls and didn’t even notice – my flesh was so cold it neither bled nor hurt. The wetsuit restricted my movement but it protected me too – not just from the water but from the sharp rocks. Henry was slower than me; I was smaller and lighter and I was no longer wearing my fishing gear. His sodden clothes must have been dragging him down, his heavy boots slipping on the rocks in a way that my bare feet did not. In some ways I had the advantage and it was a good job – if Henry got a hold of me before I reached the others, I’d be finished.

  Fear spurred me on, but I had to force myself to climb carefully. If I went too fast, and slipped and fell, I would end up in Henry’s clutches. And then, as I climbed higher still, I realised that I had bigger problems than just Henry: the falls were so high that, if I tumbled now, I would die anyway; no one could survive such a fall. A phrase stuck in my head – the STAGS school motto, of all things: Festina Lente. Make Haste Slowly. I forced myself to find good footholds on the rocks and careful handholds gouged in the freezing mud, not easy with the icy water beating in my face. As I climbed ever upward I thought of the salmon Henry had told me about, relentlessly hurling themselves up the steepest of waterfalls, struggling upstream to reach their breeding grounds and keep their species going. The fish would do anything to survive.

  And so would I.

  At last I was at the top of the falls and I saw the packhorse bridge, only seen before as a tiny black arc on a map in the estate room, the size of a sliver of fingernail, but now a massive stone rainbow spanning the river in the moonlight. The bridge was the endpoint – the source of that bright star-of-Bethlehem light. As soon as I’d reached the top of the falls, just as we’d planned, the light from the Saros clicked off, and there was just the moonlight.