S.T.A.G.S.

by M A Bennett

  Just like a year ago, we sat in our rows, in our black Tudor coats. The new Friars sat in their pews in their brown habits. Just like a year ago, the Abbot got to his feet in his black robes. For the hundredth time we were treated to the story of our founder, Aidan, and the stag. It was just like Groundhog Day. My mind wandered. I turned to look at the stained-glass window of the saint, but somehow my gaze never reached it. For just like a year ago, I found myself gazing at the back of a perfect blond head; the scroll of an ear, close-cropped hair glittering at the nape of a neck and disappearing into the black collar of a Tudor gown. My heart stopped.

  It was Henry de Warlencourt.

  Of course it wasn’t him. I spoke to myself harshly: Get a grip, Greer. This kid wasn’t Henry – yes, he looked like him from the back, but he was smaller, and he was sitting with the Six Ones, Tyeesha’s year, the year below me. I moved my gaze to the girl next to him, my heart beginning to beat again. You might just as easily have said that she looked like Charlotte from the back. You’re seeing ghosts again, I told myself. I gave myself a little shake, but I couldn’t tear my gaze away. As if they could feel my gaze boring into the backs of their necks, the two blonds turned, and my blood turned to ice.

  They had Henry’s face.

  Not just the boy, but the girl too.

  They looked at me for a moment, with eerily similar stares. Then both of them gave me an identical, amused smile, just as Henry had done exactly a year ago.

  Heart thumping again, I looked away, but the chapel, my friends, the Friars, all of them disappeared. I was far away at Longcross, and it was night. In the blue-white moonlight Henry and I were sliding down the Long Gallery in stockinged feet, the haughty de Warlencourt ancestors staring down from their portraits on the walls. And instead of the Abbot’s voice reading the lesson, I heard Henry, calling down the gallery, I used to do this with my cousins all the time. Twins, a boy and a girl, a bit younger than me. They’d go like lightning down here. It was so funny.

  Twins.

  With Henry’s face.

  Could these twins be de Warlencourts?

  I shifted on the pew, an uneasiness rising in my throat. I thought I was going to puke. Once again I had to calm myself down. Surely they couldn’t be de Warlencourts – it would be too much of a coincidence. And if they were, it didn’t mean they were the Devil’s spawn like Henry was, even if they did look like something out of The Shining.

  No, I told myself. STAGS was no longer a school where evil could flourish. We were Medievals now, all the Friars were great and I had to trust the Abbot. I raised my eyes to where he stood reading the lesson. He’d made all the changes he’d promised, even if the lesson he was reading was the same as ever. I watched as he pushed his glasses higher up his nose and read from The Life of St Aidan where it balanced on the eagle lectern. I determinedly didn’t look at the freaky blond Henry-looky-likey twins. Instead I gave the Abbot my full attention, as he read the story of St Aidan’s stag hiding in plain sight. His voice rang out, clear and true, and he didn’t sound old any more. ‘The blessed saint, when the hounds were running close, held up his hand to the stag and rendered him invisible. In such wise the hounds did pass him by, and their tooth did not touch him; whereupon Aidan restored the stag to the sight of men, and his pelt and antler could again be seen, and the stag did go upon his way in peace.’

  By the time he’d finished, my racing heart had slowed down again, soothed by the familiar text. The Abbot reached out to close the volume and his hand rested for a moment on the leather cover of the book. At that moment, from above my head, the low winter sun hit the only bit of the window that was plain colourless glass – the panes that made up the invisible stag. A shaft of sunlight struck his flank and shone directly through onto a jewel on the Abbot’s wedding finger, kindling it into fire. It was like that bit in Raiders of the Lost Ark when Indy finds the Well of Souls with a shaft of daylight. The jewel was a ruby, the colour of arterial blood, the colour of the stockings of the STAGS uniform. The ruby caught the rogue beam and shone like a lightsaber. The ring wasn’t a plain wedding band after all. It had turned around on the Abbot’s finger. It was a ring like the ones that popes wear, that kings wear. It was a ring that other people kiss, when they really want to kiss ass. It was a ring that meant you were the head of something. A religion. A kingdom.

  A cult.

  The organ thundered out and we stood for the final hymn. The shrill voices of the kids sang in my ears, and snippets of memory entered my head with the song.

  St Aidan’s stag was hiding in plain sight.

  The Abbot didn’t wear a signet ring, but he did wear a ring on his wedding finger.

  We’d never seen a Mrs Abbot.

  The game book had said: ‘The Grand Master, Rollo de Warlencourt’.

  Friar Skelton had said Hannibal didn’t wage war with elephants.

  He waged war, with elephants.

  Friar Skelton had said the placement of commas was crucial; they gave the same sentence two different meanings.

  The Grand Master and Rollo de Warlencourt were two people, not one and the same.

  I stared at the Abbot until my eyes watered, unable to quite believe what my crazed thoughts were telling me. Then I moved my blurring vision to the pews where Six One were sitting. And the cascade of revelation carried on.

  There were new blond twins in Six One.

  They were bootleg copies of Henry de Warlencourt.

  Tyeesha had said twins had been bothering her, but they weren’t any more.

  Tyeesha was going somewhere nice for Justitium.

  Henry’s last words had been: ‘The Order will go on, even without me.’

  These fragments of bright nonsense gathered in my head, shard by coloured shard, to form a clear picture, like the stained glass of Aidan and the stag over my head. I could hardly wait for the final hymn to finish before I grabbed Shafeen and Nel by the arm, and, heart thumping, marched them out into the quad. It wasn’t until I got to the Paulinus well, and there were four green lawns between us and any other living soul, that I told them. I told them that Henry de Warlencourt’s last words had been absolutely, completely and one-hundred-per-cent true.

  THE END?

  Acknowledgements

  I was always taught that it’s polite to say thank you, so here goes.

  Thanks to my son Conrad for translating teen-speak for me.

  Thanks to my daughter Ruby for fascinating animal facts.

  Thanks to my partner Sacha for his encyclopedic film knowledge.

  Thanks to Conrad’s friends Greer and Shafeen for lending me their names.

  Thanks to ace cinematographer and all-round nice guy Nic Lawson.

  Thanks to Teresa Chris, uber-agent and true friend.

  Thanks to Emma Matthewson and Talya Baker at Bonnier for their eagle-eyed editing.

  Thanks to Jeffrey, who started life as a deer ornament on our Christmas tree and ended up as a talking stag head on a wall.

  If I’m thanking Christmas ornaments I really ought to stop.

  I pillaged various huntin’ shootin’ and fishin’ websites for information on sporting life. Any mistakes are mine, not theirs.

  I referenced lots of films in this book, but the major influence was The Shooting Party (1985) directed by Alan Bridges, based on the novel by Isabel Colegate. If you’re a Savage, watch the film. If you’re a Medieval, why not read the book?

  M. A. Bennett

  M. A. Bennett is half Venetian and was born in Manchester, England, and raised in the Yorkshire Dales. She is a history graduate of Oxford University and the University of Venice, where she specialised in the study of Shakespeare's plays as a historical source. After university she studied art and has since worked as an illustrator, an actress and a film reviewer. She also designed tour visuals for rock bands, including U2 and the Rolling Stones. She was married on the Grand Canal in Venice and lives in north London with her husband, son, and daughter. Follow her at @MABennettAuthor on Twitt
er and at m.a.bennettauthor on Instagram.

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  First published in Great Britain in 2017 by

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  Copyright © M A Bennett, 2017

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

  The right of M A Bennett to be identified as Author of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, schools, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

  ISBN: 978-1-4714-0677-5

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