by Paul Stewart
‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’
It was low and hypnotic, and I realized that everyone was responding to its rhythm. Those binding the games teacher were doing it at the same pace, while those watching were swaying from side to side like metronomes. The only one not following the same mesmeric beat was Cripps himself, who tugged and struggled at every opportunity, desperate still to break free – not that it did him a ha'p'orth of good.
Softly at first, though soon rising in volume, the new chant caught on.
‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’
‘No!’ Cripps cried out. ‘No, for the love of all that is sacred, not that! Let me go, I beg you! Let me go!’
No one paid him any heed as they tugged him to his feet. Even though his voice grew louder and louder until he was screaming hysterically, it was drowned out by the rising swell of the chanting.
‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’
What manner of evil was the headmaster orchestrating in this lock-up academy? I wondered as the mob approached.
As they had been swaying, so now they were marching, each individual in the hunting party in step with the others as they strode back across the fields to the rhythm of the echoing chant. In their midst, struggling no longer, was Mr Cripps. He was walking along so obediently, his head down and his eyes to the ground, that no one needed to tug on the leashes that bound him any longer.
The victorious hunting pack marched past me in the darkness. As it did so, I picked up the length of curtain that young Sidney junior had dropped, wrapped it round my shoulders, and fell into step at the back of the throng. Ahead of me, the chant continued.
‘Bring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’
The sense of evil I'd felt from the moment I'd scaled the gates of Grassington Hall gripped me more powerfully than ever. I thought of the beautiful Mei Ling waiting for me to show up for my usual yinchido lesson. How far away the laundry now seemed as I followed the chanting crowd into the school.
From the top of my head to the marrow in my bones, I knew that something terrible was about to unfold in this place. As to what it was, I could only guess, yet as I stepped through the portico and into the quadrangle, I knew I had to find out.
ring him to the head! Bring him to the head!’
The voice of the mob echoed round the quadrangle as the boys clattered over the paving stones — with yours truly bringing up the rear, wrapped in the bedraggled curtain, trying to look inconspicuous. Not that I had to try very hard. The pupils seemed far too preoccupied with dragging and goading the games master in their midst to notice me.
At the far side of the quad, beyond the central fountain, a great tongue of yellow lamplight poured out from the main entrance of the school and across the paving stones. The mob and their prisoner funnelled in through the arched doorway. I went with them.
I'd seen lock-up academies where masters imprisoned their pupils and I'd seen school rebellions where the pupils resisted the masters. But this was different from both. The school gates were certainly locked, but inside, it was the pupils who seemed to have the upper hand. But then again, if the chants were to be believed, the headmaster was still in charge.
It didn't make any sense.
As the pupils crowded into the hallway, I found myself being jostled and shoved in the middle of a great milling crowd, and I lost sight of Mr Cripps. Peering over the sea of bobbing heads, I noticed older boys dressed in curious feathered head-dresses directing the others.
‘Heron House!’ one of them shouted, his voice shrill yet authoritative. ‘To your dorms. Eagle House on guard duty …’
It was Thompson, the boy who'd been injured on the Farrow Fives field – although in his emerald feathered head-dress and paint-daubed face, he looked as if he belonged in a jungle rather than a school. With his jaw grimly set and his eyes blazing, he thrust his arm out and pointed along the corridor.
‘Falcon House, bring the prisoner to the head!’
Ahead of me, the surging crowd began to split up and set off in different directions, with the boys around what I took to be the hunched figure of Mr Cripps heading off down the corridor in the direction of the headmaster's study.
‘To the head! To the head!’ they chanted urgently, their voices all but drowning out the anguished cries of the hapless games master.
I had to think quickly. Here in the middle of the rapidly emptying entrance hall I was about to stand out like a carpenter's thumb, curtain or no curtain. Glancing to my left, I spotted the figure of Sidney junior heading up the stairs with, presumably, other members of Heron House. Perhaps he could shed some light on the matter, I thought as I fell into step behind him.
At the top of the staircase I found myself making my way along a wide hallway, before tramping up some more stairs to a second, narrower corridor lit by flickering gas lamps. We traipsed along it in single file, our footsteps echoing. There were doors leading off it on both sides, each one with a number on the central panel, and as pupils reached their own dormitory, they broke ranks and entered.
I stuck close behind the sloping shoulders of the coal merchant's son. As he turned left into Dormitory 12, I followed him.
Up in the roof, the unlit dorm was long and narrow, with small, barred windows set into the sloping ceiling. Twelve beds were squashed into the wedge-shaped space, six on one side of the room and six on the other. The place had probably been spick and span once – cosy, even. But not any longer. The floor was strewn with bedclothes and blankets, and across every surface was a fine covering of feathery down, spilled from the torn pillows.
Sidney – shuffling now with the weary gait of a sleepwalker – made his way across the floor and sat down heavily at the end of his low iron-framed bed. I went with him and sat on the adjacent bed. I looked at him. In the dim light from the corridor I could see that his face looked pale and drawn. The events of that night had evidently taken their toll.
‘Sidney,’ I said. He looked up, an expression of confusion passing across his podgy features as his eyes met mine. ‘Sidney, it's Barnaby Grimes. From your father's coalyard. Remember?’
‘Father,’ he whispered softly. ‘Father …’ Tears welled up in his eyes.
‘Sidney,’ I persisted, ‘what's going on? What were you doing out there on the playing fields … ?’
‘What the head told us to do,’ he said, his voice low and emotionless as his unblinking eyes stared into midair.
‘The headmaster told you to hunt the games master?’ I said. ‘But why?’
‘Because the head told us to,’ he said firmly.
I thought of my own encounters with Archimedes Barnett. He'd seemed so affable, so avuncular, with the best interests of the boys uppermost in his thoughts.
How wrong could I have been?
‘Sidney,’ I said, pushing the ragged curtain aside and reaching into a pocket of my waistcoat for a pencil and notebook, ‘you must write a note to your father. Tell him what's going on here. I'll deliver it personally—’
Just then, there was a cry of ‘Lights out!’ from outside. As the lamps in the corridor were abruptly extinguished, the dormitory was plunged into darkness. Around me there was the rustling of blankets and the creaking of bed-springs as the occupants of Dormitory 12 clambered into their beds in the pitch-black.
Strangely for a school dorm, there was none of the usual whispered conversation or furtive sniggering that accompanied lights out. Just an unearthly silence, which was followed soon after by quiet, rhythmic breathing. If I tried stumbling around in this inky blackness, I realized with an inward groan, I ran the risk of clattering into all manner of things, making a terrible racket and drawing attention to myself – and most likely breaking my neck in the process.
Sidney's letter would have to wait. There was nothing for it but to bed down and wait for the cold light of dawn. Pulling my curtain around me, I sat down, propped myself up against the wall between th
e beds of Sidney and his neighbour – and waited.
I must have dozed off, for the next thing I remember was a voice in my ear, soft and insidious.
‘Arise, my children,’ it said. ‘Arise and prepare.’
I opened my eyes. Early morning light was streaming in through the barred windows. I looked around, expecting someone to be there – a prefect, perhaps, or one of the teachers. But there was no one.
‘Arise, my children,’ the voice continued. ‘Arise and prepare.’
I clearly wasn't the only one to have heard it. Around me, the other boys in the dormitory had climbed from their beds, wiped the sleep from their eyes and were already beginning to file out through the door. I turned to young Sidney, hoping that at last we would be able to get that letter written alerting Sidney senior to his son's plight.
No such luck. The kid was already up and padding obediently after the others across the dormitory floor.
‘Sidney,’ I hissed. ‘Sidney …’
I might as well have been talking to myself. I seized him by the shoulders, but he shrugged me off like a barge dog shaking off canal water.
Reluctantly I followed Sidney and my dormitory companions back along the corridor and down the stairs. I was hungry – my stomach grumbling louder than a washerwoman on a wet Monday. But when we reached the bottom of the stairs, there was no sign of breakfast and the prefects ushered us towards the classrooms.
‘Fall in, Heron House!’ they bellowed, their words echoing along the corridor.
Most of them were wearing feathered head-dresses while, curiously, others were dressed in schoolmasters’ clothes – white laboratory coats, leather-patched tweed jackets, mortar boards and flapping gowns. All of them were armed. Beneath my curtain cloak, I gripped my swordstick and kept my head down.
‘Falcon House to the west classrooms! Heron House to the quad!’
I trooped after Sidney junior and his pals as they made their way towards the quad, past the line of supervising prefects in their feathered head-dresses. I was just approaching the last in line when he leaned forward, grabbed my arm and pulled me towards him. It was Thompson – but changed. He was no longer the eager guide who had shown me to the headmaster's study on my first visit. Now, his face was hard, his eyes glazed and his jaw fiercely clenched.
‘Who are you?’ he demanded. ‘I don't recognize your face.’
‘Me?’ I said, coolly holding his gaze. ‘I'm Grimes. Grimes minor.’
His eyes continued to bore into mine.
‘I once substituted for you on the Farrow Fives field,’ I told him.
I saw a flash of recognition, or memory, pass across his frowning features. He let me go, but I knew he remained suspicious. Setting off once again, I felt his piercing gaze on my back as I made my way out into the quad.
I discovered that we were heading towards the west wing. There were classrooms on both the ground and first floors, with doors leading out either onto a raised balcony or onto the quad itself. The ornate guttering with its gurning gargoyles, the brass and stone statues guarding each entrance, and the rose and ivy winding their way round each window, made it a building worthy of a stately home. As I drew nearer, though, the sounds of banging and crashing and splintering of wood reminded me all too clearly that this was no duke's palace, but rather a school in turmoil.
All at once a huge cupboard landed heavily on the paving stones to my left with a loud crash! A derisory cheer went up from above me and I looked up to see half a dozen boys standing on an upper balcony, looking down, grinning. A moment later, there was another loud whoop as a blackboard was hurled from the adjacent balcony and struck the ground with a splintering crunch!
Soon the air was thick with flying wood, as chairs, benches and desks, wardrobes and wainscoting, and even floorboards were torn from the classrooms both upstairs and down, and tossed unceremoniously out into the quadrangle. For a moment the boys in the quad waited.
‘Build,’ came the insidious voice, close by my ear.
Around me, the boys of Heron House began picking up cracked, damaged and broken pieces of furniture and lugging them off to the centre of the quad.
‘Build,’ the voice insisted.
To my surprise, I found myself joining in the feverish work. Back and forth I went, working with the other boys, shifting broken desks and splintered benches to the middle of the quadrangle, and helping to build them up into a tall structure. With my highstacking skills, it was easy for me to climb up the growing pile – nudging this broken door across, sliding that splintered chair leg into place – ensuring that the emerging pyramid grew both tall and stable.
‘Higher,’ the voice urged us on. ‘Higher.’
It was only when I was returning for more broken wood, and happened to glance up and notice a face in a window opposite, that I was jolted back to my senses. The face was that of a late-middle-aged man. He was stooped, sunken-cheeked and wild-eyed – but clearly a schoolmaster of some sort.
‘Higher,’ the voice urged us on. ‘Higher.’
The next moment, he was abruptly gone …
That must be the teachers’ common room, I thought. Perhaps the schoolmaster and his colleagues could provide me with some answers. I decided to pay them a visit.
Affecting a casual stroll and checking over my shoulder, I slipped away. I went round the side of the west wing, keeping to the shadows. At the end of the building I discovered a rough stone wall, which I scaled, the surface scuffing my knees and grazing my hands. With a groan of effort, I pulled myself onto a pitched roof above. I was hoping for a skylight, and was disappointed to find myself confronted with an unbroken vista of slate.
Undeterred, I crossed the parapet, made my way over the top of the central ridge-tiles and down the other side. From there, I was able to shin down an ornately decorated drainpipe – unsteady and swaying – until I found a small upper window that had been left ajar.
With a final effort, I hauled myself in, and found myself in a small and, by the look of all the dust and cobwebs, seldom used stockroom. I cautiously unlatched and pushed the door in front of me. It opened onto a central corridor. I peered out and looked in one direction, then the other.
‘Which way?’ I murmured.
And then I saw it – a gold-painted plaque on the door opposite. MASTERS’ COMMON ROOM, I read. I'd struck lucky.
Checking again that the coast was clear, I darted across to the door and tried the handle. It was locked. Somehow I wasn't surprised. I removed a skeleton key from the fourth pocket of my waistcoat, and gingerly inserted it in the lock.
From my left I heard voices. One of them sounded like Thompson's. I froze. To my relief, a moment later they all faded away.
Click.
The lock gave. I turned the handle, pushed open the door and walked into the room. Inside, tied hand and foot, were twenty schoolmasters sitting stiffly on the floor, surrounded by the shattered debris of what had once been finely upholstered armchairs and side tables. It was as if a hurricane had hit the first-class salon of an ocean liner and I was looking at the shipwrecked survivors.
They turned wide, staring eyes towards me – eyes filled with fear and trepidation, rather than any hope of rescue.
‘It's all right,’ I tried to reassure them, sweeping back my curtain disguise and revealing my waistcoat and swordstick. ‘I'm an outsider. I'm not from the school.’ I looked from one to the other. ‘Can any of you tell me what's going on here … ?’
I stopped, for I'd suddenly noticed, lying at my feet and staring up at me with unseeing eyes, small whimpering sounds escaping from his cracked lips, the mud-caked games master, Mr Cripps.
‘W-what happened to him?’ I asked.
The tall, hook-nosed master whose face I'd glimpsed at the window stared at me. ‘He tried to escape,’ he said, swallowing anxiously. ‘They … they … took him to see the head.’
s I stared down at the games master, a mere husk of his former self, his body drained and his mind destroyed, I h
eard sounds from the other side of the common-room door. Tramping footsteps and voices, getting rapidly louder as they approached along the corridor.
‘Follow me, Falcon House, proceed!’ The barked command came from right outside the door of the masters’ common room. I'd been careless. I'd unlocked the door with a skeleton key – and left it unlocked. The discovery was bound to give me away. I leaped forward, pulled the key from my waistcoat pocket and slipped it into the lock.
‘Give me the keys, Simmonds major.’
My heart hammered in my chest. The prefect's voice was inches away. Only the thin panel of wood separated us.
At the sound of his command, there was a jangling of keys on a key chain. I turned my key quickly, hoping no one would hear the telltale click, and removed it – and not a moment too soon. An instant later, the prefect in the corridor thrust his own key into the lock and turned …
Leaping back from the door, I ducked down behind an upturned armchair beside the window. The next moment, the door flew open, slamming against the wall with a thunderous crash!
‘All of you, up!’ barked one of the prefects. ‘The head has work for you.’
‘Now!’ shouted a second, and from my hiding place I heard the sound of a heavy implement – a makeshift bludgeon or a home-made studded club – hammering against a cupboard, splintering the wood.
There were sighs and groans as the bound masters struggled awkwardly to their feet. One of them muttered something under his breath.
‘And no talking!’ bellowed the first prefect. ‘Take them to the bird hall.’
There was more clomping of feet as the boys trooped into the room.
‘What about him?’ someone asked.
‘What, Cripps?’ the prefect said. ‘Leave him. He won't be going anywhere.’
The boys laughed unpleasantly. I found their indifference to the master's suffering deeply shocking.
‘You lot! Get a move on!’ the prefect's voice sounded again. ‘The head is getting impatient!’