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.