On the last day before Michaelmas half-term Shafeen, Nel and I had arranged where we would meet, so we could go to Justitium Mass together.
Paulinus quad was bathed in October sunshine and striped with long shadows. I was the first one there, so, shoving the ghosts of last year’s Medievals aside, I went to lean on the well, where I’d first kissed Shafeen.
It had been a weird year at STAGS, watching the Friars all retiring, one by one, and the power of the Medievals ebbing away. The Abbot had been as good as his word. The new teachers, all whip-smart and highly dedicated, only cared about their subjects and their pupils and didn’t give a crap about the jumped-up status of a bunch of over-privileged kids. I didn’t know what the Abbot had said to them, but Cookson, Piers, Charlotte, Esme and Lara had all become good as gold and decided that there was nothing to be done but to knuckle down and concentrate on their exams. They’d all got their A*s in their A levels, despite the small detail of the death of their dearest friend. I pictured them now; all starting their new year at Oxford and Cambridge and Durham and Sandhurst, ancient foundation that weren’t too different from Daddy’s house.
The Friars had all gone by Christmas. For appearances’ sake there was a big farewell assembly where they were all presented with these gold clocks engraved with the words ‘Festina Lente’. The whole school sang them that bizarre song about being Jolly Good Fellows. Shafeen, Nel and I were the only ones who didn’t sing.
At Christmas Nel’s dad, a cheerful northerner in a sharp suit and lots of jewellery, had come to pick Nel up in a gold Rolls, and had given me and Shafeen the brand-new Saros 8, for being good friends to his daughter. The phone was amazing: rose gold and as thin as a piece of card. But I’d put the lid back on the box. As Medievals, we’d relaxed the unwritten rules about the use of phones and screens, but I didn’t forget Henry, who’d had so much distaste for the modern world that he couldn’t live in it. I decided that sometimes I would leave the phone in my drawer: there was more fun to be had In Real Life.
I was thinking, of course, of Shafeen.
Reader, I’d started going out with him.
I’d met his dad too, over the summer, when I’d been to stay in Rajasthan, at the house in the Aravalli mountains above the hill station at Guru Shikhar. At first I couldn’t quite reconcile Prince Aadhish Bharmal Kachwaha Jadeja, this distinguished white-haired Indian gentleman, with the terrified misfit teen I’d felt so deeply for in the Longcross library. But I tried my best with him. I was really hoping Aadhish would like me – not just because I’d risked my life for the boy he once was, but also because of what had happened between me and Shafeen.
It was OK though; it turned out that Aadhish did like me. He’d been really smiley and sort of courtly, and my stay in his palace had been amazing.
A whole summer with Shafeen, him in a white shirt, me in a floaty dress, wandering through the palace gardens with the white peacocks and the fountains and the tigers, looking like Jasmine and Aladdin in, well, Aladdin.
And now we were at the top of the school, a very different school to the one we’d enrolled in.
The Abbot had kept all the good things, like the traditions of the ancient foundation of St Aidan the Great, while doing away with all the bad ones, like running a murderous child-killing cult.
I hadn’t been waiting long at the Paulinus well when I saw Shafeen and Nel crossing the quad, from different directions. You could see their stockings a mile off – now we were Medievals, we didn’t have to wear the regulation red. I’d found silver ones dotted with little black-and-white film clapperboards. Nel had defiantly chosen shocking-pink Chanel stockings with the little double Cs of the logo picked out in gold. Shafeen had chosen tiger stripes, and I smiled whenever I saw them, remembering that he was the tiger’s son.
We stood there, the three of us, breathing in the autumn air, the holiday weekend stretching ahead. Justitium began that evening, and we knew that, for the first time in hundreds of years, no one would be going to Longcross, or one of the other stately homes, to be hunted, shot and fished. All the kids would be going home to their parents, just as they should. I myself would be going home to Dad, to our new flat in Salford Quays, overlooking the BBC studios. It was right in the middle of a landscape of modern iron and glass. There would not be a hillside, a tree or a lake in sight.
The bell began to ring for Justitium Mass and students began to cross the quad in twos and threes towards the chapel. A figure waved at me, a new girl called Tyeesha. I knew her slightly as she was one of the first batch of the new de Warlencourt scholars the Abbot had started to admit to the school. I waved back automatically and Tyeesha started walking over. I couldn’t help sighing. The three of us didn’t need other company right now; things were so perfect. But I reminded myself that I couldn’t exactly tell her to get lost. She was the only black girl in Lightfoot, and she’d been having it a bit tough at the beginning of term. I’d sort of taken her under my wing, hoping to be the friend I’d never had as a new girl. Blanking her now would make me no better than those blonde Medieval bitches. So instead I turned to her and gave her my best smile. ‘Hi, Ty,’ I said. ‘How are things?’
‘Great!’ she said. I was a bit taken aback by her enthusiasm.
‘Really great,’ she repeated.
‘Oh yeah?’ I said.
‘Yeah,’ she said in her strong London accent. ‘I think I’ve turned a corner. Those kids that were bothering me – twins, they were – well, I think they like me now.’ She looked like she was all lit up from the inside.
‘Good,’ I said. ‘That’s really good to hear.’ I supposed it would take a little time for the new scholarship kids to fully settle in to the school, but you had to give it to the Abbot, he had made a start. ‘Going someplace nice for Justitium?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, but she didn’t volunteer any more information.
‘Post some photos on Instagram,’ I suggested.
She frowned a little. ‘No,’ she said. ‘No – I don’t think so. I think I’ll send you a postcard instead.’
‘Cool,’ I said. ‘Have fun.’
She smiled this huge, beaming smile. ‘Thanks. I think I will.’
At that moment, the chapel bell started ringing double time as it always did for the five-minute warning. Tyeesha turned and hurried to catch up with the rest of the school as they filed into the chapel. I followed her, thoughtfully.
In the chapel everything had changed. Yet everything was the same. I thought about last year’s Justitium Mass, the morning before I’d gone to Longcross. Last year on this day, the three of us had sat dotted around the chapel on our own. Now we were no longer lonely, even if the darkest of reasons had brought us together. We sat there, by some accident of fate, right under the same stained-glass window of St Aidan and the stag. The white deer stared me down throughout the service, just like Jeffrey had done.
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?