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 discarded 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.