21

Of course, on the way back to London the talk was all of Abbot Ridley and the thumbprint at Guy Fawkes’s lantern.

Some strange part of me felt almost comforted that there was someone else with the brand. I’d high-fived (or high-thumbed) the ghost of Ben Jonson in Westminster Abbey, because 400 years ago he’d got the Manslayer brand too.

But this was different.

This was someone alive.

I’d had my doubts about the Abbot in the past, especially when he’d been gaslighting me about that Esmé Stuart thing – I still swore he’d said he was a she – but I now thought that he might be a valuable ally. He’d cut me down from the noose, covered up for me with Professor Nashe and sent me flowers in hospital. If he had left that thumbprint, and he did have a brand, then he was a kindred spirit. Only he, possibly in all the world, knew what I’d been through. I really, badly wanted to talk to him, but unless I went through Professor Nashe, which I couldn’t picture myself doing, I would have to wait until the beginning of term.

So as Nel began to negotiate the roads into central London I mentally shelved the Abbot and my thoughts turned instead to the STAGS Club and what awaited us there. By the time we’d parked the car at Cumberland Place to head for the Tube it was nearly six o’clock, and Shafeen, so far as we knew, had been at the club all day. I wondered what he’d found out. We had so much to tell him; maybe he had something to tell us.