Back at Cumberland Place, Bates greeted us with the news that coffee and sandwiches were in the library.
Caro had already retired to bed, and Rollo, probably exhausted by his Ancient Marinading, went straight up to join her.
We, of course, went to the library, because there was so much to say. If I’m honest I wondered why anyone would need coffee and sandwiches after a slap-up dinner, but there they were, all laid out. We ignored them, and as soon as the door closed we settled around the fire in leather chairs the colour of dark chocolate, with only the walls of books to overhear us. Shafeen spoke first. ‘I can’t believe I was actually thinking of becoming a part of that club.’
I leaned back in my chair, suddenly exhausted.
‘You’re not going to join and change the toilets from within?’ I was teasing slightly, but only out of relief.
Shafeen didn’t smile back but got up and walked to the mantelpiece to fiddle with a (probably priceless) china shepherdess. ‘I think this whole thing has gone up a notch. I think it’s about race as well as class.
‘I genuinely think that Rollo and his kind are afraid for the white patriarchy. They think they are under threat. It’s pure Replacement Theory.’
Nel had taken the chair on the other side of the fire, mirroring me. ‘That’s quite a leap from a toilet.’
Shafeen put the shepherdess down, probably not with as much respect as she deserved. ‘Why did this whole thing start? Conrad de Warlencourt coming back from the Crusades. You saw the mosaics on the walls in the STAGS Club. That room was even called the Crusader’s Library. And the urinals were absolutely symbolic of that.’
I didn’t quite know how to frame my question. ‘Aren’t they just a joke? A terrible one, yes. But a joke all the same?’
‘No,’ he said hotly. ‘It’s not a joke. A whole bunch of white guys pissing in the faces of people of colour. Not just people, but really badly caricatured racist stereotypes. You can’t possibly know how it feels as a person of colour to see something like that. You ask Ty.’
‘I wish I could,’ I said.
‘God, I wish we knew what she wanted when she called me,’ said Nel.
‘Try her now,’ I urged.
‘Well, OK, but remember she has a normal BTEC smartphone. Not a Saros.’ Nel wasn’t boasting about her father’s tech, just stating a fact. ‘She doesn’t have the coverage of the Saros Orbit. Signal’s pretty crap up there.’
‘But she managed to call earlier. And message yesterday. She was still at Longcross then.’
‘So far as we know,’ said Shafeen. ‘Haven’t you heard what I’ve been saying? She’s obviously in danger. On Boxing Day, I’ll bet you everything I have that they’ll be chasing her. I think the foxes are quite safe.’
It was the first time anyone had said it out loud. But of course we’d all been thinking it, since we’d piled into the car to leave Ty to her fate. It all made sense – her shoe had been stolen to give the hounds her scent. That night when the dogs had come for us in Longwood was just a rehearsal. But it was still, despite all our experiences of the de Warlencourts, hard to believe.
‘But Louis likes her,’ I said. ‘I’m convinced of it. So won’t he keep her safe?’
‘You thought Henry liked you. But he was planning to kill you all along.’
I thought of dream-Henry’s denials in the hospital. He’d said, then, he would never harm me. But I couldn’t say that without sounding cuckoo.
Instead I hit back: ‘And you think Rollo likes you.’
‘I thought so,’ he said, almost sadly. ‘Now I’m not so sure. Supposing it’s all a plot to put us down?’
‘Us?’ I pointed to the three of us in turn.
‘No, not us us,’ he said impatiently. ‘Me and Ty us.’
He paced before the fire, trying to explain. ‘I’m here, the guest of the earl. Ty is at the manor house, by the side of his heir. But there’s something wrong about it. It feels like … like a trap.’
I felt a shiver, even in front of that roaring fire.
‘The writing was literally on the walls of the Crusader’s Library,’ Shafeen went on, on a roll now. ‘Here they still are – the white knights putting down the infidels. I think they see us almost as …’
‘As what?’ prompted Nel.
‘As rebels,’ he finished.
The word nudged my memory. Who else had been talking about rebels? Then it came to me. ‘Professor Nashe was talking about rebellion. Today. In my interview.’
Shafeen turned. ‘In what context?’
‘We were talking about Ben Jonson, and the purpose of his plays. Right at the end of the interview I said that he meant to start a fire, and she agreed. It was the first time I got the feeling that I’d said something right. She said The Isle of Dogs was an act of rebellion.’
Shafeen stopped pacing. He sat down in one of the big winged leather armchairs and faced me, long fingers steepled together. ‘What else did she say?’
His tone freaked me out a bit. ‘She’s not mixed up in this, is she?’
‘Why not?’ said Shafeen. ‘She’s at an ancient college.’
‘The one that Nath— the Abbot just happened to go to and you’re applying to as well,’ put in Nel. She sat up suddenly. ‘And she was actually there on the night of your hanging. She was in the audience; why not in the circle of DOGS who tried you too?’
Shafeen held up both hands, pale palms outwards. ‘Hang on, hang on. We’re floundering a bit here. What exactly did she say?’
I thought back. So much had happened that it was hard to believe that my interview had been only that morning. ‘Oh, she said that Ben Jonson had a pet fox. Called – wait for it – Reynard.’
‘As in, actually living in his house?’ Shafeen sounded disbelieving. ‘Probably a bit dangerous.’
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I said. ‘They probably get domesticated, right? Just like dogs. That’s what Nashe said.’
‘Hmm,’ said Shafeen doubtfully. ‘I think they’re pretty vicious when cornered. What else?’
‘Lots of stuff about Extinction Rebellion, and the Occupy movement, and …’ I stopped.
‘What?’ said Nel.
‘The only thing that she was really insistent about,’ I said slowly, ‘was that I read Volpone. Another play by Ben Jonson.’ This last bit was to Shafeen by way of explanation – he hadn’t been there by the Paulinus well at STAGS when I’d talked to Nel about Volpone. ‘In fact, Nashe was so insistent she said it twice as I was going out the door. She said, Remember, Remember.’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘let’s do it. Maybe that will give us a clue.’
‘Do what?’ I was one step behind.
‘Read it,’ he said simply.
‘How?’ asked Nel.
Shafeen flung out his arms. ‘Look where we are.’
He was right. Every wall was crammed with books, from floor to ceiling.
We all got up, and for the third time in our relatively short acquaintance, began to peruse the shelves of a de Warlencourt library. Shafeen took the right side, I took the left, and Nel went up to the mezzanine. This time it was relatively easy – no dark and hidden shelves, no secret doors behind paintings. I found the play almost at once, and that was because I was almost sure someone had just been reading it. It was sticking out from the shelf, just a tiny bit, a little to the left of the mantelpiece. The gold letters imprinted on the spine were almost glowing in the light of the fire. I slid the book out. It was a slim volume, a rusty red colour – the colour of a fox.
‘Found it!’ I called, and Nel clattered down from the mezzanine so fast she was almost at my side at the same time as Shafeen, who only had to cross a room.
We all crowded around the play as I opened the cover gently – it was pretty old – to find the usual publisher’s deets and printed engravings. This edition was not original – it was dated 1870 – but it still might tell us what we wanted to know.
‘What’s it about?’ asked Shafeen.
‘Well, why don’t we let Ben Jonson tell us?’ I turned to the Argument at the front of the play, the acrostic that described the plot of the play in a few lines. It was the very acrostic I’d written out for Nel only a few weeks ago. I read it out:
V olpone, childless, rich, feigns sick, despairs,
O ffers his state to hopes of several heirs,
L ies languishing: his parasite receives
P resents of all, assures, deludes; then weaves
O ther cross plots, which ope themselves, are told.
N ew tricks for safety are sought; they thrive: when bold,
E ach tempts the other again, and all are sold.
Shafeen shook his head. ‘Nope. I’m no wiser.’
‘Here,’ said Nel, and she shoved her phone in his face. It was a funny scenario, and it totally encompassed the Medieval and the Savage. Me with a book on one side of Shafeen, Nel with the phone on the other. It was like that bit in Animal House where there’s an angel and a devil on some guy’s shoulders, both tempting him. But which of us was which?
‘Look,’ said Nel, ‘good old SparkNotes. Here we go: plot summary.’ She handed the phone to me and I scanned the synopsis. The play was apparently about an uber-rich old Venetian guy (Volpone) who had three friends squabbling over who would inherit his money. In order to screw with them, he cooked up a plan with his deputy, Mosca. According to SparkNotes:
Volpone spreads a rumour that he has died and then tells Mosca to pretend that he has been made his master’s heir. The plan goes off perfectly, and all three legacy hunters are fooled. Volpone then disguises himself as a Venetian guard, so that he can gloat in each legacy hunter’s face over their humiliation, without being recognised. But Mosca lets the audience know that Volpone is dead in the eyes of the world and that Mosca will not let him ‘return to the world of the living’ unless Volpone pays up, giving Mosca a share of his wealth.
I looked up. ‘It’s about Henry and Louis.’
‘Uh, OK, Greer,’ said Nel, mock-agreeing with me. ‘Ben Jonson, who was born in the sixteenth century, wrote a play about who was going to inherit Longcross?’
‘No, not that way round. What if we’re being directed to this because it’s what happened at Longcross? What if Henry faked his own death, handed over the estate to Louis, and now Louis won’t give it back?’
‘Give it here,’ Nel nabbed the phone back off me. ‘Look.’ She scrolled furiously. ‘It’s not about Henry. This Google Books page says that Volpone was a thinly veiled attack on Robert Cecil.’ She turned to Shafeen, probably conscious that he was the only one out of the three of us who hadn’t lived and breathed The Isle of Dogs all term. ‘You remember in The Isle of Dogs, the characters of Lupo and Volpone represented William and Robert Cecil, the father-and-son team who were Elizabeth I’s chief courtiers?’
‘Yes, of course,’ said Shafeen.
‘Well, according to this –’ the Saros lit up Nel’s face – ‘by this point in history, daddy was dead and gone and Robert Cecil was James I’s chief advisor. And he was a bit of a badass by all accounts – the most feared and hated man in England.’
‘That’s exactly what Professor Nashe told me,’ I broke in.
‘So if Volpone was about Robert Cecil,’ said Shafeen, seizing on the idea gladly, it seemed, to get us off the subject of Henry, ‘then this play is a sort of spin-off of The Isle of Dogs. But this time Ben Jonson made Robert Cecil his central character.’
‘So it is like the Han Solo movie,’ I burst out.
‘What?’ they chorused.
‘Nothing,’ I said hurriedly. ‘How about this. I’ll take the play up to bed and see if I can make any sense of it. There’s no point guessing until at least one of us has read the whole thing.’
‘Looks like someone got there before you,’ said Shafeen. ‘There’s a bookmark. See?’
He gently took the volume from my hand and showed us the gilt-edged pages. Sure enough, they didn’t entirely close. There was something in the book, parting it a little. Shafeen flipped the play open at the marked page.
Some sort of business card had been used as a bookmark.
You may be sure we looked very closely at the page that had been marked. As I scanned the text I fully expected this bit to be about Volpone’s faked death, but it was just some piece of ‘comedy’ about a foolish knight called Sir Politick Would-Be, and didn’t seem to have any relevance at all. ‘Hmm,’ I said. ‘Well, I don’t think there’s a shortcut to this. I’ll just have to read the whole thing, and –’
‘Maybe there is a shortcut,’ Shafeen interrupted. He was looking at the little card in his hand. He turned it round between his fingertips and showed it to us.
I took it from him. It was a beautiful thing – firm creamy card with a lovely rough texture. It was the kind of card they use for very posh invitations – one, I remembered, in particular. On the front it said:
L. Cornellisen & Son
Artists’ Colourmen
Est. 1855
And underneath the printed text, in handwriting, were the words:
De Warlencourt. Order date 01/12
Ready for collection 21/12
‘What’s a colourman?’ Nel asked.
‘I suppose,’ teased Shafeen, ‘someone who makes colours?’
‘It must be a posh paint shop,’ I said. ‘I wonder what they ordered. Something to do with art? Do you think Caro dabbles in watercolours? It’s a very upper-class thing to do.’
‘Hard to know from this,’ said Shafeen, taking the card back and studying it. ‘All it tells us is that whatever it is took three weeks to make.’
I took the card in my turn. ‘I wish it told us more.’
‘It does,’ said Nel. ‘It tells us that whoever ordered whatever it is was reading this play very recently. In the last three weeks in fact. Perhaps the order is connected to the play.’
‘Well, let’s find out, shall we?’ suggested Shafeen. ‘It says ready for collection on the twenty-first of the twelfth. That’s tomorrow.’
Nel looked doubtful. ‘You mean we sort of lurk around the shop and see what they collect?’
‘No,’ said Shafeen. ‘I mean we just go and get it.’
‘What?’ I said. ‘Just walk in there and hand over the card? No offence, Shaf, but none of us exactly looks like a de Warlencourt. Least of all you.’
‘Doesn’t matter. We can just say we’re picking it up for them.’
We looked at each other and started to smile. ‘OK.’
Nel, the Queen of Google, had been tapping her Saros. She said, ‘Cornellisen’s is right by the British Museum.’
‘Huh,’ I snorted unattractively. ‘Maybe we’ll see Abbot Ridley again. He seems to like hanging around museums.’
‘Wait, what?’ asked Shafeen.
‘Of course,’ I exclaimed, ‘you don’t know this. We saw the Abbot. This morning. In Oxford.’
We told him about our sighting of Abbot Ridley outside the Ashmolean Museum, and Shafeen’s conclusion was much the same as ours. ‘I guess he was just visiting his old uni. Or his old tutor.’
‘But there’s more to it than that,’ said Nel. ‘We do know why he was there.’
I explained how we had gone into the museum and found the branded thumbprint in front of Guy Fawkes’s lantern. Shafeen blew right past the lantern bit and focused in on the thumbprint, as well he might.
‘Wait, so you’re saying Ridley is branded too?’
‘Yes,’ I said very definitely. ‘If the print was his. And I don’t see who else’s it could have been.’
‘You definitely didn’t touch the glass yourself before you saw the print?’ asked Shafeen.
‘That’s what I said!’ Nel broke in.
‘No,’ I said. ‘I swear.’
Shafeen looked at me for a long moment. ‘All right. Then we have to assume he too has been tried by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag and branded a Manslayer.’
We let this sink in for a moment. ‘My question would be, who did he kill?’ My voice was a whisper.
‘I’m sure he didn’t –’ began Nel.
‘Never mind that,’ Shafeen cut in. ‘Why would he be working at the school? Right in the tiger’s den? I mean, it’s run by the Order who tried him, no?’
‘At least that means he isn’t one of them,’ said Nel defensively.
‘Well …’ I whined.
She turned on me. ‘Really, Greer? After he cut you down and everything?’
‘It’s just the Esmé Stuart thing, remember? He said she was a woman and then changed his mind and said he was a man. Then he totally gaslit my ass about it afterwards.’
‘All right,’ Shafeen stepped in. ‘Supposing he is one of the good guys. And supposing he did want you to see – what was it?’
‘Guy Fawkes’s lantern,’ Nel and I chorused.
‘Then why didn’t he stop and say, Hi, girls, fancy running into you – while you’re here you should really go and look at Guy Fawkes’s lantern.’
‘Maybe he didn’t see us,’ I said.
‘He did,’ said Nel vehemently.
Now Shafeen looked at her for a second, pressing his lips together, and I wondered what he wasn’t saying. Then he spoke. ‘All right,’ he said again, with sudden authority. ‘Let’s get to bed. We’ve got a mission in the morning.’
We all said goodnight at the top of the stairs. There was no chance that Shafeen would stay with me in Henry’s room, but as Nel went ahead I did linger behind for a second to kiss him goodnight. The kiss was so good I had to break away. I breathed in his ear, ‘What weren’t you saying just now? That you didn’t want to say in front of Nel? Do you think Abbot Ridley didn’t see us? Do you think he is one of the bad guys?’
‘No,’ he said. ‘Look, I know Nel has a thumping great crush on Ridley, so I didn’t want to spook her.’ He sighed. ‘He saw you all right. But I think he was being followed.’