Once I’d locked the bedroom door I texted Ty straight away.
Are you ok? PLEASE txt me
I kept checking, but there was no reply. I was pretty tired, as it had been such a long day, but I still sat down with Volpone. Remember, Remember. There must have been some reason why Professor Nashe had been so keen for me to read it.
It was quite different to The Isle of Dogs – for a start, all the action took place in one day. For another, it was set in Venice, a place I didn’t know at all. It was quite a cool story, about a nobleman obsessed with money and status, who was amused by his three so-called friends squabbling over who would become his heir. I couldn’t particularly see how it could be interpreted as an attack on Robert Cecil though. To be honest, I couldn’t see past what I’d mentally called the De Warlencourt Gambit: Volpone faking his own death just so he could screw with everybody, and the squabbling of his heirs over his fortune, and his eventual heir, Mosca, refusing to give up his inheritance. After all, if you’d convinced everyone you were dead, and all your friends and family were mourning you, it would be pretty hard to come out and say, Only kidding!
Wouldn’t it?
I don’t know how long I slept, but I do know that I was wakened, in the dead of night, by a weight on the end of the bed. The mattress sagged, as if someone was sitting on it.
And someone was.
Shafeen, I thought. I’d half expected him. That kiss had been an invitation, as surely as a card pushed beneath a door. Even Henry couldn’t keep us apart for long.
But then I saw the bone-white curve of a naked back, and the blond hair like silver in the moonlight. ‘What are you doing here?’
‘It’s my room.’ There it was, that cut-glass upper-class English voice. ‘Can I get in? It’s jolly cold.’
‘I guess if it’s your room, it’s your bed. Just … just keep your distance.’
He got under the covers and we faced each other, my head on one pillow, his head on the other.
I looked at him, he looked at me. Here was Greer MacDonald, there was Henry de Warlencourt. We didn’t touch. We didn’t do anything, we just looked, each drinking the other in. In the near dark this Henry didn’t look like himself – the gold hair silver, the blue eyes black. This was the Henry from the other side of the Looking Glass, the Henry from the ether. Did everyone look like this in the Valley of the Shadow of Death?
He took my hand. He was warm for a ghost. Then he did something odd. He raised it to his face, found my branded thumb and kissed it. Then it came to me.
I’d done this to him.
I’d let him fall Through the Looking Glass.
I was a Manslayer.
I looked at our hands together, clasped tightly. I remembered then the top of the waterfall – his fingertips grazing mine as he fell back into space.
And then I said something I’d been thinking about a lot, something I’d wanted to say for a year. ‘I’m sorry I didn’t save you. Even though you were a monster.’
He smiled. ‘If I was a monster, why did you try?’
I thought about this. ‘Because if I didn’t, that would have made me a monster.’
‘Then what’s this?’ He waggled my thumb.
I didn’t pull it away, but I said, ‘I’m not a killer.’
‘I’m not a killer either.’
‘Then why did you want to kill me?’
Before he could answer there was a sound at the door – that familiar little grate of metal on metal as an unseen hand turned the handle. Henry sat up with a start, backing away in terror. I’d never seen him afraid before, even when he met his end. The blond hair was ruffled, and there was a sheen of sweat on his moonlit skin.
‘Calm down,’ I said. ‘It’s only your mum. She still comes in to kiss you goodnight, you know.’
The handle turned back on itself and footsteps trod away. He lay back down, smiling, and put his hands behind his head. I could see the dark shadow of hair under his arm. ‘Dear mater.’
‘Your father misses you too.’
The smile disappeared. ‘I doubt that.’ He turned once again to face me. ‘Ask him about my childhood. Ask him about his “parenting” style. See what he says to that.’ Henry’s voice was heavy with scorn.
‘Are you saying it was somewhat … Medieval?’
‘You said it.’
I remembered then what he’d said before, that other dream-Henry by my hospital bed, hinting at the horror of his childhood, by way of some explanation as to how he’d become what he had become. I remembered, too, the poor baby elephants tied to obedience by a puny rope. By the time they were old enough to break free, they no longer wanted to.
I tried to recall how Rollo had been when he’d spoken of Henry. ‘But he seemed quite tearful when he was talking to Shafeen. About a man and his heir.’
‘Well, he has one now, doesn’t he? Louis, Lord Longcross. Sounds rather well, doesn’t it? A good bit of alliteration.’ The scorn was back.
Then I remembered. ‘In the hospital you said it suited you to let Louis be the heir for a little while longer. What if he enjoys being the lord? What if he doesn’t let you back in? Like Mosca?’
‘He will.’
‘Henry?’
‘Greer?’ It always shook me when he spoke my name.
‘Do foxes mean anything to you?’
‘What a funny question.’
‘If it’s funny,’ I said, ‘then humour me.’
‘They are reddish dog-like creatures that one chases across the countryside,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘Why?’
‘Ty said: See if you can find out anything about Foxes.’
‘Who is Ty?’
‘Louis’s … girlfriend.’ Then I remembered something else. ‘She’s actually got a scholarship to STAGS in your name.’ In all the madness, that suddenly struck me as funny.
‘Ah yes.’
‘Did you meet Ty at Longcross?’
‘Meet? No. I was keeping somewhat of a … low profile.’
Then I twigged. I rose up on my elbow and studied him. ‘Why didn’t you ask me who Mosca is?’
‘What?’
‘You asked me who Ty is, even though if you were at Longcross you’ve actually seen her. I imagine she stood out quite a bit at the twins’ party. But you didn’t ask me who Mosca is.’
‘All right. Who is Mosca?’ he drawled, amused.
‘A character in Ben Jonson’s Volpone, as if you didn’t know.’ I was perfectly sure he did know. ‘Someone’s been reading the play. Downstairs in the library. Was it you? Were you getting ideas?’
He looked amused. ‘I don’t know what you mean.’
‘Yes, you do.’
‘Shh.’ He put a thumb to the lips he’d once kissed. Not a finger, but a thumb. It was all a bit Cape Fear, but hot. Officially, of course, I should have been outraged. Man shuts up woman by putting his thumb over her lips. But it just felt tender and fond.
‘Go to sleep now.’
And I must have done, because I don’t remember anything else.
When I woke up, of course he was gone. Dreams don’t hang around in the daytime. There was no impression of a Henry head on the opposite pillow, no golden hairs in the bed. Groggily and, if I’m honest, a bit regretfully, I got up and dressed for breakfast.