And, of course, that was the night I saw Henry again.
I don’t remember sleeping or waking; I just had a consciousness that he was there, once again, sitting on the end of his own bed. This time he was clothed, in some sort of dressing gown.
I hauled myself up on my elbows. ‘Where have you been?’
‘In the ether.’ I couldn’t see his face, but he sounded like he was smiling.
‘Bullshit,’ I said, sitting up. ‘I got the dog rose. You’re no more dead than I am. So: where have you been?’
He turned a little so I could see his profile, luminous in the half dark. ‘You mean all this week?’
‘Try all this year.’
He seemed to think for a moment. ‘In hiding.’
‘Does your mum know? And your dad?’
‘Of course.’
‘So your dad was lying to us. And your mum was telling the truth.’
‘No change there,’ he said drily.
‘Does Cass know?’
‘Yes.’
‘And Louis?’
He hesitated for a microsecond. ‘No. Not yet.’
‘So you are letting him think he’s the heir. You are doing a Volpone.’
‘If you like.’
‘And where have you been?’
‘I told you in the hospital. I went home.’
‘To 221b Baker Street. Very clever. Only it wasn’t quite true, was it?’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘Well, you didn’t just “go home”.’
‘I did,’ he said. ‘It just so happens that, unlike Sherlock, I have three Holmes, if you’ll pardon the pun.’
‘Three?’
He counted them off on pale fingers. ‘Here, Longcross and Castle Macleod in Scotland, another ancestral home. And there’s always the STAGS Club – one can always get a room there with the utmost discretion.’
My lip curled a little. ‘The Establishment closes ranks to protect one of its own. Is that it?’
He shrugged elegantly. ‘As you say. It’s relatively easy to keep out of most people’s way.’
‘And how do you get about?’ I asked. ‘You were in the hospital, then at Longcross, now here. Got your own Uber, have you?’
‘In a sense.’
‘Oh.’ I remembered. ‘In your case, Perfect. Your tame goon.’
‘Correct.’
‘So the staff know too? Bates, and the rest?’
‘Of course.’
I clicked. ‘So Bates was trying to get your mum to stop talking about you. All those funny times when he burst into the room?’
‘Yes. He was only obeying orders, as they say.’
‘How can you trust him?’
He shrugged again. ‘One just does. If you have faithful old retainers, they’re not going to betray the family. They know which side their bread’s buttered.’
‘So, why turn up now?’
Henry patted the hump of covers that was my feet. ‘I thought you might want some company.’
I retracted the feet and clasped my hands around my knees in a defensive position. ‘I’ve got Reynard.’
Henry looked up at the fox mask with a strange combination of hatred and … fear? ‘You talk to … him?’
It didn’t seem like the moment to tell him that I had form when it came to talking to his family’s taxidermy – I was pretty tight with old Jeffrey the stag head back at Longcross. I just said, ‘Sometimes. I feel sorry for him.’
His face hardened. ‘I don’t. He deserved to die.’
Somehow it was this, more than anything else, that made me finally realise what Henry was. It wasn’t what he’d done to Nel, or Shafeen, or me last year, not even what he was planning to do to Ty this Christmas. But this. That he could look at that fierce little face, that red fox who had run across the green field, gloriously alive, and say that he deserved to die. Something snapped in me. I sat up straight and looked witheringly at him where he sat, on his bedclothes, on his bed, in his house. ‘You don’t change, do you?’ I threw back the covers. ‘Alive or dead, I’m done with you.’ I had to get up. This was all kinds of wrong. How could I share a bed with him? What about Shafeen?
He grabbed my arm as I made to leave. ‘Wait. Let me explain.’
‘Explain what?’ I spat.
‘Why he deserved to die. Just give me that. Just that.’ He was pleading, and even in my disillusioned state, he was hard to resist. ‘And then I’ll let you go. Forever. I won’t stop you. I won’t come to Longcross. You won’t see me again.’
That, the finality of it, stopped me. But still, I sat on the other side of the bed, like those couples in Thirties movies who had to keep their feet on the floor for public decency. I wasn’t going to lie in his arms. ‘This better be good.’
‘Oh, it is. Or rather, it isn’t. It’s bad. In fact, it’s the worst. It’s all to do with him.’ He pointed an accusing finger at the wall. ‘I was out cubbing when I first met Reynard. That’s when you get the hounds used to the scent of the fox and sort out the ones that will give you a good run.’
‘I know what cubbing is,’ I stated coldly, even though I’d only learned about it two days ago, when Rollo had told us about Aadhish.
‘I saw a fox in the covert, trying to slide past me. He practically weaved through my pony’s legs. I let him go. I thought he was cute, with his bright eyes and red fur. The pater saw what I’d done and dragged me home. I’ve never seen him so angry.’
This was so reminiscent of Aadhish’s story that I wondered if the whole tale was a lie. Inexperienced hunter goes cubbing, lets a fox go and invites the fury of Rollo de Warlencourt. But I didn’t interrupt Henry’s flow.
‘There’s a cupboard in the boot room where we keep old wellingtons and shooting sticks and things. The pater slung me in there and locked the door. It was the middle of the day, but it was still pretty dark. I waited for him to cool down and let me out, but he didn’t.’
I swallowed. That was pretty cruel, to ‘Harry Potter’ Henry in a cupboard like that, but I wasn’t going to soften up.
‘To start with I wasn’t worried. I tried on every boot, sat on the shooting stools, played with the fishing flies. You know, kids’ stuff. At that point I was more bored than scared.’
‘How old were you?’
‘I must have been eight, because it was just before I was sent away to school.’
God. Eight. This was different to Aadhish. This wasn’t even a teenager, this was a child. ‘What happened?’ I said, more gently.
‘The door opened and I thought I was free. But the pater wasn’t letting me out. He was locking someone else in. It was the fox. The pater had caught him in a net and brought him into the house. He threw him in with me and said if I liked him so much, we should get to know one another.’
Now I just listened, mouth open.
‘For a bit it was all right. The fox was young, he hadn’t really learned to be afraid of man. I gave him a name – Reynard. It was one that I’d always heard associated with foxes. There was this poem the pater liked …’
‘I know it,’ I said quietly.
‘Reynard even let me stroke him. When I touched his fur I knew I’d done the right thing in saving him. He was lovely. He didn’t deserve to die.’
I was captivated by the story – it was so … touching. But it couldn’t all be this cute. ‘Then what?’ I said with a certain dread.
He turned a desolate face to me. ‘He didn’t let me out, Greer. He didn’t let me out.’
I thought I’d misheard. ‘What?’
‘He didn’t let me out.’
‘How many hours were you in there for?’
‘Hours? Try days.’
‘Days?’ I was turning into an echo, but I was just so shocked.
‘Yes. I lost track of time, but it must have been three days. Perhaps more.’
I couldn’t think of anything to say to this. Three days, in a cupboard, with no windows. And not just alone, but with a wild animal. It was worse than cruel, it was perverse.
‘And in that time,’ Henry went on, ‘Reynard changed. The first night, he curled up in the small of my back. I was quite happy – I thought they’d let me out in the morning. I could measure the time of day by the slice of light coming from under the door. When dawn came I thought it was nearly over. I had a nanny, who always ran my bath and gave me breakfast in the nursery; a tutor, who would teach me lessons in the schoolroom. But nobody came. I was so hungry, Greer, so thirsty. And I knew Reynard felt the same.’ He shot a nervy glance at the fox’s mask on the wall. ‘For a time we were in it together – just two hungry and thirsty friends in a tight spot. I found a water bottle with a dribble of water in it, and I even gave him some. There were old biscuits in a jacket pocket and I shared some of them too. But as time went on he started to suffer. His eyes were dull, there was a white paste around his mouth. His black lips were cracked, his breath was ragged. And on the second day, he started to attack me.’ He turned back to me. ‘Then I knew that we weren’t friends. We were animals, he and I. And it was all about who was the top predator.’ He lay down on the bed as though he had a pain inside. I didn’t – couldn’t – stop him. ‘For hours, he kept coming for me and biting me. It was in his nature, you see.’
I remembered Shafeen saying, I think they’re pretty vicious when cornered. I’d thought a pet fox would be just like a lap dog, but of course they would always be wild. Furry on the inside, I thought. The Company of Wolves.
‘He was just hungry and thirsty,’ Henry went on, ‘but it felt like he hated me and was trying to kill me. I was in short trousers at that time, and my legs were running with blood. I was screaming and screaming, but nobody came. Not the mater, not nanny, not anyone.’
I shifted closer to sit by him, hand on his hunched shoulder, but couldn’t speak.
‘I couldn’t stand it any more. Just cowering in a corner, watching for those amber eyes burning out of the dark, waiting for the next attack. My nerves were in shreds. I thought he would eat me alive. So the next time he came for me, I fought back.’
‘What did you do?’ It was a whisper.
‘I bit him.’
‘You what?’
‘I don’t even know how it happened,’ he said. ‘He leaped for my throat and I sort of grabbed him.’
He was shaking now. ‘He was trying to bite my neck and I was wrestling with him. Suddenly I found there was fur in my mouth and I bit down, hard. I tore his ear. I tasted his blood.’ He sounded as if he could still taste it now. ‘Then he screamed, Greer. You never heard anything like it. It was strangely human, and utterly horrible. And so piercing. I knew they would hear it all over the house. And the second it happened, the second it was the fox who screamed, not me, the pater let me out. He knew the tables had turned, you see, that I’d bested the fox somehow, and the natural order had been restored. Freedom was my reward.’
‘Either a hunter or the hunted be,’ I murmured.
‘That’s it,’ said Henry. ‘That’s it in a nutshell. And if that fox hadn’t screamed, I don’t know if he would ever have let me out.’
I wanted to say this was ridiculous. I wanted to say that there was no way Rollo would let his son and heir starve if he couldn’t stand up to a fox. But I couldn’t say it. I just wasn’t sure. ‘What then?’
‘They put me to bed and called Doctor Morand. He patched me up as if I’d just fallen over in the playground. He didn’t ask any questions. He never does.’
I remembered that this was the elderly doctor who had treated Shafeen after he’d been shot. Then I’d thought it barbaric that he should be fine with a guest being shot in the arm on the estate. Now I realised he’d seen much worse in the course of his medical career.
‘So what happened to Reynard? They put him down, right?’
‘No. They let him go.’
My mouth dropped open. ‘They didn’t.’
‘They did, you know. And a few days later, at the Boxing Day meet, we chased him with the hounds. My legs were still in bandages, but the pater expected me to get up and ride. I remember to this day putting tight riding boots over those dressings. The blood started seeping through the bandages, but I was determined to pull them on. I wasn’t about to let the pater down.’ Henry clasped his hands around his knees, as if his legs still hurt him. ‘And Reynard gave us the run of his life – everyone said that meet was legendary. Even grizzled old colonels who’d been hunting for years said that was the best hunt they’d ever been on. I was only eight, it was my first hunt, but I rode like a maniac. And eventually we caught him. Reynard.’
Now it was me who looked at the fox on the wall, as if the creature was eavesdropping.
‘I knew it was him, because of the ragged ear where I’d bitten him. When the hounds ripped him apart, I was right at the front of the pack. I loved every second of it, Greer. They “blooded” me with his blood and I felt it warm on my forehead, and I was glad. I was so exhausted I nearly went to sleep in the saddle on the way back to the house. The pater kept laughing and patting me on the shoulder, saying things like, Young puppy’s ridden himself into the ground. For the first time in my life I felt like he was proud of me.’
His voice wavered dangerously, but he carried on.
‘The next day they mounted the fox mask on the wall in my room, and he’s been with me ever since, to remind me of our battle. Reynard 2008. A week after that Boxing Day meet, at the beginning of January, the pater sent me to STAGS prep. He said – and I remember this quite particularly – he said: You’re ready now.’
Somehow, in the course of this terrible tale, he’d curled into a foetal position and I’d reclined on the bed and was lying next to him again, like we were a couple. We faced each other as we’d done that first night when he’d put his thumb on my mouth, mirror images. Then I’d thought him a dream, a wraith from the other side of the Looking Glass; then the dividing line between life and death ran down the middle of the bed between us. Now we were both living in the here and now, and the playful banter of that night was gone like a dream itself. This was the most real Henry had ever been with me, the most raw.
‘Since then I’ve hated the pater. And the mater too.’
The crack in his voice told me that he didn’t hate either one of them. But I wasn’t about to argue with him right then.
‘I get him,’ I said softly. ‘But why her?’
‘Well …’ he reached out and lifted a lock of my hair out of my eye, tucking it behind my ear. His hands were cold. ‘Let me ask you a moral question. What’s worse: to be a monster, and to torture someone, or not to be a monster, and to stand by and watch that someone suffer, without having the courage to do something about it?’
I understood. It was why we were going to Longcross. If we didn’t help Ty, that would make us worse than the Order. ‘Is there … is there a chance she didn’t know?’
‘No,’ he said stiffly. ‘She used to come every day and knock on the door, try the handle and talk to me gently through the wood.’
Then I understood why he’d looked so terrified the other night. When he heard the creak of the doorknob. It had taken him back there, to that dreadful cupboard in the boot room.
‘But she never let me out, however much I begged and pleaded. Because she feared him more than she loved me.’
‘She does love you,’ I said gently. ‘I’m certain of it. She never stops talking about you. And she comes in this room every night, or tries to.’ Then I realised the meaning of what the sleepwalking countess had been saying that night. When she’d murmured, I’ll save you, she hadn’t meant she would save Henry from falling from the waterfall. She’d always known he was alive. She’d meant she would save him from Reynard, all those years ago; but she hadn’t had the courage.
‘She’s like she is because those few days broke her,’ he said coldly. ‘She’s been … struggling, mentally, ever since. She tried to compensate; she smothered me with love. But I could never forget that she’d left me in that cupboard.’
I imagined him trying to deal with the trauma, an eight-year-old, on his own. He should have had counselling, therapy, but these were relatively new sciences. The Medievals didn’t do that. They were all about the stiff upper lip. And this was the consequence. They’d taken an innocent little boy and created a monster. ‘Who else knows this?’
‘Just Cass,’ he said. ‘I had to tell someone. That’s why she hates the pater so much. And the mater too.’
That explained a lot, not least why Cass herself had so many issues of her own following Henry’s ‘death’. But this didn’t have to go on for ever. There didn’t have to be endless generations of messed-up privileged kids. The cycle, surely, could be broken. ‘Why don’t you change? Why don’t you help us? There’s some dark plot going on and you must know all about it. We’re pretty sure something’s going to happen to Ty at the Boxing Day meet, but it’s more than that, isn’t it?’
For the first time that night, he was silent and wouldn’t meet my eyes. But I wasn’t about to give up on him.
‘You’ve literally been given a second chance at life. Why not live this life differently?’
He looked at me for a long, long time, then seemed to make up his mind. He got up off the bed and held out his hand. ‘Come with me.’
For the second time in my life, Henry de Warlencourt took my hand and led me through a secret door. But this time we went down, not up – not to heaven, but to hell.