—Wake up, England.
Hand on his mouth, voice in his ear, he opened his eyes. Trevor, in moonlight. Barefoot, they slipped from the dorm.
There was a drainpipe out the window of box room number four, all arranged for a penny dreadful lark: moon rising almost full, drainpipe dry, wind dead as the school. They were down in moments, catlike onto the grass, playing fields, poacher’s tunnel. He’d never come through at night, but Wilberforce used to, Saturdays, smelling of—
—Steady on, Trevor said.
He shined the torch where Gray bent retching and stood beside him until it stopped.
—Brains, Trevor said, you mustn’t worry.
Gray spat, blew his nose.
—This is the Stalkiest night of our lives. We’re going to get what we’ve come for, in, out, safe for good.
Trevor said nothing of the pillows filling their beds, of climbing back up the drain, of the thousand and one ways it all could go wrong.
—We need to burn the box when we get it, Gray said.
—We will burn it. We can burn the whole barn!
—Right.
—We could, Trevor said. It’d flame in a second.
Old timber, ground wet, fire nowhere to go but up.
—We’d be doing McKay a favor, Trevor continued. That place is one good wind from falling down. Can you see it?
Trevor began to laugh:
—Head rousts a pack of prefects, Pious in the lead, off they tramp, torches blazing, and find …
The image of Pearce’s despair was too much. It was some time before they regained their breath to proceed through the woods.
A screech owl swooped past, but nothing could dispel the luck that now ringed them. At last things would come right, slate wiped clean. When he was small, Gray had thought of life as an always rising staircase. You got older, he thought, and each month and year you knew more, did more, had more to enjoy. Perhaps they should light the barn on fire. But first he had to get the letters. He could put them in his pockets and then hurl the box on the fire. Would the nameplate melt, or would it survive, a witness against him? He’d have to pry it off while Trevor prepared the blaze.
—How fast can you make the fire? he asked.
They’d passed the crest and begun down the slope where pheasants nested.
—We can’t burn down the barn, Trevor scoffed.
—But you said …
—What’ll we do for a Keep?
—The Keep is finished! Gray cried. They’ll be watching it, and every sodding cad will want to go there now.
—They’ll forget it by next term.
Trevor kicked at the underbrush. A burst of pheasant.
—And one day, Trevor continued, you’ll write a book about it and we’ll be famous. They’ll give tours.
The wall was ahead, the barn just beyond, already polluted, his inheritance from Hermes, gone.
—I thought this was the Stalkiest night of our lives, Gray said.
—Yes!
—So what’ll it be: nick a few things from a barn, or raze the place in brilliant inferno?
—It would be brilliant, Trevor said, wouldn’t it?
—And then they’d crucify the fags for tarting around in a firetrap.
Trevor laughed:
—You’re learning, Brains. You might not be hopeless after all.
They peered over the wall to the barn below.
—Why is the door open? Gray asked.
—You were supposed to close it after they came out.
—I did close it.
—Not properly.
—I put the latch down, Gray insisted.
They crouched, scouts at post, the night silent and still.
—Stay here, Trevor said.
Over the wall he went, skidding down the grass. Gray leapt over, too, following Trevor’s line to beat him to the box, but then Trevor was waving at him, scrambling back up the slope and over the wall, crouching breathless behind it.
—What…?
—Pearce …
—What…?
—In there …
Pearce was in the barn.
At this moment?
Even now.
At times of catastrophe, a cold calm always filled him. This was no exception. He asked placid questions, asked them again, but Trevor couldn’t explain Pearce’s purpose, only that the sub-prefect was sitting just inside the door, his head in his arms, awake or not, impossible to say.
—But … why?
Who could tell the ways of the loon? Not the prophet’s bones, and not Trevor Maxwell Mainwaring. Their only option was to wait.
Wait here, beyond the wall? Indefinitely through the night? As their mortal enemy held the holy of holies?
Trevor saw no alternative. But not to fear! Hours remained before they must needs turn back. And Trevor had a bag of sweets.
—We’ll be like the passengers in the mail coach, Trevor said, bound for France to recall the prisoner to life.
Or burn him to death.
—Wonder if we’ll be robbed by the Captain.
These and other now bland enactments trickled from Trevor’s mouth as they worked through the bag of licorice. Jacques even now guarded the prisoner, Trevor confided, but soon he would be freed. Madame Defarge would not knit their names into her register; they would ride, un-pursued, back to England. They would mount the steps of Whitby and plunge a stake in the vampire’s heart. They would, like Sikes and Oliver, rob the house and escape.
—But didn’t Sikes—
Gray was not to take a gloomy line. Such was not the night. Such was a night like the night Trevor had once run away to sea. Gray had never heard of such a night, but he heard of it now. Trevor’s tale had more than a whiff of fiction—absconding from his prep school, trekking out to Dodman Point, receiving news from the heavens in the form of a comet that his venture would succeed, scouring the horizon for the vessel that would take him to the treasured high seas …
The ground was damp, his seat soaked, his teeth coated in licorice. If they could make it back intact in every sense, Gray silently vowed to devote himself to ordinary life and stop confusing it with stories. In stories, you didn’t risk your life and your arse waiting in a field to perform your heroics. In stories, no one left stupid things to rot for years. In stories, a coherent hand guided the plot; there was no tumble of make-believe just when you needed to think clearly. Friends in stories never lied to one another.
—I have a confession, Gray said.
—Speak.
The truth dried before he could get it off his tongue—the box not a record of their campaigns but a record of Wilberforce’s …
—I confess, Gray said, that I’m freezing my balls off.
—Maybe we’ll get frostbite! M’pater lost a finger in the war.
—To frostbite, in Egypt?
—It got cold.
—Which finger?
Trevor wasn’t sure, but he felt his father’s admiration would be enhanced if he himself were to lose a digit, or at least part of an ear. Trevor had every confidence that upon hearing their adventure, his father would at last give up talking about his subaltern, Lieutenant Victor. How many letters had been taken up with vile Victor? Victor, who’d been thrown out of three public schools in his day, on the bill every week, the vexation of timid officers, always taking his exploits too far, now in Palestine enjoying wider scope, fulfilling the Colonel’s wishes without having to be told how, inventive, fearless, brazen. Now, this summer, when Trevor would see his father for the first time in over a year, Trevor’s curriculum vitae would at last be up to snuff. Perhaps his father could arrange a place in his unit? Once he’d passed his Remove, naturally.
—Naturally.
Trevor stopped chattering and cocked his head as the barn door whined below. A figure staggered out, hugging itself, surveying the horizon, and then stalked down the track to the road.
It was happening before he realized: Trevor over the wall, Gray scrambling after, slipping, fall broken by a hand that should have been too cold for bruises. More noise as Trevor dashed into the barn and a figure scurried round the other side—Pearce circling back? Someone else entirely? Gray froze in place. Time was never his friend. The figure darted into the barn, and before Gray could work out what to do, a crash rang out and the figure burst forth, barreling down the track like a fox flushed from cover.
Whatever the figure had seen inside the barn, the clock had begun on their return: thirty minutes by the road, shorter if you ran, longer in the dark; by the night woods, forty at least. Gray bounded to the source of the crash and found Trevor on the grass, debris around him.
The exchange as such made not enough sense. Pearce had come back as Trevor was in the loft searching vainly for Stalky.
—Are you sure it was Pearce?
—Who else would it be?
As the invader flashed his torch up the ladder, Trevor had taken to the window.
—You jumped?
Had to. Wasn’t hurt, not much, hopefully something to show for it, but— Gray helped him sit up.
—Bloody hell!
—Shh, Trevor hissed, Pearce!
—He’s gone, and you’re bleeding all over the place!
It was wet on his neck, Trevor mumbled. Somewhere in his head was a sound, and a taste, and a— Gray shone the torch on his scalp, took a handkerchief—
—Don’t touch me! Trevor cried.
A boot caught him in the knee. Gray backed out of reach:
—Stay there.
Inside the barn, torch to the wall, to the back, very back. Like a fist to the gut. Like the diagnosis you never wanted to hear. Royal tomb robbed.
Up the ladder, nothing. All the straw kicked overboard, bare boards brazen. How many ways could you spell disaster?
Outside, Trevor’s face was damp with sweat.
—I’m going to touch your chin. Don’t hit me.
Garbled curse.
—I’m going to turn on the torch. Follow it with your eyes.
—Ow, you bastard—
—Hold still!
—Where’s your box?
Torch off. Silence thick as fear.
—Did you look?
—I looked.
The patient struggled to his feet:
—We’ll get it back.
The physician turned his patient towards the road, but the patient wrenched away:
—Pearce went that way, so we’re going this way.
Trevor weaved up the slope, scrambled over the wall, and staggered through the pheasant nests, slipping—
—Careful!
—If you touch me, I’ll knock your lights out.
He fell again, got up again.
—This is all your fault.
At the poacher’s tunnel, Trevor sat down on the old fallen tree. His trousers were torn. Everything was gray. So many things could be stopped. People could be murdered, cities burned, nations destroyed, but dawn came every day, never rushed nor slowed by anything.
—This, Trevor cried, was a lark! The larkiest lark ever.
—It’s late, Gray said. We’ve got to—
—I’m not going anywhere, Brains, until you admit it was the best night of your life.
—We got nothing from the barn, you bashed your head open, and every second we’re sitting here is one second closer to getting caught.
Trevor laughed disconcertingly:
—It’s always doom and gloom with you! Eye on your Uncle Stalky.
They wriggled down the tunnel and up the other side, where the silhouette of the school brightened against the sky. Squelching fields, drainpipe. The patient began to climb but then lost his grip and fell to the grass.
—I’m done for, he gasped. Save yourself.
—Don’t be absurd!
—When they find me, I’ll say I did it.
—Did what?
—I was never going to make it.
He sounded delirious. Was this how it was when shells hit the front?
—I wanted to do this thing, you see? One good thing, before the end.
—This isn’t the end!
It wasn’t the front, and the wound wasn’t fatal.
—This is the best thing I’ve ever had, Trevor said. Good things always end.
—Not now.
—When they find me, there’ll be a flap, and—listen, Brains—while everyone’s off their heads, you go to Pearce’s study and get your box. And if he ever says anything, tell him it’s his fault, what happened to me.
—I’m not leaving you here on the ground.
—If they haven’t found me by second bell, send someone, won’t you? It’s beastly cold.
Trevor was shuddering, incapable of climbing anywhere, heat draining every second they stood there. The amateur physician did the only thing he could: drainpipe, inside, stocking feet down the back stairs. If only hearts pumped ideas with the blood. What doors gave outside? The gates would be chained until Farley unlocked them. Wilberforce had told of a window in the Tower. Through it he’d climb when bunking off at night. Trevor couldn’t climb through windows; he might not even be able to climb stairs.
Light glared across the passage. He no longer needed the torch.
Wasn’t there another way Wilberforce told of one time, when Gray had been ill and he’d come to the Tower to see him? He told the story of the Fags’ Rebellion, of going out that night and coming in another way, through a French window, in his Housemaster’s study, whose door had no key.