Stags 2, p.8
STAGS 2, page 8
The Last Tudor.
Our history classes were held in the Tudor Gallery at the top of Marinius, which had desks set along the polished floor, and stained-glass windows illuminating the long, light room, depicting the lives of the Northumbrian saints, including the ubiquitous Aidan–Stag combo. Every time I stole a glance at Shafeen, which seemed to be a lot, he was bathed in the rainbow light of stained glass, just as he’d been last year when he’d faced off with the Medievals about the Battle of Hattin. The Tudor Gallery was the perfect place to learn about Elizabeth.
At first it was standard that-film-with-Cate-Blanchett stuff. Came to the throne aged twenty-five after her half-sister snuffed it, and went about reversing Mary’s Catholic policies. Friar Camden’s whole deal was how throughout her life Elizabeth had to outwit lots of enemies who had once been friends. Tudor England was a dog-eat-dog world. Her own half-sister put her in the Tower of London. Then there was her cousin, Mary, Queen of Scots, who plotted Elizabeth’s death.
The Mary-Queen-of-Scots bit was really interesting, because it had to do with plots and spies and secret codes and stuff. Apparently, Mary sent secret codes to her co-conspirators from the castle where she was being kept prisoner, hidden in barrels of wine. Elizabeth’s spies intercepted them and cracked the codes. We had one really cool lesson when Friar Camden told us all about the code Mary used, called a substitution cipher. We spent a happy hour using the methods that Elizabeth’s spymasters would have used to decipher it, looking at the frequency of certain symbols in the code, and how they corresponded to the most common letters in the alphabet. Lots of fun for us, of course, but not so much fun for Mary back in the day; because of all that deciphering, things didn’t end well for her. When Elizabeth read those letters she signed her cousin’s death warrant, and the Mary-Queen-of-Scots episode ended with a half-cute, half-gross story about Mary’s dog, who loved his mistress so much that he stayed under her skirts while her head was being chopped off (apparently it took several goes).
Funny how everything seemed to come back to dogs.
Speaking of which, it was when Friar Camden started talking about the next ‘Frenemy’ Elizabeth had to deal with that Nel and I really sat up.
‘In many ways Elizabeth was a proto-feminist,’ the Friar declared, tucking a strand of silver hair behind her ear. ‘She realised that marriage would dissipate her own power, so, against the advice of her chief advisors, father–son team William and Robert Cecil, she refused the hand of Philip II, King of Spain. And it was a costly decision. Philip scorned was an extremely dangerous enemy, and eventually ordered the Spanish Armada to sail against England. But,’ the Friar went on, smiling a little, ‘this didn’t mean that Elizabeth lived a life without love. She certainly had her favourites, even in old age, and chief among these was the young and handsome Earl of Essex. You can imagine how much the Cecils liked him.’
It was that nugget of information that had Nel and I looking across the classroom at each other, wide-eyed. And at this point, even Shafeen came out of his sulky bubble and flashed a dark look over at us. See? the glance seemed to say. Too neat. Too coincidental. Too dangerous.
‘So,’ I murmured to Nel on the way down the stairs after class, ‘Ben Jonson was throwing shade at the queen herself in The Isle of Dogs. She’s obviously represented by Queen Cynthia.’ I thought of all those speeches in the play where the queen was being greedy, lustful, bloodthirsty, spoiled, capricious, childish. Being human. It was explosive stuff.
‘Not just the queen,’ said Nel. ‘Lupo and Volpone are clearly William and Robert Cecil. A father–son team running the country. The Earl of Greenwich …’
‘… is the Earl of Essex, her cougar crush,’ I broke in. ‘And the King of El Dorado in the play is obvs Philip II of Spain. The Cecils wanted Elizabeth to marry Philip. He was perfect on paper, but by the end of her life the Only Way Was Essex for Elizabeth.’
‘And,’ said Chanel the classicist, ‘El Dorado was a fabled land full of gold. Spain had colonised the Americas, and had access to all the gold of the continent. The King of El Dorado is literally the king of gold.’
I stopped on the stairs. ‘What the hell was Ben Jonson doing?’ I mused, half in admiration. ‘He’s pretty much mocking every significant relationship Elizabeth ever had in one play. No wonder it was banned and he got his ass thrown in jail.’
I would’ve loved to have talked to Shafeen about it too, and get his take on the whole art-imitates-life thing. Nel was great, of course, but I missed Shafeen. Not just his company, but the touch of him, the feel of him. I missed the kisses and the hand-holds and the arm around my shoulders as we walked somewhere, anywhere. And, if I’m honest, I missed those frightening, exhilarating times when it felt like things were getting out of control.
But he seemed to be getting on just fine. I saw him going about with his pet science geeks, which would have been OK, but sometimes I saw him walking around the grounds with Cassandra, which was definitely not OK. One time I saw them smiling. That was a smack in the face. How could he smile?
I was pretty lonely.
I was pretty hurt.
So I did something pretty dumb.
I went looking for Henry online.
Scene vi
I checked out all Henry’s Facebook groups, and Twitter pages, and his Google image page, and his Instagram fan pages – and much good it did me.
There he was, looking out of all the pictures with his direct blue gaze and his white smile. Henry in rugby gear. Henry in white tie and tails. Henry in a top hat. Henry in cricket whites in a punt, for God’s sake. When had he ever been in a punt?
I just felt worse after my Henry binge. Well, I deserved that.
Out of some muscle memory I checked my own Instagram. I wasn’t really expecting any messages, because all my old friends from Bewley Park had pretty much given up on me, as they knew I was off-grid. But in my Instagram, against all odds, there was a new message. The name made my pulse thud:
mrs_de_warlencourt
In the little circle where there was supposed to be a profile photo there was just a little pair of black antlers on a white background. I stared at it for a good few seconds, my heart in my throat. Then I clicked the message. There was no greeting or sign off. It was just one little bald statement:
You’ve seen it before.
My thumbs one step ahead of me, I typed:
Seen what?
I waited, listening to my own heartbeat. It was hopeless. The message was from a few days ago – there was no guarantee mrs_de_warlencourt, whoever she was, was even online. But almost immediately another message popped up.
The play. You’ve seen it before.
I typed:
Where?
The answer came back:
Think.
And then:
Gotta go.
This seemed pretty final. I stared impotently at the screen for a moment, sweat bubbling under my fingertips, unsure of what to do. In the end I locked the bright phone back in my drawer, because, for a Medieval, carrying a phone would mean expulsion, and I wasn’t about to get chucked out of this school now. I threw on my dressing gown and padded down the corridor in my bare feet to find Nel.
She opened her door dressed in these adorable pyjamas and fluffy slippers. Nel always had really nice jammies. ‘What’s up?’
In answer I said: ‘Gimme your phone.’
Puzzled, she locked the door, and took the bright Saros out of her knicker drawer. I sat down on the bed. Nel’s room was really pretty, with lots of pink, her favourite colour, which should have looked wrong with the dark oak Tudor panels but actually looked pretty rocking. But I had no time for the decor right then. I signed in to my Instagram and said, ‘Look.’
She sat down beside me and took the phone from my hand, expertly tapping through the thread with her acrylic thumbnail. ‘Who the hell’s mrs_de_warlencourt?’
‘No idea.’
‘Hmm. Probably some Henry superfan. When I was little I used to call myself Mrs Chanel Jonas Brothers.’
I smiled. ‘Well, Henry has plenty of superfans out there.’ I neglected to mention that tonight I’d been acting like one of them.
‘Do you know what she’s talking about? Have you seen the play before?’
‘Before this term? No. How could I have?’
Now it was her turn to say Dunno. She looked at me beadily. ‘Are you going to show Shafeen?’
I stuck my chin in the air. ‘No. I think I’ll let sleeping dogs lie.’
‘Greer …’
‘It’s late.’ I got up from the bed. ‘Better get my head down.’
‘Will you think about it then?’
‘About where I’ve seen The Isle of Dogs before? Sure. But I’m not sure what good –’
‘Well, yes, about that, but about Shafeen too.’ She looked at me intently from under her sculpted brows. ‘Don’t throw him away for a ghost.’
Hand already on the door, I quoted mrs_de_warlencourt. ‘Gotta go.’
Scene vii
Shafeen was right. Act Three arrived on Sunday evening.
This time I was a bit more prepared . As soon as I heard the rustle of the pages I was up from my desk and straight out the door. I heard running, retreating footsteps, not towards the stairwell this time but back into the belly of Lightfoot House. I saw – or I thought I saw – the tail of a black Tudor coat disappearing round the corner of the oak-panelled passageway. I shot after it and found myself in an empty corridor with a dead end. The rows of doors on either side of me were blank and closed.
There were two possibilities. One, whoever had delivered this manuscript to me must have hidden in one of those rooms. Two, and much more likely, the postie actually lived in Lightfoot. I walked back to my room, trailing my fingertips over the studded doors, as if one of them could tell me which of them had just been closed. I looked at the message boards and read the names. Cassandra lived on this corridor – or at least she was supposed to, if she actually slept anywhere else but with Louis. So did Ty. So did Nel. But the tail of that Tudor coat had awakened a memory in me – of last year, when I used to imagine Henry disappearing around every corner, swift and unseen. Was he still haunting me?
Heart thudding, I went back to my room and sat down with Act Three of The Isle of Dogs. I was so flustered that I read the first page three times before any of the words registered. Then, like a dark incantation, they drew me into the world of the play.
I was there with Queen Cynthia, all pent up and feverishly excited about her birthday hunt in a fortnight’s time. She grants the Earl of Greenwich an audience and teases him with a secret, a great event to take place in the dog days of summer, which she refuses to tell him anything about. Here, Greenwich does that weird thing called an ‘aside’, which people do in Elizabethan drama, when they talk to the audience right in front of another character, as if only the audience can hear what they say. He tells the audience that he believes the queen to be talking about her upcoming marriage to the King of El Dorado, and that she is cruelly toying with him. He leaves the palace, saying he will be there on the appointed day. Then, in a monologue, the queen admits that she fears her impending old age and the loss of her beauty, and that she wants to get herself a magnificent suit of green hunting clothes (which she describes in minute detail) and get all dressed up and made up and hair done, so that she looks amazing for her birthday hunt, when she will confess her love for Greenwich and ask for his hand. I guess that was the Elizabethan equivalent of getting beach-body ready.
Meanwhile, there’s a subplot where Lupo and Volpone discover some secret Catholic rebels hiding out on the Isle of Dogs, an area just across the river from the Palace of Placentia. Pretending they wanted to make peace, father and son arrange to meet the rebels in the Underwood on the day of the great hunt. I was pretty sure how that was going to go down. I had a nasty feeling that things weren’t going to end so well for the Catholics.
A bit unsettled, and locking the door first, I checked my Instagram. It was almost as though, having done something as Medieval as reading that manuscript, I could allow myself a moment to be Savage. There was a message from mrs_de_warlencourt:
Have you remembered yet?
And next to the question mark was a little lightbulb emoji. Frustrated, I replied:
No.
Then I asked her:
Are you in Lightfoot?
But she just replied:
Gotta go.
Scene viii
The more I thought about it, the more I believed that Gabriel Spenser must be the key to this mystery.
Every time I went into the De Warlencourt Playhouse, which was a LOT, I passed under his plaque. He was the one connection between the past and the present. Four hundred years ago, he’d acted in The Isle of Dogs. Now we were putting on the same play, and the words he had spoken would be performed in a playhouse dedicated to him. It was Gabriel Spenser who linked the Isle of Dogs that Ben Jonson had written, and hidden, to the Isle of Dogs that we were performing.
I don’t know why it took me so long to ask the twins about him. Of course they would know about him, right? Their family theatre had been dedicated to him. Surely over one of those twelve-course meals at whichever huge house they lived in, Mama or Papa would have mentioned this actor in passing? I decided to ask Louis. Trying to get conversation out of Cassandra was like trying to get blood out of a stone, and if I’m honest I was a bit off Cass because of her buddying up with Shafeen. Louis was the man to give you information; you could barely shut him up. I cornered him backstage after rehearsal. ‘Have you heard of an actor called Gabriel Spenser?’
He pursed his lips and shook his head. ‘No. Sorry.’
I frowned. ‘Really? Your family theatre is dedicated to him. This theatre.’
‘Is it?’
For Louis, the answer was surprisingly brief and to the point. And if he didn’t know about Spenser, there was no reason to suppose that Cass would, so I sort of left it. But there was something I would have to ask them all about. I gathered my players together in the auditorium, where they sat on the wooden benches. I stood on the stage, hearing my own voice come back to me by that weird trick of acoustics. Those Jacobean builders really knew what they were doing.
‘Guys, there’s yet another act, so it looks like we are eventually going to get the whole thing. That’ll be five acts in total, when we thought at the start we’d be doing just one. This puts quite a squeeze on the rehearsals, and the line learning. Are you all OK with that? You all want to do the whole thing?’
They all nodded, my little band of brothers, their eyes shining, even Cassandra’s.
‘Great. So my question is, what is everyone doing for Justitium? Because if everyone is staying at school, we could really do with additional rehearsals.’
The twins looked at each other, then at Ty.
‘Well …’ began Louis.
‘The thing is …’ said Ty.
Cassandra, ever the silent one, just bit her lip.
Louis explained. ‘We promised Ty a trip to Longcross. She was all ready to come a few weeks ago and it was postponed when the Abbot … when the Old Abbot died.’ He let a respectful pause fall, then brightened. ‘I say, why don’t you and Nel come? Then we could at least rehearse. You’d be very welcome.’
I didn’t even have to look at Nel. Us going back to Longcross would be like those dumb heroines in horror movies like Scream running back into a haunted house instead of getting the hell out of there. ‘Oh, no, that’s all right,’ I said breezily. ‘It’s your thing. We oldies won’t intrude. We’ll just have to hit the ground running when you’re back.’
The memories of that fateful weekend a year ago did prick my conscience enough for me to have a quiet word with Ty after rehearsal. We walked over Bede’s Piece together. ‘Are you OK with this Longcross plan, Ty?’
‘Are you kidding me?’ she said, suddenly very London. ‘I ain’t never been anywhere like that. I can’t wait to see that house.’
‘It’s not just the house, is it?’ I said, suddenly feeling a bit like her mum. ‘It’s Louis too, isn’t it? I saw you at the drinks party.’
The corners of her lips curled in a small, secret smile and she shrugged. My heart sank. How much should I tell her? How could I warn her against the de Warlencourt charm when I had fallen for Henry’s myself? How could I tell her to be careful without sounding like a dick? Then I decided to stop beating myself up. It would be no good saying anything anyway. I remembered a white-faced Gemma Delaney warning me, just over a year ago, not to go anywhere near Longcross at Justitium. And had I listened? Of course not.
I changed the subject. There was something else I’d been meaning to ask her. ‘So you’re from the Isle of Dogs, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Why’s it called that?’
‘Cos it was where Elizabeth I’s royal kennels were. So back then it was literally swarming with dogs.’
‘Makes sense.’
‘There’s this pub called the Ferry House where my uncles used to drink,’ she went on, ‘and there was a crazy old guy who always used to sit at the bar and say that on frosty nights you could hear those Elizabethan dogs baying across the mudflats.’
I shivered. I was back at Longcross, hearing Henry’s dogs barking through the dense fog after Nel’s blood. If I was a real friend to Ty, could I really let her go to Longcross alone? Yes, I liked the twins, and no, they weren’t Henry. But before I could make up my mind she hurried away, probably to catch up with Louis.
I could’ve stopped her. I could’ve called her back. But I said nothing, and my own silence left me feeling a bit sick.
