Stags 2, p.1
STAGS 2, page 1
Contents
Title Page
AWARDS FOR S.T.A.G.S.
BOOKS BY M. A. BENNETT
Dedication
Epigraph
ACT ONE
Scene i
Scene ii
Scene iii
Scene iv
Scene v
Scene vi
Scene vii
Scene viii
Scene ix
Scene x
Scene xi
Scene xii
Scene xiii
ACT TWO
Scene i
Scene ii
Scene iii
Scene iv
Scene v
Scene vi
Scene vii
Scene viii
Scene ix
Scene x
Scene xi
Scene xii
Scene xiii
Scene xiv
Scene xv
Scene xvi
Scene xvii
Scene xviii
Scene xix
ACT THREE
Scene i
Scene ii
Scene iii
Scene iv
Scene v
Scene vi
Scene vii
Scene viii
Scene ix
ACT FOUR
Scene i
Scene ii
Scene iii
Scene iv
Scene v
Scene vi
Scene vii
Scene viii
Scene ix
Scene x
Scene xi
ACT FIVE
Scene i
Scene ii
Scene iii
Scene iv
Scene v
Scene vi
Scene vii
Scene viii
Scene ix
Scene x
Scene xi
Scene xii
Scene xiii
Scene xiv
Scene xv
History of S.T.A.G.S.
Map of the School
Houses at S.T.A.G.S.
Uniform Policy
Glossary
For more from the exciting world of S.T.A.G.S.…
The Real Isle of Dogs
Author's Note
Acknowledgements
Letter from the Author
M. A. Bennett
Copyright
AWARDS FOR S.T.A.G.S.
Shortlisted for the YA BOOK PRIZE 2018
Winner of the Warwickshire Secondary Book Award 2019, the Great Reads ‘Most Read’ 2018 Senior Award and the Sussex Coast Schools Amazing Book Award 2019
‘S.T.A.G.S. is a pacey and well-plotted young adult story that champions outsiders and questions out-dated viewpoints in a constantly evolving world.’
CultureFly
‘M. A. Bennett is brilliant at keeping the reader in suspense.’
Book Murmuration
‘M. A. Bennett reinvigorates the boarding-school thriller … This is a darkly compelling examination of the allure of privilege, and the unscrupulous means by which it preserves itself.’
Guardian
‘S.T.A.G.S. is a thrilling and thoroughly enjoyable YA novel with dark undertones. A fun mystery thriller that sheds light on issues surrounding class and society. Highly recommend.’
Book Bag
‘A gorgeous and compelling romp’
Irish Times
‘Good and twisty and definitely unique … if you’re looking for something creepy and autumnal to read, I’d recommend S.T.A.G.S.’
The Cosy Reader
‘The whole story had a dark humorous tone that really gave this book a unique touch … it’s clever, fast-paced and dark, everything I love in a thriller.’
Alba in Bookland
‘Bennett’s debut is the type of book you cannot put down. I read it in just one sitting’
Choose YA
‘A cracking debut psychological thriller set in an elite boarding school ruled by a set of six pupils known as the Medievals. Think Enid Blyton meets The Hunger Games!’
Irish Sunday Independent
‘The book almost makes you believe that you are there. I would recommend this book, especially to those who loved The Hunger Games’
Teen Titles
‘Gossip Girl meets The Hunger Games’
Bustle
‘Like Mean Girls, but British and deadly … This book is great, from start to finish’
Hypable
BOOKS BY M. A. BENNETT
S.T.A.G.S.
D.O.G.S.
F.O.X.E.S.
The Island
To Inca,
who was the very best of dogs
Let him but look,
And read,
He may be saved by thy book.
To Ben Jonson’s Ghost
William Cavendish
Scene i
So.
When someone’s dead they’re supposed to stay dead, right?
Well, that’s what I thought. I certainly didn’t think I was going to be seeing Henry de Warlencourt again. But it turned out I was wrong.
Everyone in the hospital keeps telling me that there’s this thing called the ‘Anniversary Effect’. It’s when you start getting visions or flashbacks a year after a traumatic event. In my case, Justitium weekend a year ago at Longcross, and Henry’s suicide. OK, death. Apparently the anniversary ‘opens up the neurological floodgates’. Now, I know all about the Anniversary Effect. I watch Stranger Things. But this isn’t that. I know what I saw.
There’s lots of other stuff before we get to the exceptionally weird bit though. So I’m going to pick up the story exactly where I left off – Justitium of my last year at STAGS – because it annoys the shit out of me when stories are supposed to be sequels and then it’s like: THREE YEARS LATER. I mean, what the hell is that?
I’m going to tell you what happened in the second half of that autumn term – God, was it really only six weeks ago?? – right after the chapel service, right after we broke up for Justitium, right after I’d figured out that the Abbot was the Grand Master of the Order of the Stag, a freaky, people-hunting cult hell-bent on maintaining some archaic social order.
So.
Here goes:
As soon as I’d told Shafeen and Nel what I had to say, the three of us went straight to see the Abbot. We strode through the ancient quads of the school, all hyped up and ready for confrontation. We’d decided to challenge the Abbot with his crimes – a pretty crazy idea on reflection, since we now knew he was Murderer-in-Chief. Were we crazy? Probably, but still we hurried through those sunlit courts.
STAGS looked beautiful and deadly in the autumn light. There was nothing modern to be seen, and only the distant howl of an ambulance siren and a flash of blue streaking along the Alnwick road reminded us that there was even a Savage world out there at all. I shivered despite the sun. Ambulances and blue lights brought back that last night at Longcross: Henry falling backwards into space, the roar of the waterfall drowning the sound of his body breaking on the rocks below, his ruined form in a body bag being filed away neatly into the back of an ambulance. It was time for all this to end. But when we entered the Abbot’s study, the Abbot wasn’t there. Friar Ridley was sitting behind the desk. Talk about the wind being taken out of our sails …
Friar Ridley was OK. He taught English and drama, and as they were two of my subjects I knew him a little bit, even though the term was only six weeks old. He was tall and had curling dark hair and green eyes. He looked a lot like that guy from Batman v Superman. Not Batman. Superman. Henry Cavill.
I wondered how the three of us looked to him – solemn Indian guy, perfect Barbie princess and me in the middle, all dark bob and bangs like some manga Joan of Arc. He nodded at the others but he knew me well enough to greet me by name. ‘Greer,’ he said. ‘What can I do for you?’
We all sat down, uninvited, in the chairs across from him. We sat in the exact same configuration as when we’d told the Abbot all about the Medievals last year. What chumps we’d been, to give the Abbot warning so he could cover up for his evil little minions, the Medievals, and ship them off to Oxbridge before we could act. I raised my chin. We were the Medievals now, we were at the top of the school, and we were going to get to the bottom of this, right now.
‘I … We want to talk to the Abbot.’
I was ready to be asked why. I was ready to say because he’s the head of an evil, child-killing cult. But Friar Ridley didn’t ask me why. In fact, he said something quite different.
‘Ah,’ he said, looking down at his long fingers on the blotter. ‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible.’
‘Why not?’ asked Shafeen, all belligerent.
‘Because he’s on his way to Alnwick Cottage Hospital. He was taken ill after Justitium Mass.’
‘What’s wrong with him?’ Nel didn’t mess about.
‘I know no more than that, I’m afraid. He collapsed.’
‘So who’s in charge?’ I asked.
He flattened his gown over his broad chest. Friar Ridley, I could see, worked out. There was no getting away from it. He was fit. I don’t just mean ripped, but handsome with it.
‘Well, for the moment,’ he said, ‘I am.’
We all studied him. He was probably in his thirties, but despite his height he barely looked old enough to be a teacher, let alone an Abbot. Behind that desk, he kind of looked like he was on a ‘Bring Your Son to Work’ day, waiting for Daddy to get back.
Friar Ridley was one of the slew
He narrowed his eyes to match. ‘How d’you mean?’
‘I mean, where were you before STAGS?’
‘My last school was Ampleforth in Yorkshire, where I was head of house, then head of English, then –’ he smiled –‘head.’
Somewhere during that speech, I don’t know why, I started to trust him. ‘What about before that?’
‘I could swear I’d already had my interview.’ But he smiled again. The smile was sort of lopsided. It was cute. ‘Christ Church College, Oxford.’
That sounded alarm bells. Christ Church, I knew, was posh. And the reason I knew that was that it was the very college I’d applied to myself. More of that later. For now all I was thinking was that Ridley could be part of the whole STAGS set-up, radicalised at uni into the nostalgia posse, ready to murder us commoners just for fun. Warily, I asked, ‘And before that?’ I was trying to get to where he’d been to school, find out if he was part of the silver-spoon squad.
‘Manchester Grammar School.’
‘You’re from Manchester?’
‘Yes. Do I pass your test?’
That’s why I’d begun to trust him. He’d said last, not laaast. Pass not paaass. He was a northerner.
‘Do you know Arkwright Road?’
‘Know it? My aunty lived on that street. Near Asim’s newsagent’s on the corner.’
That did it. I’d bought sweets in Asim’s shop my whole childhood. I was totally Team Ridley.
I looked at the other two. Shafeen and then Nel both gave me a small nod.
‘We’ve got something to tell you. Something about the Abbot.’
He leaned forward, hands clasped on the tooled leather of the desk. You can be sure I had a good old look at those hands, every single finger, before I spoke. But we were good – no signet rings stamped with antlers, no big, flashy head-of-a-cult rubies.
‘The Abbot –’ I began. ‘You’re going to find this quite difficult to believe …’ – understatement of the year – ‘but he’s the head of a –’
Then, just like in the movies, the phone rang.
Typical of STAGS, if they had a phone it was going to be the oldest one they could find. This one was black with a rotary dial and a curly cord – it looked like it was straight out of some Ealing comedy of the 1940s. But there was nothing comedic about Friar Ridley’s face as he listened to the muffled sounds of speech on the other end.
He said, ‘I see. Thank you.’
He put the phone down very gently on its cradle. Then he looked at each of us in turn. Suddenly I knew what he was going to say before he said it.
‘I’m afraid what you had to tell me may no longer be relevant,’ he said. ‘The Abbot is dead.’
Scene ii
Apparently the Abbot had had a heart attack and was dead on arrival at Alnwick Cottage Hospital.
In my head, of course, I’d now murdered someone else. Had the Abbot known, as he’d looked out across the congregation of STAGS pupils during Justitium Mass, that one of them had guessed his secret? Had he seen it in my eyes, eyes red with the reflection of his ruby ring, that I’d rumbled him and it was all over? Had the shock killed him?
That very evening there was a Requiem Mass for the Abbot, and Shafeen, Nel and I found ourselves once more in the chapel, this time by candlelight. The chapel choir, who were this professional-standard choir cherry-picked from the decent singers at STAGS, sang this song/hymn/whatever as everyone filed in. It seemed to be about misery cos they kept singing ‘Miserere’ over and over again. It was fricking beautiful. Even though I didn’t give a crap about the Abbot, I felt the corners of my mouth twitching downwards. Suddenly the choir seemed to be singing about Henry.
Luckily, just as it seemed that tears were inevitable, Nel nudged me in the ribs. ‘They knocked this thing together pretty quick,’ she muttered out of the corner of her mouth.
Shafeen, on the other side of me, shrugged. ‘Well, if you have a school run by a Holy Order then it doesn’t take long to put together a Requiem Mass.’
‘Unholy Order more like,’ I said uneasily.
It all seemed a bit too neat. There was Friar Ridley, in the Abbot’s robes, standing at the lectern, telling us that Justitium weekend had been postponed for a few weeks and that we were all to stay in school, as a mark of respect for the Abbot. This was greeted with a chorus of groans from the kids who actually liked their parents and were looking forward to going home, but Ridley shut them down with a look. He no longer looked like he was someone’s kid. He had some authority about him, standing exactly where the Abbot had stood earlier that day, the rogue sunbeam catching not a ruby ring this time, but Friar Ridley’s green eyes. His voice rang out. He had game. He was the acting Abbot now.
‘The Abbot is Dead,’ Shafeen said drily. ‘Long Live the Abbot.’ It was pretty much what he’d said when Henry had … died, and Cookson had taken over.
‘Don’t you like him?’ I said, surprised. ‘I do.’
He gave me a considered look. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I could see that. Maybe that’s why I don’t.’
I decided to ignore Shafeen’s snippiness. I actually thought it was cute. Although we were together – really together – in private, in public he wouldn’t ever show how into me he was. To be fair, this was something we’d sort of agreed so as not to make Chanel feel like a third wheel, but that didn’t mean I didn’t like a bit of affirmation now and again. Don’t tell the BuzzFeed feminists, but I quite liked that he was a bit jealous. As one of the friars started droning through a Bible reading, I said, low-voiced, ‘Now what?’
‘Now nothing,’ said Shafeen. ‘It’s the end of the line.’
‘Are you sure?’ I said. I nodded to a few rows in front, where the de Warlencourt twins sat, almost exactly where they’d sat earlier in the day.
‘What have they done? They’re not automatically guilty by association.’
‘They smiled at me funny this morning.’
‘Ooh, they smiled? Quick, call the Feds.’
‘They invited Ty to Longcross.’ I nodded to the new girl, her neat black cornrows next to those sleek blond heads.
‘But they won’t be going now. Justitium’s cancelled. So she’s safe.’ He turned to the next hymn, snapping the pages of the hymnbook pointedly between his fingers.
After the service we had a bit of time before Commons (dinner to you). We gathered round the Paulinus well in the darkening light. This was a habit that, oddly, we’d adopted from our predecessors. I’m not sure why, we just kind of started doing it in a weird Medieval continuity, leaning on the stone wall looking into the depths of the well, or out into the night. I gazed into the shaft now and could swear I saw the Medievals’ cigarette butts still stuck in the wire mesh halfway down. Had one of them been thrown from Henry’s lips? ‘So that’s it?’ I spoke down the well, my voice echoing back to me. ‘We just drop it?’
‘Greer,’ said Shafeen, putting his arm round me in a rare Public Display of Affection, ‘we have one year left at STAGS.’ He threw his other arm out in this big theatrical gesture, which took in all the silhouetted buildings. ‘This is our school, and we’re stuck with it. If we were going to leave, we should have done it a year ago after the Henry thing. It’s too late to go anywhere else now, and besides, it has an academic record second to none. We have to take the good bits of the school and use them to our advantage. We have to trust that now Henry has gone and the Abbot has gone, all that other stuff is over.’
