FOXES Read online

  Contents

  Title Page

  PRAISE FOR S.T.A.G.S.

  BOOKS BY M. A. BENNETT

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  PART ONE THE FOX

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  PART TWO THE ROVING

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  PART 3 SCENT

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  PART 4 SOUND

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  PART 5 FOUND (TALLY HO!)

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  PART 6 AWAY

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  PART 7 THE FIELD

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  PART 8 THE RUN

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  PART 9 FULL CRY

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  PART 10 VIEW HALLOO

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  PART 11 LAST HOPE

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  PART 12 CHECKED

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  PART 13 ‘ON’

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  PART 14 THE LIFTING HORN

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  PART 15 MOURNE END WOOD

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  PART 16 ‘DONE’

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  PART 17 PRIZE

  Chapter 51

  PART 18 HOME

  Chapter 52

  Chapter 53

  Chapter 54

  Chapter 55

  EPILOGUE

  Chapter 56

  Chapter 57

  Chapter 58

  Chapter 59

  Historical Note

  History of S.T.A.G.S.

  Map of the School

  Houses at S.T.A.G.S.

  Uniform Policy

  Glossary

  Acknowledgements

  M. A. Bennett

  Copyright

  PRAISE 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 the Fairhazel fox, my midnight friend

  The Fox may live, When all the Hounds be dead …

  Esmé Stuart, 3rd Duke of Lennox, 7th Duke of Aubigny

  (Introduction to Volpone by Ben Jonson)

  1

  Last night I dreamed I went to Longcross again.

  It seemed like I was watching myself, as if I were in a film, if that makes sense. There was a whole bunch of people on horses milling around in front of the grand entrance to Longcross Hall, all wearing their hunting stuff. And I was one of them. I was on this elegant grey horse, wearing boots and breeches and a midnight-black coat with a nipped-in waist and a black riding hat. I was holding the reins with one gloved hand, and in the other I held a little silver cup. I was drinking from it and smiling.

  Shafeen and Nel were there with me too, both looking amazing in their riding gear; Shafeen, like all the gentlemen, wearing hunting red. Sorry: pink. The twins were there, immaculate on twin white – sorry: grey – horses, but when I looked for someone else, someone who also had blond cropped hair, he was nowhere to be seen. I couldn’t see Ty either, and she definitely would’ve stood out in this company, as the only black person in the hunt.

  We were all chatting and laughing, but there was an air of anticipation. The horses were shifting their hooves, the riders turning their heads with impatience. There was a bunch of hounds milling around, sniffing and yapping and weaving in between the horses’ legs. We were all waiting for something.

  And it came.

  There was the sound of a horn, clear and sweet as death, and we began to move off. We all trotted down the drive and then began to gallop across the open fields. Then I saw everything from above, like that helicopter shot of the hunt at the beginning of The Remains of the Day. The hounds, who had picked up a scent, streaked ahead in a white-and-tan arrowhead. Beyond them a flash of fire – a fox, running easily and well ahead of us. He ducked into a covert and under the dark shadow of the trees of Longwood.

  Once we followed it into the woods everything changed. This will sound weird, but the fox was now human, a figure dressed head to foot in red, a hood drawn over its head. It was running through the blackthorn of the undergrowth, the branches whipping at its face. I felt exhilaration and dread for the running figure. Jaws snapped behind it, and however fast it ran they nipped at its heels. It was no good. As we burst out into a clearing, the low sun in my eyes, the jaws closed on the red runner at last.

  I crowded in with the rest of the hunt as the hounds tore at the red clothing. I watched in horror as the dogs ripped and wrenched, my whole body drenched in dread as riders jumped down to whip the hounds away and turn the motionless figure over. I was suddenly certain that when they did I would see my own face. But when the riders stood back, almost respectfully, the body was gone and there was just a fox, furry and forlorn, stretched dead on the winter grass. Then my point of view spiralled up and up, over the
hills and far away, until the fox, that little smear of red, could no longer be seen.

  You see? Even my dreams have camera moves.

  I didn’t do that sit-bolt-upright-gasping-for-breath thing that they do in the movies though. I woke quite gradually, blinking myself into consciousness, and for a minute I didn’t know where I was. It took me a good few seconds to click that I was in room K9 of Alnwick Cottage Hospital, and I was totally alone – just me and my throbbing thumb.

  Slowly, as things do after a vivid dream, everything came back to me, resolving like a darkroom photograph. Only a few days ago I’d been onstage at the De Warlencourt Playhouse, the school theatre at STAGS. I’d been glorying in the triumph of my production of Ben Jonson’s lost play, The Isle of Dogs. I’d been playing the character of Poetaster, the narrator of the play and a thinly veiled version of Ben Jonson himself, when everything had gone very, very wrong. While speaking the epilogue with my head in a noose (part of the play, don’t ask), something had gone wrong and I’d been hauled upwards until I was hanging by the neck.

  And that was when things had got really weird.

  I’d found myself in the middle of a circle of figures wearing red hooded gowns and stag antlers, led by the Old Abbot – who was, oh yes, supposed to be dead – putting me on trial for the murder of Henry de Warlencourt.

  Naturally, when I came round in this very hospital bed, I thought I’d hallucinated the whole thing, especially as I’d then had a cosy bedside chat with none other than my own ‘murder victim’, Henry de Warlencourt himself. And TBH, I would still think that I had been hallucinating if it wasn’t for one little detail. The sentence that had been visited upon me by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag: the brand on my thumb. The same brand that had been burned into Ben Jonson’s flesh 400 years ago.

  M for Manslayer.

  I squinted at my phone. It was actually quite a reasonable hour – but of course it was the dead of winter, so it was just getting light outside. In the weak winter dawn I held up my thumb to the light. It felt strange, as if I was doing a thumbs-up, as if everything was OK. But everything was most definitely not OK. I could see the newly healed scar tissue of my brand, that pink, slightly stretched look that scars have, making a perfect capital ‘M’ in the pad of my thumb.

  As soon as my nurse, Nurse Annie, had unwrapped my thumb the night before and seen the brand, she’d kicked Shafeen and Nel out of my hospital room and called in my doctor, Doctor Kyd. He’d questioned me for about a decade about self-harm, and hazing, and online cutting challenges, and all this horseshit until I’d finally convinced him that I hadn’t done it and I wasn’t a danger to myself. This wasn’t an easy task when you consider that I couldn’t actually tell him who had done it. In the end Doctor Kyd formed the opinion that I just needed to go home for Christmas to have some R & R, but still I could only get him to leave on the condition that I agreed to come back to see him at the beginning of the Trinity Term (January to you).

  SO …

  By the time that was all over I was pretty tired but still nowhere near sleep, because then I was faced by the stone-cold realisation of what I couldn’t tell the doctor: the only way that brand could have got onto my thumb was if it had been put there by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag. And that meant the whole trial in the De Warlencourt Playhouse at STAGS, far from being a figment of my oxygen-starved imagination, had actually happened In Real Life. And that realisation, let me tell you, was not exactly conducive to sleep. I must’ve slept eventually though, because I had the dream.

  I lay there in the grey dawn trying to figure out what the hell it meant, but already it was starting to fade in that pesky way that dreams do. All I could remember, by the time Nurse Annie bustled in with a breakfast tray, was that it was about a fox.

  2

  ‘Your last gourmet meal, modom,’ said Nurse Annie, in a terrible attempt at a posh accent. Her eyes twinkled. ‘We’re discharging you today.’

  I scooched up a bit on the pillows and made a knee-hump for the tray. ‘You are?’

  ‘Yes, hinny. We need the beds and you need to get on with your Christmas holidays. A bit of fun and relaxation is what the doctor’s ordered.’

  Christmas. I’d almost forgotten. The big day was just over a week away, and I’d be seeing my dad. Back when life was normal (ya know, before my hanging, my trial by the Dark Order of the Grand Stag and my post-mortem chat with Henry), Shafeen and I had arranged to stay with Chanel in Chester for the week before Christmas. Somewhere in the middle of that week, unbelievably, was my Oxford interview, so I’d planned to train it there and back. Then, as Chester was pretty close to Manchester (by name and by nature), I was going to go home from Nel’s on Christmas Eve. I guessed that, now I’d banned my dad from coming home early from his shoot in Madagascar, that arrangement still stood.

  Sure enough, Nel turned up soon after breakfast with Shafeen in tow. They both looked quite different from their school selves. Shafeen wore a winter jacket over a wine-coloured hoodie and jeans, and Nel wore this fluffy peach jacket that looked like it was made out of Muppet skin.

  They both hugged and kissed me, and Shafeen took my hand at once. ‘Let me see.’

  He and Nel bent over my thumb. He lifted his dark eyes to mine. ‘So it was all real. The trial, I mean. Those bastards. We have to get them now.’

  Nel said, ‘Wait, what? What trial?’

  ‘Not here,’ I said, low-voiced. ‘In the car.’

  I thought Doctor Kyd and Nurse Annie were on the level, but I couldn’t escape the fact that the Old Abbot had supposedly ‘died’ here, and the paramedics who had attended me at STAGS (and Henry at Longcross for that matter) were also from this hospital. My friends stepped outside while I got dressed – Nel, God bless her, had packed me some clothes in a wheelie case.

  When I was done I examined myself in the mirror. Nel had chosen a kind of Victorian blouse to wear with jeans, and it had one of those high frilly necks so you couldn’t see the fading rope mark at my throat. She was all thoughtfulness, that girl. But the white of the blouse only emphasised how pale I was. My black bob hung lankly to my shoulders and the fringe had done that annoying separating thing that it did when it needed a wash. Little wonder – I hadn’t washed it since just before we’d performed The Isle of Dogs. But there was no real visible tell of my recent trauma, except perhaps a new and guarded look in my eyes. If it wasn’t for the brand on my thumb, you’d never know. I pressed the print to my reflection, right where my nose was, and it left a smoky whorl with a perfect M in the middle. The thumbprint, and all it meant, terrified me. At that moment I wanted to smash the mirror, like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now. But surely there was nothing to be afraid of any more. I’d made it out of the heart of darkness.

  Hadn’t I?

  I shrugged on a chunky cardigan and my coat, opened the door and smiled a smile I wasn’t really feeling at Shafeen and Nel. ‘Let’s get the hell out of here.’

  At reception I signed the discharge forms myself as I was over eighteen. I said my thank-yous to Doctor Kyd and Nurse Annie, and the reception doors whispered open as we left, letting in an icy northern blast. I felt a bit wobbly and I walked across the car park to Nel’s gold Mini leaning on Shafeen’s strong arm. Alnwick Castle cast a chill shadow over us, snow still on the battlements and the arrow slits watching us like eyes. It was nice to get into Nel’s car and blast the heating. ‘Shotgun!’ I said out of habit, before I remembered that the word might have unfortunate connotations for Shafeen, since he was the one who had once been riddled with pellets from Henry’s gun. But if it did, he said nothing. He just smiled and opened the passenger door for me in a courtly way, before folding his long legs into the back seat.

  Needless to say, I did all the talking in the car. I had so much to tell, and I’d waited so long to tell it. I described my trial by the DOGS all over again, that circle of creepy, antlered figures in the theatre, led by the Old Abbot as judge. I went through it all in fine detail: what he had said;
what I had said; what I had felt. Then I filled them in about my two visitors from Longcross the night before, Cass briefly and then, at much greater length, Ty. I told them about Leon Morgan, Ty’s tragic great-uncle who had been taken to Longcross when little more than a child and had never come home again. I told them about Ty being mrs_de_warlencourt, the mysterious Instagram messenger who had been my guide throughout the last crazy weeks, and that her last cryptic statement, ‘There is another Place’, had meant Cumberland Place, the de Warlencourt London home. And I told them about Ty’s determination to return to Longcross to thwart whatever plan the twins might have and to end the cycle once and for all.

  Of course, Shafeen and Nel had about a million questions and we were a long way down the motorway before a silence fell. There was this massive sign over the road saying THE SOUTH, with a huge white arrow beneath it, and as we followed the arrow my stomach flipped over. As we drove further and further south I thought about Ty. After a year of being three conspirators, I now felt that, without her, there was someone missing from our group. In that short intense conversation in my hospital room last night I felt that she had been a true friend to me, much more so than I’d been to her, and I felt incredibly invested in her welfare. I rubbed the pad of my branded thumb with the middle finger of the same hand, a new habit of mine that accompanied deep thought. I must have made some weird little sound because Shafeen leaned forward. ‘Are you OK? Does it hurt?’