His new skin made him look even more frightening. Which of his seven skins is this? I whispered in my head. Not that it mattered. I was pretty sure I wouldn’t live to learn the answer.
His horse scraped over the gravestones as if trying to wake the dead beneath, but the silken lord kept his eyes firmly on me. They burned as though his dark soul itself were on fire.
“There you are, Hartgill!” he snarled. “What are you waiting for?” He spoke as he would to a servant or a stableboy. Yet I was still a knight’s squire, even if that knight was a murderer himself.
“Not before you let Ella go!” I called, cursing the fear that made my voice so shrill.
Ella, however, had her own opinion on that matter.
“I’m not going anywhere, Jon Whitcroft!” she shouted. “What did you think I’d do? Drive home with Zelda while these monsters chop off your head or do God-knows-what to you?”
Chop off my head… I swallowed. She really did have a way of pointing out the obvious.
“Ella!” Zelda called. “Do as Jon says. Come to me. It will be all right.”
Ella hesitated, and before she could move, the servant behind her grabbed her again. Ella rammed her elbow into his chest, and just as the corpse lifted his hand to strike back, Stourton stopped him with a sharp hiss.
“Let her go! I only want the boy,” he growled. “Not that I wouldn’t get him anyway!” he added with a beastly smile.
He looked more dead than ever. His teeth in a lipless mouth were so rotten that it looked as if he’d looted them from one of the graves. His hair was no longer gray but white. It hung over his shoulders in such thin strands that it had the appearance of cobwebs rather than hair. His new skin was stretched tight over the bones, as though it had been sewn onto his body like a shroud. His men looked no better, but they obeyed him in their new bodies as blindly as they had as ghosts. No wonder—centuries of practice probably did make perfect.
Ella still hesitated, until Stourton’s servant finally shoved her in our direction. With every step she took, her eyes asked us exactly what our plan was.
There’s not much of a plan, Ella, I thought as I started walking toward Stourton, who already had his bony hand on the hilt of his sword. His sword can’t harm you, Jon! I repeated with every teetering step. He cannot touch you—don’t forget that.
I’d decided not to think about what the corpses might be able to do to me.
Ella and I passed each other between two children’s graves, which really wasn’t very encouraging. Come on, Beard! I thought as we walked past each other so close that I could have touched Ella’s hand. I suddenly remembered in a panic my mother’s constant complaints that The Beard was always late for everything.
A shot rang out right at that moment. The bullet hit one of the servants in the back and spun him around.
“Run, Ella!” I screamed, shoving her in Zelda’s direction.
The next shot came from the shrubs by the gate, and I heard Stourton utter some very old and awful curses.
Don’t look around, Jon! I ordered myself as Ella and I ran toward Zelda and the open church door. Zelda wielded her crutch like Zeus’s thunderbolt, but I could already hear the hoofbeats behind me. They sounded ghostly light, which made them even more threatening. Jon, don’t look around! I thought once more. He can’t do anything to you. He can’t! But at that very moment, I felt a hand on my neck—a cold but very strong hand. It threw me to the ground, and I saw an ugly face staring down at me. It had probably been quite handsome in life, but now it was all skewed and contorted with rage.
“You are going nowhere, Hartgill!” Stourton’s servant grunted, placing a muddy boot on my chest.
I saw Ella standing frozen between the gravestones.
“Run, Ella!” I screamed. But she didn’t move, and another of the corpses, a scrawny fellow with blond hair, grabbed her, while a third one stomped toward Zelda. She slammed her crutch onto his bald head, but he just uttered an irritated growl and pulled the “weapon” out of Zelda’s hands as easily as if he were taking a rattle from a baby. Then he dragged Zelda toward his hideous master.
Stourton was sitting perfectly still on his horse, watching with an impassive face as his minions gathered his human quarry. I looked around for The Beard, and I spotted him spread-eagle between the graves, his rifle on the grass next to him. For a second I was actually worried about him, but Stourton didn’t give me a chance to explore that surprising emotion.
“Take the children up the tower!” he ordered in what sounded like a bad copy of a real voice, hollow and toneless. Yet the sound I heard behind me was far more dreadful. Zelda was crying. She cursed through her sobs, but still her tears made it more than clear: We were lost. No rescue in sight. The end. Curtains.
“I will kill you, Stourton!” I screamed as two of his servants dragged me toward the church door. “I will destroy you, you maggoty swine!”
“And how are you going to do that, Hartgill?” Stourton replied as he calmly dismounted. “I’m already dead, or have you forgotten that? Not even your knightly friend can do me any harm now.”
I looked across at Ella. She had pressed her lips firmly together, but there was still not a single tear in her eyes. I couldn’t be so sure about the dryness of mine.
The door leading up into the tower was so low that the servant behind us nearly got stuck in it. He kept shoving his fists into my back as I followed Ella up the worn steps. Halfway up we came past the windowless room where, as I’d learned, William Hartgill had hidden from Stourton while his son rode all the way to London to get help. In vain. In the end Stourton had killed both of them. Just like you, Jon, I thought. There won’t be any revenge. And this time the curse of the Hartgills will also claim a Littlejohn. That thought was worse than the fear I had for myself.
“Jon!” Ella whispered as we neared the top of the tower. “Where’s Longspee?”
Of course! She didn’t know anything about the dead chorister and his story. Yes, where was he? I’d wanted to call him ever since Stourton had come jumping over the cemetery gate, but I could think of nothing but his darkness, and my fingers were frozen by the thought that I’d trusted a man who had killed a boy barely older than me.
“He pushed a chorister out a window!” I whispered to her. “He’s a murderer too.”
Ella shot me one of her what kind of idiotic boy-stuff is this? looks.
“Bull!” she whispered back. “Just call him. Now!”
Oh, where had she been? Every one of her words blew through my gloomy thoughts like a fresh wind.
We’d reached the low wooden door that led out to the tower roof. The servant pushed us through it. Stourton followed. The night blackened his bleached limbs, and his face was so see-through that a gust of wind might extinguish him. Yet the living corpse next to him still ducked like a dog every time Stourton looked in the servant’s direction.
“It’s a pity, Hartgill, that I cannot dispatch you myself!” Stourton said, smoothing his transparent clothes. “But I’m not really one for wearing some dead peasant’s corpse.”
The dead man beside him made a step toward Ella.
I stood protectively in front of her, even though she tried to pull me back.
“You are such a miserable liar!” I stammered. (My trembling lips couldn’t muster anything more impressive.) “Do you know what I think? That you never had the courage to kill someone yourself. You always had others do it for you!”
My fingers felt for Longspee’s mark.
“Yes, I bet that’s why you don’t dare move on to hell!” I screamed. “Because you…” Ella grabbed my arm, but I was far too angry to stop. “Because you’re a damn coward who can’t even answer for a single murder.”
Stourton’s red eyes darkened. I could see his skeleton under the papery skin. He looked like a terrifyingly convincing Halloween costume.
“Really?” he whispered, taking a step toward me. Then he pressed his pale hand onto my heart.
I saw bl
ood. All over my clothes. I was Stourton, and I was standing on a dark field. In front of me were two bound men. Their faces were covered in blood, but they were still alive. One of my servants dropped his cudgel as I held out my hand to him. He gave me a knife. The handle was smooth and cool, and the blade reflected the flames of a torch. I knew what I was going to do. And I was going to enjoy it….
It was a terrible feeling. More terrible than anything I had ever felt.
But then the knife was gone. Everything was gone—the dark field, the men—and instead I saw Stourton’s pale hand in front of my feet, hacked off right beneath the wrist.
“Forget what you saw, Jon!” Longspee said, planting himself in front of me. “Forget it, do you hear?”
His sword shimmered with Stourton’s ghostly pale blood.
I felt Ella’s hand reach for mine. She pulled me back until we felt the battlements of the tower against our backs. They barely reached to our shoulders, and I could sense the precipice behind them like ice on my neck.
“No, not you again, you oh-so-noble knight!” Stourton taunted him. He drew his sword. “Are you going to cut me out of another skin? Don’t bother. You can’t harm me, no matter how often you defeat me. You have the wrong name to send me to hell.”
One of the servants who’d come up the tower with us stood by his master’s side. Another one was guarding the door to the staircase, which was our only means of escape. The other two had stayed with Zelda and The Beard.
“The wrong name?” Longspee asked. “And what name would I need?”
Stourton laughed. A new hand grew from his wrist, its fingers unfolding like the leaves of some flesh-eating plant. The hand Longspee had hacked off wilted and crumbled onto the tower roof.
“What do you think, noble knight? I can still hear the old man screaming his curse just before he died. A Hartgill shall send you to hell, Stourton. Only a Hartgill. Instead, I’ve been sending them to hell for the past five hundred years. My revenge for the silk rope. And not one of them came back to fulfill the old man’s curse. They are like lambs that trot blindly into the shambles and expire. The boy you are protecting so selflessly will follow that same path, right here, tonight.”
His servant made a move to step toward me, but Longspee pointed his sword at him.
“You think that dead flesh can protect you?” he said. “I will skewer your black heart so thoroughly that you will be awaiting your master by the gates of hell.”
The servant hesitated, his face twisted with fear.
“What are you waiting for?” Stourton barked at him. “Get those children and throw them over the battlements, or I will send you to hell myself!”
The lackey took a step toward us.
Longspee’s sword was as fast as a flame, and the corpse fell like a burst sack, filling the air with an awful stench as his rotten soul dissolved into the night air. Longspee’s figure glowed brightly, as though he were made of white fire.
The servant by the door turned to run, but Stourton thrust his sword into the corpse’s back and then turned to Longspee. Stourton’s face had lost all human features; his skin was hanging in tatters from his bones, the rage peeling the skin off his body.
“Jon! Run for the stairs!” Longspee commanded. He was still shielding Ella and me with his body.
Stourton’s shape turned a grimy red. It looked as though all the blood he had spilled over the centuries was soaking into his limbs. William, however, shone as bright as the white heart of a flame, and I no longer cared what the chorister had told me. I just saw the light and was again Longspee’s squire, no matter what he’d done, no matter what was keeping him in this world.
“Ella, run!” I screamed. “I’m staying with William!”
Of course, Ella didn’t move. I tried to drag her to the stairs, but she was—and still is—stronger than me.
“Let me go!” she hissed. “Didn’t you hear what Stourton said? You have to kill him, Jon. You’re the Hartgill who will send him to hell.”
“And?” I retorted breathlessly. Behind us Stourton was raising his sword. “Just how am I going to do that?”
I could see that, for once, Ella had no answer.
Stourton snarled like one of his hounds, showing us his rotten teeth. But his sword was lighter than Longspee’s, and the knight parried his blow easily.
“What are you still doing here, Jon? Go!” he shouted at me, blocking another thrust from Stourton.
But we didn’t move.
You have to kill him, Jon.
They fought for what seemed an eternity—two ghosts, one so dark and the other so bright. There was no more time, just these two men who could not die, and Ella and me. Finally Longspee drove Stourton against the battlements and plunged his sword through him. But the silken lord just shed one more pale skin and took the shape of another, bloody red skin over pale bones.
“I have many skins, noble knight,” he taunted Longspee. “And all the blood I spilled only made them hardier. What about you? Return to your tomb before I slice off your noble shell and make you my slave in hell. You are as pale as a ghost as you were as a man. Helpless bastard son. Powerless among such mighty brothers!”
He hacked at Longspee’s shield with such force that William stumbled, and Stourton’s blade pierced deep into the knight’s gleaming shoulder. Light flooded out of the wound, like steaming blood, and I charged at the two combatants with an angry howl.
This time I didn’t wait for Longspee’s permission. I stepped straight into his light and immediately felt my flesh become his flesh. I became tall and strong. I gripped the hilt of the sword in my hand. I was Jon and I was William. I was Longspee and Hartgill. Man and boy, knight and squire, fearless and scared, young and nearly a thousand years old. I felt my heart beat in his chest; his memories became mine, and mine his. And when I opened my mouth, I heard Longspee’s voice speak my words:
“Now I bear the right name, silken lord, and all your blood-soaked skins won’t protect you from me. A Hartgill will send you to hell with William Longspee’s sword.”
Stourton raised his sword with a hoarse scream, but I could see the fear in his eyes, and I went on the attack—with Longspee’s strength and my rage, with Longspee’s arm and my love for him and for Ella.
Ella, who was still standing behind us and who neither ran nor hid.
Stourton parried my sword, but I drove him back, step-by-step, blow by blow. And finally I drove my broad blade into his chest, so deep that it struck the wall behind him. His skins wilted like the petals of some hideous flower, and his burning eyes glimmered and dimmed. But I struck yet one more blow, hacking his head off his bony neck, and I no longer knew whose rage possessed me. Was it just mine, or also Longspee’s?
Ella’s voice brought me back to my senses. She called my name—“Jon!”—and she called Longspee. And finally I dropped the sword and went down on my knees, shivering. Stourton’s shape crumbled in front of me, skin after skin, destroyed by Longspee’s light and by my name. And then I was a boy again, who was kneeling on the very same stones where once William Hartgill had knelt, waiting for his son to come and rescue him from the man I’d just killed.
Ella wrapped her arms around me, and when I looked up, I saw Longspee leaning against the wall. He looked so much like a living man that it was hard for me to believe he’d been dead for centuries.
“Jon Whitcroft,” he said, “I think you are no longer just a squire.”
OVER
Ella and I peered through the church door. The two servants who were watching Zelda and The Beard kept looking uneasily at the tower. They had bound their prisoners to gravestones, and one of them was holding The Beard’s rifle.
Unfortunately, Zelda called Ella’s name as soon as she saw us. Tears of relief ran down her cheeks, and The Beard began to grin so broadly that his beat-up face looked as if it would split in half. Sadly, that meant Stourton’s servants also spotted us. They looked at us with shock; I wouldn’t have been surprised if their corps
es’ eyeballs had fallen out.
“Stay in the church, Ella!” Zelda screamed. The Beard kicked and wriggled like a hooked fish as he tried to reach the servant who was holding the rifle, but he didn’t have much success. I have to say, I found the effort quite admirable.
“What are you staring at? We sent your master to hell—for good this time,” I yelled at the minions. “Maybe you can still catch up with him.”
The first blast of shot hit the door, barely a hand’s width from my face. Ella pulled me back before the next blast could take off my nose.
“Have you gone mad?” she hissed at me. “Leave those two to Longspee!”
Longspee. He’d come down the tower with us, but where was he now? I looked around and saw him standing in the aisle between the pews. He was facing the altar. Ella, keeping an eye on Stourton’s minions, waved at me to go to him. Luckily, the servants were at quite a loss without their master and seemed uncertain as to what to do next.
“Where did he go?” Longspee was barely visible, as if the battle on the tower had cost him all his strength. “Where did he go, Jon? Is there a hell? Is that where I shall go once death catches up with me?”
I had no idea how to answer him. I could once more hear the chorister’s voice echoing through the school chapel: He killed me.
“Out there,” I said, “are still two of Stourton’s servants. They have Ella’s grandmother and Ella’s… uncle. Can you help them?”
Of course he could. Longspee stepped through the walls of the old church as if the ancient stones had brought him forth. The Beard stared at him with the delight of a child seeing his first Christmas tree.
Stourton’s servants didn’t run, though their corpse-faces clearly showed they were tempted. They probably still expected their master to descend from the tower and come to their aid. One of them took a shot at Longspee, which really was quite stupid. The second grabbed a shovel that was leaning against one of the gravestones. That didn’t make much sense either. Then they attacked Longspee. But their dead limbs were no match for my knight, and they soon wafted out of their stolen bodies and dissolved into the night air, like their master before them. Longspee pushed his sword back into its scabbard, and the whole cemetery seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The silence between the graves was suddenly as clear as the air after a strong storm.