As I walked toward Zelda’s gate, I worked on the speech I would give my mother. “Mum, Ella’s grandmother says you have to send me to another school. Have you ever heard of Lord Stourton? No, this has nothing to do with me being homesick—and also nothing to do with The Beard.”
“Yeah, right!” I muttered as I pulled Zelda’s gate shut behind me. “She won’t believe a word.”
I turned into the path that leads through the meadows. I heard steps behind me.
“Where are you going?” Ella planted herself in front of me.
“Where do you think?” I replied. “I have to get back to school. Maybe I won’t get into too much trouble if I manage to get there before supper.”
Ella shook her head. “No, you’re not. We’re going to the cathedral.”
“The cathedral? Why?”
Ella just took my arm and dragged me along.
As I said, Ella never makes too many words.
A LONG-FORGOTTEN OATH
When Ella and I walked back into the Cathedral Close, the old houses were already blurring into the twilight. Hardly any tourists were in front of the cathedral, even though the gates to the close aren’t locked until ten p.m. Not for the first time did it seem to me that the Cathedral Close of Salisbury had been forgotten by time. Only the parked cars indicated that we were still in the same century we’d been in at Zelda’s house.
The cathedral rose into the sky as if trying to reach the darkening clouds with its tower. Again the walls seemed to offer protection from all that was evil in the world. But how? I couldn’t just spend the rest of the school year hiding in an old church.
“Ella? What exactly are we doing here?” I asked as I followed her across the lawn where Stourton had caught up with me and where I had sunk to my knees in front of Bonapart. Through a row of trees to our left, I could see the walls of the school, where Mrs. Cunningham had probably already reported me to the headmaster.
“We’re going to visit someone who can help you,” Ella said. “Or have you changed your mind about calling your mother?”
She managed to make that option sound even more embarrassing than it already was.
“No,” I barked at her. “No. Of course not.” And I decided not to ask any more questions for the time being.
We took the cloister entrance, which is the one most tourists use. The stone arches cast long shadows, and on the garth—the lawn enclosed by them—a huge cedar held the darkness between its branches, just as it had done for nearly two centuries.
By all those saints staring down at us from the roof—whom did Ella want to meet here? Was she going to ask one of the priests to drive Stourton away? Or one of the stone angels? I looked between the pillars for the dead apprentice, but Ella was waving me along impatiently toward the entrance to the cathedral.
The air behind the heavy doors was so chilly it made me shiver, and the twilight between the gray walls wrapped itself around me like a protective blanket, even though I suddenly remembered the Gray Lady Ella had mentioned earlier.
Ella bought tickets for us and then led me down the central aisle toward the altar. Behind it, in the choir stalls, Angus sung hymns every day, the ones he kept humming in his sleep. Around us the columns rose up like trees. High above, the spandrels that held up the ceiling spread out as if the columns were growing branches of stone. The huge church was nearly empty; fewer than a dozen visitors were scattered among the aisles. Our steps rang out in the silence, and for a moment I thought I could hear all the footsteps of all the visitors who’d ever come to the church over the centuries to ask for help and salvation.
Ella stopped. In front of us were the four bent pillars that support the roof of the cathedral’s tower. They really are bent. Some bishop hundreds of years ago decided that the cathedral of Salisbury was going to be the first church in the world with a pointy roof. The additional load had nearly collapsed the tower. But Ella was not leading me to the bent pillars. Instead, she dragged me to a sarcophagus in front of them to our right. The last rays of daylight were falling through the high windows, painting colorful shadows on the well-worn flagstones.
“There he is!” Ella whispered.
There was who?
A knight, sleeping on the sarcophagus. He was stretched out on the stone coffin, his face turned sideways. The face was barely visible under his helmet. A sign next to the sarcophagus explained that the effigy had once been painted, but time had bleached the colors away and had turned the stone limbs as pale white as the bones of a dead man.
“His name is William Longspee,” Ella whispered. “He was the bastard son of Henry the Second and the half brother of Richard the Lionheart. He can help you against Stourton. You just have to call him.”
I stared down at the chiseled face.
That’s what she brought me here for? The disappointment nearly choked me. Yes, of course. The past two nights had definitely convinced me for good that the dead could be very alive. But this? This was nothing more than a figure chiseled out of stone.
“There’s also a monument to his son in the cathedral,” Ella whispered. “But he’s buried in Israel, because he died on a Crusade. Zelda says they hacked him to pieces. Disgusting.”
Outside, the day was dying. Darkness flooded the cathedral. Stourton and his servants were probably waiting for me already.
“No way, Ella!” I hissed. “Is that the knight you asked Zelda about?”
“Yes. I’m positive the stories about him are true. It’s just that nobody has called him in a long time. And you have to really need his help, or he won’t appear.”
Two women stopped next to us and began to discuss the sculptural qualities of Longspee’s tomb. Ella glowered at them until they fell into an awkward silence and finally walked off.
As soon as we were alone again, Ella whispered, “I wrote an essay about him. He’s said to have sworn an oath when he returned from the war.” She lowered her voice. “I, William Longspee, will not find peace until I have cleansed my soul from all my sinful deeds. For this I will protect the innocent from the cruel, and the weak from the strong. This I swear, so help me God. But then he died, and some people say he’s still trying to fulfill his oath.”
Ella gave me an encouraging look.
“What?” I whispered. “This is totally crazy. Not all the dead come back, Ella!”
At least that’s what I hoped.
Ella rolled her eyes and looked around as if asking for the aid of all the saints around us.
“Do you have another idea?” she whispered. “Who can better protect you from ghosts than another ghost?”
“That’s not an idea!” I hissed back. “That’s just crazy.”
But Ella was ignoring me. She had turned around. More and more people were coming down the central aisle. Of course. The choristers would soon start the evensong, and Angus would be among them. What if he told the Popplewells that he saw me in the cathedral?
I took Ella’s arm and quickly pulled her between the pillars behind Longspee’s tomb.
“Your knight is probably not even buried here!” I said quietly, leaning against the gray stone. “Or didn’t Bonapart tell you that they kept moving the graves around? Sometimes they lost the bones, or even mixed them up!”
There. The choristers, wearing their blue robes, appeared behind the rows of chairs. Angus was one of the first ones. As usual, he had his finger in the stiff white collar. He kept moaning about how the thing choked him.
“Well, that’s definitely William Longspee in that grave,” Ella hissed while the choristers, followed by the priests, filed past us toward the altar. “You know why? Because when they moved the tomb to this place, they found a dead rat in his skull. You can see it in the museum.”
I suppressed a wave of nausea and tried to look unimpressed. “And?”
Ella sighed at so much ignorance. “Longspee died so suddenly that everybody was convinced he’d been poisoned. But nobody could prove anything until they found the rat. It was full of arse
nic.”
She obviously loved that story. I didn’t. Murderers and the murdered. What had happened to my life? I briefly pictured The Beard on top of a sarcophagus, bleached and turned to stone. But one glance at the dark church windows reminded me that I had other things to worry about.
Behind the altar, the altar boys were lighting the candles, and outside Stourton was just now probably picking the window through which he’d throw me. And I was talking to a girl I hardly knew about dead knights and poisoned rats.
“You have to call him!” Ella whispered. “As soon as we’re alone.”
The choristers began to sing. Their voices rang through the dark church as if the stones themselves were joining the song.
“Alone? And how is that going to happen?” I whispered back. “The cathedral is locked after evening mass.”
“And? We get ourselves locked in.”
“Locked in?” This just kept getting worse.
Ella took my hand. She pulled me down the north aisle. Behind me I could hear Angus start the solo for which he had practiced every morning in the washroom. Ella stopped in front of a door made of dark wood studded with iron nails. She pushed down the handle, cast a quick glance to the left and right, and then opened the door. The room behind it was barely more than a cupboard. Ella pushed me inside and closed the door behind us.
“Perfect, isn’t it?” I heard her whisper. “A chorister showed it to me once.”
“What for?” Being so close to her in a dark room made me very nervous.
“He wanted to kiss me.” The disgust in Ella’s voice was obvious. “But luckily, I’m stronger than any one of them.”
I was glad she couldn’t see me blush in the darkness. I had just pictured what it would feel like to touch her hair.
We could hear the choristers even through the closed door. Angus always claimed he could shatter glass with his voice, though he had never been able to prove it to me or Stu.
“Sounds nice, doesn’t it?” Ella whispered.
I wasn’t so sure. Ever since The Beard had marched into my life, I’d started to like loud music, very loud music, and definitely not Peace on Earth. This made me wonder even more how Angus, who always got into fights and who lost his temper in every rugby match, could produce such angelic harmonies and even enjoy it. “How can you walk around in that stupid outfit?” I’d asked him when I first saw him put on his robe (I had just failed my chorister audition). “Whitcroft, you have no idea!” Angus had answered, giving me a sympathetic smile as he brushed some dog hairs from the blue cloth. He was probably right, and not only about the choristers’ gowns. His statement was definitely true when it came to girls too. And that was exactly why waiting in that dark room with Ella made me nearly as uncomfortable as Stourton’s hollow whispers.
“Yes. Doesn’t sound bad,” I mumbled. I quickly pulled back the elbow that had accidentally brushed against Ella’s arm. What are you doing here, Jon Whitcroft? I thought. Are you really going to make a complete ass of yourself by trying to wake a dead knight?
The evensong lasted less than an hour, though it felt to me as if a year had passed before the choristers and the organ finally fell silent and we heard the sound of footsteps and laughter.
They were leaving.
We heard the doors being shut and the solitary steps of the priest who extinguished the lights. And then silence.
We were alone in the cathedral.
Alone with the dead.
THE DEAD KNIGHT
Ella opened the door. The air smelled of molten wax, and the song of the choristers seemed to linger between the columns.
The darkness only made the cathedral feel bigger. It was as if the night had brought the place to life, its very own kind of life, and it wouldn’t have surprised me to see one of the saints step off his pedestal to ask us what in the devil’s name (well, probably more like what in God’s name) we were doing there at that time of night.
Yes, what? Making fools of ourselves! I thought as Ella pushed a flashlight into my hand. She obviously had no doubts about her plan.
“What do you think?” she asked, letting the beam of her flashlight run down the row of columns. “Shall we wait until midnight? Zelda says that’s still the time most ghosts prefer to appear.”
“Midnight?” I looked at my watch.
Midnight was five hours away!
“You’re right!” Ella said. “Why wait? Let’s call him now. Come on!”
Think of Stourton, Jon! I thought as I stumbled after her. This can’t make things any worse.
Outside, the moon had found a tiny gap in the clouds. Its light fell on Longspee’s effigy, making the stone look as white as snow. He really looked as if he were just asleep.
Ella nodded at me encouragingly before stepping back.
Come on, Jon. You have to at least try, or she’ll never forgive you.
I stepped closer to the sarcophagus. I would have needed just to lift my hand to touch Longspee’s glove.
“Jon!” Ella whispered behind me. “He’s a knight. You have to kneel!”
Kneel?
Whatever. I went down to my knees.
“My name… um… is Jon Whitcroft.”
My voice seemed to get lost in the silence, and no matter how much I tried to make it deeper, it still was the squeaky voice of a kid.
“I… I’m here to ask for your help. Somebody wants to kill me. And because he’s as dead as you, Ella thought…”
I stopped. No. This was just too stupid. The flagstones were as cold as ice, and the moon still made Longspee’s face look as white as a corpse. As if it wanted to remind me that I was kneeling in front of a dead man. I longed to go home and forget about everything that had happened in the past months—including Stourton and The Beard.
But when I got to my feet, I heard Ella whisper behind me: “What are you doing? Stay where you are. Don’t you know anything about knights? They used to kneel like that for hours.”
Yep, I had heard about that.
I could smell the autumn flowers on the altar, and I thought of the four murderers with the broken necks, of William Hartgill and his son, and I thought that I didn’t really want a new father.
“Please!” I heard myself whisper. The words came out by themselves. “Please, William Longspee, help me.”
Suddenly I heard steps. Rattling steps, as if made by iron shoes.
I turned around.
And there he was.
Whenever I close my eyes, I can still see him as clearly as on that night. And it will always be that way.
The tunic covering Longspee’s chain-mail shirt showed the three lions of Salisbury on a background of blue and gold. Unlike in his stone image, he was not wearing a helmet. His face was beardless, his eyes pale blue. His short ash-blond hair showed no signs of graying.
“Get up, boy!” he said. “I remember how stiff legs could get from all that kneeling. I would assist you, but since I cannot offer you a hand of flesh and blood, I’d be little help to you.”
It really wasn’t that easy getting back to my feet. But that was because my knees were shaking, which I hoped he didn’t notice.
The knight was taller than I’d expected, and his chain mail shimmered as if the moon itself had made the armor for him.
He looked so glorious. Just like the knights I had dreamed about when I was six years old, whacking at the brambles in our garden, imagining I was fighting dragons and giants with a sword that made me invincible and wearing armor that protected me from all the things that frightened me—older kids, dogs, a storm in the night, or my little sister’s questions about when our father would be coming back.
I managed a clumsy bow. I didn’t know what else I was supposed to do. All I knew was that my fear was gone—as if Longspee had wiped it off my soul.
He smiled, but the smile was only on his lips. His eyes looked as if he hadn’t had much occasion to smile during the past centuries.
“It has been a long time since someone asked me
for help,” he said in a voice that seemed to come from far away. “I nearly did not hear you. I have dark dreams. They now rarely let me go. I am afraid you may have found the wrong knight.” He pointed to a sarcophagus a few steps away on the other side of the aisle. The chiseled knight on it looked like a giant.
“His name is Cheney,” Longspee said. “He has a temper, and he likes to be paid for his services. But I am sure that if you put a few coins on his brow, he will come to your aid.”
He looked around as if he’d forgotten where he was.
“Let me sleep, Jon Whitcroft,” he said, his voice weary and tired. “When the shadows of your life haunt you, and you bitterly miss the ones you once loved, then only sleep can grant oblivion.”
His features began to blur like a photograph that’s out of focus. His whole body began to fade.
No!
I wanted to reach for his gloved hand and hold on to him, but I just stood there and felt fear flood back—the fear, the loneliness, and the anger—while Longspee’s shimmering body dissolved into the darkness. Of course. Nothing but a hallucination, brewed from fear and homesickness and from Bonapart’s constant babbling about the Lionheart.
“But it is you he called, not Cheney.”
Ella’s voice sounded very loud in the deserted cathedral. I had all but forgotten about her.
For a moment there was silence. Then Longspee’s voice came through the darkness as if he was standing behind one of the columns.
“I see you have not come alone, Jon Whitcroft.”
“No, this is… Ella,” I stuttered. “It was her idea to call you.”
“Ella?” Longspee said her name as if he wanted to savor every letter on his tongue. His shape became clearer again.
“Yes.” Ella stepped to my side. “Like your wife. Ella Longspee. But in Lacock Abbey, where she’s buried, they call her Ela. What did you call her?”
Longspee’s shape shuddered like a reflection on dark water.
“Ella,” he answered. “I always called her Ella. Since the moment I saw her for the first time. She was then probably not much older than you, but her hair was blond, and she was not as tall as you. Even as a grown woman, she barely reached up to my shoulder. And yet she was stronger than any man I knew in my lifetime.”