Ruined 2 - Dark Souls (10 page)

Her father seemed to be catching on.

“I hear what you’re saying,” he said. “But it might be important for them to know that Rob would never go into that cellar by choice.”

“Why not?” asked Sally, genuinely puzzled. “He goes down there all the time. When he’s helping my father, I mean.”

“Really?” Peggy paused in buttoning up her trench coat. “I’m … surprised to hear that. That’s … that’s good.”

“It’s great,” agreed Jeff, a little too enthusiastically. Sally looked from one to the other, as though they were crazy Americans she couldn’t begin to understand. Miranda wished they would just stop talking.

Rob came thudding down the stairs again, asking if anyone had seen his shoes.

“By the door,” said Peggy. “You have the cellar key with you?”

“It’s in my wallet,” Rob said, tapping his pocket. “Exactly where I put it last night. I checked.”

“Everything’s going to be all right,” Sally said. Miranda thought she was trying to persuade herself, by the sound of it. Her cheeks had turned all flushed when Rob came downstairs again.

“Everything’s going to be fine,” echoed Jeff, and a few minutes later they were all gone, leaving Miranda nothing to do but sit at the table by herself, hoping that Rob wasn’t in any trouble, and wondering why bad things just kept on happening to them.

W
hen Rob and her parents got back from the White Boar, Rob’s mood was grim. Nobody had accused him of anything, he said, but they were all mystified about how a locked cellar could get trashed overnight. The police had recommended that he return the key to Joe, Sally’s father. Just to be on the safe side, they’d said; best not to have a spare key floating around.

So now all Rob wanted to do was brood and mope. Jeff finally left for the archives, and Peggy had two rehearsals to squeeze in, one with the singers and a pianist in drafty Victory Hall, and the one this afternoon in the Minster, where Miranda would be going.

Until then, Miranda was charged with “looking after Rob,” whatever that meant. Leaving him alone: That was the best thing, she decided. She bought him a plastic-wrapped sandwich from Marks & Spencer for lunch, using some money her mother had left tucked under the
fruit bowl. Rob ate it in silence, sprawled on the sofa. When he said he was going out for a walk, she didn’t ask where he was going, and she didn’t remind him about the Minster rehearsal later on. Miranda knew that when things went wrong, sometimes the only company you could stand was your own.

At the ticket desk inside the Minster’s south transept, Miranda flashed the
EVENT PERSONNEL
laminated pass her mother had left for her. Although the concert itself was going to take place in the main part of the cathedral — the nave, according to the brochure she was handed at the desk — the rehearsal was closeted away in the Quire, behind the impressive carved Screen of Kings. Musicians from a different orchestra, their rehearsal over, were on their way out, with her mother’s orchestra only just arriving. Musicians were easy to spot because of their instrument cases and — Miranda couldn’t help noticing — dubious fashion choices. One man struggled to wheel his giant double bass out through the safety doors. Miranda remembered a random piece of advice her mother once gave her, something about never dating a double bassist: They could never go out for a coffee after a concert, or drive a car smaller than a station wagon, because the instrument was just too big and unwieldy. The double bass was the least of this guy’s problems, thought Miranda. Peggy should have warned her about dating men who wore Crocs in the wintertime.

While her mother’s musicians set up, Miranda wandered around the Minster, the biggest and oldest church she’d ever seen. On an overcast day like this, there was a chilly calm to the place. Though it was early in the afternoon, the church already seemed to be sinking into darkness, subdued purple-gray light filtering through the stained-glass windows.

People sat in the rows of red-cushioned chairs set up for a service. Some were praying, more were talking, several were asleep, and one was actually eating his lunch. Miranda’s footsteps echoed across the marble floor. The stone of the columns and soaring ceilings looked scrubbed clean, like bones. Conservation work was going on all over the place. Miranda couldn’t even see into the crypt, which the guide told her lay directly beneath the Quire, because it was all boarded up, and a sign informed visitors that there would be no entry at all to the crypt until March. The pictures she’d seen in
Tales of Old York
would have to suffice, Miranda thought, drifting toward the Great East Window.

This was another building site, she discovered. In the far corner, a stonemason sat on a low wooden stool, chipping at a stone embellishment set low in a column. In place of the tennis court—size window hung a giant printed banner, a reproduction. The real thing was being taken to pieces elsewhere.

“It’s said that the Minster can never be completely finished,” came a voice from behind her — so close
behind her that Miranda could feel his breath on her neck. Nick!

Miranda swung around. Nick stood with his hands in his pockets, gazing up at the giant window poster.

“There’s always scaffolding up somewhere,” he continued, not looking at Miranda. “And the story is, a promise was made to return the Minster to the Roman Catholics, but only when it was finished. So the Church of England makes sure it’s
never
finished.”

“Is that true?” Miranda was so relieved to see him. Or rather — that he’d seen her first, as usual, and still wanted to speak to her.

“No.” Nick grinned. “Nothing is true. Everything’s just lies and stories and broken promises. Isn’t it?”

Miranda felt a pang of guilt.

“I’m so sorry about last night,” she said in a breathless rush. “I got there early, but my father was at the museum, the one in Monk Bar, and he saw me and … I just had to go. I hope you weren’t waiting forever.”

“I saw you go,” he said casually, as though it was no big deal.

“You … you saw me?”

“I keep my eyes open.” Nick looked at her. She could tell that he wasn’t angry. He had the slightest smile on his face — sardonic, of course.

“So, are you following me?” Miranda teased. Something about being here in the Minster, standing in an actual building, made her feel more secure, more
brave. Until now, she’d only ever seen Nick out in the streets.

“I could ask the same of you,” he said. “I come in here every day. And now, all of a sudden, here you are.”

“I thought you didn’t like the Minster.”

“Well, you know what they say. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.”

“Which am I?”

“Hmmm. Not sure yet.” He was still looking at her straight in the eyes, and Miranda felt very shy all of a sudden.

“I’m … I’m here for the rehearsal,” she said. The stonemason working on the column dropped something — some sort of tool, like a chisel, Miranda guessed, watching it shoot across the shiny floor. She leaned over to pick it up so he wouldn’t have to get up from his low stool. But as her fingers reached for it, she grasped nothing but air. She could see the chisel, which looked homemade, but she couldn’t feel it at all.

The man, his smile grateful, turned his head to look at Miranda. He was wearing the oddest floppy hat, and something that looked more like a tunic than an apron. He stretched out a dusty hand. Instantly, splinters of cold pinged through her, prickling the length of her body. Behind her she could hear Nick’s soft laugh. Right in front of her eyes, the stonemason faded from sight. Moments later, there was nothing — not him, not his stool, not his wayward chisel.

“He’s always here,” Nick told her. “Somewhere in the
Minster. Always messing with some piece of stonework. Probably his mates murdered him because he was a perfectionist. Doesn’t like me much, but he seemed to take to you. At least his dog wasn’t around today. That animal’s a menace.”

“His
dog
is a ghost?” Miranda didn’t even know that was possible. And then she thought of the black cat slinking around the White Boar Inn — the cat that her parents couldn’t see. Maybe she’d already spotted an animal ghost without realizing it.

Nick was nodding.

“Loads of people have heard him bark. Even people who can’t see him can hear him. You’ll see people looking all around for him — they think someone’s brought a dog in. He hates me, for some reason. Barks like mad whenever he sees me.”

“I didn’t think about ghosts in the Minster,” Miranda confessed. She should have realized the stonemason was a ghost. She wondered how many other ghosts she was passing every day, stupidly unaware that they’d been alive in another century.

Nick opened his mouth to say something, but the next voice Miranda heard was her mother’s, distant and muffled, but recognizable nonetheless. She was calling the orchestra to order. A violin squeaked; there was some laughter.

“The rehearsal’s beginning,” she told Nick. “My mother’s conducting the orchestra. Do you want to sit in for a little while? It’s in the Quire.”

Nick’s face clouded over, as though Miranda had just said a terrible thing. As though he’d just decided
she
was a ghost.

“Go ahead. I’ll catch you up.” He stood with his hands in his pockets. Miranda hesitated — was he just planning on leaving abruptly, the way he usually did? She walked away slowly, willing him to follow, looking for the entrance to the Quire. It wasn’t far. On the stairs, she looked back; Nick was still standing there watching her.

“Sit in the back,” he called, and she nodded.

Sitting in one of the choir stalls — in the back, as instructed — Miranda felt overawed by her surroundings. The Quire was a sanctuary at the heart of the cathedral. It looked like a beautiful jewelry box, exquisitely carved and upholstered. The orchestra and singers sat on ordinary folding chairs, but Miranda, tucked into a corner so she could see
everything,
felt as though she were sitting on a throne. Above her head loomed the shining pipes of the organ. Colorful shields and heraldic emblems were set into the wood all around the stalls. A hymnbook sat in front of her, and there was a cushioned rest at her feet, to kneel on during prayers. In the very center of the Quire, separating the choir stalls from the orchestra’s area, stood an imposing golden lectern shaped like an eagle.

The orchestra was playing the overture now, mournful at first, but then faster, more frantic, the urgent song of the violins sailing up into the Minster’s cavernous spaces. After a few minutes, Peggy stopped them, tapping
with her baton on the music stand. It was always strange watching her mother in this mode as opposed to wife-and-mother mode. Even though Miranda could see her only from the back, her mother seemed so relaxed and happy. She held her arms in the air in an expansive gesture, her wavy hair bouncing as she moved her arms down. The stop-start went on for a while, her mother singling out various sections of the orchestra and asking them to play a few phrases.

Nick padded up the tiny wooden staircase leading to Miranda’s corner and slid onto the pew next to her. He must have come in a different entrance — through the gates in the Screen of Kings, maybe. Everything he did had to be secretive, thought Miranda.

“So that’s your mother?” he asked in a low voice. Miranda nodded. “If she sees me with you and asks who I am, tell her I’m one of the beadles here.”

“What’s a beadle?”

“No idea,” said Nick. Miranda smiled.

“What makes you think I haven’t told her all about you already?” she whispered.

Nick gave her a long, disbelieving look.

“I’m not the kind of boy you take home to Mummy and Daddy,” he said. “You took off as soon as your father turned up yesterday, didn’t you? I bet you’ve never told them that you can see ghosts.”

“No,” Miranda admitted, hanging her head.

“So how are you going to tell them about us meeting, and what we’ve been up to since?”

The music soared again and stopped. The musicians riffled through the pages of their scores. One of the singers — tubby, balding, wearing a too-tight red sweater — stood up and sat down again. There was laughter. Nick sat in silence, brooding, one foot up against the woodwork.

“It’s so beautiful in here,” said Miranda. The brass-mounted candles — which were electric but looked real — cast a golden glow against the honeyed wood of the choir stalls. “I’ve never been in so many medieval buildings before. All this carving must have taken them years.”

“Originally,” said Nick. “But everything you can see in here, in the Quire, is a replica.”

“What do you mean?”

“There was a fire in here, in 1829. Brought down the roof of the Minster, destroyed the organ. Most of the woodwork in here burned as well. They did their best to copy the medieval work, but it’s all nineteenth century.”

“That’s a shame,” she said, disappointed.

Nick shrugged.

“Doesn’t matter much one way or the other,” he said. “People build temples, or churches, or forts, and other people come and sweep them away. The Vikings had a palace where King’s Square sits today — that’s
why
it’s called King’s Square. No trace of it now. One day there’ll be no trace of this place. It doesn’t mean anything anymore.”

“It must, to some people.”

“This isn’t a very religious country, in case you hadn’t noticed. This place,” Nick said, with a dismissive wave, “is all about tradition and prestige and empty rituals. Dressing up and incantations. People come here to take pictures, and they don’t even do that so much anymore, now it costs eight pounds to get in.”

“You
pay eight pounds every time you come here?” Miranda whispered. “Every day?”

“Not me,” said Nick, pushing his coat open and slumping back in the seat. The hem of his gray sweater was frayed. “I’m a beadle, remember?”

One of the female singers, a very pretty young woman, stood up, and Peggy was telling the orchestra they were going to run through Dido’s Lament.

“You’ll like this,” Miranda told Nick, though she really had no idea whether he would or not.
She
liked it when her mother played the CD at home. “It’s a very sad and beautiful aria. Dido’s asking everyone to remember her, but to forget her fate.”

“What does that mean?” Nick leaned his head close to hers. They were so close, Miranda thought their foreheads were about to brush.

“I guess it means to remember her as she was when she was alive,” Miranda whispered, “and not the way she died. She’s about to …”

Dido was about to commit suicide, but Miranda felt uneasy about bringing up the subject around Nick.

“That’s not possible, though, is it? Forgetting the way people died.”

Miranda said nothing. She was thinking of Jenna, crushed and lifeless in the car. Like Nick said, it was hard to forget. But she couldn’t keep going over that night again and again in her head — thinking if only they’d left five minutes earlier or later, if only they hadn’t gone at all. If only she’d done something, anything, to save Jenna. Eventually, Miranda’s mother had told her, she’d think more about her friendship with Jenna and less about the way it ended. One day, Miranda thought, that might be possible.

The strings started playing, until Peggy rapped her music stand.

“So — what’s the opera about, then?” Nick asked.

“Um … it’s about a queen named Dido,” said Miranda, trying to shake all the awful thoughts out of her head. “She’s the queen of ancient Carthage. She’s in love with a handsome Trojan prince named Aeneas.”