Ruined 2 - Dark Souls (11 page)

“Fatty over there?” Nick smirked.

“I think so. And he’s tricked into dumping Dido by the Sorceress and various Witches who want to destroy Carthage. Someone dresses up as a god and persuades Aeneas that the will of the gods is for him to leave Carthage forever. He’s completely duped by this guy. But just as he’s about to go, Aeneas sees Dido again and changes his mind. It’s too late, though.”

“Why?”

“She can’t forgive him. You know, for listening to the fake god and betraying her. So she sends him away. And then she kills herself.”

It just slipped out. Miranda could have kicked herself. She snuck a look at Nick, wondering if she’d upset him, furious at herself for being so insensitive. But it was almost as though he hadn’t heard her. He was staring at one of the singers, the one dressed in a gray hoodie, her auburn hair piled on her head in a messy bun. When she started singing without any accompaniment, Nick nudged Miranda.

“She’s got the same color hair as you,” he said.

Miranda felt herself blushing again. Luckily, she didn’t have to reply because the strings started playing, soft and melancholy. It might sound too restrained to Nick, Miranda thought. Too pretty or old-fashioned.

“When I am laid, am laid in earth,”
the soprano sang, her voice pure and clear.
“May my wrongs create no trouble.”

Miranda closed her eyes. Something about the Minster’s acoustics made the aria’s simplicity and sadness even more intense, much more moving than on the stereo at home — even though they had a good stereo, according to her father, who could be a boring techie about these things. But hearing the soprano’s yearning voice soar in this cavernous, resonant space was something else. No wonder people wanted to give concerts in the Minster. This place had magical powers.

“Remember me, remember me,”
sang Dido, and the Quire seemed to fill with the aching strings.
“But ah! Forget my fate.”

The last notes faded, and Miranda opened her eyes. The redheaded soprano was sitting down. Peggy was talking to one section of the orchestra, humming to show
them how she wanted them to draw out a particular phrase.

Miranda snuck a look at Nick, trying to figure out if he’d liked it.

“Sad,” he said, resting his head against the back wall. “Like you said. Dido was probably better off without Aeneas. You know, if he couldn’t be trusted.”

“It wasn’t his fault, though. Aeneas gets tricked by the Sorceress and the Witches. By evil spirits.”

“Evil spirits.” Nick wriggled lower in his seat. “People are always talking about evil spirits, aren’t they? Why are spirits always evil, and people always good?”

Miranda shrugged. She didn’t know what to say.

“All spirits really want,” said Nick, leaning toward her again, “is to rest in peace. And the reasons they can’t can all be traced to their lives. The real world. The one full of ‘good’ people.”

“Listen,” Miranda said. The singer was standing up again, holding her score.

“Should I close my eyes, the way you did?” Nick asked, and Miranda thought he was teasing her. But when she looked at him, the usual sardonic smile wasn’t there. The gaunt angles of his face looked less severe in this light. And there was something in his eyes she’d never seen before — an uncertainty, perhaps.

“If you like,” she said. She closed her eyes, but this time she wasn’t facing the orchestra. Her head was turned toward Nick, her hands resting on the soft cushion of the pew.

“Remember me, remember me — but ah! Forget my fate.”

Nick’s hand brushed hers. His touch was gentle, tracing soft lines down her fingers. Miranda kept her eyes closed. She held her breath. His hands didn’t feel as cold as they had on Monday, when he helped her down from the city walls. Nick’s skin was rough, but there was a tenderness to the touch, the movement. Goose bumps prickled her arm — not the brain-freeze cold of the ghosts, just the hint of a thrill.

The music stopped abruptly. The singer asked Peggy a question; the musicians were rustling pages again. Nick withdrew his hand. Miranda opened her eyes.

“You know, you could come to the performance on Sunday night,” she said quickly, trying to fill up the awkward silence. Nick stared straight ahead. “I could get you a ticket.”

“No,” he said. There was no softness in his voice or expression now. “I can’t.”

“Oh,” said Miranda, regretting that she’d even made the suggestion. He was always the one who made the plans, the one who told her when they’d meet again. She’d said the wrong thing.

“I shouldn’t even be here now, mucking around,” he said, restlessly shifting in his seat. “Got things to do.”

“Oh,” she said again. She tried not to feel offended by the “mucking around” comment. Was that how Nick saw the time they spent together? Miranda felt like a stupid little girl who’d been fawning over an older guy, deluding herself that he liked her. All he was interested
in was ghosts, she reminded herself. That was the thing they had in common. When he’d stroked her hand just now, it didn’t mean anything. Or whatever it
did
mean, she didn’t understand. Miranda really didn’t understand guys at all.

Nick stood up as though he’d just remembered something, and then, without looking at her or saying another word, he swooped down the stairs and around the corner. Gone, just like that — no good-byes, no talk about meeting again. That’s it, Miranda thought. She’d pushed things too far by asking him to go to the concert with her. Going to hear an opera in a cathedral wasn’t the kind of thing other kids did, especially not guys like Nick. Miranda would never dream of asking a boy back home to go to one of her mother’s concerts. She was a fool to think that Nick would be different.

When she left the rehearsal, Miranda wandered around the Minster for twenty minutes, hoping to find him. But all she saw were tourists, and tour guides, and ushers arriving for that evening’s concert. The ghost stonemason was hard at work at a different column, his wiry little dog visible now, too, lying half asleep at his master’s feet.

If Nick was still in here somewhere, she couldn’t see him. Maybe he didn’t want to be found by anyone — especially not Miranda.

S
orry, buddy,” said Jeff, zipping and unzipping his fleece as he always did when he was preoccupied. “There’s just no way to get there on the train. The house is way up in the Yorkshire Dales.”

“That’s okay,” said Rob. He was seated precariously on a window ledge in the living room, looking down onto the Shambles. “I was just planning to hang out today anyway.”

Miranda was just planning to hang out today as well. She’d thought that she’d wander around for a bit by herself, sticking to busy streets where ghosts were less likely to bother her. Maybe Nick would find her, the way he always did. He might have gotten over his little freak-out by now. They could just pretend the hand-holding thing and her embarrassing request for a date — because that must have been how it sounded — had never happened.

But no, her father had other plans. Lord Poole was taking time out of his busy schedule of foxhunting or boar baiting or however else elderly nobles spent their twilight years. He was driving into York in his ancient Land Rover to collect Jeff and take him out to Poole Castle, or wherever it was that he lived. Peggy was busy all day today — “Singers!” she exclaimed with irritation on her way out of the flat that morning — but Miranda and Rob were invited. The difference was: Rob had an excuse. They could get to the Land of Poole only in a car, and Rob didn’t do cars. Miranda had no excuse.

“You’ll come — won’t you, honey?” Jeff asked. “He’s been so nice to us. And he gave you that book, which is obviously a first edition and probably worth a fortune.”

“I think he just lent it to me,” said Miranda, wishing that everyone would leave her alone. Rob was allowed to do anything he wanted, but she was always at the beck and call of everyone else in the family.

“He has an amazing library out there, which you’ll love. And a maze, I think. Really, an actual maze. It’s a genuine English stately home, and you’ll get the insider’s tour.”

“Can’t I just stay here?” Miranda moaned.

“To do what?”

“Stuff. You know. Look after Rob.”

“I don’t need anyone looking after me, thank you.” Rob sounded affronted. Couldn’t he tell she was just saying anything to get out of going? If it weren’t for Miranda, Sally and her parents and the entire police force of York
would know about his claustrophobia by now. As usual, he wasn’t remotely grateful.

“Verandah, this is going to be great. You can sit around reading at home anytime. Now, I’m going to go get organized, because we have to wait for Lord Poole at the corner. Grab your coat and whatever else you need.” Jeff headed up the stairs. End of discussion.

“I’ll probably go along to Mom’s rehearsal this afternoon,” Rob called after him.

“Liar,” muttered Miranda.

“Whatever,” he said, breathing on the window and drawing a smiley face with his fingertip. “Sally’s parents gave her a couple of hours off this afternoon to show me around. We’re going to take a walk along the river.”

“It’s freezing outside today,” Miranda pointed out. “But then, I suppose you two will be all snuggled up together. Don’t fall in and get swept out to sea.”

Rob bared his teeth in the fakest of smiles.

“Your ignorance of British geography astounds me,” he said smugly. “Have fun in the maze. Make sure you ask Dad and Lord Poole lots of questions about the rise and fall of the Plantagenet dynasty. That conversation is sure to be
fascinating.
”

Yorkshire was a much bigger county than Miranda had realized — if she’d ever given the subject more than five minutes of thought — because it took Lord Poole over an hour to drive them back to his house. At first, there
was nothing to see but gas stations and supermarkets, glimpsed through the mist that had settled like a sodden blanket. But eventually they left the highway, driving up into hillier country where snow still lay in patches. On high fields hemmed in by rugged stone walls, black-faced sheep grazed. The roads were narrow, crossing streams via small arch-shaped bridges. They passed cottages with low windows, their walls rammed right up against the lane, and farms with vast stone barns and big muddy yards. There was a bleak beauty to all this, Miranda thought, just as she’d imagined when she first read
Wu the ring Heights
.

Lord Poole’s place wasn’t called Poole Castle at all: It was Lambert House. The driveway was very long, lined with sturdy trees. On one side, there were more trees, like some kind of rambling dark forest, and on the other stretched miles of rolling countryside, flecked with snow and sheep, divided into a rough grid by stone walls.

“I warn you — this isn’t one of those elegant Georgian estates with a gatehouse and a folly and a mansion built by Vanbrugh,” Lord Poole said over his shoulder to Miranda, who had no idea what he was talking about. She was concentrating on staying upright in the backseat as the Land Rover made a sharp turn from the rutted drive onto a lower road spread with gravel. “It’s largely a Jacobean house with various poorly executed additions. Stairs all over the place, and it’s rather cold, I’m afraid. The maze is that way.”

Lord Poole jabbed a finger to his right, and Jeff and Miranda looked out their windows. All she could see in the distance was a thicket of scruffy bushes and someone driving a beaten-up tractor.

“On sunny days,” continued Lord Poole, “the walk to the local village and the churchyard is very pleasant, but I don’t like the look of that sky.”

“Snow,” agreed Jeff, who, Miranda had to admit, was a weather expert. Back home, watching the Weather Channel was one of his major hobbies, along with making turkey chili and piling towering stacks of books and papers on the Ping-Pong table in the basement.

“I hope you won’t be bored, stuck in the house,” Lord Poole said apologetically, peering at Miranda in the rearview mirror.

“Oh no,” she reassured him, trying to sound more positive than she felt, leaning as the car rounded a corner. “I’ll just — wow!”

Whatever Lord Poole said about the house being cold and ordinary was British understatement. The house was nowhere near ordinary. It soared three stories high, reddish-brown, with what looked like a massive oak front door, and windows made up of dozens of tiny diamond-shaped panes of glass. Miranda half expected someone in a long velvet gown to come sweeping out to greet them, and maybe the Brothers Grimm to drop by later for tea.

Lord Poole screeched up outside, the Land Rover skidding on the gravel. He clambered out of the car,
calling to a man — checked cap, cocked gun, three dogs — walking up from another part of the garden.

“This looks amazing.” Jeff sounded as impressed as Miranda felt. He opened his door, almost hitting one of the dogs running in wild figure eights around the car. Miranda slid out, her boots crunching when they hit the gravel. The air smelled sweet and clean, though it was even colder up here than it was in York. One of the dogs (a yellow Labrador: She could have bet money that Lord Poole would have an entire litter of Labradors) hurled itself at her legs, lapping at her hands. Miranda braced herself, waiting for a jet of cold, but no: This appeared to be an actual dog, not a ghost.

Lord Poole finished his chat and shouted at the dogs in some impenetrable British shorthand, sending them reeling away.

“Just had to check something with the gamekeeper,” he said. Miranda and her father exchanged glances: a gamekeeper! Who would they meet next — a butler? A lady’s maid? Although she’d resisted today’s visit, and although she’d never concede this particular point, Miranda was kind of glad her father had made her come along. There was only one thing that made her hesitate before crossing the threshold.

“Lord Poole,” she said quickly, watching him swing the great door open. “You don’t have any … any ghosts here, do you? That you know of, I mean. That someone’s seen.”

“Well … ah, I don’t think so.” He looked at her — almost suspiciously, Miranda thought. “Of course, this
house has only been in the family — my wife’s family, I should say — for the past two hundred years.”

“Only!” said Jeff, who was — to Miranda’s embarrassment — pulling his camera out of his jacket pocket. If they stayed out here much longer, he’d be lying on his stomach in the gravel, trying to get a good angle, or making her pose with a hunting rifle and/or dog.

“There are ghosts over in Richmond Castle, I hear. And the house where I grew up, just outside Northallerton — well, that’s a different story. But I’ve never heard any accounts of hauntings here at Lambert. All the deaths here have been peaceful, or so it would seem. I hope that doesn’t … disappoint you too much.”

“Not at all,” said Miranda, smiling, and she walked through the open door with a much lighter heart. It would be a relief to get away from ghosts, even if it was just for a few hours. For the first time in a few days, she could pretend to be normal.

Inside, the house was as drafty and eccentric as Lord Poole had threatened, but Miranda and her father agreed that this was essential to its charm. It was all dark wood, looming furniture, and, up the creaking stairs, tiny angled landings leading off to dark hallways and closed doors. The kitchen had last been renovated somewhere around World War II, Miranda suspected, with dish towels hanging on a rack suspended from the ceiling, and a big range — an Aga, Lord Poole called it — throwing off
a very welcome heat. A red-faced woman named June bustled in from the vegetable garden, smiling and nodding at them. She wasn’t Lady Poole, Miranda knew: Her father had whispered that Mabel, Lord Poole’s wife, had died a year ago. June was a sort of part-time housekeeper. She offered them tea and had a lengthy conversation with Lord Poole, during which the only words Miranda could decipher were “potatoes” and “rot.” She also said something, translated by Lord Poole, about a meat pie ready to go in the Aga whenever they wanted lunch.

“Probably one of the old Labradors,” Jeff whispered to Miranda, on their way out to resume the tour. Miranda couldn’t help laughing, though she and Rob had agreed years ago not to do anything to encourage their father’s lame jokes. “No, really! They don’t waste anything out here in the country.”

The best part of all was the library. This was on the ground floor of the house, and Miranda wondered if Lord Poole spent more time in here than in the dark, dusty living room — or drawing room, as he called it — where they’d poked their heads in for just a moment. In the library, tall shelves lined almost every part of every wall; there were even shelves above the doors, crammed with books. Many were first editions, Lord Poole told them, including three of the novels of Sir Walter Scott.

The relative warmth of the room was the product of three antique-looking electric heaters, strategically placed to radiate feeble heat across the threadbare Turkish rug. An impressively large desk, longer than their dining
table at home, was stacked with folios, books, and what looked like the printout of a very hefty typed manuscript. A map was spread out across the center of the desk, littered with pens, a magnifying glass — which Miranda couldn’t resist playing with — and at least six empty coffee cups.

“June will tell me off if she spots those,” said Lord Poole, looking guilty. “Maybe we should smuggle them back into the kitchen later.”

Before long, her father and Lord Poole were deep in a discussion of some article in the
Ricardian
— something about new evidence on Edward IV’s alleged premarriage contract to Lady Eleanor Butler blah blah blah — and Miranda was free to roam. Lord Poole had said she could take anything down from the shelves; he’d pointed out the sliding ladder she could use for higher shelves, warning her of its tendency to roll at a quick speed along the uneven floor. He’d also gestured to a cozy window seat, a nook built into the walls, with squashy tapestry cushions.

“That’s where my children liked to read, and my grandchildren,” he said with a forlorn smile. “A long time ago.”

He stared into space for a moment, lost in some personal reverie, and then recovered himself, urging Miranda to take her boots off, put her feet up, and generally make herself at home.

Miranda didn’t know where to start. So many of the books looked very old and fragile, and a number of them
seemed to be in Latin. She sat for a while reading
The Mysteries of Udolpho,
which she recognized only because one of the characters in
Northanger Abbey
had mentioned it. After lunch — the pie was steak, Lord Poole reassured them, not Labrador — the decided to go looking for a really old copy of Mary Shelley’s
Frankenstein.

The men were sitting across from each other at the giant desk, spilling coffee on the map and jawing about something — the second wife of John of Gaunt — which was of interest to practically nobody but themselves. Miranda paced along a section of shelves she hadn’t examined yet, at the far end of the room. Shelves towered on either side of a fireplace that was clearly never lit: Paperback books were stacked on the hearth. Above the mantel hung an enormous black-and-white print of some apocalyptic scene. In the foreground, people were huddling, wailing, and lamenting. In the background, their city was on fire. A great swirl of flame was devouring walls and columns and some kind of tower.

“Ah!” said Lord Poole, slowly getting up from his torn leather chair. “I see you’re taken with the John Martin.”

“The what?” Miranda stood with her hands clasped behind her back, a habit from childhood when her parents used to take them to the Art Institute of Chicago, with strict instructions not to even
think
about touching anything. Jeff came and stood next to her, giving Miranda an affectionate pat on the shoulder.

“The engraving — it’s a mezzotint,” Lord Poole said. “Early nineteenth century. Round 1819, I believe. Very
impressive, don’t you think? The artist is John Martin. Wildly popular in his day. The Brontës had one of his engravings in their parlor at Haworth Parsonage, you know.”

“What’s it … about?” Miranda knew this was a stupid-sounding question, but the city in the picture looked like something out of a sci-fi epic.

“It’s called
The Fall of Babylon,”
Lord Poole told them. “The way it was predicted in the Bible — God’s wrath, and all that — rather than what actually happened. I believe the Persian invasion was a fairly bloodless coup, and Babylon was never burned to the ground in the way it’s depicted here.”