“That’s part of the old Roman gate,” Simon said, with the tone of a teacher. The boy seemed intelligent.
“Oh?” Xan said. “Why do they call it a Roman gate, I wonder.”
Simon began to turn a shade of red. “Something about the Romans, I think.” He shrugged. Xan tried not to laugh at the boy. If Brother Andrew were here, he’d know the story. No doubt, the gate was from a time when the Roman Empire had ruled this island hundreds of years ago. Maybe they’d built it when Lincoln was still a small village, like Hardonbury.
They walked further up a steep incline until Simon led them through a hole in a hedge. The boy was good company—fun and innocent, like Joshua, but a bit more mature.
Amazingly, they’d popped back out into the middle of a busy street, where passersby walked with purpose, holding items bought or ready to sell: necklaces and leather shoes and apples and fancy hats and dead chickens. Perhaps the butcher was walking around with a dead cow.
“Well?” Simon said with a nudge. “What do you think?”
“How do you ever find your way around this place?” Xan asked, gazing about him.
“I’m used to it,” Simon smiled through his gapped teeth. “I know all the secret spots.”
“And you know where my uncle sells his goods?”
Simon pointed across the road to a side lane. “Christina’s boss works right over there.”
They were truly here! As the time drew nearer to meet Uncle William, the anticipation and excitement were becoming unbearable. This could be a life-changing moment.
For some reason, God had allowed so much to be taken from him this past year—Mother, Father, home, Lucy. Sister Regina said he was like Joseph, but Joseph got his family back at the end of that story. Maybe this was the moment when Xan would get a family too.
“What’s my uncle like, Simon? Is he rich? Does he have a family? Is he friendly?”
Simon’s face bunched up as he thought. “I don’t know. He’s never spoken to me.”
They crossed the main road, barely avoiding a sturdy brown horse whose rider didn’t seem to care much if boys got crushed under its hooves.
They had passed into some kind of selling district now, with a variety of shops all around. They strode along a row of short stone houses with quaint wooden doors. Some of the buildings had signs hung above their rounded archways showing symbols of their trade.
The third store on the right, Simon had said. That was supposedly Uncle William’s merchant shop. It seemed like any other of the stone storefronts in that alley. A hanging wooden sign had two simple words carved into it: “Fine Goods.”
The thin oaken door was cracked open, and voices came from within.
“Gone, he is,” one of the voices said, hard and deep. “Probably run off.”
“The Master’ll not take kindly to it, Mort,” said another. “Even if we bring him this junk.”
Xan pressed on the door and stepped within, Simon at his side. Two bearded men—thick-armed, wide-gutted, clad in pants and untucked black shirts—were loading items from the store’s shelves into a wheelbarrow. Almost every shelf in the little shop was empty of its merchandise, even the ones behind the waist-high wooden countertop.
Surely neither of these men could be Uncle William. Indeed, they didn’t look like shop workers or even friends of his uncle. But no one else was in the store.
“Who are you two?” the man with the deeper voice—Mort—said with a suspicious stare.
“We were just looking for the shopkeeper.” No need to give more details than necessary. Xan did a quick turnaround, but there was nothing else to see in the little store. Whatever goods had been on the shelves were piled in that wheelbarrow: vases, plates, and other trinkets.
“William’s his uncle,” Simon added helpfully. Except that wasn’t helpful in the least.
The two men exchanged a glance and stepped closer. “Oh, is that so?” Mort said. “We were hopin’ to have a little chat with your uncle. Would you be so kind as to bring us to his home, boy?” The huge man smiled falsely through cracked teeth, breath reeking of ale even at a distance.
This meeting was going even worse than the one with Christina. Uncle William was not only missing but in some kind of trouble. These henchmen were confiscating Uncle William’s goods for this Master, and they’d likely confiscate him and Simon too, if that would help them find their target.
Xan took Simon’s arm and backed toward the door. “I have no idea where he lives.”
The second man—shorter and stockier than Mort—circled around them, as though to cut off their exit from the shop. Two more steps and they’d be trapped. Yet he spoke with a voice dripping of feigned kindness. “Come, lad. Surely you know where your uncle lives.”
“Sorry,” Xan said. He dragged Simon out the door, back into the lane. “Run!” They bolted to the main road, nearly bowling over a woman holding a sack of vegetables.
“This way!” Simon shouted, pointing in the opposite direction from earlier. The boy might not know history, but he knew his way around Lincoln. Xan followed him through a maze of cobblestone paths that led higher and higher up the incline.
They paused several times on their way up the hill. Simon seemed less affected by the exercise. Maybe it was because his legs were so much longer than most boys of his short height.
“Where are you taking me?” Xan said.
“You’ll see.” Simon stood up and started jogging again.
What would he do now? Uncle William was in trouble, his shop ransacked, his life in danger. Only Christina knew where he lived. Even if he could find him, would his uncle have enough wealth to pay his head money to the reeve at Hardonbury?
They came to a steep stone staircase and climbed. As their heads reached the crest of the steps, there loomed Lincoln Castle, proudly on display upon the nearby hilltop. It was much closer now than when he’d seen it outside Father Philip’s cottage. And it was magnificent.
They reached the top stair and entered a wide-open area. “Look!” Simon said, pointing in the opposite direction from the castle.
There it stood: the haunted cathedral that Guy had talked about.
“’Tis over a hundred years old,” Simon said, in his scholarly voice again. The two massive structures—the castle and cathedral—dwarfed anything at the abbey.
“I’ll take you round it,” Simon said, starting to jog again.
The cathedral seemed to go on forever as they trotted alongside it, with Simon providing information between huffs. It was hundreds of feet in length and designed in the shape of a cross—a long beam stretching from west to east and a shorter beam from north to south.
As they neared the western side of the church, Simon suddenly sprinted toward its end, shouting, “Let’s race!” Except the boy had an unfairly long head start and awfully long legs. They dashed toward the finish. In the end, Xan threw himself to the cool grass in victory. He stared into the sky, the two tall towers of the cathedral soaring toward Heaven, higher than the trees.
The cathedral’s western wall had many doors, each taller than the height of several men standing on each other’s shoulders. The entrances were layered with pointed stone arches with elaborate designs that would have made Brother Andrew stop and marvel. There were zig-zagging rectangles on some columns, with small dots running beside them.
More arches surrounded glass windows of all sizes—some circles, but most in a series of pointed shapes with iron supports between, coming together to form even larger windows. Columns framed the windows, along with carved statues and other symbols Xan hadn’t seen before.
Whoever had designed the cathedral must have been a master of the arts. But how had the builders placed such heavy stones so high and so perfectly arranged?
“There you are!” The girl’s voice, approaching from a distance, sounded like it wanted to be a reprimand, yet its harshness was covered with a natural layer of honey.
“Uh, oh,” Simon said. “My sister.”
&n
bsp; Christina crossed the wide area from the same stairs that they’d taken. The sun touched upon her hair, orange and bright, lighting it like a torch. Her green frock fluttered in the wind yet still covered her feet. She had her forefinger on her right hand out, ready to point.
“I knew you’d come here, Simon,” she said, just a bit out of breath. “You left without telling Mother where you were going. And you, Alexander: I should have known you’d be trouble.”
“Please,” he said, rising to his feet. “My name is . . . I mean . . .” Stop being a simpkin, Xan! Speak like you always do. He took a deep breath. “Please call me Xan.”
The day he’d met Lucy, he’d talked to her without missing a syllable. But Lucy had a way of making people feel comfortable; Christina seemed to relish making him quite uncomfortable.
“Chrissy, these bad men tried to get us,” Simon said. “We had to run.”
“What are you talking about?” Her emerald eyes seemed to grow softer with her worry.
“We just came from my uncle’s shop,” Xan said. Then—pretending he was talking to Lucy—he explained what had happened. Finally, his words were coming out like normal again.
Christina’s sassiness turned to concern. “’Tis worse than I thought, then.”
“What is worse?” he asked. “Can’t you tell me anything about my uncle at all? Is he well?”
She pressed her lips tightly together, making her dimples deeper than before. Then she studied him, foot to head. As her eyes rose, so did the heat on his cheeks and his forehead. “You’re not one of those Northmen boys at all,” she said, announcing her verdict. “If you were, you’d be running silly around here like you’d eaten a barrel of sweets.”
“I told you, I’m from Harwood Abbey. I haven’t seen my uncle since I was a little boy.”
“You still are a little boy, now aren’t you?” she said with a smirk. “What are you—ten?”
He folded his arms. “Really? I’m twelve. And you’re what—all of fourteen years?”
That made her smile. “Do I look that old then? Not ’til next year, but thank you anyway.”
Simon grew impatient. “Chrissy, I took him to the cathedral to see Nelly.”
That was a name Xan hadn’t heard before. “Who’s Nelly?”
“She’s a ghost,” Christina said, matter-of-factly.
So Guy wasn’t the only one who’d heard tales of a ghost in the cathedral.
“When people die, they turn into ghosts,” Simon said.
“Not all people, Simon,” Christina corrected. “Just the ones that aren’t ready for Heaven.”
The idea of spirits remaining behind to watch over loved ones was comforting, but this kind of talk wasn’t far removed from John and David in the boys’ dorm, talking about the Shadow.
“So, you think the stories of a ghost here are true?” Xan said.
“We’ve seen her,” Simon said. “She’s real.”
“Really,” he said, sitting back in the grass. “You’ve seen the ghost yourself?”
“Well,” Simon stumbled a moment. “We saw her light glowing through the window.”
“This is how it happened,” Christina said. “We were out here the other night because Simon insisted we go see what all this fuss was about a ghost in the cathedral.”
“People have been talking about it for weeks,” Simon said. “Ever since Eleanor died.”
“Little Nelly, that is,” Christina clarified. “The poor sweet dear was only eight years old. She used to play with the other girls in the town square.”
“’Til she got sick and died,” Simon added. “The church bells all were ringing that night.”
“I remember,” Christina said, getting a distant look that softened every feature on her face into flawlessness. “’Twas the same night the guards gathered up all those dirty Northmen families and drove them back to their ships on the docks.”
“But why would the girl’s ghost haunt this cathedral?” Xan asked.
“It has a cemetery out back,” Christina said. “That’s where she’s buried.”
Simon interrupted. “Plus, the cathedral was her favorite place, wasn’t it?”
“Aye. After Nelly got sick, her mother was always taking her there to pray.”
“She couldn’t play anymore,” Simon said. “Just pray.”
“Anyhow,” Christina said with a sigh. “Simon and I were here to see what all the fuss was about, when we saw this eerie light shining through the cathedral’s windows, almost like a glowing ember. It seemed to glide from one window to the next.”
“I thought she was knotty-pated at first, but then I saw it too,” Simon said.
“We thought it might have been the priest, but when we went to the entrance, the priest was already outside, locking the doors up with chains like he does each night.”
“So, it must have been Nelly,” Simon said. “Lots of others have seen strange things, too.”
“Like what?” Xan asked.
“Sometimes,” Christina said, “they say you can hear whispers. And candles keep disappearing, especially the one in front of that statue of Mary holding baby Jesus.”
“Nelly loved that statue,” Simon interrupted again. “That’s where she’d pray all the time.”
Perhaps there really was something to the rumors. The little girl had died, but maybe her spirit still wanted to stay here with her mother. She might miss her family and be sad.
“People say they can feel her watching them as they pray,” Christina continued. “And sometimes they even hear her whimper or cry out a little.”
Just then booming bells rang from the cathedral’s west tower, their rich tones echoing.
Simon tugged on the shoulder of Xan’s tunic. “C’mon, you can see for yourself.”
If this were true—not at all proven at this point—but if true, and if they could communicate with this little girl, might she be able to tell him something about Mother and Father? God worked in mysterious ways. What if God wanted to use this little girl to show him there was a Heaven and to help him know whether Mother and Father would be angry if he ever gave Carlo his forgiveness?
He could try to get answers from Christina about Uncle William later. She seemed readier to tell him about ghosts than uncles right now anyhow.
“Fine.” Xan jumped to his feet again. “Let’s go see.”
13
The Cathedral
Xan stepped under the cathedral archway and through two massive doors. The sunlight dimmed to a kind of twilight. Candlelight and the smell of beeswax replaced the bright sky and spring air. Like other churches, there were no seats in the center—just wide empty spaces for people to stand.
This was like walking into a dream, or maybe into Heaven itself. No wonder people were kneeling and praying before the altar and in some of the alcoves.
The towering heights of the cathedral’s vaulted ceiling offered a breathtaking view from sixty feet below. With his head cocked back to take in that magnificent sight, Xan paced the length of the wide nave: the cathedral’s center. Its longest section stretched from the front doors to the transept, where the north-south beam of the cross intersected with its east-west beam.
Not far from the transept, a long, rectangular slab of stone lay across the floor: a tomb of some sort. The tomb cover—black and carved with wavy lines and little human figures on it—bore a jagged crack down its middle, as though it had been split in two.
The cathedral stimulated all senses. Sunlight through dazzling windows cast light upon the thick stone walls. Statues of Jesus and the saints dotted the corners and aisles, with candlelight flickering on their faces. Xan’s footsteps echoed off the walls and pillars and the massive stone altar in the sanctuary. And the sweet aroma of burning beeswax filled his lungs.
With all this beauty, the last thing that seemed possible was a ghost haunting this cathedral. There were no sobs, no whispers, no candles lighting themselves, and no feeling of eyes watching.
Christina
came behind and tapped his shoulder with a gentle touch. “You seem like you’re in another world,” she said. “Have you never been in a church?”
“Not a church like this one. ’Tis nothing like Hardonbury at all.”
That name aroused interest in her eyes. She blew a strip of auburn hair from her face. “William is from Hardonbury. How did you know that? You said you were from an abbey.”
“If you’d have just let me speak before, I was trying to explain everything to you.”
She gave a light smirk. “I might have let you speak if you’d been using proper English.”
“Fine enough,” he said. “So let me tell you now.”
He led Christina and Simon to a pillar in a far corner of the nave and—in a hushed voice—gave a quick recap of how he’d wound up at the abbey and of his journey to Lincoln. When he got to the part about the crash in the gully and Guy’s crushed body, Simon took special interest.
“You mean that guard died?” Simon said. “Dead, right in front of you?”
Xan nodded but didn’t describe it further—it wasn’t a sight he wanted to see again. In a way, God had spared him great trauma by taking his memory the day the bandits attacked his village. Imagine if he’d returned to Hardonbury to find Mother and Father’s bodies in the road.
“I’ve never seen a real dead person,” Christina whispered.
“I have,” Simon said. “Remember the drunk who drowned in the swan pool down by the wharf last year? They dragged him out of the water and his body was all white and wrinkly.”
If Xan hadn’t run from Rummy that day, he might have been there to see Carlo give the kill order—might even have been a victim himself. Yet now that bandit wanted his forgiveness.
“Are you all right?” Christina asked with concern, taking his hand in hers. The callouses on the ends of her fingers were smooth and softer than they looked.
Simon had stopped speaking. How long had they been standing there gawking at him?
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