Also By Helen Stringer
Spellbinder
The Midnight Gate
No Better Thing Under The Sun
H E L E N S T R I N G ER
Copyright © 2012 Helen Stringer
All Rights Reserved
For my father
It was raining again. Belladonna hunkered down in her seat and watched the buildings slide by through the greasy, rain-spattered windows. The windows on school trip buses were always greasy, from sticky fingers and foreheads and heaven knew what else.
Belladonna didn’t want to speculate. It was too icky.
They were on another one of Mr. Watson’s history trips. This time it was some Roman ruin near the coast. The jagged remains of a fort near what had been a port, but had long since silted up into one of those endless beaches where you couldn’t even see the ocean at low tide.
There had been a time when Belladonna had loved trips to the seaside, even when it rained. Sometimes, those were the best trips of all. Her dad would park the car as close to the roaring waves as possible and they’d sit and eat cold sausages and hard-boiled eggs and drink tea from a thermos while the seagulls circled over the grey, roiling water.
But the prospect of a freezing plod around some low stone walls and a makeshift museum didn’t excite quite the same feelings.
The bus slowed and turned into a small gravel parking lot.
“Right!” said Watson. “You’ve all got your worksheets. I know it’s a bit wet, but we’ll see what we can do.”
He glanced at his watch.
“A bit wet,” said Steve, suddenly appearing next to Belladonna’s seat. “We don’t need a bus, we need a bleeding ark.”
Belladonna couldn’t help smiling, but Mr. Watson was already herding everyone off.
“Half an hour to look around the fort! Then everyone into the museum for lunch and a talk from the museum director! Got that?”
There were a few mumbled “yes sirs,” but most of his charges just pushed their way off the bus and scattered across the landscape.
Belladonna zipped up her jacket, pulled the hood up, hoisted her pink backpack onto one shoulder and stepped off the bus.
The place looked utterly miserable. The sky was the color of lead and the clouds were so low, they seemed to push down on her already dismal spirits. For some reason, her mum and dad had hardly been around. They were there when she got up in the morning and came home at night, but her mum hadn’t cooked anything for weeks and her grandmother had brought dinner every evening instead, which meant buying things in boxes from the local supermarket and microwaving them when she got there, so that even the beef vindaloo they’d had the night before had tasted vaguely of cardboard.
She trudged to the far side of the parking lot and started with what had been the parade ground, a flat expanse of earth that the Romans had used for training. She half expected to see a phantom cohort marching up and down, but there was nothing – just muddy grass and a small raised area where the commanders had stood and watched their men.
She strolled across the parade ground and up onto the platform. What must it have been like for the soldiers, she wondered. Mr. Watson had explained that many of the Roman legions were made up of men from the far reaches of the empire, not necessarily those from Italy. But she couldn’t help thinking that when you looked at maps of the Empire, most of it seemed to be in fairly warm places, like the Mediterranean, the middle east and north Africa. Getting posted to the north of England really must have felt like getting the fuzzy end of the lollipop.
She turned to leave the mound, but slipped on the wet grass and skidded down the side, landing with a thump.
“Great,” she thought. “Typical!”
She scrambled to her feet, brushed herself off, and was just thinking that at least no one had seen her, when the unmistakable sound of giggling skittered across the grass.
She spun around, hoping against hope that it wasn’t Sophie Warren or any of her minions, but it wasn’t anyone she recognized.
It was a girl with reddish hair, sitting on the railway ties that bounded the parking lot. Belladonna glowered at her, then stopped. This wasn’t one of her classmates. She wasn’t wearing a jacket, for one thing, and she wasn’t clutching a copy of Mr. Watson’s worksheets, for another.
Belladonna hesitated for a moment, then walked toward her. As she got closer, she could see that the girl was the same age as her, or maybe a little younger. She was very thin and completely sodden. Her reddish hair was plastered to her head and hung in dank rattails down her back, half sticking to the sides of her face, and the worn garland that crowned her head seemed sad, rather than festive. Her dress was little more than a simple shift, and had probably been white at one time, but was now the color of mud.
Belladonna glanced around to make sure no one was near.
“Hello,” she said, softly.
The girl looked surprised, and instinctively turned around, as if she thought there must be someone standing behind her.
“No,” said Belladonna. “I said hello to you.”
“You can see me?” whispered the girl.
“Yes. You laughed at me.”
The girl stared at her for a moment before a smile spread across her grubby face.
“You looked funny. Your legs and arms all went in different directions.”
“I’m Belladonna.”
“Branwyn,” whispered the girl.
She fingered at her leather necklace and smiled.
“That looks tight,” said Belladonna. “Why don’t you take it off?”
Branwyn looked confused.
“What?”
“Your necklace. It looks uncomfortable.”
“Johnson! What the devil are you doing over there?”
Mr. Watson stomped across the parking lot.
“The fort is over there,” he said, pointing to the walls.
“Yes, but this is the parade ground,” said Belladonna, turning to the page on the worksheet. “We’re supposed to mark it off, see?”
“Yes, mark it off, not set up camp. You know students aren’t supposed to wander off alone.”
“Yes, sir.”
“Right, well. Get on with it, then.”
He marched off. Belladonna glanced at Branwyn and was surprised to see that she had shrunken back, an expression of fear on her face.
“Is he your Seer?” she whispered, her voice shaking slightly.
“Our…? No, he’s just Mr. Watson, our teacher. I’d better do as he says, though.”
Branwyn smiled uncertainly.
“It was nice meeting you,” said Belladonna, a little awkwardly. It was always a bit hard to end conversations with ghosts, as if you were abandoning them, somehow.
Branwyn smiled briefly, brushing her hair away from her face, which didn’t help her general appearance one bit.
“I haven’t spoken to anyone in a long time,” she whispered. “It was nice. I’m always here if you’d like to talk again.”
Belladonna couldn’t tell her that the bus trip had taken over an hour and that it was very unlikely she’d be able to return, but she just nodded, turned, and made her way across the parking lot to the maze of low stone walls, roughly sculpted horse troughs and stacks of tiles from the ancient hypocausts.
She finished her worksheet and joined everyone else as they headed toward the small museum for lunch, though she couldn’t help glancing back to see if Branwyn was still sitting on the edge of the parade ground.
She was.
“What is it?” asked Steve, his voice low and his attitude nonchalant, so that no one would think he was actually talking to the weird girl. “A ghost?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But what?”
&
nbsp; “There’s something odd.”
“Is it a soldier?”
“No. A girl.”
Steve grunted and melted away into the crush of kids trying to get through the single narrow door into the museum.
Mr. Watson led the way to a small cafeteria, where everyone sat down and got out whatever sandwiches and drinks they had brought for lunch. Belladonna usually had some strange concoction assembled by her mother, but this time it was just a store-bought ham sandwich in a plastic wrapper with a bottle of fizzy orange instead of Tizer.
Toward the end of lunch the museum director arrived and introduced herself as Dr. Hartley. She was short and rather round, with cropped grey hair, green wellington boots, and a pair of glasses on a string around her neck. She told them the history of the fort and how the land where it was built had once been marshland and peat bog and that the Romans had built the ground up so it was solid enough to hold the stone fort.
Mr. Watson had covered most of this in class and Belladonna’s mind began to wander to the girl outside. She looked out of the window and could just make her out through the rain, still sitting in the same place.
Then it came to her.
The girl was soaked through.
But she was a ghost. The rain shouldn’t touch her. Not here in the Land of the Living.
“…it was thought that the body dated from this period. A theory that was confirmed by an examination of the seeds and plants found with it.”
“What?” thought Belladonna. “Why do people only say interesting things when I’m not listening?”
“Thank you, Dr. Hartley, that was very informative,” said Mr. Watson, standing. “I’m sure everyone is very grateful to you for taking the time to describe the museum’s work.”
He glanced sharply at the class, who had been on enough trips by now to know that what was expected at this point was applause.
“Good,” said Watson, clearly pleased. “You’ve got an hour and a half to spend in the museum. Don’t forget to identify something that interests you the most, draw a picture of it, make notes and be prepared to talk about it in class next week.”
There was the usual murmured assent as lunches were packed away and clumps of kids meandered off into the maze of small rooms that made up the museum.
Belladonna caught up with Lucy Fisher, who was dropping her egg salad sandwiches into the bin. Lucy’s mum always made her egg salad sandwiches for school trips, but Lucy never ate them. She wolfed down the regular school dinners, so Belladonna could only guess that it was the egg salad she didn’t like. Once, she’d mentioned that Lucy should perhaps tell her mum, an idea that Lucy had greeted with a look of total incredulity, as if Belladonna had suggested sticking her hand down the waste disposal, which only confirmed what Belladonna had always thought: other people’s families were weird. Which was quite something when she considered that her family consisted of two ghosts, a psychic grandma (who wasn’t really psychic), and an aunt who was off somewhere chasing down the Wild Hunt.
“Lucy,” she said. “What was that stuff about a body?”
“Weren’t you listening?” asked Lucy.
“Of course I wasn’t listening,” thought Belladonna. “Why else would I ask?”
She didn’t say it out loud, though. Lucy was so timid she made Belladonna look like the class clown.
“No…I was sort of daydreaming. Was it a Roman soldier?”
“It was a girl,” said Lucy, her voice low as if it were some big secret, rather than something the entire class had been told only minutes before. “Isn’t that creepy? They found her in the peat bog and it turned out she was over two thousand years old!”
Belladonna and Lucy made their way through the museum. Some things were boring, but others were fascinating. There were the remains of sandals worn by soldiers and delicate shoes worn by the camp commander’s wife. They’d even found some letters in which she had invited the wife of another camp commander over for a birthday celebration.
As they walked into the last room, there was a buzz of excitement. Most of the kids seemed to be lingering there, leaning over a glass case, mesmerized.
Belladonna eased her way through the crowd, Lucy following in her wake. When they got to the case, Lucy winced.
“Oh, that’s awful! That’s awful!” She turned away and pushed back through the crowd.
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?” said Steve. He was standing on the other side of the case and was clearly fascinated.
“I’m…I don’t…”
“It’s because the peat’s anaerobic,” said Steve. “That means there’s almost no oxygen, so a body buried in peat doesn’t decay. Not even the hair or the stitches on their clothing.”
“How d’you know that?” asked Rob, a sturdy boy who, as long as Belladonna had known him, had never listened to a word in class or cracked open a single book. He was good at football, though, which seemed to make up for everything else.
“I have a book about the Bog People at home,” said Steve, his words coming fast and betraying his fascination. “They’ve found them all over the place, Ireland, the Netherlands, Germany, and here. Mostly they’re adults, but some of them are children.”
“It’s gruesome,” said Philippa Lawler, wrinkling her nose. “I’ve never seen anything like it. Have you, Belladonna?”
Belladonna stared at the thing in the case. It was a little twisted, distorted from the weight of two thousand years of peat, and not all of it was there, but there was no mistaking the simple dress, the reddish hair and, above all, the garland of flowers that circled her head.
She backed away from the case, hoping that she looked like she’d just seen enough and was going to look at the tile samples, but as she turned she saw Steve staring at her. He followed her back out to the cafeteria.
“What is it?”
“It’s her. The girl in the parking lot. That’s why she’s still wet.”
“What?”
“That’s what was odd. It’s raining, but she’s a ghost. She shouldn’t be wet.”
“But she was wet when she died.”
Belladonna nodded.
“Can you see her? Over there.” She pointed toward the parade ground.
“I don’t know,” said Steve, squinting into the rain. “It’s been a while.”
Belladonna brushed her hand against his.
“Whoa! Yes! But what is she doing there? It’s miserable. Why doesn’t she just go to the Land of the Dead. Why would she want to stay where it…where it happened?”
“Let’s go ask her,” said Belladonna, heading for the door.
Steve glanced back into the museum reluctantly.
“It’s okay,” said Belladonna. “I’ll just say I dropped something when I was over there and Mr. Watson said we aren’t supposed to go anywhere alone.”
“We’ve used that one before, Belladonna. We’re going to have to come up with something new one day.”
Belladonna grinned, pulled up her hood and stepped out into the rain. Steve followed, though his hoodie wasn’t much protection from the downpour. They hadn’t gone far before she slowed down and looked at him.
“What d’you mean ‘where it happened?’ Where what happened?”
Steve stopped.
“They think…archaeologists and stuff…they think…that is, they’re fairly sure that…that the people found in the bogs were sacrificed.”
“Sacrificed?”
“Maybe when food was scarce or something. They’d give them some kind of drugged drink--”
“Wait. How do they know that?”
“They’ve found the remains in some of the stomachs. Anyway, they’d drug them, then take them out to the marshes and strangle them. Sometimes they’d cut their throats, too.”
“Strangle them?” Belladonna’s blood ran cold.
“Yeah, and…what’s wrong?”
“I thought it was a necklace. I told her it looked tight.”
“Well, it probably is,” said Steve. “Co
me on, let’s find out why she’s still here.”
They trudged across the ruins to the parking lot and over to where Branwyn waited, smiling and clearly pleased to see Belladonna again.
“Hello!”
“Hello, Branwyn. This is my friend Steve.”
“Hello, Steve.”
“Branwyn…we were wondering, why are you here?”
“Why I’m here?”
“Yes,” said Steve. “You do know you’re dead, right?”
“Yes,” whispered Branwyn sadly, her hand flittering to the leather band around her neck.
“Ow!” yelped Steve, clutching at his chest.
Belladonna and Branwyn stared at him.
“What is it?”
“It’s…something sharp.” He reached into his jacket and pulled out a small blade with an elaborate hilt.
Branwyn shrank back.
“No,” she whispered. “Please. They promised they wouldn’t do that. They promised!”
“The Rod of Gram?”
Steve nodded and leaned forward. He tried to steady Branwyn with his left hand, but it passed right through her.
“I don’t see how…” he started.
“The strap, try just the strap,” said Belladonna.
Branwyn was weeping now, her ghostly tears leaving trails of pale skin in their wake.
“Please…”
Steve leaned down again, reached for the strap and sliced through it. He unwound it gently from around Branwyn’s neck and stepped back. The strap immediately crumbled into dust and blew away on a gust of wind as the blade returned to its usual form—a somewhat battered plastic six-inch ruler.
Belladonna had to admit that there was a part of her that hoped it was the leather thong that had held Branwyn to the spot where she died, but if her experiences with the dead had taught her anything, it was that things were seldom so simple.
“Can you go now?” she asked, hoping against hope.
“Go where?” asked Branwyn, puzzled.
“To the Land of the Dead,” said Steve. “The Other Side. It’s really nice. The weather’s a lot better.”
Branwyn looked from one to the other in disbelief, as if she’d stumbled upon the stupidest people on the planet.
The Blood Binding Page 1