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 arsenic.”

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.