Ella and I peered through the church door. The two servants who were watching Zelda and The Beard kept looking uneasily at the tower. They had bound their prisoners to gravestones, and one of them was holding The Beard’s rifle.
Unfortunately, Zelda called Ella’s name as soon as she saw us. Tears of relief ran down her cheeks, and The Beard began to grin so broadly that his beat-up face looked as if it would split in half. Sadly, that meant Stourton’s servants also spotted us. They looked at us with shock; I wouldn’t have been surprised if their corpses’ eyeballs had fallen out.
“Stay in the church, Ella!” Zelda screamed. The Beard kicked and wriggled like a hooked fish as he tried to reach the servant who was holding the rifle, but he didn’t have much success. I have to say, I found the effort quite admirable.
“What are you staring at? We sent your master to hell—for good this time,” I yelled at the minions. “Maybe you can still catch up with him.”
The first blast of shot hit the door, barely a hand’s width from my face. Ella pulled me back before the next blast could take off my nose.
“Have you gone mad?” she hissed at me. “Leave those two to Longspee!”
Longspee. He’d come down the tower with us, but where was he now? I looked around and saw him standing in the aisle between the pews. He was facing the altar. Ella, keeping an eye on Stourton’s minions, waved at me to go to him. Luckily, the servants were at quite a loss without their master and seemed uncertain as to what to do next.
“Where did he go?” Longspee was barely visible, as if the battle on the tower had cost him all his strength. “Where did he go, Jon? Is there a hell? Is that where I shall go once death catches up with me?”
I had no idea how to answer him. I could once more hear the chorister’s voice echoing through the school chapel: He killed me.
“Out there,” I said, “are still two of Stourton’s servants. They have Ella’s grandmother and Ella’s… uncle. Can you help them?”
Of course he could. Longspee stepped through the walls of the old church as if the ancient stones had brought him forth. The Beard stared at him with the delight of a child seeing his first Christmas tree.
Stourton’s servants didn’t run, though their corpse-faces clearly showed they were tempted. They probably still expected their master to descend from the tower and come to their aid. One of them took a shot at Longspee, which really was quite stupid. The second grabbed a shovel that was leaning against one of the gravestones. That didn’t make much sense either. Then they attacked Longspee. But their dead limbs were no match for my knight, and they soon wafted out of their stolen bodies and dissolved into the night air, like their master before them. Longspee pushed his sword back into its scabbard, and the whole cemetery seemed to breathe a sigh of relief. The silence between the graves was suddenly as clear as the air after a strong storm.
“What is it about you and knights, Jon?” my mother used to ask me when, for five years when I was a kid, I would refuse to dress up as anything else for Halloween. Yes, what? Maybe they let us believe that all the evil in this world can be banished with a sword and armor.
Ella freed The Beard (she called him Uncle Matt), and I untied Zelda.
Longspee was still there, but he was already fading.
“Why did you not call me sooner, Jon Whitcroft?” he asked.
Then he was gone, without giving me a chance to answer his question.