I took her hand. “It’s good that he didn’t come back, Mum,” I said quietly. “Because it means that he’s happy wherever he is now. Ghosts are not very happy, you know?”

She looked at me as if she were seeing me for the first time. “Since when do you think about ghosts, Jon? Everybody is suddenly talking about ghosts. Did Matthew put that nonsense in your head?”

“No!” I answered. “We’ve just been talking about it at school.” It didn’t feel right to lie in the cathedral, but I think on that day my mother was in no shape to hear the whole Longspee-Stourton story. The Beard and I only told her many years later, and I’m still not sure she believed us.

“At school?” Mum asked incredulously. “They talk about ghosts there? What subject is this?”

“Oh, um, English?” I sputtered. “You know, Shakespeare and all that.”

“Ah, yes,” she said. “Sure.” Then she squeezed my hand and ruffled my hair (extremely embarrassing for an eleven-year-old). “What do you think? Shall we say good-bye to the dead knight and find ourselves some dinner?”

“Good idea,” I mumbled. For a moment I thought I could see Longspee between the columns, with a smile on his face. It was a few weeks after that when I asked the knight whether he remembered meeting another boy named Whitcroft approximately thirty-five years earlier. But my father had never called Longspee, because even back then my dad had been simply a happy person and hadn’t needed any help.

“What about friends?” my mother asked as we walked side by side across the grass in front of the cathedral. “Those boys we met by the school—are they your best friends?”

“Angus and Stu?” I asked. “Yes. Although… no, not really.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean, now?” Mum asked.

The evening sun shone on the old houses around us, and I realized we were standing in the exact spot where Stourton had caught up with me and where Bonapart had picked me up from the ground.

“My best friend is a girl,” I said. “And you know her uncle. In fact, you’re going to marry him.”