I HAD so many questions but, on returning to the Bishop’s library, it was obvious I was not going to get any immediate answers. Melford and Mordaunt had already downed their sherry, and before they could refill their glasses, Oliver said firmly that it was time he took them home.
Melford looked up. ‘But we never asked Bishop about those books for you, young Oli—'
‘Another time will be sufficient, Mr Froyle,’ said Oliver hurriedly. ‘The Bishop has… other concerns right now.’
Grumbling about those damned ghosts spoiling everything, the Froyles were eventually persuaded to head back to Happy Acres. Oliver threw me a grin on his way out the door and I couldn’t help smiling back. There was something about him that attracted me strongly, and I hoped I’d see him again soon. Even if I had sworn off men just the day before.
The moment the door closed, Aunty B rounded on the Bishop. ‘You cannot doubt it any longer, Woody. The ghosts are out of control because something is blocking the Phantral Gate.’
‘I fear you are right, Amelia. Only what could do such a terrible thing?’
Aunty B looked sombre. ‘I suspect it is a curse.’
‘A curse?’ rasped the Bishop, and my insides twisted at the fear on his face. ‘You think a curse has barred the Phantral Gate? But it—it would be diabolical. No one would do such a thing!’
‘But someone must have, for those ghosts to attack Melford and Mordaunt that way.’ Aunt Butters looked grim. ‘The spirits cannot pass on and so they are growing desperate. What else could it be but a curse? It’s the only thing that makes sense.’ She held out the crumpled sheet. ‘It is fortunate I brought this along, for who knows what might have happened without it?’
‘But how did a sheet stop—’ I paused, still reluctant to admit that that what I’d witnessed could be real.
‘How did it stop a fright of ghosts?’ Aunty B smoothed out the sheer fabric. ‘
‘A fright of ghosts?’
‘The correct plural term. And it worked because it is not a sheet. It’s a shroud.
I gave an involuntary shiver.
She folded it neatly. ‘Ghosts hate to be reminded that they’re dead. A shroud is an unpleasant memory-jogger.’
‘But how did you know what to do?’
‘I’ve studied a good deal, especially the works of the great twentieth-century medium, Courslin Kerber, and you learn many things in a lifetime of travel. I once spent three months in Mongolia with a Shaman who taught me a lot about the dead, and I lived for six months with a Wiccan priestess in Ireland. She had remarkable powers and had seen many extraordinary things. It was she who first helped me to see ghosts.’
‘But I still don’t understand how you can see them.’ I turned to the Bishop. ‘Can you see them?’
‘Only as a shadow or a shade. No more than that.’
‘So why can you, Aunty B? And … Melford and Mordaunt. They could see them too, couldn’t they?’
She nodded. ‘Seeing is often easier for the elderly. As you draw nearer to death their presence becomes more perceptible.’
I shifted uncomfortably. I didn’t want to think about Aunt Butters moving closer to death. I changed the subject. ‘So, what is this Phantral Realm that you keep talking about?’
The Bishop drained his sherry glass and shrugged wearily. ‘It is the invisible realm between the Terrestrial and the Celestial Realms.’
‘The Terrestrial and Celestial Realms?’ I chewed my lip nervously. ‘Should I… know about them?’
‘Well, of course you should,’ said Bishop Stiles irritably. ‘You spend your mortal life in the Terrestrial Realm, and the Celestial Realm is where you go after you die.’
I gaped at him. Had he actually heard himself? He’d just made this mind-blowing pronouncement about the certainty of life after death as if it were the most obvious thing in the world. I mean, I’d been brought up to believe in Heaven, but I’d never actually thought it was real. A hundred questions pounded at my brain but all I managed to say was, ‘But if we go to this… this Celestial Realm after we die, then why are there apparently ghosts stuck in that… that phantom place?’
‘The Phantral Realm is for those who linger after death,’ replied Aunt Butters. ‘It is a ghostly plane that houses those spirits who are still connected to the Terrestrial Realm – our mortal world – in some way.’
‘But… wait, does everyone become a ghost when they die?’ My heart skipped a beat. I hated the idea of not being properly dead.
Aunt Butters patted my hand. ‘No. Most of the dead pass straight on to the Celestial Realm. And even those who linger in the Phantral Realm do not stay there forever.’
‘So, why––’
The Bishop interrupted, his voice strained. ‘But Amelia, if, as you suggest, it is a curse that is blocking the portal to the Celestial Realm, what can we possibly do about it?’ He looked helplessly at her.
She lifted her chin and met his anxious gaze. ‘I think we have no choice but to try my spell,’ she said firmly.
Bishop Stiles was clearly taken aback. There was a long silence. Then he shook his head. ‘No. It’s too risky. Instead we must discover what is preventing the spirits from passing on. Then we might know what to do about it.’
‘There is a way we could perhaps find out,’ said Aunt Butters. She pointed at the tall volumes standing in stately rows behind the glass doors of the huge mahogany bookcase. ‘We must unlock the Bishops’ Chronicles.’
Bishop Stiles goggled at her, and I couldn’t help thinking how strange it was that of all the things he’d seen that afternoon, it was the suggestion that we read some books that had thrown him. ‘Un… unlock the Chronicles…?’ He mopped his brow with a large spotted handkerchief. ‘Certainly not! Not since the great plague of 1665 has any Bishop of Winchester been compelled to unlock them. I have made a solemn vow to protect them from all eyes but my own.’ He drew a deep breath. ‘The Chronicles are sacred. They may only be read in the direst emergency.’
‘Exactly,’ said Aunty B. ‘You must unlock them at once.’
‘Impossible.’ Bishop Stiles shook his head. ‘And not just because they are secret. There are over a thousand years of records in those volumes—’
‘Well, we don’t need to search them all,’ cut in Aunt Butters with unusual sharpness, and I wondered if she was really as calm about all this as she appeared ‘Swithun told me that Lewis Carroll was still—’ She stopped. Thought for a moment, then punched the air. ‘That’s it!’ she cried.
‘What?’ asked the Bishop and I in unison.
‘We’ll ask St Swithun.’