Ruined 2 - Dark Souls (7 page)

She couldn’t just stand there like an idiot, so Miranda walked through Bootham Bar toward the steps up onto the wall. The roads were much busier outside the medieval walls; York suddenly felt like a modern city again, with trucks lumbering through intersections and people impatiently leaning on their car horns. Nick was nowhere in sight. It was only when Miranda turned around to retrace her footsteps that she saw it. The green door was right there, practically set into the city walls, impossible to see from Petergate itself. The door was the darkest of greens, almost black. It had a brass knocker but no bell of any kind. On the doorstep, Miranda hesitated, wondering if she was too early. Wondering if it was too late to change her mind.

“Hey,” said a voice behind her.

She swung around, not really surprised to see Nick standing there. He seemed to have a habit of popping up out of nowhere. At least he was almost smiling at her now, his face softer, less hostile, than it had appeared Saturday morning. Still pale, of course. His face looked as though it were chiseled from chalk.

“Is this … where you live?” she asked shyly, gesturing at the green door.

“Where I’m staying.” His voice was gruff. “Come on. We should get onto the walls.”

“Aren’t they about to close?”

“Don’t worry. It’ll be twenty minutes before they’re sweeping this stretch, and by then we’ll have jumped off.”

Miranda didn’t like the sound of “jumped off” at all: The walls looked way too high for any jumping — and why, exactly, did they have to jump anywhere? But even a semi-smiling Nick made her feel nervous, and before she could get another word out, he was hustling her through a squeaky barred gate and onto the stairs.

Within moments they were up on the city walls. On one side, there were the rooftops of the houses along Gillygate. On the other, across lush lawns streaked with the shadows of trees, sat York Minster, the last of the afternoon light catching its intricate ivory carvings and stained-glass windows.

“This was a Roman road,” Nick told her, pointing back to Bootham Bar. “The Romans had their own gatehouse here. Roman legions marched north out of the city this way, up to Hadrian’s Wall.”

“You know a lot about York,” she said, running her hand along the golden stone of the battlements. It was a lame thing to say, but it was all Miranda could think of right now. It was a whole lot better than “are you planning to kill me?”

“Like I said, I grew up here. I moved away. But you don’t forget things.”

“When you moved away, where did you go?”

“Here and there. London, mostly. I’ve only been back for a week or two.”

“Oh.” Miranda wished her heart would stop beating so fast. Her voice sounded squeaky. “Does your family still live here?”

“No.” He was walking more quickly now, his black boots clomping along the stone walkway. “I’m leaving on Monday.”

“So are we,” Miranda called after him, hurrying to catch up. “Where are you going?”

“Anywhere but here,” Nick said, his voice dark, and he stalked away, his black coat flapping in the wind.

N
ick finally slowed his pace and walked down a set of steps that led into a stark garden. Miranda followed him. All the flower beds were dug over, and the trees were spindly and bare. The lawns here backed onto a jumble of old buildings that crowded around the towering Minster. Miranda still had no idea where they were going. She opened her mouth to ask and then closed it again. She had to trust him. But part of her wondered what she was doing, if this was remotely safe.

Nick jumped over the low, locked gate in one easy movement: He was very agile for someone so tall. He reached out a hand for Miranda, but she hesitated before taking it. His grip was firm; the skin felt cold and a little rough. Miranda felt herself blushing, though she knew there was nothing romantic about this. Nick was just hauling Miranda over the gate, steadying her when her boots slipped on the damp ironwork. There was no
reason to feel this flustered. Even so, Miranda was relieved when he dropped her hand, and at the second gate, she scrambled over without his help.

Hand holding was something surreptitious that happened when (before the accident) she had gone with some boy from school to the movies — clammy, tentative, under cover of darkness. Nick was nothing like those boys, and not just because he was older, and English. Miranda knew what to expect from the boys at school. Nick was still an enigma.

In a few confident strides he crossed the grass and ducked into the shadow of a high brick wall. Miranda scampered along behind him.

“Keep low,” he said to her over his shoulder. He stopped next to the wall of what might be a shed, and crouched down.

“Where are we going?” Miranda asked, crouching alongside him, trying not to sound as nervous as she felt. She hoped they weren’t going to break in somewhere. Getting arrested would definitely fall into the “ruining the family vacation” category.

“The Treasurer’s House.” Nick peered around the corner of the shed. “The courtyard. The place is closed for the winter right now; otherwise we’d be able to walk right up. They’re doing renovations, too, building work. We should wait here a little while, until it gets darker. All right?”

“Okay,” said Miranda. It wasn’t okay, really. They weren’t supposed to be here. It was cold and the ground was damp. The sky looked heavy, ready to burst with sleet
or snow. The city walls were about to close for the night. The only people passing by up there were an old lady walking a yappy terrier and a jogger thudding past toward Bootham Bar.

“Here,” Nick said, maneuvering until his back was against the wall, and then spreading the tails of his long coat out around him before he slid down. “Sit on a bit of this.”

Miranda hesitated. She didn’t want to get damp grass all over her butt, but if she complied with Nick’s request, they’d be sitting very close together. Uncomfortably close. Nick was looking away, gazing up at the stretch of city wall, and Miranda slowly, awkwardly sat down next to him. Their shoulders and arms were brushing now. There wasn’t anything she could do about it.

“What are we going to see at the Treasurer’s House?” she asked him, desperate to fill the silence.

“Not see. Hear,” he said. She waited for him to explain, but he was still staring up at the walls.

Miranda tried to take the conversation in a more normal direction. “Did you grow up near here or, you know, in the suburbs?” Her knee touched Nick’s and she jerked it away, embarrassed.

“Here in town. Various houses. My mother liked to move.”

“But she doesn’t live here now, right?”

“She buggered off.” Nick’s voice betrayed no emotion. “Not long after I ran away. Moved to Spain. Didn’t surprise me. I didn’t really care.”

“You ran away?”

“When I was fifteen. Wasn’t the first time. The first was after … someone died.”

“Your father?” asked Miranda. Nick had only talked about his mother moving away.

He gave a contemptuous snort.

“No, he’s still alive. Getting fat, probably, on his estate up in Scotland. Ripping off investment bankers who’ll pay through the nose for a chance to shoot a deer. They got divorced, him and my mother, when I was small. Haven’t seen him for years.”

His parents sounded as though they had money, Miranda thought. So why did Nick dress in such ragged clothes? Maybe it was all just a big Goth pose. But she couldn’t ask him any more questions. The sun was setting, any warmth seeping out of the day. The darkness made her feel more self-conscious rather than less, painfully aware of the slight pressure of Nick’s arm against hers.

“My brother,” Nick said suddenly, his voice soft. “He was the one who died. When I was thirteen. He was a lot older than me — he was twenty-one. But I hadn’t seen him for several years at that point. He’d been … away.”

“At college?” Miranda asked, glancing at him. Nick’s face was obscured by the shadows.

“In a mental hospital. Just outside the city. That’s where he died. He committed suicide.”

“How awful,” Miranda said, because she had to say something, even though there was nothing to say. Losing
someone you loved was unbearable, unspeakable. She knew that firsthand. Losing your brother in such a terrible way just had to derail you completely. If Rob had been killed in the accident … Miranda couldn’t bear to think about it. No wonder Nick had run away to London. No wonder his mother had moved to another country.

“My mother wanted to have the funeral in the Minster.” Nick sounded far away. “My parents got married in there. Big society do. They said no, of course. Mental case, killed himself. Not entitled to anything, as far as the Church was concerned. He’s buried in the village where my grandparents live, way out there, where nobody has to know about him, or think about him, ever again.”

“You
think about him.” This was such a sad story, Miranda thought. She looked up at Nick. The shadows softened the angles of his face.

“I saw him,” he said. “Day of the funeral. We were walking away from the gravesite, and something made me turn around. He was standing by the grave, looking at the pile of dirt. I only saw him from the back, but I knew it was him. Then he walked through the churchyard and disappeared into a field. I told my mother — pointed to him, when he was walking past all the graves. She couldn’t see anything. Nobody could. That was the first time I realized …”

“… you could see ghosts,” said Miranda, waves of relief washing through her. She wasn’t a freak. She wasn’t crazy. This happened to other people as well.

“Same for you?” Nick turned his head, leaning into
her. “The friend you mentioned, the one who died? Six months ago, right?”

“This summer,” she told him, almost whispering. “Jenna and me and my brother — we were in a car accident. Rob and I were okay, more or less, but Jenna … They told me she was dead, but I swear to you, she walked past me and into the field. Her body was still there in the car …”

“… but her spirit had other ideas.” Nick scuffed at the wet grass with the toe of his boot.

“I’m still getting used to it, this seeing-ghosts thing. You’ve had longer to figure it all out, I guess.” Miranda didn’t feel quite so scared of Nick anymore. In one very crucial way, they were two of a kind.

“Seven years.” He sounded weary. Sad. “Your friend’s name was Jenna?”

“Yes. What was your brother’s name?”

“Richard.”

“Richard Gant,” said Miranda. Nick wheezed out a laugh.

“That’s not my real last name,” he said, tapping his chest until Miranda leaned forward to look. The logo on his sweater, embroidered in a slightly darker gray, read
GANT.
“It was the first thing that came into my head the other day. Not used to talking about myself, I suppose. I usually don’t tell people about any of this. But you … you’re not like other people.”

Miranda stared down at her knees, her cheeks burning.

“Look up there,” he said, and he nudged her with his shoulder.

Miranda followed his gaze to the city walls. Some kind of night watchman in a long coat, holding a swinging lantern, was making his way along.

“He’s closing the walkway,” she said, but Nick shook his head.

“Watch,” he said. Another jogger, visible mainly because of his fluorescent orange armband, pounded along the walkway toward Bootham Bar. Instead of running around the man with the swinging lantern, he ran straight through him, as though the night watchman were no more than a puff of mist. Miranda gasped.

“How did you know?” she asked. The night watchman had looked completely real and alive.

“I’ve seen him before,” Nick admitted. “Tried talking to him once, but he didn’t seem to hear me. Didn’t answer, anyway.”

“Jenna didn’t speak to me,” Miranda told him. It was so strange and liberating to be able to talk about that night to someone who understood. Miranda couldn’t believe she was saying these things out loud. “Did your brother speak to you?”

“Not then.” Nick frowned. He squirmed away from her, and Miranda regretted asking the question. “Come on, it’s dark enough now. Keep low, and follow me.”

Miranda struggled to her feet, freeing up Nick’s coat so he could creep around the shed. He wended his way between two tall buildings, stooping as he passed windows.
Miranda followed him, wishing that the crunch of gravel wasn’t so loud beneath her boots, only vaguely conscious of passing landmarks — a wooden garden gate, a moss-covered basin surrounded by terra-cotta pots, stone lions perched on their hind legs on the tops of columns.

Soon they were stealing across cobbles through a parking lot at the side of a grand stone house. The lot was empty except for a line of orange bollards and some yellow
DO NOT CROSS
tape strung across a stubby makeshift fence. Behind them, the cobbles had been lifted and the ground was being excavated. Pipes were exposed and, beyond them, the pit was even deeper. The ground along the lowest floor of the building itself — the basement, judging by its low windows — had been dug away by several feet. A paint-streaked tarp, held down by bricks, covered only some of the area.

Nick dragged the temporary fence post out of place, so there was enough room for them to squeeze through. Miranda, stumbling on a dug-up cobble, couldn’t understand where they were going. There were no doors anywhere in sight. She hoped that Nick wasn’t going to break a window.

But he stopped at the tarp, moving a brick to check underneath it.

“Here,” he said, and folded the tarp back into place. “This is about as low as we’ll get. We can sit on this. I don’t think it’ll get in the way.”

He sat down with his back against the wall, legs outstretched, and looked up at Miranda expectantly.
She scuttled into place next to him, her back against the wall, too. She was going to have to get changed as soon as she got home: Every part of her felt damp and cold.

“Put your hands on the ground, like this,” Nick instructed, pressing his palms flat against the tarp. “Take your gloves off.”

“Why?” asked Miranda, but doing as he said.

“York was an important Roman city,” he told her, as though that was the logical answer to her question. “The emperor Constantine was crowned here. Remember at Bootham Bar, when I said that’s the way Roman soldiers marched north? Petergate was a Roman road, the Via Principalis.”

“And Stonegate,” Miranda said, remembering something her father had said. “That was a Roman road, too.”

“Via Praetoria,” said Nick. “And right underneath us, cutting through this building and running down the street beneath the Minster, is the old Via Decumana. The two roads used to meet in the middle, at what would have been the big HQ, the center of the Roman fort. The Minster was built on top of it.”

“So we can see Roman ghosts here?” Miranda asked, suddenly excited. All this scrambling and hiding — all this breaking and entering — would be worth it if she could see Romans. But Nick was shaking his head, his smile dismissive.

“Too high up,” he said. “The Roman road was much
lower — almost twenty feet down. We’d have to be in the cellar to see anything.”

“Oh,” said Miranda, disappointed.

“They’ve been spotted a few times over the years down there,” Nick said. “Always around this time of day, in the wintertime. Tours go in there sometimes, to wait for them. But what they don’t get is that only a few people can see ghosts.”

He raised his eyebrows at Miranda, and she smiled back at him.

“There’s all sorts of rubbish talked as well, about them being the famous lost Ninth Legion,” he continued. “Marching off into the northern wilderness, never to be seen again. This was the last place they were stationed in Britain.”

“How do you know so much history when —” Miranda stopped herself. She was about to say “you didn’t even finish school?” but it sounded too rude a question. Nick glanced at her, amused.

“This isn’t stuff you learn at school,” he said. “I read books — I always did. You can’t trust the stories people tell, especially around here, where there’s profit in it. Saying the ghosts down here are the lost Ninth Legion, thousands of Roman soldiers about to be wiped out forever, makes a good story for the tourists even if it’s not true. Here — can you feel them?”

Miranda didn’t understand until Nick waved his hands at her and then pressed them firmly against the tarp. She pushed down with her own hands, feeling
the tarp give way a little as it was tamped into the soft earth. From deep within the ground she felt a vibration, something shuddering. The motion made her hands tremble.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Men. Horses. Dozens of them. They’re getting closer — can you tell?”

She nodded. It felt like thunder rumbling underground. The soil beneath her was pulsing, the way a car seemed to pulse with the bass when the driver had the stereo turned up way high. It was rhythmic like the bass, too. Footsteps and hooves clopping along the road. When Miranda closed her eyes, she could hear them as well as feel them. Heavy, trudging steps. A shout — guttural, echoing — and then a shrill blast of sound that made her jump.

“Trumpet,” said Nick. He must have heard it, too. “Announcing their arrival.”

The footsteps kept thudding, but they were growing more distant now. Miranda realized she was clawing her fingers into the tarp, eager to feel the last of the procession.