The Midnight Gate (5 page)

After about an hour, the noise level declined and people started reading or sleeping. In another half hour, the rain had begun to subside and the coach left the highway and began to wend its way down narrow country lanes, past green fields, tumbledown farm buildings, and verdant clumps of trees whose low-hanging branches scraped across the roof like eager fingers. Gradually the number of buildings declined and the trees closed in ever more tightly. The road was only one lane wide now and Belladonna wondered what on earth would happen if they met something coming the other way.

Finally, as the road began to descend into a narrow valley, Mr. Watson stood up.

“Alright!” he said. “Pay attention!”

The ones who had been sleeping looked up bleary-eyed as Mr. Watson pulled a sheaf of handouts from his bag.

“Pass these around,” he commanded, shoving the stack into the hands of Alison Jones, who beamed at him. Alison always sat near the front on Mr. Watson's trips—she'd had a crush on him since her very first day, and her faithfulness showed no signs of abating. It made her the target of a great deal of Sophie Warren's spite, but she didn't care. For his part, like almost everything else to do with his students, Mr. Watson was blissfully unaware.

“Right,” said Mr. Watson, once everyone had a copy. “On page one, as you can see, there's a brief history of Fenchurch. Not too much detail—you should all know this already. Page two is a ground plan of the abbey. I expect you all to name the different parts before we leave today. Finally, there are three essay questions. Pick one. One. And you needn't look at me like that, Evans, this isn't a pleasure trip. One essay each, due next Tuesday. Got that?”

There was a general grumbling assent as the bus pulled into the gravel car park and ground to a halt under an aged oak tree. The doors crashed open and everyone piled out for the usual quick head count.

Belladonna looked around. There wasn't a sign of an abbey, just the car park and a rather grim-looking visitor center. And it was cold. Really, really cold. She zipped up her jacket and pulled on her gloves as Mr. Watson led them all into the visitor center.

After a quick word with the woman behind the cash register, he led them past a few salvaged pieces of stone carving and out the opposite side of the building.

The whole class stopped and gasped. Reading about the scale of the old monasteries was one thing, but to actually see the massive ruins of one was something else altogether.

“Right,” said Mr. Watson. “Has everyone got a watch? If you don't, find someone who has. I want everyone back at the picnic area over there by noon for lunch. Noon, got that? Half an hour. Right, off you go.”

It was like a reenactment of a Viking raid: The whole class whooped and ran across the wet grass toward the towering buildings. Belladonna ran too, the grass whipping against her legs and the cold wind stinging her face. Then she slowed and finally stopped as the impossibly slender red sandstone arches of the nave soared skyward around her and almost blotted out the feeble February daylight. It was stunning. Each stone fit so perfectly with its neighbor and each piece of carving was so flawlessly executed, it was hard to believe it had all been done by hand over eight hundred years ago. She wandered through the nave and out onto the grass. She could see a cluster of her classmates near the exposed lower half of a monk's sarcophagus. They were taking turns lying in it and taking one another's picture. Nearby an elderly monk watched, sadly shaking his head. Belladonna caught his ghostly eye and smiled. He stared at her for a moment, clearly taken aback, then vanished.

Belladonna shrugged and turned back to the abbey. She wrote
Nave
on the plan and set out in search of the refectory.

By lunchtime she'd found the refectory, the lay brothers' dormitory, the infirmary, and the kitchen. The monks had diverted a piece of the small river that ran through the valley so that it flowed through the kitchen. A kitchen with running water in the Middle Ages—it wasn't what she'd imagined.

She was just adding a sketch of the river to the plan when she heard a bell start to toll. She glanced at her watch. It was noon. Time for lunch.

It wasn't until she was halfway back to the picnic ground and walking through the nave that it occurred to her: There was no bell. There couldn't be—the monastery had been in ruins for over four hundred fifty years.

But there was. Deep and sonorous, the single spectral bell rang out from the empty air above the nave where once there had been a magnificent tower. Then she heard them. A hundred voices chanting plainsong. And there was a smell, a faint whiff of incense. She turned around and saw rank upon rank of shadowy monks in their white robes walking into the church and down what must once have been the aisle to their places for midday mass. Their voices echoed through the vast space as if the church were whole, which to them it was.

Belladonna watched them, almost hypnotized by the deep sound of their voices and the slow mesmerizing song. And then it was over. A bunch of kids charged through the ruins on their way to lunch, and the monks, the incense, and the song vanished. Belladonna sighed and made her way to the picnic area.

Everyone else was already there, and Mr. Watson gave her a stare and glanced at his watch as she made her way to an empty seat, brushed the accumulated dead leaves and gunk off it, sat down, and opened her sandwiches. Her mother had made them. They were brie with slivers of blanched almonds and probably seemed like a good idea to her mother, but after being in Belladonna's backpack for four hours, the almonds had gone sort of soggy and the cheese had nearly all run out of the sandwich and adhered to the plastic bag. Belladonna ate as much as she could stand while everyone listened to Mr. Watson talk about the founding of the monastery and how the Cistercian monks had broken away from the Benedictines—all of which they had already covered at length since the beginning of term.

After what seemed like an eternity of rambling, Mr. Watson finally announced that lunch was over and they had one more hour to finish marking their plans and decide on their essay topic.

Belladonna drifted through the abbey buildings again, slowly filling up her abbey plan with the building names: night stairs, bakehouse, brewhouse, cloisters, garden, garderobes (toilets, which also had running water), and the abbot's house. Eventually the only room missing was the chapter house. The chapter house was where the monks would meet to discuss the business of the monastery and it was usually on the east side of the cloisters, which would put it just about as far away from where she now was as it was possible to get. Belladonna looked around from the slight rise where the abbot's house had sat. Her feet were absolutely freezing, even with the boots and two pairs of socks, and she was wondering if she could get to the chapter house without walking on the wet grass. A collection of low stone foundations zigzagged their way through the grounds and seemed like her best option. She climbed onto the nearest one and set off.

It was nearly the end of the trip. The light was beginning to fade and she could see her classmates making their way back across the monks' cemetery to the visitor center. She walked quickly through the refectory again, and crossed the cloister toward the chapter house. It was very quiet. She glanced at her watch—she was late. Everyone else would be back now, maybe even climbing on the bus.

There was a low arched tunnel leading from the cloister into the chapter house. Belladonna hurried through it … and stopped.

She could hear voices, but something told her it wasn't ghosts. She stepped into the shadow of the tunnel and peered into the chapter house. The voices were low, but she recognized one. It was Steve.

She walked into the chapter house and peered through the gathering gloom. It had obviously once been a spectacular room. Unlike the nave, it wasn't daunting in size or scope, just a good-sized octagonal hall, its double arched windows still nearly complete, each with a huge delicately carved rosette between each arch. The center of the room was dotted with the bases of the carved pillars that had once supported the roof, now sadly reduced, like great trees in the aftermath of a forest fire. She looked around for Steve. He was standing near a small niche, like a bay window, deep in conversation with someone she couldn't quite make out.

She crossed the room, oblivious to the freezing ground. Steve saw her coming and stepped back. As he did so, a figure emerged from the shadows, too solid to be a ghost, but somehow not quite alive either. It was a young man in the distinctive white robes of a Cistercian monk, but his careworn face and sturdy build spoke more of a life lived outside the cloistered confines of a country abbey.

“Is this her?” he said, his voice soft and sad.

“Yes,” said Steve. “That's Belladonna.”

Belladonna looked him, waiting for more, but before he could speak again, the young monk stepped forward and bowed. Not the awkward bow of compulsory country dancing classes, but the graceful, easy bow of one for whom it is the most natural movement in the world.

“I am Edmund de Braes,” he said, “the last Paladin.”

“Um … hello,” said Belladonna, glancing quickly at Steve, who seemed both pleased and worried. “I'm Belladonna.”

Edmund de Braes smiled slightly and nodded.

“You are the Spellbinder,” he said.

“So people keep telling me,” said Belladonna, trying to keep the annoyance out of her voice.

“Your Paladin and I have been discussing you,” continued the young monk. “I was just telling him that—”

“Yes, well,” interrupted Steve, “he was, um … he was saying that he's been waiting for us. For … um…”

Edmund glanced at Steve, clearly surprised, but quickly regained his calm demeanor.

“For over six hundred years,” he said.

“Six hundred years,” said Belladonna. “But you're not … That is, you don't seem to be…”

“No, I am not dead,” explained Edmund. “But neither am I alive. She came to me and bade me stand sentinel against a change in the tide. I have been waiting here for your coming. Now you are here and the Dark Times are upon us again.”

“A change in the tide?” asked Steve.

“Hang on,” said Belladonna. “First, who is this She, what are the Dark Times, and what are we supposed to do about it? And why is everything always so cryptic?”

“You do not know?” said Edmund, clearly taken aback.

Belladonna and Steve both shook their heads.

“But who has the care of your teaching? Have you not been trained in the ways of battle?”

“No,” said Steve, grinning. “We've been trained in the ways of Math, English Lit, and double French on Wednesdays. Most schools these days kind of frown on the ways of battle.”

“Not that it ever stopped you,” said Belladonna.

“What is this?” said Edmund. “You jest in the face of all that is dread?”

“Look.” Belladonna took a deep breath. “If you'll just explain, clearly, what is going on, why you have been waiting, and what we have to do, preferably before Mr. Watson comes and drags us back to the bus, then maybe we'll take it all a bit more seriously.”

Edmund looked from one to the other and nodded. “So be it.”

Belladonna hardly dared breathe. Was he really going to make everything clear?

“In the last of the Dark Times, I was Paladin to Margaret de Morville of the Priory of Gwybod in the Welsh Marches. I was tasked, like all the Paladins who preceded me, to protect the Spellbinder from those who would do her harm. But all was not as it seemed, and I was too slow in perceiving the danger. By the time I awoke to the peril, the whole world was helpless before the pestilence and death that destroyed all in its path. Yet all was not lost, for it came to pass that in due course the forces of light beat back she who fashioned herself Empress, and she, along with all her minions, was imprisoned in the Dark Spaces. But She Who Knows All perceived that they would return and that they would seek and this time find the Instrument of Life. So I was charged with waiting until the next Dark Times in order to warn the Spellbinder and Paladin who would then appear and give them this that they might prevent her return, find the instrument, and conceal it anew.”

Belladonna and Steve stared at him.

“Clear as mud,” said Steve finally.

Belladonna had to agree. As explanations went, Edmund's was right up there with Miss Venable's “clarification” of quadratic equations. She took a deep breath.

“Look—” she began.

“Evans? Johnson?” Mr. Watson's voice rang through the abbey.

Edmund reached into one of his capacious sleeves and produced a rolled parchment.

“There's no time,” he whispered. “Take this! And tell no one!”

He handed it to Steve, and as he did so, a look of relief replaced the worry on his face.

“It is done,” he said.

“No … wait!” Steve looked at the parchment and then back at Edmund, but it was too late. He was already transparent; in another moment he would vanish altogether, gone on his long-delayed journey to the Other Side.

“Evans! Johnson! What the devil are you doing here? Couldn't you hear us calling?”

Mr. Watson had that mix of fury and gratitude that Belladonna had noticed grown-ups frequently had on locating wandering children. She turned toward Mr. Watson and smiled sheepishly.

“Sorry,” she said. “We were just—”

“Listen!” hissed Edmund, suddenly grabbing Steve's right wrist with a surprisingly strong grip. “Always carry the Rod of Gram. That was my error. Always! Do you hear?”

And he was gone. Steve stood frozen for a moment, then hastily shoved the parchment inside his jacket as Mr. Watson strode through the sodden grass in the chapter house.

“You were just what?” he demanded.

“We couldn't hear you,” said Belladonna. “It's really quiet in here.”