‘Good. Well done, lad. Now, tell me, do you still feel scared?’
‘A bit. I don’t like being so close to him.’
‘Why? There’s nothing to be afraid of. Nothing that can hurt you. Think about what it must have been like for him. Concentrate on him rather than yourself. How must he have felt? What would be the worst thing?’
I tried to put myself in the soldier’s place and imagine how it must have been to die like that. The pain and the struggle for breath would have been terrible. But there might have been something even worse…
‘He’d have known he was dying and that he’d never be able to go home again. That he’d never see his family again,’ I told the Spook.
With those words a wave of sadness washed over me. Then, even as that happened, the hanging men slowly began to disappear, until we were alone on the hillside and the leaves were back on the trees. ‘How do you feel now? Still afraid?’ I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘I just feel sad.’ ‘Well done, lad. You’re learning. We’re the seventh sons of seventh sons and we have the gift of seeing things that others can’t. But that gift can sometimes be a curse. If we’re afraid, sometimes there are things that can feed on that fear. Fear makes it worse for us. The trick is to concentrate on what you can see and stop thinking about yourself. It works every time.
‘It was a terrible sight, lad, but they’re just ghasts,’ continued the Spook. ‘There’s nothing much we can do about them and they’ll just fade away in their own time. In a hundred years or so there’ll be nothing left.’
I felt like telling him that Mam did something about them once, but I didn’t. To contradict him would have got us off to a bad start.
‘Now if they were ghosts, that would be different,’ said the Spook. ‘You can talk to ghosts and tell them what’s what. Just making them realize that they’re dead is a great kindness and an important step in getting them to move on. Usually a ghost is a bewildered spirit trapped on this earth but not knowing what’s happened. So often they’re in torment. Then again, others are here with a definite purpose and they might have things to tell you. But a ghast is just a fragment of a soul that’s gone on to better things. That’s what these are, lad. Just ghasts. You saw the trees change?’
‘The leaves fell and it was winter.’
‘Well, the leaves are back now. So you were just looking at something from the past. Just a reminder of the evil things that sometimes happen on this earth. Usually, if you’re brave, they can’t see you and they don’t feel anything. A ghast is just like a reflection in a pond that stays behind when its owner has moved on. Understand what I’m saying?’
I nodded.
‘Right, so that’s one thing sorted out. We’ll be dealing with the dead from time to time, so you might as well get used to them. Anyway, let’s get started. We’ve quite a way to go. Here, from now on you’ll be carrying this.’
The Spook handed me his big leather bag and without a backwards glance headed back up the hill. I followed him over its crest, then down through the trees towards the road, which was a distant grey scar meandering its way south through the green and brown patchwork of fields.
‘Done much travelling, lad?’ the Spook called back over his shoulder. ‘Seen much of the County?’
I told him I’d never been more than six miles from my dad’s farm. Going to the local market was the most travelling I’d ever done.
The Spook muttered something under his breath and shook his head; I could tell that he wasn’t best pleased by my answer.
‘Well, your travels start today,’ he said. ‘We’re heading south towards a village called Horshaw. It’s just over fifteen miles as the crow flies and we have to be there before dark.’
I’d heard of Horshaw. It was a pit village and had the largest coal yards in the County, holding the output of dozens of surrounding mines. I’d never expected to go there and I wondered what the Spook’s business could be in a place like that.
He walked at a furious pace, taking big, effortless strides. Soon I was struggling to keep up; as well as carrying my own small bundle of clothes and other belongings, I now had his bag, which seemed to be getting heavier by the minute. Then, just to make things worse, it started to rain.
About an hour before noon the Spook came to a sudden halt. He turned round and stared hard at me. By then I was about ten paces behind. My feet were hurting and I’d already developed a slight limp. The road was little more than a track that was quickly turning to mud. Just as I caught him up, I stubbed my toe, slipped and almost lost my balance.
He tutted. ‘Feeling dizzy, lad?’ he asked.
I shook my head. I wanted to give my arm a rest but it didn’t seem right to put his bag down in the mud.
‘That’s good,’ said the Spook with a faint smile, the rain dripping from the edge of his hood down onto his beard. ‘Never trust a man who’s dizzy. That’s something well worth remembering.’
‘I’m not dizzy,’ I protested.
‘No?’ asked the Spook, raising his bushy eyebrows. ‘Then it must be your boots. They won’t be much use in this job.’
My boots were the same as my dad’s and Jack’s, sturdy enough and suitable for the mud and muck of the farmyard, but the kind that needed a lot of getting used to. A new pair usually cost you a fortnight’s blisters before your feet got bedded in.
I looked down at the Spook’s. They were made of strong, good-quality leather and they had extra-thick soles. They must have cost a fortune, but I suppose that for someone who did a lot of walking, they were worth every penny. They flexed as he walked and I just knew that they’d been comfortable from the very first moment he pulled them on.
‘Good boots are important in this job,’ said the Spook. ‘We depend on neither man nor beast to get us where we need to go. If you rely on your own two good legs, then they won’t let you down. So if I finally decide to take you on, I’ll get you a pair of boots just like mine. Until then, you’ll just have to manage as best you can.’
At noon we halted for a short break, sheltering from the rain in an abandoned cattle shed. The Spook took a piece of cloth out of his pocket and unwrapped it, revealing a large lump of yellow cheese.
He broke a bit off and handed it to me. I’d seen worse and I was hungry so I wolfed it down. The Spook only ate a small piece himself before wrapping the rest up again and stuffing it back into his pocket.
Once out of the rain, he’d pulled his hood back so I now had the chance to look at him properly for the first time. Apart from the full beard and the hangman’s eyes, his most noticeable feature was his nose, which was grim and sharp, with a curve to it that suggested a bird’s beak. The mouth, when closed, was almost hidden by that moustache and beard. The beard itself had looked grey at first glance, but when I looked closer, trying to be as casual as possible so that he wouldn’t notice, I saw that most of the colours of the rainbow seemed to be sprouting there. There were shades of red, black, brown and, obviously, lots of grey, but as I came to realize later, it all depended on the light.
‘Weak jaw, weak character,’ my dad always used to say, and he also believed that some men wore beards just to hide that fact. Looking at the Spook though, you could see despite the beard that his jaw was long, and when he opened his mouth he revealed yellow teeth that were very sharp and more suited to gnawing on red meat than nibbling at cheese.
With a shiver, I suddenly realized that he reminded me of a wolf. And it wasn’t just the way he looked. He was a kind of predator because he hunted the dark; living merely on nibbles of cheese would make him always hungry and mean. If I completed my apprenticeship, I’d end up just like him.
‘You still hungry, lad?’ he asked, his green eyes boring hard into my own until I started to feel a bit dizzy.
I was soaked to the skin and my feet were hurting, but most of all I was hungry. So I nodded, thinking he might offer me some more, but he just shook his head and muttered something to himself. Then, once again, he looked at me sharply.