I remembered what the Spook had once told me soon after he took me on as his apprentice. He’d spoken it with such conviction that I’d committed it to memory.

‘Above all, we don’t believe in prophecy. We don’t believe that the future is fixed.’

I badly wanted to believe what the Spook said because, if Mam was right, one of us – the Spook, Alice or I – would die below in the dark. But the letter in my hand told me beyond a shadow of all doubt that prophecy was possible. How else could Mam have known that the Spook and Alice would be down in the burial chamber now about to face the Bane? And how had it happened that I’d read her letter at just the right time?

Instinct? Was that enough to explain it? I shivered and felt more afraid than at any time since I’d started working for the Spook. I felt as if I were walking in a nightmare where everything had been decided in advance and I could do nothing and had no choice at all. How could there be a choice, when to leave Alice and the Spook and walk away would result in their deaths?

And there was another reason why I had to go down into the catacombs again. The curse. Was that why the Spook had slapped me? Was he angry because he secretly believed in it and was afraid? All the more reason to help. Mam had once told me that he’d be my teacher and eventually become my friend. Whether that time had arrived or not it was hard to say but I was certainly more of a friend to him than Alice was and the Spook needed me!

When I left the yard and walked into the alley, it was still raining but the skies were quiet. I sensed that more thunder was to come and we were in what my dad calls ‘the eye of the storm’. It was then that, in the relative silence, I heard the cathedral bell. It wasn’t the mournful sound that I’d heard from Andrew’s house, tolling for the priest who’d killed himself. It was a bright, hopeful bell summoning the congregation to the evening service.

So I waited in the alley, leaning back against a wall to avoid the worst of the rain. I don’t know why I bothered because I was already soaked to the skin. At last the bell stopped ringing, which I hoped meant that everybody was now inside the cathedral and out of the way. So I began to head slowly towards it too.

I turned the corner and walked down towards the gate. The light was starting to fail, and the black clouds were still piled up overhead. Then the sky suddenly lit up with a sheet of lightning and I saw that the area in front of the cathedral was completely deserted. I could see the building’s dark exterior with its big buttresses and its tall pointy windows. There was candlelight illuminating the stained glass, and in the window to the left of the door was the image of St George dressed in armour, holding a sword and a shield with a red cross. On the right was St Peter, standing in front of a fishing boat. And in the centre, over the door, was the malevolent carving of the Bane, the gargoyle head glaring towards me.

The saint I was named after wasn’t there. Thomas the Doubter. Thomas the Disbeliever. I didn’t know whether it was my mam or my dad who’d chosen that name but they’d chosen it well. I didn’t believe what the Church believed; one day I’d be buried outside a churchyard, not in it. Once I became a spook, my bones could never rest in holy ground. But it didn’t bother me in the slightest. As the Spook often said, priests knew nothing.

I could hear singing from inside the cathedral. Probably the choir I’d heard practising after I visited Father Cairns in his confessional. For a moment I envied them their religion. They were lucky to have something they could all believe in together. It was easier to be inside the cathedral with all those people than to go down into the damp, cold catacombs alone.

I walked across the flags and onto the wide gravel path that ran parallel to the north wall of the church. Instantly, as I was about to turn the corner, my heart lurched up into my mouth. There was somebody sitting down opposite the hatch with his back against the wall, sheltering from the rain. At his side was a stout wooden club. It was one of the churchwardens.

I almost groaned aloud. I should have expected that. After all those prisoners had escaped they’d be worried about security – and their cellar full of wine and ale.

I was filled with despair and almost gave up there and then, but just as I turned, about to tiptoe away, I heard a sound and listened again until I was sure. But I hadn’t been mistaken. It was the sound of snoring. The warden was asleep! How on earth could he have slept through all that thunder?

Hardly able to believe my luck, I walked towards the hatch very, very slowly, trying not to let my boots crunch on the gravel, worrying that the warden might wake up at any moment and I’d have to run for it.

I felt a lot better when I got closer. There were two empty bottles of wine nearby. He was probably drunk and unlikely to wake up for some time. However, I still couldn’t take any chances. I knelt and inserted Andrew’s key into the lock very carefully. A moment later I’d pulled the hatch open and lowered myself down onto the barrels below before easing it carefully back into place.

I still had my tinderbox and a stub of candle that I always carried about with me. It didn’t take me long to light it. Now I could see – but I still didn’t know how I was going to find the burial chamber.

CHAPTER 21

A Sacrifice I picked my way through the barrels and wine racks until I came to the door that led to the catacombs. By my reckoning it was less than fifteen minutes or so before nightfall so I didn’t have long. I knew that as soon as the sun went down, my master would make Alice summon the Bane for the final time.

The Spook would try to stab the Bane through the heart with his blade but he would only get one chance. If he succeeded, the energy released would probably kill him. It was brave of him to be prepared to sacrifice his life, but if he missed, Alice would also suffer. Realizing it had been tricked, and was now trapped behind the Silver Gate for ever, the Bane would be furious; Alice and my master would certainly both pay with their lives if it wasn’t destroyed quickly enough. It would press their bodies into the cobbles.

At the bottom of the steps I paused. Which way should I go? Immediately my question was answered: one of Dad’s sayings came into my head.

‘Always put your best foot forward!’

Well, my best foot was my left foot so, rather than taking the tunnel directly ahead, the one that led to the Silver Gate and the underground river beyond it, I followed the one to the left. This was narrow, just wide enough to allow one person through, and it curved and sloped steeply downwards so that I had a sense of descending a spiral.

The deeper I went, the colder it got and I knew that the dead were gathering. I kept glimpsing things out of the corner of my eye: the ghosts of the Little People, small shapes hardly more than glimmers of light that kept moving in and out of the tunnel walls. And I had a suspicion that there were more behind me than in front – a feeling that they were following me; that we were all moving down towards the burial chamber.

At last I saw a flicker of candlelight ahead and I emerged into the burial chamber. It was smaller than I’d expected, a circular room perhaps no more than twenty paces in diameter. There was a high shelf above, recessed into the rock, and on it were the large stone urns that held the remains of the ancient dead. At the centre of the ceiling was a roughly circular opening like a chimney, a dark hole into which the candlelight couldn’t reach. From that hole dangled chains and a hook.

Water was dripping from the stone ceiling and the walls were covered in green slime. There was a strong stench too: a mixture of rot and stagnant water.