The Graveyard Book

“You can’t get in. It’s locked. They all are.”

“Can you get in?”

“Of course.”

“Why can’t I?”

“The graveyard,” he explained. “I got the Freedom of the Graveyard. It lets me go places.”

“I want to go in the stone house and make little houses.”

“You can’t.”

“You’re just mean.”

“Not.”

“Meany.”

“Not.”

Scarlett put her hands into the pocket of her anorak and walked down the hill without saying good-bye, convinced that Bod was holding out on her, and at the same time suspecting that she was being unfair, which made her angrier.

That night, over dinner, she asked her mother and father if there was anyone in the country before the Romans came.

“Where did you hear about the Romans?” asked her father.

“Everybody knows,” said Scarlett, with withering scorn. “Was there?”

“There were Celts,” said her mother. “They were here first. They go back before the Romans. They were the people that the Romans conquered.”

On the bench beside the old chapel, Bod was having a similar conversation.

“The oldest?” said Silas. “Honestly, Bod, I don’t know. The oldest in the graveyard that I’ve encountered is Caius Pompeius. But there were people here before the Romans came. Lots of them, going back a long time. How are your letters coming along?”

“Good, I think. When do I learn joined-up letters?”

Silas paused. “I have no doubt,” he said, after a moment’s reflection, “that there are, among the many talented individuals interred here, at least a smattering of teachers. I shall make inquiries.”

Bod was thrilled. He imagined a future in which he could read everything, in which all stories could be opened and discovered.

When Silas had left the graveyard to go about his own affairs, Bod walked to the willow tree beside the old chapel, and called Caius Pompeius.

The old Roman came out of his grave with a yawn. “Ah. Yes. The living boy,” he said. “How are you, living boy?”

Bod said, “I do very well, sir.”

“Good. I am pleased to hear it.” The old Roman’s hair was pale in the moonlight, and he wore the toga in which he had been buried, with, beneath it, a thick woolen vest and leggings because this was a cold country at the edge of the world, and the only place colder was Caledonia to the North, where the men were more animal than human and covered in orange fur, and were too savage even to be conquered by the Romans, so would soon be walled off in their perpetual winter.

“Are you the oldest?” asked Bod.

“The oldest in the graveyard? I am.”

“So you were the first to be buried here?”

A hesitation. “Almost the first,” said Caius Pompeius. “Before the Celts there were other people on this island. One of them was buried here.”

“Oh.” Bod thought for a moment. “Where’s his grave?”