The Graveyard Book

“That’s all very well you saying that,” said Mother Slaughter. “But you comes and you goes and nobody keeps track of you. If you went off for a week, the boy could die.”

“You are a wise woman,” said Silas. “I see why they speak so highly of you.” He couldn’t push the minds of the dead as he could the living, but he could use all the tools of flattery and persuasion he possessed, for the dead are not immune to either. Then he came to a decision. “Very well. If Mr. and Mrs. Owens will be his parents, I shall be his guardian. I shall remain here, and if I need to leave I shall ensure that someone takes my place, bringing the child food and looking after him. We can use the crypt of the chapel,” he added.

“But,” expostulated Josiah Worthington. “But. A human child. A living child. I mean. I mean, I mean. This is a graveyard, not a nursery, blast it.”

“Exactly,” said Silas, nodding. “A very good point, Sir Josiah. I couldn’t have put it better myself. And for that reason, if for no other, it is vital that the child be raised with as little disruption as possible to the, if you’ll forgive the expression, the life of the graveyard.” With that he strolled over to Mrs. Owens, and he looked down at the infant asleep in her arms. He raised an eyebrow. “Does he have a name, Mrs. Owens?”

“Not that his mother told me,” she said.

“Well, then,” said Silas. “His old name won’t be of much use to him now, anyway. There are those out there who mean him harm. Suppose we pick a name for him, eh?”

Caius Pompeius stepped over and eyed the child. “He looks a little like my proconsul, Marcus. We could call him Marcus.”

Josiah Worthington said, “He looks more like my head gardener, Stebbins. Not that I’m suggesting Stebbins as a name. The man drank like a fish.”

“He looks like my nephew Harry,” said Mother Slaughter, and it seemed then as if the whole graveyard was about to join in, each inhabitant offering his or her own comparisons between the infant and someone long forgotten, when Mrs. Owens broke in.

/> “He looks like nobody but himself,” said Mrs. Owens, firmly. “He looks like nobody.”

“Then Nobody it is,” said Silas. “Nobody Owens.”

It was then that, as if responding to the name, the child opened its eyes wide in wakefulness. It stared around it, taking in the faces of the dead, and the mist, and the moon. Then it looked at Silas. Its gaze did not flinch. It looked grave.

“And what kind of a name is Nobody?” asked Mother Slaughter, scandalized.

“His name. And a good name,” Silas told her. “It will help to keep him safe.”

“I don’t want trouble,” said Josiah Worthington. The infant looked up at him and then, hungry or tired or simply missing his home, his family, his world, he screwed up his tiny face and began to cry.

“Leave us,” said Caius Pompeius to Mrs. Owens. “We will discuss this further without you.”

Mrs. Owens waited outside the funeral chapel. It had been decreed over forty years before that the building, in appearance a small church with a spire, was a listed building of historical interest. The town council had decided that it would cost too much to renovate it, a little chapel in an overgrown graveyard that had already become unfashionable, so they had padlocked it, and waited for it to fall down. Ivy covered it, but it was solidly built, and it would not fall down this century.

The child had fallen asleep in Mrs. Owens’s arms. She rocked it gently, sang to it an old song, one her mother had sung to her when she was a baby herself, back in the days when men had first started to wear powdered wigs. The song went,

Sleep my little babby-oh

Sleep until you waken

When you’re grown you’ll see the world

If I’m not mistaken.

Kiss a lover,

Dance a measure,

Find your name

and buried treasure…

And Mrs. Owens sang all that before she discovered that she had forgotten how the song ended. She had a feeling that the final line was something in the way of “and some hairy bacon,” but that might have been another song altogether, so she stopped and instead she sang him the one about the Man in the Moon who came down too soon, and after that she sang, in her warm country voice, a more recent song about a lad who put in his thumb and pulled out a plum, and she had just started a long ballad about a young country gentleman whose girlfriend had, for no particular reason, poisoned him with a dish of spotted eels, when Silas came around the side of the chapel, carrying a cardboard box.

“Here we go, Mistress Owens,” he said. “Lots of good things for a growing boy. We can keep it in the crypt, eh?”

The padlock fell off in his hand and he pulled open the iron door. Mrs. Owens walked inside, looking dubiously at the shelves, and at the old wooden pews tipped up against a wall. There were mildewed boxes of old parish records in one corner, and an open door that revealed a Victorian flush toilet and a basin, with only a cold tap, in the other.

The infant opened his eyes and stared.