The chosen victim will die within the year, because his spirit has been stolen from him and it will be compelled to guard the building for ever. Lincoln That vile old crone, Eadhild, is following me. I try to keep her at bay by avoiding the Greesen steps of an evening, even though it deprives me of the chance to meet the other ghosts who loiter there. When the charming Catlin and the beautiful little Leonia are safely abed, I drift instead to the Newport arch through which the Roman soldiers forever march. But they’re hardly good company. I understand little of what they’re saying. The Latin I dimly remember my tutor thrashing into me seems a foreign language to these fellows and, besides, they’ll no more break ranks in death than they did in life. I wonder if they know they’re dead. But Eadhild has found me, sliding her rotting hand between my thighs and tilting her head coquettishly to one side, asking if I wouldn’t fancy a stroll through the graveyard. I don’t know how she died or why she haunts the Greesen, and I’m afraid to ask in case she thinks I’m interested in her, which, most emphatically, I am not.
