“That,” said Silas, “was a very rude thing to say. I think you should apologize, don’t you?”
Bod didn’t, but Silas was looking at him and Silas was carrying his black bag, and about to leave for no one knew how long, so he said, “I’m sorry, Miss Lupescu.”
At first she said nothing in reply. She merely sniffed. Then she said, “I have come a long way to look after you, boy. I hope you are worth it.”
Bod could not imagine hugging Silas, so he held out his hand and Silas bent over and gently shook it, engulfing Bod’s small, grubby hand with his huge, pale one. Then, lifting his black leather bag as if it were weightless, he walked down the path and out of the graveyard.
Bod told his parents about it.
“Silas has gone,” he said.
“He’ll be back,” said Mr. Owens, cheerfully. “Don’t you worry your head about that, Bod. Like a bad penny, as they say.”
Mrs. Owens said, “Back when you were born he promised us that if he had to leave, he would find someone else to bring you food and keep an eye on you, and he has. He’s so reliable.”
Silas had brought Bod food, true, and left it in the crypt each night for him to eat, but this was, as far as Bod was concerned, the least of the things that Silas did for him. He gave advice, cool, sensible, and unfailingly correct; he knew more than the graveyard folk did, for his nightly excursions into the world outside meant that he was able to describe a world that was current, not hundreds of years out of date; he was unflappable and dependable, had been there every night of Bod’s life, so the idea of the little chapel without its only inhabitant was one that Bod found difficult to conceive of; most of all, he made Bod feel safe.
Miss Lupescu also saw her job as more than bringing Bod food. She did that too, though.
“What is that?” asked Bod, horrified.
“Good food,” said Miss Lupescu. They were in the crypt. She had put two plastic containers on the tabletop, and opened the lids. She pointed to the first: “Is beetroot-barley-stew-soup.” She pointed to the second. “Is salad. Now, you eat both. I make them for you.”
Bod stared up at her to see if this was a joke. Food from Silas mostly came in packets, purchased from the kind of places that sold food late at night and asked no questions. No one had ever brought him food in a plastic container with a lid before. “It smells horrible,” he said.
“If you do not eat the stew-soup soon,” she said, “it will be more horrible. It will be cold. Now eat.”
Bod was hungry. He took a plastic spoon, dipped it into the purple-red stew, and he ate. The food was slimy and unfamiliar, but he kept it down.
“Now the salad!” said Miss Lupescu, and she unpopped the top of the second container. It consisted of large lumps of raw onion, beetroot, and tomato, all in a thick vinegary dressing. Bod put a lump of beetroot into his mouth and started to chew. He could feel the saliva gathering, and realized that if he swallowed it, he would throw it back up. He said, “I can’t eat this.”
“Is good for you.”
“I’ll be sick.”
They stared at each other, the small boy with tousled, mousy hair, the pinched pale woman with not a silver hair out of place. Miss Lupescu said, “You eat one more piece.”
“I can’t.”
“You eat one more piece now, or you stay here until you have eaten it all.”
Bod picked out a piece of vinegary tomato, chewed it, and choked it down. Miss Lupescu put the tops back on the containers and replaced them in the plastic shopping bag. She said, “Now, lessons.”
It was high summer. It would not get fully dark until almost midnight. There were no lessons in high summer—the time that Bod spent awake he spent in an endless warm twilight in which he would play or explore or climb.
“Lessons?” he said.
“Your guardian felt it would be good for me to teach you things.”
“I have teachers. Letitia Borrows teaches me writing and words, and Mr. Pennyworth teaches me his Compleat Educational System for Younger Gentlemen with Additional Material for Those Post Mortem. I do geography and everything. I don’t need more lessons.”
“You know everything, then, boy? Six years old, and already you know everything.”
“I didn’t say that.”
Miss Lupescu folded her arms. “Tell me about ghouls,” she said.
Bod tried to remember what Silas had told him about ghouls over the years. “Keep away from them,” he said.
“And that is all you know? Da? Why do you keep away from them? Where do they come from? Where do they go? Why do you not stand near a ghoul-gate? Eh, boy?”
Bod shrugged and shook his head.
“Name the different kinds of people,” said Miss Lupescu. “Now.”