Pitman had always believed that ghosts were nothing but Catholic superstition; that none would rise from their graves to walk again until the last trump sounded and Christ returned to judge both the quick and the dead.
Well, bugger I, he thought, I’ve turned Papist. For there are ghosts before me now.
He watched them from where he lay in the playhouse corridor, each figure shimmering white and moving as slowly as if underwater, their every sound half-drowned, barely piercing the sharp whine that had taken near all his hearing. Yet this was not unfamiliar, this scene, this sound, and he suddenly recalled the cannon that had exploded next to him on the ramparts at Brentford. It had made ghosts of all its crew and nearly him as well though he didn’t see them.
And the king hadn’t been there
