Chill by Alex Nye Read Free Book Online Page A

break.”
    â€œI hope you haven’t left it in a mess?”
    â€œWe’ll get back to it in a minute,” Fiona muttered, her eyes gleaming with anticipation.
    â€œAll right then,” she said irritably, and turned her back on them crossly.
    Charles withdrew into the shadows of the drawing room as they passed, to avoid being seen. He knew they had found something, and wanted to know what it was.
    â€œThe snow is beginning to get to her,” Fiona whispered as they made their way down the staircase and along the corridor to the boot room.
    Across the courtyard Samuel’s cottage was empty. Isabel was buried in her studio again, hammering away at a lumpy piece of metal, a look of pure jubilation on her face. Fiona and Samuel had the privacy they needed.
    They went along to Samuel’s small end room, closed thedoor, sat on the bed and began to examine their find. The writing was faded and difficult to read, with a language and spelling that wasn’t entirely familiar to them, but with careful patience they managed to decipher what it had to say. A girl spoke to them from the past, a twelve-year-old girl with a story to tell.
    The nineteenth day of April 1708
    My name is Catherine Morton. To mark my twelfth birthdy I have decided to begin a journal. This is it. From now on, whativer I have to say, I will say it betwixt these pages.
    I have lived at Dunadd all my life, and I have a suspicion I will die heer.
    My bedroom is up in the tower, above the staircase, where none other can reach me. I have two older brothers, who tease me more than they oghte. I keepe to myself.
    The house is verie old. It has stoode on this muir for hundreds of years. It has been in my family for generations, a legacy stretching far back into the past.
    Needless to say, I am supposed to be educated as a lady. That is to say not educated at all, in fact, except to sit nicely and sew with a nete hand. But I’m fortunate in that we live so remote from society that I’m allowed to run free, within reason. There are the gardens, the woodes, the boating pond, and of course the muir itself, stretching away into endless emptiness like the sea lapping around an island.
    Instead of sewing my sampler as I oghte, I spend my time in the hills. My brothers and I whittle bows and arrows for ourselves,and play games. Sometimes these games can become dedly earnest. My brothers are not the most patient and mild-mannered of people, but I know how to handle them. It is their wish to bully me, but I have a manner of making them feart. They think I’m a witch because I hear voices sometimes. There are voices in the house, you see. I hear them, a boy and a girl, laughing, fighting, squeals of delight, sometimes quarrelling. Even banging. I am woken at night by their antics.
    This afternoon I was in the drawing room, stitching my sampler because it was raining and we were not able to go outside to play, and I heard them again. A faint tinkle of laughter. Wicked. As if bottled-up. I looked up from my sewing and there was silence suddenly. No more voices again after that.
    Mrs Fletcher was busy bustling about in the room behind me, and she tutted and said “Aye, that’s right. It’s good to see thee stitching thy sampler for a change, stead of gallivanting about that muir. Thou shalt have to grow accustomed to quiet pastimes now thou art growing up.”
    I tried not to mind at her words. I don’t think I like the idea of growing up.
    For my birthday I was given this booke, a leather-bound volume. Mother taught me to read and write, and she considers it will be good for me to keepe a journal.
    I shall not let anyone read it, however. I am afeared they would not be plesed if they culd see what is written betwixt these pages. Mrs Fletcher says that Mother has new-fangled ideas in teaching a wee slip of a lass to read and write, and that my father would strongly disapprove if he knew. Thankfully he is too busy to notice. So