Chill Page 13

  Fiona looked towards the door of the room where her father died. He’d had a weak heart they said, but something had hastened him on his way.

  “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” Samuel said quietly.

  Fiona’s face was white. “Charles and Seb?” she whispered.

  He nodded.

  “It’s as if they’re doomed already.”

  “We have to find her grave before tomorrow,” Samuel whispered.

  “D’you think it’ll do any good?” Fiona said doubtfully.

  “It might.”

  They imagined the unhappy people who had lived in this house, and the ghost they had left behind. The ghost of one young woman, who couldn’t rest in peace.

  Samuel closed the book, disappointed.

  “Well, we still don’t know enough,” he said. “We don’t know where she’s buried.”

  He reached up to replace the great leather book on the table. As he did so, he dropped it and it fell open on the floor with a heavy thud, its cover bent backwards.

  “Careful!” Fiona hissed, grabbing at the volume.

  Then she stopped, intrigued. A bundle of papers that had been pressed into the back of the book had slid out from between its pages and fluttered to the floor. She picked them up, Samuel watching her, and carefully, gently, so that they wouldn’t break apart, she unfolded one or two of them.

  “What are they?” Samuel asked.

  “I don’t know. Letters, I think.”

  The writing was very faded, and on closer examination they appeared to contain a lot of boring information about household expenses and domestic arrangements. What had seemed such an exciting find was nothing more than shopping lists, receipts, bills, lists of expenditure, that kind of thing. The signature at the bottom caught their attention – Lady Cecilia. It was she who had written these documents, plotting the finances of a busy thriving household. It would have been her duty to do so.

  Samuel sighed. “It’s amazing.” He peered closer at the lists of figures, next to words like flour and salt. “Boring, though. Pity she couldn’t have written down something more exciting to do with her daughter’s death.”

  It was disappointing. Once they had noticed Lady Cecilia’s signature they had both secretly hoped to discover some intimate account of how she had felt about the whole experience, her own thoughts and views on the subject of her daughter’s “disobedience.” But there was no such thing.

  “Sir Douglas Morton must have come across these documents,” Fiona mused “and thought they ought to be preserved, I suppose. More history about the house …”

  “Wait …”

  One of the documents stood out from the rest. Samuel laid it out flat and studied it for a moment.

  “What is it?”

  “A map.”

  “But what of?”

  The markings were faded, but they could still make out the delicately-etched drawings of trees, a small cluster of buildings, and a familiar house with a tower. The whole thing had been hand-drawn on a piece of parchment and was an amateurish effort, but interesting nevertheless. At the top was a date, 1716.

  “It’s a map of Dunadd,” Fiona said. “Look, there’s your cottage.”

  They studied the map of Dunadd as it used to be in 1716, just after the time of the battle, noting the changes and the positioning of trees, boundaries and buildings. They saw a curving blue line to represent the Wharry Burn, and a watermill they hadn’t known was there, a small settlement of cottages, a schoolhouse, a flour mill, a farm and a smithy. It was a thriving centre, a community so different from what they knew today. They stared, fascinated. In the top left-hand corner of the map, they saw a small cross, and beneath it the letter K.

  “What does that mean?”

  Fiona shrugged.

  “Wait,” Samuel said, and began flicking through the other documents. In the list of expenditures he came across the sentence “thirteen ells of cloth for Kitty’s raiment.”

  “Kitty? Who was Kitty?”

  They stared at each other in silence, and realization dawned.

  “We’ve found her,” Samuel breathed. “We’ve found Catherine Morton.”

  An Unmarked Grave

  From an upstairs window Charles watched his sister make her way beneath the bare trees with Samuel. He could see the tracks of their footprints in the snow, black marks that stood out clearly against the surrounding white.

  He stood up swiftly, and hurried down the winding stone staircase of the tower.

  Fiona and Samuel bore their latest treasure, the map of the unmarked grave, out into the garden. The silent shadows of the empty house seemed to wait for them to pass, as if they knew that something of significance was happening.

  Outside, they unfolded the map, and looked carefully at the markings.

  “It looks different,” Fiona said. “There were more buildings then.”

  By the look of it Dunadd Estate used to be a busy and industrious place, with twenty or so workers living cheek by jowl in freezing-cold tiny cottages.

  They stood at the back of the outbuildings, bearing the map between them, turning it this way and that, measuring distances. “You can see the foundation stones of these cottages in the grass behind your cottage,” Fiona said. “When there’s no snow, of course.” The building had once been divided into three dwellings, where whole families were crowded into one room, with a few rolls of peat or a log fire to keep them from freezing in the long winter months.

  “There was a watermill here,” Samuel said, pointing at the map. “The burn was bigger then and used to run right through Dunadd. It must have powered the mill.”

  They followed the markings, trying to imagine how different life on the estate must have been then, three hundred years ago.

  Above their heads came a dripping sound. The icicles that had hung on the trees for weeks were slowly beginning to melt.

  “Looks like the big freeze might be over soon,” Samuel murmured, a little wistfully.

  According to the map Catherine was buried on the edge of Dunadd, on Glentye, the hill just above Dunadd.

  They followed the map’s pointers and strode under the beech trees along a bumpy track. It ended in a wide five-bar gate leading out onto open countryside.

  They stood in the wind and listened to it sighing in the branches above them. They could see the Highland line from here, the range of snow-capped mountains, with the nearer peaks looming up large on the horizon.

  One grey boulder stood at the spot, embedded in the ground, the only marker to show where Catherine’s grave lay. No doubt her mother, Lady Cecilia would have wanted to lay flowers here. Would they have refused to talk about her, a forbidden subject too painful to mention? After all, she had been buried, with her baby, just beyond the gardens of Dunadd, like being placed permanently outside of Paradise.

  “Tomorrow is 13th January,” Fiona said softly. “The anniversary of their deaths. We can have our ceremony, after all.”

  They looked at one another, but even as she spoke she realized they were not alone. Charles had appeared behind them, as silently and stealthily as a fox in the shadows. He stood framed by the trees. They stared at him, and he stared back, his head full of the things he couldn’t say.

  “What’s going on?” he whispered hoarsely, eyeing Samuel.

  Fiona instinctively stepped between them. “He’s only trying to help,” she began.

  “Help? How d’you make that one out?”

  “Listen Charles. You have to listen. We’ve found out about the weeping woman.”

  “She’s right, Charles,” Samuel murmured. “Listen to her.”

  “This is where she’s buried,” Fiona cried, trying to get through to her brother. “Catherine Morton.”

  “I know,” Charles said, his voice cold.

  She stared at him. “What d’you mean, you know?”

  “I know about the curse,” he muttered. “I’ve read the journal. I’ve got a letter Dad wrote.” From out of his pocket
he produced a piece of paper that had been folded into quarters.

  She looked shocked. “A letter?”

  Charles nodded. “A letter he wrote the day he died.”

  “But how did you …?”

  “Same reason as you, I guess. I’ve been snooping around too.” Then he eyed Samuel boldly. “We can all play at that game.”

  “What does it say?” Fiona breathed.

  He passed it to her. “Read it for yourself.”

  As Fiona read the letter there was a silence between the three of them as they stood in the cold wind, their backs to it.

  “I read the journal. I saw the things you took from the library. I followed you to Lynns Farm. I’ve been making my own search …”

  “Then you know the full story …?”

  “We’re trying to put her to rest,” Samuel murmured.

  Charles laughed. “Put her to rest. And you really think that’ll work?”

  “Why not?” Fiona said. “It’s better than doing nothing.”

  “We can’t change anything,” Charles said darkly, and it was only now that Fiona realized how much her brother had been suffering, how his eyes were ringed with shadows, from too many sleepless nights. “I have dreams,” he murmured. “Like Dad did … She says things. She stands at the foot of my bed, and speaks to me. You don’t want to hear what she says,” he adds, laughing in spite of himself.

  Fiona and Samuel were silent. They didn’t know what to say.

  “She’ll kill me one day,” he breathed quietly. “And Seb too.”

  “Not if we make amends for the past,” Fiona whispered.

  But perhaps Mr MacFarlane was right. Maybe the sufferings of the past could never be resolved. “The past just is,” he had said.

  “We shouldn’t have kept all this from you,” she said softly, looking at her brother. “Perhaps we should have let you in on it at the beginning. We’ve been searching for clues to find out who she was, exactly, and why she was so sad.”

  “And did you?”

  Fiona nodded. “She was in love with a farmer’s son from Lynns Farm, the boy she mentions in the journal. Patrick MacFarlane. Her father and brothers refused to let her marry him, so she married him in secret. The family never acknowledged the marriage and locked her up in the house. He died fighting alongside the MacRae clan in the Battle of Sheriffmuir, while she watched the battle from an upstairs window. Two months later she died giving birth to a little boy who didn’t survive. She died of grief.”

  Even Charles was shocked into silence by this bleak little account.

  “I didn’t know that,” he murmured quietly. “I didn’t know the rest of the story.”

  He looked down at the unmarked stone on the ground. The wind blew across the surface of the snow, stirring up powdery spirals, making a sad sound like a sigh.

  Anniversary of the Dead

  Samuel, Fiona, Charles and Sebastian gathered by the trees on the edge of Dunadd the next day. Despite the thaw the ground was still hard. They cleared away the snow and began to dig. They had one spade between them, and took turns in striking the earth.

  When a big enough hole had been dug, they bowed their heads as the cold wind drove damp snow into their eyes. Fiona bent down and laid the carved ebony box in the ground. It contained the worn leather bag, the silver ring and the piece of tartan, as well as the slender bejewelled dagger, which Mr MacFarlane had given them. They had considered adding the pages of Catherine’s journal to the treasures as well, but decided against it in the end. They didn’t want her voice to be silenced for all time. The twelve-year-old Catherine had too much to say, and had never had the opportunity to say it.

  Archaeologists and historians would have been glad of these artefacts, and would have happily displayed them in a museum, but the children knew they were precious for other reasons. When Patrick MacFarlane died in battle, they were all that Catherine had left of him – and she had cherished them. Although Patrick wasn’t buried at this spot, the children felt that the dagger would represent him in some way, a symbol of his spirit, bringing the two together again.

  Now the children laid these objects in the ground. They marked the spot with a small wooden cross on which they had written the words, “Here lie the remains of Catherine Morton and her son. Died 13th January 1716. Reunited in spirit at last with Patrick MacFarlane of Lynns Farm.”

  Fiona muttered a prayer, a psalm beginning “The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures …”

  It was trying to snow again, despite the thaw, and they shivered inside their coats. As the boughs of the trees bent in the wind, it was almost as if Sheriffmuir had remained unchanged, as if they were standing at Dunadd as it used to be three hundred years ago. As if the past three hundred years had never happened, and Catherine and her little baby had died only that morning.

  Fiona placed a small twist of dried lavender beside the cross, left over from last year. There were no fresh flowers to be had on Sheriffmuir yet.

  Then they shovelled earth back over the grave, burying the box and its hidden treasures. Charles hung his head, staring at the ground, his brow furrowed.

  “D’you think it’ll work?” Sebastian said. The Mortons looked at one another and Charles shrugged.

  “I think so,” Fiona murmured.

  They stood for a moment or two in silence, then they turned and walked away, leaving the twist of dried lavender and the cross lying in the snow. A chill breeze still blew, and a disembodied voice seemed to whisper in the trees above, an answering prayer of gratitude … but neither the Mortons nor Samuel heard it.

  The day after they buried the ebony box, Samuel was finally able to go to school. An uneasy peace had been established at Dunadd, and Samuel regretted the fact that it was the end of the holiday. He was beginning to get used to it, being trapped on the moor. It had been a Christmas to remember!

  “Well,” his mother said as she drove him across the empty moor. Dirty piles of brown snow were heaped on either side of the road, where the snowplough had finally cut a path through. “You get to see your new school at last. I thought I was never going to get rid of you.”

  He gazed out of the window, his school bag at his feet, and said nothing.

  “Back to reality,” she said, grasping the steering wheel.

  Samuel turned his head. Through the beech trees he caught a sudden glimpse of Dunadd, its white tower and turrets, the connecting stone archways, and the rooftop of their own little cottage. “I know one thing,” he said suddenly, and his mother looked at him in surprise. “I’m glad we live on Sheriffmuir.”

  She raised her eyebrows, and turned to face the front. “I never thought I’d hear you say that.”

  Fiona was right when she expressed the hope that their little ceremony would work. They never saw or heard the Weeping Woman again. They believed they had buried her memory for good. Besides, she was no longer the Weeping Woman but had become Catherine Morton, who now lay buried with relics of her would-be husband, Patrick MacFarlane, and their son. The family who might have been but never were.

  And Charles was no longer tormented by visions or dreams of her. His room at the top of the tower had become quiet … for now.

  As for the papers torn from Catherine’s journal, these were given to a museum in Edinburgh, and are preserved behind glass. Catherine’s diary entries are displayed, page by page, and kept in a controlled atmosphere so that they cannot deteriorate any further. Tourists stand and read what she has to say, and comment on what a bright and intelligent twelve-year-old she must have been.

  Whenever Samuel and Fiona visited the exhibition, they felt proud of their own involvement in the discovery. If it hadn’t been for them, another little piece of history would have been lost.

  On one particular visit they peered through the glass at the familiar faded handwriting, gently spot-lit from above. The pages were pinned open like the wings of a butterfly, crisp with age. A white rectangle of card described what w
as on view.

  Behind them a middle-aged woman leaned forward.

  “Read this, Geoffrey,” she called to her husband. “What an intimate little account? It would make a fabulous story, wouldn’t it?”

  Samuel and Fiona exchanged glances.

  “Mmm,” Geoffrey murmured, pushing his bifocals up the bridge of his nose. He read in silence for a moment. “Spirited young woman. How old was she? Good Lord, only twelve years old.”

  “Come on,” Fiona said quietly. “Time for a break.”

  As they wandered off to the coffee shop Samuel grinned with satisfaction.

  “What’s up with you?” she asked.

  “I was just thinking – Catherine Morton has had her say at last. Her views are finally listened to.”

  Fiona was quiet. She was thinking about a passage she had just read that had given her pause for thought. “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.”

  Fiona stood still in the middle of the bright glass atrium. Samuel was rushing ahead of her and had chosen a table.

  “Look,” he called. “I’ve got the one with comfy sofas,” and he threw himself into a squashy chair, looking gleeful. But Fiona was distracted. She hurried to catch up with him.

  “Samuel?” she began …

  Author’s Note

  I would like to acknowledge certain invaluable sources of information, used when researching this book. The information on page 97 was based on The Jacobites, Anthony Kamm, National Museums Scotland Publishing, 1995, (p.15), and the quotation on page 97 was taken from The Street and Place Names of Dunblane and District, Archie McKerracher, Stirling District Council, 1992, (p.43). The information on page 96 was also based on The Street and Place Names of Dunblane and District.