Free 2006 - Wildcat Moon by Babs Horton

would be away for a great deal longer than six weeks and good riddance. Maybe, just maybe, Master Jonathan would come home more often and things could be like they used to be.
    “Romilly, come away from the window please.”
    But Romilly hadn’t heard a word she was saying. She was staling at the small boy who was standing in the doorway of the summerhouse, a small boy standing quite extraordinarily still, looking steadfastly back at her.
    “Romilly, do you hear me?” Nanny Bea’s voice was sharp with impatience.
    “Why is there a boy in the summerhouse?”
    Nanny Bea rounded on her, “Don’t be so ridiculous.”
    Romilly didn’t reply, she was too busy watching the boy.
    “I think, Romilly, you are having one of your sillier moments.”
    “I think his name is Thomas Greswode.”
    Nanny Bea stared hard at the child. “Thomas Greswode died before you were born, before even your papa was born.”
    “Who was he?”
    “He was your grandfather’s cousin, I believe, and not a nice boy, not a nice boy at all.”
    “But he only looks about the same age as me.”
    Nanny Bea stepped up to the window and looked fearfully down towards the dilapidated summerhouse.
    There was no sign of a boy. How could there possibly be?
    She looked at the child with concern. Romilly was transfixed as if she could really see someone.
    “He’s smiling at me,” she said in a faraway voice. “I think he’d like to be my friend.”
    “Well, I won’t be smiling at you if you don’t come away from that window this instant and put an end to this nonsense.”
    Romilly turned away from the window and followed Nanny Bea obediently across the hallway without a murmur.
    Nanny Bea needed a drop of medicinal brandy. Hearing Thomas Greswode’s name mentioned after all this time had made her feel quite out of sorts.
    Archie Grimble woke with a start. He was stiff and sore and his brain felt as though it was wrapped tightly in muslin, like a boiled pudding.
    He sat up and touched the back of his head gingerly; there was a bump there the size of a gooseberry. He scrabbled around for his spectacles, found them and put them on.
    One lens was cracked and it took some moments for his eyes to get used to the dim light. He looked around him and gasped.
    He’d expected to see the familiar surroundings of his bedroom but he realized with a shudder that he had spent the night on the floor of the wobbly chapel.
    He wriggled out from a black cloak that was wrapped tightly around him and tried to stand but his legs were too weak. He slumped back down onto the floor and cradled his head in his hands. His thoughts were all jumbled up as though he were half in the real world and half in a dream.
    He could vaguely remember putting the key in the lock and coming inside the chapel but after that his thoughts were all blurred up.
    He remembered being afraid because someone had tried to get into the chapel. He’d gone down some steep steps, then stumbled over something in the dark and fell.
    That must have been when he’d banged his head.
    He winced now as he remembered falling, then hitting the water and going down and down.
    His feet touching the sea bed, cheeks puffed out with air, eyes bulging, fighting desperately to get to the top. Then the waters parted and he was gasping and coughing. The starlit sky was quivering above him and somehow he’d managed to heave himself up out of the water and onto the rocks.
    He could have drowned. He hadn’t though. He must have swum. Eejit! He couldn’t swim…
    He looked down at his skinny legs; they were crisscrossed with scratches, his pale skin streaked with dried blood.
    Somehow he had dragged his bad leg up over the rocks, miraculously finding his way back up through the hole he had earlier fallen through. Then, trembling, his body racked with cold, sobbing with fear and relief he had found the first of the steep slippery steps that led him back up to the cupboard into the chapel.
    His brain was slowly warming up,