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Winter was a frost-clad knight on a snowy steed, demanding his time. Mellow autumn stubbornly refused to concede her place, but her defeat loomed ever closer. Trees, stark and bare, had long shed their summer splendour. The last leaves were falling like November tears onto the grass, and chattering birds played amongst them like excited school children. The damp smoky haze of bonfires curled through the air. Our footsteps rang out on the stone-hard ground, providing a rhythmic counterpoint to the crunch and rustle of autumn’s own acoustics. Bertram, Eleanor’s spaniel, ran with his nose down, gleefully snorting the leaves into the air.
Eleanor told me that the original castle had been complete with moat and drawbridge. When designing this new incarnation of Tenebris, Tynan had considered reinstating those features. In the end, he had decided to build the follylike arched lodge that spanned the start of the sweeping drive. This pretty building was reminiscent of a fairy-tale cottage, with red-tinged creeper growing over the eaves, and mullioned windows that playfully threw the light back at us. Its pointed turrets were a mischievous reminder of the great monument to feudalism that had once adorned this site. As we approached it along the broad sweep of the drive, Eleanor explained various aspects of the estate to me.
“Cad stays here whenever he is home,” Eleanor said when we reached the gatehouse. “Which is not very often. He takes care of my father’s business interests elsewhere.”
“Why does he stay here and not in the main house?” I asked. I was becoming increasingly intrigued by what I heard about Cad Jago. The dangerous image Eddie had given me was at odds with the flint-edged efficiency Tynan ascribed to his younger son’s business dealings.
“Cad is the black sheep of the family.” She giggled slightly in her little-girlish way. “I heard my mother say that once, and I thought it was the funniest expression. It would be hard to imagine anyone less like a sheep than Cad. But, in a family as steeped in villainy as ours, it is quite an achievement to be the outcast!” she added. We paused to admire the view as we rounded a corner of the lodge and Tenebris—the new Tenebris, the family were always at pains to stress—was revealed in its full glory. “He never does what people expect, or want, from him. And besides, I’ve heard him say that there is no privacy up at the main house.” Just why, I wondered, might the second son of the noble house of Athal need privacy from his own family?
When we strolled along the cliff top, I recalled the rider I had seen the previous night. I told Eleanor about him. “Do you know who he was?” I asked, trying to sound nonchalant.
Her expression, which was midway between fear and fascination, surprised me. She cast a swift glance over her shoulder, then back at me as though weighing me up. “The man you have described has been seen now and then by servants and visitors. I have not seen him myself,” she told me quietly, linking her arm through mine and directing our steps toward a series of steep steps hewn into the rocks. We paused at the top, gazing down at the pretty cove below. “No one knows who he is or where he comes from. But it would be best not to mention you have seen him to my mama,” she added. “His description reminds her of someone she once knew. Someone I believe she has no desire to be reminded of.”
As we approached Port Isaac, Eleanor commenced an oddly stilted history of the picturesque harbour town and the surrounding area. “We are on the coastal edge of Bodmin Moor here,” she explained. “The whole area is hilly with deep valleys where streams run down to meet the sea. Port Isaac is in one of those valleys. Yzack is ‘corn’ in the Cornish language. So the name means ‘corn port.’ It was registered as a fishing village in 1340 and that is still the main trade, but the harbour is very busy with cargos of stone, coal, timber and pottery. My father calls it a rare sheltered haven on an otherwise inhospitable coast.” I couldn’t help reflecting that she sounded like a bored child, one who has learned a recitation off by heart. Her words did not do justice to the wild beauty of this place.
Bertram ran ahead of us down the tight, twisting path, while I enjoyed the feeling of stepping back in time. This was what England had looked and felt like centuries ago. This was the medieval heart of the land my mother called home. Beautiful, quirky and mellow. But there was also a disturbing undercurrent of drama. This was also a land of smugglers, wreckers and ancient legends. I pictured dark-cloaked witches claiming these cobbled alleyways after nightfall and ghostly mariners putting to sea by moonlight. My thoughts had a poetry that was a million miles from Eleanor’s mundane account. I was drawn into the irresistible web of the beauty and mystery of this strange land.
