Telling myself to get a grip, I had given the gates a shake. They refused to budge. Stepping back, I scanned the mullioned windows of the gatehouse. Blankly, they stared back at me.
“Hello?” My voice had sounded nervy and hesitant. Distinctly un-Annie-like. I had glanced to the sides of the gatehouse. A wall ran away to either side, and I had seen on the approach that it bordered the perimeter of the house on three sides. On the fourth was the cliff. Although the wall was above head height, I knew I could scale it easily. But I had been dressed for an afternoon visit, not for climbing. My best dress, matching coat and smart shoes would have been ruined, as would my dignity. And if I got myself arrested for trespassing, what would happen to Rudi?
“Hello?” I had cupped my hands around my mouth and raised my voice. “Can you help me, please? I’ve broken my shoelace. If I could come inside? Just for a minute…”
It was useless. Dispirited, I had made my way back to the diminutive cottage we had rented for the summer season. But Athal House had taken a firm grip on my imagination. It had become a challenge. And I was never going to resist one of those. Which was why I had come back again, clad in Rudi’s clothes, with my braided hair tucked up under one of his tweed caps.
I approached the house from an oblique angle. Although the windows stared back at me like sightless eyes, I wasn’t prepared to take any chances. This was the side of the house with ocean views, and the first window I peeped into showed me a glimpse of a library, a room that fired my reader’s soul with bitter envy. The next was a beautiful parlour, and I somehow sensed the hand of an elegant, fashionable woman in its cool, comfortable design. As I approached the third window, a light flickered on inside and I leaped back in alarm, hoping to avoid detection. My instincts had failed me in the most spectacular fashion. I had been here only minutes, but it was already time to go.
Keeping low, I ran along the side of the house, heading back in the direction of the perimeter wall. I reached the corner and entered a large, desperately overgrown rose garden. Making my way through this proved fraught with obstacles, and I was soon hopelessly entangled in a thorny grip. As I twisted to free myself from sweet-smelling captivity, a huge paw of a hand grabbed me by my collar and plucked me bodily from the ground, holding me suspended so that my legs dangled in midair a foot above the grass.
“Now then, my boy.” The voice was low and rumbling, as befitted an owner of such immense proportions. “Might I ask what you are doing here? Casing the joint in preparation for a spot of house-breaking later, perhaps?”
I squirmed wildly in an attempt to break free. My feeble efforts made my captor laugh, a fact that caused me to gasp furiously. “Jou bliksem!” For the purposes of clarity I said it again in English. “You bastard! Put me down!”
He turned me easily in his grasp at that, and I found myself looking into a pair of puzzled blue eyes set in a strong-jawed face that was pleasantly handsome without being in any way remarkable. Although he retained his grip on my jacket, he did set my feet on the floor, and seizing the opportunity this presented, I kicked out. My boot gave a satisfying thud as it connected with his shin. He gave a grunt of annoyance, but still did not release me. I swung a punch in the direction of his jaw, but because of the man’s height, it fell short and connected with the base of his throat.
“Unless you want your ears soundly boxed, my lad, you’ll keep these pathetic attempts to do me physical damage under control.”
Ignoring this piece of advice, I kneed him sharply in the groin. He gave a loud “Oof!” and doubled up in pain. Not surprisingly, he did let me go at that, and I prepared to run. Unfortunately, the giant was not as badly hurt as I had hoped, and he reached out a hand, sweeping the tweed cap from my head as he did. My braids tumbled free, falling almost to my waist. My captor caught hold of one of these, jerking me to an instant standstill.
“Not a boy, after all,” he remarked, as though finding a girl in disguise prowling around his garden was an everyday occurrence. He wound the plaited length of my hair around his hand like a rope, drawing me relentlessly toward him. I regarded him belligerently as he studied my face. “The question remains the same, however. What the devil are you doing here?” Inside my pocket, I surreptitiously slid my little dagger out of its stitched leather sheath. “Cat got your tongue? Well, since you won’t speak to me, perhaps you’d rather talk to the police?”
Relying on speed and surprise, I twisted the knife in my hand. His eyes flashed as he saw it, but before he could react, I brought it up and sliced neatly through my own thick hair. I had time to register the look of comic surprise on his face as he stood there, clutching a length of plaited black hair in his hand before I sped off like a streak of lightning and hurled myself at the wall. Laughing, I turned back at the top.
“Call it a keepsake, meneer,” I called as I dropped down into the gathering twilight on the other side.
∗ ∗ ∗
I couldn’t get used to the dawdling pace imposed on me by the narrow, cobbled streets of Port Isaac. And, oh, how I missed my horses! Rudi was sympathetic, but because he had spent most of his life confined to a wheelchair and even now walked with the aid of a stick, he had never roamed the veldt and the mountain foothills with the freedom I had. He was absorbed by the scenery here in Cornwall, his artistic eye charmed by a light that was unlike anything he had ever known before. If I was honest, he was not the best company when his muse possessed him in this way. At home, of course, it didn’t matter, because I had so many other things to occupy me. Here, in this cramped cottage, in this little village, on this island, I was bored. But I would not, for all the world, have told Rudi that. Instead, I strode along cliff tops, crunched over sands, traversed fragrant meadows and pondered the mystery of the house on the cliff, the castle and the man with the golden eyes.
I had been obliged, because of my hair, to give Rudi an edited version—because I knew my bad language and aggression would bring a worried frown to his gentle features—of what had happened in the garden.
“Annie! That’s shocking.” His dark gold eyes had filled with reproach.
“I know,” I said, wilfully misunderstanding him. I tugged my remaining plait ruefully. “I look a fright, don’t I? I shall have to cut it all off now.”
“What will Ouma say?”
I pulled the corners of my mouth down and put my hands on my hips in an impression of our formidable grandmother. “She will say ‘Sies tog, Annie-girl! Come here while I give you a slap around that silly, newly shorn head of yours.’ And we both know, of course, that she never has raised a hand to either of us throughout our whole lives.” I turned back to him with a grin. “Despite the fact that one of us, at least, has probably regularly deserved a good hiding!”
“Was it him, Annie?” Rudi changed the subject.
I knew immediately what he meant, of course. “No. His eyes were blue. And he wasn’t just big—he was huge. I am almost as tall as you, but he was head and shoulders above me.” I gestured with my hand to give an indication of the proportions of the man I had encountered. “No, I don’t know who he was, but he wasn’t Uther.” I planted a kiss on his cheek, leaving him to his painting while I went out to explore the wild Cornish countryside. I turned back in the doorway and my heart was seized with love for the serious, sensitive figure who sat poring over his palette, already lost in his own world. “After all, Rudi,” I said, interrupting his reverie, “we don’t know if Uther is real, do we?”
“The house is real,” he pointed out. “And we didn’t know that until we got here, did we?”
Those words stayed with me as I strode along the headland. Studiously, I avoided a route that would take me close to the Athal peninsula. Instead, I veered away toward sheer cliff edges, deliberately choosing the most hazardous path. Ouma would have said it was a metaphor for my journey through life. I clambered over several gates that, I had been told by a local fisherman, were known as “kissing gates.” As I walked, it struck me as amusing that I should be the
one who was homesick. Rudi seemed oddly at home here in Cornwall, but I craved a scene with a different sort of grandeur. The saltwater caress of the Atlantic was all very well, but I was missing the African sun on my upturned face. These soaring cliffs and restless waves were breathtaking in their beauty, but my heart belonged to mountains that had been spewed forth from the breath of dragons then hewn to perfection on the anvil of a giant.
Perhaps if we could solve the mystery of the castle-house and of the man we called Uther, this sense of dawdling, of wasting my time here, would dissipate. And then, of course, there was always the real reason we were here. The reason Ouma had provided the funds for what she had called a klein vakansie. A “little holiday” that had brought us halfway around the world. For what? Probably a wild goose chase, I thought gloomily. Prompted by a scrap of paper that might—but in all probability would not—lead us to finally discover the identity of our father. I sat for a long time on a high outcrop with a view along the coast that I shared with swooping black-backed gulls and diving gannets. Their cries reproached me for invading their territory, and one or two boldly dared to come close in an attempt to intimidate me.
“Voetsek!” I shooed them. It seemed they understood, for, after throwing me a look of censure, they departed. Rudi had once suggested I might reconsider using my favourite Afrikaans curse. I offered instead to substitute the nearest English equivalent—“Fuck off”—and he refrained from mentioning the matter again.
On my return to Port Isaac, I carried my hat and gloves in one hand, having become too warm during my exertions. I paused to study my reflection in a shop window. I had ruthlessly chopped the rest of my hair off at the nape of my neck, and my dark curls now clustered in a halo about my head. My face appeared different without my long locks; my eyes seemed even bigger, dominating my face. My neck was longer, the line of my jaw more clearly defined, my lips fuller and more sensual. I was used to seeing a girl in the glass, but the stranger who gazed back at me was all woman. My clothes, although newly purchased in Durban before our departure, were provincial and outdated. I had never paid much attention to what I wore until now, but I looked dowdy, and the knowledge irked me.
As I turned and made my way toward the sea, a little drama unfolded nearby. An elderly lady was seated in a wheelchair near the harbour wall, and as I watched, a gust of wind caught her scarf and tugged it loose. It blew away toward the churning waves. I broke into a run and caught the flimsy piece of green cloth just before it was claimed forever by the Atlantic Ocean. I brought it back to its owner and presented it to her. She took it with a gentle smile of thanks and patted my hand. I thought she had the saddest and sweetest blue eyes I had ever seen.
“Oh, good heavens!” A soft, breathy voice behind me made me turn my head. “Aunt Eleanor, what a horrid wretch of a girl I am! I expect you will find it impossible to ever forgive me.” A pair of enormous, limpid grey eyes were turned upon me. “I am most dreadfully sorry. I moved away for the tiniest of seconds to look at that ribbon, which I had thought quite pretty. I now find it to be rather beige, however. Imagine my shock when I realised what had transpired while my attention had wandered.” The smile that accompanied these words was, quite simply, breathtaking. “Pray do not report me to the authorities for neglect of elderly relatives, Miss— Er…” I watched a dainty hand encased in a lavender kid glove extend toward me, and feeling rather overwhelmed, I took it.
“Van der Merwe.”
“Oh, how charming! Did you hear that, aunt? This lady has the most delightfully unpronounceable name imaginable. But how horribly rude of me not to introduce myself in return. I’m Felicity Jago. My friends call my Finty. You will call me that, won’t you? If your name is Felicity, you feel under a strange obligation to be cheerful all the time, which becomes quite wearing after a while. And this is my Aunt Eleanor. Are you staying here in Port Isaac? May we walk a little way with you? Do say we may. We so rarely get to meet any new people. It is such a treat for us to have someone different to talk to. Well, for me to talk to, if we are to be quite accurate.” She lowered her voice slightly so that only I could hear. “Poor Aunt Eleanor doesn’t speak, you see. Some terrible tragedy in her youth left her bereft of speech.”
“How dreadful.” I was still slightly stunned by this verbal onslaught, but managed to reply.
“Yes, isn’t it?” Finty took my arm and drew me slightly to one side. “I expect it was a man, don’t you?” She regarded her aunt speculatively. Eleanor Jago gazed across the bay. It was easy to believe that those faded cornflower eyes had indeed seen great heartache. “I used to try to discover exactly what it was, because it’s only human nature, isn’t it, to want to know these things? But everyone was so close-mouthed about the whole business and now there is only my aunt herself left. And, as you can see, she isn’t going to cough up the details anytime soon.” She sighed. “Well, I suppose Tristan Martyn may know, but I very much doubt he will tell me because, although he knows everything there is to know about the family, he can be quite impossibly stuffy. I call him my uncle, but we are not actually related at all. At least, I don’t think… Anyway, it is most remiss of them, don’t you think? Because these things are part of my heritage and should be preserved for future generations.” Her pretty mouth pouted slightly. “But you must think me incredibly indiscreet and quite horribly dull! The history of the reprehensible Jago clan cannot be remotely interesting to you. Shall we take Aunt Eleanor along to the end of the harbour to watch the boats coming in? Are you staying here for the summer?”
“Yes, my brother and I have taken a cottage close to the beach for a few months. Although we have not yet decided whether we will remain in Cornwall for the whole time, or travel around and see more of England while we are here.”
“Your accent is most unusual. It sounds Dutch, but I think it is perhaps not quite that?”
“No, I am from South Africa,” I explained. “My brother and I speak Afrikaans as our first language, but our father was English, so our mother insisted that we must learn both languages.”
“Good gracious, did you travel all this way from Africa? Did you hear that, aunt? How terribly exciting.” Her voice held a wistful note. “I have never been farther afield than London. I don’t suppose I ever shall now.”
We sat on the wall at the far end of the harbour, and I did my best to answer Finty’s many questions about life in South Africa, about our journey and about my family. This was not a particularly easy task as she often interrupted her own questions with interjections or further enquiries, but I found myself liking her. In spite of her bubbly manner, I sensed loneliness and something akin to pain within her that drew me to her. And I was intrigued by the silent, mournful figure of Eleanor Jago.
“We must go. Although it is quite warm, I do worry that Aunt Eleanor will take a chill if we stay out for too long. It has been so nice talking to you.” Finty paused, her eyes sparkling. “Will you and your brother come to tea? Do say you will. It would be the most splendid thing imaginable. We hardly ever have visitors these days. Do we, aunt? Not since darling Cad died. Tomorrow at three.” She turned away and then looked back over her shoulder before I could prompt her. “Gosh, how dreadfully silly of me. I am such a flibbertigibbet at times. You don’t know where we live!” Her musical laugh rang out and she waved a hand toward the proud peninsula that could be seen in the distance. It was a bright, sunny day, so the large, walled, white house was just visible. “Athal House. Anyone will give you directions, but you really can’t miss it. Do come. Aunt Eleanor adds her entreaties to mine.”
Chapter Two
“We can’t go,” Rudi said, his mouth settling into an uncompromising line. “What if your giant is there? He will recognise you for sure.”
“It was almost dark when he saw me. Anyway, I’ll just deny it,” I replied, attempting to achieve a studied lack of concern. When I gave Rudi an account of my meeting with the large man in the grounds of Athal House, I had, of course, omitted to mention that I had sp
oken—well, sworn, to be precise—in Afrikaans. Even if he didn’t recognise my face, my accent was sure to give me away. There couldn’t be too many Afrikaner women with drastically short hair in this part of Cornwall. “He can’t prove it was me, can he? Come on, broer. Don’t tell me you are not as anxious as I am to get inside that house.”
He was, naturally. Which is why at three o’clock the following day, we dutifully presented ourselves at the gatehouse of Athal House. Although I worried that the walk from Port Isaac might prove too tiring for Rudi, I knew better than to mention it. I was not the only stubborn one in the van der Merwe family. I was the older twin. Rudi, born five minutes after me, had a deformity of his right hip that left him with one leg considerably shorter than the other. When he was a child, our mother was told it was unlikely he would ever walk. As he grew up, he was in constant pain, which was made worse by the numerous medical treatments and operations he was forced to endure. I had never heard him complain. Through sheer strength of will, he had abandoned his wheelchair and learned to walk with a stick. He still had a pronounced limp and walking any distance wearied him, but he hated pity, and if he even sensed it, he would hold his head higher and just become more determined.
“What does it mean?” I asked as a bowing footman opened the huge gates. Gnarled trees stood guard like hideous statues on either side of the alabaster gateposts.
“Lucent in tenebris.” Rudi, always more studious than I, had applied himself and actually bothered to learn Latin. “It means ‘shine in darkness.’” I shivered slightly and drew my coat closer about me. Something about those words again touched a chord deep in my subconscious.
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