Echoes in the Darkness
“Can I stay here with you? I just want to be close to you, nothing more,” he asked.
I nodded. He slept in my arms that night, but his dreams were not easy. I watched his face as the dawn light touched it and wondered what horrors tortured him.
Chapter Two
We accomplished most of our remaining journey by rail and in silence. Eddie was not inclined to indulge me by enacting the role of tour guide, so I was left to view the contrasts between the dour industrial landscape and the majestic beauty of the countryside. Glimpses of London when we changed trains did nothing to inspire me. The miserable weather seemed to affect the national psyche, and everyone I encountered appeared hurried or forlorn. The bleak look on Eddie’s face was perfectly in tune with the weather, and both deepened in intensity with every mile we covered. We were met at the station in Wadebridge by a carriage bearing a crest of gold stars and a flowing Latin inscription. As this vehicle left the main post road and trundled onto rutted tracks, the Eddie Jago I knew was gone. The man, who sat across from me now, his eyes fixed on the brooding landscape, was a stranger. Cornwall, ancient land of my maternal heritage—a place I had dreamed of for so long—passed by unseen. My heavy heart fixed my gaze inside the carriage, on the remote, beautiful countenance of my friend.
“Tell me about your home,” I asked quietly, and his eyes flickered over me as if he was surprised to see me there. “Its name, for instance, is most unusual. Did you call it ‘Tenebris’?”
He was silent for long minutes before, with a slight exhalation of breath, he said, “Tenebris is not really its name. It is Athal House, but it has always been known as Tenebris by the family and the locals after the Jago motto. Lucent in Tenebris.” Those were the words I had just read on the carriage door. “It means ‘shine in darkness.’ And that’s exactly what the castle that originally stood on the site did, a year before my birth. It was burned—almost to the ground—on my parents’ wedding night. My father’s uncle, aunt and his valet all perished in the blaze.”
“What a dreadful start to their married life!”
He shrugged. “Doesn’t seem to have had any lasting adverse effects. You’ll never meet a couple more suited to each other than my parents.”
“You said it was a castle originally. Is that not so now?” I said, and Eddie shook his head, his eyes sweeping from the hilly scenery to my face and back again.
“My father began a restoration project about twenty years ago. It was never his intention to completely rebuild the castle as it once was. There were too many bad memories. But he did incorporate some of the original walls into the new house. It really is a beautiful, remarkable building, making the best of the old and the new.”
“Your family is an ancient one, then?” I thought how little we knew of each other. We had shared a home for six months, but we had kept our own secrets.
“There has been a house of Athal since the time of the Conqueror,” Eddie said. His voice was glum, with no trace of pride in his noble heritage. He indicated the view from the carriage window and I leaned forward to see more. I knew that Cornwall was cut off from the rest of England by the River Tamar and that this ancient, fey county welcomed its isolated, islandlike state. The Cornish revelled in their un-Englishness, their ability to be part of the world and yet apart from it. Even I, raised on stories of its glory, was not prepared for the unearthly beauty of this land. Even the quality of light was different here, silky and silvery as it bounced back from the sea in all directions.
The coach swung toward the coast, and I caught a glimpse of seabirds wheeling and turning low against a sky made gold by stingy sunlight. The cliffs and sea jewelled the landscape with opal, emerald and sapphire so bright that even the dismal late autumn chill could not dim their glory. My mother had told me once that she would like to be buried in Cornwall because, wherever your final resting place was, you would always be able to hear the sea. I was saddened by the thought that I had not been able to fulfil that wish, and also by the fact that I was here at last in the land she loved. Without her.