Chapter One

The old house slumbered in the morning sunlight. It allowed that unique Cornish glow—the one that bounced back from the sea in all directions—to bathe its tired corners and crevices with warmth. After centuries of darkness, Tenebris had enjoyed a brief period of quiet. This world, a whirl of automobiles, telephones and air travel, could not understand the ancient creeds. This brave new century thought it knew everything. It had survived a great war, one that it arrogantly called “the war to end all wars,” but there was greater horror to come. The darkness that waited patiently within the ancient walls knew it. A man who led a small, but vocal, political party in Germany—a man named Adolf Hitler—knew it, too. The world would cringe before the awful truth in time.

The darkness missed the Jago clan, the true family of Athal. The Hungarian woman had brought peace, and with her coming, the evil had moved on. For a while it had stalked the streets of London’s Whitechapel district, knife in hand. But it was on its way back. Tenebris sensed the true darkness drawing ever closer. It smiled to itself, hugging its secrets tightly. The Jago legacy was about to be unchained once more.

∗ ∗ ∗

Cornwall, England, 1922

I paused astride the top of the wall, looking down at the expanse of garden below me. Nothing moved. When I was absolutely certain that there was no other living creature around, I dropped down onto the grass and crouched low in the late afternoon shadows. If I’d thought this through, I’d have come at night, equipped with a torch. But I’d reached the age of twenty-two and not yet acquired the skill of thinking things through. The garden was overgrown and deserted, not at all what I had expected or imagined. I thought of Rudi’s paintings. They invariably depicted this pale marble manor, a castle with its soaring ramparts and flying pennants, or an impossibly handsome man with golden eyes and a cruel smile.

“Sies tog, Annie! For shame,” I scolded myself under my breath. “Did you think he would be here, waiting to greet you?”

I moved away from the wall, confident now that the house really was, as I had believed, empty. It was a hauntingly beautiful place. Rudi’s brushstrokes had been remarkably accurate. He had even managed to reproduce the shape of the ornate lake, now a still, dark mirror, and the way the contours of the house clung sinuously to the scorching drama of the cliffs. Bolder now, I followed a path through well-planned gardens. Someone had put great thought and love into the arrangement of these, but their upkeep now showed signs of definite neglect.

I had attempted, in what Rudi would doubtless call my “sledge-hammer Annie” fashion, to get into the house by more conventional means two days ago. Ever since we had first seen this place and realised, with an awe-filled exchange of glances, that we were here, I had been determined to get over the doorstep. Rudi, always more cautious than I, had put forward a series of reasoned arguments.

“It’s a coincidence, Annie. It must be.”

I gazed steadily back at him. “Coincidence?” I said at last, pointing to his sketchpad. He had the grace to hunch one thin shoulder. “Don’t worry, broer, I’ll make some excuse. I was out walking and the laces on my shoe broke, or something like that. Even I’m not going to march up to their front door and blurt out the real reason.” I fluttered my eyelashes and affected a flirtatious tone. “Oh, goeie more, meneer. Good morning to you, sir. Yes, you with the eyes like a hunting lion. My broer and I live over five thousand miles away, but I just dropped by to say ‘hello’ because we’ve known about you and your house ever since we were little babas. We have the pictures to prove it.”

I had made some enquiries in Port Isaac. People seemed surprisingly reluctant to talk about the impressive mansion on the jutting peninsula, but I learned it was called Athal House. The name meant nothing to me, which I found slightly disappointing. I had expected a cacophony of bells to chime in my mind when at last I heard its name. I swung briskly along the cliff path in preparation to put my plan into action, only to encounter an ornate gatehouse that spanned the drive. The huge gates themselves, carved from wrought iron, were embellished with a crest of gold stars on a black background. The words Lucent in Tenebris were engraved in flowing script across the top of the closed barrier. I didn’t know any Latin, but these words did strike a chord somewhere deep inside my subconscious. Not bells and whistles, but something I didn’t understand stirred within me, and the hairs on the back of my neck lifted. The feeling intensified when I had reached out a hand to touch the cold metal of the gate. I knew it would be firmly locked against me before I tried it. You are not welcome here, Annie. We are not ready for you…yet.

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.”