Page 126 of The Shadow Key

She lapses into silence. Below them, the grandfather clock ticks.

Henry swallows, Adam’s apple hard at his throat.

‘When did you remember all this?’

He addresses their mother, but it is Enaid who answers.

‘Only this very morning. After you left, my lady asked about your pocketwatch. I told her you were a Foundling, and it all seemed to come flooding back. The birthmark she saw that night; she recognised you then, although she did not know it. Imagine my shock when she told me the truth!’

Silence again. Only the clock speaks, a solemn knock as the galleon swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth …

‘Julian Tresilian is a fiend,’ Cadoc murmurs. ‘All these years, wasted. I’ve cursed every single day that his lordship was lost to us.’

‘Hugh is not lost.’

The words are said so softly Linette scarcely hears them, and they each look to Lady Gwen once more, sitting so pale and wan on the fraying ottoman.

‘He stands here, in front of us, in his son. My Henry. My dear Henry. Come home, at last.’

CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

In the small cottage across from Penhelyg Church, the Reverend Mr Owain Dee pours nettle tea from a steaming stoneware pot. Henry – sitting at the small table overlooking the mine, its hillside blotched with the eddies of spoil-heaps – clasps his mug quietly between his hands in grave contemplation.

‘I confess, I cannot think what to say to you,’ the vicar says finally, placing the teapot in the centre of the table. ‘You, a Tresilian!’

Henry lifts his mug to his mouth, tests the temperature with his tongue. Rests it down again.

‘I don’t …’ Henry stops. Can hardly find the words.

He still feels shock, disbelief, unable to fathom the truth of what he has been told; in the space of a few hours his life has turned on its axis, the past he thought he knew blurred like watercolours on wet canvas.

Henry Talbot is, in fact, Henry Tresilian, not a Foundling at all. He has a mother. He has a sister, a twin. But as strange and wondrous as all that is Henry has not forgotten the means of how he discovered it, that there are ultimately more sinister dealings at play.

Lady Gwen – his mother, he corrects himself – said the reason why he had been sent away was because Julian had meant to kill him, planned to sacrifice both himself and Linette as part of some bizarre ritual. It is, Henry sees now, why Dr Evans is dead, to get him out of the way – Julian deliberately orchestrated Henry’s return, which can mean only one thing:

He intends to finish what he started.

‘I didn’t know who else to speak to,’ Henry tells the reverend now, gripping his mug tight, the warmth of hot nettle seeping into his palms. ‘I don’t know what to do. Lord Pennant is magistrate, but he is also part of the Order. He’ll do nothing, just like he did with Heledd Einion.’

Mr Dee sets down his tea.

‘Even if you were to report to an honest magistrate, what you have told me is so far beyond the realms of reality that any court of law would easily throw it out. Hearsay, conjecture. You’d be accused of libel. Besides some cryptic notes in a spell book and the claims of Lady Tresilian who – I am sorry to add, but the truth of it is necessary to my argument – has long been considered a woman of unstable nature, you do not have any concrete proof. With your birth being unregistered … well, do you not see the quandary? A name in a Bible could easily be added at a later date. Ultimately, you are accusing men of the peerage. Julian Tresilian has the ear of high office, and with the support of Lord Pennant and Sir John Selwyn he is formidable, unlikely to be doubted. If one has money, then the law can be bent without a second thought.’

Henry sits forward in his seat. ‘You understand the import of what I say though, don’t you? Julian arranged for me to return to Penhelyg. Somehow he tracked me down, and now that I am here he means to finish what he began all those years ago. Linette and I are in danger.’

‘So you keep saying.’ The vicar looks down at the torn skin of parchment Henry brought with him, Julian’s untidy scrawl. “To ensure salvation the bargain must be struck with the sacrifice of one’s own ancestral lifeblood, the bond of two united”,’ he recites. ‘Of course it is troubling.’

‘It’s more than that! Lady Gwen said that Julian had promised a vast fortune if we were sacrificed. His wording, it is most particular. “Ancestral lifeblood”: a relation. “Two united”: twins. That much is clear. The only thing I don’t understand is the first part of the passage. “To ensure salvation.” Salvation from what?’

The reverend taps his finger on the rim of his mug. ‘What did the other pages in the grimoire say?’

Henry sighs. ‘It was all written in a language I did not understand.’

‘Hebrew or Theban perhaps. Lady Tresilian spoke of Solomonic magic; those are the most likely to be used in such ancient texts. Hebrew is a Semitic language, familiar only to one native to the Levant, or, of course, an experienced scholar such as Julian. As for Theban … Well, it is less a language and more a writing system, specifically a cipher of the Latin script. That is why it appears here as an alphabet. Interesting,’ Mr Dee adds, pointing at the two lines of Latin, ‘that Julian should use full Latin here. “Clavis umbrarum”. “Magus goetia”. Perhaps he required something easy to pronounce. Theban text, and Hebrew for that matter, are very difficult to read. They don’t, you see, have quite the same nuance.’

Henry takes a sip of his tea, ignores the tart burn.

‘Can you assist me with the Latin?’ He taps the two lines the vicar just referred to. ‘What do they mean?’

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