Page 12 of The Shadow Key

Linette truly is a wildling.

Well. It is indeed clear that she is a woman of uncommon independence, for no lady of a grand house such as this would wear men’s clothes nor venture out alone in the wilderness, day or night. Yet despite all these brief observations, Henry did not mark any peculiar indications of mental weakness.

But then, even the sanest-looking people can be mad.

‘His lordship wishes to see you at breakfast before he leaves for London,’ Powell says now, interrupting Henry’s musings. ‘He awaits your pleasure in the dining room.’

‘Ah.’ Henry plucks at the collar of his nightshirt. ‘Well, then. I’d best be getting on.’

The butler inclines his head, and the flaps of his uncouth wig swing forward over his broad shoulders.

‘Very good, sir,’ he says, and promptly he shuts the door behind him with a pronounced and heavy click.

In his tired stupor Henry did not pay much attention during the journey up to his room the previous evening and so it is that when he steps out into the hallway, he finds himself blinking in surprise.

He stands in a long gallery filled with portraits. They line the panelled walls, the faces of Plas Helyg ancestors of centuries past looming down at him like stern sentinels. Henry looks up at them with interest, recognises the changing fashions of Jacobean through to Restoration, through to the earlier years of this century, from the flouncing frills of rococo to the silk and brocades of five decades before. A little further down the hall (and as Henry turns his head he detects the faint scent of vanilla and beeswax) another portrait much larger than the rest catches his eye. It shows three sitters: a beautiful blonde woman seated, with two dark-haired men standing behind her. One of the men rests his hand possessively on her shoulder while the other – Julian, Henry recognises – stands a little further back, as if observing them.

The other man must be Hugh Tresilian. Which means the woman can only be his wife, Gwenllian.

It is a strange portrait, Henry thinks, staring up at it, surely not one likely to be found in a Welsh country seat, for each of the sitters wears what seems to be Middle Eastern costume. Gwen Tresilian has her hair pinned high, a circlet of rubies crowning her forehead, and is dressed in an elaborate style of jewel-coloured skirts intricately detailed in the echo of foreign climes. She looks boldly out from the canvas, a small almost seductive smile playing across her lips.

Henry shifts his gaze to Hugh Tresilian. He is a tall man, broad-chested, handsome in his oriental robes. He wears a gold and crimson turban on his head so Henry cannot make out the colour of his hair, but from the shade of his eyebrows he suspects Hugh shares the same colouring as his cousin. Julian Tresilian is dressed similarly but wears instead an odd ornate headdress made of what looks to be ivory adorned with dark feathers. He looks very like Hugh – both of them strikingly handsome with hawk-like eyebrows and an aquiline nose.

He steps further back, cranes his neck. The composition of the painting itself has something distinctly odd about it, something unsavoury. It is reminiscent of a Gainsborough Henry saw once, yet it lacks the mellow romance of that artist’s style. This portrait is more striking, more severe. In the foreground are the trappings of wealth – gleaming coins, precious gems, swathes of grapes, wine goblets on carved pedestals. A skull nestles between a hoard of sapphires and a gold dagger. Behind the Tresilians a dark curtain sweeps across the canvas, shielding in the corner what looks to be a temple pillar, a stone plinth, torches with glowing flames.

Henry shrugs off a feeling of unease. He has never had much taste for the superfluous frivolities of the gentry. It is a world far removed from the blood and sawdust of surgery, the plain comforting simplicity of lodging in tiny annexes. Henry turns away, only to pause once more.

Below the portrait stands a curio cabinet. Inside are two locks of hair – one brown, one blonde – a pair of tiny shoes, a silver thimble, a small finely carved wooden rattle and a Bible. Not dissimilar from the tome in Julian’s bookcase, it is very large, covered with thick boards embossed with ornate patterns of religious persuasion pressed into handsome brown leather, its paper edges gilded. The corners of the cover are encased in brass, attached to which are large filigree clasps that bind the cover shut. Henry’s landlady owned one very much like this – she kept it on the dresser in her parlour and read from it every evening before supper. A family Bible, in which were listed the names of all the children she had lost.

A noise makes him look up. The dog from the night before stands looking at him, head inquisitively cocked. Henry reaches out his hand.

‘Hullo,’ he says, and the dog wags its curling tail, pads toward him. Its claws thrum lightly on the worn runner, and Henry realises it must have been those he heard clicking on the flagstone floor in the vestibule when Linette Tresilian crossed it the night before.

The sighthound is so large he need not bend to pet it; the dog presses its snout into his palm, and with a smile Henry scratches under its chin.

‘Who are you then, hmm?’

Large brown eyes stare up at him dolefully, and though it is of course impossible, Henry has the notion that the creature understands. It licks Henry’s fingers, trots down the gallery toward the staircase.

Henry follows.

There are three flights of stairs; by the time Henry reaches the bottom of them he feels somewhat out of breath. He has done his fair share of walking in London, of course, but the city streets were invariably flat and often Bow Street would provide him with a landau whenever they were in need of him. Henry is just tugging at his cravat to get some air, when there comes the sound of cutlery on porcelain. The lurcher ambles in the direction of a corridor off to the left, and once again Henry follows it.

The dog leads him into a richly furnished dining room, where at the head of a long table sits Julian Tresilian dressed in finely tailored travelling clothes. He half-rises from his chair to greet him, gestures to a seat on his right.

‘There you are! Sit, my boy. You must be famished.’

In truth, Henry feels too tired for food; the meal from the night before still sits heavy in his stomach but, determined to be polite, he diligently reaches for the platter laid between them on the table and takes a buttered bap. Julian has already cleared his plate; the dog – eager for scraps – snaffles loudly at his elbow.

‘Away,’ he shoos, and the lurcher’s ears flatten to its skull before sloping off out of the room. Watching it go, Julian wipes his hands on a napkin before tossing it on the table. ‘Linette bought it as a runt from one of the farmers up in the valley. It’s not a pretty beast at all, unlike Sir John Selwyn’s pointer. Pedigree stock, that one. Beautiful russet coat.’

‘I think the dog rather handsome,’ Henry replies, and in response Julian laughs deep in his throat, twists the gold signet ring on his finger.

‘Well,’ he says, ‘each to their own. Linette would, I daresay, agree with you.’

A beat. Henry takes a bite of his meagre breakfast before speaking once more.

‘Mr Powell said she was down at the gatehouse.’

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