Page 122 of The Shadow Key

A creeping cold spindles itself up his limbs like needles.

‘It … it was for when my parents came to claim me. To identify me. But no one came.’

‘Perhaps they did, and you didn’t realise. Julian claimed you, when he brought you here. Ancestral lifeblood. The bond of two united. Don’t you see?’

Henry stares. Gently, Linette puts her hand on his.

‘Your name,’ she says softly, ‘is not Talbot. It is Tresilian. Henry Tresilian.’

For a long moment he is silent, scarce able to fathom it. This is madness, he thinks, it makes no sense, should make no sense and yet, somehow …

‘We’re related?’ His voice sounds wooden, far off. ‘I’m Julian’s son?’

‘You must be.’

‘But,’ Rowena cuts in, who until that moment has stood quietly, too shocked it seemed to speak, ‘this is all conjecture, surely? You’re finding ways to tie the threads, and yet there’s no way of really knowing.’

Linette turns to look at her.

‘Yes, there is.’

‘There is?’

‘The Bible,’ she says simply. ‘The family Bible, in the cabinet upstairs.’

Very slowly Henry raises his head to the ceiling, as if he might somehow look through Plas Helyg’s ancient bones up to the floor above. The women follow suit.

‘We must look inside,’ Henry swallows. ‘It’s the only way to know for sure.’

With something like her old strength Linette rises from her chair and crosses the room, reaches for the bell-pull by the door, its emerald sash.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Cadoc,’ she says. ‘He has the key.’

She tugs the pull. Within moments Powell appears at the study door.

The butler looks between them, his stern gaze going from Linette, to Henry, to Rowena and back again.

‘What is it you need?’

‘We need you to unlock the cabinet upstairs,’ Linette says. ‘Now.’

Henry watches the butler insert a small key into the curio cabinet. It is stiff in the lock and takes him a second or two to make the key turn before it gives with a dull thunk, to lift the glass lid. Instantly the smell of camphor rises, mixed with a faint aroma of must, a sure sign the Bible has not been opened for years.

As one Henry and Linette step forward.

The Bible sits grandly in the middle of the blue velvet bottom, an unopened promise. Henry has given it little mind since coming here – only the portrait above claimed his attention – but here it is in front of him, ready to confirm Linette’s wild claim, and a part of Henry now does not want to know the truth.

The Bible is truly beautiful. Though very like Julian’s grimoire, it does not hold the same sinister air; ornate patterns – ivy, he sees now – curl prettily around the holy cross, framed by brass filigree corners, held shut by handsome clasps, and Linette reaches down to unclip them from the pins that holds them in place.

With infinite care, she turns the cover. The family tree stares up at them from the first page, a sea of names inked into its coiling willow branches. Generations of Cadwalladrs trickle down from the top in looping copperplate, but Henry pays them no mind; he looks only to those at the bottom of the page, scarce able to believe what he is seeing:

He is too shocked to speak, too shocked to do anything. Even Cadoc Powell seems at a loss for words – he is staring hard at the Bible, a muscle working in his jaw. It is Linette who lets out her breath, Linette who reaches into the cabinet, though it is not to the Bible that her hand goes but to one of the small locks of hair either side of it. She hovers a finger against the blonde, then in turn the brown.

‘I always thought they were from my parents,’ she whispers, and finally Henry finds his voice.

‘When was your birthday, Linette?’

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