Page 2 of The Shadow Key

He pulls the door open wider, the heavy wood creaking on its hinges.

Before him lies a stone passage, at the end a set of spiral stairs leading downward, and cautiously the old man descends on creaking knees. The iron banister is cool to the touch; he grips it tight, heart pinching in his chest. When he reaches the bottom he is greeted by a rush of air, smells the dankness of earth and wet stone. All of a sudden he is suspended with indecision – he wishes neither to go on nor to retreat. But! He has come too far to turn back now and before him is another, longer passage, lined with torches attached to ornate braziers, crusted with age.

The old man continues on.

Halfway down (or is it up?) he stops. Listens. The echoed whispering is much louder here. Drawn now to its strange cadence he begins to move forward again, uses the flat of his free hand to touch the rough damp walls, hard-knuckled fingers reading crevices in the stone as if he were blind, his worn slippers scuffing on the dirt floor. The smell of sulphur catches at his throat and as the old man coughs he sees his breath pool in the air before him.

How far underground is he? To where does the passage lead? And the whisperings! They come not from village children at all, but someone else, something else, and in the wake of that knowledge he finds that he is trembling. But as if an invisible thread has attached itself to his spine, that whispering – seductive yet frightening in its strangeness – pulls him to the end of the passage, and taking a deep and rattling breath, the old man enters the cavernous room beyond …

Meirionydd

Summer 1783

BRANCH I.

There are hells everywhere,

Both under the mountains, hills, and rocks,

And under the plains and valleys.

EMANUEL SWEDENBORG

Heaven and its Wonders and Hell: From Things Heard and Seen (1758)

CHAPTER ONE

The journey from London had been pleasant enough, to begin with.

The many coachmen who conveyed him made easy and timely progress – the roads were good, the weather altogether fine, and on their approach to the Welsh border the landscape began to take on a new face. Henry Talbot watched as rugged mountains rose in the distance, as previously flat fields started to slope gently upward, chequered black and white with grazing sheep and cattle. Even the air – though the journey by that time had been almost exclusively along open roads and the towns were miles behind – smelt different: fresher, sweeter, with hints of flora and sharp fir. For a brief moment Henry had let himself feel something akin to optimism instead of the bitterness that has dogged him since leaving the capital, but then his progression across the border and thence into the valleys took a decidedly downward turn; the temperature dropped as the horses ambled into dense woodland, the roads within them tight and winding, the chaise rocking from side to side almost continually for twenty miles. At the mountain he heard called Dinas, Henry was required to exchange the luxury of that enclosed vehicle for a pony and cart led by a gruff driver who did not seem to speak any English. By the time they had ascended an incomprehensibly steep hill to then descend along a very bad and stony dirt track (at which point heavy rainfall made itself most keenly known) Henry’s mood was sober, the experience having dampened any pleasure he might have taken from the scenery of this wild and desolate country he must now call home.

Until that moment there had been in Henry a sense of denial, as if he were merely playing out a part; until that moment he let himself believe that his journey was a temporary one, to be considered an excursion only, from which he would return in due course. But as the cart’s wheels clattered over those uneven roads littered with slate shards and jagged pebbles there was no denying it any longer: his old life is over. His new one must begin.

With a sigh Henry turns up his collar. The sun has finally made its appearance but the lateness of the day has tempered the May air with a touch of cold. Still, this next stage of the journey is picturesque; the vale they travel through now is watered by what Henry assumes is the estuary which widens as the cart advances, its sides bounded by hills and lush woodland. On the curve of another tree-lined bend he catches the scent of brine.

At length they reach the outskirts of a town called Abermaw where the driver stops at the bottom of a sharp incline of shale-rock. Two labourers climb aboard, settle themselves down in the straw next to Henry’s trunk strapped into the back of the cart. He looks over his shoulder, doffs his hat, proffers a smile.

‘Good afternoon.’

Both men stare stonily back. Henry’s smile slips. His tone had been friendly; there was no need at all for them to look at him like that and turn so pointedly away. A discord of whispers begins between the two men, and in confusion Henry twists back to face front.

The cart rumbles on. The road angles itself on an unsteady turn; a gull cries high in the arch of a sharp breeze. As the sea hoves into view – an undulating sheet of iron-grey shot with jade – Henry grips the handles of his portmanteau even tighter, takes a grudging kind of pleasure from the sound of waves, the quaint fishing boats bobbing along the horizon.

It is the first time he has ever seen the sea.

Further down at the harbour stand much larger boats, all at various stages of construction. Fascinated, Henry watches as they pass what looks to be the beginnings of a brigantine with its wooden skeleton only half complete, three men at its belly with hammer and nail. Further down the quay he spies a line of smaller boats being loaded with crates, an empty wagon waiting on the sand, and Henry turns to the driver with interest.

‘What do you export? Slate? I heard there were mines nearby.’

Henry’s driver – an older man with a heavily lined face beneath a coarse hay-coloured beard – glances at him. He sniffs, says nothing. Henry reaches into his coat, extracts the Welsh dictionary he was obliged to purchase in an obscure bookshop on the fringes of Piccadilly a week before his departure, and thumbs through the pages. ‘Llechen?’ he tries, tripping over the word for slate, but still the Welshman does not answer. Behind them one of the labourers snorts, and the cart trundles by – the moment with it. They emerge once more onto open road, leave Abermaw behind them. Henry returns the dictionary to his pocket with a sigh.

He has pored over that dictionary, felt duty-bound to attempt to at least try to accept what fate has dealt him. He knows he will be at a loss in this rugged land without speaking the language, but it is damnably difficult; he does not understand the clauses or the grammar, and to his ear the sounds are guttural, hard to adapt to. Henry suspects too that he is mispronouncing everything, applying the incorrect word to the situation, and it angers him, this weakness. He, who was respected for his intellect in London by his colleagues at Guy’s and Bow Street alike. He, who could speak to a room full of medical students with eloquence and finesse! Henry sought positions in other places of course, both in London and beyond, but without recommendation no one would deign grant him an interview.

Instead, he has had to come here.

Henry thinks of the letter nestled at the bottom of his trunk, folded and refolded so many times it has grown limp. My dear sir (it started), it has come to my attention that you are without position under circumstances most unfortunate. To ease such misfortune, it would be my greatest pleasure to offer you the vacant post of physician in Penhelyg, Meirionydd.

It was signed, I am, &c, Lord Tresilian.

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