The nearest village was a place called Alsperyl, which was also their destination. This comprised a church, a vicarage, a collection of cottages, an ancient schoolhouse, and a pub. All fashioned from the unpainted stone of the district, they sat some half mile to the east of the cliff path, beyond a lumpy paddock. Only the church spire was visible. Daidre pointed this out and said, “St. Morwenna’s, but we’re going this way just a bit farther if you can manage.”
He nodded, and she felt foolish with her final remark. He was hardly infirm and grief did not rob one of the ability to walk. She nodded in turn and led him perhaps another two hundred yards where a break in the wind-tossed heather on the seaside edge of the path gave way to steps hewn into stone.
She said, “It’s not much of a descent, but have care. The edge is still deadly. And we’re…I don’t know…perhaps one hundred fifty feet above the water?”
Down a set of steps, which curved with the natural form of the cliff side, they came to another little path, nearly overgrown with gorse and patches of English stonecrop that somehow thrived here despite the wind. Perhaps twenty yards along, the path ended abruptly, but not with a precipitous cliff edge as one might expect. Rather, a small hut had been hewn into the cliff face. It was fronted with the old driftwood of ruined ships and sided?where such sides emerged beyond the cliff face itself?with small blocks of sandstone. Its wooden face was grey with age. The hinges that served its rough Dutch door bled rust onto pitted panels.
Daidre glanced back at Thomas Lynley to see his reaction: such a structure in such a remote location. His eyes had widened, and a smile crooked his mouth. His expression seemed to say to her, What is this place?
She replied to his unasked question, speaking above the wind that buffeted them. “Isn’t it marvelous, Thomas? It’s called Hedra’s Hut. Evidently?if the journal of the reverend Mr. Walcombe is to be believed?it’s been here since the late eighteenth century.”
“Did he build it?”
“Mr. Walcombe? No, no. He wasn’t a builder, but he was quite a chronicler. He kept a journal of the doings round Alsperyl. I found it in the library in Casvelyn. He was the vicar of St. Morwenna’s for…I don’t know…forty years, perhaps? He tried to save the tormented soul who did build this place.”
“Ah. That would be the Hedra from Hedra’s Hut, then?”
“The very woman. Apparently, she was widowed when her husband?who fished the waters out of Polcare Cove?was caught in a storm and drowned, leaving her with one young son. According to Mr. Walcombe?who does not generally embellish his facts?the boy disappeared one day, likely having ventured too near the edge of the cliff in an area too friable to support his weight. Rather than confront the deaths of both husband and son within six months of each other, poor Hedra chose to believe a selkie had taken the boy. She told herself he’d wandered down to the water?God knows how he managed it from this height?and there the seal waited in her human form and beckoned him into the sea to join the rest of the…” She frowned. “Blast. I’ve quite forgotten what a group of seals is called. It can’t be a herd. A pod? But that’s whales. Well, no matter at the moment. That’s what happened. Hedra built this hut to watch for his return, and that’s what she did for the rest of her life. It’s a poignant story, isn’t it?”
“Is it true?”
“If we can believe Mr. Walcombe. Come inside. There’s more to see. Let’s get out of the wind.”
The upper and lower doors closed by means of wooden bars that slid through rough wooden handles and rested on hooks. As she pushed the top one back and then the bottom one, and swung the doors open, she said over her shoulder, “Hedra knew what she was about. She gave herself quite a sturdy place to wait for her son. It’s framed in timber all round. Each side has a bench, the roof has quite decent beams to hold it up, and the floor is slate. It’s as if she knew she’d be waiting for a while, isn’t it?”