Midsummer's Eve

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I WAS NOT QUITE nine years old on that Midsummer’s Eve, but I shall never forget it because, after what happened on that memorable night, I ceased to be the innocent girl I had been up to that time.

My comfortable home, my easy life and my adored parents had given me no indication that such things could be. We lived amicably in what was more like a castle than a house. It had been the family home of the Cadorsons for generations. Cador meant “warrior” in the Cornish language, so our earliest ancestor must have been a great fighter. I could well believe that. The house stood on a cliff, so that from the windows we could look out on the sea. Built of grey stone, it looked forbidding. It was like a fortress. It probably had been at one time. There were two turrets and a path along the battlements from one to the other. It was known simply as Cador. My father was proud of it—my mother, too, although I sometimes thought she was a little nostalgic for her home on the other side of England—the south east corner. We were in the south west so when we visited my grandparents, or they came to us, it meant travelling the breadth of England.

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