Chapter One

In summer, when the sun beams down from an azure heaven, the sea surrounding this rocky promontory has a smiling, innocent face. Golden gorse and purple heather nestle in the fissures of the caverned granite cliffs. The waves splash gaily onto the silver sands of the cove and play among the rocks, twinkling and winking. As the sun sinks slowly in the west, the vault of heaven resembles a painter's palette, splashed with sublime hues of crimson and cerulean blue, with a lone star pinned like a diamond upon the bosom of the night. In the dying hush of day, one may fancy one can hear the distant chiming of the sunken churches of Lyonesse.

—Diary of Caroline Tregellas,
born 1762, died (?) 1780

Carla Tregellas—born 1952, and very much alive—was also thinking about the beauties of nature and the fabled cliffs of Cornwall as she approached the home of her ancestors for the first time. She was not stirred to rapturous appreciation. On the contrary, she muttered profanely under her breath and brooded on the disadvantages of living in a mechanized world.

Her rented Austin, inching its way through the streets of Exeter, was one in a line of similar vehicles, all emitting clouds of noxious fumes. The air was blue with exhaust and with the comments of frustrated motorists. She had the choice of leaving the car windows down and getting the full effect of the poisonous gases, or rolling them up and being overcome with the heat.

She had been naive to suppose that England in general, and Cornwall in particular, would be any different from the rest of the so-called civilized world. It was early June, and the Cornish coast