Of course, those dark and gloomy narrow passageways were not the places anyone else would go. The family and everyone else kept to the main rooms and the well-decorated and better-lit main parts of the house. We, though, were interested in the secret and the off-limits. Although, even we were sometimes scared of the dark and gloomy nature of some of the lower passageways, down where the basements and cellars of the house merged into the rock of the ground beneath it.
In those days no-one really knew or cared how old the house was; or why it had so many dark corridors and passageways. Especially those passageways that merged into the rock of the cliff and led away from the house, some down to the sea-shore at the cliff bottom, others away from the house inland and some towards the village and others apparently leading to nowhere, emerging from the ground in heaped rocks, seemingly for no reason.
Of course, people talked of smugglers, of dark deeds and dark days. Others mentioned priests and religious strife from even further back in the history of the island, but no-one really knew for sure. After all, the island was quite a way from the mainland, too far for its customs men, or even its religious differences, to reach, or so you would have thought.
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