The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  The rain became fierce again just as the ferry came to rest beside the quay. Amid the shouting, rope-throwing and manoeuvring of gangplanks, Uncle Miles dropped coins into a couple of palms, and the Sunderly luggage was manhandled ashore.

  ‘The Reverend Erasmus Sunderly and family?’ A thin man in a black coat stood drenched on the quay, water spilling off the broad brim of his hat. He was clean-shaven, with a pleasant, worried sort of face, currently a little blue from the cold. ‘Mr Anthony Lambent sends his compliments.’ He bowed formally and handed over a rather damp letter. As he did so, Faith noticed the tight-fitting white stock round his neck and realized that he was a priest like her father.

  Faith’s father read the letter, then gave a nod of approval and extended his hand.

  ‘Mr . . . Tiberius Clay?’

  ‘Indeed, sir.’ Clay shook him respectfully by the hand. ‘I am the curate on Vane.’ Faith knew that a curate was a sort of under-priest, hired to help out a rector or vicar that had too many parishes or too much work. ‘Mr Lambent asked me to apologize on his behalf. He wished to meet you himself, but the sudden rain . . .’ Clay grimaced up at the leaden clouds. ‘The new holes are in danger of filling up with water, so he is making sure that everything is covered. Please, sir – will you permit me to have some men assist with your luggage? Mr Lambent has sent his carriage to take you and your family and belongings to Bull Cove.’

  The Reverend did not smile, but his murmured acquiescence was not without warmth. The curate’s formality of manner had clearly won his approval.

  The family were drawing looks, Faith was sure of it. Had the mysterious scandal reached Vane already? No, it was probably just the fact that they were strangers, loaded down with absurd amounts of luggage. Subdued murmurs around them caught her ear, but she could make no sense of them. They seemed to be a mere soup of sound with no consonants.

  With difficulty, the Sunderly luggage was arranged into an ungainly and alarming tower on the roof of the large but weathered carriage and strapped into place. There was just enough room for the curate to squeeze inside with the Sunderly family. The carriage set off, jouncing over the cobbles and making Faith’s teeth vibrate.

  ‘Are you a natural scientist, Mr Clay?’ asked Myrtle, gamely ignoring the growl of the wheels.

  ‘In present company, I can but claim to be a dabbler.’ Clay gave the Reverend a small, damp bow. ‘However, my tutors at Cambridge did succeed in hammering a little geology and natural history into my thick skull.’

  Faith heard this without surprise. Many of her father’s friends were clergymen who had stumbled into natural science in the same way. Gentlemen’s sons destined for the Church were sent to a good university, where they were given a respectable, gentlemanly education – the classics, Greek, Latin and a little taste of the sciences. Sometimes that taste was enough to leave them hooked.

  ‘My chief contribution to the excavation is as a photographer – it is a pursuit of mine.’ The curate’s voice brightened at the mention of his hobby. ‘Alas, Mr Lambent’s draughtsman had the misfortune to break his wrist on the first day, so my son and I have been recording the discoveries with my camera.’

  The carriage headed out of the little ‘town’, which to Faith’s eyes looked more like a village, and climbed a rugged, zigzag lane. Every time the carriage jolted, Myrtle clutched nervously at the window frame, making everyone tense.

  ‘That edifice out on the headland is the telegraph tower,’ remarked Clay. Faith could just make out a broad, dingy brown cylinder. Shortly afterwards a small church with a tapering spire passed on the left. ‘The parsonage is just behind the church. I do hope that you will do me the honour of calling in for tea while you are on Vane.’

  The carriage seemed to be struggling with the hill, creaking and rattling so badly Faith expected a wheel to fall off. At last it juddered to a stop and there was a sharp double rap on the roof.

  ‘Excuse me.’ Clay opened the door and climbed out. An animated conversation ensued above, in a blend of English and French that Faith’s untrained ear could not disentangle.

  Clay’s face appeared in the doorway again, his face drawn with distress and concern.

  ‘My most profuse apologies. It seems that we have a dilemma. The house you have leased is in Bull Cove, which can only be reached by a low road that follows the shoreline, or by the high track that passes over the ridge and down the other side. I have just learned that the low road is flooded. There is a breakwater, but when the tide is high and the breakers fierce . . .’ He crinkled his forehead and cast an apologetic glance towards the lowering sky.

  ‘I assume that the high road is a longer and more wearisome journey?’ Myrtle asked briskly, with one eye on the morose Howard.

  Clay winced. ‘It is . . . a very steep road. Indeed, the driver informs me that the horse would not be equal to it with this carriage in its, ah, current state of burden.’

  ‘Are you suggesting that we will have to get out and walk?’ Myrtle stiffened, and her small, pretty chin set.

  ‘Mother,’ whispered Faith, sensing an impasse, ‘I have my umbrella, and I do not mind walking a little—’

  ‘No!’ snapped Myrtle, just loud enough to make Faith’s face redden. ‘If I am to become mistress of a new household, I will not make my first appearance looking like a drowned rat. And neither will you!’

  Faith felt a rising tide of frustration and anger twisting her innards. She wanted to shout, What does it matter? The newspapers are tearing us to pieces right now – do you really think people will despise us more if we are wet?

  The curate looked harassed. ‘Then I fear the carriage will need to make two journeys. There is an old cabin nearby – a lookout point for spotting sardine shoals. Perhaps your boxes could be left there until the carriage can return for them? I would be happy to stay and watch over them.’

  Myrtle’s face brightened gratefully, but her answer was cut off by her husband.

  ‘Unacceptable,’ Faith’s father declared. ‘Your pardon, but some of these boxes contain irreplaceable flora and fauna that I must see installed at the house as soon as possible, lest they perish.’

  ‘Well, I am quite happy to wait in this cabin and spare the horse my weight,’ declared Uncle Miles.

  Clay and Uncle Miles dismounted, and the family’s personal trunks and chests were unloaded one by one, leaving only the specimen crates and boxes on the roof. Even then the driver stared at the way the carriage hung down, grimacing and gesturing to indicate it was still too low.

  Faith’s father made no move to step out and join the other men.

  ‘Erasmus—’ began Uncle Miles.

  ‘I must remain with my specimens,’ the Reverend interrupted him sharply.

  ‘Perhaps we could leave just one of your crates behind?’ enquired Clay. ‘There is a box labelled “miscellaneous cuttings” which is much heavier than the rest—’

  ‘No, Mr Clay.’ The Reverend’s answer was swift and snow-cold. ‘That box is of particular importance.’

  Faith’s father glanced at his family, his eyes cool and distant. His gaze slid over Myrtle and Howard, then settled on Faith. She flushed, knowing that she was being assessed for weight and importance. There was a dipping sensation in her stomach, as if she had been placed in a great set of scales.

  Faith felt sick. She could not wait for the mortification of hearing her father voice his decision.

  She did not look at her parents as she stood up unsteadily. This time Myrtle said nothing to stop her. Like Faith, she had heard the Reverend’s silent decision and had turned meekly to toe the invisible line.

  ‘Miss Sunderly?’ Clay was clearly surprised to see Faith climbing out of the carriage, her boots splashing down into a waiting puddle.

  ‘I have an umbrella,’ she said quickly, ‘and I was hoping for some fresh air.’ The little lie left her with a scrap of dignity.

  The driver examined the level of his vehicle again and this time nodded. As the carriage rattled
away, Faith avoided her companions’ eyes, her cheeks hot with humiliation despite the chill wind. She had always known that she was rated less than Howard, the treasured son. Now, however, she knew that she was ranked somewhere below ‘miscellaneous cuttings’.

  The cabin was set into the hillside facing out to sea, and was rough-hewn from the dark, glossy local rock, with a slanting slate roof and small, glassless windows. The floor inside was scattered with earth-coloured puddles. Overhead, the rain’s drumroll was slowing.

  Uncle Miles and Clay dragged in the family’s trunks and boxes one by one, while Faith shook out her dripping bonnet, feeling numb and useless. Only when her father’s strongbox landed with a thump at her feet did Faith’s heart skip. The key had been left in the lock.

  The box contained all her father’s private papers. His journals, his research notes and his correspondence. Perhaps it held some clue to the mysterious scandal that had driven them here.

  She cleared her throat.

  ‘Uncle – Mr Clay – my . . . my kerchief and clothing are very wet. Could I have a little while to . . .’ She trailed off, gesturing towards her sodden collar.

  ‘Ah – of course!’ Clay looked a little alarmed, as gentlemen often did when something mysterious involving female clothing was in danger of happening.

  ‘It looks as if the rain is letting up again,’ observed Uncle Miles. ‘Mr Clay, shall we take a little turn on the cliff, so that you can tell me more about the excavation?’ The two men stepped outside, and after a while their voices receded.

  Faith dropped to her knees next to the strongbox. Its leather was slick under her fingers, and she considered peeling off her wet, skintight kid gloves, but she knew that would take too long. The buckles were stiff, but yielded to her hasty tugging. The key turned. The lid opened, and she saw creamy papers covered in various different hands. Faith was no longer cold. Her face burned and her hands tingled.

  She began opening letters, teasing them out of their envelopes and holding them by their edges so as not to smudge or crumple them. Communications from scientific journals. Letters from the publisher of his pamphlets. Invitations from museums.

  It was a slow, painstaking task, and she lost track of time. At last she came upon a letter whose wording seized her attention.

  ‘. . . challenging the authenticity of not one but all the fossils which you have brought to the eye of the scientific community and upon which your reputation is based. They claim that they are at best deliberately altered, and at worst out-and-out fakes. The New Falton find, they say, is two fossils artfully combined, and report traces of glue in the wing joints . . .’

  A knock sounded at the door, and Faith jumped.

  ‘Faith!’ It was her uncle’s voice. ‘The carriage has returned!’

  ‘One moment!’ she called back, hastily folding the letter.

  As she did so, she realized that there was a large, blue stain on her wet, white gloves. With horror she realized that she had smudged the letter, leaving a thumb-shaped smear.

  CHAPTER 3:

  BULL COVE

  As the carriage rattled along the high route, Faith kept her hands tightly balled to hide the mark on her glove. She was sick with self-hate. If her father looked through his letters, he would spot the evidence of her crime instantly. Who else had been alone with the strongbox? He would soon deduce that she must be responsible.

  She would be caught. She deserved to be caught. What was wrong with her?

  And yet all the while her mind gnawed at the wording of the letter, simmering with outrage on her father’s behalf. How could anybody believe that any of his finds were fakes, let alone his famous New Falton fossil?

  Everybody had agreed that it was real. Everybody. So many other gentlemen experts had examined it, prodded it, exulted over it, written about it. One journal had named it ‘The New Falton Nephilim’, though her father never called it that, and declared it ‘the find of the decade’. How could they all be wrong?

  He must have enemies. Somebody must be trying to destroy Father.

  Dusk was settling as they crested the hill, then zigzagged down a rough and winding road. At last the carriage slowed, and Faith made out the yellow glow from an open doorway.

  It was an old farmhouse, slate-roofed and built of jagged brown stone that looked like shattered caramel. On the other side of the cobbled courtyard stood a stables and barn. Behind them rose a domed glasshouse, its panes milky in the half-light. Beyond lay a lawn, then the edge of a dark, ragged copse, and a dim outline that might have been another building.

  The carriage splashed its way through the puddles and came to a halt. Clay leaped out and handed Faith out of the carriage while Uncle Miles tipped the driver.

  ‘Good evening!’ The curate gave Faith and Uncle Miles a hasty bow. ‘I shall not keep you in the rain!’

  A manservant ran out and started unloading the luggage. Under the cover of the umbrella, Uncle Miles and Faith ran to the open door. A gaunt, middle-aged woman stood aside to let them enter.

  ‘Mr Miles Cattistock and Miss Sunderly? I am Jane Vellet – the housekeeper.’ She had a deep, mannish voice, and small, shrewd, unforgiving eyes. Her dress was striped in shades of dark green and buttoned high at the throat.

  The hall was darker than expected, the only light coming from two lanterns perched on sills. There were black timber beams in the ceiling. Faith could taste paraffin on the air, and a host of other smells that told her the house was old, and had settled into its own way of being, and was not her home.

  Soon Faith was sitting in front of a blazing hearth next to Uncle Miles and Myrtle, with a bowl of hot soup in her hands. If Myrtle felt any remorse at having left her daughter by the roadside, she hid it well. She was pink and purposeful, and had apparently reconnoitred the family’s new abode and found it grievously wanting.

  ‘They have no gas at all,’ she informed Faith, in a stage whisper. ‘They say that there is some to be had in the town, but out here we shall be surviving on lamps and dips. There is no cook, only a housekeeper, a housemaid and a manservant. They all worked for the last tenants – two old invalid ladies – and were kept on. Apparently the housekeeper and maid “managed” the cooking between them. But how shall they manage for a family of five? And there is no nurse for Howard – you must take care of him, Faith, until we can find someone.’

  ‘Where is Father?’ asked Faith when her mother paused for breath.

  ‘He went out to find a home for a botanic specimen as soon as he arrived,’ Myrtle answered wearily. ‘Apparently the glasshouse will not suffice. Instead he has been out in the folly for an age, fussing over his plant.’

  ‘The folly?’

  ‘An old tower, apparently.’ Myrtle cleared her throat as the housekeeper passed through the room. ‘Mrs Vellet, what is the folly?’

  ‘It was intended to be a spotting tower, madam,’ Mrs Vellet answered promptly, ‘looking for Napoleon’s ships. They never built forts here on Vane the way they did on Alderney. The gentleman who owned the house back then decided he should build his own defences, like a good Englishman.’

  ‘Was it of any use?’ asked Myrtle.

  ‘He ran out of money before it was finished, madam, and then the war ended,’ answered Mrs Vellet. ‘It was used as an apple store for a while . . . but it leaked.’

  ‘Peculiar place to put a plant,’ mused Myrtle. She sighed. ‘In any case, nobody is permitted to interrupt him or go anywhere near the folly. Apparently the plant is frightfully delicate and exotic, and an untrained gaze will cause all its leaves to fall off, or something of the sort.’

  Faith wondered whether her father had retreated into the forsaken tower because it was the only place he could be alone. Her heart ached. She knew some great animals retreated from their pack when they were wounded.

  Even Myrtle’s ever-ready conversation was waning. A long journey leaves one depleted, like a paintbrush that has been drawn across a broad stretch of canvas. When it was noticed that Faith�
��s head was drooping, she was told to go to bed.

  ‘You have the smallest room, darling,’ Myrtle told her, ‘but there was no help for it. You do not mind, do you?’

  Mrs Vellet took up a candle and offered to show her to her room. As they passed through the hall, Faith glanced through a door and saw that a small parlour had been conquered by her father’s menagerie. The lizards stared through the glass. The elderly wombat snuffled and twitched in its sleep, which was virtually all it did these days. Faith frowned as she realized that she could not see the snake.

  There was a stack of the family’s trunks and boxes against one wall of the hall. With disbelief, she recognized the snake crate near the bottom of the stack. It had been abandoned in the cold hall as if it were just a hatbox.

  Faith ran over and crouched beside it, pressing her ear against it. She could hear nothing from within.

  ‘Mrs Vellet – could you please have this box brought up to my room?’

  Faith’s room turned out to be tiny, less than half the size of her bedroom at home. The vigorous fire in the hearth cast light on a hand washstand with a chipped marble top, an elderly dresser and a four-poster with curtains that had probably known another monarch. In the shadows beyond the dresser she could just make out another door, with great bolts on it.

  ‘Would you like a posset brought up before you sleep?’ asked the housekeeper.

  ‘Do you have any dead mice?’ As soon as the words were out of Faith’s mouth, she became aware that this was perhaps not the best response. ‘My father has a Mandarin trinket snake!’ she explained hastily, and watched Mrs Vellet’s eyebrows rise another fraction of an inch. ‘Meat . . . tiny scraps of fresh meat will do,’ she stammered, suspecting that she was not making the best first impression. ‘And some rags. And . . . a posset would be most agreeable, thank you.’

  Only when she was alone in the room did she open the crate and lift out the cage within. The trinket snake was a disconsolate figure eight in the bottom, sleek black except for the flares of gold and white. The patterning always made Faith think of a candlelight procession through an ink-black wood. Back at the rectory she had spent a lot of time with her father’s little menagerie, and even taken on their care during his absences, but the snake had always been her favourite. He had brought it back from China eight years before.