The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  After everything I have done, I find myself empty-handed and at a dead end. I must coax another fruit from the Tree, but I cannot see the way. However ingenious a falsehood I contrive, nobody will now believe me. If I cannot rescue my reputation, all has been for naught.

  There followed some two dozen pages of sketches, jottings and tables of figures, but Faith’s mind was too full to take them in. She closed the book slowly.

  No wonder he had been so protective of his plant, and so reluctant to talk about it or let it out of his sight. No wonder he had snatched his papers from Faith’s hand, and lost his temper when she admitted to having opened his strongbox.

  Faith had hoped that there might be information in the journal that could somehow be used to clear his name. That hope was dead. No, nobody else could ever be allowed to read it! If the contents became public, he would be proven a fraud, and probably remembered as a madman to boot.

  So, was this madness? Had this obsession and all these visions been a symptom of a diseased mind?

  Perhaps. Or perhaps right now Faith was the only living person who knew the location of the Mendacity Tree, a wonder of the earth, which might draw forth untold secrets and unravel countless mysteries.

  Faith had to know, one way or another. If the Tree could deliver secrets, then perhaps it would unravel for her the mystery of her father’s death.

  CHAPTER 16:

  ANGRY SPIRIT

  At about eight o’clock, the housekeeper brought a supper tray to Faith’s room. Faith thanked her, declared that she would be turning in early and declined the warming pan. The housekeeper departed, and Faith was left to herself for the night.

  Faith gobbled her food down quickly, then quietly put on the rest of her damaged funeral clothes once again. Everyone had already seen them wet and muddy, so probably would not notice if they became wetter and muddier overnight. She lit a lantern to take with her, but turned the flame low and covered it with a cloth, just as her father had done.

  She slipped out through her private door into the roof garden, which still dripped and glistened after the recent rain. The sky overhead was still grimly grey. As she slipped through the gate and down the steps, she could hear the busy clatter of pans and voices in the scullery. She took an oblique route across the garden, creeping behind the outbuildings so that she was less likely to be spotted.

  Faith hurried along the seaward path, hoping that she had remembered the tide table correctly. When she reached the beach, she was relieved to see that the tide was low and the sea calm, just as she had hoped. If she was right, it would ebb for another hour, then start coming back in. The waters would be calmer, and the currents would be her friend.

  Feeling exposed, Faith scanned the cliff-tops, but could see no sign of anybody watching her. The half-dry tendrils of her hair whipped her face.

  It was difficult dragging the boat by herself, but she finally wrestled it into the water. She clambered in and used one of the oars to push away from the shore.

  Faith had never rowed before, and soon discovered it was much harder than her father had made it look. At first she tried to row facing forward so that she could see where she was going, pushing the blades through the water instead of pulling, but the oars floundered weakly and kept rattling out of their sockets. She made much better headway when she rowed facing backwards, as her father had done. Very soon she was out of breath, and the muscles in her arms and shoulders ached. She was all too glad that she had loosened her training corset before coming out.

  Whenever she twisted around in her seat to look ahead, she seemed to be heading straight out to sea or about to founder on a submerged crag. Thankfully the rocks were easier to see by twilight than they had been at night.

  And there in the grey light was the sea cave, like a dark Gothic arch. Its open mouth swallowed each wave, then vomited foam.

  Heaving furiously at the oars, she brought the boat close to the cave. Once again a wave swept her into its mouth, but less violently than before, and the boat ran aground far closer to the cave entrance.

  Faith clambered out on to slithering rock, half deafened by the echo of the water, and tethered the boat to the same column as before. She took up the lantern, hitched her skirts and scrambled up on to the rocky platform beyond the boat, then through the rough, triangular hole into a larger cave beyond. Here the light was dim, only a little leaking in from the cave mouth behind her. Remembering her father’s warning about the plant’s ‘violent reaction’ to light, she kept her lantern almost entirely covered, allowing only a sliver of radiance to play across her surroundings.

  The cave was roughly domed, cracks and streaks running down the ceiling like vaulting. Here and there she could see shadowy fissures and openings leading to other caves.

  On the far side of the cave, on a jutting oblong shelf of rock, stood a shrouded shape, the terracotta pot just visible beneath the cloth.

  There was something strange in the echoes of the vaulted cave. The roar of the nearby sea had been softened and twisted, so that the air seemed full of sighs. Faith could not help glancing over her shoulder, thinking that somebody had just let out a long breath immediately behind her. The cold smell was bitter here, making her eyes sting.

  Slowly Faith slithered her way up the sloping stone floor. When she stood by the rocky shelf, she reached up and slowly pulled at the cloth. She felt resistance, the tug of thorns, and then the oilskin came away, revealing a black, indistinct tangle that spilt over the edges of the pot, a scribble of shadow on shadow.

  The not-noises in the cave became louder, as if the breathers had drawn closer. Gingerly she raised her lantern, letting a little bar of quivering light fall upon the plant.

  The light glistened on slender, blue-black leaves, long thorns, dull golden pearls of sap glowing on black knobbed stems . . . and then before her eyes Faith saw the illuminated foliage flinch, wrinkle and subside, hissing with the angry sibilance of a beast disturbed.

  Hastily she turned the lantern’s beam away again, so that the plant became an inky, indistinct mound once more. Even when the hissing desisted, she did not dare illuminate the plant again. Instead, she reached out and gently stroked her fingers through its foliage, seeing it by touch.

  To her relief, the light did not appear to have done too much damage. The leaves were cold and slightly clammy, and left her fingers covered in a moist stickiness like honey. She could find no fruit.

  Imaginary ants led a parade up her spine. There was no mistaking the shape of the leaves, which forked then tapered to two narrow points. She had seen their likeness painstakingly sketched in her father’s journal. This was the Mendacity Tree, his greatest secret, his treasure and his undoing. The Tree of Lies. Now it was hers, and the journey he had never finished stretched out before her.

  She lowered her face until her mouth nearly touched the leaves. The smell was a snow-bite behind her eyes, and ached in her temples.

  ‘Father cannot come to you any more,’ she whispered. ‘He is dead and in the church crypt. I want to find out who murdered him. Will you help me?’

  There was no reply. Of course there was no reply.

  ‘Do you want a lie?’ asked Faith, feeling as though she were offering some dangerous animal a treat. She almost expected it to bristle again, like a hungry wolf.

  Choose a lie that others wish to believe, her father had written.

  Faith remembered the conversation at the graveside, and Tom’s suggestion that her father be staked ‘to keep the ghost down’. She thought of Howard’s superstitious terror, the stopped clocks and the cloaked mirrors.

  ‘I have a lie for you.’ She closed her eyes and whispered, ‘My father’s ghost walks, seeking revenge on those who wronged him.’

  Something very gently stroked her face, and Faith pulled back, opening her eyes. There was no sign of motion among the plant’s glossy leaves.

  As she slowly retreated from the central cavern, however, it seemed to her baffled ears that the echoes had a new tim
bre. She almost thought she could hear faint traces of her own words in the air, swaying and unfurling.

  A stake through the heart at the crossroads, so the dead cannot find their way home . . .

  Slipping back into the darkened house in her ravaged black dress, Faith herself felt a little like a lost soul returning. She paused to listen, but all was still quiet. Everybody had gone to sleep. The house was hers.

  So what should she do? Where should she start?

  Faith narrowed her eyes, then smiled in the darkness as inspiration dawned. She crept into the kitchen, where she was sure she had seen . . . yes.

  The careful light of her lantern showed her a bell board on the wall, just above head height. There were seven bells, each dangling at the bottom of a spiral curl of metal, which in turn was attached to one of the seven wires running horizontally across the wall. Each bell had a different label – Master Bedroom, Second Bedroom, Third Bedroom, Drawing Room, Library, Nursery, Dining Room. The bell pull in each of these rooms tugged a hidden wire, which zigzagged unseen through floors and walls and rang the corresponding bell in the kitchen.

  Squinting in the imperfect light, Faith set about unfastening the wires for the Master Bedroom and Third Bedroom and swapping them over.

  She crept to the library, and found her father’s tobacco box on the desk. She took a pinch and fed it to a candle flame, watching it fizzle and blacken, leaking a scented, bluish plume of smoke. Then, with a letter opener, she slashed a hole in the crêpe covering the mirror, so that a silvery gash was visible through the cloth like a half-open eye.

  One last stop. She tiptoed upstairs, listened again for any sign of motion in the bedrooms, then crept into her father’s room, closing the door carefully before uncovering her lantern.

  The room was still filled with vases of wilting flowers. There was a long crease in the bed where his remains had rested, but his effects had been tidied away into trunks and boxes. The family Bible lay closed on the bedside table.

  Faith’s mind filled with a thousand angry ideas, but she restrained herself. Too much at once would betray her. She opened the Bible, and hastily leafed through until she found Deuteronomy 32.35.

  To me belongeth vengeance, and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste . . .

  She left it open on that page, with a single flower petal under the vengeful quotation.

  The bell pull by her father’s bed was a red corded rope with a tassel. Faith climbed on a chair and used her father’s razor to saw through the cord at a high point, so that it was close to snapping. Only then did she leave the room.

  If they want a ghost, they will have one.

  CHAPTER 17:

  A GHOST-KILLING GUN

  Faith wakened from a dream of being buried under rubble to find herself still weak and aching. For a while she lay there, trying to work out why her back, shoulders and arms were so sore.

  Then everything returned to her in a cold, dark rush. Loss, the funeral, the journal, the touch of the Lie Tree’s leaves against her face. Her mind spent a few moments in cold, helpless free fall, before her anger spread its wings and buoyed her up again.

  She struggled out of bed. Her arms felt heavy as lead, and manoeuvring them into the sleeves of her spare mourning clothes was a painful process. These muscles had never before been used in earnest and were shrieking in protest.

  Her hair was a mess of tangles, woven by wind and salt. She attacked it with her brush until it recovered some of its smoothness and sheen.

  Faith tweaked aside the curtain and peered outside. It was another grey, restless day. The wind fluted in the flues and flattened glossy spirals in the grass, and the trees flung up their boughs like drowning sailors.

  She had a murderer to find, and an island to frighten. Frightened people sometimes made mistakes, and it was a good day to be a ghost.

  Faith grasped the blue corded bell pull that hung by her bed and gave it three long, deliberate pulls.

  She imagined the servants below staring agog at the bell board as the bell for the empty master bedroom impossibly twitched and chimed. Minutes passed, and nothing happened. Then she heard uncertain steps ascend the servants’ stairs and walk along the landing. Faith knelt by her bedroom door and pressed her eye to the keyhole.

  Jeanne was hovering outside the Reverend’s room, eyes wide, twisting her hands nervously together. As Faith watched, she grasped the door handle and entered the room. Faith was fairly sure she heard a muffled gasp.

  Creak. Creak. Faint, cautious footsteps from inside the room. Then there was a short squeal of surprise. Jeanne burst on to the landing in disarray, the red corded bell pull in one hand, and sprinted from view.

  Faith smiled to herself as the other girl’s steps thundered down the servants’ stairs. She had guessed that somebody would give the haunted bell pull an experimental tug. If she had left it un-sawn it would have caused the bell for her room to ring, and perhaps somebody could have deduced the truth.

  Pressing her ear to the wall, she could hear muted conversation taking place somewhere on the servants’ stairway.

  ‘You broke it?’ Prythe was asking, incredulously.

  ‘I only pulled gently!’ Jeanne could be heard exclaiming, her voice defiant but shaken. ‘It came away in my hand! There’s all manner of things amiss in that room . . .’

  Faith stroked her hand down the bell pull, feeling its roughness under her fingers, tempted to pull it again. No, that would be too much, too fast. Her victims needed time to wonder, to whisper, to tell each other frightened stories.

  An hour later, when Jeanne brought the breakfast tray to the day nursery for Faith and Howard, she seemed to have lost her usual self-possession. The cups rattled as she set down the tray, and she barely spared Faith a glance, bobbing the briefest distracted curtsy as she left. Whatever she thought of the mysterious bell, she evidently did not suspect the prim, shy daughter of the house.

  Faith could hardly concentrate on her breakfast as she sat at the little wooden table with Howard.

  What did she know about the murderer? Almost anybody on Vane could have been in Bull Cove that night. However, her father had talked as though he had an appointment at midnight. This had to be somebody that he was willing to meet, though not without a pistol. If he expected danger from this enemy, though, why meet them at all, let alone secretly and unaccompanied in the dead of night?

  Then there was the mystery of the pistol. He had gone out armed, but for some reason this had not saved him. And when his body had been laid out, the pistol had been missing from his pocket.

  ‘Other hands, How,’ she said reflexively, noticing her brother had quietly swapped his cutlery again.

  ‘No!’ Howard shouted, in a sudden fit of rebellion. He was shiny-faced and breathless, his face locked in an expression of slightly frantic discontent. Faith could see that he had slept badly, and once again felt a soul-bruise that was not quite guilt.

  ‘Howard . . .’

  ‘No, no, no, no!’ Howard shrieked more loudly, pushing away his plate so that it nearly knocked Faith’s breakfast into her lap.

  She tried to stay calm, but felt her temper fraying. He was clawing for attention, and it actually felt as though his small, clumsy fingernails were scraping at her mind.

  ‘Behave yourself!’ she snapped, losing control. ‘Or I will put you in the blue jacket!’

  It was an ill-judged threat. Howard’s mouth fell open and he started to bawl.

  ‘I ha-a-ate you!’ he wailed, his words broken and thick with sobs.

  The jacket was not supposed to be used as a general punishment. Howard liked to understand how things worked, and needed to know that the world was fair. Unfortunately the world was not fair, and every time he collided with this fact he lost control completely. If Faith did nothing, he would scream himself sick.

  No, the world was not fair. Faith jumped from her chair and stalked acr
oss the room, looking for something to kick.

  When she glanced back at Howard, he looked very small in his miniature wooden chair. None of this was his fault. He had every reason to be miserable.

  Relenting, Faith sat down with a rustle of black skirts. She reached into the trunk of Howard’s toys and pulled out his model theatre.

  The theatre was box-shaped, its card and paper intricately painted in reds, golds and greens, with crests, swirls and angels. The front frame had painted curtains, and you could look through it into the stage itself, which tapered and receded to a tiny backdrop of blue sky, hills and a castle.

  Faith pulled out the landscape backdrop. There were three others to choose from, one showing the same hillside scene by moonlight, one depicting an indoor scene with pictures and a chandelier, and one with a green-tinted woodland scene. With a deliberate air of absorption, Faith slotted the nocturnal scene into place.

  Very quickly Howard stopped screaming. He wandered over and dropped himself heavily beside her to sit cross-legged. Howard was always captivated by her ‘shows’.

  ‘I want Juggler,’ he said. ‘And . . . Wizard. And the Devil.’

  The actors were tiny paper figures, glued to slender sticks so that they could be moved around the stage. Most of them had been created by Faith, carefully drawn, coloured and cut out.

  There were slots in the side of the stage, so that Faith could slide the figures in from the wings, and move them from side to side across the stage. They could not move forward or backwards though. This frustrated Howard, and several puppet sticks had been broken as a result of this frustration.

  Today, as usual, Howard wanted fighting.