The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

‘Mmm? Oh, it does not matter as long as the back is not too high.’

  Faith settled herself in a wooden chair, and a moment later she felt the calipers grip her, one metal pincer resting on the back of her head, the other pressing into the base of her forehead, just above her nose.

  ‘Dolichocephalic skull, like your father,’ the doctor muttered, his temper recovering a little.

  His words did not surprise Faith, nor was their meaning lost on her. It had already crossed her mind that, when engaged in his duties as coroner, the doctor had probably seized the opportunity to measure her father’s head. She gritted her teeth and kept her expression bland as chalk.

  The calipers were withdrawn, and the wooden frame lowered on to Faith’s head, so that its crosspiece was settled on the top of her skull. It had four drooping vertical arms, and Dr Jacklers twiddled the screws until the arms pressed against the front, back and sides of her head.

  ‘My mother was very pleased with the veil,’ she said meekly. ‘And the lovely shawl!’

  ‘Shawl?’ The doctor paused. ‘There was no shawl.’

  ‘Oh!’ Faith blinked. ‘I beg your pardon! Now I remember – the shawl was from Mr Clay.’

  ‘Mr Clay gave your mother a shawl?’ asked the doctor in outraged, suspicious tones.

  Faith knew that she might be providing Clay with an enemy, but she could not afford to be sentimental. Besides, any man of the cloth chasing a brand-new widow deserved everything he got.

  ‘Yes,’ she faltered. ‘It arrived yesterday.’

  There was a long pause.

  ‘That measurement seems too large,’ the doctor muttered at last. ‘Are you tensing your face muscles? Please try not to exert your forehead.’ The screws were tightened until she was unsure whether he was measuring her head or trying to crush it down to the right size.

  ‘That feels rather tight, Dr Jacklers!’ Faith exclaimed, as the pressure became bruising. She wondered whether she had been rash, putting her skull at his mercy. He was, after all, one of her suspects.

  ‘I am trying to acquire a credible reading,’ growled the doctor with rather ill grace. ‘Of course, the best way to be sure of your cranial capacity would be to fill your skull with seeds, just as I do with empty skulls, but you would hardly thank me for that!’

  Just as she was wondering whether she would end up with a rectangular head, the screws were loosened and the frame lifted away. While Faith gingerly felt her forehead and temples, Dr Jacklers wrote down a set of figures in a notebook. Glancing across, Faith could see that the columns had headings like ‘facial angle’, ‘cranial index’, ‘breadth, ‘circumference’ and ‘length.

  ‘How did I do?’ she asked.

  ‘Your head is longer than I expected,’ the doctor admitted. ‘No doubt a gift from your late father.’ He frowned again at his figures, and Faith saw him round a couple down.

  ‘Dr Jacklers,’ said Faith timidly, ‘can I ask your advice?’ She reached for her sketchbook and spread it for the doctor’s view, turning page after page. ‘I wanted to thank you – to be of help to you and the other gentlemen – and I know Mr Lambent’s draughtsman has broken his wrist. Do you think I would do instead?’

  The doctor watched as Faith leafed past sketches of birds and still lifes of deer antlers, then put out his hand to halt her. The page showed a cross section of a hillside, neatly sliced by lines into layers, with labels such as ‘broken medieval pottery’, ‘fragment of Roman wall’, ‘clay soil’, and ‘pygmy hippo and aurochs bones’.

  ‘Is that a drawing of an excavation section?’

  ‘Yes – Father taught me how to draw them.’ It was a lie. Faith had seen such diagrams before, and understood them a little, but she had carefully copied this picture from one of her father’s books that very morning. ‘Would that help?’

  The doctor was tempted, she could see it. But then he glanced over at her, and she saw herself reflected in his gaze, a young girl out of place amid rubble and bones. He started to shake his head.

  ‘I would not want to be any trouble though,’ Faith declared swiftly. She shut the book. ‘I know that you have Mr Clay to take photographs, and that he probably needs the money. I would hate to steal his commissions and make difficulties for him.’

  A little candle of malice lit in Dr Jacklers’s eye. Faith could guess what he was thinking. If Faith was making sketches, the excavation would not need so many of Clay’s photographs. He would lose his importance at the dig and have less money to buy presents for pretty widows.

  ‘Miss Sunderly, do not concern yourself. That is an excellent idea! Are you sure that your mother can spare you?’

  ‘I believe so,’ answered Faith, a little uncertain. ‘To tell the truth, I think I have been under everybody’s feet lately. Do you think Mr Lambent and Mr Clay will mind though?’ It was her role to be doubtful, hesitant and ultimately persuaded.

  ‘Leave it to me,’ said the doctor grimly.

  Waiting for the verdict from the excavation leaders, Faith busied herself in her room with scientific investigation.

  Remembering the way that her clothes had caught fire, and the strange occurrence with the sample jar, Faith decided to perform some careful experiments, this time with a jug of water to hand.

  First she tried a tiny piece of Lie Tree leaf on the tip of her knife and moved it into a narrow shaft of sunlight. It ignited instantly, a leap of white flame consuming it in a second with a hiss. A frail mote of grey ash floated down to the floor. The same thing happened when she repeated the experiment with thorns, blobs of sap or fragments of bark.

  It was true then. Fragments of the Lie Tree burst into flame at the touch of sunlight. There had probably been tiny fragments of foliage on her dress that morning, and they had ignited as she left the cave.

  After singeing herself a few times and slightly charring the windowsill, she knew a little more. Bright light from candles and lanterns only caused the leaf to fizz and wilt. Daylight immediately reflected in a mirror’s surface triggered instant combustion, as did direct daylight. Indirect daylight seemed to have no effect, providing it was dim and diffuse enough. Lantern-light muted by enough layers of gauze also seemed to be harmless to the specimens.

  ‘Father must be right,’ Faith murmured to herself. ‘The Tree must be cave-dwelling – somewhere the sun never reaches. But why does it burn? Chemicals, I suppose – oils, volatile. Maybe that’s why it smells so strongly. But why does it let itself burn?’

  How could bursting into flames be an advantage? How would a tree like that evolve?

  ‘Maybe it is a defence,’ she said aloud. She imagined plant-eating animals venturing into caves, chomping the Tree’s slick leaves. As they emerged, muzzles sticky with sap, they would suddenly find their faces singed and searing. They would learn to avoid that ice-cold reek.

  ‘But that answers nothing,’ she muttered, as she jotted down her thoughts. ‘Volatile oils are stored energy. Where does the Tree find its energy?’

  Her father had theorized about the Tree feeding off a ‘psychical connection’ with an ‘intelligent member of another species’. Her pen halted on the paper. If the Lie Tree was ‘connected’ to anybody at that moment, it could only be herself. And it was growing. But she did not feel as though something were draining out of her. As she looked at her notes, she felt energized, alive.

  If Faith could understand the plant, perhaps she could understand something about daylight, the vegetable kingdom, truth or even the human soul. Her awe of the plant was giving way to a hungry curiosity.

  A little before dinner, a letter arrived for Myrtle from Dr Jacklers, asking whether she might spare young Faith over the next few days for some sketching tasks.

  Myrtle was only slightly happier than she might have been if Faith had suggested leaping down the excavation shaft. Sending a young girl to a dig full of labouring men was scarcely proper. Dragging her from the bosom of her family straight after bereavement was irregular. Expecting her to assist the excavation, after h
er father had been so terribly snubbed, was downright peculiar.

  It was Dr Jacklers who had asked though, so Myrtle spent the whole of dinner talking herself round.

  ‘Uncle Miles will be with you, so it is not completely improper,’ she conceded. ‘And perhaps the invitation is some sort of apology for the way our family has been treated. Faith – the Lambents have slighted us dreadfully, but please be as civil to them as you can bear. If they can only be persuaded to be reasonable, then everybody can forget about this ridiculous inquest.’

  Jeanne served the food like a sleepwalker. There were dark shadows under her eyes, and she kept forgetting what she was doing mid-ladle. She picked up each napkin gingerly, as if expecting to find horrors lurking beneath. At one point a servants’ bell rang in the kitchen, and she nearly jumped out of her skin.

  The excavation is not really a dig for dusty old bones. The leaders are lying to everybody. They are looking for smugglers’ treasure, and they want to keep it all for themselves.

  That was the lie that Faith needed to sow into the minds of the islanders. Back in her room, she set about creating the first seed.

  She had borrowed a sheet of her father’s writing paper and one of his pens. Carefully she began to write, glancing at her father’s journal now and then so that she could copy his handwriting as closely as possible.

  17th May 1865

  Proceeds of 2nd Cavn to be Divided as Below:

  Mr A. Lambent

  763

  (plus additional 100 for ownership of land)

  Rev. T. Clay

  763

  Rev. E. Sunderly

  763

  All further finds to be divided equally

  She examined it with real pride. It looked smudged and hurried, just as she had planned. Better still, it was unclear. There was nothing to show what the numbers meant. They could be pounds, guineas, doubloons or mammoth teeth. All that anybody could tell from reading it was that something had been found in large quantities and divided between three men . . . and that Dr Jacklers had not been included.

  Faith was learning that you only had to provide part of a lie. You could rely on other people’s imaginations to fill the gaps.

  She chewed her lip, deciding where to leave the note. It should be found, but it should not look as though it had been left to be found. Discovering it should feel like a tantalizing accident.

  Her eye fell upon the glass spill vase on her mantelpiece. Of course! There was a similar vase on every mantelpiece, filled with stick-like rolled paper spills, so that people could light them from the fire and use them to light pipes or candles. Carefully she rolled her paper until it looked like a spill. Then she unrolled the last few inches again, so that a curl of paper was loose and the first line of writing just visible.

  She crept down to the library and placed it among the other spills in the brass vase on the mantelpiece. Anyone who found it might fancy that it had been sitting there for days and only just begun to unravel. Faith looked at it, nestling among the other spills, and felt like an artist.

  When she checked the library again a couple of hours later, the new spill was gone.

  CHAPTER 23:

  INFILTRATION

  The next morning, Faith found herself stepping out of a Dr Jacklers’s carriage at the excavation site, accompanied by Uncle Miles. For once the sky was clear and the sun bright, but Faith felt only a turbulence of nerves, gripping her sketchbook so hard that the edge dug into her fingers. She had no idea whether the doctor had persuaded everyone to accept her presence, or whether she would find herself a bone of contention, chewed by rival dogs.

  ‘Perhaps we had better ask the driver to wait a few minutes, just in case,’ said Uncle Miles. Evidently he was thinking along similar lines.

  Faith was relieved that the first person to approach was Ben Crock, and even more relieved to find that he had been expecting her. As before, his manner was careful and polite. He showed no signs of ordering her off the site.

  ‘I am sure the gentlemen will want to greet you properly, Miss Sunderly, but they are busy setting up a photograph right now.’

  As she followed the foreman and her uncle down the zigzagging path into the little gorge, Faith felt a little glad that she had not robbed Clay of all his photographic commissions.

  Down by the tunnel, a gleaming, dome-headed figure immediately caught her eye. Lambent was dressed in a most peculiar array of garments. A shining white pith helmet was perched on his head. He wore the top half of a brilliant white linen suit, but with Turkish-style purple pantaloons, gathered at the knee into high boots. He also seemed to be carrying a tropical fly-whisk, and flicking its plume of horsehair at imaginary flies.

  Faith was not sure whether he had deliberately dressed this way, or whether items of his collection had simply fallen on him.

  Clay’s camera tripod stood facing the entrance of the tunnel. The cloth-draped ‘Bedouin tent’ structure had been moved, with all its genteel furniture, so that it stood slightly to one side of the tunnel entrance. On the divan reclined a solitary figure in a dark green dress.

  Dr Jacklers was kneeling in front of the tunnel entrance and shuffling this way and that on his knees in response to Clay’s instructions. When he saw Faith and Uncle Miles, however, he leaped to his feet and came over to greet them.

  ‘We should find you somewhere in the shade . . .’ He looked over his shoulder at the ‘tent’. ‘Lambent – what about having Miss Sunderly sit next to your wife? If one lady lends gentility to the picture, why not double the effect?’

  Lambent stopped dead and appeared to observe Faith for the first time. His smile faded and he looked away, appearing deeply uncomfortable. Faith wondered whether he had intended to avoid noticing her.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, after a pause that was slightly too long. ‘Why not?’ His pained tone told Faith everything she needed to know. She was permitted on the site, but she was not welcome. Had the doctor made his suggestion in her absence, she suspected that Lambent would probably have given a very different answer. Instead, the magistrate had been put in a situation where he could not refuse without being incredibly rude.

  With deep misgivings, Faith walked forward to the ‘tent’. As she drew closer she could see that it was indeed Agatha Lambent seated in the shadow, dressed in a green dress and bonnet and swaddled in scarves and lace shawls almost to suffocation. On the table beside her gleamed a silver tea set, and an unhappy glass vase of lilies that threatened to pitch over with every gust.

  ‘Good afternoon, Mrs Lambent,’ murmured Faith as she sat down, keeping her tone civil with some effort. She remembered the day of the funeral all too clearly.

  The older woman did not look at her, but continued nursing a small glass of clear liquid in her shaky, lace-gloved hands. A caprice of the breeze left Faith downwind of Mrs Lambent for a moment, and a strong smell seared her nostrils. Myrtle had been right, Faith realized. Mrs Lambent’s ‘medicine’ was indeed strong liquor.

  ‘We should be shown discovering something!’ declared Lambent, recovering his composure. ‘Where is the aurochs horn?’ The four gentlemen hastened away to the tents, debating the matter.

  Agatha Lambent stirred herself and moved forward on the divan, so that she partially emerged from the shade. Faith realized that the older woman must be doing so to make herself clearly visible to the camera. She moved to do likewise, but was brought up short by a sharp cough from Mrs Lambent.

  ‘Miss Sunderly.’ Mrs Lambent spoke quietly, hardly moving her mouth. ‘If you have any sense of consideration and decency you will stay with your face in shadow. This photograph is to be a carte de visite, for circulation among our acquaintance, perhaps even for publication. Your name will not be among those written beneath it. We cannot have the name of Sunderly linked to this endeavour.’

  Faith felt warmth stealing up from the little cauldron of anger she kept at her core.

  ‘I know that you did not ask to appear in this photograph,’ Agatha Lambe
nt conceded. ‘Dr Jacklers and my husband have put us both in an impossible position. For my husband’s part in that, I apologize.’

  Faith found that she was trembling from head to foot. Suddenly meek silence was impossible.

  ‘If you want to apologize, Mrs Lambert,’ she said under her breath, ‘you can apologize for shutting us out of your house on the day of my father’s funeral, and forcing my mother to walk miles in the pouring rain.’

  Agatha Lambent narrowed her eyes and sniffed.

  ‘I see that you have your mother’s manners,’ she murmured coldly.

  ‘You cannot talk to me about manners,’ answered Faith, just as icily. ‘Do not worry – I shall stay in the shadows. I have no more wish to be seen with you than you have to be seen with me.’

  Before she could say anything else, the gentlemen returned. Clay positioned himself behind his camera, and Dr Jacklers and Lambent knelt before the tunnel entrance. Lambent held a curling horn, discoloured and honey-sticky with seize and varnish. Both men stared at it with pantomimish solemnity.

  ‘Where shall I stand?’ called out Uncle Miles. There was an uncomfortable silence.

  ‘Erm . . .’ Dr Jacklers cleared his throat. ‘Actually, Cattistock, you would be of great service if you were to stand just behind the ladies’ tent, and hold the cloth down to stop it billowing and spoiling the photograph.’

  With a rather stony look on his round, pleasant face, Uncle Miles walked past, presumably to station himself behind the tent.

  Clay fiddled with his camera, adjusting the accordion-like ‘bellows’ so that the front of it slid forward.

  ‘Hold position!’ he said, and removed the lid from the lens.

  The seconds crawled by. Faith gritted her teeth. She was glad of the shadows, she told herself. She was pleased that she did not have to sit with the sun in her eyes for over a minute.

  After what felt like five minutes, Clay covered the lens with the lid once more. ‘Thank you – it is quite safe to move now!’