The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘No!’ Faith opened the cage door, poured water hastily into its bowl and gently stroked its coils. To her relief, it moved. When its head emerged, however, she saw that its eyes were covered by a translucent cloudy crust. ‘Don’t die! Don’t leave me! I am so sorry!’ As it slid up her arm to recline across her shoulders, its scales felt papery against her skin.

  There was a faint knock on the door.

  ‘Excuse me, miss,’ came Mrs Vellet’s quiet voice. ‘If you would like to join your brother for breakfast in the nursery—’

  ‘Mrs Vellet!’ With an impulse born of panic, Faith threw open the door. ‘The mouse you gave me for the snake a few days ago – how did it die? Could it have swallowed poison?’

  Mrs Vellet was a little taken aback by Faith’s sudden snake-bedecked appearance at the door, but rallied well.

  ‘The mouse was in a trap.’ The housekeeper looked uncertainly at the snake. ‘It does not seem likely that it was poisoned – but I suppose it is possible.’

  ‘Something is wrong with her – look!’ Faith lifted the snake’s foremost loop so that the housekeeper could see the milky eyes. ‘Is there anything in the medicine cabinet that might make her vomit?’

  Mrs Vellet was peering with a frown. ‘Miss – what happened to your hand?’

  In her concern for the snake, Faith had completely forgotten to hide the bite. ‘There was a rat behind the barn!’ she explained hastily. ‘It . . . It does not matter right now!’

  ‘That wound needs more care than your pet does,’ Mrs Vellet said, with surprising firmness.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Your snake is sloughing, miss,’ the housekeeper said patiently. ‘Nothing more.’

  Faith’s mouth fell open. She felt like an idiot. Of course she knew that snakes shed their skin. However, it had not even crossed her mind as an explanation. She had only been able to think that the snake was dying and leaving her. Faith felt almost sick with relief. She had not killed the snake.

  Fifteen minutes later, snakeless and dressed in her day clothes, Faith found herself sitting in the parlour while Mrs Vellet unlocked the medicine cabinet.

  The housekeeper held Faith’s hand firmly but gently, and swabbed at the wound with a cloth dipped in something that stung. An acrid smell of alcohol filled the air. Faith tried not to flinch and looked away from the bite into the cabinet, which seemed to be full of bottles.

  ‘It looks like a wine cupboard,’ she said aloud.

  ‘That was the way the invalid ladies liked it.’ Mrs Vellet glanced over her shoulder at the bottles. ‘You would be surprised at the cures they could find in it. Brandy to stimulate the heart. Cherry liqueur for fatigue. Oh, and anything mixed with tonic water is medicine against malaria, I am told.’

  ‘Is there a lot of malaria here?’ asked Faith doubtfully.

  ‘I never heard of any, miss, but I am sure the invalid ladies knew what they were about.’ The housekeeper’s face was deadpan, but there was a slight wry curl to her voice.

  Then Mrs Vellet frowned. She was staring past Faith and out through the window.

  ‘Heaven save us,’ she murmured. ‘What is that?’

  Turning to look, Faith could just make out a brownish-grey smear across the sky, some distance to the south.

  ‘It looks like smoke!’ said Faith. It was too close to come from the town. Only a few things lay in that direction – the church, the parsonage, the telegraph tower, the post office and Miss Hunter’s abode. A dark suspicion started to gnaw at her mind.

  Mrs Vellet stared out at the smoke, brow furrowed, apparently making the same calculations.

  ‘You go to back to bed, Miss Sunderly,’ she said at last, without looking at Faith. ‘You need sleep, or you will make yourself ill. Prythe is taking letters to the post office this morning – he will find out if anything is amiss.’

  Yielding to exhaustion and the housekeeper’s insistence, Faith tottered back to bed. She was sure that she could not sleep, and fell into slumber almost immediately. She dreamed that she was in a parlour drinking tea, and trying to hide the vines that crept out of her cuffs and collar. Miss Hunter sat opposite in a rocking chair, her skin papery, and her eyes frightened behind their crusted white shells.

  Faith was next woken by the sound of murmurs, which sounded so close that they might have been in the room with her. It took her a few moments to realize that the muted conversation was taking place on the servants’ stairs. She struggled out of bed and scampered over to place her ear against the wall.

  ‘. . . preys on a man’s mind.’ It sounded like Prythe, choosing his words carefully and solemnly as usual. ‘Do you think there is a curse?’

  ‘I think there are as many curses in this house as unicorns,’ Mrs Vellet answered drily.

  ‘Jeanne thinks she is cursed.’ There was a long pause.

  ‘How does she fare?’ asked the housekeeper.

  ‘Ill, and getting worse, even in the church. She cannot eat or sleep. She has nightmares, and is chilled to the bone. Some folk are saying that she is dying.’

  ‘Some folk say a lot of foolish things, and I hope they do not say it in Jeanne’s hearing. I would not want that idea taking hold of her . . .’

  The voices moved away.

  Jeanne was not dying, Faith told herself. Of course she was not. There was no curse. It was nothing but Jeanne’s imagination playing tricks on her. Nothing but the effects of continual fear, and sleeplessness, and lack of appetite, and sleeping in a cold church night after night . . .

  There was a creeping sensation under Faith’s skin. Just for a moment she wished that she could shed herself like a snake’s skin, and slide away to be somebody new.

  It was the middle of the afternoon. Faith had missed lunch, but a meal tray had been left outside her room, presumably by Mrs Vellet.

  Heading downstairs, she encountered Myrtle pacing the hall, fretful and intolerant of everything.

  ‘Faith! Where in the world have you been?’ She did not wait for an answer, which was just as well. ‘You need to look after your brother. He has been running wild this morning!’

  ‘But I need to go to the excavation with Uncle Miles and make sketches!’ exclaimed Faith.

  ‘That dreadful place where chains snap and people throw rocks? No, Faith – I should never have allowed you to go there in the first place. Besides, your uncle left for the dig first thing this morning. Apparently they are close to breaking through into the lower chamber, and he did not wish to miss anything.’

  This was a blow. Now more than ever Faith wanted to be watching the members of the dig.

  ‘Besides, I need you here to keep an eye on Howard. He has been writing – there is ink all over the nursery – and he has not been wearing his blue jacket! You know he must wear that whenever he is writing! He is going to school in a few years . . .’ She paused and raised a hand to her forehead. ‘School,’ she murmured, as if the thought pained her.

  ‘I am sorry,’ Faith began, ‘but the last time I put the jacket on him he cried so much—’

  ‘Then let him cry!’ exploded Myrtle. ‘It is for his own good! It will be far worse for him if we indulge this phase of his! He will be teased at school, and have his knuckles caned. And it will make a difference when he is making his way in the world – nobody will invite him anywhere if he grips his cutlery in the wrong hands! Howard’s future is at stake! His future . . .’ She trailed off, looking distracted.

  Faith bit her lip. ‘What if it is not a phase?’ she asked.

  ‘Faith, your brother is not left-handed,’ Myrtle said firmly, as if Faith had made an unfair accusation. ‘What is wrong with you today?’ She frowned, and looked at Faith properly. ‘You are a mess! When did you last comb your hair properly? And why do you smell of lemons?’ She looked around her at the hall. ‘Everything is a mess! And Dr Jacklers will be arriving at any moment.’ She glanced at the clock. ‘Where is he? Two hours late and not a word – something is wrong; I can feel it.’

  E
ven as she said this, a clop and crunch of horse hoofs was audible from outside.

  Myrtle let out her breath. ‘At last!’ she said.

  As it turned out, it was not Dr Jacklers. It was Dr Jacklers’s apology in paper form. He had been detained attending to Miss Hunter.

  It appeared that in the dead of night Miss Hunter had noticed a gaggle of men loitering not far from her home. Although she lived with only an elderly maid for company, Miss Hunter had not felt under threat, since it was not unusual to see little ragtag groups weaving home slowly after a ratting, or sitting and drinking on the cliff-tops.

  After she retired, however, she was awakened by a smash, and a cry of ‘Fire!’ She woke her maid and led her downstairs, where they discovered a haze of brownish smoke drifting from the rear of the house. Miss Hunter sent her maid to the parsonage to seek help from Clay, while she began moving valuables out of her house and out of the post office next door, starting with the precious post in her care.

  Unexpectedly, she found herself helped by a group of men, who had just been passing and who ran in to move out her furniture and valuables, cloths wrapped around their faces to protect against the smoke. It was only when she saw them loading some of her trunks and furniture on to barrows, or hoisting them on to their own backs, that it became clear that these were not Good Samaritans. She had shouted at them, and finally tried to wrest her jewellery case out of the hands of one of her ‘rescuers’. He had shoved her brutally, knocking her backwards. Her head had struck the corner of the wall, hard enough to render her insensible.

  ‘We are trying to ascertain whether there is a fracture, or bleeding within the skull,’ read Dr Jacklers’s letter. There was none of his usual enthusiasm for skulls, or contempt for those of womankind.

  Faith thought of the hints she had dropped on the cliff-top. They had seemed so tiny and air-frail. But the two boys must have run straight back to the ratting hut, spreading her rumour among a gang of men already rowdy and in their cups, and not a mile from Miss Hunter’s house. Faith’s other lies had lit a slow fuse. This lie had thrown a spark straight on to a heap of ready powder.

  The last part of the doctor’s letter Myrtle did not read out aloud. Instead she stood there, quivering in her beautifully tailored dress, a flush stealing its way up past her velvet choker.

  Faith watched her with dread, wondering if her own name was mentioned in it. It is believed that the attack took place because of scurrilous rumours spread by your daughter while she was cavorting in a den of blood sports . . .

  However, when Myrtle raised her gaze she looked through Faith, not at her, her face clouded and abstracted.

  ‘The doctor thanks us for helping him with his investigations,’ she said abruptly, ‘and apologizes for troubling us during this painful time. He will try to avoid trespassing upon our patience any further.’

  ‘What does that mean?’ asked Faith.

  ‘It means that we shall not be seeing Dr Jacklers again,’ Myrtle answered, her voice flippant, but heavy with bitterness. ‘He is hauling Miss Hunter from the jaws of death, and doubtless he believes that this will improve his prospects with her. If she is returned to the world an imbecile, he may even be correct.’

  Faith sensed that there was something in the letter that she had not been told. It sounded as if the doctor’s unseemly courtship had come to a sudden end, and she wanted to feel relieved about that. However, something about her mother’s expression filled her with dread. Myrtle was not belligerent or vociferous, as she might have been if her vanity had been punctured. Instead her face was stony and deeply tired, and for once she almost looked her age.

  Howard was almost crazed with boredom, so Faith took him out into the garden with the family’s old croquet set and pushed hoops into the stubborn earth. The grass was too long, and the balls bounced wherever they chose. Howard laughed when Faith forgot the score, and when the balls hid in tussocks or burrowed into hollows. After a couple of hours Mrs Vellet brought out supper for them to eat on the grass, like a picnic.

  As they played, Faith walked beside Howard like a sleepwalker, picturing fractures in the skull beneath Miss Hunter’s neat black hair. She imagined the postmistress tossing in delirium, or reduced to a drooling simpleton.

  This is what you wanted, said a voice in her mind. It was her own thoughts, but she could almost hear it, speaking with her own voice. You wanted revenge on her, and now you have it. And yet this brought Faith no happiness.

  ‘She might be a murderess,’ Faith said under her breath.

  She pressed her hands against the side of her head and forced herself to think. If she had understood her vision rightly, there were two murderers. Miss Hunter was rumoured to be having an affair with Lambent. Miss Hunter rode out at all times of the day and night. Lambent claimed he had trouble sleeping, which gave him a good excuse to go out at strange hours. They could be meeting in secret. They might be involved in an ‘intrigue’.

  Faith did not know why they might want to kill her father, but Lambent had written to Uncle Miles inviting the Reverend to the Vane, and Miss Hunter had been the family’s enemy from the start.

  You must be ruthless, said the voice in her head. You have come too far to turn back.

  ‘Can we play again?’ asked Howard for the twentieth time, appearing at her side.

  ‘You must be tired of it by now!’ exclaimed Faith, though she could see from his face that he was not. She envied him. Had she ever been able to play and play the same game without losing joy in it, or worrying about anything else? Perhaps this knack was something she had lost, or something she had never had.

  She looked around her, noticing the dulling of the sky and the fading peach halo in the west. The battered wooden hoops were becoming harder to see against the grass.

  ‘It is starting to get dark,’ she said aloud. She had not even noticed. ‘This must be the last game, How. I mean it this time.’

  ‘Are you tired?’ asked Howard, then put his head on one side. ‘What’s wrong? Are you bilious?’ His nursemaid Miss Caudle was often bilious, and Howard had adopted the word.

  ‘No,’ Faith managed to smile, ‘but . . . I have a headache.’

  ‘Is the ghost making you ill?’ There was a worried light in Howard’s eye, and Faith wondered how many conversations about Jeanne he had overheard.

  ‘No, of course not!’ Faith forced herself to smile. ‘You keep the ghost away, remember? By being a good boy and copying out your scripture.’

  Howard dropped his gaze, and his hands curled nervously. ‘I couldn’t make it go,’ he whispered. ‘It came back.’

  ‘No, How—’

  ‘I saw it. Last night.’

  Faith halted, and looked down into Howard’s round, earnest eyes. She was gripped by a powerful fancy that, if she looked round suddenly, she would see her father silently watching her. The thought should have comforted her. Instead she felt a creeping dread. Try as she might, in her mind’s eye she could not make his expression kind or understanding.

  ‘Where? Where did you see it, How?’

  Howard turned and pointed at the glasshouse.

  ‘It made a light,’ he whispered. ‘I saw it from my window.’

  Taking Howard’s hand, Faith slowly approached the glasshouse. It had rained overnight, and the grass was still wet enough to dampen the hems of her skirts. The glasshouse panes were clouded with moisture. She raised the latch and entered.

  Several of the plant pots had been moved slightly. Tiny clods of fresh black earth were scattered here and there. In the centre of the floor, Faith found a small, gluey blob of yellow candle wax.

  Faith’s superstitious fear ebbed, only to be replaced by a far more pragmatic dread. Ghosts were not the only things that walked.

  ‘What did it look like, How?’ she asked gently. ‘What did you see?’

  ‘It looked like a man. In a big black coat.’

  ‘Did you see its face?’

  Howard shook his head, and looked a little mulis
h. ‘It was looking all everywhere. I think it was looking for me, but it didn’t know I was up in the window. And then it went around the house.’

  Faith walked Howard out of the glasshouse and in the direction he had pointed. It led her past a flower bed to the foot of the steps that ran up to her roof garden.

  There was a large, earth-laden footprint on one of the steps.

  ‘Stay there, How.’ Faith walked up the steps. In the garden she found two more faint prints on the stone flags. Here too the pots had been shifted slightly, and the stone children faced in new directions as if startled into conference. Somebody had been here, in her secret haven. Perhaps their stealthy tread had been pressing the flags while she was asleep mere yards away. Somebody had been searching, and their search had brought them to her very door.

  But they weren’t looking for me.

  The realization struck her as she slowly descended the steps. The ‘ghost’ had searched the glasshouse, the flower beds and her roof garden. They were looking for a plant.

  At last she understood why a plant was missing from the glasshouse. Somebody had carried away the wrong plant in haste and darkness. Uncle Miles’s determination to gain possession of her father’s papers and specimens also took on a deeper significance.

  Somebody knew about the Tree. Somebody wanted the Tree. Her father had been right to hide it, right to fear that somebody would come for it. Somebody had tried to steal it, had asked Uncle Miles to acquire it, would stop at nothing to get it.

  A Tree that could give you secrets nobody else possessed, and unpeel the mysteries of the world. A Tree that could show governments their enemies’ plans, scientists the secrets of the ages, journalists the vices of the powerful. It was not just scientifically fascinating. It was valuable. Powerful. Priceless.

  Someone might kill for a plant like that.

  Faith’s face tingled as she took up the threads of her mystery once more, looking at everything in a new way. The invitation to Vane had brought the Reverend to the island, but it had also brought the Lie Tree. He could not entrust it to anybody else, and perhaps the murderers had counted on that. All this while, Faith had been poring over her father’s life, trying to work out who might have been envious, angry, jealous or vengeful enough to kill him. But perhaps he had simply died because he owned a plant that somebody else wanted.