‘I know,’ he says, still without turning. ‘But your father did, and I couldn’t refuse.’
‘I’m sorry,’ I tell him. ‘I’m so sorry.’
Drawing closer to him, I press my lips to the hollow between his shoulders. Wyn’s breath catches and he turns to face me. The only time I’ve seen him look so bleak before was in Burleigh’s memory of my father’s death.
‘Haelwyn. That’s not even my name,’ Wyn says. ‘I had another, before I came here. I can remember that much, but I can’t recall what it was. The House magic – it works differently in me than in anyone else, because of the binding. Your father lost his health first and then his mind. But I’m losing my memory. I can hardly remember anything from before I was brought to Burleigh House. And half of what I remember from after, I only know because Burleigh was a witness to it. I can see it in my mind’s eye, but it’s from outside myself. And I don’t feel those memories, not the way I would if I was the one recalling them.’
‘Why didn’t you say?’ Hot tears spill from my eyes and I ignore them. ‘Wyn, let’s leave now. You and me together, just like you’ve always wanted. Run away with me.’
He smiles, but there’s bitterness behind it. ‘I can’t. Not any more. I tried to get off the grounds after Falmouth was here and I did all that magic. Not to leave for good, mind you, just to clear my head. But the binding’s gone too far and I can’t. It’s as if I’m walking into an invisible wall, and if I keep pushing it feels like . . . like dying.’
‘Blood and mortar, I should have let you go while you still could.’ I bury my face in my hands, because I think I’m about to fall apart. Wyn’s touch, gentle on the crown of my head, only makes things worse.
‘I decided to stay, Violet,’ he says. ‘I could’ve left. I decided to stay for the arrest too. And to be bound to Burleigh. None of it is your fault – I chose it all, for you.’
My mind is reeling. Burleigh and Papa are everything I believed was good and upright in this world, and to find that both of them bound children—
Yet tempering the bitterness of that revelation is Wyn’s admission that he’s done all this for me. Knowing it is a weight and a burden, but it kindles heat and light inside me, where the similar burden of looking after Burleigh leaves only cold resolve.
All that warmth crumbles to ash, though, as Wyn speaks again. ‘In a few days, everything will be all right,’ he says, though there’s a note of uncertainty in his voice. ‘Just before His Majesty arrives, I’ll do what I’ve been bound for. Burleigh will have a fresh start. You will have a fresh start. You’re going to be fine, Violet. I promise.’
I drop my hands and stare at him. ‘Wyn, I don’t want a new start without you. Nothing’s going to be all right if you don’t make it through this. Do you really think I could stand by and watch you make the sacrifice I was meant for? What if – why can’t I bind myself to the House again, in your place?’
‘I’d have to go away for that to happen,’ Wyn answers simply. ‘I can’t be replaced unless I’m absent from the House. But the binding’s gone too far, and I can’t leave. So I’m afraid this is how things have got to be. But you’re a Caretaker, Vi. What does a Caretaker do? She puts her House first. Before king, before country, before—’
‘Stop,’ I say. ‘I don’t want to hear it.’
Wyn bends and picks up his nightshirt, pulling it back over his head. When he faces me again, he’s all maddening practicality. ‘Why don’t you want to hear it?’ he asks. ‘Being a Caretaker is everything you’ve ever wanted. Everything your father taught you to be. I can bring about what you’ve hoped for since we were children.’
He stands there, with his hands at his sides, next to the place where Papa cut my name into Burleigh’s walls and bound Wyn to the House. And Wyn looks so small and breakable next to Burleigh’s thorns and mortar.
The House will eclipse him. He will be overshadowed.
Burleigh will take him over, and leave him lifeless when it goes back into the earth.
Panic wells up inside me, setting my hands to shaking and tears to burning at my eyes. This is not what I wanted.
‘I’m not a good Caretaker,’ I own to Wyn. ‘I’m never going to be a good Caretaker. I don’t want to put the House first, not like this. I don’t . . .’ I swallow. ‘Wyn, I don’t want Burleigh without you.’
He heaves a sigh. ‘Well, that’s unfortunate. Because I’m afraid it looks like you’re going to get it.’
And then I’m crying in earnest, not bothering to hide my face or turn away, because Wyn already knows the best of me, and the worst.
‘Come on now,’ he says. ‘Don’t do that, Vi. You really will be fine, you know.’ He steps forward and puts his arms around me. For a moment, I feel an overwhelming sense of safety, until the awareness that it’s Wyn who will die for Burleigh strikes me all over again. I tremble in his arms and he pulls me closer. ‘It’s all right,’ he says, his voice low and comforting. ‘It’s all right.’
He presses a kiss to the top of my head, but I turn my face up to his and we’re caught, looking at one another and knowing that in this moment, something’s irrevocably changed between us.
Then my hands are on his skin and his are on my waist. My mouth meets Wyn’s, and in spite of all this blood and mortar, in spite of what feels like the end of the world, everything in me sings. I kiss him as if a kiss could break a binding, and he kisses me as if it could mend a broken heart.
When we finally draw apart, I know it will never again do me any good to count the stars, or to count my fears. Because as Wyn runs a hand through his untidy hair and gives me a look that says, Well, Violet, what are we going to do now? I can feel it with every bone in my body: he is the centre upon which all my fears, at last, converge.
20
Ever since Wyn’s midnight confession, Burleigh is on edge. I’m on edge. Wyn seems quietly resolved, and that only sharpens the fear inside me.
I beg Alfred and Esperanza to redouble their efforts on Burleigh’s behalf, though I can’t bring myself to explain why. They write a flood of letters to their contacts throughout the country, asking if anyone’s found even the vaguest hint as to the location of Burleigh’s deed. For my part, every night I watch Burleigh’s memories until I can’t stay awake any longer, and fall asleep with the House’s whole sad history playing out around me.
I know in my bones that this is the only chance I have – if I can succeed in finding the deed, if I can manage to unbind my House, perhaps I won’t have to choose between home and heart.
Because everything has shifted between Wyn and me. Though we’re careful with each other, lips and hands never meeting, our eyes meet often. Every time, my pulse goes wild. And every time, I see it in him as he looks back at me – panic, raw and wild, forced down so deep that only the merest glimmer is visible. But I am a master of keeping my emotions tightly in check and know exactly what to look for.
Wyn is like a rabbit in a snare. Whatever he may say, however he may insist he’s ready to die to give me a chance at happiness and Burleigh an opportunity to start over, it’s not what he wants. And it works like mortar and thorns in me, seeing him unhappy. I think that’s why he’s maintaining this new and scrupulous distance between us too – because to be close is to be honest, and Wyn doesn’t want me to see the truth.
Then, three nights after Wyn tells me the truth, I wake to a memory I’ve never seen before.
I haven’t asked Burleigh to show me anything about Papa’s arrest, beyond what it’s volunteered. I’ve been wary of pushing the House to show me things that might be painful. But I open my eyes in the small, dark hours between evening and morning, and find myself looking at the dining hall.
Or rather, at the ghost of the dining hall, which now lies in ruins.
In this vision of Burleigh House, a fire crackles on the hearth and rain beads down the dining hall’s long windows, though it looks to be midday. Fitful wind gusts through wide cracks in the walls, and ivy twines its way up
towards the ceiling.
Papa sits at the head of the table. I’ve never seen him look so ill – he’s gaunt and hollow-eyed, with a sickly grey pallor to his skin, and when he reaches for his water glass his trembling hand knocks it over. For a long while he sits, watching the damp patch spread across the tablecloth. Then slowly, methodically, in a way that chills me to the bone because there’s no passion in it, just a fixed and emotionless intent, he picks up the glass and hurls it across the room.
Shards explode out from where it hits, with a sharp, unmistakeable shattering sound. Papa takes the pitcher next and sends it flying after the glass. Then his plate, his teacup, his saucer, his silverware.
It’s not until the last object has gone from the table that he yanks off the tablecloth itself and balls it up, stuffing it into the fire, which backs up and smokes. By this point, mingled blood and mortar run from Papa’s nose and weep from his eyes. He stops to wipe at his face with one sleeve before stalking from the room.
Once he’s gone, I finally notice Wyn, perhaps a year or two younger than he is now. He’s perched on the edge of a chair next to the fireplace, and so still he’s nearly invisible. An untouched plate of colourless stewed parsnips rests on Wyn’s knees and I watch as he sits for a moment, his throat working. Then he sets his plate aside, takes a broom and dustpan from one of the cupboards, and begins to sweep away Papa’s mess.
But halfway through tidying up, Wyn stops and looks about himself, as if to ensure he’s alone. He sets down the broom and dustpan and spreads his hands flat against the golden parquet floor.
All around us, the House hums, with something halfway between anxiety and anticipation.
‘Go on, then,’ Wyn’s younger self says, his voice unsteady with fear.
And as suddenly and viciously as my father flung his glass against the wall, Burleigh pours magic into Wyn. All around us the House trembles and groans. The ivy that’s crept in and covers the dining-room walls withers and dies, leaf after leaf going black.
Beneath its skeletal remains, great cracks knit back together in the walls, dust blossoming out to hang on the air. On the hearth, the fire sparks and then roars high, consuming the damp and half-burnt tablecloth.
Finally, the House lets Wyn go. He topples over and lies on his side, taking great ragged breaths. But he’s there, within himself, and not an inch of his skin that I can see is stained by mortar.
‘Well, that’s a start,’ Papa’s voice says from the doorway. He stands leaning against the lintel, a frightful contrast to Wyn, with dried mortar still caught in the seams around his eyes and the lines around his mouth. ‘I’ve been wondering when you’d finally find the nerve to try it. Took you long enough, boy.’
He turns and leaves Wyn sitting among splinters of china, surrounded by walls that once more keep out the rain.
I slip out of bed and crouch in front of Wyn’s ghost. As I watch, his face goes blank. His eyes become vacant. He’s gone from within himself, wandering that endless corridor he described to me, as Burleigh House eats away at his memories.
I can’t watch any longer. Going to the door, I leave Burleigh’s memory behind.
My Wyn is fast asleep in the hall, a constant and faithful guardian, though at least he’s not on the ground now that I’ve helped him drag a feather bolster out from one of the abandoned guest rooms.
Bending down, I rest a hand briefly on his untidy hair, then slip past without a sound – just another one of Burleigh’s ghosts. In the silent, moonlit kitchen, I slide my feet into a pair of galoshes. Jed and Mira’s door is shut, and I know at this hour they’re fast asleep. I miss them – all summer we’ve been ships passing in the night. I feel agonizingly on the brink of something, as if I’ve outgrown the old life we had together and haven’t yet found the next place where I’ll belong.
It doesn’t help that I’m planning to do something no self-respecting Caretaker would. If I were the person who Burleigh needs me to be, I would go upstairs, wake the boy sleeping outside my bedroom door and tell him there’s no place for him in my heart or my life. Tell him that it’s in his power to give me everything I’ve ever wanted, and that I’ll remember him kindly if he does.
But just the thought of speaking those words to Wyn is like splinters inside me. So I leave the kitchen and go out through the garden, where dead and dried rose canes rattle in a scorching breeze. I pass through the meadow, leave the family cemetery behind and enter the shadowy world of Burleigh’s back woods. I cannot risk Wyn, and so I’m going to do something dangerous and desperate instead.
Ominous noises enliven the dark. More than once, I step into a puddle of thick and viscous mortar, and am glad I thought to put on boots. Brambles creep slowly across the footpath, too slow to trip me but slithering towards my ankles nonetheless. Marsh lights and memories glimmer between the trees, an otherworldly blue-green. But whatever guise they wear, I know the shape of these woods and the paths that run through them. I’d know them in daylight or darkness, and whether they appear sunny or sinister, it’s not in me to fear a piece of Burleigh House.
As I get further into the woods, the air becomes cold and damp. Misting rain beads on my hair and the fabric of my dressing gown. I come to a place where a winding trail branches off through the trees and veer down it, towards the little valley where the manor’s trout stream rushes and laughs over rapids, rain dimpling its surface.
Scrambling down the muddy, leaf-strewn embankment, I settle beside the stream, trying to ignore the chill that’s growing more bitter with each passing minute. Blinking rainwater from my eyes, I sink my hands into the gravelly soil of the stream bank. It’s an invitation to Burleigh – if anything goes wrong, here I am. A conduit, a channel, a ready vessel for your power. I may not have the key, or a Caretaker’s pure intentions, but I am all you’ve got, House of mine, so set mortar in my blood if you must.
‘Burleigh,’ I say. ‘I’m going to ask you a question. And I think you know what it is.’
The wind gusts overhead, moaning in the treetops. Cold rain runs down the back of my neck and I shiver. For weeks we’ve danced around this. For weeks I’ve coddled Burleigh, mindful of its binding and failing health, never wanting to hurt my House even if doing so might save it. But I haven’t the time or the patience or the goodwill left to coddle Burleigh any more.
‘Burleigh,’ I ask. ‘Where is your deed?’
In answer the trout stream bubbles higher, rising against its banks until water laps at my bare, mud-encrusted feet. I swallow back frustration.
‘Show me, Burleigh. Help me set you free.’
The stream rises again, insistently, and I’m forced further up the bank. But then darkness falls, so complete that even the shadowy forms of the trees and the occasional glimmer of water from the stream are swallowed up. I pass a hand before my eyes, but it’s as if I’ve shut them. I can’t see a thing.
A smell rises around me, out of place yet still familiar. It’s not the scent of damp earth or rotting wood or forest mosses, but a wild and briny odour – the tang of seawater. My stomach ties itself up in knots, because Burleigh has never shown me anything outside its grounds before. I didn’t even know that it could.
Sounds grow at the edge of my hearing. Waves, crashing against the shore. Gulls, shrieking overhead. And a hollow drip, drip, drip. This isn’t just a memory the House has for me. Burleigh, desperate to please, is showing me the location of its deed.
I strain to see in the overwhelming darkness and gradually the air around me grows grey. Indistinct forms begin to take shape – they’re not recognizable yet, but any moment they will be. Hope bursts to joyous life inside me, even as I feel cold creek water against my feet, and the icier bite of mortar leeching into my hands, still buried in forest earth.
The light grows. I see a rocky cavern floor, and beyond the cave mouth the blue, blue Cornish sea. A bit of rock rising from the water offshore.
The image holds. I try to move forward, but it’s as if my boots have been nailed to
the ground. This is all Burleigh can give – this picture of the Cornish coast. And it’s not much to go on.
‘Burleigh,’ I beg. ‘I don’t know where we are. Can’t you tell me? Find a way.’
The sun sinks low on the western horizon. And the walls of the cave melt away. Away east, I see a seaside town – the curve of sand around a harbour, a spill of whitewashed buildings built upon a hillside by the cove, ice cream vendors and postcard sellers packing up their carts.
And I know exactly where I am. I’ve been here before.
We were at St Ives for a holiday once, Papa and Mama and me. They fought, and I built sandcastles and missed Wyn dreadfully, because we’d left him behind at the House. Papa took me walking out on the cliffs, occasionally vanishing on some mysterious errand while I sat in the shade of a gorse bush eating sandwiches. He seemed defeated at the end of our trip, though at the time I’d thought it was because of the way things were with Mama.
Abruptly, the vision shatters. The night-time woods behind Burleigh House reappear with a suddenness that makes my head spin. Beneath me, the ground lurches. Water is rising in the stream at an alarming rate – it’s already reached my knees, but when I struggle to get to my feet, everything in me is horribly, overwhelmingly heavy. I look down, and my bare arms and legs aren’t just veined with grey – they’re the colour of stone, and I can hardly feel them, they’ve grown so cold.
With a supreme effort, I force myself upright and climb the treacherous stream bank. The leaves and mud are slick underfoot and I lose my balance several times, coming out plastered in muck. All the while, the earth beneath me groans and trembles.
At the top of the embankment, I reach out to a nearby tree trunk to steady myself. But I snatch my hand back at once with a hiss. Vines thick with razor-edged thorns are slithering across the forest floor and up the trees, and have torn my palm open. Blood and mortar ooze sluggishly from my skin.
I don’t dare stop. I don’t dare offer to help my keening House, for fear that it will kill me by mistake.
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