A Treason of Thorns

by Laura Weymouth

  Esperanza and Alfred are still waiting up when I trudge back through the inn door at dawn.

  ‘Violet—’ Espie begins.

  ‘I’ve got it,’ I tell them wearily. ‘I found it.’

  They both begin speaking at the same time, but fall silent as soon as I draw the bundled stone from my pocket.

  ‘Are you – are you sure that’s it?’ Espie asks, concern pulling her expressive face into a frown. ‘Only I know you’ve had a shock, what with us failing to get hold of the deed earlier.’

  ‘I’m certain,’ I tell her. ‘Espie, look at me. I haven’t taken leave of my senses. We’ve been looking for the wrong thing. Chasing after deeds made of paper, when it’s a piece of Burleigh itself that’s bound my House.’

  Pushing aside the torn strip of my skirt, I hold the stone into the light and take a look at it for the first time. Esperanza and Alfred bend to get a better view.

  It’s not much – just a fist-sized piece of broken masonry, the same warm colour as Burleigh’s walls, streaked with grey and with darker, rust-brown stains.

  ‘Blood and mortar,’ Espie breathes.

  ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Quite literally. This is what’s binding Burleigh. This is what my House needs back. Can’t you feel it, reaching across the countryside towards the rest of itself?’

  But my companions shake their heads.

  ‘Well, I can. And what’s more, it drew mortar out of my blood when I first touched it. What if – what if the reason Burleigh needs a Caretaker is that this missing piece is what allowed it to channel and control its own magic?’ A sudden shock of recognition surges through me as I look down at the stone. I’ve seen this particular shade before, red and brown and grey all at once. Turning it over, I look at the stone’s underside, and there it is – a place where a chip has been hewn off of it. A fraction of Burleigh’s missing piece, taken for use in its Caretaker’s key. To allow someone to channel the House’s magic, as it no longer can.

  ‘I think the key was made with a piece of this,’ I tell Alfred and Espie. ‘Which is why a Caretaker can safely work House magic, but Burleigh itself can’t. What if Burleigh wasn’t bound, so much as broken? What if that’s what was done to all the Great Houses?’

  Alfred’s eyes are blazing, and I can all but see the gears turning in his mind as he tries to recall anything he’s read that might support my epiphany.

  ‘It’s true they don’t speak of deeds anywhere but in England,’ he says slowly. ‘In my Italian sources, it’s always il cuore della casa – the heart of the House. In Spain they talk of la fianza, which means something more like a deposit, or a guarantee. An assurance of the House’s compliance. In France it’s l’acte de vente – a deed of sale, but I’ve also seen the rather more poetic l’esprit du foyer – spirit of the hearth. I’d thought it was just semantics, though. The medieval chroniclers are known for taking rather a lot of artistic licence. And nowhere outside of Europe has bound their places of power. The rest of the world left them free.’

  ‘We’d best discuss this on the road,’ I say. ‘We’re running out of time, and I’m still afraid of Wyn trying to take things out of my hands and giving himself up for Burleigh while I’m gone.’

  ‘Sit down,’ Esperanza orders crisply. ‘In ten minutes, we’ll have the carriage ready. We’ll change horses wherever we can, and won’t stop for anything else until we get you back home.’

  25

  By the time we round a bend in the road and the Red Shilling comes into view, I’m exhausted by forced inactivity and by constant, nagging fear. The anguished thrum of Burleigh’s heartstone, as I’ve come to think of it, saps my energy too. But I can’t take it home – the moment I do, Burleigh and I will be at odds. I’ll have to get Jed and Mira off the grounds first. In the meantime, there’s only one person I trust to hold this unspeakably valuable treasure.

  Before the carriage has fully stopped, I’m out of it and through the Shilling’s back entrance.

  ‘Frey?’ I call out as I hurry down the narrow back corridor, between the storerooms and the kitchen and the public areas up front. ‘Frey, where are you?’

  ‘In here,’ she calls from her office. ‘Vi, is that you?’

  Darting inside, I shut and bolt the office door behind me. Frey raises an eyebrow. ‘How was Cornwall? Did you find what you were looking for?’

  ‘I found something else,’ I tell her, keeping my voice low. ‘But I have to get home to look in on Wyn, and to get Jed and Mira off the grounds before I go back with it.’

  As I speak, I kneel at her side, taking Burleigh’s heartstone from my pocket and holding it out to her.

  Frey peers down at it, a quizzical look on her face. ‘It’s not what you’d expected. Not what your father thought he’d find, either.’

  ‘No, it’s a piece of Burleigh House. Frey, I can’t go home and take this with me. I’m afraid the House won’t understand. They say it’ll try to kill me, as soon as I set foot on the grounds with this – and honestly I wouldn’t blame it, even without the binding. Burleigh needs to be whole again, and has no reason to trust people, when we’re the ones who broke it.’

  ‘You want me to keep it safe, until you come back for it?’ Frey says, guessing my request.

  ‘Would you?’ I ask. ‘If it makes you uncomfortable, you needn’t. This stone is the most dangerous object in England right now. If the king knew I had it . . . But I have to get home – there’s something the matter with Wyn – oh, how do I explain everything when I haven’t got the time?’

  She reaches out and cups my chin with one hand. ‘You don’t, child. Give it to me. I won’t speak a word about that stone until you ask for it again.’

  ‘Thank you,’ I tell her. ‘Esperanza and Alfred have been so good to me, truly they have, but Frey, I trust you.’

  ‘Go on, then.’ Frey rolls her eyes. ‘No need for a scene. Get home and do what needs doing, then pick up your trinket and save that House.’

  I set the cloth-wrapped heartstone on her lap but she stops me when I’ve already got one foot out the door.

  ‘Violet Sterling. Whatever goes on this next little while, try not to die. I’ll never forgive you if you do – you’re the best tavern girl I’ve had when you’re actually here, and you’d be the devil to replace.’

  ‘I’ll try,’ I say with a wry smile. ‘But I can’t make any promises.’

  On the inside, my stomach is twisting into nervous knots. I half run back down the hall and burst out into the inn yard again, where it’s begun to snow, though it’s only the end of July.

  ‘Violet, what—?’ Esperanza begins from where she and Alfred are waiting for me next to the carriage.

  ‘Going home, I’ll be back,’ I call over one shoulder, already hurrying down the lane.

  ‘She’s got to stop tearing off like that,’ I hear Espie say to Alfred, and then I gather up my skirts and run.

  It snows harder the closer I get to Burleigh House. Drifts blur the edges of the lane and I can’t see more than a dozen feet ahead. I’m sure I’d be freezing if not for the fact that I haven’t stopped moving. My breath smokes on the air, and finally the bramble gate appears amid the driving white, the thorns and vines already snaking back, opening the way for me.

  Only once I’m through the gate do I slow to a walk.

  ‘I missed you too,’ I tell the House. ‘But where’s Wyn? You’ve looked after him for me, haven’t you? You haven’t done anything awful?’

  The ground beneath me rumbles ominously. Burleigh doesn’t like that at all, hearing me speak reproachfully to it. But fear has eaten away my softer and more sympathetic parts. It grows wicked and wild within me as I get far enough down the drive to make out Burleigh’s shape through the swirling snow.

  The jacaranda tree has lost all its leaves and blossoms. They lie in heaps on the ground around its trunk, filling the cold air with a sour scent of rotting vegetation. And my House. Oh, my House. When I left, Burleigh was in ill repair. The guest wing was in rui
ns, and the rest of the roof needed patching, only growing worse day by day. Vines threatened to take over, and here and there, a windowpane wanted replacing. But my House, that looked poorly tended only a handful of days ago, is now a ruin.

  Every window has blown out, and shattered glass mingles with gravel and snow on the drive, crunching underfoot as I draw closer. The roof has fallen in entirely, not just over the guest wing, and in places bits of the upper walls are already beginning to crumble. Ivy has been overtaken by wicked brambles. Burleigh would look almost frightening, were it not for the fact that I know it so well.

  ‘Wyn?’ I call, climbing the steps and pushing open the door. The corners of the front hall are choked with rubble. The four-lamp kerosene pendant has fallen from the ceiling and lies smashed in the middle of the floor. It’s left a gaping hole in the ceiling above, through which I can see a patch of distant sky. Snow falls softly through the gap, mingling with twisted bits of metal and shards of lamp glass.

  ‘Wyn?’ I’m shouting now, picking my way through fallen masonry and leaving a trail of slush in my wake. ‘Wyn, answer me. Where are you?’

  There’s no sign of him, but when I push into the kitchen, Jed and Mira are there, nursing cups of tea and brooding under a great canvas tarpaulin that’s been lashed down where the roof once was. They start out of their chairs at the sight of me, and in an instant I’ve been engulfed by Jed’s arms. It’s even more like hugging a bear than usual, for in spite of the fire burning on the kitchen hearth, the room’s still frigid, and he’s wearing a greatcoat. Mira gets up and embraces me too, and I stand for the briefest instant, safe and warm and loved.

  I remember how this family was won for me, though. I ought not to have this by rights. It should be Wyn’s, and I should’ve been the one who stayed behind, bound to the House as insurance against the coming end to its long dying.

  ‘Where’s Wyn?’ I ask, pulling away from Jed and Mira. A glance rife with hidden meaning passes between them.

  ‘We’re that glad to see you, Violet,’ Mira says. ‘We thought something might have happened to you as well.’

  ‘What do you mean, as well?’ I ask, unable to keep panic from creeping into my voice. ‘Where is Wyn?’

  ‘He’s out in the family plot by the wood’s edge, visiting your father,’ Jed says heavily. ‘Here, take my coat and just bear in mind he doesn’t quite look himself.’

  It’s snowing even harder now, but I know this land. I don’t even have to think about the direction to head in or the path to take – my feet know the way.

  I let myself in through the low fence that hems in the cemetery, separating it from the looming woods. The nearby trees are still choked with brambles, their bare branches limned with streaks of dried mortar. And I see Wyn at once.

  He’s sitting in the snow with his back to Papa’s plain grave marker. He’s got on several bulky layers of tatty knit jerseys to ward off the cold, but the snow is thick on his untidy hair and his shoulders. As I draw closer, he looks different indeed – there’s something gone wrong with his skin. It’s an inhuman shade and texture, more like Burleigh’s walls than anything else. And while there was never much softness to Wyn’s appearance in the first place, what little there was is gone. He’s all unrelenting angles and fierce symmetry, with eyes like the sparks cast off by flint and iron. I wonder if there’s any warmth left to him at all, or if I would find him cold and unyielding as granite. None of that matters to me, though. Where there’s life there’s hope, and I am unspeakably glad to find him alive.

  ‘Wyn, what happened? I was only gone for a few days,’ I say. ‘What have you done with yourself?’

  ‘It’s . . . difficult,’ he answers, and the words somehow seem muffled, like the House showing me a memory. ‘I can’t always tell now, where Burleigh ends and I begin.’

  I sit down at his side, wrapping Jed’s greatcoat around me. ‘What did you do?’

  ‘Vi, I know I promised I wouldn’t, but—’

  ‘You were going to finish the binding, weren’t you?’

  Wyn turns his face towards me for the first time, and somehow, his flint-like eyes still retain their old, patient look. ‘I was. But Burleigh stopped me before the end.’ He rests his head against Papa’s new and still-unmarked gravestone. ‘Three nights ago, I finally got up the nerve to finish what your father and I started. To offer myself, everything there is of me, to Burleigh. So that it could carry on somewhere new, without you ever having to try your hand at unbinding it. I’ll spare you the details, but it was dreadful, and it took hours, and then around midnight, Burleigh just . . . stopped. It was like one minute the House’s whole attention was fixed on me, that crushing weight – you know what it’s like – and then it just turned aside. I still don’t know why, but it left me like this, and left Burleigh as you see it.’

  ‘That’s right about when I found the heartstone,’ I say. ‘The House must have been able to feel it. Burleigh must want the stone back more than it wants a new start.’

  ‘Heartstone?’

  Wyn straightens up and when I glance over at him, fear slams through me with a hideous jolt. Because where his expression and his eyes were his own before, now something indefinable in them has changed, and I know, just as I did after he worked House magic, that Wyn has gone from his body. This time, though, he hasn’t left it empty. There’s something in his place.

  ‘Bring us the stone,’ a gravelly voice says, and I shudder, hearing it come from Wyn’s mouth. It’s like rock scraping against rock, and sets my teeth on edge. ‘Lay it on our doorstep and never come back, and because we have loved you we will let you leave with your life.’

  ‘. . . Burleigh?’ I ask, forcing my fear down, as I’ve grown so used to doing. ‘Is that you?’

  The thing that is no longer Wyn says nothing, just stares at me with opaque grey eyes.

  ‘Burleigh, you know me,’ I tell the creature. ‘I can’t just leave the stone anywhere, because if I do, you won’t really be free. The binding has to be undone with blood and mortar, at your secret heart, just as it was made.’

  ‘We will never let another person set their blood into our mortar again,’ the creature says bitterly. ‘Not after being bound against our will so many times. Neither will we show you our hidden heart. We will take back what is ours for one shining moment, and break our binding, and die in power as we once lived.’

  ‘Think of the West Country,’ I beg. ‘You will ruin it if you stay this course. But I can make you whole, Burleigh, truly whole, and undo the wrong you’ve suffered. I would do that and more for you. Surely you know I would, my love.’

  The old endearment comes out forced and unnatural, though, because with Burleigh speaking through Wyn’s body, all I feel is fear, and underneath it, something terribly akin to loathing. I have loved my House long and well, and I loved my father in spite of his stern ways. But to find that both of them have used Wyn as a pawn in this dangerous game is almost more than I can bear, because as much as I loved them, I love him too.

  ‘Would you, little girl?’ Burleigh grates, and Wyn’s cold hand rises to brush a finger against my jaw. I shiver, and try not to pull away. ‘Would you really? Don’t you think after all these years, all these lives, we can look through those who dwell within our walls and see the truth in their hearts? You are no Caretaker. Your heart is divided. Would you truly unbind us, or use the power in our broken piece to unbind him instead? To force us to restore him?’

  I take absolute care to ensure my face stays immobile, my hands motionless on my lap. It hadn’t occurred to me that I might use blood and mortar and the heart-stone to unbind Wyn, rather than the House.

  But Burleigh leans closer to me and lets out a sigh like the rattling of small stones. ‘We see the war within you. The very blood in your veins is singing to us, and do you know what it says? Treacherous. Treacherous and false.’

  I look at the creature before me, at Burleigh House wearing Wyn’s body like an ill-fitting cloak, and all the dis
taste I feel fades to sorrow.

  ‘Burleigh,’ I say. ‘You are vaster and older and more powerful than I will ever be, but I am still more than the sum of my parts. I contain multitudes, and I can fight for both you and Wyn. Remember that, when I unbind you – that I’ve been faithful, when you thought the worst. And I hope and pray that if Wyn’s fate is tied to yours, freeing you will free him as well.’

  ‘He’s ours,’ Burleigh rasps. ‘His blood willingly given, his bones willingly bound.’

  ‘He’s not yours,’ I tell Burleigh. ‘He doesn’t belong to anyone but his own self. And so long as there’s one bit of him left, I will call him back and he will choose to answer.’

  Swallowing the revulsion I feel with Burleigh’s eyes locked on mine, I turn towards what should be Wyn and take his face in both my hands. Pressing my forehead to his, I shut my eyes.

  ‘Haelwyn of Taunton,’ I whisper. ‘Wherever you’ve gone, come back. I need you.’

  For a long time, nothing happens. The smell of cold stone is so strong I think I might choke, and the ground rumbles beneath me, unsettled by my touch. The creature that is speaking for bitter, broken Burleigh makes an eerie noise, halfway between a hum and an avalanche.

  But I don’t let go, and I don’t open my eyes until finally,

  ‘Violet?’ Wyn’s voice says.

  A small sound of anguish and relief escapes me, and I throw my arms around Wyn.

  ‘I’m sorry, Vi,’ he says, and his arms are around me too. ‘I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to go away, or to frighten you. It’s just harder to hold on to myself now.’

  ‘No,’ I tell him. ‘You have no reason to apologize.’

  Brushing his untidy hair aside, I press a kiss to his forehead, and where my lips touch Wyn’s skin, it warms, ever so slightly. He raises his head to look at me and our eyes meet, and he’s there, the boy I know, fully present, with something in his gaze I’ve never seen before. But it must be in my eyes as well, that desperate longing I see in him, because all at once his mouth is on mine, or mine is on his – I don’t know who began it. His lips part and mine eagerly follow, and it is intoxicating, feeling warmth spread through him again beneath my touch. I would give him all my heat, all my fire and determination and will, if it would only banish the mortar from his blood and the magic from his bones.