A Treason of Thorns

by Laura Weymouth

  ‘I hate this,’ I tell Wyn when we stop. ‘I hate all of it. Why couldn’t we have been born anywhere else? Why couldn’t we have just been ordinary?’

  For a moment, I’m afraid Burleigh will take hold of him again, to chastise me for unfaithfulness to my calling.

  ‘This is what we’re for, Violet,’ Wyn says, and there’s a note of resignation in his voice that cuts me to the quick. ‘You’re for the House, and I’m for you. I’ve known it since the first day I came here, though I was never supposed to tell. And maybe I wanted things to be different once, but now Burleigh won’t let me finish the task I’m meant for and that’s what I hate.’

  ‘What if we don’t have to be who we were told to become?’ I ask. ‘What if I don’t want to put the House first always? What if . . . what if I want to put you first instead?’

  I think of what Burleigh told me: that my heart is divided. That I will play my House false. And I’m honestly not sure what I’ll do if I’m finally forced to choose between Burleigh and Wyn. All I do know is that no one has ever unbound a Great House before, but I think it is my only chance to keep both my home and my heart intact.

  ‘I still want what I was brought here for,’ Wyn says. ‘To save you, no matter the cost. To see you get out of this alive and well.’

  ‘Wyn, can’t we save each other?’ I ask.

  He gets to his feet and helps me up. ‘I don’t know, Violet. I suppose we can try, but I’m never going to stop wishing you’d just walk away.’

  I scowl at him. ‘I’d die first, and you know it.’

  ‘I do,’ he says. ‘And that’s exactly what I’m afraid of.’

  26

  Late in the afternoon, Espie and Alfred join us. Wyn and I are in the study, which overlooks the front drive, and go out to meet them when they come through the bramble gate, on foot and unaccompanied. It’s as if we’ve all decided not to comment on the state of the House, or of Wyn, though Alfred’s eyes widen and I hear a sharp intake of breath from Esperanza. But I stand before them, holding Wyn’s hand tightly, and Espie is the one who speaks first. She sets a valise down on the gravel next to her and smiles, though the expression’s a little too bright.

  ‘Do you have somewhere to put us up?’ she asks offhandedly, as if she’s just arrived at an ordinary country manor – the sort with a roof and windows and no destructive magic coursing beneath the ground. ‘Of course you’ll probably be otherwise engaged tomorrow evening, Vi, and we’ll go back to our rooms at the Red Shilling, but it’d be nice to get away from the crowds in the public room tonight. And perhaps you and Wyn wouldn’t mind the company. Although if you’d rather be on your own, just say so.’

  ‘No, we’d be glad of the company,’ I say, glaring at a bramble that’s creeping towards Alfred’s ankles. It rustles and pulls away.

  On our way indoors, I hang back behind the others and stop in the ruined foyer.

  ‘Please don’t be dreadful about this,’ I beg my House. ‘Please just let us all have one last pleasant night. I know you and I are at odds, but if you ever loved me, let me have this. I still love you, you know, whether you believe it or not.’

  A few sad white flowers blossom from a crack in the wall, drooping almost before they’ve opened. I reach out and pick the blooms, tucking them into the strands of my braid. That seems to pacify Burleigh, because the flowers flush with life, and outside the sun comes out for the first time today. I run a reassuring hand along the wall all the way to the kitchen, where everyone has gathered. I feel loss and longing, pain and regret, through the tips of my fingers.

  ‘I swear to you,’ I whisper, ‘everything will be all right. I’m not going to turn on you, Burleigh, just because you aren’t the only thing I care for any more.’

  The House is silent, as if thinking over what I’ve said.

  And so, all of us within Burleigh’s walls pretend that nothing untoward has happened, and that tomorrow I won’t return with the heartstone, holding both Burleigh and Wyn’s fates in my hand. Mira sets about salvaging things to eat from the cupboard and pantry, with Alfred as her willing assistant. Jed and Espie sit at the table amicably chatting about crop rotations and land management, which leaves Wyn and me to wander the House, searching out the least damaged guest bedrooms.

  ‘Should we each take one side of the hall?’ I ask, after we’ve made our slow way up the stairs, having to choose every step among the brambles with care.

  ‘No.’ He shakes his head decidedly. ‘Let’s go together.’

  I’m glad of that. I want to be near him for as long as I can.

  ‘I’m going to send everyone away tomorrow, of course,’ I tell Wyn, as we search room after room that’s been overrun by brambles. ‘I wish you could leave with the others – could get off the grounds and stay safe. Perhaps if you were gone, Burleigh wouldn’t be able to finish what it started with you.’

  Burleigh is still entirely silent, giving me no sign of what it thinks about these goings-on. It’s unnerving – more so than discontented rumbling or ill-tempered brambles would be.

  ‘You’re very noble,’ Wyn says with a smile, opening another door. ‘But things have changed since you first came home. I wouldn’t leave now, even if I could.’

  I let out a frustrated sigh and Wyn bumps my shoulder with his own gently. ‘Come and find me once you bring back the stone. One way or another, we’ll finish this together.’

  We’re still hand in hand when Espie’s voice drifts up from downstairs. ‘Vi and Wyn! Mira says it’s time to eat!’

  Stubs of candles illuminate the kitchen, set out at intervals along the table. Dinner is griddle cakes and apple sauce but there’s enough for everyone, and we are determined to be merry. Alfred reads pages from the newest bits of his monograph, which are rendered far less dry by Esperanza’s acerbic commentary. Mira sings her Sephardic grandmother’s old favourite, ‘Una Hija Tiene El Rey’, which keeps Espie spellbound and beaming. I even let Jed coax me into showing off a string of bird calls I learnt while on the fens. Wyn watches everything quietly from his place beside me, but he smiles, and the candlelight softens his features.

  When at last the candles begin to gutter and go out and we’re forced to all part ways, the emptiness inside me that was filled for a few hours by warmth and light yawns wide again. I pace in the solitude of my own room for a few minutes, and then slip into the hall, pulling on a faded old dressing gown as I go.

  Wyn’s waiting outside as always, sitting on his makeshift pallet and reading as, across the corridor, Burleigh replays the memory of Wyn’s binding over and over again.

  It tears me apart to look as Papa sharpens a long, wicked knife, going first to the wall and cutting into Burleigh’s skin. The House trembles, both in memory and reality, as mortar oozes from the edge of the cuts Papa has made. It clings, gritty and damp, to the knife’s edge. Then Papa goes over to Wyn and I can’t watch any longer.

  ‘Do you want this memory?’ I ask my own Wyn, who’s just turned over a page. ‘Only it’s a little grim.’

  ‘No, I don’t want it at all, but the House likes to remind me of certain things,’ he says without glancing up. ‘I’ve got used to ignoring it. Don’t watch this, Vi, it’s not something you should see.’

  ‘Burleigh,’ I say sternly. ‘Stop that at once.’

  I’m not sure the House will listen, not after our strange and unsettling confrontation in the graveyard and its silence this afternoon. Burleigh isn’t a certainty to me any longer, when once it was my bedrock. But the memory flickers and dies, and a wave of lilies of the valley ripple towards me. Their sweet fragrance fills the hallway and I sigh. Part of me wants to cling to the inevitability of who I used to be, to go into Papa’s room, to run my hands along the scars that mar my House, and whisper to Burleigh that everything will be all right, I’m here, I was born to be a Caretaker, you come before anything else.

  Instead, I walk over to Wyn, lilies parting before my feet. I settle down on the bolster and rest my head on his la
p, and he puts his book aside. ‘Can I stay with you?’ I ask, keeping my voice quiet in the emptiness of the hall. ‘Please, Wyn?’

  ‘Always,’ Wyn answers simply. I lie quite still for a while, staring at the debris-strewn floor, the cracked walls dripping mortar, the place near the main stair where the attic has caved in and a great beam rests slantwise, half of it propped up at ceiling height, its splintered end fallen into the corridor. So much has changed these last few months – once it was Wyn who’d take refuge in my room, feeling lost and ill at ease between the walls of Burleigh House. Now here I am, coming to him because he’s the only thing in this place that grounds me. Only with him do I find a momentary sense of belonging, of surety, of home.

  Wyn’s hands move through my unbound hair. I shiver, though not with cold, and shut my eyes. Slowly, his undemanding touch and all the tension of the past summer overcome me. I’m half asleep when he speaks in a low voice, and at first I’m not sure if it’s my own exhaustion that’s muddled his words.

  ‘Fowles in the frith,’ Wyn recites. My heart jumps at the strangeness of his words, but slows again as I realize it’s Wyn’s own voice speaking, not Burleigh’s harsh and gravelly tones. ‘The fisshes in the flood, and I mon waxe wood – much sorwe I walke with for beste of boon and blood.’

  ‘What’s that?’ I mumble.

  ‘Middle English verse,’ Wyn says. ‘It’s what I’m reading. I read a great deal of it during the House arrest. And Burleigh thinks in Middle English sometimes.’

  ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘The birds are in the wood,’ he answers slowly, ‘the fish are in the flood, and I must go mad – much sorrow I walk with, for the best of bone and blood.’

  ‘I don’t know if I like it. It’s sad.’

  ‘I know. But it’s the one thing Burleigh and I agree on, most of the time.’

  ‘Say it again?’

  He does, but before he’s finished, I’m asleep.

  The light is still thin and grey when I wake. I keep absolutely still, fixing this moment in my memory. Burleigh beneath me, anxious and brooding but quiet for now. Wyn beside me, so close I can feel the slow rise and fall of his chest as he breathes.

  Then I get silently to my feet and take Wyn’s book from where it sits beside the bed. It strikes me that in better times, he and Alfred might have become good friends. But these are the times we have, so I take the stub of pencil he’s been using as a bookmark and scribble a note on the title page.

  Wyn –

  I’ve gone to get the heartstone, because I don’t want a fuss, and I don’t want to say any goodbyes. I know you’ll understand that. Could you get everyone off the grounds and out of the way first thing?

  I’ll see you soon.

  Violet

  Leaving the book open to the note, I slip out the door. In my own room, I pull on my fen clothes and braid my hair and go down the main stairs of Burleigh House one last time, moving hesitantly among the brambles that slither up the staircase.

  On the threshold of the front door, I pause.

  ‘Will you wake everyone, once I’ve gone?’ I ask. The House sends a soft-leaved vine climbing up the doorpost to twine around my finger and I sigh. Oh, Burleigh. Are we friends or enemies now? Why must you make it so hard for me to tell?

  Outside, the snow is melting, leaving puddles and piles of slush everywhere. The air’s mild and soft, like a day in spring, but there’s an electric edge to it, a tension, as if a storm’s brewing. I pulled on a pair of gumboots before leaving the House, but mud spatters the hem of my wrinkled skirt, so that by the time I reach the Shilling I look like quite a vagabond. Fitting, I suppose, that I should look as downcast and desperate as I feel.

  The Shilling’s nearly abandoned at this hour but Frey’s cousin Ella, who manages things from late at night till mid-morning, is behind the counter, a cheerful yellow scarf wrapped around her tightly coiled black hair. I give her a half-hearted wave.

  ‘Is Frey up?’

  ‘Does she ever sleep? She’s in the private dining room, balancing the books. Just ignore the placard, you can go right in.’

  ‘Thank you, El.’

  A little sign dangles from the dining-room door, DO NOT DISTURB printed on it in decided capital letters. But I let myself in anyhow and Frey grumbles without looking my way.

  ‘Can’t you read? No one’s allowed in here.’ Frey’s got ledgers and small blank books and order slips and handwritten notes spread across the table, a fierce scowl on her face as she sorts out the business end of running the Red Shilling.

  ‘It’s only me,’ I say.

  Glancing up, Frey leans back in her chair and tilts her head from side to side, stretching the tension from her neck. ‘I needed a distraction; you’ve got good timing, Vi. You’re not here for . . . what you left with me, already, are you?’

  ‘Yes.’ I nod. ‘I’d rather have everything over with, one way or another. There’s no point delaying the inevitable.’

  Frey pulls the heartstone from her pocket with a sigh. ‘Here it is, then. I didn’t like to leave it anywhere. It’s hard to believe we’ve finally come down to this, isn’t it?’

  Though I ought to be going, I sit down next to her and stare at the heartstone. ‘What am I doing, Frey? I’ve got a lot riding on this – so much more than just the House, but . . . is it wrong of me to risk the West Country? To chance Burleigh ending up like Ripley Castle? I started out so certain, that I was meant to be a Caretaker and that Burleigh is more important than anything, but I don’t know any more.’

  ‘I know,’ Frey says. ‘And I haven’t left Burleigh Halt. That more than anything should tell you I believe you’re enough for this, Violet Sterling. If there was a doubt in my mind, I’d have packed up and left. Nothing personal, see, but I’ve lived this long in the world and I intend to live longer. But when you step back off those grounds having done what no one else could, not even your father, I’ll be right here. He’d have been proud of you, George would. I hope you know that.’

  ‘I’m not sure.’ I gnaw at a ravaged fingernail. ‘I used to want nothing more than to be like him, but we’ve turned out to be very different people.’

  ‘That’s why he’d be proud.’ Frey pushes the heart-stone towards me. ‘He did a lot of things he regretted in life, your father. And I’m sure binding that boy ended up at the top of the list.’

  I glance at her sharply. ‘How do you know about that?’

  ‘The princess, of course. Look, are you going to save Burleigh House and your beau or not? Because you can’t sit here talking to me all day, I’ve got accounts to balance.’

  ‘Fine, I’m going,’ I mutter, taking the heartstone and dropping it into my own pocket. That feeling of brokenness, of pain and incompletion, is so strong when I pick it up that it’s like being shoved, and I’m forced a few steps backwards.

  ‘Good, go on, then. I’m only going to cover so many of your shifts before I find a new serving girl, so don’t dawdle while you’re at it. And no, I’m not saying anything other than that; if you want pleasantries from me, just you see that you get back here in one piece.’

  27

  So it’s come down to this: I’m afraid of going home.

  With Burleigh’s missing piece in my pocket, I trudge across the fields, clambering over low stone walls and wooden gates, because meeting the others in the lane on their way into the village from the House would be more than I could take.

  And I am deathly afraid. My hands are slick with it, my belly flips with it, my breath is quick with it. Fear, fear, fear that won’t be tamped down, no matter how hard I try. Instead I let it be. Let my hands and knees tremble, and my breath quaver. I’m going home to Burleigh House, which I’ve loved all my life. But it’s Burleigh that killed my father and may yet kill Wyn. That will surely try to kill me when I set foot on the grounds with its missing piece in hand. How one-sided the love I hold for my House has come to feel.

  I am so caught up in my fear that I hardly notice the
faint sounds of horses – the jangle of tack and occasional muffled thump of a hoof. Instead, I push through the hedgerow opposite Burleigh’s gate and come out directly in front of His Majesty the king, backed by two dozen mounted and red-coated soldiers.

  ‘Hello, Uncle Edgar,’ I say, mentally scrambling to hide my shock and dismay, and hoping the words come across as easy and uncaring. ‘I’ve just been out for a walk. You haven’t been waiting long, I hope? Though you are a few days earlier than I expected.’

  But the king’s normally genial face is impassive and forbidding. ‘Did you really think I wouldn’t notice you stealing from me? That as the deedholder, I don’t have a sense for the Houses – every piece of them – and can tell when something’s gone wrong? Because I’ve felt Burleigh declining all summer, Violet, and gave you a chance. More of a chance than you deserve. You took that opportunity, then turned round and robbed me.’

  ‘I don’t know what you mean,’ I lie, because there’s nothing else I can do.

  His Majesty raises a hand and snaps his fingers. Three horsemen in dark frock coats, not regimental uniforms, ride forwards.

  ‘These gentlemen are magistrates,’ the king says. ‘I assume you know what that means.’

  Three magistrates for a travelling court. Just like the one that sentenced my father.

  ‘Violet Helena Sterling,’ Edgar Rex, king of England says, his voice clear and stern on the warm, soft air. ‘I hereby charge you with treason. And as Burleigh House is shortly to be burnt, I recommend a sentence of hanging by the neck, until you are dead.’