But only Burleigh remains.
‘He took it upon himself to break the binding,’ Burleigh says with Wyn’s mouth, in its voice like shattering stone. ‘And there was so little of him left. We spared him for you as long as we could, Sterling girl. But in the end, he wanted to go.’
‘He’s not—’ I can hardly bring myself to speak the words. ‘He’s not gone? For good?’
Burleigh makes no answer at first, and I can feel all the House’s brooding attention pondering the question I’ve asked.
‘We would rather not tell you,’ Burleigh finally says. ‘You are . . . very small. And perhaps more fragile than we’d thought.’
‘Answer. The question.’
The creature before me, that is not my Wyn, and may never be again, hangs its head. ‘He is ours entirely now, Sterling girl – a part of us, and inseparable. But we are sorry we cannot give him back.’
For a long time I keep entirely motionless, afraid even to breathe. Because I know the moment I begin to feel this loss, it will cut deeper than any thorn. Weigh heavier than all the world’s mortar. Breed more damage than years of working House magic.
At last I glance over one shoulder to the edge of the woods. A wall of fire is eating away at the trees, flames hungrily consuming Burleigh’s power and magic. But Burleigh can begin again, go elsewhere to take a new shape with the life Wyn’s given it.
I hold the heartstone in my two cupped hands and the wide world beyond the grounds seems sere and empty. This could end now. I could leave, clamber over the wall and disappear. Cast off my name, and the expectations it brings with it. In a way, the prospect is almost inviting. A fresh start. A clean slate. It’s what Wyn always tried to convince me I wanted.
The truth is, though, I don’t want any of that after all the things I’ve seen. After everything I’ve lived through, and all that I’ve lost. Nothing seems worthwhile any more. Not the world. Not a life on my own. Not even Burleigh House.
But since the day I was born, I have been taught one thing. It comes as naturally as breathing to me, the knowledge that I am a Caretaker, and a good Caretaker puts her House first.
Before king. Before country.
Before her life and her heart.
Now, at last, it’s time for me to decide if I will break free of my bond, or fulfil the fate that Burleigh House and my father placed upon me. At the thought, something dark and bitter rises up within me. A wanting. A longing. A brooding desire, laced with vengeance.
I don’t know if it’s possible for Burleigh to return Wyn – for us to have another chance at becoming all the things we were never able to be, both on our own and together. But I do know this – if I stand at Burleigh’s heart, with its missing piece in my grasp, I could bind it with blood and mortar to spend the last of its power and the final moments of its life at least trying to bring him back.
Rather than taking the few steps left between me and freedom, I grasp the heartstone tightly and turn towards the House.
‘Where are you going, Sterling girl?’ Burleigh calls after me, but I make no answer.
The ground rumbles incessantly as I cross the field. The air is thick with smoke, and everywhere brambles burst from the ground, slithering across the soil. Strange, light-on-water memories float above them – all the many ghosts of Sterlings gone before. Burleigh House itself is nearing absolute ruin. The roofless attics have all collapsed into the second floor, and bits of stone crumble from the remaining walls. Overhead, the sky boils with clouds, thick with unspent rain.
Inside the door I meet more ghosts. All of them drift silently through the remains of the House, like spirits leaving a dying body. And perhaps they are. I move against the flow of them, feeling nothing but a shift of cold air as they brush past me. They’re all coming from the same place, moving down the main stairs like water over rapids and then splitting off in different directions as they reach the landing.
Stepping out of the way, I tuck myself into a secluded spot next to the stairs. And I watch the ghosts as I think, mind racing. The heart of the House. The heart of the House. Surely, in all the years Burleigh and I have spent together, at some point it showed me a glimpse of its hidden heart.
With a start, I recognize one of the remembered Sterlings floating past. It’s my grandfather, who I’ve only ever seen in an oil painting, and through Burleigh’s eyes. My father’s not far behind him, and the sight of them as they’re remembered by Burleigh tightens my throat. They’re not anxious or worried or wasted by House magic. Instead, they look calm, at peace, even happy. These aren’t just ghosts, or memories, for surely my House has memories of people it hated – the king and all his predecessors, to begin with. No, this procession of Sterlings is a parade of all the people Burleigh ever loved.
I stiffen at the thought, and at the sight of that procession of ghosts, all pouring down the stairs, all coming from the same direction. Taking the heartstone from my pocket and gripping it tight, I push back into the current of memories and begin to climb the stairs. The brambles choking the staircase have crumbled to ash that stains my feet as I hurry up the trembling steps. On the landing I see that while every door in the House has swung open, one is shut. And every memory passes through it, appearing like figures moving through a cloud of mist.
Stopping outside Papa’s room, I try the door. Locked. There’s no roof left overhead, just the sky simmering with rainclouds. A crack forms in the wall beside me, yawning open with an inhuman groan.
‘Burleigh,’ I say, knocking insistently. ‘Burleigh House, let me in.’
The door stays locked.
‘I’d never hurt you,’ I lie, forcing down not fear but the softer, gentler pieces of me. Because I’m still not sure what I’ll do – whether I’ll choose to unbind Burleigh, or bind it further in an attempt to bring Wyn back. I’m waiting for some sign or beacon, some undeniable sense of rightness to tell me: this, Violet. This is how you should choose.
‘No matter what’s happened before, if you let me in, I swear to unbind you. You’ve known me since the day I came into this world, Burleigh, and I’ve loved you just as long. Can’t you trust me? Can’t you hope for a world where you get more than a lonely rebirth, rebuilding on the bones of someone who never should have died for you? Let me set you free.’
With a whine of rusted hinges, the door swings open. For a moment, I stand on the threshold, breathless and anguished. I almost hoped Burleigh would hold out. That it would refuse me entry and keep me from breaking its trust, and that would be all the sign I needed.
But the door is open, the way is clear, and I step one more time into Papa’s bedroom, Burleigh’s last and most faithless Caretaker, who stands on the verge of betraying her House.
The room is bare and roofless, and I pick my way around rubble.
‘Have it your way, Violet Sterling,’ Burleigh says from across the room and I startle. There he sits, on the pile of moulding linens discarded in one corner, wearing the body that was once Wyn’s and now contains no trace of the boy I knew. I swallow, and steel my nerves.
‘Bind us or unbind us. Do what you wish,’ Burleigh continues, an almost sorrowful note in its shattered-stone voice. ‘The truth is, after all these years, we’re tired. So tired, little girl. And it might be more than we could bear, to start over again. We don’t have the strength of spirit or the force of will or the sense of purpose left for new beginnings. So do as you wish – have your way with us.’
Through a window behind Burleigh, I can see the back woods. They’re all ablaze now, and flames are beginning to lick at the wildflower meadow. Not long before they consume it, and come for the rose garden, and then start to gnaw at the walls as well.
I bite at my lower lip. Oh, Burleigh. How you break my heart. Whatever Wyn and my father did for me, I’ve never been anything but bound to you. And what shall I do, here at the end? Break my own binding – not one of blood and mortar, but of love and expectation and countless years of history – in the hope that I can buy Wyn a
second chance at life? Or honour the bond between us, and give life to you instead?
‘This is the right place, then?’ I ask Burleigh. ‘Your very heart, where I can bind or unbind you?’
Burleigh shrugs, an all too human and Wyn-like gesture, and I can’t help but wonder. It jerks Wyn’s head towards the room’s far wall. ‘Our heart isn’t a place, Violet Sterling. You could have unbound us the moment you laid hands on that stone.’
I glance over at the far wall in confusion and tears prick at my eyes. Because there it is, still carved into the plaster in tall and brutal capitals.
VI. My own, mortar-scarred name.
I have always been the heart of Burleigh House, though it is no longer wholly mine.
Smoke burns at my eyes and I don’t want this, Papa. I’m not enough for it. How do I choose between two halves of myself? How will I live if from this moment on, my soul is split in two?
A good Caretaker puts her House first.
Before king. Before country.
Before her own heart.
I kneel in front of Burleigh, choking on tears. Pulling my gutting knife from one pocket, I draw it across my palm. Blood wells up, bright and vital, full of life and still-unbroken promises.
‘Give me his hand,’ I say to Burleigh. The House holds out its hand that once was Wyn’s. But when I cut it, there’s no blood left in these veins, only the gritty grey slick of mortar.
Putting my gutting knife aside, I take the heartstone out and set it on my own bloodied palm.
‘Go on,’ I say to Burleigh, and the House fixes me with a devastating look. There are eight hundred years of pain and exhaustion and brokenness in those eyes that don’t belong to it, and resignation too. Right now, in this moment, Burleigh is entirely within my power.
Wyn’s hand cups the top of the heartstone, my blood and Burleigh’s mortar mingling together.
‘Burleigh House,’ I say. ‘My name is Violet Sterling, last of my line, and my family has always served you well. By the blood in my veins and the mortar in your walls . . .’
Burleigh fixes its sorrowful, stolen eyes on me, and dear God, all I want is to see Wyn looking out from that face again.
‘. . . I unbind you. Be whole again, Burleigh. Be well again. Be free.’
Rain slams into me from above as the clouds split apart. A great, earth-shattering roar of thunder shakes the skies, and the foundation of the House. Wind howls through the broken windows. And before me, Burleigh rises in power.
Blinding light radiates from the creature that is no longer Wyn and no longer the House I knew, either. I put up a hand to shield my eyes, and am struck by the sudden, irrational thought that perhaps this isn’t Burleigh at all, but one of the seraphim Mira told me stories of on the fens. An angel of life or death, or perhaps both at once.
Everything around me is wind and thunder and light and rain. ‘Remember this, Burleigh,’ I call out in a panic, my voice barely audible in the tumult. ‘Remember how I loved you. And if you can, give him back. Mend my heart again, as I mended yours.’
There’s no answer but the scream of wind and the growl of thunder. At last I’m forced to shut my eyes against the burning light and the driving rain.
When I dare to open them, the noise of the storm has grown bearable. Rain still pelts my skin, but I’m no longer on the grounds. Instead, I’m in the lane, my back to Burleigh’s great iron gate, which has been restored to its prior form.
In front of me stands His Majesty the king and a regiment of soldiers, all of them soaked to the skin and looking like they’ve seen the dead rise up from their graves. Behind me, the House is swathed in a pillar of cloud and fire. The sounds of its restoration are a terrible and mighty thing.
I drop to my knees in the mud of the lane, wrap my arms around my middle, and sob. I’ve proved myself the greatest of all Caretakers, and bought Burleigh House its freedom against all odds.
But at what cost, Burleigh? At what cost?
30
I drift in and out of sleep as Jed and Mira argue with Frey at my bedside, tucked away in a little room under the Red Shilling’s eaves.
‘She’s ours,’ Mira begs. ‘Let us take her home.’
‘That cottage you’ve rented is hardly big enough for the two of you as it is,’ Frey says staunchly. ‘And it isn’t home to Vi. You know where her home is. Let her stay here, in a place she knows.’
Jed is the one who kneels beside the bed and takes my hand. ‘Violet, my love. What do you think?’
I’m too tired to answer. And I don’t care about any of it, or anything. I’m lost in the same fog they tell me still envelops the House, though it’s been two weeks since I set Burleigh free.
In the end, I stay at the inn. Mira comes to sit next to me in the afternoons and evenings when Frey oversees things. The rest of the time, Frey herself keeps watch, sleeping on a pallet across the room. They’re all worried, I know, but I can’t summon the energy to take an interest or care. I sleep and sleep, waking only to take cups of broth or to use the chamber pot. Even the plate of autumn vegetables and stewed apples and warm bread that Mira brings me over Rosh Hashanah is not enough to tempt me.
Then one morning I wake to a robin singing outside the attic window, and realize the leaves of the branch he perches on have turned to gold.
‘Frey?’
She’s by my side in a moment.
‘Are things all right, with the West Country? How will everyone fare over winter?’
Frey squeezes my hand. ‘There were plenty of folk expecting to starve, if you want the truth. But the day you walked out of that House, every apple tree in the West Country started a second bloom and every heifer and ewe dropped twins. No one’s ever seen the like. The lambs and calves and apples have all grown up at a fearful rate too – they started pressing cider last week, and the markets are full of stock.’
‘What about the king? He just . . . left, after I came out from the House. But before, he’d planned to charge me with treason.’
‘He’s back at Hampton Court,’ Frey says. ‘Espie’s gone with him, to make sure he doesn’t get any ideas about renewing those charges. But I doubt there’s any danger of that, not with the West Country in better shape than it’s ever been before. If he laid a finger on you, there’d be riots in the streets. And I hear His Majesty’s at a bit of a loose end, without Falmouth to manage things for him, but that Esperanza’s taken over very capably.’
‘I’m sure she has,’ I say with a faint smile.
‘Do you know what they drink to downstairs every night now?’ Frey asks. I can feel myself flush under her close scrutiny. ‘To Violet Sterling, the bond breaker, and to Burleigh House restored.’
‘And Burleigh?’
Frey turns, so I can’t look her in the eyes. ‘Shut up tight, and showing no sign of opening its gate again. I’m sorry.’
I don’t ask after Wyn. I can’t bring myself to speak his name. That wound is still too raw, and I’m not sure it will ever really heal. This is everything you once wanted, I remind myself. To see your House whole and well and free.
But inside me there is an endless sea, not of fear, but of grief, and I cannot push it back or confine it, no matter how hard I try.
At last, I find the will to get out of bed. And every afternoon I walk the scant mile to Burleigh House, though it takes me longer than it should to make the trip. I sit on the verge beside the lane and watch the meadow grasses go from gold to brown, the hedgerows sprouting red berries and gilded leaves. When the first frost comes and the afternoon air begins to bite, I wrap myself in a thick wool cloak, but I still make the journey.
Even now, with the walls impenetrable and the gate shut to me, I can’t help being drawn back to my House.
Hanukkah comes and goes. But Mira’s latkes and Jed singing ‘Maoz Tzur’ in his deep bass voice are hollow joys this year. Christmas I keep with Frey and her son and daughter-in-law, who make the trip down from London. There’s a tree in the public room of the inn a
nd we sing carols with guests who happen to be travelling over Christmastide. Or rather, everyone else sings, and I stand mute, the music washing over me like a river parting around heartless stone.
When the holidays pass, I resume my vigil outside Burleigh House, sitting with my back to the wall, dozing in thin winter sunshine, listening to the wind over the frozen fields.
And one day, one entirely ordinary day in mid-January, I wake from a fitful sleep outside Burleigh’s walls and find a bluebell has sprouted between my fingers. I glance over to the wrought-iron gate and slowly, soundlessly, it swings open.
Getting to my feet, I walk over and stand on the very brink of Burleigh’s grounds.
The House is visible again, all the mist that shrouded it burnt away. It looks just as it once did, when I was a child. Warm stone. Leaded glass windows. Gardens dreaming of spring under their cover of frost. Woodsmoke even spirals up from the chimneys, scenting the air. It looks and smells and feels like home.
‘Wyn?’ I ask, my voice carrying far in the cold and the silence. ‘Are you there?’
Only the birds in the hedgerows answer. And when I step away, I know I ought not to come back to Burleigh House again. I may be well enough in body, but so long as I keep returning, I will never be well in spirit.
When an early thaw hits, turning all the world to mud and sleet, I begin to think it’s time to take my leave, not just of Burleigh House, but of the Halt as well. I wait tables as I try to make up my mind, and while most of my pay comes in the form of room and board, what coin I do get I put aside.
Frey’s careful with me, watching closely, as if I’ve grown breakable since freeing the House. Perhaps she’s right. Some days, everything seems fine. But others, I feel like a snapped reed, unable to stand on my own. I can’t shake the temptation to slip out each night, after the inn has closed and the last of the evening’s patrons wander home. To take the familiar north lane until I reach the walls of Burleigh House. Once there, I run my fingers along smooth stone, returning time and again to the iron gate, where I stand on the threshold and speak into the hush of Burleigh at rest.
A Treason of Thorns Page 25