A Treason of Thorns

by Laura E. Weymouth

  “Ripley Castle was very much like Burleigh House. A family called Ingilby looked after it. Just as the Sterlings have been at Burleigh for a very long time, the Ingilbys had been at Ripley for hundreds of years.”

  I listen, wide-eyed. There’s nothing I love better than stories of the Great Houses.

  “Before you were born, there was a girl who lived at Ripley Castle—Marianne Ingilby—and when her father died unexpectedly just after the girl’s eighteenth birthday, she wanted to become Caretaker in his stead. She wanted it and Ripley Castle wanted it, but your uncle Edgar did not.”

  “Why not?” I ask, sipping my milk.

  A frown mars Mama’s beautiful face. “Who knows with your uncle Edgar? But he is the king, and he wanted to give Ripley Castle as a prize to one of his noblemen. Marianne hated the idea. The House hated the idea, too, and chafed against its bindings, refusing to accept the king’s chosen Caretaker.”

  I lie with my hands laced together under my chin, enthralled. All of Papa’s stories contain a moment of darkness or an instant of despair, when it seems all will be lost. But then comes the turning point, when House and Caretaker work together in perfect unison, two souls with one purpose, and save the day. I’m sure Mama’s will be the same.

  “It broke Marianne Ingilby’s heart to see her House in distress,” my mother continues. She reaches out and runs a gentle hand over my hair. “And she trusted Ripley Castle more than anything else in this world. So she did what no one had yet dared to. She stole the deed to her House, and tried to set it free.”

  Outside, there is a sinuous, rustling sound along the walls. Ivy, newly grown, begins to tap-tap at the windows. Green sparks snap from the fire.

  “You won’t have heard this story yet, Violet. It’s something your father doesn’t like spoken of here. But secretly, he hopes to follow in Marianne’s footsteps, and to try to set Burleigh free. It’s a dangerous undertaking, though—in order to set a Great House free, you must take its deed to the House’s heart, and there unbind it with blood and mortar, as it was bound.”

  “Why should that be dangerous?” I ask. Outside, the ivy is waving at me, creeping across the window glass.

  Behind Mama, the door to the airing cupboard swings open another few inches. Wyn’s face is pale in the gloom—he’s his child-self in this dream, not the Wyn I’ve come to know, and even in sleep I feel a stab of disappointment.

  “Vi, I know your father loves Burleigh House more than anything,” Mama says, and I ignore the hint of bitterness in her voice. “I know he’s teaching you to love it, too. But every House, no matter how biddable it may seem—no matter how devoted to its Caretaker it may be—must obey its binding in the end. And the Houses are bound to kill anyone who attempts to return their deeds.”

  A tendril of vine snakes through a crack in one of the window frames and lifts the latch. When the window swings open, ivy creeps in, spilling silently across the window seats, pouring onto the floors.

  “Burleigh isn’t like that,” I answer with unshakable confidence. “Burleigh would never hurt anyone.”

  “I’m sure Marianne Ingilby thought the same of Ripley Castle.” Mama glances over her shoulder at the oncoming ivy and shivers. “But that House killed her, Violet. Ripley strangled her in obedience to its bond. It was not freed by blood and mortar as Marianne had planned. Killing her was too much for the House to bear, though. It went wild, and unleashed every bit of its destructive magic on the countryside. What is it your father always says? A Caretaker puts his House first, but a House puts itself first. Well, Ripley Castle did just that. Then in the aftermath, caught up in its own grief, it destroyed Yorkshire.”

  I look down at my hands, and they’re a child’s now. I’ve shrunken, folded into my former self, and I can feel tears slipping down my face.

  Mama is relentless. She continues speaking, and the ivy creeps inch by slow inch toward her. With every word and every rustle, I feel as if the axis of my world is shifting.

  “In the wake of Marianne’s death, Ripley Castle turned the north to a wasteland. Its magic became a dark and twisted thing that spilled out into the surrounding countryside. The damage was so severe that even after His Majesty finally dealt with the House, people fled the county, and it still lies uninhabited.”

  Mama takes my hands in hers, and I’m too shocked by her story to pull away.

  “Houses don’t love us, Violet. They obey or disobey, and they use us to their own ends.”

  She startles with a quick intake of breath as the ivy brushes against her ankle.

  “Burleigh, stop it,” I snap, and in an instant, the vines crumble to ash. I look at the black smudges they’ve left on my bedroom floor, because I can’t look at my mother.

  “You needed to know,” Mama says. She presses a kiss to my forehead. Her lips are cool against my skin and I catch a hint of rosewater as she stands and moves to the door.

  I stop her with a word. “Wait. What happened to Ripley Castle, after it went wild?”

  “The king had it burned. Every stone and every timber.”

  Once she’s taken the lamp away and shut the door behind her, I crawl out of bed and pad across the floor to the airing cupboard. I sit down next to Wyn and shut the door behind us, so that we’re shoulder to shoulder, alone together in the quiet dark.

  “Violet, I’m afraid,” Wyn says. “What if it’s true, about the Houses?”

  “I’m afraid, too,” I tell him. “What would I do, if Burleigh were to burn?”

  And in the way of dreams, everything shifts. I’m no longer sitting in the dark with Wyn—I’m standing at the front gate, which is once more iron-wrought bars rather than brambles. Wyn stands on the other side, within the grounds, and he’s the boy I know—sandy-haired and reticent, familiar and unfamiliar all at once. He clutches the gate’s iron bars, and I cover his hands with my own.

  “Go on then, Violet,” Wyn says. “Find your own way.”

  Beside me in the hedgerow, a little bird opens its beak to sing, and the voice that comes out is Mama’s clear, sweet soprano.

  Burleigh holds quicksilver

  Burleigh ruins all

  Without blood in its mortar

  Breath in its walls

  As it sings, I watch Wyn go down the gravel drive and into the House, where he shuts the door behind him. Smoke billows from the windows. Flames lick at the stonework, glass shatters and timbers groan. Burleigh House collapses in on itself, with Wyn inside, and it feels as if I’ve caught fire myself, and my own insides must surely crumble.

  When I wake, that pain is still with me, crushing my chest like a vise, pushing the breath from my lungs. I gasp, and gasp, and gasp.

  15

  IT IS A FINE MAY MORNING—THE LAST MAY MORNING OF this year, in fact—and Burleigh looks lovely on the cusp of summer. I sit out in the kitchen garden, on a bench in the sun with my back against one of the walls. The air is warm, and while the garden may be mostly weeds at this point, bees buzz drowsily among their blossoms. Finches flit between the green thistles. I am happy in this brief moment, and Burleigh is happy because I’m happy. Though I can still feel pain emanating from the bricks, and the immense strain of the House holding in its unspent magic, there’s also contentment, benevolence, and a vast sense of fondness.

  I smile and run one thumb across the bricks behind me. In response, Burleigh unfurls tendrils of honeysuckle and their flowers open, spilling sweet fragrance onto the breeze.

  “Show-off,” Wyn grumbles from where he’s splitting and stacking firewood in front of the woodshed. “You were insufferable when we were small, you know. Always flaunting the House’s preference for you.”

  He sets the ax aside and straightens up, wiping the back of one hand across his damp forehead. I gnaw at a fingernail and try not to look too long or too hard. Wyn’s so . . . competent now. He never was before. And while I don’t like to dwell on why he had to become so, the result can be a little distracting. Especially when I’ve got Papa’s ledge
r open on my lap and am supposed to be looking through it for anything useful.

  “The House is a fusty old building that plays favorites and doesn’t appreciate the people who do the most for it,” I tell Wyn. “Look at Jed and Mira—they oversaw all the upkeep during Papa’s time, and when has Burleigh ever even acknowledged them?”

  A skein of honeysuckle pokes me in the ear, and I bat it away.

  “You love it, though.” Wyn’s voice is carefully empty, devoid of emotion. He might be speaking of the weather. “No matter how selfish or unfair it is. No matter what it’s done to your family, or what they’ve done for it. That’s why you came back.”

  I frown at him as he stacks split logs beneath the overhang of the woodshed. “There were a lot of reasons why I came back.”

  “Have you found anything new today?” Wyn asks, gesturing at the ledger with a stick of kindling. I know he’s changing the subject, but let it slide. Instead, I squint down at the pages of the ledger.

  “Actually, I think I have. I’ve been charting the locations of all my father’s journeys, and during the last year before his arrest, he kept going to Cornwall. Over and over, without recording why. So either he had a lover there I knew nothing about—”

  “Unlikely,” Wyn says.

  “—or he’d found out the deed was somewhere in Cornwall. Somewhere along the coast, in a sea cave.”

  Wyn glances over at me and he’s almost smiling. “And you used to tell me you weren’t clever enough for riddles.”

  “I am who Burleigh needs me to be,” I answer, looking at the weed-choked gardens, the crumbling walls, and the low places in the ground where wet mortar has pooled.

  Wyn’s just about to speak again when the air grows deathly still. The sky clouds over and shifts to a sickly green. A sudden gust of chill rain falls, followed by eerie calm.

  “Burleigh?” I ask. “What’s wrong?”

  The House, of course, does not answer, but Wyn squints around the corner of the building.

  “I think there’s someone at the gate,” he says. “It’s storming out in the lane. And the brambles patching the wall look especially thorny.”

  Closing Papa’s ledger, I heave a sigh. “I expect it’s Lord Falmouth. He came into the Shilling yesterday—the king sent him to keep an eye on me and the House.”

  “That’ll be trouble,” Wyn says with a shake of his head. “Burleigh loathes Falmouth. And I can’t say as I was particularly taken by him, either, though we only met the once.”

  Getting to my feet, I walk over to Wyn and hold out the ledger. “Will you take this for me? I’ve got to go play charming hostess. I do wish Burleigh would be charming, too—the last thing we need is for a poor report to get back to the king.”

  Wyn takes the ledger as I’ve asked him to, but I don’t let go. For a moment we’re caught with all that’s left of my father between us.

  “Don’t go, Violet,” Wyn says without looking at me. “Don’t let Falmouth in. It’ll end badly.”

  “Oh, Wyn.” It pains me to tell him no, but if I don’t follow the king’s rules, it’ll be a torch and a quick end for Burleigh. “I have to.”

  “I still don’t like it,” Wyn says. This time he glances up at me and there’s a bleakness in his grey gaze that cuts me to the quick.

  “I’ll try to get rid of him as soon as possible,” I promise, and at last I let the ledger go. Pulling myself together, I gather up my worn fen skirts and hurry toward the front grounds, and the bramble gate beyond.

  At the head of the drive, I peer through the mess of thorns that patch the hole in Burleigh’s wall. A stiff, cold breeze is whipping at me on this side of the bramble gate, but on the other side, it’s pouring rain. Falmouth is sitting astride a black charger and scowling over the weather. His menservants flank him with hunched shoulders, seemingly resigned to their fate of ending up soaked to the skin.

  “Hello,” I call out. “What can I do for you?”

  “I’m here to see your mistress,” Falmouth calls back, his voice terse and clipped. “Is she at home?”

  I smile grimly, and oh, I should know better, but I can’t resist baiting him. “She was last I checked.”

  Falmouth’s horse dances in place and it saws at the bit in frustration. “Let me in at once, then.”

  “I’m not permitted to allow strangers onto the grounds,” I tell him. “And I didn’t know you were coming.”

  He mutters something under his breath. “Look, girl, I’m here on His Majesty’s business, and I expect you to let me in, or the king will hear of it.”

  I don’t want to. The House doesn’t want me to. Wyn doesn’t want me to. But if I don’t, and Falmouth takes word back to the king that I’m being uncooperative, there’ll be hell to pay.

  “Burleigh,” I whisper, resting my hand on a thornless length of bramble. “It’s alright. I know he’s hurt you before, but I’m here, and I won’t let anything happen to you.”

  Reluctance pulses through the palm of my hand.

  “Go on, then,” I coax. “You’re fine, I promise.”

  Slowly, the brambles begin to pull apart, and I can feel the House’s ill humor in the ground beneath me. At last, there’s enough space for a single horse to pass through, and Burleigh stops there, refusing to yield any further. I give the wall a disappointed look.

  But Lord Falmouth urges his charger forward. The horse shies a little in the gap, as the House reaches out to it with thorny fingers.

  “Behave, this is for your own good,” I hiss at the air and the grass and the gravel of the drive. There’s a distant grumble of thunder in answer.

  At close quarters, Lord Falmouth appears to be a good thirty years my senior, with an unforgiving jawline and eyes that don’t miss a thing.

  “You’re the tavern girl from last night,” he says as he dismounts. “Does your mistress know how you spend your evenings?”

  “Oh yes,” I answer. “She doesn’t mind at all.”

  Falmouth’s scowl grows more pronounced. “Well. That’s no way to run a household. Things will be a damn sight different here once I’m Caretaker, mark my words.”

  I say nothing, because I refuse to countenance the idea of this boorish nobleman as Caretaker of Burleigh House.

  “Have a groom take my horse away and water him,” Falmouth orders abruptly. “And fetch your mistress for me. I want to discuss Burleigh’s management with her—this House is a disgrace.”

  Behind Falmouth, a length of bramble snakes out from the wall, running across the ground toward his horse’s rear hooves.

  “Sir”—I reach out for the charger’s reins and lead it forward a few steps, out of harm’s way—“I’m afraid there’s no groom at present, so you’ll have to make do with me. The staff isn’t what it was when my—when Master Sterling was alive.”

  “You mean before he was sentenced to death for betraying the king.”

  I paste on a thin smile, more for the benefit of Burleigh than this odious nobleman. Thunder rumbles again, and half a dozen slate tiles slide from Burleigh’s roof and smash on the drive in front of the House. “Just so. Would you like to walk with me to the stables, or go on inside and wait?”

  “I’ll join you. Burleigh was hardly congenial the last time I was here, and it would be nice to see a bit of the grounds.”

  I lead the horse and Lord Falmouth falls into stride next to me.

  “Did you visit during the old master’s time, then?” I ask, both to make conversation and to keep him from looking toward the House. From this angle, you can see the wide cracks in the exterior walls of the guest wing, and I don’t want him knowing Burleigh’s in such dire straits.

  “No, I never visited while George Sterling was alive, though we were well acquainted. But I serve as the king’s proxy in his absences. He binds the Houses to obey me while he travels overseas. He was away in Belgium when George’s House arrest ended, so I was the one who had to retrieve the body, though Burleigh House did fuss about it. I ended up having t
o force the gate.”

  The ground beneath us shifts a little. I stop dead in my tracks and turn to face him. “I’ll thank you not to speak so lightly of the damage you did.”

  Falmouth reddens. “Who are you to speak to me in such a fashion, girl? I’ll have you beaten for your impertinence.”

  Burleigh’s livid. Every stone on the gravel drive begins to chatter, like the sound of small malevolent teeth.

  Peace, Burleigh, peace, I think desperately at the House.

  I can’t keep this up.

  “I’m Violet Sterling,” I say. “George’s daughter and the current mistress of this House. As I said, I don’t appreciate any mention of what you did last time you were here. To do such a thing to a House under a binding is unconscionable.”

  “Of course you are. George’s get would be working as a barmaid—he always spent too much time at the Shilling himself.” Falmouth rolls his eyes. “And don’t be dramatic. The House did it to itself. What was I supposed to do? Leave your father decaying on his deathbed while this place festered and went bad? Did you know that the boy George kept under arrest with him never even dealt with the corpse—just left it lying out to rot. All that was left by the time I made the House open up was bones. I had the trouble of a burial and a headstone to deal with myself.”

  I concentrate on nothing but the rhythm of my breath and my own footsteps, because his words are poison, and more than that, a lie. I saw Burleigh’s memory. I know it was Esperanza who came and did the decent thing after my father’s death.

  Breathe in, and out. In and out. One foot forward. Now the next.

  The sound of Wyn’s ax splits the air every few moments, like gunfire. I find it oddly comforting, knowing he’s nearby. Knowing I have an unquestioning ally, should I need him.

  As we walk to the empty and derelict stables, daisies sprout and spring up through the gravel along my path. Light beams through the threatening clouds and follows me, so that I move in a halo of gold, like a saint or a Madonna. I’m glad of Burleigh’s obvious attention, just as I’m glad of the sound of Wyn’s ax. It’s a reassurance, that forceful as Lord Falmouth may be, I’m not entirely alone. I tend to the horse while Falmouth watches. His men are entirely silent, never making eye contact or speaking a word. They’re more skittish than the horse is, and I can only imagine what sort of master the duke must be to make them seem so wary.