I push out of my seat. It’s true—nervous energy is coursing through me, now we’re so close to our goal. “What if I walk to the harbor? Can we meet there?”
“Of course. Go gaze at your sea.”
There’s an unseasonably cold wind coming in from offshore, but at least the sky is clear. Small clouds scud across it, like a mirror image of the whitecapped Atlantic. I walk and walk, from one end of the sandy harbor beach to another, and though the fishermen have taken the boats from their slips, a few people linger at the harbor’s edge, mending nets or crab pots. But for the most part, St. Ives is shockingly empty. When I was last here, holidaymakers lined the sand, children laughed on the carousel, and little carts stood out on the beach, from which hawkers sold lemonade and ice creams. Even a hundred miles from Burleigh House, the proof of its decay is everywhere I look.
Alfred and Esperanza join me, and we hike through town and out onto the rugged green cliffs of the Cornish coast. The wind is even stronger up here, away from the protection of the harbor. We walk in silence. I take the lead, traveling westward, remembering Burleigh’s vision of a setting sun. The tang of the salt air and the boom, hush of the surf and the knowledge that I am about to reach the end I’ve been working toward have my head spinning.
At last we reach a jutting piece of headland that looks eerily familiar. The beach here is no longer sand—it’s stony shingle, and the cliffs have jagged edges. The water below is inky blue where vegetation grows from the ocean floor, and lighter in the sandy spots where sea plants cannot thrive. It’s all just as Burleigh showed me.
“Over here!” Esperanza shouts, beckoning to Alfred and me. She points to a worn trail, hidden behind a clump of gorse, and the three of us slip and scramble down it to the shingle below. Once we’re at sea level, it’s easy to see the thing we’ve come for—a yawning cave mouth, halfway up the cliff, safe beyond the high-water mark.
Espie clasps my hand in her own and squeezes. “We’re nearly there, Violet. Look what you and Burleigh have managed.”
I bite my lip and nod. The ascent to the cave looks daunting. There’s been an attempt made at hewing a stairway into the rock, but it’s a rudimentary effort, somewhere between stone steps and rough handholds.
Without a word, I begin the climb, not needing to look back to know Alfred and Espie are following. Halfway up, I’m forced to stop a minute, clinging to the rock face like a barnacle or a bit of cliff grass as my head spins.
“Alright, Vi?” Alfred asks from beneath and behind.
There’s something strange about this place—something deeply right and wrong all at once. It feels like Burleigh, though my House is miles and miles away. By the time I pull myself up into the cave, my legs won’t stop shaking.
“It’s got to be here,” I tell Esperanza breathlessly as she pulls herself up into the cavern. “I can feel it.”
The cave isn’t very large. Perhaps the size of my bedroom at home, its interior is almost entirely bare. A few stalactites cling to the ceiling, and loose stones rest in the sunken areas of the uneven cave floor. I don’t know what I expected, to be honest—perhaps something with an entrance submerged at high tide, that bored deep into the cliffs, full of passageways and twists and turns, rife with places to hide a chest containing one of the things I most desire in this world.
This is little more than a hollow in the hillside. A place for a handful of bats to take refuge and for swifts to nest. It is not a place for hidden treasure—indeed, there’s nowhere to hide it.
“It doesn’t look like much, does it?” Esperanza says uncertainly.
I stand at the cave mouth and peer out. There’s no mistaking this bit of headland, the small rocky island just off the coast that’s barely large enough for three people to stand on. I am where Burleigh wanted me to be.
And there’s the spinning of my head, the trembling of my legs, the sense that Burleigh is very near, to confirm the House’s directions.
“Let’s spread out,” I tell Alfred and Espie. “I want every inch of this cavern combed over.”
They take the walls, running their fingers carefully over the damp stone, searching for any cracks or seams that might hold an oilskin-wrapped package containing the deed. I get down on my hands and knees and travel foot by slow foot across the cave floor, feeling for patches of soil or indentations in the rock, and turning over the loose stones.
We go over the cave once, and by the time we’ve finished, the sun is high overhead, casting much of the cavern into shadow.
“Again,” I say.
Alfred and Esperanza are pale with worry, but they don’t protest. We search every nook and cranny a second time, and then a third. By the end my stomach is an empty pit and I’m weak as water.
“Vi.” Espie rests a hand on my shoulder. “It’s not here.”
“How can that be?” I protest. “Burleigh House showed me this spot. And I can feel it here. We’re in the right place.”
“Your father thought he’d discovered the deed’s whereabouts,” Alfred says. “And yet never found the deed itself. Perhaps it’s a mistake.”
“I don’t understand where we keep going wrong.” I bury my face in my hands. “This can’t be happening. Not again.”
“You should eat a sandwich,” Esperanza says. “It’ll make you feel better.”
“Espie, I can’t.”
We climb back down the cliff face, and twice I nearly fall, overwhelmed by Burleigh, by regret and sorrow and magic pulsing through the earth. By time we get off the beach and to the top of the trail, we’re losing daylight. I have to stop for quite some time beside the gorse bush, legs trembling beneath me. But by far the worst is my heart. I can’t feel it at all—it’s as if someone’s cut it out of my chest with surgical precision, leaving me no more than a shell of the girl I was.
I have failed in my purpose. I have failed my House.
I’ve failed Wyn.
How can I go back and let Burleigh have its way? How can I do what I’ve been raised for, be the Caretaker I was brought up to be, when it means watching the friend of my childhood, who is much more than that to me now, give his life to save my House?
27
NO SOONER DO WE GET TO THE INN IN ST. IVES THAN THE sky opens up and pours. Rain lashes at the windows, the fire backs up and smokes, and there’s no possibility of us starting for home until tomorrow at the earliest.
I chafe at the enforced confinement, and feel as if at any moment, I might fly apart.
“Do you want to talk about anything, Vi?” Espie offers.
“No,” I answer sharply. “No, I don’t want to talk at all.”
Alfred buries himself in his books, receding so far into a stack of them that only the top of his head remains visible. Esperanza sits at the counter and strikes up a rather desperate conversation with the barmaid, about St. Ives and Cornwall and fisheries and what could be done to ease the burdens of local tin miners.
I don’t have a bent for reading to distract me, or the good of England to bother with, so I stand at a window and brood, staring out into the dark of the storm. In all my life, I have never felt so low. And with nothing to occupy me, all I can do is wait for ungovernable fear to rise up, for heartbreak to blossom in my chest like a physical pain.
While I wait, I think of Burleigh House, marking me as a child. Of Mama’s insistence that Papa find a way to undo what had been done. Of my father bringing a foundling boy home not a week later, when he’d never shown much of a bent for charity before.
I think of Mama’s refusal to welcome Wyn into the family, to make him one of us. Of Wyn’s unease throughout our childhood—his furtive requests for the two of us to run away together. Of Papa taking him, a blameless boy, into the living prison of House arrest. And I think of Wyn at home, steeling himself to do something that should not be required of him.
Suddenly, I find I am not fearful, or heartbroken.
I’m furious.
Before either Alfred or Esperanza can protest, I bu
rst back out into the storm, grabbing a lantern that hangs by the inn door as I go. I don’t care that the cliffs are slippery and treacherous, or that in the darkness the boom and crash of the surf is near overwhelming. I don’t care that the rain has me soaked through in a moment, either. All I care about is getting back to that sea cave, because I can no longer tolerate failure. Perhaps I will die for Burleigh yet. But I will not go home and watch Wyn do it in my stead. I’m not just Violet Sterling, Caretaker of a failing House. I am the sum of everywhere and everything I’ve been. And I am still, in my deepest parts, Vi of the Fens, who never goes home empty-handed.
In the dark and the rain, I nearly pass the gorse bush that marks the head of the trail down to the little beach below the cave, where I felt Burleigh’s presence so strongly. But my skirt snags on its reaching branches and I start down the rain-slick path.
The climb up to the cave is a nightmare, with unseen water frothing below as I grasp for purchase on the wet rocks, forced to leave my lantern behind. But at last I haul myself up into the cavern’s scant shelter and draw a breath.
Well done, Violet, I think to myself. You’ve really thought this through. Sitting in a cave during a rainstorm when you can’t see your hand in front of your face will absolutely save Wyn and Burleigh.
But do I need to see? We searched this whole place over with our eyes in broad daylight, and not a sign of the deed turned up. Perhaps it isn’t sight I’m wanting. With sight, I saw nothing worth noticing. But even now, that part of me that recognizes Burleigh, that’s always recognized Burleigh, can feel magic, and the familiar presence of my own House.
So in the darkness, racked with shivers, I get down on my hands and knees and reach, with the piece of me that is always reaching for either Burleigh or Wyn; the bit of Violet Sterling who sees them as family, and home.
As I do, thoughts of Wyn being bound to Burleigh rise up, and are soon met by grim imaginings of the House being put to the torch by His Majesty, and of Burleigh overtaking Wyn entirely in order to survive. I force those bleak visions down ruthlessly, all my practice at holding things in check coming to good use as I creep along the cavern floor. I don’t want to live in a world where either Wyn or Burleigh does not exist—I want them both, and I refuse to trade one for the other, whatever my father was willing to do.
So I move inch by slow inch through the cave, feeling for my House. Toward the back of the cavern my awareness of Burleigh grows ever so slightly stronger. And then again as I shift a few paces to the left. And again. Then a little weaker, so I hastily backtrack. At the place where I can feel Burleigh most strongly, I meticulously run my hands across the cave floor, touching every bit of rock, and then up along the wall. Little by little I go, all of me bent on sensing my House.
When my searching fingers slide over a slight lip of rock just higher than my head and brush against a small stone, I’m shoved three steps back by the force of what I feel.
Despair, darkness, calamity. Brokenness, heartbreak, agony.
And once that subsides, I realize cold mortar is dripping from my hand. It hasn’t gone into me—there was no sense of magic crawling under my skin, no, this is leftover mortar—the last vestiges of it that remain in my blood from the times Burleigh couldn’t hold its power back. Whatever I’ve just touched, it’s pulling the lingering bits of poison from me like a magnet draws metal. I’ve never seen the like, and never known such a thing to be possible. As the mortar goes, I feel suddenly flush with health, like waking up from a long illness you’ve grown used to, only to find yourself well again.
Bending, I tear a wide strip off the bottom of my already ragged fen skirt. Folding it double and wrapping it around my hand, I reach up once more and grasp at the stone resting on the rock ledge overhead. I can’t see it in the darkness, but even through layers of fabric I can still feel that wild anguish, that sense of brokenness, of unbelonging, and of separation.
No wonder my father stood in this cave and never found what he was looking for. It’s not deeds that bind the Great Houses—it’s missing pieces of their own selves. How devilishly clever of the king and all his predecessors, to never speak a word of this truth. To ensure for eight hundred years that anyone who sought to free the Houses would always be searching for the wrong thing.
And how well Marianne Ingilby must have known Ripley Castle, to find its missing piece.
I carefully wrap up this lost bit of Burleigh and tuck it into one of my deep pockets, where its constant thrumming of loneliness and desolation immediately sets an ache in my thigh. Fear uncurls in my belly at the thought of the journey back down the cliff face, but when I turn to the cavern’s mouth, the clouds have parted. A sickle moon gleams overhead, casting diamonds across the restless sea, and its light seems all the brighter for the night having been so dark.
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 color 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 toward 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 cuore della cassa—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 le contrat obligatoire—a binding contract or agreement, but I’ve also seen the rather more poetic esprit de le 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 license. 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 Burleig
h 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.”
28
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 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. Burleigh’s bound 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. The House 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.
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