“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 applesauce 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 favorite, “Una Hija Tiene El Rey,” which keeps Espie spellbound and beaming. I even let Jed coax me into showing off a string of birdcalls I learned 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 toward 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 alright, 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 lap, 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 lies on the floor beside him. 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 pull on a pair of gum boots 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 midmorning, is behind the counter, a cheerful yellow scarf wrapped around her tightly coiled black hair. I give her a halfhearted 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 anymore.”
“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 heartstone toward 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?”
“Esperanza, 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 backward.
“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.”
30
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 don’t 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 a 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, turned around, and robbed me.”
“I don’t know what you mean,” I lie flatly, 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 forward.
“These gentlemen are magistrates,” the king says. “I assume you know what that means.”
Three magistrates for a traveling 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 burned, I recommend a sentence of hanging by the neck, until you are dead.”
And then all hell breaks loose.
Enormous vines studded with thorns the size of my forearm explode out from the bramble gate. They twine around the delicate fetlocks of shying horses, and I hear the sharp report of cannon bones snapping. The lane is filled with foundering mounts and soldiers bound by brambles, unable to reach their powder or pistols. Only the king remains untouched, but for once he’s left witless, able only to stand and watch the destruction Burleigh has wrought upon his men in the blink of an eye.
I allow myself a scant second to watch, too, to marvel with a bitter sort of elation at the spectacle of Burleigh House acting with no regard for its bond. But the bare swath my House has cut through the gathered soldiers beckons, and already more killing brambles are clambering over the whole length of Burleigh’s walls, turning them to an impenetrable hedge of thorns.
Gathering up my skirts, I run.
“Violet Sterling, set foot on those grounds and you’re signing your own death warrant far faster than I can,” the king bellows after me, but I ignore him. I hurtle across the threshold of Burleigh’s gate and brambles snap back into place behind me, sealing me in, sealing everyone else out.
The sounds of screaming horses and shouting soldiers and the ranting king grow fainter at once. I stand stock-still, heart pounding in my chest, waiting to meet the same fate they have. Waiting for thorns to pierce my skin, for vines to tear at me, for the heartstone to drop from my pocket, leaving Burleigh almost, but not quite, whole. And then, the spectacular end. The West Country going down in flames or famine, in plague or flood.
But nothing comes. The chaos in the lane fades away entirely, replaced by birdsong and sunshine. All the snow of yesterday has melted so that Burleigh looks fresh-faced and inviting, as if we’ve just had an April shower.
It’s the end of July, I remind myself. Inviting as this feels, it’s wrong. All of it is wrong.
Every nerve in me sings. While the sun may be bright and the birds giddy in the trees, the overgrown lawns are still thick with thorns and thistles. The orchard drips not with meltwater but with mortarous blight. Oozing puddles of yet more wet mortar pockmark the path that leads to the desiccated wildflower meadow and the tainted woods.
I don’t have time to linger over the ruins of the grounds. I need to find Burleigh’s heart. House, my love, where have you hidden your most secret self away? I need you to trust me enough to show me where it is.
Burleigh’s emotions are always strongest and clearest when I’m indoors, so I suppose that’s where I’d better start. Hurrying up the front steps, I shut the door behind me.
“Wyn?” I call out, my voice loud in the preternatural calm. I lean against the doorway, thinking hard. There was nothing in Papa’s ledger about where the House might need to be unbound, only mentions of his search for the deed. According to Alfred, a Caretaker should know where the House’s heart is, but I’ve never been a proper Caretaker. I don’t have the key to guide me, only my sense of this House. So it is once more down to me, and down to Burleigh.
As I stand and think, an eerie scratching and scraping drifts in from outside. Turning, I try to pull the door open an inch or two to see what’s going on, but it won’t budge. A tendril of vine snakes through the keyhole and I realize the front door has been sealed shut by Burleigh’s inexorable, creeping fingers.
There are other doors, though, and countless windows. It’s not enough to quicken my fear again—not yet. Intent on finding Burleigh’s heart, I set of
f into the House’s dark interior, intermittently calling for Wyn as I go. Where has he gone?
The halls are thick with ghosts—everywhere, pale blue memories gutter and glow, Sterlings that history has long forgotten still walking through Burleigh’s ponderous mind. I open doors and run my fingers along walls and feel along bookshelves for hidden latches, waiting for some sense of rightness and surety, that yes, here is Burleigh’s heart. Outside, the weather has shifted and a wind is rising—a dry, choking wind that rushes in through the shattered windows, carrying a fine and gritty dust that tastes and smells of mortar. I cough into my sleeve, and keep my arm up to shield my mouth and nose.
With each room I enter, the wind grows fiercer. It howls in the eaves, screams down the chimneys, gnaws through cracked walls, and rattles the last shards of broken glass in the window frames. The longer I stay out in it, the more I cough, until finally a fit nearly bends me double.
Briefly, I consider calling out to Burleigh, begging the House to stop. But it knows what it’s doing, I’m sure. Whether this is an obstacle or a test or a warning, however, remains to be seen.
My chest burns and my head aches and spins, until as I leave each room, it takes me a moment to remember where I’ve come from, and which way I’m headed.
I search the study.
The conservatory.
The smoking room.
The drawing room.
The second-best parlor.
The kitchen.
The ballroom.
The dining room.
The breakfast room.
They all begin to blur together. Cracked walls. Encroaching ivy. Splintered floors strewn with rubble. And wind and dust everywhere, the sound and swirl of them overwhelming. The pain in my head is nearly unbearable, and each time I cough it feels as if my skull will burst. But I carry on, driven by that nagging sense that I’ve lost my way, or lost something, and must continue the search.
A Treason of Thorns Page 25