The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  Towards the cliffs, she tried not to say. Towards the rocks.

  Her father said nothing but began hauling on the oars with greater vigour. With each heave the boat’s nose twitched towards starboard, but then started to drift back to port.

  Faith was so hypnotized by it that she almost missed a flare of foam thirty feet ahead. It flung itself up in an outwards spray, like a convolvulus bloom. Only once the scattered froth fell did she see it settle upon a jutting form, outlining it for a second in white . . .

  ‘Rock!’ she shouted, holding up the lantern to see better. ‘A rock straight ahead!’

  ‘How far away?’

  Faith opened her mouth to answer, but then her lantern’s light caught a much closer trail of white. In the slick valley between two waves, a black jagged shape tore the surface for a telling second.

  ‘Ten feet!’ Faith steadied herself on the edge of the boat, then drew in her breath as yet another rocky point bared itself like a tooth-tip, closer still. The waves around her crested and swirled. ‘They are all around us!’

  There was a grating sound from beneath the boat, like a great, blunt claw being drawn along the boards. Reading the eddies of the water, Faith leaned over the side, plunging her hand into the icy water and grazing herself on the rough barnacles of a submerged rock. She pushed off it as hard as she could, nearly losing her balance, then fell back into the boat with a sopping sleeve and stinging fingers. The lantern in her other hand swung and clattered, the flame shrinking to a blue sprite, before growing tall and yellow once again.

  Behind her, Faith could hear splashing, a cacophony of wood and metal, and her father’s gasps for breath as he wrestled the oars. There were no more grating sounds from below, however, nor could she make out the trickle or gush of a leak.

  Salt-matted strands of Faith’s hair whipped her face and stung her eyes. All the while, the cliff stealthily loomed larger and larger, cutting out ever more of the sky. At its base waves raged, champed, tore each other and bled white.

  Faith became aware that she could hear a loud and rhythmic rush and hiss, rush and hiss. A little further oceanward, she saw a wave strike the cliff. Nearly all of it detonated in spray, but part of it seemed to disappear into the rock. She could hear it roaring hollowly, and after a few moments the water surged back out, turbulent and gleaming. It took Faith a moment to understand what she was seeing.

  ‘Father, I can see a cave!’

  As the boat drew nearer, the roar grew louder and more ominous. Soon Faith could make out the cave’s mouth, a deeper blackness gaping like a cat’s yawn.

  The waves had them now, the oars helpless against the churning of the white water. The spray stung Faith’s eyes. At last a breaker seized them and bore them helplessly forward, into the mouth of the cave itself. The sky went out like a lamp, leaving only the radiance of the lantern. The roar of water and rock was deafening, echoing.

  The belly of the boat ground against a glistening slope of shingle, complained, and beached. The roar went out with a fierce sibilance of water and stuttering of pebbles. Ahead, Faith could see that the cave floor sloped upward. Beyond toothed openings, other chambers quivered in the dull, discoloured lantern-light.

  Behind Faith, the Reverend got to his feet, letting go of the oars.

  ‘Stay where you are!’ he said sharply, as Faith adjusted her position. ‘Your weight will keep the boat grounded.’ He took the lantern from her, clambered out of the boat and waded through the ankle-deep retreating water to the prow. He seized the mooring rope and climbed up on to a stone shelf, where he made it fast to a top-heavy pillar of rock.

  The next wave came in at a terrifying speed, and the boat rose, then descended to ground itself once more. The Reverend returned, the lantern’s handle looped over one arm, and carefully lifted the great pot out of the boat.

  ‘Wait here.’ Her father disappeared into the throat of the caves, carrying the pot as tenderly as if it were a wounded child. The light receded with him, leaving Faith in darkness.

  The cave smelt of the sea, but it was not a cheerful seaside smell. It reeked as if the sea were something old and evil. This sea licked the flesh off shipwrecks, leaving the bare wooden bones in the lightless deep. Its mermaids were green-skinned and squid-eyed with long, hooked fingers and breath that smelt of old fish.

  At last Faith’s father returned, carrying nothing but the lantern. He loosed the rope and jumped back into the boat without a word. When the next wave came to lift them, he used the oars to push away from the rising floor with all his might, so that they were still floating free when the wave retreated. It hurried them back out of the cave, the sky returned to them, lividly bright after the cave’s darkness.

  Fighting their way free from the cave was no easy matter, but the Reverend rowed and rowed tirelessly, and at last Faith saw the cliff start to recede, the rocks become fewer and the waves less turbulent.

  The haul back to the shore was a long one. Faith could no longer see the beach they had set off from, but thankfully she remembered a jutting poplar at the top of the cliff. Now she kept her eye upon that solitary spike on the skyline and navigated towards it.

  The foam-fringed shore came into view, and at last the keel ground into the shore. Father and daughter climbed out and manhandled the boat back up the beach. Faith found that her legs were weak, her hands too numb to grip properly. The two of them leaned against the boat for a short while to recover, breathing plumes of mist into the cold air.

  ‘Good girl, Faith,’ the Reverend said at last. ‘Good girl.’ And suddenly Faith was no longer cold.

  They walked back towards the house, Faith pushing the wheelbarrow. She felt unsteady, but somehow, impossibly, there was dry ground beneath her boots. They had faced danger together, and had survived. She had been tested, and had passed.

  They left the wheelbarrow by the glasshouse. As they drew closer to the house, however, her father stopped and studied his pocket watch once more by the lantern-light.

  ‘It is nearly midnight,’ he murmured. ‘I am out of time. Faith – go in, and go to bed.’

  ‘You are not coming in?’ Faith’s concerns leaped to attention once again, like guard dogs. ‘Is something wrong? Shall I come with you?’

  ‘No!’ he replied abruptly. ‘No, that will not be necessary.’ There was a long pause. ‘Faith,’ he began in a quieter tone, ‘nobody must ever know that I left the house this night. Listen to me. If you are ever asked, you must tell them that we stayed up talking in my study until well after one in the morning. Do you understand?’

  Faith nodded, though the nod was a half-lie. She did not really understand.

  ‘I am not going far, and will be back very soon.’ Her father hesitated. ‘Faith, are your boots wet?’

  ‘Yes,’ confessed Faith, touched by his concern. The walk from the beach had been squelchy and unpleasant.

  ‘See to it that they are dry by morning, or the servants will notice and gossip about it. Nobody must suspect what we have done, nor where we have been. You must make sure there is no clue, no evidence.’

  He took a step away from the door, and hesitated. He glanced over his shoulder at Faith, but the lantern was shrouded again and his expression lost in darkness.

  ‘Show me how clever you can be, Faith.’

  Clever. That one small word warmed Faith as she crept up the outside steps to her private roof garden and eased open the door to her room. She slipped inside and hastily removed her cape, dress and petticoats.

  Show me how clever you can be. Surely that meant that she was permitted to be clever – that he was acknowledging that she could be clever?

  She would prove herself. She would not be caught out, or betray his secret.

  Faith removed the cover from the hearth, teased life out of the dormant embers with kindling and paper, then used a taper to light the candle on the mantelpiece. By its light, she examined the damage to her clothes. Her cape was covered in burrs and stained with bilge grime. The hems of her
dress and petticoats were drenched with seawater and her stockings were sopping wet. Even the inch-high heels on her boots had not saved them from a soaking, and there was every danger that the sodden leather would shrink and crack as it dried out.

  However, this was not the first time Faith had hidden evidence of a secret outing. She slipped on her night clothes, then crept out of her room and downstairs, her damaged clothing bundled in her arms.

  As she hoped, the scullery was dark and empty. She stealthily filled a sink with water, then stirred in soap shavings, starch for stiffness, and a handful of salt to stop the dye running. Then, very carefully, she rinsed her stockings, then the wet hems of her petticoats and her dress. Her nerves were brittle as glass and she jumped at each rattle of the shutters.

  When her clothes no longer smelt of the sea, she wrung them out, stole a jugful of bran from the pantry and crept upstairs again. Her newly washed clothing she draped over the fireguard to dry. Using her buttonhook, she unfastened the tiny, fiddly buttons on her boots. Then she filled them with the bran, which she knew would soak the moisture out of them, buttoned them up tight so that they would keep their shape, and left them by the fire.

  The room was still cold, so Faith slipped into bed. She wished she could call for a warming pan, and hoped she would not catch a chill. With a blanket wrapped around her, she sat up brushing the grime from her cape and plucking off burrs. The smell of the fire-cooked bran was at least a dry and comforting one. Her thoughts were warmer and more comforting still.

  Faith’s father had called on her in his time of need. She felt as if a door long shut had opened between them, if only a crack.

  He cannot shut me out again, whispered part of her mind. Not this time. I know too much.

  Even as this thought passed through her mind, though, the brush faltered in her hand. Ever since they had set off on their nocturnal adventure, she had felt a nagging, miserable sensation in her gut. It was a thought she had been trying not to think, an idea she had been edging around as if it were a gin-trap in the grass.

  Her father, her beloved, revered father, had been shocked to hear about her secretive, deceitful behaviour. And yet he had ordered her to creep through the night with him by the light of a covered lantern, and to tell nobody about it. He had torn her apart for concealing the evidence of her secret deeds . . . and now she was doing the same thing again, on his own instructions.

  Father. The grim patron saint of honesty. The harsh light of judgement. He had asked her to lie to save his secrets.

  And now he had gone out into the darkness once more with a pistol in his pocket, and had asked her to give him an alibi.

  CHAPTER 11:

  THE HORSESHOE

  A bang on the door shocked Faith from sleep.

  She lay there for a few seconds amid the jagged shards of her dream. She had been on trial, standing in a dock that was filling with seawater. The court had been angry that she would not give the name of her accomplice. The judge had worn her father’s face.

  ‘Fa-a-aith!’ It was unmistakably the voice of Howard, petulant and disgruntled. ‘I cannot do my collar!’

  If Howard was awake, then it was nearly breakfast time. Faith had overslept.

  She leaped out of bed, trying to comb her thoughts straight. She pulled her dress and petticoats off the fireguard. They were dry now – not immaculate, but far less incriminating than they had been. Faith put the fire cover back in place and quickly swept up every stray crumb of mud.

  Opening her windows and shutters, she found the world had been swallowed by mist. She shook the bran out of her boots on to the stone flags of the roof garden. With satisfaction she saw sparrows and pigeons flit down to dispose of the evidence.

  ‘Fa-a-a-aith!’

  Faith opened the door, and Howard blundered in, his paper collar on backwards.

  ‘It hurts!’ He tugged at it. ‘I want Skordle!’

  Faith calmed Howard down, straightened his jacket and collar, then sang to him while she plaited her hair and dressed. By the time their breakfast was brought up to them by Mrs Vellet, both of them were sitting in the nursery, only slightly unkempt.

  Howard did not want Faith to leave him after breakfast. He was bored to breaking point, and desperate for her to stay, read with him, play with him. It was an hour before she could finally slip away.

  Downstairs, all was quiet. There was no sign of either of her parents, only Uncle Miles reading in the drawing room.

  ‘Good morning.’ Uncle Miles blinked at her over his book.

  ‘Where is everybody, Uncle Miles?’ asked Faith.

  ‘Your mother insists that she has a headache, and has taken breakfast in her room. Your father has not risen yet, and nobody is in a hurry to bang on his door.’

  ‘He is probably tired.’ Faith did not meet her uncle’s eye as she sat down. ‘It is my fault. I kept him talking late last night – we did not go to bed until one o’clock.’

  ‘So late? Is something wrong?’

  ‘No,’ Faith insisted hurriedly, her face turning hot. ‘I . . . have just been worrying about my confirmation.’

  ‘Good Lord, was that it?’ Uncle Miles sounded a little taken aback. ‘Well, I commend your piety. I am not sure I could have worried about my confirmation for ten minutes straight, let alone until one in the morning.’

  It was done. The words were spoken. For better or worse, Faith had given her father an alibi. She knew that it had sounded convincing. She knew she ought to feel happy and proud that her voice had sounded shyly natural. But instead she felt only a confused sense of guilt.

  What had she just done? She had obediently opened a door and stepped through into blackness, without even knowing if there was a floor on the other side.

  You are doing your duty to Father, she told herself. There cannot be any wrong in that. You need to trust him. It is just like Abraham. God told him to kill his son, so he went to fetch a knife. He did the right thing, even though it looked evil. He trusted God to understand right and wrong better than he did.

  But, whispered another voice in her head, maybe he should not have done. And anyway, Father is not God.

  Faith gritted her teeth and tried to find resolve. Instead a sly thought slipped into her head, both terrifying and thrilling.

  I can make Father tell me the truth.

  He must. I know too much. He has to take me into his confidence about everything now – the plant, the scandal and wherever he went after we came back last night. He can’t shut me out any more.

  ‘Are you sure?’ said Uncle Miles.

  Faith started, before realizing that her uncle was not talking to her. Mrs Vellet was discreetly stooped next to his chair, murmuring in his ear.

  ‘Yes, sir.’ The housekeeper’s voice was tactfully low, but Faith could make out her words. ‘All the other boots were outside the doors this morning, but not his. So I looked at the hooks, and his overcoat and hat are missing too.’

  Faith’s blood ran cold.

  ‘That is peculiar.’ Uncle Miles frowned and stood up. ‘Perhaps we should try knocking on his door again.’

  Faith rose, but did not follow her uncle as he headed upstairs, brow furrowed. She alone knew that her father had gone out in the dead of night. Now it looked as though he had not come back.

  Her mind was full of pictures more terrible than the scene in Paul Clay’s stereoscope. She imagined her father bleeding in his own gin-trap, or wounded by some enemy, and too weak to call for help.

  She could not wait while others searched the house in vain. Faith quietly made her way to the front door and slipped out of the house.

  The mist flattened everything and sucked out all colour. Trees became intricate smoke-hued doilies. Buildings were featureless outlines, eiderdown grey.

  Faith tiptoed to the sites of the gin-traps, and found nobody sprawled in their toothed maw. There was no one in the glasshouse or the folly. She even edged her way into the dell and called out among the ghost-trees. Nobody answered.
There was no sign of her father on the road that faded as it climbed the hill into the mist.

  Sounds were startlingly real in this world of ghosts. Faith could hear her own breath, and the click of stones under her feet as she hobbled down the path to the beach. At the fork in the path she passed the wheelbarrow, lying on its side, one handle raised as if hailing her as a co-conspirator.

  The rough path gave way to pebble beach, and each step became a high-pitched chhh of little stones rasping. The night before, the cliffs had been inky and massive. This morning they were grey paper. She could have thrown a stone and torn them.

  She stared down the beach, hoping to find her father’s outline. The far end of the beach melted into mist, and with a jolt she realized that she could not see the little rowing boat.

  She broke into an uneven run, skirts hitched. No. No! The boat had to be there! He could not have taken it out a second time! It would have been mad to do so, without Faith to hold a lantern! The idea enslaved her imagination. It was too horrible to be anything but true.

  Faith hobbled, almost turning her ankle . . . and then slowed. With calm innocence, the mists thinned just enough for her to make out a gauzy white shape, with a familiar curve of a prow. The boat was there after all. The mist had deceived her.

  Faith covered her mouth with both hands, not sure whether to sob or be sick with relief. She turned to walk back to the house.

  And it was then, of course, that she saw it.

  Halfway up the nearest cliff, slung over a jutting tree, was a black shape. It looked like a horseshoe, ends pointing down so that the luck would drain out.

  It was a silhouette and nothing more, but Faith knew what it was. Humans are always looking for one another, and human eyes have a gift for spotting a human shape. With cruel clarity, she knew she was looking at two legs hanging loosely, two dangling arms, the curve of a back.

  It was a man who was draped over the tree. The cold air was a knife in Faith’s throat as she ran back to the house.

  Ten minutes later, Faith and Myrtle sat on the parlour’s chaise longue, tea cooling in their cups. Uncle Miles and the manservant Prythe had hastened out to the beach with stout rope.