The Lie Tree

by Frances Hardinge

  ‘Madam . . .’ Mrs Vellet cleared her throat. ‘We . . . should take the low road.’

  ‘Why is that?’ Myrtle looked surprised by the unsolicited advice.

  Mrs Vellet tightened her mouth, drew back her chin and looked uncomfortable. If she had been able to pull her head down into her collar like a turtle, Faith fancied she would have done so.

  ‘If we take the low road, we shall encounter a carriage,’ Mrs Vellet said at last. ‘Somebody is coming . . . to meet with me.’

  The low road and the sea always flirted with each other, and today they were particularly passionate. It was high tide, and great waves could be heard crashing against the shore. The freshening wind filled the air with spray and a dusting of rainbows.

  Mrs Vellet patiently dragged Howard by the hand, while Myrtle struggled along in her immaculate black dress, her heavy veil puffing in and out with her breaths. None of them carried luggage, or even a fan. Faith’s limbs ached after her fall, her knee was starting to swell, and her lack of sleep was catching up with her. Now and then a woolly grogginess muffled her mind for a second, like a cloth over a lamp.

  She could not help looking over her shoulder. She kept expecting to see men coming after them at a run.

  The first rumble took Faith by surprise. She was too tired and sun-dazzled to work out where it was coming from. Then something cracked loudly against the road a few feet away, and she turned to see reddish-brown rock fragments fountain and scatter.

  ‘They are above us on the cliff, dropping rocks!’ Faith pulled closer to the inland side of the road. ‘Quick, this side! Under the overhang!’

  The others followed her example and were soon in a hasty single file in the little strip of shelter.

  ‘They must have thought – huff– that we would take – huff– the high road,’ Myrtle gasped as she struggled to keep up.

  ‘They know where we are now,’ murmured Faith. ‘Some of them will double back and come down the road behind us.’

  Another, larger rock struck the roadway very close to the fugitives. Some of its fragments flew out and hit Howard, who gave a wail of pain and confusion. The sound cut Faith to the heart and filled her with a hot torrent of protective rage.

  A little further on, the road descended sharply, then levelled much lower down. Now the breakwater was all that defended the road from the fierce and capricious sea. The noise was deafening. Every other wave sent a gleaming arc of white foam over the top of the breakwater, falling with a slap on the roadway and spattering the cliff with dark splashes.

  One seething white arc drenched them all, making them gasp. The way was sloppy with broad, salt puddles. With a chill, Faith remembered that this road had been dangerously flooded on the day of their arrival. She could not remember the tide table, or be sure that the waters would not rise higher.

  Worse, as Faith peered back over her shoulder she could just make out distant figures through the haze of sunlit spray.

  ‘They are coming!’ she called.

  ‘Where is the carriage?’ cried Myrtle.

  ‘Listen!’ shouted Mrs Vellet.

  There was a clatter so faint that it was almost imperceptible. Then it became clearer and louder, until at last a pony and trap rounded the distant bend and came into view, hoofs echoing and bells ringing.

  There was a single figure in the trap, wearing a maroon riding coat and bonnet and driving with an eager, cavalier speed. As the trap drew closer, Faith could make out black hair, and heavy bandaging across the forehead. It was Miss Hunter.

  Upon seeing a group approaching at a run, Miss Hunter’s expression changed from happy anticipation to surprise and doubt.

  ‘Jane!’ she called. ‘You have brought the family?’

  ‘Desperate times, Leda,’ called Mrs Vellet, hurrying forward with Howard in her arms. ‘They are under attack – I needed to help them escape.’ Her eyes were bright, and she looked younger than usual.

  ‘Of course you did.’ Leda Hunter’s smile had the slight sadness that often mingles with true fondness.

  ‘Can you turn the trap around on this road?’ Even as Faith spoke the words, another rock smashed down, showering the carriage wheels with gravel.

  The road was just wide enough, so Miss Hunter started turning her trap about. Some of her black hair had come loose from its coiled plaits, making her look playful and reckless.

  ‘You should not be riding with that injury!’ Mrs Vellet whispered chidingly as she passed Howard up into the trap. The two women exchanged a slight and hasty smile. And that flash of a smile was enough for Faith to understand that Mrs Vellet was not dry, and Miss Hunter was not cold, and to sense a moment of rightness like two notes in accord, the tiniest fragment of a melody that she did not understand.

  ‘Quickly!’ shouted Myrtle.

  The distant men were becoming less distant by the moment. They had reached the steep descent in the road and were running down it as fast as they dared, feet sliding on the spray-moistened road. One was carrying a barrel the size of a large hatbox.

  Miss Hunter completed the manoeuvre. Myrtle was helped up into the trap, next to Howard. Mrs Vellet clambered up and squeezed in as well, the little carriage creaking and protesting at the unusual burden.

  ‘Faith! Climb up!’

  Faith cast one last glance behind her, then stopped. The men had not pursued. They had halted at the base of the hill, and they had been busy. The barrel had been set against the breakwater, and rocks heaped haphazardly over it. And now the men were running back up the hill, as fast as they could . . .

  The barrel was twenty yards away. She broke into a run, in spite of her swollen knee and the weight of her wet skirts. She sprinted towards the sinister makeshift rockery, knowing that if she was correct, it could blow her apart at any second.

  It was probably Crock’s plan, and bore the marks of his ruthless good sense. There was no need to catch and kill five fugitives in a carriage, if you could blow a hole in the breakwater and let the sea do your dirty work.

  She reached the pile of rocks, heart hammering, expecting to feel her flesh blasted from her bones. She could just see the wooden spars and hoops of the buried gunpowder barrel. A faint fizzling sound caught her ear. There was a foot of fat, varnished rope protruding from the rocks. A flower of fierce orange flame wavered at its loose end, eating the rope down to a stump.

  Faith grabbed the fuse, just above the flame, and yanked it away from the barrel. It came away easily, and she threw it across the road, to languish and hiss in a puddle. She kicked away the rocks, until she could reach down and grab the barrel. It was heavy, but she heaved it up on to her shoulder, and then hurled it over the breakwater.

  ‘Faith!’ screamed Myrtle.

  There were footsteps running down the hill towards Faith. She turned to flee for the trap, but she knew it would be too late. She had known it even as she sprinted for the barrel.

  Somebody grabbed her by the back of her collar, and then an arm gripped her about the middle, bruising her innards and lifting her off the ground.

  Myrtle was screaming and screaming her name, as other men ran past Faith after the trap. There was shouting and the crack-a-crack of more rocks falling, then a screech of a terrified horse. The trap jolted into flight as the horse bolted, weaving wildly but gathering speed, and vanished around the corner in the road.

  ‘Come back!’ called a familiar voice. The sprinting navvies slowed down, turned about and walked slowly back. ‘We have the one we want,’ said Ben Crock, setting Faith back on her feet.

  CHAPTER 35:

  SURVIVAL AND THE FITTEST

  Under a brilliant blue sky, Faith walked down the path to the beach, the crunch of her enemies’ boots behind her. The back of her neck tingled with a sense of danger.

  This is the last time I shall walk this path, thought Faith, strangely calm.

  She had already calculated her own odds of survival. Agatha Lambent and Ben Crock could not afford to leave her alive. They would kill her
once she had served her purpose.

  Once Faith was dead, it was unlikely that anybody would be able to prove anything against Agatha and her accomplices. Dr Jacklers might testify against them if he had survived, but his survival seemed unlikely. The group who had escaped on the trap knew only what Faith had gabbled to them. They had seen little – only a gang of men in the distance and some falling rocks. Paul knew some of what Faith had discovered, but Agatha and Crock did not know that, and Faith was in no hurry to tell them.

  She could almost feel the presence of other Faith’s from other times. Faith striding guiltily to the beach to hide her gloves among the rocks. Faith creeping through darkness with her father. Faith discovering the human horseshoe hanging from the cliff tree. Faith sneaking to the boat in her ravaged funeral gown, mad with grief and a hunger for revenge. Perhaps even a far younger Faith, on another beach, finding her first fossil and looking for her father’s approval.

  These other selves all seemed lifetimes away. Faith barely knew what she might say to any of them.

  ‘Is that the boat ahead?’ asked Agatha Lambent’s deep, contralto voice behind her.

  ‘Yes,’ said Faith. She tipped her head back, watching a ballet of tiny white gulls riding the high back of the strengthening wind.

  She could no longer understand the Faith from the night of the ratting, who had believed that the world was only teeth and hunger, nothing but killing and dead bones in the dust. Hunger cannot explain why I love the blue of this sky, she thought.

  Somebody took her by the arm and led her firmly on to the shingle. Faith could not help limping, her swollen knee hard to bend.

  ‘Show us the cave,’ said Crock.

  Faith raised her arm and pointed. ‘You cannot see it properly from here.’

  ‘And there is no other way in?’ asked the foreman.

  Faith turned and looked straight into Crock’s clear, sky-coloured eyes.

  ‘Do you really think that I would be taking a boat out on these currents, over and over again, if there was another way in?’

  Crock studied her for a moment, then gave a small nod, acknowledging her point. It amused Faith. Even now, at death’s brink, she could still tell a lie.

  The boat was too small for many occupants.

  ‘Sit in the stern and give directions,’ Agatha told Faith. ‘I shall take the prow, and Mr Crock shall row.’

  When all three were seated, the ‘navvies’ pushed the boat into the water. Clearly Faith’s nocturnal voyages would have started far more easily with a host of deadly enemies to assist her.

  The green glassy waves and crashing foam had a false brilliance like a lunatic’s smile. The boat reared and bucked, leaving a playful pearly wake, but Crock managed the oars more easily than Faith ever had. The sun gleamed through the fabric of Agatha’s bonnet, casting a peacock-tinted shadow across her face. They might have been a family of day trippers.

  Right now Faith was dancing to her captors’ tune, doing the very thing that would make her expendable. However, this also meant that she was now faced with two enemies, not seven.

  ‘What will you do with the Tree?’ she asked aloud.

  ‘Will I publish papers on it, stagger the scientific world and become the toast of the Royal Society?’ Agatha’s deep voice was laden with cynicism and bitterness. ‘I think not. I had ideas of that sort once. I understand the world better now.’

  ‘You think that nobody would believe you?’ suggested Faith.

  ‘I know that they would not. It is too new, too strange; it would push too many other scientists out of their comfortable seats. Perhaps it might sound better coming from a gentleman of good breeding, but if I talked of it? I should probably find myself in a lunatic asylum.’

  ‘So you plan to keep it secret and feed it lies.’ Faith found that she was angry. If she was to be murdered for a plant, then at the very least the murderers should make the best use of the thing.

  ‘Soon, God willing, my husband will be a Member of Parliament,’ Agatha said calmly. ‘He will be well-placed to feed the Tree, and will say what I tell him to say.’

  The thought made Faith queasy. As a Member of Parliament, Anthony Lambent could spread grand, far-reaching lies through the House of Commons to the whole Empire.

  ‘Secrets are power,’ continued Agatha, ‘and money, if one uses them correctly. If I cannot be famous, I may as well be rich.’

  ‘But surely you intend to study it!’ exclaimed Faith. ‘You must plan to do so! How can you bear to use it without trying to understand it!’

  ‘There are things that science cannot explain,’ remarked Crock with a frown, as he drew on the oars.

  Both Faith and Agatha instantly spluttered in disagreement.

  ‘What nonsense!’ cried Faith. ‘Just because something has not been explained, does not mean it cannot be explained! They used to think flint arrowheads were elf-bolts! The Angles thought Roman ruins were built by giants!’

  ‘There may be questions still unanswered, but that means that we need science, not that science is useless,’ Agatha retorted tartly. ‘There are fish in the sea as yet uncaught, but that does not mean that fishing nets have failed and should be thrown aside.’

  Faith found herself nodding.

  ‘But we all know what that Tree is!’ protested Crock. He glanced at Faith. ‘You’re a parson’s daughter – you know the good book inside and out – you must know what I mean.’

  It took a moment for Faith to grasp Crock’s meaning. As she did so, she recalled cryptic fragments from her father’s journal and at last understood them.

  I have wondered whether the Tree may date from the Earliest Days . . . a more Fortunate Age, now lost . . .

  ‘The Tree of Knowledge,’ breathed Faith, and felt a sudden, deep sadness. ‘Father thought so. No . . . he hoped that it was so. He wanted scientific proof of the Bible.’

  ‘Hope is a dangerous thing for a scientist,’ Agatha said coolly.

  ‘I do not think it is the Tree of Knowledge,’ said Faith slowly. It hurt to contradict her father, and it was strange to be debating the matter with her nemeses, but she could not help herself. ‘Why would the Tree be out of Eden, and eating lies? Besides, the fruit do not give you god-like knowledge. Sometimes I even wonder . . .’ She stopped and frowned, as a hazy suspicion took shape in her mind. ‘The “secrets” might only be things that one has already guessed, deep down.’

  Crock continued rowing, but he was scowling now. Faith sensed a simmering, angry discomfort with the conversation. It was the first time she had noticed any hint of disagreement between her enemies. Crock seemed less than certain that the Tree was not a forbidden plant destined to damn his soul. Faith could see that he would follow Agatha Lambent into hell, but perhaps he believed that that was exactly what he was doing.

  Faith noticed where they were. ‘That is the cave! Let the wave wash us in!’

  She had never arrived at high tide before, and the water was lapping near the top of the cave’s mouth. As the wave hurled them forward with dizzying force, all three had to duck down inside the boat, in order to pass through un-stunned.

  Faith heard her companions gasp as the boat surged through the roaring cavern, spinning about and rattling against the walls. At last it settled, not on the shingle as usual, but on the stone plateau beyond it.

  ‘What is that smell?’ asked Agatha. The aroma of the Tree drove ice needles behind the eyes and nose. It chilled the lungs.

  ‘The Tree,’ said Faith.

  Crock clambered out first. When Faith climbed out, he took a firm hold of her arm.

  ‘I don’t want to lose track of you in the dark,’ he said.

  A light quivered then glowed in the boat, showing Agatha nursing a lantern’s flame into more life.

  ‘You cannot take that in there!’ Faith declared promptly. ‘A light that bright will destroy the Tree! You saw what happened to the leaves. You need to smother the lantern, so only a little light shines through.’

 
After some suspicious looks and exchanged glances, Faith’s enemies followed her advice. She saw the entrance cave dim around her.

  As they approached the other cavern, even Faith could not suppress a small gasp. Ahead lay a mass of writhing black creeper, so dense and dark that it looked like a portal into an abyss. Huge, muscular wooden vines arched and weaved among the black tendrils, like sigils in some vegetable language.

  Lantern aloft, Agatha led them towards the gently swaying curtain of black tendrils. She reached out one lace-gloved hand and gently stroked the nearest vines, rubbing finger and thumb together to test the consistency of the sap. Her eyes were bright, entranced. At the same time there was something lost and distant in her smile. Even the brightness seemed empty, like the reflection of gold in a prospector’s eye.

  ‘This is the Tree,’ she said, her voice awed but oddly flat. ‘We found it. After all these years.’

  Without warning, Agatha stepped into the black tentacular jungle and vanished, taking the lantern with her and leaving the entrance cave in darkness. Ahead, the glow of the lantern shifted and swayed among the vines, a will-o’-the-wisp in a sunless forest.

  ‘Come along, Ben,’ Agatha called, her voice muffled. ‘It will not hurt you.’

  Crock followed, dragging Faith through the shifting, slithering tendrils.

  Faith tried to keep track of their route, so that she would know how to find the hidden passage to the cliff-top. Unfortunately Crock kept too firm a grasp on her arm for her to slip his hold and escape amid the vines. In any case, even if she did, Agatha’s lantern would help them track her down before she got far.

  Unobserved, she slipped one hand into her pocket and sought the handle of her father’s pistol. The little weapon had only one bullet, however, and she was faced with twice as many murderers.

  ‘You can track the floor roots to the heart!’ said Agatha, raising her lantern and beckoning. ‘They are like the slats of a fan!’ As she advanced, the hanging tendrils whispered against the taffeta of her full skirts and trailed inquisitively over her shoulders. Agatha and the Tree seemed to be taking a liking to each other, and Faith felt a foolish sting of jealousy.