The Lie Tree (19 page)
Authors: Frances Hardinge
And he
had
chosen such a lie. A beautiful proof of the truth of the Bible story of the Nephilim. Faith remembered the old man at the Lambents’ house, so feverish in his belief in
the fossil, so
devout.
The ‘Nephilim’ had been a floating timber in the cruel new seas of doubt. Of course people had clung to it.
The scandal, the outcry, the accusations of fraud . . . it was all true. Her father
had
faked fossils. He
had
lied about his findings. He
had
deceived his friends, his
colleagues, his family and the world.
Nothing less than this would have convinced Faith. Nothing less than this confession in her father’s distinctive, precise hand. She could no longer feel shock or surprise, only a sense of
ever-spreading darkness. A frail, lost part of her wheeled helplessly in that dark, like a dove in a shadowed vault, crying,
Who was this man, then? Whom have I loved all these years? Did I
know him so little?
But she
had
loved him. She had loved him too hard and too long to loose her hold even now. She had nailed her very heart and soul to his mast.
Faith wrapped her arms around the little journal and held it tight to her chest, eyes squeezed shut. She imagined him soldiering on towards truth through a poisoned jungle of concealment, danger
and enmity, courageous but solitary. How lonely his secrecy must have been!
‘You did it to help mankind,’ Faith whispered. ‘They did not understand you, but
I
do.’ She could forgive him, even if nobody else could. That made him more
human, and brought him closer to her.
She flicked hastily past the drawings of his false fossils, unwilling to look at them. They were followed by records of his visions. These were generally vague and difficult to comprehend, and
this appeared to infuriate him.
The first showed him a shadowy jungle where a cruel-beaked shadow glided slowly downward, light flecks catching on its reptilian eyes and its blue-and-scarlet feathered wings. The second showed
islands boiling into being like swelling bubbles in a porridge pot, their volcanoes spewing white smoke. Another revealed a skirmish, a band of small, unshaven men in rough hides battling larger,
man-like creatures with thick necks, their sloping faces and limbs so thickly muscled that they looked unreal.
The last vision was the most detailed.
I was at my club, and somebody placed
On the Origin of Species
in my hands. I tried to read it, but the words skimmed and danced before my gaze. When I raised a
hand to rub at my eyes, my fingers tickled my face. They were covered in fur.
In the silver back of my snuffbox I saw my own face reflected. Above my cravat yawned a tawny, wolfish jaw with long incisors and canines. Hurriedly I raised the book before my face to
hide my disfigurement and peered over it to see whether anybody had noticed my transformation.
The club was in disarray. The footmen swung from the chandeliers, monkey-faced and cackling. One member bared rodent teeth in a snarl, fighting a toad-featured rival for a plate of
oysters. Another flailed his arms, upsetting crockery, and gobbled everything within reach of his pelican bill and slack, sack-like throat. A dropped cigar set a curtain on fire, but nobody
moved to put it out. Instead the smoke only caused more howls, roars, hisses and screeches.
I tried to keep my head, and made my way out of the room. I was looking for the old man whom I knew ran the club and lived on the topmost floor. He would explain everything and put
things to rights.
With every set of stairs I climbed, however, things became worse. On the first floor the members had torn off their waistcoats, crawling and capering in their shirtsleeves. Their faces
were distorted to the likeness of beasts I had never seen before, some with scale-crested brows or monstrous tusks. On the second floor the members were all but naked, sliding and slithering
through puddles of spilt port, slender tongues darting from their lizard mouths.
On the third floor I found myself before a door with gilded panelling, and knew that beyond it I would find the old man.
As I reached for the door, my name was spoken. My daughter Faith was standing beside me.
I felt terror and outrage at the sight of her. She should not have been in the club at all, and I did not wish her to see my fangs and fur. The greatest horror was seeing her succumb to
the curse of that place. As I watched, the youthful skin of her face started to split, showing the scales beneath.
This apparition owed itself to the fact that my daughter had intruded into my library and interrupted my vision. I believe that she nearly roused me from it, but as my mind started to
surface I was coherent enough to banish her hence.
Faith swallowed. Now at least she understood the strange, quiet savagery of her father’s response when she had roused him from his stupor. But what damage had she done in
interrupting him? Had she robbed mankind of an eternal truth?
When my daughter was gone, I opened at last the gilded door.
There was no chamber beyond. Instead a terrible foaming cataract struck and engulfed me. The room filled with water in an instant. I was spun around and over and then drifted down, down,
down. I was no longer in a building but an interminable murky sea. My lungs breathed the water, and I knew with despair that I would sink into an ever deeper darkness for millennia multiplied
by millennia, and never drown. I was alone, but for tiny motes of gold that swam, circled and hunted each other.
And that was the whole of my vision. That was the entire reward for my efforts, sufferings and trials.
I had entertained high hopes of this vision. It was the fruit resulting from my fabrication of the so-called New Falton Nephilim, and I had left it to swell and ripen far longer than any
of the others. I felt entitled to expect that it would justify all the sacrifices I had made. The fickle world was turning on me, but at least I would achieve my goal.
Instead, this latest magic-lantern show has filled me with further turmoil and dread. I am not blind to the interpretation that can be placed upon its images: the relentless turning back
of the clock, the regression of Man into Beast, the return to a primordial slime. That is the easy explanation, but to accept it is to resign myself to despair. I must seek further. My quest
cannot end thus.
After everything I have done, I find myself empty-handed and at a dead end. I must coax another fruit from the Tree, but I cannot see the way. However ingenious a falsehood I contrive,
nobody will now believe me. If I cannot rescue my reputation, all has been for naught.
There followed some two dozen pages of sketches, jottings and tables of figures, but Faith’s mind was too full to take them in. She closed the book slowly.
No wonder he had been so protective of his plant, and so reluctant to talk about it or let it out of his sight. No wonder he had snatched his papers from Faith’s hand, and lost his temper
when she admitted to having opened his strongbox.
Faith had hoped that there might be information in the journal that could somehow be used to clear his name. That hope was dead. No, nobody else could ever be allowed to read it! If the contents
became public, he would be proven a fraud, and probably remembered as a madman to boot.
So, was this madness? Had this obsession and all these visions been a symptom of a diseased mind?
Perhaps. Or perhaps right now Faith was the only living person who knew the location of the Mendacity Tree, a wonder of the earth, which might draw forth untold secrets and unravel countless
mysteries.
Faith had to know, one way or another. If the Tree could deliver secrets, then perhaps it would unravel for her the mystery of her father’s death.
ANGRY SPIRIT
At about eight o’clock, the housekeeper brought a supper tray to Faith’s room. Faith thanked her, declared that she would be turning in early and declined the
warming pan. The housekeeper departed, and Faith was left to herself for the night.
Faith gobbled her food down quickly, then quietly put on the rest of her damaged funeral clothes once again. Everyone had already seen them wet and muddy, so probably would not notice if they
became wetter and muddier overnight. She lit a lantern to take with her, but turned the flame low and covered it with a cloth, just as her father had done.
She slipped out through her private door into the roof garden, which still dripped and glistened after the recent rain. The sky overhead was still grimly grey. As she slipped through the gate
and down the steps, she could hear the busy clatter of pans and voices in the scullery. She took an oblique route across the garden, creeping behind the outbuildings so that she was less likely to
be spotted.
Faith hurried along the seaward path, hoping that she had remembered the tide table correctly. When she reached the beach, she was relieved to see that the tide was low and the sea calm, just as
she had hoped. If she was right, it would ebb for another hour, then start coming back in. The waters would be calmer, and the currents would be her friend.
Feeling exposed, Faith scanned the cliff-tops, but could see no sign of anybody watching her. The half-dry tendrils of her hair whipped her face.
It was difficult dragging the boat by herself, but she finally wrestled it into the water. She clambered in and used one of the oars to push away from the shore.
Faith had never rowed before, and soon discovered it was much harder than her father had made it look. At first she tried to row facing forward so that she could see where she was going, pushing
the blades through the water instead of pulling, but the oars floundered weakly and kept rattling out of their sockets. She made much better headway when she rowed facing backwards, as her father
had done. Very soon she was out of breath, and the muscles in her arms and shoulders ached. She was all too glad that she had loosened her training corset before coming out.
Whenever she twisted around in her seat to look ahead, she seemed to be heading straight out to sea or about to founder on a submerged crag. Thankfully the rocks were easier to see by twilight
than they had been at night.
And there in the grey light was the sea cave, like a dark Gothic arch. Its open mouth swallowed each wave, then vomited foam.
Heaving furiously at the oars, she brought the boat close to the cave. Once again a wave swept her into its mouth, but less violently than before, and the boat ran aground far closer to the cave
entrance.
Faith clambered out on to slithering rock, half deafened by the echo of the water, and tethered the boat to the same column as before. She took up the lantern, hitched her skirts and scrambled
up on to the rocky platform beyond the boat, then through the rough, triangular hole into a larger cave beyond. Here the light was dim, only a little leaking in from the cave mouth behind her.
Remembering her father’s warning about the plant’s ‘violent reaction’ to light, she kept her lantern almost entirely covered, allowing only a sliver of radiance to play
across her surroundings.
The cave was roughly domed, cracks and streaks running down the ceiling like vaulting. Here and there she could see shadowy fissures and openings leading to other caves.
On the far side of the cave, on a jutting oblong shelf of rock, stood a shrouded shape, the terracotta pot just visible beneath the cloth.
There was something strange in the echoes of the vaulted cave. The roar of the nearby sea had been softened and twisted, so that the air seemed full of sighs. Faith could not help glancing over
her shoulder, thinking that somebody had just let out a long breath immediately behind her. The cold smell was bitter here, making her eyes sting.
Slowly Faith slithered her way up the sloping stone floor. When she stood by the rocky shelf, she reached up and slowly pulled at the cloth. She felt resistance, the tug of thorns, and then the
oilskin came away, revealing a black, indistinct tangle that spilt over the edges of the pot, a scribble of shadow on shadow.
The not-noises in the cave became louder, as if the breathers had drawn closer. Gingerly she raised her lantern, letting a little bar of quivering light fall upon the plant.
The light glistened on slender, blue-black leaves, long thorns, dull golden pearls of sap glowing on black knobbed stems . . . and then before her eyes Faith saw the illuminated foliage flinch,
wrinkle and subside, hissing with the angry sibilance of a beast disturbed.
Hastily she turned the lantern’s beam away again, so that the plant became an inky, indistinct mound once more. Even when the hissing desisted, she did not dare illuminate the plant again.
Instead, she reached out and gently stroked her fingers through its foliage, seeing it by touch.
To her relief, the light did not appear to have done too much damage. The leaves were cold and slightly clammy, and left her fingers covered in a moist stickiness like honey. She could find no
fruit.
Imaginary ants led a parade up her spine. There was no mistaking the shape of the leaves, which forked then tapered to two narrow points. She had seen their likeness painstakingly sketched in
her father’s journal. This was the Mendacity Tree, his greatest secret, his treasure and his undoing. The Tree of Lies. Now it was hers, and the journey he had never finished stretched out
before her.
She lowered her face until her mouth nearly touched the leaves. The smell was a snow-bite behind her eyes, and ached in her temples.
‘Father cannot come to you any more,’ she whispered. ‘He is dead and in the church crypt. I want to find out who murdered him. Will you help me?’
There was no reply. Of course there was no reply.
‘Do you want a lie?’ asked Faith, feeling as though she were offering some dangerous animal a treat. She almost expected it to bristle again, like a hungry wolf.