The Lie Tree (37 page)

The Reverend gave him a curt, formal inclination of the head, then turned and walked away, giving a sharp rap at the door in the wall. It opened, and he stepped through, casting a glance back
into the room. For a moment he seemed to look straight into Faith’s gaze. His eyes were cool as slate. Then he closed the door between them.

Faith ran to it, felt the rough grain under her hands and heard the
clunk
of a heavy bar dropping to fasten the door on the other side. She placed her ear against the wood and could
just make out her father’s voice.

‘No.’ His voice was precise and cold as a scalpel. ‘If the gentleman believes that he knows me, he is mistaken or delirious. I have never seen his face before.’

The rain became deafening applause. Darkness closed like a fist.

Faith woke, feeling cold inside and out. She had never felt so cold.

She remembered her father’s account of his conversation with Winterbourne.

Now she wondered whether she had always sensed something false in those words, a shimmer of deeper water. Winterbourne had not fallen over himself to divulge the location of
Kikkert’s precious plant; Faith’s father had forced it from him. And the Reverend had not striven to save Winterbourne. He had lied to keep him in his malaria-infested cell, and seized
his chance to find the Tree.

And Winterbourne had died.

She stirred a little. This time the rope around her middle was still secure. Opening her eyes she saw Paul sitting at some distance, with his back to her. His obvious indifference made her feel
even more alone, until she looked down and found an unfamiliar handkerchief draped over her arm.

Faith put up one hand, and found that her cheeks were wet. She had been weeping, and she did not know how long. She dried her face quickly, took a minute or two to calm herself, then cleared her
throat so that Paul knew that it was safe to look. He turned immediately and came back to her, placing her water bottle in her hand. As usual, his face was carefully unemotional.

‘How long has it been?’ she asked, her voice creaking like old bellows.

‘An hour perhaps,’ said Paul. ‘Can you see me now?’

Faith nodded. ‘The vision is over. How do my eyes appear?’

Paul raised the lantern and peered, then flinched back as if stung.

‘Like molten butter in a pan,’ he said. ‘I never saw anything like that. What does it mean?’

‘It means I am still affected by the fruit.’ Faith picked numbly at her bonds. ‘I . . . do not feel as if I am, but I did not last time either. Do not let me grab any
rats.’

Paul nodded, evidently putting pieces together. ‘Did you find out what you wanted this time?’

‘I think so.’ With difficulty, Faith succeeded in tugging loose the rope, and stood shakily. ‘But I need to look at the parish register to be certain. Where is it
kept?’

‘In the vestry. But should you not be resting?’

‘No.’ Faith shook her head and steadied herself against the pillar. ‘The inquest is tomorrow. I need a plan by the morning. I
must
see those records
tonight.’

‘You never ask much, do you?’ said Paul grimly. Slightly to Faith’s surprise, however, he did not refuse.

As they walked, Faith noticed that Paul kept himself between her and the cliffs, perhaps afraid that she would dance over the edge in a fit of fruit-induced madness. They
barely spoke until they approached the lean, black finger of the church spire.

‘We will need to be quiet,’ whispered Paul as they drew near to the church’s brass-bound doors. ‘Jeanne Bissette will be asleep on one of the pews. Wait here – I
need to fetch the parish-chest keys.’ He disappeared in the direction of the parsonage.

Faith stood alone in the churchyard, still aching from the inside out with the cold. The bright moonlight gave the tiny panes of the windows a lizard-scale glitter.

Over to one side she could see the grave that had been dug for her father. The earth was still piled to one side, but with admirable pragmatism sacks of something had been heaped in the hole,
presumably to stop people falling in.

If it had not been for Jeanne’s spiteful gossip, Faith’s father would be lying deep and safe in that grave beneath a blanket of turf, instead of in the church crypt awaiting an
unknown fate.

Faith reached out and took hold of the great metal ring on the front of the church door. It turned, and slightly to her surprise the door pulled open. After a moment’s reflection she
realized that Clay probably did not want to leave a young woman helplessly locked in the building.

She walked in. The church seemed much larger without people and light. The moon shone through the stained-glass window, spilling watery colours over the nearest pew. It was cold within, and
Faith’s breath steamed.

Faith found Jeanne Bissette near the front of the nave, huddled in one of the gentry’s box pews with a blanket over her. She was asleep, and she breathed with a worrying wheeze. Her skin
looked pale and waxen, reminding Faith of her snake’s dull, crusted scales.

I can do nothing to help her now,
Faith told herself.
One more day, that is all I need. Then it will not matter how my stories unravel.

But the shadows under Jeanne’s eyes were dark as plum-skin, and they reminded her of Winterbourne in her vision. Perhaps her father had told himself the same thing.
All I need is one
day, to look for the Tree. Winterbourne can survive in that prison a little while longer. Once I have the plant, I can arrange his release.

Faith wondered what people would do if they found Jeanne Bissette cold and blue on the pew one morning. They might pull the sacks out of the hole outside and lower her into it. There was a
ghastly poetry to that idea. Once again, Faith was trembling on the brink of the impossible, just as when she had stood outside her father’s library door, willing herself to knock and
confess.

‘Oh, why must I always do this for
you
?’ she hissed under her breath. ‘I do not even like you!’

Her hissed words were startlingly loud in the stillness. Jeanne’s eyelids fluttered, and she woke. She started violently at seeing a black cloaked figure leaning over her, but then she
blinked and her eyes seemed to focus.

‘Miss Sunderly?’ she asked, her tone incredulous.

‘Do you have anywhere else to go?’ Faith demanded in a whisper.

‘Anywhere else?’ Jeanne hauled herself into a sitting position, her hair drooping unchecked over half her face. ‘I cannot! I cannot leave here!’

‘But . . . if you could? Do you have family or friends on the island?’

‘An uncle . . .’ The other girl was clearly still groggy, and trying to work out whether Faith was a dream or apparition. ‘But—’

‘There is no ghost!’ Faith spat it out quickly, like an insult or accusation.

Jeanne shook her head wordlessly, her face drooping with misery and exhaustion.

‘There is no ghost,’ repeated Faith. ‘There is only . . . me.
I
am the ghost. I exchanged the wires of the servants’ bells. I stopped the clocks, and burned my
father’s tobacco in the library, and moved things around the house. I left the skull in your bed.’

As Faith spoke, Jeanne’s grogginess melted away. By the end she was fully alert, her eyes widening, growing darker and more dangerous.

‘
You?
Why?’

‘I hated you,’ Faith answered simply. ‘You told everybody my father was a suicide. You left him graveless.’

Jeanne struggled to her feet, staring at Faith as if snakes were tumbling out of her mouth. Her jaw set, and her breath became quick and angry. Tears of mortification and rage shone in her
eyes.

‘You . . . you
witch
!’ Jeanne’s voice broke. ‘I hope they do drive a stake through your precious father’s heart! I hope they do it in front of you! I hope
your whole family ends up in the workhouse!’

She was taller and stronger than Faith and could easily have taken her in a fair fight. But of course the fight would never be fair. Jeanne Bissette would always reap the whirlwind for striking
Faith Sunderly, beyond anything that Faith Sunderly would ever suffer for striking Jeanne Bissette. Dropping retribution from a height was easier than hurling it upward, and Faith felt a sting of
shame at the thought.

‘I will tell everyone! Everyone! By the time I am done, you won’t be able to show your nose outdoors!’ Jeanne turned and broke into a staggering run, disappearing out through
the church doors and into the moonlight.

A few moments later, Paul appeared in the doorway, a ring of keys in one hand. He looked pointedly out into the churchyard, then back at Faith with a questioning expression.

‘She left,’ said Faith.

‘What were you doing in here?’ he asked.

‘Ruining all my own plans for no good reason.’ Something important had been missing inside Faith for a while, she realized, and now she had a tiny ribbon of it back. It made her feel
worse, not better, but she clung to it anyway. ‘You will probably hear about it soon. Everybody will.’

‘What do you mean, your plans are ruined?’ Paul asked sharply. ‘Do not tell me you no longer need that photograph!’

‘I do need it!’ Faith answered quickly. ‘Did you make it for me? Is it ready?’

Paul reached into his pocket and drew out a small card, which he frowned at, as though performing last-minute alterations through force of will.

‘It was not easy,’ he muttered, and passed it to her, still frowning. ‘This was the best that I could do.’

Gazing down at it, Faith felt a frisson of shock. He had used the excavation picture that had been taken on Faith’s first day as draughtsman. There were Dr Jacklers and Lambent in the
foreground, staring intensely at the aurochs horn. Behind them and slightly to one side were the figures of Mrs Lambent and Faith, the latter obscured by shadow and only partially in the shot. And
clawing his way around the side of the ‘Bedouin tent’ was a half-hidden figure with very familiar aquiline features, domed brow and coldly distant eyes . . .

For a moment Faith could not understand how her father had been transported into the scene in his entirety. It took her a moment to remember Uncle Miles. Of course, Faith’s uncle had been
told to stand behind the tent and control the billowing of the cloth. Being Uncle Miles, however, he had found a way to lean across and appear in the photograph. Paul had cut out the
Reverend’s face very precisely and glued it over that of his brother-in-law. The effect was deeply uncanny.

‘That is . . .’ Faith bit her tongue. Compliments were contrary to the rules of engagement in her conversations with Paul, but in this case unavoidable. ‘That is very good
work,’ she admitted gruffly. She tucked it carefully between the pages of her notebook and put it away.

She had not quite dared to hope that Paul would respond to her crazed challenge and make her the photograph. Impulsive brinkmanship was one thing, but this had involved time, effort and
cool-headed precision.

‘Thank you,’ she added in an undertone. She was not sure whether he heard.

Lantern in hand, Paul led her through the church and into the little vestry, where he stooped and turned keys in the three locks of a battered, old-fashioned parish-chest. He opened the lid and
drew out a large leather-bound book.

He passed it to Faith, and she began leafing through, focusing on marriage records. When she reached a page listing the marriages for ‘the Year One Thousand Eight Hundred and Sixty’,
she stopped.

‘There,’ she breathed. She reached out and tapped one of the carefully written names.

‘Does that name mean something to you?’ asked Paul, looking over her shoulder.

Faith nodded. ‘It means that I know who the killers are, and how they knew about the Tree, and why they might have hated my father,’ she whispered.

Her father’s journal had always held the key, but Faith had not seen it. Her eye had skimmed over the one little sentence that might have told her everything she needed to know.

Not ‘Winterbourne’, but ‘the Winterbournes’. Hector Winterbourne had been travelling through China with his wife. The Reverend had seen no reason to
mention her. Her existence would not have seemed relevant or important to him.

By the light of the lantern Faith could make out the marble plaques on the walls. Tonight her eye snagged on all the female names.

Who had they been, all these mothers and sisters and wives? What were they now? Moons, blank and faceless, gleaming with borrowed light, each spinning loyally around a bigger
sphere.

‘Invisible,’ said Faith under her breath. Women and girls were so often unseen, forgotten, afterthoughts. Faith herself had used it to good effect, hiding in plain sight and living a
double life. But she had been blinded by exactly the same invisibility-of-the-mind, and was only just realizing it.

The parish register entry recorded the marriage of Anthony Lambent Esq. to Mrs Agatha Winterbourne (Widow).

The next day dawned callously clear and heartlessly sunny. Birdsong was cruelly loud, shattering Faith’s sleep. Once again she woke in her own bed with an ache behind her
eyes and the feeling that her insides had been battered with a rolling pin. As she hastily gulped water, she remembered the adventures of the night before. The visit to the Lie Tree, the encounter
with Paul, the journey to the church, the conversation with Jeanne, the revelations of the parish register . . . and after that hatching strategies with Paul, slipping back through the sea cave and
rowing back to shore.