The Lie Tree (41 page)

‘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.

Crock, on the other hand, flinched whenever a vine stroked his face.

‘Pay no attention to the voices,’ Faith whispered. ‘You get used to them.’ It pleased her to see Crock tense as he noticed the piecemeal murmurs for the first time.

As they progressed, however, the voices grew louder, and began to unnerve Faith as well.

The heart of the Tree was now a vast tortured tangle of trunk-wide wooden vines, buckling and puckering. Staring up at it, Faith could hear her eardrums beating, with a sound like rending paper.
With each beat, the pallor of the twisting wood seemed to pulse and glare. In her peripheral vision she thought she saw tender wisps of blackness leaking from the knot to darken and thicken the
air.

Agatha laughed, and placed one foot on a thick lower coil. Faith did not know whether the older woman was claiming conquest of it, or about to climb it like a child. Crock stared at it with a
suspicious frown.

‘We have seen what we came to see,’ said Crock. ‘Shall we go?’ He glanced across at Faith, and his face saddened. He was already thinking of her dead, she realized. He
was readying himself to murder her, and already trying out the regret he would feel. He was thinking of ways to make it quick.

If she gave her captors nothing else to think about, they would think about killing her.

‘Why are you in such a hurry, Mr Crock?’ Faith demanded, with a boldness she did not feel. ‘Are you
afraid
of it? After everything you have done, and the people you
killed to be here? It is only a
plant.
It eats lies and feeds secrets, but that is easily explained. It forms a bond with one person, and then the rest is just a matter of currents in the
magnetic fluid.’

Agatha stiffened and turned to glare. ‘I beg your pardon?’

‘Animal magnetism,’ Faith continued brightly. ‘It induces trances, unobstructed visions, allows living things to affect each other without touching, causes physical
effects—’

‘I know of the theory of animal magnetism!’ snapped Agatha. ‘It is an absurd, exploded notion that nobody of sense now believes! Only charlatan healers still talk of it! How
dare you apply such old-fashioned nonsense to my Tree?’ There was a fierce light in her eye that was almost joy.

‘How would you explain it then?’ retorted Faith, wondering how long it had been since Agatha had had the chance to debate anything with anybody.

‘Well, obviously the Tree is some sort of spiritual carnivore.’ Agatha drew closer. ‘I would surmise that it consumes ghosts, and is able to provide answers using the knowledge
of the spirits within – like a vegetable medium. My theory is that a powerful lie takes on a life of its own, almost becoming a miniature spirit. The Tree absorbs such lies, and uses their
spirit energy to sustain the ghosts inside it.’

She was standing close to Faith now, her eyes shining in the dim lantern-light. She was the same age as Myrtle, Faith realized, but disappointment had scored its grooves deep. There were creases
at the corners of her mouth, the marks of too many words bitten back.

‘Thank you,’ said Faith humbly. ‘That was . . . very enlightening.’ Then she struck the lantern from Agatha’s hand, so that it smashed on the cave floor.

There was darkness, and smells of oil and green wood singeing. Faith tried to snatch her arm from Crock’s grip, but his fingers bit into her and held. His other arm grappled her, and
tightened about her throat as she struggled.

Faith pulled the pistol out of her pocket, fumbled blindly until the hammer clicked back, then raised the gun so that it was pointing backwards past her head. She fired.

The bang was like a blow to the side of her head. The pistol jerked and jumped out of her grip, its hot metal bumping against her shoulder as it fell. Somebody behind her was screaming, and
nobody was holding her any more.

Faith plunged into the pitch black ahead of her, hearing glass crunch under her feet. There were shapes behind her thrashing, rustles and panting like great beasts in the undergrowth.
Faith’s own blundering caused just as much noise. Vines slapped her face, tangled about her neck, tripped her feet, hooked her sleeves, trailed into her pockets, reached invisible fingers
into her eyes.

She needed to find the cave wall. Once she had it she could follow it and find her way out. But her fingers met dangling vines and more vines and the clammy stickiness of leaves. There came into
her head a deep soul-fear that she and her pursuers were no longer in the cave but in a wall-less, endless jungle of the Tree, a private hell where they would hunt each other for eternity.

No
, she told herself,
no. There is a wall. There is a wall

Amid the fluttering of leaves and the matted strands of foliage, her fingers touched stone.

She followed the wall, tearing her fingers on the vine-knots in her haste. She stumbled on steps and slopes, found footholds, climbed. She clambered, and squeezed, feeling her way by touch. The
apertures were narrower than they had been, padded out with sprawling, crawling vines. She lost precious time sawing through her hoop ties and disentangling herself from them, so that she could
squeeze through narrower gaps.

But she thanked each desperate cranny, each painful fissure, knowing that if they were hard for her they would be doubly so for the crashers and thrashers behind her. She was the rat in the
crack, escaping the terrier’s jaws.

There was something above her, a glimmer that could scarcely be called light. She fought and struggled and wriggled like a fish, striving towards that pale promise. Her fingers found holds and
her arms found strength and she hauled herself upward. The tunnel grew lighter and at last there was a triangle of blue sky above. Faith smelt fresh air with a scent of hot grass, and felt soil
between her fingers.

But as she tried to haul herself into that light, the vines tightened and held her. They were tangled about her shoulders and waist, her arms and neck, biting and knotting. She had reached the
full extent of the Lie Tree’s leash, and felt her fingers rake through earth as she started to slide back down the tunnel.

‘No!’ whispered Faith, but her whisper was not the only noise. The voices thronged about her, and now she knew why they disturbed her. They spoke in her own voice, mangled and
maddened into the gargling of a cat.

He was a genius,
the voices wailed and growled.
He was wronged and misunderstood. He was a good man. We had a special bond . . .

Words that she had never spoken to the Tree. Thoughts that she had whispered to nobody but herself. And lies. Beloved, choking lies.

Faith managed to struggle one hand down into her pocket and pull out her tiny hand mirror. Reaching upward at full stretch, she could just move its glass face into the shaft of sunlight and
reflect its light towards herself.

There was a fizzle and flare as the vines binding her burst into flame. She ignored the sudden burning pain and the smell of her hair scorching. Her sap-smeared clothes fizzed, but they were
still damp with seawater. As the vines loosed their grip she scrambled upward and heaved herself out of the hole, belly down, like landed fish. She rolled over and over to put out the flames, then
lay gasping.

For a few moments she had no breath, no sense of anything but the sky over her head. Then she became aware that a smoke was coming from the hole. She had thought only to singe the tendrils that
bound her, but now she imagined fire chasing its way down vine after vine, like the orange flame along the blast-powder fuse.