A Treason of Thorns Read online

  By the time I make it back to our little cottage on a raised hump of land in the middle of absolutely nowhere, the light’s growing long and golden away inland. Mira has the shutters thrown open, and Jed sits on the front stoop whittling. He wasn’t a whittler before our exile, but I suppose I wasn’t much of a fisher-woman, either.

  ‘Find your luck, then?’ Jed asks as I tie the boat to our bit of dock. In answer, I sling the pike up, and it takes two hands for me to lift it.

  Jed lets out a low whistle. He’s a thickset, bearded man with a florid white complexion and close-cropped hair that long ago went grey, and though he’s stood by me through good times and bad, I love him best for how he was with my father. There never was a more devoted steward, whether Papa was present or absent.

  ‘Mira’s waiting inside,’ Jed says. ‘She’s – we – have something you need to hear.’

  I can feel the smile fade from my face at his words. ‘What—’

  But before I’m able to ask, Mira’s voice calls from within the cottage, cutting me off. ‘Bring that fish in here at once and wash the stink of it off your hands.’

  As I step into the close confines of the cottage, she tuts at me. ‘I expected you home hours ago.’

  Mira does rule us with a bit of an iron fist, but Jed and I would be lost without her. We’re a family – an odd one, to be sure, but time and tide have bound us together and it would break my heart to lose them.

  I cross the cottage’s tiny downstairs room – just the one space for cooking and eating and living, with a curtain drawn across the nook that holds Jed and Mira’s bed. A ladder leads up to a loft for me, and that’s all there is to it.

  With a weighty thud, I let my pike fall on to the kitchen table, and Mira turns. Horror writes itself across her face.

  ‘Violet Sterling, you’re a sight, and today of all days I wanted you home early.’

  Leaning against the table that holds my rather splendid fish, I hunch my shoulders, as if doing so can protect me from what’s surely coming. If Wyn were here, he’d appear and just stand at my side, a silent ally in all things. And if we were home, the House would already have a carpet of reassuring flowers growing around my feet.

  Will I never feel whole without them?

  ‘Why? What’s happened?’ I finally summon the courage to ask.

  Jed ducks into the cottage, and the whole space feels suddenly smaller. ‘Mira had a visitor come looking for you today. A messenger from the king.’

  All the air goes out of me. I drop on to my chair, ignoring the fish now lying forgotten on the table.

  ‘His Majesty’s back from Belgium and stopping at the Knight’s Arms in Thiswick tonight, especially to see you,’ Mira says. ‘Apparently he’d be much obliged if his only god-daughter would pay him a visit tomorrow at noon, before he journeys on. The messenger said – he said there’s news from Burleigh House.’

  ‘News.’ My voice breaks on the word. There’s been no news from Burleigh House for seven years. And every sun that sets without it is a relief to me, because it means that across the country, my father and Burleigh and Wyn have survived another day of House arrest.

  Jed steps up behind me and puts his enormous hands on my shoulders. ‘He didn’t give any particulars, but I don’t think we have to tell you what to expect.’

  I choke back questions I know Jed and Mira have no answers to, and mechanically lay the table for supper. But when we’ve eaten and the dishes have been cleared, I duck out of the cottage the instant Mira’s back is turned. Jed watches, saying nothing as I shove our dory into the water and scramble aboard. I ship the oars and haul back on them and the boat reluctantly begins to move.

  ‘Violet!’ Mira calls through the open cottage doorway. ‘Just where do you think you’re going so close to nightfall?’

  ‘Away!’ I answer back, sculling for all I’m worth. The dory pulls steadily forward, building momentum until I’m skimming across the water, dragging the welter of my emotions behind me like a length of tangled net. Movement is the best thing for me, I know – to still the aching of my heart, the clenching of my stomach, the furious grinding of my teeth. I scull until my arms and back ache – till sweat drips between my shoulders again and the last of the day’s sun adds freckles to my freckles.

  And when I’ve rowed for so long that each oar seems weighted with lead, I drop anchor in the middle of a tidal floodplain. Water stretches ahead of me to the very edge of the eastern sky, which has gone dark. I turn away from it, and from the vast, uneasy North Sea, looking westward instead, towards the setting sun. Beyond that blaze of splendour lies my past. Beyond it lies my future. Beyond it lies my House.

  Blood and mortar, I miss it with everything in me. Every bone and every breath. I thought the end of Papa’s House arrest might taint things between Burleigh and me, but even knowing what’s surely happened – that my father must be dead, finally killed by the House itself – all I feel when I think of Burleigh is an agonizing desire to be with it.

  So I know in the morning I’ll visit His Majesty. I’ll sit in front of him while he feigns pity and tells me Papa’s protracted death sentence has ended, and a new Caretaker must assume his place. I’ll do what must be done, choking down my hatred and fear of the king, all for the sake of Burleigh House. Because in the wake of Papa’s arrest, Burleigh will need a gentle hand.

  There have been five House arrests over the years, before my father’s. Two Caretakers killed themselves before their Houses had to. Three were killed by their Houses, though outside the confines of an arrest, the binding the Great Houses have been placed under expressly forbids them to take a life.

  My heart aches for Burleigh, required to do what is neither in its nature or its bond. But it breaks at the thought of Wyn, the dearest friend of my childhood. Seven years after the arrest began and I still don’t understand why my father was allowed to inflict a portion of his punishment on someone else, and keep Wyn trapped within the manor walls. I’ve never been able to think of it without resentment gnawing at my insides. Everything else I can fathom – Papa risking arrest and a charge of treason in his attempt to steal Burleigh’s deed from the king and free our House. Indeed, all across England, there are people who support the unbinding cause in spite of its risks.

  Of course I sympathize with that. Of course I want Burleigh out from under the king’s thumb. The royal family has maintained control of the Great Houses since William the Deedwinner first bound them. Caretakers may manage the Houses’ magic, but it’s the deedholder they must obey. I suppose it must have worn on Papa, watching the king make decisions for Burleigh that were not in its best interests.

  Yet the price Papa paid for his attempt and subsequent failure – the choice he made to sacrifice not just his own freedom, but Wyn’s – has never sat well with me. And I don’t know why it had to be that way.

  A good Caretaker puts her House first, I remind myself, to calm the anger that still rises in me when I think of Wyn. Before her family. Before her friends. Surely, that must have been what Papa was doing, whether I understand his actions or not.

  The light on the horizon burns down to crimson embers. Swallows skim across the water, and far above them, bats flit here and there. Around me, the air cools and sweat dries on my skin as the sky darkens. I shiver, a salt girl alone on a salt marsh.

  When the stars wake in the sky, winking to life one by one, I count them. It’s an old trick Wyn and I learnt together, long ago, when we’d sit out on the roof of the House. We were both of us children plagued by worries, and on the nights they kept us from sleeping, we’d count stars together until the fears faded.

  It used to work. It used to keep my fear at bay.

  Now, though, I always lose count before the tide of my worry turns, and this night is no different from any other since my father and my friend were sealed away within Burleigh’s walls. When I’ve lost myself among the stars, I turn inward, the way I learnt to do after both heart and home were taken from me. In the labyri
nth of my own mind, I count fears instead of stars.

  I am afraid of memory, and the visions it brings of my father’s careworn face – his stern eyes, his harried smile. Did he do right? Will I be a worthy successor to him? Will I someday meet the same fate?

  I’m afraid of never seeing home or Wyn again, of living my life in limbo here on the fens, and never wishing for better. Of never feeling whole.

  I’m afraid of losing Jed and Mira as I’ve lost everything else. I’m afraid of hunger, which stalks us each winter as the salt fish barrels run low. I’m afraid of the sea, that gives life and then buffets the coast with storms.

  Each fear surfaces and as they rise, I take them one by one, box them up and put them away on a dusty shelf in the back of my soul. I don’t know what else to do with these thoughts that threaten to choke me, so I keep them locked inside, like last winter’s moulding apples or a dragon’s tarnished hoard.

  The last fear I tuck away is this: I’m afraid of the king, desperately afraid. But for me, the good of Burleigh House will always come before that fear. It must.

  ‘I want to go home,’ I whisper to myself and to the night sky and the stars.

  Home. The word tastes like honey and ashes, like hope and regret, and this I know: I would face the devil himself for a chance at getting back to the House I grew up in, and at finding out what fate has befallen the one friend I had as a child. The king is only a little worse than the devil, after all, and I would beg or bargain, whichever he prefers, to get back to where I belong. To be what I was born to become – the Caretaker of my beloved House.

  The tide has turned, running out to sea. It pulls at my boat, tugging me eastwards and away from home. For the first time in years, I ship oars and truly set myself against it.

  2

  Thiswick, the nearest village to our cottage, was built near a crossroads. It sees plenty of travellers, and they’re all milling about the roadway at noon, unable to stop at the inn since His Majesty’s taken it over. There are liveried guards at the front door and I take a breath to steady myself before pushing through the crowd and stepping up to them.

  ‘I’m Violet Sterling,’ I say, willing my voice not to shake. ‘The king’s asked to see me.’

  Without a word, they let me pass.

  It’s very strange, entering the inn’s common area and finding it nearly empty. Most days it’s standing room only, and Dex, the proprietor of the Knight’s Arms, is behind the counter, looking vaguely panicked and entirely at a loose end. He’s a good sort, and when he catches sight of me, he gives me a tense smile, a purple birthmark standing out starkly against one white cheek.

  ‘They’re in there,’ he says, nodding in the direction of the inn’s private dining room. Glancing over, I catch sight of yet more red livery. Of course His Majesty wouldn’t be out here, eating where common folk have sat – and of course they can’t be allowed in the inn when he’s here, either. Knowing the king, I’m sure the uproar he’s caused has pleased him immensely.

  Surreptitiously rubbing my damp palms against my skirt, I start across the common room.

  ‘Are you sure you want to see him, Vi?’ Dex asks. He’s known since we first arrived who I am and why I’m here, worlds away from Burleigh House. Sometimes I think all of England’s party to my sad family affairs. Especially in the West Country, where they say folk keep calendars marking the days since Papa’s arrest, and drink to his health every night instead of the king’s.

  Who will they drink to now? I wonder.

  I square my shoulders. ‘No, I’m not sure. But I have to do it anyway – the king said he has news about the House. About my father.’

  Dex rubs one enormous hand across his face. ‘So it’s finally come to that. I’m sorry. We all are. I’ll be about if you need anything.’

  ‘Thank you, Dex.’ Before my nerves can fail me, I cross the threshold into the private dining hall.

  The inn staff have been dispensed with in favour of the king’s own servants, who stand quietly along the wall, ready to step forward at the slightest indication they’re wanted. A handful of courtiers sit at the table, fearfully au courant in ribbons and lace, the women wearing flimsy dresses with waistlines that nip up under their breasts, the men in frock coats and breeches and garishly coloured cravats. I wonder if this is how I would look, had my life gone differently – bright and unmarked by grief, fashionable and sharp as tacks.

  As it is, I’m drab and downcast by comparison, in my plain wool-spun shirt and often-patched skirt. Like a reed bunting beside kingfishers. But none of it matters. I have no pride, no position, and no place left to me. I’ve come to hear the worst, to ask after Burleigh House and, as the king knew I would, to beg for a chance to go home.

  His Majesty sits at the head of the table with a plate of dainties before him and a bored expression on his face. He’s a lean, middle-aged man with shrewd dark eyes and a white complexion, pale from too much time spent indoors at his desk and the gaming tables.

  The sight of him chills me to the bone. It is a relic of the old medieval hostage system that he’s my godfather at all. Since the Great Houses were bound, Caretakers’ children have been placed under the guardianship of the reigning sovereign. A pretty thought at face value – the royal family serving those who serve the Houses. Truly, it is a ploy to ensure the loyalty of the Caretakers. His Majesty took an interest in me when I was small – sent gifts, and would stop at Burleigh House whenever he passed by. He taught me to play cards, and I spent my childhood convinced he and Papa were friends.

  But none of that familiarity and feigned friendship was enough to ensure mercy for my father, or clemency for me once Papa’s great crime was uncovered.

  I will make you dance, His Majesty said. Well, here I am. Will it be a waltz, or a gavotte?

  Hiding my hands behind my back so the king won’t see how they tremble, I step closer to the table and clear my throat. One of the courtiers is twittering away, and I go unnoticed.

  I reach for anger rather than fear, but can’t quite find it. Sterling stubbornness will have to suffice.

  ‘Uncle Edgar,’ I say, loud enough that everyone in the room can hear. The courtiers fall silent, and their eyes widen at my decision to call him by the name I used when I was small. ‘You wanted to see me?’

  A delighted smile replaces the king’s look of boredom. With a loud scrape he pushes his chair back, and I will myself not to falter as he puts a hand on each of my shoulders and presses a kiss to my cheek. ‘Violet Sterling, where is the pretty child I knew? You look like an absolute fishwife. What would your father think?’

  The courtiers giggle, assured that their pleasant day will carry on much as it has done, and that my intrusion will cause no trouble. But somewhere within me, music has begun. If I’m to dance for my House, I mean to lead, not to follow.

  So I step past the king and drop into his chair at the head of the table. The silly laughter of the courtiers dies down. His Majesty raises a disapproving eyebrow and snaps two fingers together.

  One of the waiting servants hurries up with another chair. The king takes a seat and leans forward, resting his elbows on his knees as the courtiers pick up their silverware once more, pretending their attention isn’t fixed on the head of the table, on me and His Majesty.

  ‘Not a single kind word for your godfather?’ the king chides. ‘Have you lost your manners out here on this bog? I didn’t expect to ask for a royal visit only to find you sulking.’

  ‘I’m not sulking, Your Majesty,’ I say. ‘I’m grieving. I will always be grieving. You took everything from me, and tormented my family’s House in the process.’

  Covert glances fly between the courtiers. Perhaps their day won’t be as pleasant and dull, but it has become more interesting.

  Something like remorse crosses the king’s shrewd face. ‘Violet, do you think it brought me joy to sentence your father to House arrest, or to receive the news that his confinement had finally ended? George was a friend, and the finest Ca
retaker I’ve known. I thought the world of him until he betrayed me. The deeds to the Houses are my family’s birthright – they’ve been so for eight hundred years, and yet he tried to steal Burleigh’s from me. One cannot simply ignore that. Nevertheless, it pains me to have lost him too.’

  It is as I expected, then. My father is dead. I look past His Majesty, out the dining room’s long bank of windows towards the fens I’ve come to know. Familiar in all their aspects, but never, never my home. I don’t know who I miss more in this moment – Papa, or Wyn, or Burleigh.

  ‘How did it happen? The end of the arrest, I mean,’ I ask, because there is no use arguing over the king’s version of Papa’s conviction. We will always be at odds about it. What Uncle Edgar calls treason, I call a Caretaker’s duty to put one’s House first, because Papa would never have risked trying for Burleigh’s deed unless the House had need of it.

  The king reaches out and pats my hand, and I resist the urge to pull away.

  ‘You know I’ve been in Belgium for several months,’ he says. ‘I bound the Houses to obey the Duke of Falmouth in my absence. He sent surveyors to Burleigh twice, to ensure everything was going smoothly. They found the gate had appeared in the wall again, and knew the arrest must have ended, but the House refused to let them in. Falmouth had to go down to Somerset himself, and even then the House tried to go against its binding to obey him. It tried to keep Falmouth out, but when he eventually got in, he found your father. Evidently George had been working House magic without the protection of the key, which is what killed him in the end. That’s how he was able to prolong the arrest the way he did – any time the House’s magic built up and threatened to wreak havoc without a Caretaker to put it to good use, your father siphoned it off himself.’ His Majesty tuts dramatically. ‘What an unpleasant way to die.’

  I ball my hands into fists beneath the table and press, nails digging into soft skin. I need the small pain it brings, to distract me from a larger agony blossoming inside. It’s not just unpleasant, death by House magic. It’s slow and messy and gruesome. And though I cannot think on it now, I can feel that a bright and vital part of me has been ruined by this news. Something young and yielding and fragile has fallen apart within my soul, crumbling into countless irreparable pieces.