The Lie Tree Read online

  ‘I had this old mechanism moved from an abandoned mine on the other side of the island,’ Lambent explained. ‘The hauling is all done by that fellow.’ He pointed towards a sturdy-looking horse to whose halter the loose end of the chain had been attached. ‘We needed something of the sort – the drop is a good thirty feet.’

  Gripping Faith’s hand, Howard stood on tiptoes to peer at the top of the shaft.

  ‘Ah!’ exclaimed Lambent. ‘Our young sportsman is sizing up the basket! Would you like a short ride in it, sir?’ He glanced at the Reverend. ‘What do you think, Reverend? Would he like to be one of the very first people since the Stone Age to see those caves? We can lower him a dozen feet with one of the men and a lantern, just low enough that he can look down into the cavern.’

  A quiet light kindled in the Reverend’s eye. He looked at Howard, and she knew that the idea was taking hold. His son, seeing a prehistoric cavern while it still wore its mysteries. It would be a kind of baptism. He gave a barely perceptible nod of consent, and Faith felt an ache of loss and jealousy.

  Faith was vaguely aware that an unhappy-looking Ben Crock was whispering into Lambent’s ear. She caught the words ‘child and ‘risk. But whatever his arguments were, they were waved away.

  Lambent beckoned, but Howard clung to Faith’s sleeve. His jaw was working again, his face reddening with frustration at his own trapped words.

  ‘He will go down if I do,’ Faith whispered to her father, on impulse. She could not resist. Of course she would have preferred it if her father had turned to her and said, Faith, I want you to see this, I want you to be part of this. But if all she could do was ride her little brother’s coat-tails, it was better than nothing.

  And the Reverend did not quell her with a look. Perhaps he had noticed that Howard was looking a little less scared by the thought of Faith coming with him.

  He gave a nod. Faith flushed with excitement as the men readied the basket, attaching an oil lamp to a hook on the frame. At Ben Crock’s insistence they also hooked ropes on to the sides, as guy ropes to keep it from twisting.

  One of the sides of the cage-basket was hinged like a door, and was held open so that Faith and Howard could enter.

  ‘Sit down – that will be safer,’ called Crock, and they obeyed. At the sight of his furrowed brow Faith’s stomach gave a little fizz of fear, but the excitement was stronger.

  Faith wrapped her arms around Howard as the chain was let out and their basket started to descend. They passed below the timber frame, and now they were flanked by red-brown rock, rippling and pocked. Howard’s eyes were bright in the lantern-light.

  ‘This is our adventure, Howard!’ whispered Faith. ‘We are going back in time! Far, far back, to when this was a mountain tip, not an island. No sea, just land, covered in snow deeper than houses. Mammoths stamping around, making the ground shudder. Huge herds of reindeer, shaking their antlers. Shaggy rhinos big as shire horses. Sabre-toothed cats.’

  The past was all around her. She could smell it. It did not feel dead. It felt alive, and as curious about her as she was about it.

  The shaft was widening, as if they were descending through the neck of a bottle. The light from the lantern threw into relief the jagged walls of the shaft, and directly below there was darkness.

  The metal chain told out with a tooth-tingling clang-clang-clang that echoed down the shaft. Then amid this monotonous music there was a faint chink, then a loud, dull crack.

  The basket fell.

  There was a second of utter weightlessness, and perfect lightheaded despair. Then the basket was rattling against the rock walls, and Howard was screaming. Good honest terror hit Faith like a brick.

  The basket came to a sudden halt, with a jolt that made it tip. As Howard pitched forward Faith flung an arm around him, grabbing the cage barrier with her free hand. Something heavy hit her hard in the back with a metallic rattle. It was a loose end of the chain fastened to the basket. The guy ropes were taut, Faith realized, groaning as the basket swung and tipped over the dark abyss. These ropes alone had halted their plummet. There was shouting above, but the echoes muddied the words.

  Clumsily, in jolts, the basket started to ascend again. Looking up she could just see a cleft of sky with heads silhouetted against it. As the basket swayed, Faith could see the slender ropes scraping against the rock and starting to fray.

  ‘Hush Howard hush Howard hush Howard . . .’ It was an incantation. Howard’s sobs were the only real thing in the world.

  The cleft grew closer. Arms were reaching down towards the basket. Faith grabbed Howard under his armpits and heaved him as high as she could. Her arms ached and weakened under his weight, and then the burden was lifted away. Howard’s legs flailed as he rose, nearly kicking her in the head.

  Then the basket started to ascend more quickly, and the arms were reaching down again, and this time they were clutching her hands, her arms. They had her. They heaved her up and out, and then she was sitting on the grass, scarcely believing she had survived.

  Afterwards there was a lot of shouting, most of it from Lambent, who was thunderstruck and incandescent. He was the local magistrate and would have the law on somebody, but it soon became clear that it would probably not be anybody present. The fellow who had sold him the old mining mechanism was the main target of his ire.

  Howard was wailing. He needed to be examined for injuries, wiped with handkerchiefs, petted, comforted and offered toffees. The Reverend was icily furious, but gradually relented in the face of apologies. After all, who could have expected such a thick chain to snap? And with the guy ropes in place there had been no real danger.

  Unsteadily Faith walked over to Ben Crock, who was sitting on the grass, recovering his breath. There were raw, red rope burns on both his palms.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said quietly, casting a pointed glance at his hands.

  ‘No lady should have a scare like that while in my charge,’ was all he said. ‘I hope you can forgive me, miss.’

  CHAPTER 5:

  SKULLS AND CRINOLINES

  The Sunderly family went home to change their clothes, and to argue about what had just happened. For a while it seemed that Myrtle would refuse to attend the Lambents’ afternoon tea out of indignation. Only when she had been assured a dozen times that her children had never been in any real danger did she finally relent.

  Faith said nothing. She still remembered her lurching horror when Howard had seemed about to fall out of the basket. The peril had certainly felt pretty mortal at the time.

  Myrtle was not at all sure whether Faith was included in the invitation to ‘ladies of the family’. Had it been a dinner invitation, she would have been left behind with Howard as a matter of course. Afternoon tea, however, was a slightly different matter. In the end Myrtle decided Faith could attend, though Faith suspected that her mother simply wanted somebody to accompany her as an unofficial lady’s maid.

  Because of the importance of the occasion, Myrtle agreed to tighten Faith’s ‘training corset’ an inch more than usual. However, she quashed Faith’s suggestion that she wear a longer skirt in an adult style. Faith knew a few girls of her own age, and over the last year she had watched their hems creep downwards. Most of them had also just graduated to proper grown-up corsets, leaving Faith feeling self-conscious about her clumsy, loose, childish one. She sometimes wondered if Myrtle was keeping her a child for vanity’s sake, rather than admit to being old enough to have a nearly adult daughter.

  As they were about to leave, Myrtle noticed the crochet gloves on Faith’s hands.

  ‘Where are your kid gloves?’ she demanded.

  ‘I . . . do not know.’ Faith reddened. ‘I am sure I had them on the boat . . .’ A tremulous hint that the unfortunate gloves had fallen overboard.

  ‘Oh, Faith!’ Myrtle’s mouth tightened with impatience and annoyance.

  Lambent’s house stood on the top of a headland, less than a mile from the excavation. According to the battered wooden sign
, the house was called ‘The Paints’. It braced its four red-brick storeys against the weather, but the fences and little trees around it had surrendered to the wind, bowing and skulking close to the long grass. There was a large stables and coach house. Beagles barked in their kennels.

  There were the usual delays, as Myrtle was manoeuvred out of Lambent’s carriage. Her crinoline, the bird’s cage of whalebone and linen that bulked out the back of her skirts, creaked and shivered, tipping to reveal her dainty, bow-covered shoes.

  The Sunderly family had barely entered the hallway before they were intercepted by Lambent.

  ‘Come through! Let me introduce you to everyone!’

  He led them into what appeared to be a trophy room, its red-and-white check floor flecked with burrs and dog hairs. Antlers jutted from high plaques, throwing branched shadows across the walls. There were also African masks, Chinese jade carvings, a walrus tusk, a boomerang and other souvenirs of strange and exotic lands.

  A dozen guests stood around talking, most of them men. Faith recognized Dr Jacklers and Clay, but the rest were strangers.

  When the Sunderlys entered, Faith cast a nervous glance around the room, scanning every face for traces of coldness or scorn. Instead, when her father was introduced, she saw only enthusiasm, curiosity and respect. If the venom of scandal had touched her father’s name, nobody present appeared to be aware of it.

  As usual, the adulation slid off the Reverend’s stony reticence and was soaked up by the lace handkerchief of Myrtle’s busy charm. She quickly made herself a favourite with the gentlemen, by being witty without being too clever. Meanwhile Uncle Miles produced the fossilized shellfish he kept in his tobacco tin and tried to show them to people, in spite of Myrtle’s attempts to make him stop.

  Faith found herself standing next to Dr Jacklers, who clearly had no idea what to say to her.

  ‘Do tell me about skulls!’ Faith whispered. It was a bold suggestion, perhaps an unladylike one, and if Myrtle had been within earshot Faith would not have asked it. But Crock’s willingness to answer her questions had given her a small surge of confidence. What if the rules were different in Vane? What if she could show interest in natural science without it seeming odd?

  ‘Ah, you are just humouring an old man!’ The doctor laughed, showing his strong, white teeth. But of course he let himself be humoured. ‘I have a collection of skulls – not because I want to affright nice young ladies like yourself, but because I am writing a paper on the human brain and the roots of intelligence. I measure my patients’ heads as well – even if they drop by with a sniffle I come up with some reason to wrap a tape measure around their skulls.’

  ‘So you are a craniometrist?’ As soon as the words left Faith’s mouth she saw the doctor’s smile fade and knew that she had made a mistake. He had been enjoying his explanation, and now she had spoilt things by knowing too much. ‘Is . . . is that the right word?’ She knew it was, but swallowed hard and made her voice hesitant. ‘I . . . think I heard it somewhere.’

  ‘Yes.’ The doctor’s confidence slowly returned in the face of her timidity. ‘That is exactly the right word, my dear. Well done.’

  As he went on to describe his skull collection, Faith listened with an acid twist in her stomach. She was furious at herself for using too clever a term. Right now, somebody was talking to her about science, and if she sounded too knowledgeable he would stop. Yes, he was explaining things that she already knew as if she were half her age, but she should be grateful even for that.

  Once upon a time, when she was nine years old and starting to make sense of her father’s books, Faith had been so keen to show off her knowledge. Every time visitors came to the house she would bubble over with the latest facts she had discovered and the newest words to capture her imagination. She had wanted to impress – to prove to her father and everyone else that she was clever. Each time, her efforts had been met first by surprised laughter, then uncomfortable silences. Nobody was unkind exactly, but after a while they had politely ignored her as if she were a stain on the tablecloth. She had wept herself to sleep afterwards, knowing that she had not been clever, she had been stupid, stupid, stupid. She had embarrassed everyone and spoilt everything.

  Rejection had worn Faith down. She no longer fought to be praised or taken seriously. Now she was humbled, desperate to be permitted any part in interesting conversations. Even so, each time she pretended ignorance, she hated herself and her own desperation.

  ‘The larger the skull, the larger the brain, and the greater the intelligence,’ the doctor continued, warming to his theme. ‘You need only look at the difference between the skull sizes of men and women. The male skull is larger, showing it to be the throne of intellect.’ The doctor seemed to become aware that he was not being entirely tactful. ‘The female mind is a different thing altogether,’ he added quickly, ‘and quite delightful in its own right! But too much intellect would spoil and flatten it, like a rock in a soufflé.’

  Faith flushed. She felt utterly crushed and betrayed. Science had betrayed her. She had always believed deep down that science would not judge her, even if people did. Her father’s books had opened to her touch easily enough. His journals had not flinched from her all too female gaze. But it seemed that science had weighed her, labelled her and found her wanting. Science had decreed that she could not be clever . . . and that if by some miracle she was clever, it meant that there was something terribly wrong with her.

  ‘Ah, I recognize that refrain!’ declared a woman’s voice directly behind Faith. ‘Once again Dr Jacklers is decrying us for our little skulls!’

  It was a lady who had been introduced as ‘Miss Hunter, our postmistress and telegraph operator’. She was short, neat and black-haired, with a quickness of motion and gesture that reminded Faith of a moorhen. Her plump, gloved fingers were always busy straightening and preening at her own clothes, but her gaze was steady and appraising.

  ‘Forgive me, Doctor, do not let me cut you short.’ Miss Hunter smiled blandly. Faith was not sure whether she had imagined the slight emphasis on the last word.

  There was no mistaking Dr Jacklers’s reaction though. His ruddy face became almost violet and he gave Miss Hunter a glance loaded with bitterness. He was by no means a tall man, and Faith wondered if Miss Hunter’s remark was a veiled taunt about his height. Nonetheless Faith suspected that she was missing something.

  ‘I am simply saying,’ the doctor persisted with an edge to his voice, ‘that the Almighty has designed each of us for our appointed place in the world . . .’

  But these were fateful words. The conversation promptly exploded into a debate about evolution.

  Natural scientists liked to argue and debate. Back at the rectory Faith had grown used to her father’s guests smiling, bantering and my-dear-fellow-ing over their tea, while racing their rival theories like prize ponies. The disagreements about evolution were always different, however. There was a crackle of fear behind them, a rawness like splintered wood.

  The same rawness and tension filled the conversation now. To Faith’s surprise, the ever-mild, ever-courteous Clay was one of the loudest and most fervent voices.

  ‘Lamarck and Darwin are leading the world into a great error!’ he declared. ‘If we say that species change, then we say that they were created imperfect! We criticize God himself!’

  ‘But, Clay, what about the relics of extinct beasts?’ protested Lambent. ‘The mastodon! The great cave bear! The aurochs! The dinosauria!’

  ‘All slain in the Flood,’ answered Clay without hesitation, ‘or through similar catastrophes. Our Lord has seen fit to clean the slate many times, on each occasion creating new species to enjoy his world.’

  ‘But the fossils – most of them must be tens of thousands of years old at least, long before the Flood—’

  ‘That is impossible.’ Clay’s tone was adamant. ‘We know how old the world is, from scriptural records. It cannot possibly be more than six thousand years old.’

&nbs
p; The oldest gentlemen nodded approvingly at this speech. The other men looked pained and rather embarrassed. Clay seemed to notice the silence.

  ‘Dr Jacklers,’ he appealed, ‘you have said as much yourself! I remember you talking of such things with my father . . .’

  ‘Perhaps I did, ten years ago.’ Dr Jacklers looked uncomfortable. ‘Clay . . . everything has changed in the last ten years.’

  Faith was a naturalist’s daughter and knew what the doctor meant. The world had changed. Its past had changed, and with it everything else. Once upon a time, everybody had known the story of the earth: it had been created in a week, and Man set in place to rule it. And the history of the world surely could not be more than a few thousand years . . .

  But then gentlemen of science had worked out how long it took rock to fold itself like puff pastry. They had found fossils, and strange misshapen man-skulls with sloping brows. Then, when Faith was five years old, a book about evolution called On the Origin of Species had entered the world, and the world had shuddered, like a boat running aground.

  And the unknown past had started to stretch. Tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, even millions of years . . . and the longer the dark age stretched, the more glorious mankind shrank and shrank. He had not been there from the start, nor had the whole of creation been presented to him as a gift. No, he was a latecomer, whose ancestors had struggled up from the slime and crawled on the earth.

  The Bible did not lie. Every good, God-fearing scientist knew that. But rocks and fossils and bones did not lie either, and it was starting to look as though they were not telling the same story.

  ‘Truth has not changed!’ exclaimed an elderly whippet of a man with white floppy hair. ‘Only the minds of those who doubt! May I point out that in our very midst we have the Reverend Erasmus Sunderly, whose greatest find bears dumb witness to the truth of the Gospel!’