The Lie Tree (43 page)

‘Why is it that the sweet-tempered men
never
have any money?’ Myrtle said with wry wistfulness as she waved her handkerchief to Clay.

‘He may have even less now,’ said Faith. ‘The whole island just saw him helping the Sunderly witches. He may find himself preaching to an empty church on Sunday.’

He needs a decent living, poor fellow, and I am sure he is too meek to ask for one.’ Myrtle narrowed her eyes, and Faith knew she was making calculations. ‘Oh – I
know
what I must do! I shall put in a good word for him.’

A good word for him? With a mixture of horror and admiration Faith realized where her mother’s mind had sped. Her father’s living had just fallen open, and nobody else knew it yet. A
replacement would be needed quickly. Myrtle knew the local squire in whose gift the living lay, and could put a word in his ear . . .

Or was Myrtle perhaps thinking even further ahead, of the day when her mourning would end and she would be looking for a husband with a large house and a decent income?

‘It would be perfect!’ Myrtle breathed, very softly. ‘We would not even need to redecorate!’

‘Mother!’ hissed Faith, but found she did not feel the utter recoil and outrage she would once have experienced. Myrtle was dreadful, but without such dreadfulness where would the
family be in a year’s time?

My mother is not evil,
Faith reminded herself.
She is just a perfectly sensible snake, protecting her eggs and making her way in the world as best she can.

‘Well,’ Myrtle said, defending herself against the accusation Faith had not made, ‘if you are to continue with these antiquarian enthusiasms of yours, it will not be cheap. You
do wish to persist in them, do you not?’

Faith nodded.

‘Then heaven send you a husband with patience and money.’ Myrtle gave Faith an anxious glance.

Faith knew now that her mother was not worried about the embarrassment of having a dull, eccentric bluestocking daughter. Myrtle was concerned for Faith, and rightly so. If Faith pursued natural
science, as a female she would probably be mocked, belittled, patronized and ignored her whole life. She might well make herself unmarriageable. How would she live, and find money to pursue her
passion?

Perhaps she would go abroad to visit excavations, and be despised as a scandalous woman travelling alone. Perhaps she would marry, and have all her work attributed to her husband, like Agatha.
Perhaps she would end up a penniless old maid, with only a coral collection for company.

And perhaps some other later girl, leafing through her father’s library, would come across a footnote in an academic journal and read the name ‘Faith Sunderly’.
Faith?
she would think.
That is a female name. A woman did this. If that is so . . . then so can I.
And the little fire of hope, self-belief and determination would pass to another heart.

‘I am tired of lies,’ said Faith. ‘I do not want to hide, the way Agatha did.’

‘So what do you want?’ asked Myrtle.

‘I want to help evolution.’

Evolution did not fill Faith with the same horror her father had felt. Why should she weep to hear that nothing was set in stone? Everything could change. Everything could get better. Everything
was
getting better, inch by inch, so slowly that she could not see it, but knowing it gave her strength.

‘My dearest girl, I have not the faintest idea what you are talking about.’

Faith thought about the best way to rephrase her resolution.

‘I want to be a bad example,’ she said.

‘I see.’ Myrtle stirred herself, ready to walk to the prow. ‘Well, my dear, I think you have made an excellent start.’

I would like to thank my agent Nancy Miles; my editor Rachel Petty; Rhiannon Lassiter for her support and robustly clear-sighted critiques; my boyfriend Martin for remaining
patient even through my welter of all-nighters; Plot on the Landscape; Dr Ruth Charles for all the fascinating and entertaining information about nineteenth-century archaeology and paleontology;
Heather Kilgour for introducing me to the Crystal Palace Park dinosaurs; Sandra Lawrence for taking me to the excellent seminar ‘Creepy Victorians: After-Death Photography’ at The Old
Operating Theatre Museum; Sarah Blake for information on geology;
The Mismeasure of Man
by Stephen Jay Gould;
Victorian Religion: Faith and Life in Britain
by Julie Melnyk;
The Victorian Celebration of Death
by James Stevens Curl;
Crinolines and Crimping Irons: Victorian Clothes: How They Were Cleaned and Cared For
by Christina Walkley and Vanda
Foster;
The Victorian Undertaker
by Trevor May;
Food and Cooking in Victorian England: A History
by Andrea Broomfield;
Cave Hunting: Researches on the Evidence of Caves
Respecting the Early Inhabitants of Europe
by William Boyd Dawkins;
The Idea of Prehistory
by Glyn Daniel.

T
he first things to shift were the doll’s eyes, the beautiful grey-green glass eyes. Slowly they swivelled, until their gaze was resting on
Triss’s face. Then the tiny mouth moved, opened to speak.

‘Who do you think you are? This is my family.’

When Triss wakes up after an accident, she knows that something is very wrong. She is insatiably hungry; she keeps waking up with leaves in her hair, and her sister seems
terrified of her. When it all gets too much and she starts to cry, her tears are like cobwebs . . .

Soon Triss discovers that what happened to her is more strange and terrible than she could ever have imagined, and that she is quite literally not herself. In a quest to find the
truth she must travel into the terrifying Underbelly of the city to meet a twisted architect who has dark designs on her family – before it’s too late . . .

‘
The Lie Tree
is brilliant: dark, thrilling, utterly original. Everyone should read Frances Hardinge. Everyone. Right now’

Patrick Ness

‘One of our finest children’s writers’

Nicolette Jones

Frances Hardinge’s first book,
Fly By Night
, won the Branford Boase Award for outstanding debut novel.
Fly By Night
was also, along with many of her
following books, shortlisted for several other awards, including the Guardian Fiction Prize. All her books are now published in many languages around the world.

Frances spent her childhood in a huge, isolated old house on a hilltop in Kent that ‘wuthered’ when the wind blew and inspired her to write strange, magical stories from an early
age. Now she lives in London with her boyfriend.

Also by Frances Hardinge

Fly By Night

‘Remarkable and captivating, masterfully written and with a wealth of unexpected ideas . . . Full of marvels’

Sunday Times

Verdigris Deep

‘Hardinge writes with energy and verve’

The Times

Gullstruck Island

‘Hardinge is a hugely talented writer of tireless invention and prose’

Guardian

Twilight Robbery

‘
Twilight Robbery
has everything: fabulous characters . . . richly evocative world-building and writing so viscerally good you want to wrap yourself up in
it’

Sunday Telegraph

A Face Like Glass

‘Sophisticated, multi-layered and elegantly written’

Booktrust

To my father

For quiet wisdom and integrity,

and for respecting me as an adult long before I was one

First published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books

This electronic edition published 2015 by Macmillan Children’s Books
an imprint of Pan Macmillan
a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited
20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR
Associated companies throughout the world
www.panmacmillan.com

ISBN 978-1-4472-6411-8

Copyright © Frances Hardinge 2015

Cover design by James Fraser

The right of Frances Hardinge to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital,
optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be
liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Typeset by Ellipsis Digital Limited, Glasgow

Visit
www.panmacmillan.com
to read more about all our books and to buy them. You will also find features, author
interviews and news of any author events, and you can sign up for e-newsletters so that you’re always first to hear about our new releases.