Page 58 of A Treason of Thorns

Instead, I turn and step out the front door, into a dry and unbearably hot summer day. Whether I have the protection of a Caretaker’s key or not, I am Violet Helena Sterling. I was born to look after this land, and to care for Burleigh House.

No matter the cost. No matter the risks involved.

I remember Longhill Farm from my childhood. Every so often, Wyn managed to coax me off the grounds of the House and through the wicket gate in the back woods. Beyond them lay Longhill, and the Worthings’ good-natured, half-wild children. We would run through the fields with them, teasing placid cows and picking ripe apples off the branches in the orchard. It was like a little paradise.

But things have changed. Burleigh’s back woods are no longer sunny and inviting. As I walk through them, dark brambles slitherin the hollows and rooks shout ominously from the trees, which have twisted and show mortarous patches on their trunks where the bark has sloughed away.

When I let myself out at the back gate, the sky is low and grey overhead. The temperature drops precipitously outside Burleigh’s grounds, and a wind that smells of cold earth whips across the barren fields. Well. At least the long stockings and gloves and scarf I’ve brought along won’t look out of place beyond Burleigh’s walls.

The gate at the end of Longhill’s lane won’t open. I peer at the hinges in the dim light, and realize they’re coated with a layer of thick, dry mortar. The earth is grey with it, too, and as I scramble over the gate and make my way toward the farmhouse, signs of Burleigh’s rampant magic are everywhere I look.

Several acres of apple trees have cracked at the base and fallen to the ground under the weight of leaves and branches plastered with mortar. The cows in the fields are streaked with it, only their faces showing the russet and dun of their fur below.

Sam Worthing is out front of the farmhouse, sitting on a chair in the ruined garden and brooding. There’s mortar dust showing pale in the creases of his deeply lined and sunburned face, and caught in his greying brown hair. Papa was fond of telling me that Sam Worthing’s family had lived on this land for centuries, and were as much a fixture of Burleigh Halt as we Sterlings. If they’re forced to leave, I can only imagine what will become of us.

“Hello, Mr. Worthing,” I say sadly. “It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?”

“Now then, Miss Violet,” Sam says, and his expression remains unreadable. “Have you come to see what your House is doing?”

“I have,” I say, swallowing back shame. I’ve been so caught up inlooking after Burleigh I’ve neglected the countryside. Though how I’d manage to tend to the whole of the West Country and my dying House, and do it all without a key is a bit beyond me.

“I want to help,” I tell Sam Worthing.

He shrugs. “You can’t. Not without being a proper Caretaker. And even then, we all know the House is failing. You’d only ever be buying time. Miss Violet, Burleigh’s done well by us in the West Country. We had our days of plenty, but now I reckon it’s time to let it go before it does more damage.”

A good Caretaker puts her House first and the land it oversees, I remind myself. Before her king. Before her country. Before her own life.

“Whether I have a key or not, I’ve come to do a Caretaker’s job,” I tell him. “Will you show me your farm and your land?”

He gives me a narrow look. “I’m not wanting any trouble, Miss. Not from you or the House. What is it you intend?”

“I’m trying to set things right.” I gnaw at a hangnail and glance around us, at all the ruin my House has wrought. Oh, Burleigh. What are we going to do?

“Well, then you’d better follow me.”

Sam leads me into the cow byre and a match flares as he lights a lantern in the gloom. I follow him down to the very end of the long row of stalls to where a heifer’s been quarantined as much as space allows. Sam holds the lamp high as I step closer to the ailing cow.

She lies on her side, breathing heavily, and when I approach, the whites of her eyes show as she follows my every move.

“Sssshhh,” I say to her. “There’s a love. I’m not going to hurt you.”

I run a hand over her side but it’s easy to see where the problem’scoming from. Above her heart, veins of mortar spread, marring her russet fur, and a bit of that all-too-familiar grey substance runs from one of her nostrils.

“Livestock have been taking ill like that for months now,” Sam tells me. “We say they’ve been mortarstruck.”

I straighten up. “Can we go out to the orchard?”

The trees look even worse up close. Bark peels from the trunks, revealing damp grey patches, and banks of withered leaves lie on the grass, brambles tangled in among them. There will be no fall harvest here. This farm, once a place of peace and productivity, has become a wasteland, holding nothing but a promise of starvation for those who stay on it.

Burleigh is trying, it truly is. I can feel the effort my House spends trying to hold its tainted magic in when I stand on the grounds. The focus and energy required. But all that power must go somewhere, unless Burleigh is burned, and its magic, along with its stone and timber, goes up in smoke. Until then, or until I find the deed and unbind my House, it will continue to poison this land, even if it doesn’t mean to do it.

All this suffering, of people and places and Houses, and it could all be undone if the king would just loosen his grip on the reins of power.

“I’m sorry, Mr. Worthing,” I say. “But I can fix this.”

I hope I can, at any rate. But whatever the dangers, I could hardly call myself a Sterling if I didn’t try.

Sam Worthing seems less than certain, now we’ve come down to it.