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“Suddenly, all work on Farleigh Cathedral ceased. The foreman resigned, after a particularly heated exchange up at Farleigh House, and another was installed in his place. New orders arrived: The cathedral was going to be a monument to the word of God, and literally have those words inscribed into its every stone. Rudolph, of course, would dictate which parts of his library would be etched into the stones, and though his selections did include several passages from the Bible, they also included a wide range of theological and even astrological musings from across his studies.

“Hammers and chisels rang out for weeks and months. Passage upon passage was carved into the stones of the cathedral, at outrageous cost, and it slowly became clear that the project was too large: The money would run out before the walls ever went up. The monastery’s monks appealed to the new Duke, but to no avail. From time to time an emissary from the Crown would arrive to observe, before leaving satisfied that the Ruxton estate would be in ruins by the end of the year. The new foreman quickly realised that Rudolph had absolutely no grip on his finances and found creative ways to bleed him dry.

“Just before the money completely ran out, Rudolph died. It was written that he, too, perished in a riding accident, but it is easy enough to imagine foul play. An inheritor had been identified—a young man by the name of Oliver Ruxton, said to be Rudolph’s cousin, who arrived just in time to prevent the Ruxton estate from total collapse. Oliver took his seat in Farleigh House, as the third Duke of Farleigh in a year, and tallied what remained.

“There was Farleigh House, and there was Ruxton House, and then there were the carvings; the hundreds of intricately etched pieces of stone that should have been the foundations of Farleigh’s cathedral. Oliver sold Ruxton House to pay the estate’s remaining debts off and leave himself with a few coins to sustain himself. Then, he rid himself of the stones strewn about his estate. They were an embarrassment, and Oliver did the only thing he could think of doing with them: He had them buried.”

Havelock paused. Then, he said:

“The words that the trees of Farleigh Forest grow are entirely capitalised. This is because the work to inscribe the cathedral stones was done in haste—and it is far easier to carve uppercase letters, using a series of short, sharp strikes. I found a few chunks of those stones at the foot of Farleigh’s ruined monastery. The old folk tale about the Duke of Farleigh’s Stone Library is based in truth, you see. The truth is eccentric, and has been deliberately suppressed for the sake of the reputation of the Ruxton family, but the dedicated archivists of London helped me to uncover the nuances of the story. Of course—the burial of the stones was not the end of it. Here, then, is the most important part of all:

“Think, now, of all those stone blocks. A thousand of them, carved with the words of a hundred books. Think of them beneath the earth. Think of Farleigh Forest—razed in part, but now given the time and space to grow again. Imagine the roots of its trees, spreading through the earth. Imagine them finding the stones there. Imagine their roots growing into the letters; finding purchase. And then imagine them, after time—after so much time—finding an understanding. This slow, unlikely, extraordinary process is how the trees of Farleigh Forest have learned our language.”

There was quiet in the conservatory.

Then Father Anker said, “It’s not a miracle, then.”

“Or perhaps it is,” said the Duchess softly.

“A debate for another time,” said Havelock. “For now, we are only half done. You all now know how Farleigh Forest has learned our language. What I have yet to reveal is why the Duke was felled, and by whom.”

Everyone shifted about—casting eyes at each other.

“I must confess,” continued Havelock, “that I knew the culprit from the very moment I set eyes upon him. It was only a small observation, but potent enough to be clear. You were exaggerating a limp, while trying to disguise a shake in your hands.” Havelock turned to the Ambassador. “A trembling caused due to the injuries you sustained striking the Duke with an axe. Felling a tree was far more difficult than you imagined it would be, wasn’t it?”

There were gasps from across the room.

The Ambassador simply nodded. “It was,” he said.

Havelock addressed everyone again. “The problem I faced was not the who, but the why of the thing. I could find no discernible motivation. That was—until I listened to the Duke, and determined the nature of the word that had been erased. Once I had that word, and combined it with all the official records the dedicated archivists of London could find about the Ambassador, a clear picture emerged. And now it is time that I share that picture with you.”

Havelock opened his hand to the Ambassador. “I hope that you will correct me if I have any of the details wrong.”

The Ambassador nodded again. “I shall.”

“Then let’s begin.” Havelock resumed his pacing about the room. “And it begins here:

“Your name is Bartholemew Filigree, and you were born in Farleigh in 1851. You grew up in a community still coming to terms with the fact that words had begun to appear, growing in the bark and branches and roots of the local forest. To your parents, and the adults around you, the words were a splendid mystery—a cause for endless delight. To you, they were a normality, and it puzzled you to learn that other forests did not have words. You learned to read from an exceptionally young age, and you quickly made friends—with both other young locals, and the trees. At school, you were taught how to weave, and you found that you were very good at it. In your idle hours, you would weave your favourite trees.

“As you grew up, it became apparent that some of the trees were more talkative than others. The village had even given a few particularly communicative trees names. There was the Judge, the Bishop, the Lovers, and your favourite—the Duke. You would visit them all often, but the Duke most of all—spending time sitting among his roots, and learning his words. It was clear, at school, that you were an exceptionally inquisitive young fellow, and that you would require better teaching, so you were sent to Windermere once a week, where you took classes with a learned local tutor. Windermere felt like a peculiar place to you—with its odd, wordless trees, and people who seemed too loud, too abrasive; everyone moved around you too quickly for comfort. Nevertheless, you were an able student, devouring every text you were given, and learning quickly. The more you learned, the more inquisitive you became—wondering about Farleigh, and its place in the world.

“You understood that Farleigh was special. You knew that its trees, which were so beloved to you, needed to be protected, and that decisions had been made to protect them. You, too, wished to protect the forest, and as a young man with a hunger for knowledge, you thought that understanding its trees would be the best way to do so. As such, with the help of your tutor in Windermere, you applied to various universities—hoping, specifically, to research the nature of trees, and in turn the nature of Farleigh. You received offers to three institutions, and accepted the offer to Glasgow, which you favoured because the university grounds were right next to the city’s botanical gardens.

“In Glasgow, you studied the natural sciences. You read every book you could find on forestry and tree husbandry, and you volunteered at the botanical gardens, learning everything known about the trees that grew there. You consulted linguists—delivering them anonymised samples of tree-writing to analyse—and confirmed what you had long suspected: that the lexicon and syntax of Farleigh’s trees suggested an early and developing form of self-expression—that the forest was in the process of finding its voice. Your studies also formally introduced you to humanity’s historically exploitative relationship with trees: for as far back as records went, you found evidence that trees had been, and continued to be, treated primarily as a resource. In rare cases, you found evidence of tree worship, and some small amounts of respect, but these were always anthropocentric: Trees were worshipped and respected only for their value to humans, and not on their own merits. To put it succinctly: Farleigh was the only place in the entirety of your studies that you could find evidence of trees being treated as if they were a people.

“Your studies continued, and as you spent your days in Glasgow, learning all you could about trees, you slowly came to enjoy the city. The speed of life that had so perturbed you in Windermere was even quicker, but it was also intoxicating. You spent your days engrossed in studies with your fellow scholars, and nights debating them about every subject imaginable. These were dizzying days, and endless nights—you would often wake so filled with new ideas that you wondered how you could possibly contain them all. You began to make friends with locals, as well—Glaswegians who showed you the true face of the city, and an entirely new way of living. You discovered music, and drinking, and heartbreak. You fell in love with Glasgow, and gradually, as the months progressed, came to understand that you were falling in love with society. As months turned into years, your memories of Farleigh began to feel distant and quaint. You could see, clearly, how Farleigh was only possible due to the wealth of the society it relied upon. A wealth that made life wonderful to live. It felt strange that Farleigh should hide, when society would so clearly celebrate it.

“When your time in Glasgow was done, you accepted a role in London, tending to its green spaces. They were poor spaces compared to Farleigh, but the city—the city! If Glasgow was intoxicating, then London was an addiction. You loved the wealth and pomp of it—visiting the palaces and galleries and libraries in awe. You went to shows, and watched the parades, and made acquaintances with people from all over the Empire and beyond it. The newspapers and gentry all waxed on about the brilliance of the Empire, and you wished to see it for yourself. You drank with officers, and they told you about New Zealand, and Canada, and the beauty of the wider world. And then, one day, you found yourself enlisting; excited to sail out beyond Britain and see its wider influence.

“Your enchantment faded quickly, at sea. You were part of an infantry regiment ostensibly assigned to work in Central Africa, and your fellows were a young, troublesome, quarrelsome bunch—nothing on the regal officers you had drunk with in London. It would take you a few months to fully realise your own naiveté, during which time the endless, monotonous journey had robbed and bullied you of your cheer, and your fellows had robbed and bullied you of your valuables. In the end, your regiment was diverted from Africa to Crimea, there to take part in a conflict that you did not entirely understand. From what you were told, you were going there to push back allies of Russia, who were getting altogether too big for their boots, and needing a seeing-to. You had a rifle, and a certain amount of training, but nothing could have prepared you for landing. You knew vaguely about Sevastopol from your studies—and from maps—but it was nothing like you expected.

“These days, when you talk about the war, and your time overseas, you mention that you dream of fire and smoke. Part of you recalls the days and nights in the mud, the buck of the rifle in your hands, and the booming of cannon fire, but all of these things are secondary to the incident that haunts you. You remember fire and smoke because your regiment was commanded to set fire to a forest west of Sevastopol. You’re still not certain why the order was given—to reduce the city’s access to good timber, no doubt—but you and your fellows followed through with efficiency, taking torches to the trees until they were all ablaze. You watched, then, from afar, and felt the heat of the burning forest on your brow; the horror of it, of all those blackening trees, so brightly ablaze, scarring itself permanently into your memory. Soon after, you sustained an injury—almost crushed to death by a section of wall when it fell upon you—that sent you home.

“You remember little of your journey back to Farleigh, but it was to Farleigh that you went. You returned stooped and broken. But it was there, among the trees, that you slowly recovered from your time away. Your wounds healed, and you learned just how much of a balm the slow days and slow nights of the village could be. You were still haunted by the burning forest outside Sevastopol, and your days studying trees in Glasgow came back to you. You knew, then—perhaps better than anyone—just how vulnerable Farleigh was: a village with a tremendous secret, hiding in the very heart of a British Empire that would gladly burn a forest in the name of war. You had a newfound respect for the Duchess, who, through her extremely well-considered correspondences with London, maintained the village’s tenuous relationship with that Empire. You understood, too, why she, and a great many other people in Farleigh, lived in a constant state of tension; of how easy it would be for Farleigh Forest to be revealed to its unwitting benefactor, and thus exposed to the worst of it. All it would take is a single poorly worded letter to invite suspicion.

“So—you began to help. You visited with the Duchess most mornings and became her confidant. You and she discussed the day’s correspondences and news, and responded together—constructing subtle and elaborate ways to discourage visitors, and remain undetected by the Crown’s revenue services. And by some miracle, it continued to work, as it always had. Farleigh and its trees remained hidden. Even those few visitors that were necessary to maintain the masquerade failed to see anything beyond what they were expecting to see. The years passed, and you began to relax. You took up station in the old, ruined monastery and went back to studying the trees. You began to weave their likenesses and words year by year, to better appreciate their poetry.

“Only—as the years progressed, the Duke was beginning to worry you. His words continued to be bombastic and expressive, but you saw in them evidence that he seemed to be afraid of something. In the way of all the trees in Farleigh, his words continued to be unspecific—the threat, whatever it was, remained difficult to define in any tangible sense—but you began to pay special attention to him. When the first winds of autumn rose, you were always the first to arrive at his roots and read his new words. You would visit the Duchess once a day anyway, so you began tracking the new words as they arrived; studying the shapes in the bark to try and guess at letters before they fully emerged.