Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley

  Neither Lionheart nor Jeweltongue at best paid much attention to flowers, beyond the fact that one did of course have to have them, as one had place settings for seventy-five and a butler to cherish the wine; but when they came downstairs to have a final look at the front hall and the dining-room, even they were astonished by what Beauty had done.

  “My saints!” said Lionheart. “If the conversation flags, we can look at the flowers!”

  “The conversation will not flag,” said Jeweltongue composedly, “but that is not to say that Beauty has not done miracles,” and she patted her sister’s shoulder absently, as one might pat a dog.

  “I didn’t know flowers could look like this!” roared Lionheart, and threw up her arms as if challenging an enemy to strike at her, and laughed. “If Miss Fuss-and-Bother could see this, perhaps it would quiet her nerves!” Miss Fuss-and-Bother was the name Lionheart had given to the governess least patient with the frequent necessity of fishing Beauty out of her latest muddy haven in the garden and bringing her indoors and dumping her in the bath. Lionheart had often been obliged to join her there after other, more dangerous adventures of her own.

  But that ball was particularly successful, and her sisters teased Beauty that it was on account of her flowers and asked if she was keeping a greenwitch in her cupboard, who could work such charms. Beauty, distressed, tried to prevent any of this from reaching their father’s ears, for he would not have taken even a joke about a greenwitch in their house in good part. The housekeeper, who did hear some of it as she hobbled around the house on a stick, was not pleased and contrived to snub “Miss Beauty” for a fortnight after. (She might also have denuded the garden of flowers in her efforts to have a grander show than Beauty’s for the next party, but the head gardener was more than a match for her.) Beauty stayed out of her way till she had moved her ill will to another target; there was too much temper and spitefulness in the house already, and she thought she might forget her promise to herself never to add to it, and tell the housekeeper what a dreadful old woman she thought her.

  Besides, she would probably then have to hire another housekeeper afterwards, and she could think of few things she less wanted to do.

  The sisters’ parties, over the course of several seasons, became famous as the finest in the city, as fine as their mother’s had been. Perhaps not quite so grand as the mayor’s, but perhaps more enjoyable; the mayor’s daughters were, after all, rather plain.

  Only the ill-natured—especially those whose own parties were slighted in favor of the sisters’—ever suggested that it was the work of any hired magician. Their father’s attitude towards magic was well known. His sudden revulsion of feeling upon his wife’s death had indeed been much talked of; but much more surprising was its result.

  It was true that he was the wealthiest merchant in the city, but that was all he was; and if he had long had what seemed, were it not absurd to think so, an almost magical ability to seize what chance he wished when he wished to seize it, well, seers and soothsayers were always going on about how there was no such thing as luck, but that everyone possessed some seeds of magic within themselves, whether or not they ever found them or nursed them into growth. But no mere merchant, even the wealthiest merchant in the biggest city in the country, and whatever the origins of his business luck, should have been able to dislodge any magical practitioner who did not wish to be dislodged; but so it was in this case. Not only were all the magicians, astrologers, and soothsayers who had been members of his wife’s entourage thrown out of his house—which ban was acceptably within his purview—but he saw them driven out of the city.

  The sisters were forbidden to have anything to do with magic; the two elder girls still bought small street charms occasionally, and Beauty was good friends with the elderly salamander belonging to the retired sorcerer who lived near them; but none of them would ever hire any practitioner to do a personal spell.

  It was no surprise to anyone who paid attention to such matters when Lionheart contracted an engagement with the Duke of Dauntless, who owned six thousand of the finest hunting acres in the entire country, and much else besides. Jeweltongue affianced herself to the Baron of Grandiloquence, who was even wealthier than the Duke, and had a bigger town house. They planned a double wedding; Beauty and the three sisters of the Duke and the four sisters of the Baron should be bridesmaids. It would be the finest wedding of the season, if not the century. Everyone would be there, admiring, envious, and beautifully dressed.

  In all the bustle of preparations, no one, not even Beauty, noticed that the old merchant seemed unusually preoccupied.

  He had hoped he could put off his business’s ruin till after the wedding. He loved his daughters, but he felt his life had ended with his wife’s death; he had been increasingly unable to concentrate on his business affairs in the years since. His greatest pain as he watched the impending storm approach was the thought that he had not been able to provide a husband for Beauty. It was true that she was not very noticeable in the company of her sisters, but she should have been able to find a suitable husband among all the young men who flocked to their house to court Lionheart and Jeweltongue.

  He thought of hiring a good magician or a sorcerer to throw a few days’ hold over the worst of the wreck, but his antipathy to all things magical since his wife’s death meant not only had he lost all his contacts in the magical professions, but a sudden search now for a powerful practitioner was sure to raise gossip—and suspicion. He was not at all certain he would have been able to find one who would accept such a commission from him anyway. It had occurred to him, as the worst of the dull oppression of grief had lifted from his mind, to be surprised no magical practitioner had tried to win revenge for his turning half a dozen of them out of the city; perhaps they had known it was not necessary. The unnatural strength that had enabled him to perform that feat had taken most of his remaining vitality—and business acumen—with it.

  The bills for the wedding itself he paid for in his last days as the wealthiest merchant in the city. He would not be able to fulfil the contracts for his daughters’ dowries, but his two elder daughters were in themselves reward enough for any man. And her sisters would do something for Beauty.

  It was ten days before the wedding when the news broke. People were stunned. It was all anyone talked about for three days—and then the next news came: The Duke of Dauntless and the Baron of Grandiloquence had broken off the wedding.

  The messengers from their fiancés brought the sisters’ fate to them on small squares of thick cream-laid paper, folded and sealed with the heavy heirloom seals of their fiancés’ houses. Lionheart and Jeweltongue each replied with one cold line written in her own firm hand; neither kept her messenger waiting.

  By the end of that day Lionheart and Jeweltongue and Beauty and their father were alone in their great house; not a servant remained to them, and many had stolen valuable fittings and furniture as well, guessing correctly that their ruined masters would not be able to order them returned, nor punish them for theft.

  As the twilight lengthened in their silent sitting-room, Jeweltongue at last stood up from her chair and began to light the lamps; Lionheart stirred in her corner and went downstairs to the kitchens. Beauty remained where she was, chafing her father’s cold hands and fearing what the expression on his face might mean. Later she ate what Lionheart put in front of her, without noticing what it was, and fed their father with a spoon, as if he were a child. Jeweltongue settled down with the housekeeper’s book and began to study it, making the occasional note.

  For the first few days they did only small, immediate things. Lionheart took over the kitchens and cooking; Jeweltongue took over the housekeeping. Beauty began going through the boxes of papers that had been delivered from what had been her father’s office and dumped in a corner of one of the drawing-rooms.

  Lionheart could be heard two floors away from the kitchens, cursing and flinging things about, wielding knives and mallets like swords and lances.
Jeweltongue rarely spoke aloud, but she swept floors and beat the laundry as pitilessly as she had ever told off an underhousemaid for not blacking a grate sufficiently or a footman waiting at table for having a spot on his shirtfront.

  Beauty read their father’s correspondence, trying to discover the real state of their affairs and some gleam of guidance as to what they must do next. She wrote out necessary replies, while her father mumbled and moaned and rocked in his chair, and she held his trembling hand around the pen that he might write his signature when she had finished.

  Even the garden could not soothe Beauty during that time. She went out into it occasionally, as she might have reached for a shawl if she were cold; but she would find herself standing nowhere she could remember going, staring blindly at whatever was before her, her thoughts spinning and spinning and spinning until she was dizzy with them. There were now no gardeners to hide from, but any relief she might have found in that was overbalanced by seeing how quickly the garden began to look shabby and neglected. She didn’t much mind the indoors beginning to look shabby and neglected; furniture doesn’t notice being dusty, corners don’t notice cobwebs, cushions don’t notice being unplumped. She told herself that plants didn’t mind going undeadheaded and unpruned—and the weeds, of course, were much happier than they’d ever been before. But the plants in the garden were her friends; the house was just a building full of objects.

  She had little appetite and barely noticed as Lionheart’s lumpen messes began to evolve into recognizable dishes. She had never taken a great deal of interest in her own appearance and had minded the least of the three of them when they put their fine clothes away, for they had agreed among themselves that all their good things should go towards assuaging their father’s creditors. She did not notice that Jeweltongue had an immediate gift for invisible darns, for making a bodice out of an old counterpane, a skirt of older curtains, and collar and cuffs of worn linen napkins with the stained bits cut out, and finishing with a pretty dress it was no penance to wear.

  Nor could she sleep at night. She felt she would welcome her old nightmare almost as solace, so dreadful had their waking life become; but the dream stayed away. Since her mother’s death it had never left her alone for so long. She found herself missing it; in its absence it became one more security that had been torn away from her, a faithful companion who had deserted her. And it was not until now, with their lives a wreck around them, that she realised she had forgotten what her mother’s face looked like. She could remember remembering, she could remember the long months after her mother’s death, waking from the dream crying, “Mamma!” and knowing what face she hoped to see when she opened her eyes, knowing her disappointment when it was only the nurse’s. When had she forgotten her mother’s face? Some unmarked moment in the last several years, as childhood memories dimmed under the weight of adult responsibilities, or only now, one more casualty of their ruin? She did not know and could not guess.

  What unsettled her most of all was that her last fading wisp of memory contained nothing of her mother’s beauty, but only kindness, kindness and peace, a sense of safe haven. And yet the first thing anyone who had known her mother mentioned about her was her beauty, and while she was praised for her vitality, her wit, and her courage, far from any haven, her companionship was a dare, a challenge, an exhilarating danger.

  In among her father’s papers Beauty discovered a lawyers’ copy of a will, dated in May of the year she had turned two, leaving the three sisters the possession of the little house owned by the woman named. Beauty puzzled over this for some time, as she knew all her father’s relatives (none of whom wanted to know him or his daughters anymore), and knew as well that her mother had had none; nor did she know of any connexion whatsoever to anyone or anything so far away from the city of the sisters’ birth. But there was no easy accounting for it, and Beauty had no time for useless mysteries.

  There was a lawyers’ letter with the will, dated seven years later, saying that the old woman had disappeared soon after making the will, and in accordance with the law, the woman had now been declared dead, and the house was theirs. It was called Rose Cottage. It lay many weeks’ journey from the city, and it stood alone in rough country, at a little distance from the nearest town.

  Even their father’s creditors were not interested in it.

  She wrote to the lawyers, asking if there was any further transaction necessary if they wished to take up residence, and received a prompt but curt note in reply saying that the business was no longer anything to do with them but that they supposed the house was still standing.

  Rose Cottage, she thought. What a romantic name. I wonder what the woman who had it was like. I suppose it’s like a lot of other house names—a timid family naming theirs Dragon Villa or city folk longing for the country calling theirs Broadmeadow. Perhaps—she almost didn’t dare finish the thought—perhaps for us, just now, perhaps the name is a good omen.

  Hesitantly she told her sisters about it. Lionheart said: “I wish to go so far away from this hateful city that no one round me even knows its name.”

  Jeweltongue said: “I would not stay here a day longer than I must, if they asked me to be mayor and my only alternative was to live in a hole in the ground.”

  It was teatime. Late-afternoon light slanted in through the long panes of their sitting-room. They no longer used any of the bigger rooms; their present sitting-room was a small antechamber that had formerly been used to keep not-very-welcome guests waiting long enough to let them know they were not very welcome. In here Jeweltongue saw that the surfaces were dust-free, the glass panes sparkling, and the cushions all plumped. But the view into the garden showed a lawn growing shaggy, and twigs and flower stems broken by rain or wind lay across the paths. It had been three weeks since the Duke and Baron sent their last messages.

  Beauty sat staring out the window for a minute in the silence following her sisters’ words. It was still strange to her how silent the house was; it had never been silent before. Even very late at night, very early in the morning, the bustle had only been subdued, not absent. Now silence lay, cold and thick and paralysing as a heavy fall of snow. Beauty shivered, and tucked her hands under her elbows. “I’ll tell Father, then, when he wakes. At least something is settled.…” Her voice tailed off. She rose stiffly to her feet. “I have several more letters I should write tonight.” She turned to leave.

  “Beauty—” Lionheart’s voice. Beauty stopped by Jeweltongue’s chair, which was nearest the door, and turned back. “Thank you,” said her eldest sister.

  Jeweltongue reached suddenly up, and grasped Beauty’s hand, and laid the back of it against her cheek for a moment. “I don’t know what we would be doing without you,” she said, not looking up. “I still can’t bear the thought of … meeting any of the people we used to know. Every morning I think, Today will be better—”

  “And it isn’t,” said Lionheart.

  Beauty went back to the desk in another little room she had set up as an office. Quickly she began going through various heaps of papers, setting a few aside. She had already rebuffed suggestions of aid from businessmen she knew only wished to gloat and gossip; uneasily she discarded overtures from sorcerers declaring that their affairs could yet be put right, all assistance to be extended on credit, terms to be drawn up later upon the return of their just prosperity. Now she drew a sheet of her father’s writing-paper towards her, picked up a pen, and began to write an acceptance, for herself and her sisters, of the best, which was to say the least humiliating, offer of the several auction houses that had approached them, to dispose of their private belongings, especially the valuable things that had come to them from their mother, which their father had given his wife in better days. Beauty had told no one that she was not sure even this final desperate recourse would save their father from a debtors’ prison.

  And in the next few days she made time wherever she could to visit various of the people who had adopted her animals. She learnt what s
he could, in haste and distress of mind, of butter- and cheese-making from a woman who had been a dairymaid before she married a town man, while her cat, once a barn-loft kitten, played tag to rules of her own devising among their feet and the legs of furniture. She learnt bottling and beer-making from an old woman who had been a farm wife, while her ex-racing hound made a glossy, beer-coloured hump under the kitchen table. She took the legal papers she was not sure she understood to a man whose elegant, lame black mare had foaled all four of his undertaker son’s best funeral carriage team. Another man, whose five cowardly hounds bayed tremendously at any knock at the front door from a vantage point under his bed, taught her how to harness a horse, how to check that its tack fitted, and the rudiments of how to drive it; and a friend of his saddled up his very fine retired hunter, the whites of whose eyes never showed anymore, and went to the big autumn horse fair to buy her a pair of pulling horses and a suitable waggon.

  She came home from these small adventures with her head ringing with instructions and spent the evenings writing up notes, listening to the silence, trying not to be frightened, and wondering wearily what she was forgetting.

  I can teach you to remember, the elderly salamander said to her.

  “Oh—oh no,” said Beauty. “Oh no, that won’t do at all. But thank you.”