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Rose Daughter

Page 7

by Robin McKinley


  Jeweltongue returned even as Beauty was looking after her, and said, “Beauty, if you’ve sold all your roses, maybe you’ll come lend me your eye? Mrs Bestcloth has a new shipment in, and Miss Trueword says she will leave it up to me, and I’m drowning in riches, I can’t decide, I want to use them all.”

  Over a late tea at home Jeweltongue said, “You and Mrs Greendown were in close conversation for some while, were you not? Did she tell you anything interesting? Mrs Treeworthy—she and her husband have the Home Farm, you remember—says Mrs Greendown knows everything about everything round here.”

  “Yes … oh … a bit. Not very,” said Beauty, glancing at their father, who had come home with them after a day doing sums in Longchance, and now had his scribbles on his knee, and was holding his teacup absentmindedly halfway to his mouth.

  Jeweltongue knew what that glance meant and said briskly, “Never mind. Help me remember what Miss Trueword’s final decisions were, so I can write them down, my head is still spinning”—help that Beauty knew perfectly well her sister never needed.

  By the time she and Jeweltongue were alone together, she had decided to say nothing of the curse. She thought there was a good chance that no one else in magic-shy Longchance would mention it to anyone else in her family; she was the one who was supposed to be a greenwitch. What did she herself think about the curse? She didn’t know. Curses were dangerous things; they tended to eat up their casters and were therefore unpopular among magical practitioners, though they still happened occasionally. Most likely Longchance’s curse was some folk-tale that, in generations of retelling, had begun to be called a curse to give it greater prestige.

  Her first impulse was to attend the very next market-day, find Mrs Greendown, and ask her to tell her explicitly just what this curse was. But she had second thoughts almost at once. She told herself that her interest might cause, well, reciprocal interest, and there was Lionheart’s secret to protect. But she knew that wasn’t the real reason for her change of heart. She didn’t want to know because she didn’t want to know. And she would set herself to forgetting that Mrs Greendown had ever so much as mentioned a curse. “There’s nothing wrong with you and nothing wrong with Rose Cottage.” She would leave it there.

  Jeweltongue was fascinated by the story of the greenwitch who had left them Rose Cottage and appeared to harbour no suspicions that Beauty was holding anything back, and by the end of her revised history, Beauty had already half succeeded in forgetting what she had chosen not to tell.

  “What a romantic story! At least we now know why we never found the Longchance greenwitch’s signboard,” said Jeweltongue. “All the way to Appleborough for a simple charm! I don’t think I miss magic, do you? We have had little enough to do with it since Mamma died, but now it seems as if it’s just one more thing we left behind in the city. It’s not as though the cleverer practitioners ever came up with anything really useful, like self-peeling potatoes or needles that refuse to pierce human skin.”

  That night Beauty had the dream. Her first reaction to finding herself again in that dark corridor where the monster waited was of heart-sinking dismay, for her last roses were still blooming in the garden. No! she cried in her dream. Let me go! It is not your time! The light of the candle nearest her flickered, as if disturbed by the draught of her shout. But as she drew her breath in again, she discovered that the corridor was full of the smell of roses, a rich deep scent nothing like her mother’s perfume and even more powerful and exciting than the scent of high summer in her garden. And she was not afraid.

  CHAPTER

  4

  A second summer turned to autumn, to winter, and the third spring arrived. But this year was different. Spring was cold and bleak; the warmth of the turning year never came, and the rain never stopped. Summer arrived in seas of brown mud; the rivers overflowed and drowned the seed in the fields and more than a few calves and lambs. Everyone was still wearing coats and boots at midsummer; everyone was low and discouraged; everyone said they couldn’t remember a year like this.…

  And Beauty’s roses never bloomed.

  They tried. The bushes put out leaves, draggled as they were by the relentless rain, but the long, arching branches drooped under the weight of the water, the weight of the heavy dark sky. The climber over the kitchen door was torn out of its hold on the thatch, and Beauty spent a long dreary afternoon tying it away from the door so that she need not cut the long stems. She came indoors soaked to the skin and spent the next week sneezing and shivering and standing over bowls of hot water and mint oil with a towel round her head to keep in the steam.

  The bushes all produced a few hopeful flower-buds, but the sun never came to open them. Those flowers too stubborn to know they were doomed turned as brown as the mud at their feet as soon as the sepals parted; a few Beauty rescued, half open, and brought indoors, where they sat dejectedly in a vase, too weary of the struggle to finish opening, their petals brown-edged and soon falling. Nor did they bear more than the faintest hint of their usual deep delicious scent.

  Everyone grew bad-tempered. Jeweltongue’s remarks had edges like knives; Lionheart shouted; their father withdrew again into dull silence. Beauty, who should have been spending most of her time in the garden, felt like a rat in a trap. She kept the house clean, mucked out the shed, fed Lydia and the chickens—who were too depressed by the weather to lay—cooked the meals, ran errands both real and imaginary just for something to do, and stared at the ankle deep slop that should have been her garden. And, with some effort, kept her own temper … till Jeweltongue snarled and Lionheart bellowed at her too. Finally she shouted back, threw a plate across the room and heard it shatter as she ran upstairs—just before she burst into tears.

  She buried her face in her pillow, so that no one downstairs should hear her. The puppy Lionheart had rescued a year ago, rejoicing in the name Tea-cosy for her diminutive size and the neat little hummock she made when she curled up for a nap, followed her, and burrowed under Beauty’s trembling arm to lick her wet cheek.

  The leak in the corner of the loft dripped sullenly into its pail. They had scratched enough money together at last to have their thatch replaced this spring; but not only could no thatcher work in a steady downpour, they now had to save the money to buy food for next winter—if they could. The farmers were all fighting the same weather that kept the thatchers indoors and ruined Beauty’s garden; market-days at Longchance were a sad affair.

  Beauty raised her head and gently pushed the cold nose and wet tongue away from her face. “You are a silly beast,” said Beauty. “You know you can’t climb down the ladder again yourself. What a good thing you never grew too large to carry.”

  Tea-cosy heard by the tone of Beauty’s voice that she was succeeding in comforting her, whatever those particular words meant; the main thing, from her point of view, was that they did not contain the dreaded word No. She dodged Beauty’s restraining hand, put her paws on Beauty’s arm, and licked her face harder than ever, wagging her tail till her whole body shook. “Your generous sympathy is not all joy, you know,” murmured Beauty through the onslaught.

  She was just beginning to think she should go back down and sweep up the fragments and go on with dinner while Lionheart finished her week’s baking when she heard footsteps on the loft ladder. Jeweltongue laid their dented little tea-tray down on the floor beside the mattress—the chipped saucers clattered in the dents, and the cups clattered in the mismatched saucers—sat down next to her sister, and began to rub her back gently. “I’m sorry. We’re enough to try the patience of a saint, and even you’re not a saint, are you? I don’t think I could bear to live with a real saint.”

  Beauty gave a soggy little laugh, rolled up on an elbow, and caught her sister’s hand. “Do you ever miss the city? You must think about it—as I do—but do you ever long for it?”

  Jeweltongue sat quite still, with an odd, vacant expression on her face. “How strange you should ask that just now. I was only thinking about it thi
s afternoon. Well, not so strange. It’s the weather that does it, isn’t it? The cottage grows very small when it’s too wet to be out of doors. I hadn’t realised how often I took my sewing outdoors, till this year, when I can’t. And the cottage is smaller yet when Lionheart is here too, roaring away.

  “I don’t know if I miss it.… I miss some things. I sometimes think if I have to wear this ugly brown skirt one more day, I shall go mad. I still remember Mandy, who wore it first; do you remember her? Creeping round all day with eyes the size of dinner plates, waiting for me to say something cross to her. Oh! How many cross things I did say, to be sure! No, I don’t long for that life. But I would like a new skirt.”

  “Do you miss the Baron?”

  Jeweltongue laughed and picked up the teapot to pour. “I miss him least of all. Although I would have enjoyed redecorating his town house. Drink this while it’s hot. Lionheart has sent you a piece of her shortbread, see? You have to eat it or her feelings will be hurt. She roars because she can’t help herself, you know.”

  “I do not,” said Lionheart’s head, appearing through the trapdoor in the loft floor. “I roar because—because—If you let Tea-cosy eat that shortbread, Beauty, I really shall roar. And if you don’t come downstairs soon, I will feed your supper to Lydia.”

  It was at the end of the summer that the letter came. Each spring and autumn since they had lived in Rose Cottage, one or two or three of the traders from the convoy that had brought them here stopped in on their journey past, to see how the old man who had once been the wealthiest merchant in the richest city in the country and his three beautiful daughters—with a good deal of joshing about the metamorphosis of the eldest into a son, always accompanied by the promise not to give her away—did in their exile.

  The leader of the original convoy seemed to take a proprietorial pleasure in their small successes and always noticed the improvements they had made since last he saw them: brighter eyes, plumper frames, clothing that not only fitted well (Jeweltongue would have nothing less round her) but which bore fewer visible darns and patches, chairs all of whose legs matched, enough butter and butter knives to go round when they had a fifth, or even a sixth, person to tea.

  This visit was less cheerful than usual; the weather had been bad all over the country, and the traders suffered for it too. Lionheart, who was the best of the three sisters at pretending high spirits she did not feel, was not there, and Mr Strong was preoccupied. He was in a hurry; the convoy had lost so much time to the weather they were passing right through Longchance with barely a pause. “Mr Brownwaggon and Mr Baggins send their regards and beg pardon for not coming round,” he said. “But we’ll be returning near here in a few days, before we head south again, and one of us will stop in if there is any reply we can take for you.”

  Reply? They glanced at one another, puzzled.

  “I am very back to front today,” Mr Strong said, groping in his breast-pocket. “Please forgive me. This rain gets into one’s head and rots the intellect. I would have come anyway to say hello, but as it happens—” and he pulled out an envelope and laid it on the table.

  Soon after, he said his good-byes and left them, but the echo of the door closing and the slog of his footsteps had long gone before anyone made a move toward the envelope. Jeweltongue, who had sat next to Mr Strong at tea, and was nearest, said, “It’s addressed to you, Father,” but her hands remained buried in the fabric on her lap. Beauty stood up and collected the tea-things, putting the bread and butter back in the cupboard with elaborate care, setting the dirty plates in the washing-up bowl as if the faintest rattle of crockery would awaken something terrible.

  She had finished washing up, tipped the water down the pipe, pumped enough fresh water to refill the kettle and the water-jug, and begun to dry the tea-things and put them away when Jeweltongue abruptly leant forward, jerkily picked the letter up, and dropped it hastily in front of her father, as if she wanted to be rid of it as quickly as possible, as if she wanted to push it as far away from herself as she could, as if it were literally unpleasant to the touch.

  Their father dragged his eyes away from the fire—hissing as the rain dripped into the chimney—and took it up. He held it for a long moment and looked back at the fire, as if tempted to toss it into the heart of the small blaze. With a sigh, he bowed his head and broke the seal.

  One of his ships, presumed lost at sea, had returned, loaded with fine merchandise, worth a great deal of money. His best clerk—whose wife sent her regards, adding that she still prized her collection of once-silent canaries who now sang chorales finer than the cathedral choir, and whose rehabilitated sphinx was, she and her husband agreed, better than any watchdog they had ever had—had contrived to have the ship impounded till his old master could arrive. But he pleaded that he should come soon, for he himself was only a clerk, and working for a new master, who took a dark view of his new clerk working for another man.

  “What he does not say is ‘a man disgraced and driven out of town,’” said the old merchant, having read the letter aloud to his daughters. “I suppose I must go.”

  Silence fell. Beauty went on polishing and polishing the dish in her hand; Jeweltongue stared blankly at the needle she had just threaded. Tea-cosy, who had been hiding under the table—her usual lair in anxious times—crept out, scuttled over to Beauty on her belly, and tried to press herself between Beauty’s feet, tucking her head and forequarters under the hem of her skirt.

  Beauty reached down absently with the hand still holding the damp tea-towel, to pat the still-visible hindquarters. “Wait at least till Lionheart comes home again,” she said.

  The old merchant appeared to rouse himself. “If I can. But I must be prepared to leave when the convoy returns.”

  When Lionheart came home two days later, she hurtled through the door as she had done every week since this wretched year had begun, scowling, ready to shout at anything that displeased her, softening only to greet the ecstatic Tea-cosy.

  Her father’s news stopped her. Bewilderment, and dismay, replaced the scowl. “Must you go? Surely—surely you can ask Mr Lamb to dispose of the goods and—and take a commission?”

  “I could. But it would not be honourable.” He lifted his shoulders. “You do not know; there may be something left at the—at the end.” His daughters, Beauty particularly, knew better than he did how many debts had been left to pay after their house had been seized and their property auctioned. There were legal papers saying these were to be forgotten, but they would be remembered again as soon as there was money to pay them. “What shall I bring you?”

  Lionheart shook her head, and her scowl returned. “Yourself, home safe. Soon.”

  Their father smiled a little. “Jeweltongue?”

  Jeweltongue smoothed the sleeve on her lap. It was silk, with lace insets, and the lace had gold threads in it that caught the light. It was much like one of the sleeves of a dress she had herself worn to the party when the Baron had taken her a little aside and proposed marriage to her, telling her that he cared for nothing but her and her beauty and brilliance and that if she agreed to marry him, he would be the happiest man on earth. She was to leave all her dresses and jewels to her sisters, for once she was his bride he would buy her a new wardrobe that would make the queen herself look dowdy; her father could provide her with a dowry or not, it was a matter of greatest indifference to him. She had always been fond of that dress, and when Miss Jane True-word had spoken of silken sleeves with lace insets, she had remembered it. “Nothing,” she said. “Nothing at all. But that you come home again as quickly as you may.”

  “Beauty. There must be something I can bring you.”

  He looked so sad that Beauty cast her mind round for something she could suggest. He would know she did not mean it if she asked for jewels and pretty dresses. They had Tea-cosy and did not need another house pet, nor could they afford to feed and shelter anything beyond Lydia, her latest kid, and the chickens. Whatever it was, it needed to be something
small, that would not burden him on the way. They really lacked for nothing at Rose Cottage—nothing but the sun—nothing, so long as they wished to stay here, and it seemed to her that they did wish to stay here.

  Nothing but the sun. Her eyes moved to the windowsill, where an empty vase stood, and she gave a little laugh that was mostly a sob. “You could bring me a rose.”

  Her father nodded gravely, acknowledging the joke. And when the convoy returned, he went with them.

  The winter the old merchant spent in the city he had been born in and lived in all his life till the last three years was sadder and emptier even than he had expected. His clerk had not succeeded in keeping the impoundment proof against raids from his old creditors; there was little enough left even by the time he arrived, and he saw none of it at all. Winter frosts came early, but no snow fell; the muddy, churned ground froze solid and into such rutted, tortured shapes that many of the roadways were impassable. He found himself stranded in the city week after week, with almost no money even to put food in his mouth; if the Lambs had not taken him in, he did not know what he would have done.

  Yet he had to keep hidden even that kindness, for his clerk’s new master disliked any expression of loyalty—or even human sympathy—to his old. The old merchant rather thought that Mr Lamb’s new master had taken him on as a deliberate gesture of spite against himself, but he found he no longer cared. He lived in a tiny house called Rose Cottage, very far away from here, and as soon as the weather broke, he would return. He knew now that his daughters had been right, and he should never have come in the first place. Well, he had learnt his lesson.

  But he was not able to wait for the weather. His old business rival discovered his clerk’s, as he put it, duplicity, and declared that the clerk could choose between his job and sheltering a ruined man. Mr Lamb did not tell him this; the captain of the ship that had returned found out about it. The captain offered his own home as alternative, but the old merchant declined. He was bad luck in this city, and the sooner he left the better. Reluctantly he did accept the loan of a horse—or rather of a stout shaggy pony—from the captain, on the man’s flatly refusing to let him leave town on any other terms. “It’s winter out there, you old fool; you could die of it, and then where would your daughters be?”

 

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