Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley

  She followed the lighted corridor till she came to the chamber of the star—eight doors; she counted and shook her head—and found the door to her rooms open for her. She drifted through them till she came to her bedroom, and she looked at the bed, longing to lie down on it and be lost in sleep, and her hand reached up and grasped the embroidered heart.

  But there was a beautiful scarlet and crimson dress laid across the bed, and stockings and shoes, and a necklace lay almost invisible on the ruby towels of the washstand, so dark were its red stones, and there was fresh warm water in the basin and a steaming ewer at the foot of the table. “I am to dress for dinner, am I?” she said wearily; but she was too tired either to protest or to be afraid of seeing the Beast again (he is so very large, whispered a little voice in her mind), and so she washed, and dressed herself, and clasped the necklace round her neck and the drops in her ears, and tucked the little embroidered heart at the end of its long rope into the front of her bodice, and tied up her hair with the ruby-tipped pins she found under the necklace.

  When she went to the chamber of the star, she was too tired to count the doors, too tired to do anything but concentrate on not listening to the little voice in her head, saying, You will not be able to see him clearly, now, as the twilight deepens, and the candle flames throw such strange shadows; he is dark, almost black, and he wears black clothing, and he walks very quietly—noiselessly; you will not know where he is until he is just beside you.…

  The chamber of the star itself was dark, the first stars showing through the dome overhead, but another door was open for her, and candles gleamed through it, and she went towards the light at once, her shoes pattering like mice.… He is so very large, whispered the voice.

  She went down the dim candlelit corridor surrounded by darkness, and suddenly she was in her dream.

  Her tiredness dropped away, and panic replaced it. Her heart drummed in her ears, and her vision began to fail her; she sat down where she was, in the middle of the corridor, with her cascades of skirts and petticoats flying round her, and she was weeping again, weeping like a child, wholehearted and despairing, for she was all, all alone, and the monster waited for her—for her—

  “Beauty—”

  The Beast had approached her as silently as he had done that morning, as silently as the little voice had said he would. She looked up through her tears, snapping her head back so quickly her neck sent a sharp shock of pain up and down her spine, and all she could see was a great dark shape bending over her from the coiling shadows. She shrieked and scrabbled away from him, dragging herself along on all fours, smothered by her skirts. She could not see properly, between tears and darkness; she thudded into the corridor wall and stopped because she had to. The jolt shook the panic’s hold on her; she still wept, but less violently, and then she remembered the Beast.

  She rubbed her face with her hands and tried to look up at him again, but she could not find him in the shadows. Was he there, in the corner between the tallboy and the wall, or there, where the shadow of that plinth extended the black pool of shadow left by the heavy deep frame of that picture? … Fear seized and shook her, as savagely as if cruel hands held her shoulders; but she set her will against it and forced it back, and then another little unhappy fear said to her: What if he had left her before she had a chance to apologise?

  Speaking into the darkness, she said: “I—I am sorry—please forgive me—it is a dream—a dream I have had since childhood—that I am lost—walking down a dark corridor, alone, and—and—” She scrambled somehow to her feet, stepping on her skirts, needing to lean against the wall to sort herself out, knocking her hand against the frame of another picture, its subject invisible in the gloom though she stood directly next to it. The Beast had emerged from the shadows by taking a step towards her, his hand outstretched to offer her his aid, but she saw him check himself before the gesture was completed; had she not shrieked at the sight of him but a moment before?

  She was ashamed. She would not—she would not—be frightened of him; he was what he was, and he had made a promise he would keep. It is only the silly human way of needing to be able to see everything; if Tea-cosy were here, she would know at once everything she needed to know through her nose.… The shadows fell across his face, but she could hear him breathing. There was a faint, elusive odor; it reminded her of the scent she had caught—or imagined—in her rooms that afternoon.

  “The dream—the dream has frightened me all my life.” She moved towards him in such a manner that he must turn to look at her, turn so that the candlelight fell once more on his face. She saw him flinch as it touched him, and she kept her eyes steadily on his face. “I am ashamed of myself.”

  She heard the rumble of his voice, like a low growl, before he spoke any words: “Do not be ashamed. There is nothing to forgive. This … house … is large, and it is strange to you. As am I.” He paused. “But I know that dream. I have had it too. And you have not told me all of it, have you? There is something that waits for you at the end of the corridor. Something that waits just for you. Something terrible. A monster—or a Beast.”

  “Yes,” said Beauty gravely. “You are right. Something does wait at the end of the corridor. But it is a monster—not a Beast.”

  They stood still, the shadows curling round them, the little glow of the candlelight on their two faces.

  The Beast turned away at last, saying, “I am keeping you from your dinner.” He raised his arm, that she might precede him, but she slipped up to him, and put her arm through his, and led him down the corridor, the long train of her skirts rustling behind them, the Beast silent beside her. It was only then that she realised that the corridor was full of a wild rich rose smell, and that the smell came from the Beast himself.

  Dinner was laid in a hall so tall and wide that both walls and ceiling were lost in darkness, though there were several many-armed torchères clustered round the end of the table nearest them as they came through the door. The Beast held the chair at the head of the table for Beauty; she settled herself in it reluctantly, and it was not till he had sat down some little distance from her that she realised there was a place setting only for her. “Do you not eat with me?” she said in simple surprise.

  He lifted his shoulders and spread his hands—paws. “I am a Beast; I cannot eat like a man. I would not disgust you—in any way I can prevent.”

  Beauty bowed her head. When she looked up, her plate had been served, though she was quite sure the Beast had not moved. She ate a little, conscious of the Beast’s silent presence. (What is he looking at? said the little voice in the back of her mind. Even sitting down, he is—so very large. Look! One of his hands—half curled, there, as it lies—one of his hands is as large as—as large as that bowl of fruit. And see! The nails are as long as your fingers, shining and curved like crescent moons, the tips sharp as poignards.…) She finished quickly, saying, “I fear I am not very hungry; it has been a—a long and tiring day. I must ask you to forgive me—again.”

  The Beast was on his feet at once, his gown eddying round him, briefly blocking the brightness of the gold and silver bowls and dishes on the dark table. “Again I say to you that there is nothing to forgive. If I were to have my will in this, I would ask that there be no talk of ‘forgiveness’ between us. I have not forgotten—I will not forget—on what terms you are here at all.”

  Beauty, for all her desire to trust him, to not fear him, to remember her pity for him, could think of no response to this. “I—I will be clearer-headed in the morning,” she said faintly. She stood up and turned towards the door.

  “Beauty, will you marry me?” said the Beast.

  For a moment the panic of the corridor, and of the dream, swelled up in Beauty’s mind and heart again, but as she put her hands on her breast, as if to press her heart back into its place, the little wind her hands made blew the smell of roses to her again. She sighed then, and more in sadness than in fear she whispered, meaning the words only for herself, “Oh, wh
at shall I say?”

  But the Beast had heard. “Say yes or no without fear,” he replied.

  She raised her eyes; again he stood in shadow, and she could not see his face. The candlelight made a silhouette of him; she knew he fidgeted with the edge of his robe with one hand because she could see the cloth judder and jerk. She could not see his face. “Oh, no, Beast,” she said.

  The Beast nodded once and then turned and left her, disappearing into the darkness towards some other way than that by which they had entered, moving perfectly surely into the blackness; her last glimpse was of a shimmer of long hair sliding over one shoulder.

  She had no recollection of making her way back to her rooms, undressing, or climbing the little stairs by her bed, but she woke hours later, staring at the canopy, not sure if she was awake or dreaming still, for she had been walking down a dark corridor full of the smell of roses, and she had been hurrying, hurrying, to come to the end of it, to comfort the sadness that hid itself there.

  She fell asleep again and dreamt of her sisters.

  At first it was a very ordinary sort of dream. She seemed to watch Jeweltongue and their father at Rose Cottage, going about ordinary activities; she was pleased to see that her father seemed fit and well again, although his hair was whiter than it had been, and his face more lined with grief. She thought: Not for me! Oh, Father, not for me! She yearned to be there with them, but she was not; she was an onlooker, and they were unaware of her presence.

  But then something changed, and Beauty, dreaming, did not know what it was, only that it made her uneasy. Perhaps it was only that her family looked so—so ordinary without her, and she wished some clear token that they missed her as she missed them—no, that wasn’t it, for she could read the careful look on Jeweltongue’s face, the look she had always used when she wished to hide something, a look that had often worked on her father and her elder sister, but never on her younger. Beauty knew Jeweltongue was hiding the same grief that lined their father’s face, and it struck at her like the blade of a knife. This was not right; she wanted them to miss her, to know that she was—not even so very far away—in an enchanted palace, and that she held a small embroidered heart in her hands and loved and missed them. Their apparent grief made her feel more isolated than ever, as if the enchantment were an unbridgeable chasm, as if she would never see them again, never hold them in her arms and be held by theirs.… Now Lionheart was with them, whirling round the kitchen, setting dough to rise, rolling out pastry, chopping herbs from Beauty’s garden; and Beauty knew too what her blaze of activity meant, just as she could read the look on Jeweltongue’s face, and again she felt the blow like the blade of a knife, and her heart shook in her breast.

  But the scene changed again, but only a very little, as if a veil had been thrown over it, or a veil taken away; it was almost as if the colour changed or as if the sun went behind a cloud, and Beauty remembered Jeweltongue laying swatches of lace and netting over an underskirt and saying, “This one, do you think? Or this one?”

  Jeweltongue’s face and manner were now stiff and brittle; Lionheart’s gestures seemed informed by an old anger.

  “You shouldn’t have gone,” said Lionheart, and Beauty with a shock seemed to hear her voice as if she were in the room with them.

  “I know I shouldn’t have gone! But I did go. It’s done. I went.”

  “It was very silly of you. I don’t understand how you could have been so silly.”

  “Don’t be so dull! Don’t you ever feel … lonesome?”

  Lionheart set the bowl she was carrying down carefully and stood still for a moment. Her brows snapped together. “No,” she said forcefully. Her face relaxed again. “But … I’m too busy. I make sure that I am too busy. And there are always other people around—always—even when none is a friend.”

  Jeweltongue nodded, and her voice lost a little of its edge. “Father is out all day, and Beauty is … we don’t know when we’ll see Beauty again, and if I am working on something, I may see no one at all but Father in the evenings all week. Sometimes I go along to market-day just for the company. I have even thought of asking Mrs Bestcloth if she might let me have the little room over her shop, to work in; it is only a kind of storeroom, and I don’t take up much space. I’m almost sure she would let me; it is not only that she knows I am good for business, she has been a friend to me. But that is why I cannot ask her. We still cannot afford to pay rent money, even for part use of a room the size of a small wardrobe.

  “I don’t miss the city, but I do wish we could live nearer town. If it weren’t for Beauty’s garden … But I would still wish to live in town, where you can hear footsteps outside and voices that aren’t always your own, even if you’re working, even if you don’t want to talk yourself.”

  Lionheart shook her head. “No towns for me. But … I don’t like wild land, like this. Oh, I know it isn’t really wild—Longchance is too close—but it’s wild enough. Longchance is not a big town, is it? And then there’s nothing much till Appleborough, and then there’s nothing at all till Wishington, which is too far away to do anyone in Longchance any good. Goldfield is the only one who farms this end of Longchance, you know? There’s Goldfield, us, and … more nothing. I want fields, with horses in them, or growing hay for the horses—like up at the Hall—or wheat for my bread. If it weren’t for Beauty’s garden, I wouldn’t want to come back here either.” With her most ferocious scowl: “I keep thinking I see things among the trees.”

  Jeweltongue tried to laugh. “Maybe they’re friendly.”

  “You see them too, do you? The ones I see are never friendly.”

  “Since Beauty … I never used to … I almost fancy them as a kind of guardian, or I like to think so.… Something to do with Beauty, that they watch over her too, or even that the Beast sends them, that Beauty has told him … that he isn’t … that he is … I would think I was imagining all of it, except that Lydia sees them too. Silver shadows, among the trees, where the shadows should be lying dark, like shadows do.”

  Lionheart took a breath to speak, but Jeweltongue cut in quickly: “You’re worrying about nothing, you know. His father will prevent anything. Everything. I’m sure poor Miss Trueword has been raked up one side and down the other for inviting me.” Jeweltongue was trying to speak lightly and failing. “I only hope my misjudgement doesn’t prove disastrous for business.”

  “But what if the brat does decide to court you? I can tell you the other stable lads think he’s smitten. They all want to tell me about it—my friends to warn me, my enemies to gloat about the trouble it will cause.”

  “The son of the squire court a dressmaker?” Jeweltongue’s tone was sharp as needles. “‘But you have such beautiful manners, my dear,’” she said in a cruel imitation of Miss Trueword’s fluting voice. “A dressmaker who is so busy saving up to have the thatch replaced on the hut she lives in that she had to keep her hand over the hasty darn on her only half-decent skirt all the evening that the squire’s brainless sister had invited her to supper, which she had been brainless enough to accept.”

  She put her hands up suddenly and covered her face, and her voice through her fingers was muffled. “Oh, Lionheart, what came over me? Miss Trueword is kind and meant to be kind to me, and she genuinely likes my work. I do not believe it is just her vanity; she jokes that she has a figure like a lathe and does not expect me to deck her out in frills like a schoolroom miss. What need has she to be so clever she could cut herself on it? That has always been my great gift. I—I think she just invited me home to meet her family because she likes me, and the young ladies like me, and to the extent that that amiable animated bolster the squire married can stir herself to likes and dislikes, Mrs Trueword likes me, and there is not—there is not much society here, is there? The Oldhouses, and the Cunningmans, and the Tooksomes, and only the Oldhouses are … nice to have around. It was not at all a grand supper.… Perhaps the darn in my skirt did not matter.

  “Lionheart, do you know, it w
as because I knew I should not be there that I was so bright, so witty, that I talked too much? I wished to draw attention away from the holes in my skirt … the holes in my fingers … draw attention away from the fact that I am a dressmaker.”

  There was a little silence as the two sisters looked at each other. “A very fine dressmaker,” said Lionheart. “I hated your salons, have I ever told you? Full of people being vicious to each other and using six-syllable words to do it with. Your dresses are beautiful. Jeweltongue, love, it’s not that he’s the squire’s son—which I admit is a little awkward—but you’re wrong about old Squire Trueword. The real problem about Master Jack is that he’s a coxcomb and a coward. If you want to charm someone, cast your eye over the second son, Aubrey. I grant you he is neither so tall nor so handsome—nor will he have any money—but he is a good man, and kind, and—and—”

  Jeweltongue’s real laugh rang out, and as Beauty awoke, she just heard her sister say, “What you mean is that you approve of his eye for a horse—”

  “It was only a dream,” Beauty whispered to herself, “only a dream,” she insisted, even as she could not help looking eagerly around her new, strange, overglamorous bedroom for a glimpse of her sisters. Jeweltongue’s laugh still sounded in her ears; they must be here, with her, close to her, they must … She squeezed the little heart between her palms till her finger joints hurt.