Rose Daughter

by Robin McKinley

  “Perhaps it is easiest to say that they were no longer rose-petals. Somehow they warned the greenwitch what had happened. Perhaps they spoke to her in a dream. But the result was she had warning—not enough, not much, but a little. The greenwitch had known—had to have known—what she risked by deceiving a sorcerer. And she had to have known that if—when—he discovered the truth about the simulacrum, his rage would be very terrible, and more terrible still if he understood that a mere greenwitch was responsible. But his rage was even greater than that which is to say that in the moment of revelation, when he saw what he had carelessly believed to be a woman weeping rose-petals, he guessed as well that the philosopher he had despised—had hated—had indeed been pursuing some course of study that the sorcerer would have found very useful, that he would yet find very useful, just as soon as he had his revenge.

  “Quickly the greenwitch threw up what defenses she could, and they were little enough; but she was still clever, if perhaps not as wise as she had thought she was on the day she had gathered rose-petals to make a simulacrum. She had not time to send word to the young philosopher, who was now nearly a middle-aged philosopher, but she had time to throw some kind of spell over him and his house.…” Mrs Words-Without-End faltered to a halt and looked round at her audience.

  “You see the story does not have a proper ending. The sorcerer meant to blast both the greenwitch and the philosopher off the face of the earth, which he would certainly have been able to do had he come down on them without warning. But blasting people leaves traces. There were no traces. The philosopher disappeared. His servants woke up one morning and found themselves lying in a field. Their master and his fine house were gone. It took a little longer to discover that the greenwitch had disappeared too—and not merely gone off on one of her collecting expeditions, to return when she chose. But the sorcerer had also disappeared. My grandmother said he’s the reason no magic will settle here—but there are many tales told about that; why should this one be the right one?—that it was what he did that has left this place so troubled that no good magic can rest here. She said that it’s only the rose-bushes the greenwitch planted at Rose Cottage that have held Longchance safe from worse—even though they’ll only bloom when a greenwitch lives there.”

  CHAPTER

  12

  Mrs Words-Without-End went to Jeweltongue, who was standing, looking stricken, and seized her hands. Her father gripped Jeweltongue’s shoulder; Mr Whitehand stood close at her side. Mrs Words-Without-End said: “It is only a silly tale, the silliest of tales. I forgot myself in the pleasure of your father’s reading of his most romantic poem. It is all nonsense, of course, as silly tales are—”

  Jeweltongue said, stiffly, as if she were very cold: “And the ghost? You never told us who the ghost is.”

  “Yes!” said several voices at once. “Who is the ghost?”

  Mrs Words-Without-End said to Jeweltongue: “The ghost is the ghost of the simulacrum. Sometimes she is nothing but a breath of the scent of a rose on the air, especially in winter. Sometimes you can just see her, but often only as a kind of shadow, a silhouette, of a woman with long hair, holding a rose to her breast, as if its stem grew from her heart. I saw her often when I was a little girl—I had seen her several times before my grandmother told me the story—and then it was as if she went away, oh, for twenty years or more. But then she came back, about ten years ago now.…”

  “But why does she come to you?” said a voice.

  Mrs Words-Without-End said to Jeweltongue: “My father was a kind of cousin to the philosopher who disappeared. My father’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather inherited the philosopher’s other properties, including this house. I’ve always lived in this house. I made my poor husband come here when I married him. I might have made him change his name, except that he is a cousin too, and already had it. I—I have been afraid that if one of our family no longer lives here, perhaps the ghost will no longer have a home; and if she needs a home, I wish her to have it. I—I don’t know what possessed me to tell the story tonight. I do believe the storm has crept into my head and disarranged all my thinking. I have never told it to anyone but my husband and my daughters, once they were grown, when our ghost returned after her long absence. Except that … it has seemed to me lately that she is around much more than she ever used to be. Even my husband has seen her several times, in the last several months, and he had never seen her before. And she seems to be restless in some way; I have even felt that she has been asking me to do something, and the only thing I can think of to do for her is to tell her story.”

  Beauty heard the rain pounding against the windows and the wind thundering as if it would have the house off its foundations, and she felt as if the wind and the rain were dragging and drumming at her, and wished she could hold on to her chair for comfort; but she could not move her hands. She seemed only able to move her eyes, and she stared at Mrs Words-Without-End, stared as the marmalade cat stared at herself, as if she could not look away. A gust against the wall of the house made her quiver, and she had to blink, and blink and blink again, as if rain were running into her eyes. I am dreaming, she told herself again. There is nothing to be frightened of; it is only a dream; I will wake in my bed, I will wake in my bed in …

  As Mrs Words-Without-End fell silent, the sound of the storm seemed to swell; the lash of rain against the house struck like a blow from something solid as a bludgeon, and it poured down the windows with a heavy splash like a bucket overturned on a doorstep. Everyone in the room had moved slowly towards the front, to be near Mrs Words-Without-End as she told her story, as if attracted by some irresistible force, and now seemed fixed on the sight of Mrs Words-Without-End with her hand holding Jeweltongue’s, staring into her eyes, and the dumb, amazed look on Jeweltongue’s face; and with the muffling of all other sound by the bellow of the storm, everyone started and looked round in alarm when someone threw back the half-closed doors at the rear of the room.

  Beauty still could not stir. She turned her eyes, and her neck consented to move slowly, slowly, slowly, but still not so far that she could look over her shoulder and see who—or what—had arrived. Mrs Words-Without-End seemed to shrink away from whoever it was; she put her arm round Jeweltongue’s shoulders, but whether she wished to comfort Jeweltongue or herself it was impossible to say.

  Beauty felt a tap on her shin and looked down; there was the marmalade cat, patting at her leg, as if asking to jump into her lap. Beauty’s lips slowly shaped the words Oh, yes, please, though she had no voice to utter them, nor could she have made herself heard now over the storm bar shouting; but the cat understood, and leapt up, and trod her skirts into a shape it liked, and lay down. Beauty gave up trying to look over her shoulder and, automatically trying to bend her arm to cradle the cat, discovered that she could, and with the first touch of warm fur on her skin a little life seemed to come to her, as if she were in this room in truth instead of only in dream. And as the intruder strode down the aisle towards Mrs Words-Without-End and the little group on the hearth-rug, she was able to turn her head easily and watch.

  “The weather has held me up, or I would have been here sooner,” he said, speaking in an authoritative, carrying voice, which rode over the storm like a practised actor’s over hecklers. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and gave it a shake, sending water fanning out over the empty chairs on the side of the aisle away from Beauty. Beauty saw Mr Whitehand’s fists clench at his sides.

  “I was delighted when I heard of your little literary occasion, and I planned to come—I know you would have sent me an invitation had you known I was interested—because I have a story to tell too.”

  Beauty had recognised the man now: Jack Trueword, the squire’s eldest son. She had only seen him once or twice, in Longchance, riding his glossy highbred horse, looking faintly amused or faintly bored, staring over everyone’s heads, perfectly certain that everyone was looking at him, because he was the squire’s elder and handsomer son. Be
auty remembered him chiefly for that conviction of his own fascination, which he wore like a suit of clothes; to her eye he had never been more than a good-looking, spoilt, idle young man. But tonight she looked at him and was afraid, as if the spirit of the storm had entered the room in the person of Jack Trueword. His face was animated, but his smile was so wide as to be a grimace, his eyes were too bright, and his sharp glance moved jerkily round the room. He walked and turned and made his gestures with a barely restrained energy, as if with every motion he had to remember not to knock people down and hurl the furniture through the windows or into the fire.

  He tossed back his hair, held his wet hat delicately in one hand, and shrugged out of his cape, deftly catching it with his other hand. He gave the cape a spin, and this time Beauty was spattered by the wet, though she did not feel it. The cat on her lap did and interrupted her purring with little bass notes like growls. If anyone looked at me, thought Beauty, and I am a ghost, where is the cat sitting? Is she floating a handsbreadth in the air?

  But no one did look at her; everyone was looking at Jack Trueword. He laid the cape over the back of a chair, and the hat upon it, with a flourish worthy of the villain in a penny pantomime.

  “I think I heard the rather interesting end of a story Mrs Oldhouse was telling, as I was entering. Something about a ghost—a woman made of rose-petals—and a sorcerer. Quite a flamboyant mix, perhaps—just the thing for a literary company.” He strolled up the rest of the aisle and turned on the hearth-rug. “My story has perhaps some elements in common with it.” The marmalade cat stopped purring.

  “Mrs Oldhouse,” said Jack Trueword solicitously, “you look tired. Indeed, if you were to ask my opinion, I would say you look … drained. As if some … involuntary magic—eh?—had been called out of you. Perhaps something to do with that very interesting story you just told, that you have so rarely told? Magic takes care of itself, you know. I would wonder a little myself about a story of magic that so wishes not to be told. Especially here, you know, in Longchance …”

  Mrs Words-Without-End, and Jeweltongue and her father, and Mr Whitehand stared at Jack Trueword as if fascinated. The others in the room began to stir and murmur, as if coming out of a trance, as if waking from some spell that had held them. They looked at one another a little uneasily and started as another particularly fierce blast of wind shook the house.

  “Even the storm itself seems a bit … extreme, does it not?” Jack Trueword went on thoughtfully. “As though something were trying to get in. Or perhaps out. The storm is most powerful just here, by the way. When I set out from the Hall, it was merely raining. Even at the other end of Longchance the wind is no more than brisk. But when I turned through your gates, Mrs Oldhouse, I thought the wind would knock my horse off its legs.

  “I am very sorry I did not hear more of your story, Mrs Oldhouse. Perhaps if I had, I would have understood it better. Sorcerers don’t disappear, you know. That bit of your story doesn’t make any sense—pardon me, Mrs Oldhouse. But sorcerers can be driven away or even ensorcelled themselves. You have to be very strong indeed to ensorcel a sorcerer, but it can be done. There are stories about it.

  “I’m afraid I also don’t accept the idea that any sorcerer would for a moment fail to recognise a simulacrum as a simulacrum—however beautiful she was—especially a simulacrum made by a greenwitch. No, I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense either. I’m very sorry, Mrs Oldhouse, I seem to be ruining your story. But truth is important, don’t you think?

  “My story begins … once upon a time and very long ago, but perhaps not so very far away, there were three sorcerers. I think, really, the first sorcerer was only a magician, but little the less dangerous for that, because she was so very ambitious. The second sorcerer had been distracted from the usual paths of power by his interest in immaterial philosophies. He spent his days discussing, with various citizens of various ethereal planes, how many hippogriffs can dance on the head of a pin, and such airy matters.

  “The third sorcerer was a practical fellow. He too was ambitious, and his ambition had once betrayed him into carelessness: He had made the mistake of demonstrating that he was a little too clever for his own good a little too soon—and to the wrong man. He decided to move well away from the city where he had made his little mistake, and to stay away, till his name, in people’s minds, and especially in that one wrong man’s mind, should have lost some of its prominence.

  “He had heard of a town—let us call it Longchance—quite a small town to have two sorcerers in it already, but it was attractively far away from the city he wished to leave, and rather isolated, and he did prefer to go somewhere that contained at least one or two of his colleagues, because he wished to go on studying and knew that studying in a vacuum always leads to carelessness, sooner or later. He was not going to be careless again, if he could help it.

  “And so he moved to this town we are calling Longchance, and was apparently welcomed by both the sorcerers—or the sorcerer and the magician—already in residence, and all went well for some time.

  “But sorcerers still have to eat, and unsurprisingly, they most often earn their bread by their sorceries. It so happens that the philosopher-sorcerer was the last of a wealthy family, which is no doubt why he could permit himself the luxury of philosophy in the first place. But the woman, sorcerer as she called herself, needed people to pay for her services, as did the third sorcerer. And after the third sorcerer had been living for some little time in his new home, she began to notice that when people wanted sorcery, they more and more often went to him; her they were only asking the littlest, meanest charms, love philtres, counterspells against the souring of milk by ill-natured persons known or unknown, herbs to take warts off or soothe croup. Greenwitch sorts of things that no sorcerer should be expected to perform.

  “Do I begin to see some doubtful recognition on some of your faces? We all know there is some reason no magic has settled here in a very long time. And we think we know it has something to do with some great conflict between sorcerers.

  “The greenwitch—for perhaps she was only ever a greenwitch—grew terribly jealous of the third sorcerer, or perhaps she only fell in love with him. That she brewed a beauty potion of rose-petals is true, but she made no simulacrum. She could not have done so much. She brewed the potion for herself and arrayed herself in an irresistible beauty.

  “No one recognised her, for she had been a plain woman, and both the sorcerers fell in love with her, and each wanted her for himself. But the philosopher had been a philosopher too long, and his sprites were of no use to him here. The third sorcerer won her, as she meant for him to win her. And she convinced him, for her false beauty was the stupefying sort which throws a shadow over its lover, that she too was a powerful sorcerer and that together they could do anything. Perhaps she even believed it herself.

  “I do not know everything about what happened next. I have been researching the story, you see; something that has occurred recently brought the old nursery tale to my mind again, something I will tell you … a little later. But there are gaps in the story I cannot fill. I have even stolen a look at Mrs Oldhouse’s father’s notes—I’m sure you will forgive me, Mrs Oldhouse, as I was only seeking the truth—but I found nothing about anyone weeping rose-petals. That must be a part of the story you had from your grandmother. Women are such romancers. Well, I believe that the third sorcerer and his new mistress went off to that city the third sorcerer had left, to confront the man who had made it necessary for him to leave it.

  “The third sorcerer lost that confrontation, of course. But he lost far more than he had over his initial mistake. He was dying, I believe, and, in dying, was half mad with the too-late understanding that he had been betrayed. The woman’s beauty was stripped from her, and he saw it go and knew who she was and what she had done. In order to save her own wretched life—for she had taken little part in the disastrous meeting with her lover’s old nemesis—she told him that it had been the philosopher who had b
ewitched her—how she lied!—that she herself had only known what had happened to her when the spell was torn away. She said that the philosopher had bewitched her because it had been he who was jealous of the third sorcerer who had come and settled on his territory, as he had long been jealous of her, and he saw this means to be rid of them both.…

  “And with his last strength, the dying sorcerer put a curse on the philosopher, a curse as great as he could make it. Perhaps he still loved the woman … a little, even with her beauty gone from her. Perhaps he remembered that the philosopher had not fought so very hard for possession of the woman; perhaps he, being otherwise made and desiring material successes, underestimated the attractions of philosophy. He wanted what the woman had said to be true.

  “And he had been nearly a very great sorcerer, before he was cut down, and the end of his strength was considerable. He meant only to seize the philosopher, but he was dying, in pain, and he did not manage very well. His curse blasted not merely his supposed enemy—who, with his house, disappeared overnight, and his servants awoke the next morning in a field, just as in Mrs Oldhouse’s story—but his curse fell on Longchance as well, like shards from an exploding cannon.

  “Those shards remain. Their substance seeps into the ground, hangs like scent in the air we breathe; our noses are too dull for the work, but as a man will not build his house near a stagnant bog, no magical practitioner will come to a place that stinks of an old curse. This is perhaps inconvenient, you may say, but little more; Appleborough is not so far away, and there are greenwitches there, and a magician, and what use has Longchance for sorcery anyway? And you might be right—except that is not quite the end of the story.