Beauty

by Robin McKinley

  I don’t remember the next few weeks, after the sailor’s arrival, too well; nor do I regret that vagueness. I remember only too clearly that Father, who had been young and hearty, in a few days’ time came to look his age, which was past sixty; and poor Grace turned as white as cold wax when she heard the news, and went about the house like a silent nightmare, like the poor pale girls in old ballads who fade away until they are nothing more than grey omens to the living. Hope and I took turns trying to persuade our father and eldest sister to eat, and making sure that the fires in their rooms were well built up.

  Father made plans to take what little remained to him and us and retire to the country, where we could make shift to live cheaply. His rapid rise in business wealth and success had been based on his ability to take calculated risks. He had run ventures very near to the line before, and always come about, and so he had refused to believe that he would not come about at the last moment this time too. Consequently, our ruin was complete, for he had kept nothing in reserve. What little he had available to him he used to try and cushion the fall for some of his best men; most of it was sent with the third mate from the Stalwart, to try and find the men he had left behind him and help them out of their difficulties. The man left on his return journey less than a week after his arrival, although Father urged him to stay and rest, and send someone else in his stead. But he was anxious to see himself how his fellow crew members fared, and he would have the best chance of finding them again; he did not say it, but we knew that he was also anxious to leave the sight of us and the ruin he had brought to us, although it was none of his creation or blame.

  The house and lands were to be auctioned off; the money resulting would enable us to start again. But start what? Father was a broken man; he was now also labeled jinxed, and no other merchant would have anything to do with him, if he could have brought himself to work for another man. He had done no carpentry but trinkets for his daughters since he had given up shipbuilding for more lucrative business over thirty years ago; and he had no other marketable skills.

  It was at this low ebb in our thoughts and plans that Gervain came to visit us; this was about a week after the man from the Stalwart had told his story. The four of us were sitting silent in the parlour after dinner; usually we talked, or Father or myself read aloud while my sisters sewed, but we had little heart for such amusements now. The auction had already been set, for a day late next week; and Father had begun looking for a little house somewhere far from the city.

  Gervain was announced. Hope blushed scarlet, and then looked down quickly at her clasped hands. She had told me two days before that she had refused to see Gervain since the news of our downfall had come. There was no question of his not knowing; the whole city was talking about it. Father’s shipyard was being sold first of all to pay off business debts, and all the employees were wondering what their new master would be like, and if they would even still have jobs. Father had been both liked and respected by the men who worked for him—and admired for his daring in business ventures.

  Gervain explained the reason for his visit without preamble. He had looked forward, a few weeks ago, to making an offer, soon, for Hope’s hand. He understood that everything was suddenly changed; but he thought that he knew his own heart, and dared to trust that he knew Hope’s. When he had first wished to marry Hope and she had given him to believe that she would be willing to leave the city for a humbler life if her family consented, he had begun to look for an opening suitable to his skills as a blacksmith, through friends he still had living in the town of his childhood. He had heard just this afternoon of a house, with a shop and a forge and work waiting, in a small town only a few miles from the village he had been born and raised in.

  His suggestion was this: that he would be honoured if we would throw our fortune in with his. The house would be a bit small for five, but it could be enlarged; and, he added with a bow to Father, there was a bit of a carpenter’s shed with the blacksmith’s shop, and work for a good craftsman. He would not press his suit now, and we were not to think that any obligation fell on Hope to marry him as a reward for any trifling service such as he might be able to render us. He was sure that while such service might now seem more than might honourably be accepted, he knew that we only needed an introduction to a new way of life for us to make our own way, with honour. He would be deeply grateful to us if we allowed him to make that introduction.

  Father sat silent for a long moment after Gervain had done. Ger had been offered a seat when he first entered, and had refused it, now he stood as calmly as if he were in his own home waiting for dinner to be served. He was a good-looking man, though no beauty, with brown hair and serious grey eyes; I put his age at around thirty. He had worked for Father about six years, and was proved a steady and honest craftsman.

  Father said at last: “Hope, what this young man has said of you is true?” and Hope, blushing and paling by turns like an autumn sunset seen through wind-shaken leaves, nodded and said, “Yes, Father.” He raised his head then and looked at Ger, who had not moved but to breathe and follow our father with his eyes. “Gervain, I do not know if I do the right thing in my reply, for it is a heavy task you ask the burden of, for all your pretty words. But indeed I and my daughters are in sore need of help.” He looked round at us. “And we will, I think, be most grateful to accept what you offer.”

  Gervain bowed his head. “Thank you, Mr. Huston. I will, if I may, call on you sometime tomorrow, that we may discuss arrangements.”

  “Anytime that is convenient for you,” said Father, and with a touch of grim humour, added, “You may be sure of finding me here.”

  I don’t know what we would have done without Gervain. Since we had first known that the worst had happened, our lives had seemed to come to a halt: We could see no farther than each bleak day’s dawning, and the thought of the auction and the end of the life we had known seemed the end of life itself. We drifted through the hours like abandoned ships on a sea without horizon. Gervain’s plans, which, after a long afternoon’s conversation with our father, he was careful to explain to all of us, gave us something to think about. He was patient with everything but gloomy forebodings; encouraged questions, told us stories about the hilly, forested land we were going to that he loved so well; and, by his quiet enthusiasm, struck answering sparks of interest in our tired hearts. We had known that we would leave the city and travel, probably far away and out of reach of old friends and associations. Now we knew that we were bound for a little four-room house in a town called Blue Hill, with the deep hills on one side and forests at front and back, and that our journey there was likely to take between six weeks and two months. We even began to take some interest in the practical aspects of the trip as Gervain described horses and wagons and roads.

  It was easiest for Hope and me. I was the youngest, I was in love with no one except perhaps Euripides, and while I grieved deeply for my father and for Grace, there was little in the city or our life there that I loved for itself—although rather more that I took for granted, like my own maid and all the books that I wanted. I was frightened of the unknown that we faced, and of our ignorance; but I had never been afraid of hard work, I had no beauty to lose, nor would there be any wrench at parting from high society. I didn’t relish the thought of sleeping in an attic and washing my own clothes, but then it didn’t fill me with horror either, and I was still young enough to see it in the light of an adventure.

  Hope had told me weeks before that Gervain’s original plans had included a maid to do the heavy work, and four rooms would have been sufficient if not ample for the two of them (our house in town had eighteen rooms, including a ballroom two stories tall, plus kitchens and servants’ quarters). These latter days she was subdued, but there was an air of suppressed excitement about her. Once started on a task that could be finished in one effort, she would accomplish it efficiently enough; but she was absentminded about messages, or about remembering to return to a task only partially completed. Sh
e confessed to me one night that she felt guilty for feeling so happy: It was very selfish of her to be glad that she was going with Gervain, yet would not be moving away from her family.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said. “Seeing your happiness is what’s holding the other two together.” Nearly every night, after Grace and Father had gone to bed, Hope and I met, usually in my bedroom, to discuss how “the other two” were doing, and whether there was anything further that might be done for them. And for Hope to ease the tension of being quiet during the day for her father’s and elder sister’s sakes by babbling at length to me about how wonderful Gervain was. “Besides,” I added after a moment, “washing your own floors will be enough and plenty of reality for you.”

  “Don’t forget the tarry aprons you prophesied before,” Hope said, smiling.

  No one mentioned goblins or dragons or magicians.

  2

  The day of the auction came all too soon. The three of us spent it locked up in Grace’s sitting room, which had been reserved from the sale proceedings for the use of the family, shivering in each other’s arms, and listening to the strange voices and strange footsteps walking in our rooms. Gervain was in charge; Father had been bundled off to spend the day going over records at the shipyard; it was Ger who had the lists of items to be sold and saved, and it was he who answered questions.

  At the end of the day, Ger knocked on our door and said gently, “It’s all over; come out now, and have some tea.” Much of the furniture was left, for we had been left the house and “fittings” for the two more weeks Ger had estimated it would take us to be packed up finally and gone. But many of the small pieces—Father’s Chinese bowl, the smaller Oriental rugs, vases, little tables, the paintings off the walls—were gone, and the house looked forlorn. The three of us wandered from room to room clinging to each other’s hands, and silently counting the missing articles in the last sad rays of the setting sun. The house smelled of tobacco smoke and strange perfumes.

  Ger, after leaving us half an hour alone, swept us up from the drawing room where we had collapsed at last—it had suffered the fewest depredations of any of the rooms—and said, “Come downstairs, see what your friends have left you,” and refusing to say more, ushered us down to the kitchen. Father met us on the front stair, gazing at a dark rectangular spot in the wallpaper, and was brought along. Downstairs, on tables and chairs and in the pantry were laid haphazard any number of things, much of it food: smoked hams and bacon and venison, sealed jars of vegetables and preserves, and a few precious ones of apples and peaches and apricots. There were bolts of cloth, gingham and chintz, muslin, linen, and fine-woven wool; there were leathers, soft and supple and carefully stretched; and there were three heavy fur capes. There was also a canary in a cage, who tried a trill on us when we peered in at him.

  “You should not have let them do this,” said Father.

  “Indeed, I did not know,” Ger said, “and I am glad I did not, for I am not sure I would have tried to stop anyone. But I only discovered it myself a few minutes ago.”

  Father stood frowning; he had been very firm in resisting offers of charity, and in paying all his debts, even when fellow merchants were willing to cancel them silently, for old friendship’s sake.

  A few servants had pleaded to stay with us, even without pay, until we left; and although we could ill afford even to feed them, Father could not quite bring himself to send them away. One of them, a young woman named Ruth, came down the scullery stairs now and said, “Excuse me, Mr. Huston; there’s a man here to see Miss Beauty.”

  “All right,” I said, wondering who it might be. “You might as well send him down here.” Father made a restless motion, but said nothing. The rest of us looked at one another for a moment, and then there was the tread of heavy boots on the stairs, and Tom Black appeared in the doorway.

  Tom bred, raised, and trained horses; he had a stable in the city, and a stud farm outside the city, and an excellent reputation throughout a large portion of the country. He sold hacks and hunters and carriage horses for his livelihood; all our animals had come from him. My sisters had owned, up until this morning, two pretty, round little mares with gentle manners; and for me, who looked slightly better in the saddle than anywhere else, there had been a long lean chestnut gelding who could jump over anything that stayed in one place long enough for him to gallop up to it. But Tom’s real love was for the Great Horses, eighteen hands high and taller, descended from the big, heavy horses the knights had used to carry themselves and several hundred pounds of armour into battle at an earth-breaking gallop. Many draft horses pulling carts and ploughs across the country owed their size and strength to the diluted blood of these old chargers; but the horses Tom bred were sleek and beautiful, and ridden by princes.

  “Your horse,” he said to me. “I’ve left him in the stable for you. Thought I’d best tell you, so you could go down, say hello, settle him in; he’ll get lonesome by himself, now that all the little stuff is gone.” The little stuff was our riding and carriage horses, which had been taken away by their new owners. “And his saddle. It’s only an old one. A bit worn. But it’ll do you for a bit.”

  I was looking at him blankly.

  “Don’t gape at me, girl,” said Tom irritably. “Greatheart. He’s in the stable, waiting for you. I’m telling you to go say good night to him or he won’t sleep for worrying.”

  “You can’t give me Greatheart,” I said at last.

  “I’m not giving him to you,” replied Tom. “There’s no giving about it. He’s won’t eat if you go off without him. I know it. He’s already been missing you these last weeks; you come around so rarely, it makes him uneasy. So you take him with you. He’s a big strong horse. You’ll find uses for him.”

  “But—Tom,” I said desperately, wondering why no one else was saying anything. “He’s a tremendously valuable horse—you can’t want one of your Great Horses pulling a cart, which is all there’ll be for him with us. He should carry the King.”

  “He wouldn’t like carrying the King,” said Tom. “He’ll do what you tell him to. I didn’t think I had to tell you to be good to him, but I’m wishing you’d stop talking nonsense to me and go down to the stable. He’ll be worrying that you don’t come. Night, miss,” he said, nodding to each of the three of us, “sir,” to Father and Gervain. And he stamped back up the stairs again.

  We heard Ruth let him out; silence came to us on the backwash of the front door closing. “I guess I’d better go do what he says,” I said vaguely, still staring at the empty stairs Father started to laugh: the first real laugh we’d heard from him since the trouble began. “They’re all too much for us,” he said. “Bless them, we’d best leave town soon before we have too much to carry away.”

  “What is this horse that won’t eat if you leave it be hind?” inquired Gervain.

  I shook my head. “That’s all rubbish—he’s just giving him to me. I don’t know why. I used to lurk around his stable a lot.”

  “Horses are the only things that will take her away from her precious Greek poets,” said Hope. “And Tom says she’s the only woman he knows who can ride properly.”

  I ignored her. “One of Tom’s mares died giving birth, he said the foal might have a chance if someone who had the time and patience would bottle-feed it. So I did. I named the poor thing Greatheart—well, I was only eleven. That was four years ago. Tom usually sells them when they’re four or five. He let me do some of the training—not just the basic breaking to saddle; all his Great Horses learn some fancy steps, and how to behave on parade, how to stand at attention. Well I guess I’d better go.”

  “She used to read him her Greek translations,” murmured Grace. “And he survived.”

  “It gave her governess fits,” said Hope. “But then I’m sure that horse knows more Greek than Miss Stanley did.”

  I glowered at her. “He was here for a while, then I took him back to Tom’s stable when he was a yearling—but I’ve visited him nearly every
day—except, uh, recently.” I started up the stairs. “I’ll be back in a little. Don’t eat all the biscuits; I still want my tea.”

  “Can I come along and meet your horse?” said Ger.

  “Of course,” I said.

  Twelve days after the auction I rode Greatheart, with Grace riding pillion, out of the city we’d lived in all our lives, for the last time. The rest of the family rode in the long wooden wagon we followed. Ger was driving, and Hope sat beside him, with her arm around Father, who sat on the outside. None of us looked back. We were traveling with a group of wagoners who made this journey regularly twice a year: It began in the broad farm country south of the city and wound its way from town to town to the far north; they arrived at their final destination with only a few weeks to spare before they turned back and went south again. These men knew the road and what dangers it might offer, and were always willing—for a reasonable fee—to have a few pilgrims journey with them. Conveniently for us, the train passed about ten miles from the village that was to be our new home. Hope and I agreed, during one of our late-evening conversations, that this made us feel a little less desolate, a little less cut off from the rest of humanity and the world.

  I remembered, from several years ago, a family we had known a little whose fortunes in the city had suddenly collapsed; they had left in these same wagons with this same group. It had never occurred to me then to consider the possibility that we might one day follow them.

  Greatheart clopped along, nearly asleep, chewing meditatively on his bits; one of his easy strides reached as far as two of the small, sturdy wagon horses’. There had been a little difficulty about bringing him at all, for a riding horse was an expensive luxury; he was also a very visible incentive to any bold thief who might be watching us. But spring was well advanced, so there was no shortage of fresh fodder for my massive horse’s matching appetite, and I promised to break him to harness as soon as we were moved into our new home. Gervain shook his head over us, but I don’t think he ever meant to suggest that Greatheart be left behind. The wagoners shook their heads too, and muttered loudly that they who could afford to own a horse like that one could afford to travel in a party of their own, with hired guards, and not disturb their humble company with flashy lures to robbers and cutthroats. But the train was doing some business for Tom Black’s stable too, and the story must have come out, for several of the wagoners came up to us during the first few days to look at Greatheart a little more carefully, and with a little more sympathy—and curiosity.