Rose Daughter (29 page)

She went slowly, baffled by happiness, upstairs to her room,
where a bath awaited her; reproachfully, she thought, as her filthy skirt was
very nearly whisked out of her hands as she pulled it off. “Now, you slop that,”
she said, lightheaded and blithe. “What am I for if not to rescue the Beast’s
roses?”

But there was a sudden frantic shimmer in the air as she
spoke, as if something almost became visible, and the breath caught in her
throat; she opened her eyes very wide and stared straight at it—tried to stare
at it—and then screwed her eyes up to stare again, but whatever the something
was, was gone.

She shook her head to clear the dizziness, and then lay down
in the bath and closed her eyes. When, a little later, she put her hands on its
rim, to rearrange her position, she knocked into something with her elbow,
opened her eyes, and discovered a tray sitting over the bath, with a little
round loaf, a little round cheese, a pot of jam, and a pot of mint tisane upon
it. But it reminded her of one of Jeweltongue’s peace offerings, and she did
not know whether to laugh or cry. Crying won, and her joy was all gone away in
a rush, like bathwater down a drain, and even meeting unicorns was nothing in
comparison to the absence of her sisters.

“It will ail come right soon,” she said to herself. “Soon.
The roses will grow again, and then I will be able to go home.” But this did
not comfort her either, and she wept harder than ever, till she frightened
herself with the violence of her weeping, and stood up out of the bath, and
wrapped herself in several towels, and went to kneel by the little fire. Its
heat on her face dried her tears at last, and she returned to the forlorn tray
laid across the bath, and lifted it with her own hands, and set it down by the
fire.

She began to eat, realised how hungry she was, and ate it
all, wiping the last smear of jam from the bottom of its pot with her finger,
because the jam spoon wasn’t thorough enough. She was by then only just awake
enough to remember to divest herself of her towels and put on her nightgown
before she crept up the stairs to her bed.

(She had no dreams she remembered. She woke, with daylight
on her face, to a faint cheeping noise. She lay, still half asleep, her eyes
still closed, with the bedclothes wrapped deliciously round her, and thought
about things that cheep. It wasn’t a bird sound. She knew that immediately. It
wasn’t exactly familiar, but it wasn’t totally strange either. It didn’t sound
at all dangerous or threatening or—or—It did sound rather near at hand however.
Near enough at hand that if it was something she did not want to he sharing her
bed with ...

She opened her eyes. Fourpaws had made a nest in the elbow
between two pillows and had scrabbled up a hummock of coverlet to face it. She
lay with her back against the pillows, and with the sun behind her—and shining
in Beauty’s face—and with the hummock of the coverlet in the way as well, it
took Beauty a moment to comprehend the tiny stirrings that went with the
cheeping noise: kittens. Fourpaws responded to Beauty’s eyes opening, followed
by her rolling up on an elbow and breathing a long “Oh!” by beginning to purr.

There were four of them. They were so small it was
impossible to guess very much of what they would become, but three had vague
stripes and looked as if they might take after their mother’s colouring, and
the fourth was as black as the Beast’s clothing. Beauty stroked each with a
finger down its tiny back, and Fourpaws’ purring redoubled. Their eyes were
still fast closed and their ears infinitesimal soft flaps, and their legs made
vague gestures as if they believed that the air was water, and they should
attempt to swim in it.

Fourpaws leant over them and made a few brisk rearrangements,
and the cheeping stopped and was replaced by minuscule sucking noises.

“Oh, Fourpaws, they are beautiful!” said Beauty, knowing
what was expected of her, but speaking the truth as well. “I am so glad that
this palace should have kittens in it! I only wish there were many more of
them!”

Fourpaws stopped purring long enough to give Beauty a look
like the edge of a dagger, and Beauty laughed. “You will produce more kittens
if you wish, dear! And not if you don’t wish it. You needn’t look at me like
that! I always want more of anything I think good; it is a character Fault!”

She almost missed Fourpaws beginning to purr again, because
as she said, “I always want more of anything I think good,” she remembered her
adventure of the night before. “Oh—I must see—no—no, not yet. I mustn’t go into
the glasshouse today at all—Oh, no, 1 can’t possibly wait all day! Till this
afternoon then. Late this afternoon, when the light begins to grow long, and
the glasshouse is at its most beautiful anyway, because the light is all gold
and diamonds,” She turned back to Fourpaws and her kittens. “Oh, but whatever
will I do till then? I can think of any number of things in this palace I
should like to see a kitten unravel—supposing 1 could find any of them
again—but your children are a little young for it. Well.”

She climbed carefully out of bed—Fourpaws’ nest was directly
blocking the bed stairs—poured herself a cup of tea, and came back to the bed
to drink it in company. The second time she maneuvered round the kittens to the
bed stairs, once she was on the floor, she tried to push the stairs over a
little; it was like trying to shift the palace by leaning against one of its
walls. “Here,” she said. “If the magic that carried my basket last night is
anywhere in call, I could use a little help.” As she stood looking at the
stairs, there was a faint singing in her mind, and a half sense like a vision approaching,
like the odd sensation she’d had just before she saw the meadow with the old
woman milking her cows. She put her hand against the side of the stairs, and
they moved softly over and settled again. “Thank you,” said Beauty very
quietly. The singing sensation faded and disappeared.

She spent as long as she could at breakfast—which wasn’t
very. Fourpaws and her kittens fell asleep, and Beauty couldn’t bear her
fidgety self near that peaceful scene. She dressed and ran out to the chamber
of the star, but then thought again and tried to take her time in the corridor
on the way to the courtyard. She curtsied to the painting of the bowl of fruit,
which today hung opposite the lady who used to hold a pug dog, and then a fan,
and now a bit of needlework in a tambour; Beauty examined her after her impertinent
curtsy, and the lady looked stiff and offended, but then she always did.

Beauty opened the doors of a red-lacquered cabinet and
closed the doors of a secretaire inlaid with mother-of-pearl. She moved an
inkstand from another secretaire to a low marble table, and a tray from one
sideboard to another. She set matching chairs facing each other instead of side
by side; she turned vases and small statues on their pedestals and plinths; she
flicked the noses of caryatids holding up mantelpieces. She twiddled and
fiddled, poked and patted. She remembered the Beast’s warning to stop when she
wished to look round, and the stopping let her fool away a little more time.
She thought of having kittens with her.

She thought she noticed, or perhaps it was only her own
mood, that the shadows did not seem to lie so thick in the palace rooms as they
generally did; even in daylight, darkness tended to hang in the corners like
swathes of heavy curtain. She did notice that there was no speck of dust
anywhere she looked, no smudges of handling or of use, save what she left
herself, and the floors, when she strayed off the carpets, were as impeccably
brilliant as if the polisher had only just slipped out of the room as Beauty came
into it.

She stepped at last into the courtyard, feeling as if she
had bees buzzing in her brain. She scuffed her feet in the pebbles, and then
looked up; there were big clouds in the sky today, for the first time; it had
been clear every previous day she had been here. She saw shapes in the clouds
she did not wish to see: Rose Cottage, her sisters’ faces. Lion-heart’s hair
was long again, and the cloud that was Jeweltongue held out her arm, and Beauty
saw a great ruched, embroidered sleeve such as she had worn when they lived in
the city. She looked back at their faces. She did not want the sisters who had
lived in the city, she did not want the person she herself had been when they
lived in the city.

But the clouds had shifted and her sisters had disappeared.
For a moment longer she saw the door of Rose Cottage, framed with roses, and
then it too was pulled apart and became a scud of cloud fragments.

The weather vane glinted when the sun broke through.

Finally Beauty wandered into the orchard to look for the
Beast. She did not want to tell him what she had done, and she was afraid her
mood would betray her into saying something, but she felt she could bear her
own company no longer. She thought again of the Beast’s solitude—his solitary
imprisonment—here; how had he borne all his own moods, with no one, ever, to
talk to?

She found him under a different apple tree. “What is the
weather vane that spins at the top of the glasshouse, do you know?” It was the
first harmless remark she could think of. She wanted too to tell him of
Fourpaws’ kittens but felt it was Fourpaws’ privilege to make that great
announcement, and she did want to know about the weather vane. It had intrigued
her since she had first come to this place. Even at the peak of the glasshouse
it was not so very far away, nor was it so very small, that she should not be
able to make some kind of guess at what it represented. The shape seemed very
clear and fine and detailed, and then there were all the small curls and chips
delicately cut out of the inside of the silhouette; these should have given it
away at once. But they did not.

The Beast turned and looked towards the archway, but from
where they were standing they could not see the courtyard. “Would you like to
examine it?”

“Oh yes—but how?”

“How is your head for heights?’’

“I do not mind heights,” said Beauty, remembering her
efforts to help Lionheart poke the sitting-room chimney clear from the roof.

“Do you not?” said the Beast thoughtfully. “I dread heights.
When I am painting on the roof, I am careful not to let my eyes wander. But if
you do not mind them, I think we can find a ladder.”

He looked preoccupied for a moment, and then his face
cleared, as if he had received the correct answer to a question, and he led the
way back towards the arch but stood aside that she might precede him through
it. When they made their way round the side of the glasshouse facing the
archway, they found a ladder already in place, braced against the silvery
architecture that held the panes, nowhere touching the glass, and it reached to
within an arm’s length of the distant weather vane.

Beauty set her foot on the lowest rung. Her heart was
beating a little quickly, for she had never climbed anything half so tall; Rose
Cottage’s roof had been her limit. But she did want to see the weather vane.
She looked up; white clouds were stilt scudding merrily overhead, but there was
no breeze in the courtyard, surrounded by the palace walls.

“I will hold the base,” said the Beast.

“Thank you,” she replied, and mounted quickly, before she
could have second thoughts.

She was above his head at once and climbing past the slender
silver girder that marked what would have been the first storey, had there been
any floor or ceiling: climbed on, and then on and on. It was farther—higher—than
she’d realised, looking up from ground level. She thought of the long, long
staircases inside the palace and the fact that her glasshouse stood taller yet.
And she took a deep breath, ignored the beginnings of rubberiness in her legs,
and of ache in her lower back, and climbed on.

She began to feel the wind up here; it tugged at her hair
and teased her skirts, but it was a little, friendly wind, whistling to itself
a thin gay tune. Her heart was still beating quickly, but now from the speed of
her climb and with excitement. She paused a moment; her leg muscles were
growing stiff and clumsy, and she couldn’t risk being clumsy this far up. This
was the final stretch of her journey; the glasshouse was narrowing gracefully
towards its little cupola at the peak of its third storey, and she suddenly
didn’t want to hurry to its end. She deliberately looked away from the weather
vane, saving the moment she would see it till she was at the very top of the
ladder, of her adventure. She looked round her instead.

She was above the flat roof of the palace here and could see
in all directions. First she looked at the roof itself, hoping to have some
provocative glimpse of the Beast’s work from this distance, not knowing if she
might see anything at all; perhaps the gorgeous roof was a nighttime
enchantment.

Directly in front of her lay an expanse of pure white-grey,
with the same shimmery surface of the walls and the pebbles in the courtyard.
She was facing the front wing, with the formal gardens beyond; she could just
see the farthest edge of them. To her left was the wing that contained her
rooms; to her right the bonfire glade. She looked closely at the roof
immediately before her—having to look round the final peak of the glasshouse
and the weather vane itself, whose shape tickled her peripheral vision—till she
was satisfied she could see no glint of any color in its confusingly reflective
surface.

Then, her heart sinking a little, she looked to her right,
and there was nothing there either. Very calmly now, like a polite child who
believes no one has remembered its birthday, she turned her head to look
left.... Down the centre of that wing of roof to about halfway ran a slender
stream of colour, curving precisely round invisible islands that were only
blank spaces to Beauty’s eye. It widened at its leftmost end, and Beauty
tracked it round that corner, turning carefully on her rung of the ladder, to
look at the final wing of the palace the one that had lain behind her, the one
that was backed by the orchard.