Rose Daughter (37 page)

“And then, as Lionheart says, we’ve been so determinedly
bright and sunny about your absence, everyone positively has to squint from the
glare when they look at us, although I know my poor Whitehand had guessed there
was something about something I wasn’t telling him.... And meanwhile I have
kept looking at your roses, and they look so—so happy, if one can say that
about flowers, I’ve wanted so to believe they were telling me—”

“Us,” said Lionheart.

“—what we wanted—badly wanted—to know. But then Mrs
Oldhouse’s story, out of nowhere, and with the storm pounding away at us like a
monster yelling for our lives, and then Jack corning in, wet as a water spirit,
and threatening us with that curse I’ve been worrying about for years—’’

“Then you did know,” said Beauty.

“After all the talking-to you gave me the day I told you
about Aubrey!” interrupted Lionheart in high dudgeon, and then began to laugh.
“So much for no secrets between sisters!”

She had paused, tea-kettle in hand, beside the jam jar
containing the dark red rose. Its first petal had already fallen; she picked it
up, rubbing it gently between her fingers for the deliciously silken feel, as
she hung the kettle over the fire again. “Oh, Beauty, won’t you please tell us
what has been happening to you? I really must go off again—as it is, I’ll be
back after dawn and will have to tell Mr Horsewise something—and I will explode
of curiosity if you don’t. Start with Fourpaws. Why is she called Fourpaws?’’

“The Beast named her. She is the only creature—was the only
creature—who would live in the palace with him, and he said she must be a
sorcerer in her own country, and he would not imbalance the delicate network of
her powers by giving her a powerful name when she has done him the great
kindness of breaking the loneliness of his house.” And there rose up in her the
memory of the evenings they sat together in the great dark dining-hall, and she
did not remember the pressing shadows, the imprisoning silence, but the
companionship of the Beast, and Fourpaws, purring, on her lap.

There was a silence, as Jeweltongue and Lionheart tried to adjust
to this other sort of Beast than the one they had heard about from their
father. There was tremendous relief in this new idea of a thoughtful, wistful
Beast, but there was tremendous bewilderment too. “Will you tell us about the
Beast?” said Jeweltongue timidly. “Surely he is a sorcerer too?”

“Oh no,” Beauty heard herself saying immediately. “I—I don’t
know why I said that. I had assumed that he was, as you did, but lately, as I
have grown to know him better. ..”

She fell silent, and in the silence Lionheart watched the
second petal fall from the dark red rose.

Jeweltongue said: “Surely there is some boundary to the magic—how
long to pay the debt of one blooming rose in the middle of winter? Isn’t seven
months enough?”

Again Beauty heard her own voice answer, speaking almost as
quietly as a rose-petal falling: “He told me he cannot—that he never could—hold
me against my will,” She knew the words were true as soon as they were out of
her mouth, but where had they come from? And why could she not remember?

Why couldn’t she remember how she had left the Beast’s palace
and come to Rose Cottage?

Jeweltongue laughed, a laugh like a child’s bubbling up from
somewhere beneath her heart. “But then you can stay with us! I can finally give
poor Whitehand a day! He has been very good, although—since I had not told him
the truth—he has been puzzled at why my sister is quite so unspecific about
when she might be able to return, only long enough to attend a wedding, I know
it has occurred to him that I have not meant to marry him at all. but I do! Oh,
I do! But I
could
not be married without your being here. Beauty, or. at
the very, very, very least, knowing that you were well. There now, Lionheart,
you can put Aubrey out of his misery too.”

“We were planning on a double wedding, just like—not at all
like—we were going to do in the city many years ago,” said Lionheart.

“Not
at all like.” said Jeweltongue quickly, with a
touch of her old acidity. “Once you finally overcame your peculiar
terrors—rogue horses, indeed! It is as well I do not know the daily facts of
your life, or I should not sleep for worrying!—and gave your hand to poor Aubrey.”

Beauty leant over to touch Lionheart’s knee. “Then you have
told him yes? And that is all well? What of Mr Horsewise?”

Lionheart smiled reminiscently. “Mr Horsewise was appalled
for about two and a half heartbeats, and then it occurred to him that he’s been
fighting off a suspicion about me almost since I’d come to work for him, and he
hadn’t wanted to know because if he knew the wrong thing, he might lose me, and
... well...”

“Go on,” said Jeweltongue. Lionheart muttered something inaudible,
and Jeweltongue laughed her merry, bubbling laugh again, “Mr Horsewise dotes on
her! She is the finest ‘lad’ he’s ever had, you see, and now he not only won’t
lose her but is positively obliged to promote her, because Aubrey is going to
take the horse end of affairs at the Hall on and run it as a business, which is
deeply offensive to Jack, of course, but Aubrey worked it out with his father
so that Jack can’t touch it, although—”

“Although we’re going to have to work like slaves to make a
success of it,” finished Lionheart.

“As soon as the sun is up, I’ll measure you for your
wedding-dress,” said Jeweltongue, “that is, the dress you will wear to our
wedding.” Her happiness faltered for a moment, for she would have liked it to
be a triple wedding, but now that Beauty was home again, surely... “You won’t
be nearly as hard to please as Lionheart, I’m sure. Oh, I’m so glad! What
colour, do you think? Gold? Green? Blue? Darling, what is it?”

“Oh—my Beast. He is my friend, you see—”

“‘Your friend?”
bellowed Lionheart. “Your gaoler,
your kidnapper, and you have told us that he has admitted he could not keep you
in the first place, so he is a liar and a trickster as well—’’

“Oh no, no,” said Beauty in great distress. “You do not understand
at all. I will go hack to visit him. I take care of his roses!”

“You have roses enough to care for here!” said Lion-heart.

Jeweltongue laid her hand on Beauty’s. “If the Beast is your
friend, then we must—we must learn that. But it is hard for us, just now, at
the beginning, especially when we haven’t—haven’t quite known if we had lost
you entirely.”

“He never—” began Beauty. “He always—”

Jeweltongue smiled. “I believe you. Go on. We’re listening.”
She flicked a quelling look at the more volatile Lion-heart, but Lionheart was
dreamily watching something behind her and Beauty’s heads. She turned to see; another
petal wavered and fell from the dark red rose, and then, after the merest
breath of a pause, a whole gust of petals,

“He is—he is—oh, I don’t know how to describe him!” said
Beauty. “He is very tall, and very wide, and very hairy; he is a Beast, just as
he is named. He eats apples in two bites, including the cores. But he is—that
is not what he is like.”

“What is he like then?” Jeweltongue prompted.

“He is gentle and kind. He loves roses. He loves roses best
of all, but his were dying; the only one still blooming was the one from
Father’s breakfast table. Of course, when I knew—when I found—I had to rescue
him—help them—rescue them—him. He walks on the roof every night, looking at the
stars. On the roof he has drawn the most beautiful map of the sky. ...” Beauty
was weeping as she talked.

“My dear,” said Jeweltongue, gently turning her sister’s
face towards her. “Why do you weep?”

“Every night, after supper, he asks me to marry him,” said Beauty,
and she knew she spoke the truth, that it was no mirage of memory, and then she
was weeping so passionately she could speak no more.

Jeweltongue put her arms round her and rocked her back and
forth as if she were a little child. “Well—and do you wish to marry him?”

Beauty wept a little longer, and slowly her tears stopped,
and she looked up. Jeweltongue looked gravely back at her. “He is—he is very
great, and grand, and ... he is a Beast.”

“Yes, very large, very hairy, you said. Great and grand—foo.
Are you afraid of him?”

“Afraid of him? Oh, no!”

“Well then, if he were an ordinary man, instead of a Beast,
and my darling younger sister burst into tears immediately after telling me he
had asked her to marry him, I would advise her that it is perfectly obvious
that she should say yes.”

“But—”

“He is very large and very hairy, and your introduction to
each other was ... awkward, and first impressions are so important. Very well.
What is it you dislike? That he eats apples in two bites, including the cores?”

Beauty laughed through the last of her tears. “No, no!
Although in an ordinary garden, I should want the cores for my compost heap.”

Lionheart groaned. “You only ever think of one thing! Your
roses!”

Beauty flashed back: “You only ever think of one thing! Your
horses!”

Jeweltongue said, “Do you remember Pansy’s story—many years
ago, when we were still quite little, before Mamma died—of the princess who
married the Phoenix?”

“Yes,” murmured Beauty. “I remember.”

“It is very odd,” said Lionheart. “Jeweltongue, d’you remember
the way the rose Father brought lasted what seemed like nearly forever? It
wasn’t just that it was the middle of winter, was it? Look, the last petal is
already falling from the rose Beauty brought with her.”

If you decide you do wish to see me again, pall another
petal and set it again in your mouth, and you will at once be here. But if you
wait till all the petals have dropped, it will be too late; once they have
loosed themselves from the flower, they can no longer return you here, and
besides, when the last of them falls, I will die.

“The last petal!” cried Beauty, her last conversation with
the Beast suddenly and terribly recalled to her mind, and she threw herself to
her feet, knocking painfully into Jeweltongue, spilling Teacosy, who gave a
little yip of surprise. to the floor, spinning in the direction Lionheart was
looking, reaching for the forgotten rose there in its humble jam jar, reaching
for the last petal, her hand darting out faster than her mind could direct it,
but that last petal fell from its flower head before her fingers touched it,
dropping softly into her palm, and she stared at it in horror, “Oh no,” she
whispered. “Oh no.’*

“Darling, what is it?” said Jeweltongue.

“What is it about the last petal?” said Lionheart. “What enchantment
does it hold that frightens you so?”

But Beauty did not hear them. She looked up from the last
petal in her hand, sightlessly staring at her sisters,
When the last of them
falls, I will die.
“Do you remember,” she said, “when Father brought that
first rose home, I cut two pieces from its stem and planted them, hoping they
would strike. Did they? Did they? Oh, please tell me at least one of them did!”

Jeweltongue put a hand to her face. “I—I’m not sure. I don’t
remember. I—I am not much of a gardener, dear, dear Beauty. Please try to
forgive me,”

Beauty turned and fled into the rear garden. She was so distraught
by terror and grief she could not remember where she had put the two stem
cuttings; she cursed herself for not telling Jeweltongue to tend them
particularly, for cuttings are very vulnerable as they struggle to produce
their first roots, but she cursed herself more for not remembering—until it was
too late—for not watching her rose, the Beast’s rose, that he had given her
last of all. And she looked at the petal in the palm of her hand and saw the
smear of blood there, from clasping the stem of that rose too tightly. How
could she not have remembered?

She thought of the endless wall of the palace, the first
time she had tried to follow it to the corner of the courtyard, to see what lay
behind the glasshouse. She thought of the first evening she mounted the spiral
staircase, the basket she had almost not found, and the storm that had come
from nowhere, as soon as she touched the weather vane.

But she had turned the corner, arrived at the top of the
staircase, found the basket, and descended from the ladder. The Beast had
carried her up the stair and guarded her down the ladder. He would not be dead;
she would not allow it. She had sent butterflies and bats and hedgehogs and
toads into the palace gardens, she had welcomed kittens (and one spider) into
the palace when the Beast himself had said no creature would live on his lands.
The unicorn had come to her, and the roses bloomed. She would not let him die.

She would not let him die. Her resolution faltered. As soon
as her sisters had told her she had been seven months away, she should have
remembered, she should have thought at once to look at the rose. It did not
matter what her father’s rose had done; she knew the enchantment that held her
Beast and his roses had changed, for she had changed it. And now she was
destroying everything when the Beast had trusted her. When the Beast had loved
her.

Blindly she went down the centre path of the garden towards
the great riotous tangle at its heart; the roses there had gone over from their
full midsummer flush, hut there were still a few heavy flower heads bowing
their branches with their weight. She was vaguely aware, as her eyes began to
focus on what lay round her, that the night’s darkness was graying towards
morning. Her gaze settled on the statue within that centre bed, the statue of a
beast she had never been able to name; and it was a beast like her Beast, and
she remembered him on his knees in the glasshouse, drenched by rain, looking up
at her, smiling. But the statue was no longer standing, as it had when she last
stood in Rose Cottage’s garden. It was lying, curled up on its side, one
forelimb over its head, looking lost, and hopeless, and as if it only waited to
die, “You cannot die,” said Beauty.