Rose Daughter (17 page)

She said this in just the tone she would have used in
speaking to a miserable dog, or any of her other rescued animals, who was
refusing to eat. “Now, my sweet, I know you are a good dog, and good dogs
always do what they are told when it is for their good, and I know the things
you have been told recently have not been for your good, but you must
understand that is all over now. And here is your supper, and you will of
course eat it, you good dog.” And the dog would. Beauty went to the hanging
cupboard and opened the doors, and there were all her few clothes, hanging up
lugubriously in one comer, as if separated carefully from the other, much
grander things in the rest of the wardrobe, and they looked self-conscious, if
clothes can look self-conscious, and Beauty laughed.

But when she took down her skirt and shirt, there was a
sudden flurry of movement, and a wild wave of butterflies blew out at her. as
if from the folds of her dull patched clothing, and she cried out in surprise
and pleasure. For a moment the butterflies seemed to fill the room, even that
great high ornamented room, with colours and textures al! the more glorious for
being alive, blues and greens and russets and golds, and then they swirled up
like a small whirlwind and rushed out the open doors, over the balcony, and
away.

She ran to watch them go and saw them briefly twinkling
against the dizzy whiteness of the palace and the dazzle of the glasshouse, and
then they disappeared round a comer, and she saw them no more. She dressed
slowly; but she was smiling, and when she touched the embroidered heart she
wore, she touched it softly, without so piercing a sense of sorrow. And when
she stepped into the chamber of the star, she deliberately did not count the
number of doors and ignored the glare of the haughty lady in the portrait just
beyond the one that opened.

Ihere was a priming-knife and a small handsaw lying on top
of the water-butt inside the door to the glasshouse. She spent most of the
morning studying stems and bushes and cut very little. After a while she said,
“Gloves. May I please have a good stout pair of gloves?” And turned round and
discovered just such a pair of gloves lying at the foot of the water-butt,
where she might have overlooked them when she first came in. “Ladder?” she said
next, after another little while. “What I would like best is a ladder light
enough that I can—that I can handle it on my own,” she added, for she was
remembering that the last time she had had much to do with a ladder she had had
Lionheart there to help her wrestle the great awkward object to where they
needed it.

There was a ladder behind the door. “Thank you,” she said,
“but I don’t believe I could have missed that, you know,” she added to the
listening silence; but she kept her eyes on the ladder.

At noon she stopped, and rubbed her forehead, and went in
search of lunch, and there was lunch on the table by her balcony. She still was
not at all certain how she got from her rooms to the glasshouse or back again;
the corridor never seemed quite the same corridor, and the dislocating turns
seemed to come at different stages of the journey, and the sun came through
windows where the walls should have been internal, and even at noon there were
far too many shadows everywhere. She was also beginning to feel that the
portrait of the handsome but haughty lady just beyond the door from the chamber
of the star was not just one haughty lady but several, sisters perhaps, even
cousins, in a family where the likeness is strongly marked; but that did not
seem plausible either, for no such grand family would allow all its women to be
painted wearing nearly identical dresses, with their arms al! bent with no
perceptible kindness round the same sort of browny-fawn lapdog.

The table by the door into the courtyard had reverted to
square, and the slope-shouldered clock now had a shepherd, more suitably
attired for his occupation, keeping company with the gambolling lambs.

But she did not care, so long as the magic she needed went
on working and allowed her to go where she needed to go and do what she needed
to do. And there were few shadows in the glasshouse, and the ones there were
laid honestly, by stems and leaves and the house’s own glittering framework—and
her ladder.

In the afternoon she took her first experimental cuts,
beginning with the climbers, and she was rejoiced to find, as she cut cautiously
back and back, living wood in each. She nicked dormant buds in gnarled old
branches with green hearts and said, “Grow, you.
Grow.”

She stopped for tea and a shoulder-easing stretch in the afternoon,
and then she spent the last of the lengthening spring twilight marking out her
seedbed, peeling her rosehips, and punching rows of tiny finger-sized holes to
bury the seeds themselves in. “Grow, you,” she whispered, and went indoors.

1 his evening a sapphire-coloured dress lay across her bed,
and a sapphire necklace on the blue towels of the washstand; but though the
soap, and the bath oil in the great tin bath (enamelled over with roses) drawn
up before the fireplace, again smelt of roses, today it did not make her weep,
for she had work to do and felt she knew why she was here.

She did not examine this feeling too closely, for she was
too grateful for the possession of it. and even less did she examine the
conclusions it might lead her to. But for the moment the roses in the
glasshouse demanded her attention and care, and that was enough, for a little
while, and she had a little space to nurse a little precarious security in. She
lay in the bath while twilight turned to dusk, and she felt the aches slide out
of her muscles and dissipate in the warm water, till she found herself falling
asleep, and then she flew out and whisked herself dry in such a commotion of
haste that she half believed herself assisted with extra towels by invisible
hands.

The Beast was waiting for her in the long dim dining-hall,
and he bowed to her, and said, “Good evening, Beauty.” and she replied, “Good
evening, Beast.”

The silence and the shadows pressed round them. He moved to
her chair and bowed her into it, poured her two kinds of wine, and took a chair
himself a little distance from her. She picked up a glass, touched it to her
lips, set it down again untasted, served herself blindly from the nearest
plate. She was hungry—she had worked hard since lunch—but the silence was
heavy, and the Beast, again dressed all in black, his head bowed so she could
not see his eyes, was almost obscured by the gloom and seemed as ominous as all
the rest of the silence and shadow. She put her fork to the food on her plate;
the click of the tines was too loud in the stillness; she set it down again.
She was hungry, and could not eat. She sat motionless for a moment, feeling as
if the shadows might seep into her blood, turning her into a shadow like
themselves.... Her hand crept to the tittle embroidered heart tucked into the
front of her bodice.

When the gentle
plonk
came from the darkness at the
far end of the long table. Beauty started in her chair, feeling like a deer who
knows she is tracked by a hunter. There was another
plonk,
and then a
rustle-rustle-rustle,
and Beauty’s heart slowed down to a normal pace, and she began to smile,
because it was a friendly, a silly sort of sound. There was a third
plonk
and
then a quick run of tiny thumps... . Whatever it was, it was coming towards
this end of the table.

The Beast stirred, “I believe Fourpaws is coming to
introduce herself to her new guest,” he said.

She still had to strain to hear his words when he spoke
anything beyond common courtesies such as “good evening”; it was like learning
to hear articulate speech in a rumble of thunder. “Fourpaws?”

But at that moment a small grey and amber cat appeared from
behind one of the wine carafes, tail high, writhing once round the carafe as if
that were her entire purpose at this end of the table, so supple and sleek in
the dimness that it seemed she would overstep her hind legs and take a second
turn round the narrow vessel. But then with a boneless flicker like a scarf
coming loose from a lady’s neck, she unwound herself again and became a slim
short-bodied cat, with silky fur just enough longer than short to move gently of
its own in response to her motion, and Lo give her a very wonderful tail.

She stood so that Beauty could admire her for a moment,
while she looked off into some chosen distance, and then she turned as if to
walk straight past the edge of Beauty’s plate. But Beauty was far too charmed
by her not to make an effort, and she reached across her plate and offered
Four-paws the tips of her fingers. The fingertips were deemed acceptable, and
the base of ears and a small round skull between were presented to be
scratched. Beauty scratched, Fourpaws purred. Fourpaws then sat down—at jusl
such a distance that Beauty would be risking the lace on her bodice to the food
on her plate if she wished to go on scratching ears, so she stopped.

Fourpaws moved a little towards Beauty and looked at her for
the first time, stared at her with vast yellowy-greeny eyes, misleadingiy half
shut. She curled her tail round her feet—careful not to trail the tip of it in
Beauty’s plate—and continued to purr. The purr seemed to reflect off the sides
of the bowls and dishes and goblets round her. Beauty picked up her knife and
fork again and began to eat.

“It is so very quiet here,” said Beauty between rnouth-fuls.

The Beast roused himself. “When I was ... first here, here
as you see it, the silence troubled me very much.”

But you are a sorcerer! You cannot have come here against
your will—against your will—as I did. . .. Beauty was briefly afraid that she
had spoken aloud, so painfully had the words pressed up in her throat; but the
shadows were tranquil, and Fourpaws was still purring, and after only the
merest pause, the Beast continued: “I had forgotten. It was such a long time
ago. I have learnt... I have learnt to look at the silence, to listen to the
dark. But I was very glad when Fourpaws came. I believe she must be a powerful
sorcerer in her own country, which is why 1 dare not give her any grand name
such as she deserves, for fear of disturbing the network of her powers. She
comes most evenings and drops a few rolls and bits of cutlery into the
darkness, like coins in a wishing well. I am grateful to her.”

“As am I,” said Beauty fervently, for she was discovering
just how hungry she was. She moved a candlestick nearer and peered into various
tureens. She recognised little, although everything smelled superb, which was
enough recommendation, but when she turned back to her plate, which had been
empty but a moment before, it had been served again for her already. “The
chef’s speciality?” she murmured, thinking of grand dinner parties in the city,
but she picked her knife and fork up readily and began.

Fourpaws had moved herself again slightly, so that her
bright furry figure slightly overlapped the great shadowy bulk of the Beast
from Beauty’s point of view. Beauty smiled at her a little wonderingly;
Fourpaws’ eyes shut almost completely, with only a thin gleam of green left
visible, and her purr deepened.

As soon as Beauty laid her knife and fork down for the last
time, she felt exhaustion drop over her, shove down her eyelids, force her head
forward upon her breast. “I—1 am sorry,” she said faintly. “1 am much more tired,
suddenly, than I had any idea... If you will excuse me ...”

The Beast was on his feet again at once, bowing her towards
the door. “Beauty, will you marry me?”

Beauty backed two steps away from the table. Her eyes fell
upon Fourpaws, who was still sitting where she had been while Beauty ate; but
her eyes were now opened wide, her head tipped up, and she was staring at
Beauty with an unnervingly steady gaze. “Oh, no. Beast,” said Beauty to the
cat. Fourpaws leapt off the table and disappeared under it.

“Good night, Beauty,” said the Beast very softly.

“Good night, Beast,” said Beauty.

She went slowly up to her rooms, the whispering of her
skirts the only sound, and stayed awake only long enough to take her elegant
dress off carefully, lay the necklace of sapphires back on the washstand, and
climb up the stairs to her bed. She almost didn’t make it to the top; she woke
up to find herself with her head resting on the top stair and pulled herself
the resl of the way into bed.

She dreamt again of Rose Cottage.

There was a new rug on the floor by the fireplace at the
sitting-room end of the downstairs room, and Teacosy, looking unusually well
brushed, lay on it in her traditional neat curl. There was a new tablecloth,
with a bit of lace at its edge, on the old table—Beauty could still see its
splinted feet beneath—and the place settings were as mismatched as ever,
although none of the cups or plates was chipped.

The old merchant was talking, and the other two were listening—three,
counting Teacosy’s half-pricked cars—or rather, as Beauty’s dream shimmered
into being, her father had just stopped talking. Beauty’s dream-eyes ranged
over the familiar scene and picked out its unfamiliar elements, pausing finally
on the person sitting in what had been Beauty’s chair. There was a litUe
silence in which Beauty could almost hear the echo of her father’s last
words—she had a half notion that he had been reciting poetry—but she did not
know for sure.

The strange young man spoke first. “That was very moving,
sir. Perhaps—perhaps you would come to one of our meetings?”

“Oh, do, Father!” said Jeweltongue. “I had no idea you
were—you were—” She stopped, blushed, and laughed.

Her father looked at her, smiling. “You had no idea the old
man had any idea of metre and rhyme, you were going to say? I never used to. It
seems to have come on me with moving here, to Longchance and Rose Cottage. I
would be honoured to come to your meeting, Mr Whitchand, if you think I will
not embarrass you.”