Rose Daughter (4 page)

The three sisters and their father went the last few miles
alone. The lawyers’ letter had described Rose Cottage as being at the end of
the last track off the main way through the woods before Longchance’s farmlands
began. The traders knew the way to Longchance well, and while none of them knew
anything of Rose Cottage, they knew which track the last one was—or what was
left of it, for it had not been used in many years. It was just wide enough to
take two small horses abreast, and just clear enough for an old farm cart
laboriously to lumber down.

A surprising number of the traders came round individually to
say good-bye to their travelling companions, and several mumbled something
about maybe looking in t’see how they was doing, on the way home again. Then
the traders went on the wider way. The three sisters and the old merchant went
the narrow one.

The house too was recognisable from the description in the
lawyers’ letter. Small; thatched, now badly overdue for replacement; one
storey, with a loft over half of it, the roof so peaked that the upstairs room
would be only partly usable; stone chimney on either of the narrow sides of the
house, the one on the loft side much the bigger; two small tumbledown sheds and
some bits of broken fence; and a chestnut tree growing a little distance from
the front door. The remains of an overgrown garden spilled out behind the house,
but even Beauty was too bone-weary to explore it.

But the house was surprisingly tall for ils small size, and
this gave it a curious authority and a reassuring air of steadfastness. They
all sat and stared while the horses, perceiving the end of the road and a lack
of attention in the hands on their reins, dropped their heads and began to nose
through the debris of winter for anything to eat.

It was earliest spring. The sky was blue, the birds sang,
the chestnut tree was putting out its first sticky leafbuds, but the low coarse
growth underfoot was malted weeds interspersed with bare muddy patches, the
brown buds crouched on drearily empty branches, and the house had obviously
been derelict for a long time. The clearing it sat in was reverting to
woodland, with opportunistic saplings springing up everywhere; there was a
bird’s-nest built into a comer of the front door and an ominous crown of ragged
twigs on one of the chimneys. The two sheds hadn’t a sound wall between them;
there was nowhere to keep the waggon or stable the horses. It was a cheerless
homecoming,

Lionheart was the first to jump off the waggon, stride
forward, and throw the unlatched door of the house open, spattering herself
with shreds of broken bird’s-nest and fighting off the maleficent embraces of
the long thorny sterns of an overgrown bush just beside the door. Jewe!-tonguc
and Beauty followed her slowly; their father sat dully in the cart. Beauty’s
heart sank when Lionheart opened the door so easily; she had feared the worst when
the lawyers had sent her no key, but if the house had been open to weather and
all depredations both animal and human. . . .

“No leaks,” said Lionheart, looking towards the ceiling. She
climbed the ladder and stuck her head through the trapdoor. “Nor any I can see
up here,” she said, her voice muffled.

“No rubbish in the comers,” said Jeweltongue. She walked
round the one big downstairs room, touching the walls. “It’s not running with
damp. It doesn’t even smell of damp. Or of mice.”

Beauty was standing in the middle of the floor, slowly
turning in ber place, half watching Jeweltongue touching the walls, half
looking round herself, thinking, It does not smell of mice, nor of damp, but it
does smell of something—I don’t know—but it’s a friendly smell—not like a
years-closed-up house. Weil, there may be horrors tomorrow—birds’-nests in the
chimneys, snakes in the cellar—but. .. And her heart lifted for die second time
since the Duke and Baron had written those final lines, and she remembered that
the first time had been when she discovered the papers saying that they still
possessed a little house called Rose Cottage. Rose Cottage. She had wanted the
name to be a good omen.

Lionheart came downstairs again, and the three sisters
looked at one another. “It’s perhaps just a bit small,” said Lionheart.

“But it’s ours,” said Jewehongue, and walked over to Beauty
and tucked her hand under her sister’s arm.

“Those little leaded windows don’t let in much light,” said
Lionheart.

“The ceiling is high enough to make the house seem bright
and airy,” said Jeweltongue.

“None of our furniture will sit straight on this floor,”
said Lionheart.

“None of the wisps and remnants we now call our furniture is
going to sit straight anywhere,” said Jeweltongue, “and we can invent a new
parlour-game for winter evenings, rolling pennies across the slopes.”

Lionheart laughed. “There’s a baking oven,” she said,
looking at the bigger chimney. “And think of the fun I’ll have learning where
its hot spots are. The first loaves will have slopes on them like the floor.”
She looked round again, “And we’ll never be lonesome because we’ll always be
under one another’s feet. Not like—not like the last weeks in the old house.”

Beauty felt Jeweltongue shudder. “No. Never like that. Never
again.”

They returned outdoors. Their father had made his way down
from the waggon and was standing under the tree near the front door. “It’s a
chestnut,” he said. “I’ve always loved chestnut trees. I was a champion
conker-player when

I was a boy. Chestnut trees are messy, though; they shed all
year long. Aside from the sticks little boys throw up into them to dislodge the
conkers.” And he laughed. It was the first time they had heard him laugh since
the blow fell, months ago in the city.

Jeweltongue, to her infinite disgust, found she could
neither saw nor hammer straight; but Beauty could, and Lionheart learnt from
Beauty. They rehung doors, patched broken flooring, rebuilt disintegrating
shutters, filled in the gaps in the sills—mostly with planking salvaged from
the tumbledown sheds. As their shabbiest dresses grew more and more ragged,
they tied the skirts round their legs till it was almost as if they wore
trousers; they wrapped themselves up in the old silver-polishing tunics that
had once belonged to their major-domo; their hair they bound back severely, and
Lion-heart threatened to cut hers off. “Long hair is a silly fashion for ladies
who have nothing better to do with their time than pin it up and lake it down,”
she said.

“I like my long hair,” said Beauty.

“You have very beautiful hair,” said Lionheart. “I used to
think—before we shared a bedroom—I used to think it must shine in the dark, it
has such a glow to it. Mine is just hair.”

Their father was still frail and spent most of his days and
evenings near the smaller fire, in the area which they used as their sitting-room.
His was the one comfortable chair, but none of the three sisters ever sat still
long enough to enjoy a comfortable chair—said Lionheart—so he might as well
have it, or it would be wasted. As he began to grow a little stronger, he found
a pen and a little ink and some bits of half-used paper, and began to write
things down on them, and murmur to himself. But his eyes were now more often
clear than they were not, and he recognised each of his daughters as herself
and no one else, and they began to feel hopeful of his eventual recovery—as
they had not for the long sad weary time just past—and went about their work
with lighter hearts as a result.

Jeweltongue and Beauty at first were the only ones to
venture to Longchance. “We don’t all three need to go, and Father can’t,” said
Lionheart, “and you two are much better at saying the right thing to the right
person than I am—you know you are.”

“What you mean is, we can come home and tell you who is going
to vex you into shouting, so you can refuse to have anything to do with them
and leave the work of it to us,” said Jeweltongue.

Lionheart grinned, then sobered. “Yes, you’re right—you
nearly always are, it’s one of your greatest faults—but, you know, we can’t
afford to... to annoy anyone here. I’ll try to be polite, but when some buffoon
is yammering away at me, my mind goes blank of anything but wanting to knock
‘em down and sit on “em.”

So Jeweltongue and Beauty went alone to sell their horses
and waggon, leaving Lionheart experimenting with lashing together an assortment
of short whippy poles cut from the saplings they had begun clearing from round
the house. There were still birds’-nests in one of the flues of the kitchen
chimney, which they had thus far failed in reaching from either end, although
Lionheart had managed to begrime herself thoroughly with soot, nest fragments,
and bird droppings once already, with her last lot of lashed poles.

“You’ll come home to two fully functioning chimneys,” she
promised, “or I’m going to drown myself in the well. Although if I succeed. I
may inadvertently have drowned myself anyway, trying to rasp the feculence off
me again.”

“Couldn’t we look for a greenwitch to sell us a charm for
the chimney?’’ said Jeweltongue, dropping her voice after a quick glance at
their father, who was chewing the end of his pen and scowling furiously at his
scrap of paper.

“With what money?” said Lionheart, testing the whip-piness
of one of her poles with a muttered “‘Tis enough to try the patience of a
saint.”

“You wouldn’t know,” said Jeweltongue. “A witch’s charm must
be cheaper than having your body fouling our well.”

“I will take pains not to drown myself,” said Lionheart.
“Now go away before I bite you.”

Jewel tongue, while her sisters had been busy with repairs
lo the house, had spent her time cutting and sewing rough but sturdy shins out
of the several bolts of material they had found slowed in the back of the
housekeeper’s wardrobe. “What in sky or on earth did she want with such stuff?”
said Lionheart on discovery.

“Perhaps her secret lover is a poacher. It would make a splendid
poacher’s jacket,” said Jeweltongue.

“It would make an entire regiment of poachers splendid jackets,”
said Lionheart.

“Never mind,” said Jeweltongue grimly. “The auction house
won’t want the stuff: whatever it is, we get to keep it. It’ll wear like iron.
I’ll think of something to do with it.” And so it had gone into the drab heap
of bits and pieces they would take with them into exile.

Jeweltongue sewed till her fingers bled from the harshness
of the fabric and the wiry strength of the thread; but the shirts (minus any
pockets useful for poaching) would be as tough as she had predicted, and in the
working community they now found themselves in, she was sure—she was almost
sure—there would be buyers for them. Lionheart was right about their little
remaining hoard of money: It would not last them their first year, and what
they still needed for the house, plus a few chickens and a goat and somewhere
to keep them, would take whatever they made on the sale of the horses and
waggon.

Jeweltongue left her elder sister to her pole-lashing and
went outdoors to find her younger one waiting for her. Beauty was sitting on
the high rickety seat of the decrepit old waggon, singing to the horses, who
were obviously listening to her. “And from her heart grew a red, red rose, and
from his heart a briar. ...”

“Oh dear!” said Jeweltongue. “Isn’t there something more
cheerful you could sing?”

Beauty stopped and looked surprised. “It has never occurred
to me that that is not a cheerful song.”

“I’ve never felt that lovers who failed to embrace while they
were alive were going to derive much joy out of plants embracing after they’re
dead,” said Jeweltongue.

‘‘Maybe you just don’t understand about plants,” said
Beauty, smiling.

“No, I leave all that to you,” said Jeweltongue. “I would
rather make sailcloth shirts for the rest of my life than weed a flowerpot
once. And I have absolutely no intention of making sailcloth shirts for the
rest of my life.” She climbed lightly up the side of the farm cart and settled
herself delicately on the hard plank seat. “I shall not miss this cart in the
least,” she said.

“I will miss the horses,” said Beauty a little wistfully.

“Perhaps you will become fond of the goat,” said
Jeweltongue. “Or even the chickens.”

“Does one ever grow fond of chickens?” said Beauty dubiously.
“Perhaps the goat.”

“We will make an effort for a very nice go?.t,” said Jeweltongue.

The two sisters were determined to be optimistic about their
first meeting with the local townsfolk; but clinging to optimism left them
little energy for anything else, and their conversation soon faltered. To
prevent herself from thinking too much about their last experiences of
townspeople. Beauty looked round the thinning woodland they were passing
through and silently recited: Oak. Larch. Don’t know what that is. Sycamore.
Rowan. Wild cherry. More oak. Snowdrops, aren’t they pretty! Truly spring is
coming.

But when they arrived in Longchance, they discovered what
else they had won by making aged turnips into feast dishes, and warm clothes
out of rags, and cooperation from antagonism. When the traders’ convoy had
passed through, the only news of the new residents of Rose Cottage left behind
was that they were a merchant’s family, fallen on hard times. The traders had
not so much as named the three sisters and had mentioned the old merchant’s
illness as if this were the central fact about the family. Most important of
all, the traders left no sense of any mystery to be solved. The townsfolk were
inquisitive—Rose Cottage had stood empty for a long time, and Longchance was
small enough to be interested in any newcomers besides—but not agog; cautiously
friendly, not suspicious.

And Longchance was a good-natured town. They gave the sisters
good advice and a good price for the horses, if not for the rickety waggon.
Beauty and Jcweltongue came home exhausted but content. They had credit to
spend at the village shops, a promise of delivery via the carter from the sawyer
and the smith, a basket of pullets peeping aggriev-edty under the shawl tucked
round them to keep them from leaping out, a bundle of fresh vegetables to enliven
their stale end-of-winter stores, and a very nice goat indeed, following them
thoughtfully on the end of a string tied round her neck. She was a silky brown
and white goat with long eyelashes around her enigmatic slot-pupilled eyes, and
the fanner’s daughter had named her Lydia and wept at parting from her.