She rose to her feet, and Mr Whitehand rose too. “I’ll come with you,” he said.
She looked up and smiled. “No. You stay here and wait till the surgeon comes. I want someone besides my father to tell me what he says—and someone my father will have felt obliged to listen to too, if what he says is unwelcome. Besides, I—I think perhaps—”
“If it is magic,” said Mrs Oldhouse, “you will be much better off by yourself than with some dull Longchancer befogging all the—the—whatever magic does. Even you, Mr Whitehand. Go on then.” She added to the cat: “Take care of her, mind. Or no more warm evenings by the fire for you.”
Becky disappeared.
Jeweltongue took her cloak from the rack by the door and let herself out, Becky winding dangerously through her ankles. The night was clear after the rain, and there were stars overhead; the storm had left as quickly as it had come. Magic? Had the storm brought Beauty, taken her away again? Where was she? “I’ve never seen the stars so bright,” she said to Becky. “Have you? There’s the Ewer … and the Tinker … and the Peacock.” She took a deep breath, trying to regain her self-possession; it seemed to have gone with the storm and the ghost of her sister. “Oh!” The night air smelt of roses, strongly of roses.
Her nose was not so good for the variations of rose scent as was Beauty’s, but this odour put her immediately in mind of the dark red rose their father had brought home from the Beast’s palace, which had sat for weeks on their windowsill, whose petals had at last fallen when the roses in the garden—she could not help but think of them as Beauty’s roses—had bloomed in midsummer. She turned her head one way and then another, sniffing like an animal searching for water, or for danger, or for safety, and saw Becky trotting purposefully away from her. “Becky!” she called.
The cat stopped, turned her head, and looked at her. Curious how the starlight fell! The marmalade cat looked suddenly grey, and yet she stood next to a stand of black-eyed Susans, whose colour even in this faint light clearly showed orange. The cat turned away again and trotted on.
“Oh dear,” said Jeweltongue, but with her first step following, the smell of roses grew stronger still, and Jeweltongue broke into a trot herself. “I hope you are not leading me into any thickets,” she muttered under her breath. “I am a good deal higher up from the ground than you are, you know, and you are leading me directly into the middle of nowhere,” for the cat had gone straight across Mrs Oldhouse’s gardens and into the meadow beyond, easily picking her way across the stepping-stones in the stream at its bottom, while Jeweltongue, confused by the shadow dapples, splashed less skilfully in her wake. Jeweltongue was jerked to a sudden halt, and there was a sound of tearing cloth. “Oh, bother!” she said. “I liked these sleeves! I should have let Miss Trueword have this bodice after all.”
The cat trotted on, and Jeweltongue followed, her sense of urgency increasing. In her mind there was a picture of the dark red rose: Only a moment ago it had seemed to be little more than a bud; now it was full open; now she saw its petals curling back, drooping; now the first one fell.…
She battled her way through a thin hedgerow, and suddenly she knew where she was; this was the end of Farmer Goldfield’s land, and Rose Cottage was only a few steps that way and through the stand of trees. “I don’t know how you did that,” said Jeweltongue to the cat. “I was supposed to stay the night with Mrs Oldhouse, you know—do you know?—because it is much too long a walk home. Much longer than this. Oh—” A terrible thought struck her. “She’s not ill, is she? That isn’t why you have brought me in such a hurry—”
She began to run, but the cat was purring round her ankles, and she would not risk kicking her, and then it seemed rude not to thank her properly. So she stooped and petted her, and the cat purred, and rubbed her small round skull against Jeweltongue’s chin, and put her forepaws on Jeweltongue’s knees, and licked her once with her raspy tongue. Jeweltongue, looking into her face, said, “You’re not Becky at all, you’re some other cat,” at the moment that her hands, stroking the cat’s sides, felt the soft swellings of her breasts hidden by her silky fur. “Ah! You’re only in a hurry to go home to your kittens. Are you Beauty’s cat then?”
But the cat jumped down and ran off, and Jeweltongue hastened the last few steps to Rose Cottage, and at that moment she heard a heartrending wail from Tea-cosy, exiled for the night in the goat shed.
At the door of the cottage she met Lionheart, with her hand out to lift the latch; she turned at the sound of Jeweltongue’s approach. “You too! Tonight’s your literary party, isn’t it? You shouldn’t be home at all—especially not walking alone at this time of night. Listen to poor Tea-cosy! What’s wrong with us? I had to come.”
“I don’t know,” said Jeweltongue. “Something about—”
“—Beauty,” finished Lionheart, and pushed open the door.
She was asleep, lying as if flung on the hearth-rug, in front of the banked fire; her arms and legs were sprawled, and her hair lay across her face as if blown there by a strong wind. One hand seemed only just to have dropped a dark red rose, its petals blowsily open and near to falling, and she was as wet as if she had been out in the storm.
“Beauty,” breathed Jeweltongue.
“Oh, Beauty!” said Lionheart.
Jeweltongue dropped to her knees beside her sleeping sister and picked up one cold hand and began to chafe it. Lionheart bent over them just long enough to brush the hair from Beauty’s face, tenderly, murmuring, “We’re like a three-legged stool with one leg gone, without you,” and then knelt by the fire and began to dig through the ashes for embers worth blowing on. She said between exhalations: “I couldn’t believe … any harm … had come to her … even though … I had no real reason …”
“But the roses,” said Jeweltongue.
“Yes,” said Lionheart, feeding kindling chips into her tiny flame flickers. They both glanced at the window over the back garden; even in the darkness, the ruffled and scalloped edges of a few late roses that framed it were visible. A little wind stirred, and several of the roses tapped their heads against the panes; it was a reassuring sound. “If Beauty’s roses were blooming, then so was Beauty.”
Jeweltongue rose abruptly and fetched an empty jam jar, upside down next to the washing-up bowl, filled it with clean water from the ewer, and put Beauty’s rose in it. “This is another one like the one Father brought, isn’t it? I remember the smell. Only it’s nearly gone over. I wonder what—” She hesitated.
“—adventures Beauty has had since she plucked it? Yes,” said Lionheart. “But her adventure will have been nothing like Father’s.” She tried to speak firmly, but her voice trailed away.
“The first one lasted and lasted, as if the rose itself were enchanted.… Help me get her out of her wet things, and then if you’ll go let Tea-cosy in before she brings the wild hunt’s hounds down on us.”
Tea-cosy rushed out of the goat shed and hurled herself against the closed door of the cottage. At the thump, Beauty stirred for the first time. Jeweltongue had been tying her dressing-gown round her. It was a new one; Jeweltongue had only just finished making it last winter, to replace the rag of overcoat Beauty had been using in the absence of anything better. She had refused to take it with her to the Beast’s palace, as it was now the nicest of their three: “An enchanted palace must have dressing-gowns and to spare, or if not, I will make a velvet curtain serve.” Neither Jeweltongue nor Lionheart had had the heart to use it, however, and it had hung untouched on its peg for seven months. It had been such a long time! She stopped what she was doing and stroked Beauty’s cheek. “Beauty? Please, darling …”
The door opened to the sound of Lionheart’s expostulations, and Tea-cosy launched herself at Beauty and began frantically licking her face, making little squeaking whimpers and wagging her short tail so hard her body vibrated down its full length, and between the counter-impulsions of wagging and licking, her ears seemed to spin out almost sideways, in a blur like hummingbirds’
wings.
“Saints!” said Jeweltongue, trying to lift her away, but the dog, usually immediately amenable to anything any of the sisters suggested, struggled in her grip and began to burrow under Beauty’s arm and side.
“Tea-cosy,” murmured Beauty, trying to sit up. “I’d know that frenzy anywhere … you’re much worse than Fourpaws, I’d forgotten … don’t eat me, please.”
And then there were several minutes while the sisters simply wept in one another’s arms, and several more minutes when no one could say anything in particular, and then Lionheart got up to make tea, and Jeweltongue, Beauty, and Tea-cosy remained in front of the now enthusiastically burning fire, and Jeweltongue’s arms were round her sister, and Beauty’s head was on her shoulder, and Tea-cosy was stretched across both their laps.
“Are you ready to talk?” said Lionheart, returning with the tray.
Beauty sighed and shook her head—gingerly, because it felt so odd. She felt odd all over: Her skin was overtender and faintly prickly, like the end, or the beginning, of fever, and her thoughts spun stupidly in place and would not connect with one another. She had a strange savour in her mouth, as if she had been eating rose-petals. Why could she not remember the journey here? What had happened? She had a sense of something, of some doom near at hand, but she could not remember what it was. She did not want to remember. “Why is it so dark? Is it the middle of the night? Where is Father?”
“It is the middle of the night—when did you arrive, my love?—and Father is in Longchance, at the—the remains of a literary party. He read his own poem; he was very grand! And they called him Mr Poet after! But there was, er, a tiny accident—he’s really perfectly all right—and I came on alone.”
“In the middle of the night,” murmured Lionheart. “How did you know to come?”
Jeweltongue felt herself blush, but the firelight was warm on all their faces, and none of them wanted to disturb their own little family magic by lighting a lamp. “Well … there was this cat—”
Lionheart sat bolt upright. “But that is precisely what happened to me!”
Jeweltongue tightened her arm round Beauty, and Beauty looped her arms round the front end of Tea-cosy and hugged her, and the dog sighed hugely on a long low note of utter contentment and fell asleep, muttering faintly in her dreams.
The sisters found in themselves a great reluctance to discuss anything at all. They were home in Rose Cottage, all together again, and it was the middle of the night. They had no responsibilities; responsibilities returned with daylight. The fire crackled; Tea-cosy kicked as she ran after a dream rabbit; the roses round the kitchen window tapped against the glass; peace pooled around them like water.
Lionheart sighed, and put her teacup down. “I will have to go back to the Hall soon. I’m sorry. Would that I had known to bring Daffodil! That’s something you don’t know, Beauty; when we tried to send her back with the traders, they had a note from the captain saying we were to keep her, that she was a country pony, not a city pony. So we sent half a fair purchase price south and will send the other half in the spring. She’s a great favourite at the Hall. It’s the first time anyone has ever seen Dora happy on horseback, riding Daffodil, which is a great thing for poor Dora, in that family.
“Beauty, please, can you bear it? Can you bear to tell us what happened? Even a little of it? Mostly—really—only—are you home—home—home for—” Her courage failed her, and she could not finish her sentence.
But Beauty, to her sisters’ alarm, turned in Jeweltongue’s arms and began to weep against her sister’s breast. “I do not know what to do! It is all too impossible! He is very kind—and—and—oh—but his roses are blooming again, I am sure that is what he wanted of me—” Why had she a picture in her mind of the Beast saying, Beauty, will you marry me? Why would someone so great and grand, like the Beast, want to marry her? She was beautiful, but that would fade, unlike Jeweltongue’s skill with her needle and Lionheart’s horse sense. She had always been the least of the sisters, called Beauty because she had no other, better characteristic to name her as herself. She could make roses bloom—but that was the unicorns and the old woman. There was a little gap in the magic, that was all, and she had mended it, merely by being there, as if she were a bit of string.
“I am sure that is what he wanted of me, and I cannot possibly live without you and Father, but I have begun to wonder if I cannot live without—” And here her tears overcame her, and she sobbed without speaking. Tea-cosy woke up and began to lick her wrist.
Jeweltongue stroked her hair, and eventually Beauty sat up again, drawing her hand away from the dog. “You will wear a hole in the skin soon, little one,” she said, and took the dog’s head between both her hands, and smoothed the fur back over her skull and down her neck and ears. “Your hair is so thick and curly, after Fourpaws! I wonder if Fourpaws—” She almost said, “misses me,” but stopped before the dangerous words were out. Dangerous, why? she thought; but she had no answer, only the sick, torn, unhappy feeling she’d had since—since … She could not remember. How had she come here? Why could she not remember the Beast’s last words to her? Why then was she so sure that those last words had been important?
“Who is Fourpaws?” said Jeweltongue.
“Fourpaws is a cat I—who lives where I have been staying. She has just had kittens. She is very pretty—rather small, grey with amber flecks and huge green-gold eyes.”
“But that must be the cat that I—” “But that is the cat—” Jeweltongue and Lionheart spoke simultaneously.
“I didn’t finish telling you,” said Lionheart. “I’ve been horribly restless all evening, but I thought—I told myself—it was just the storm. Molly came in and wouldn’t go out again—usually she sleeps in the barn, and indeed, Mr Horsewise doesn’t like her in the house; he says she has to earn her keep—but she wouldn’t settle down either and kept winding through my legs and making this fretful, irritating, hoarse little mewing till I thought—with the wind and the rain and her going grrup grrup in anything resembling a lull—I would go mad with it.
“The storm cleared off from the east, you know; you would have had it longer in Longchance, I think. As soon as the wind dropped, I opened the door and pretty well threw her out, but when I tried to close the door again, she was standing on the threshold. If I hadn’t seen her in time, I think I’d’ve closed it on her, because she really wasn’t moving.
“But I was in a state myself by then. I had this craving to go back to Rose Cottage. I don’t know how else to describe it. I was convinced I’d find Beauty there, you know? Only I knew that was ridiculous. But I thought a walk might calm me down a little, so I came out. Everyone else was asleep. We get up early, you know, we fall asleep early. We all have our own tiny cubbies, upstairs from the common room, so even if it’s not allowed, and it isn’t, if you want to slip out, it’s not hard.
“Molly was thrilled, and gambolled and played like a kitten, always coming back to me and then dashing off somewhere, and I was so preoccupied with fighting my longing to come home I just followed her for something to do … and then discovered I was out in the middle of the woods and had no idea where I was. I would have said I know every foot of woodland around here, not just the bridle paths but the deer trails—the rabbit trails, for pity’s sake!—but I was completely lost. And then I followed Molly because I didn’t know what else to do.
“And then about the time I spilled out on a track I did know—the one that runs along the length of Goldfield’s farm—and I saw Molly in fairly bright starlight after all the shadows under the trees, I saw it wasn’t Molly. All cats are grey in the dark, but Molly is brindle-black and white, and the white shows. You see her white front twinkle in the dark of the barn when you’re up before dawn.”
“And she came up to you to say good-bye, and when you petted her, you noticed she was nursing kittens,” said Jeweltongue.
“Yes,” said Lionheart. “And we’d covered far more distance than we should have
been able to. One of the reasons I was so cross about being lost is that we hadn’t been walking long—not long enough to get really lost in. When I came out on the farm road, I was only about half an hour from here, and on foot in the dark, from the Hall, it’s at least three hours. Which is why I need to leave soon. I don’t suppose your Fourpaws will be hanging round waiting to take me back.”
“Half an hour,” said Jeweltongue. “I guess she, Fourpaws, had to dash off to relieve Becky, who was bringing me.”
They both turned to Beauty, who was staring out the window at her roses. “I can’t remember,” she said softly. “I remember this morning … and Fourpaws’ kittens … and the night before … the unicorns—oh, I remember the unicorns!—and so I didn’t want to go into the glasshouse this morning. There is something I cannot remember. I went to find the Beast.… Oh!” She sat up again, and leant forward to grasp Jeweltongue’s hands. “I remember Jack Trueword—the story he told—I was afraid—have I ruined it for all of us?—Do we have to leave Longchance? I had to come back to see if you were all right—”
“If we were all right!” exploded Lionheart. “You’ve been gone seven months with never a word, and now suddenly you reappear because of something that conceited little fop said, and you want to know if we’re all right? You wretched, thoughtless brute, why didn’t you ever send us word about you?”
“Seven months?” Beauty said slowly. “Seven months? But it’s only been seven days. The butterflies were the first morning, the day after I arrived, and then the bat, and the hedgehogs, and the spider, and the toads, and this morning was Fourpaws’ kittens—seven days.”
“Dear,” said Jeweltongue, “it’s been seven months for us.”
There was a silence. “I’m so sorry,” said Beauty.