Beauty (6 page)

hadn’t grown, though. When I was twelve, my sisters said kindly that the size of my hands and feet indicated that I would grow later; but by this time I was sixteen, and resigned to the fact that that growing

streak just wasn’t going to arrive. But now that I no longer had to put them in dainty white gloves, I found

that my big hands had their uses; and overall I was on pretty good terms with myself. It helped that the only looking-glass in the house was in my sisters’ room.

We had worried about Grace the first winter; she seemed never to get over the shock of Robbie’s loss, and grew so thin and pale I used to think I could see the firelight shining through her. But with spring

she began to recover, and while she was quieter than she once had been, she put on weight, and got some colour back in her cheeks—She did most of the work and all of the organizing for the wedding day, and for the feast afterwards; and if she was thinking of Robbie, you would never have known it, seeing her laugh and dance and sing, and watch the level in the punch bowls. She even condescended to flirt a little, very delicately, with the young minister who performed the ceremony; and the poor man went

home walking like one drunk, although he had tasted nothing stronger than tea the whole day.

It was the day of the wedding also that Ferdy kissed me, which was how I discovered that looking presentable had its drawbacks. Ferdy was a lad a few years older than myself who helped Ger in the shop when he was needed; Ger said often that the boy had promise as a smith, and he wished he could hire him on a regular schedule. Ferdy was very tall and thin, with bony hands and a big nose and a wild thatch of red hair. We had become friends over the last few months—he’d started working for Ger in early June—and he taught me to fish, and to snare rabbits, and to kill and clean them when they were snared. I liked him, but I didn’t like him kissing me.

The wedding day was blue and clear and warm—hot, after the second cup of punch. The ceremony was performed in our tiny parlour, with only the family, and Melinda and a few more special friends; but afterwards the whole town came to the banquet. We had brought the big trestle tables from the Griffin in

Greatheart’s cart, and set them up in the meadow, and added our own kitchen table; and spread on them

were bread and sweet butter, and pies and fruits and jellies, and roast meats, plus the punch, and tea and

milk for those who wanted it; and some fiddlers had upon request brought their fiddles, and so there was

dancing; and while Ger and Hope laughed at their friends’ jokes, and danced with everyone, and thanked

them for their good wishes, they never really took their eyes off one another. The day had begun very early, on the understanding that it would end at sundown; tomorrow would be a working day as usual, and it was near harvest, with no time to waste, even on weddings. Grace and Molly and Melinda and I cleaned up afterwards in the young twilight. We agreed with each other that we were exhausted, but none of us could stop smiling.

Ferdy came by the next day especially to see me, though I didn’t want to see him, and especially not when he’d made his visit only for that purpose. He apologized to me for the day before, stammering and shaking and turning a bright scarlet, which looked very odd with his orange hair, and he begged that I forgive him. I forgave him to make him stop apologizing; but I also began to avoid him, and when I did come to the shop when he was there, or when he ate die noon meal with us, he followed me with his eyes

as if I wore a black hood and carried an axe, and he was next in line.

Ger, who as a new bridegroom shouldn’t have been noticing anything but the charms of his new bride, noticed the tension between his assistant and his younger sister-in-law. One day when we were out

together hauling wood, and there was the pause between throwing the tools in on the last pile of wood and telling Greatheart to get along there, Ger rubbed his face with a dirty hand and said, “About Ferdy.”

I stiffened. There was a pause that snickered in my ears, and then Ger said gently, “Don’t worry about it.

It’s different with different people.”

I picked up a twig from the forest floor and threw it absently into the wagon. I didn’t know what he meant by “it” and I would have died rather than ask him. “Okay,” I said. And then as I took hold of Greatheart’s bridle I added, “Thanks,” over my shoulder, since I knew he was trying to be helpful.

Hope gave birth to twins ten months after the wedding, in May. The girl was born first; Hope named her Mercy, after our sister who had died, although I privately thought that our family already had more than enough virtues personified. The little boy was named Richard, for Ger’s father. Mercy was a healthy, happy baby from the beginning, and she was born with golden curls and blue eyes that would look straight at a face bending over her. Richard was puny, bald, and shriveled-looking, didn’t eat well, and cried steadily for the first six months; then perhaps he began to feel ashamed of himself, for he cried

only at intervals, grew plump and rosy, and produced some reddish-brown hair.

It was in late September that a pedlar from the south came into town and asked at the Griffin if they knew of a man named Woodhouse, or of another, older man named Huston, who used to live in the city.

Melinda, after looking him over and asking his business, brought him along to us; and he gave Father a letter with a wax seal.

The letter was from a man named Frewen, whom Father had known and trusted. He was another merchantman who owned several ships, and lived in the city near our old house. He was writing now to say that one of Father’s missing ships was returning to port after all: It had been sighted and spoken by one of Frewen’s own captains, whose veracity his master would vouch for. Frewen could not say exactly when the ship might reach home; but he hoped to be able to do his old friend Huston the service of holding it for him until he could send word or come himself to dispose of it. He was welcome to stay at Frewen’s house while he transacted his business.

Father read the letter aloud to us sitting around the parlour fire after dinner, and a grim silence fel l after he was finished, Grace sat as if frozen; if it hadn’t been for the firelight she would have been white as

milk, her hands clenched into fists in her lap, twisting her apron. Even the babies were quiet; I held Mercy, who looked up at me with big eyes.

“I’ll have to go,” said Father. Robbie Tucker was an almost tangible presence in the room. “Tom Bradley should be stopping by here any day now; I can go south with them.”

And so it was. Tom arrived a week later, and declared himself delighted to have Father’s company all the way south to the city again. The letter had cast a pall over all of us that the fine clear autumn weather and the babies’ high spirits did nothing to dispel; and it closed down as tightly as a shroud when Father had gone. The worst of it was watching Grace turn cold and white and anxious again, seeing in her

a helpless, despairing sort of excitement that she could not quite suppress.

Father told us not to look for him before the spring, when traveling would be easier. But it was a col d night in late March, with the snow nearly a foot thick on the ground after a sudden blizzard, when the front door was thrown open and Father stood on the threshold. Ger strode forwards and caught him in his arms as he staggered, and then half carried him to a seat near the fire. As he sank down with a sigh we all noticed that in his hand he held a rose: a great scarlet rose, bigger than any we had seen before, in

full and perfect bloom. “Here, Beauty,” he said to me, and held it out. I took it, my hand trembling a little,

and stood gazing at it. I had never seen such a lovely thing.

When Father had set out last autumn he had asked us girls if there was anything he could bring us from the city. No, we said: Our only wish is that you should come home to us soon and safely.

“Oh, come now, children,” he said. “Pretty girls want pretty things: What little trinkets do you secretly think about?” We looked at one another, not sure what we should say; and then Hope laughed a little and kissed him and said, “Oh, bring us ropes of pearls and rubies and emeralds, because we haven’t a thing to wear the next time we visit the King and Queen.” We all laughed then, Father too, but I thought his eyes looked hurt; so a little later I said to him, “Father, there is something you can bring me—I’d love to plant some roses here, around the house. If you could buy some seeds that are not too dear, in a few years we’ll have a garden that will be the envy of all Blue Hill,” He smiled and promised that he w ould try.

I remembered this now, five months later, the snow-cold stem against my fingers. We stood like a Christmas tableau, focused on the huge nodding rose in my hand, snow dripping softly off its crimson petals; then a blast from the still-open door shook us, as it seemed, from sleep. Grace said, “I’ll put some water in a cup for it,” and went to the kitchen. As I went to close the door, I saw a laden horse standing forlorn in the snow; it raised its head and pricked its ears at me. I hadn’t bothered to think that Father must have traveled with some kit besides a scarlet rose. I handed the rose to Grace and said, “I’ll see to the horse.” Ger followed me, and it happened that I needed his assistance, because the saddle-bags were

full and very heavy.

When we returned, Father was sipping some hastily warmed cider, and the silence still lay as thick as the snow outside. Ger and I dumped the leather satchels into a corner near the door, and all but forgot them. As we took our places again by the fire, Hope knelt down in front of Father and put her hands in his lap; and when he looked at her, she said gently: “What has happened since you left us, Father?”

He shook his head. “There’s too much to tell it all now. I am tired, and must sleep,” and we noticed how old and frail he looked, and his eyes were heavy and sunken. He looked up at Grace: “I am sorry, child, but it was not the
Raven.”
Grace bowed her head. “It was the
Merlyn;
she hadn’t been drowned after all.” He fell silent again for several minutes, while the firelight chased shadows across his weary face.

“I’ve brought back a little money, and a few things; not much.” Ger and I caught each other giving the full

saddle-bags puz7led looks; but we said nothing.

Grace had set the rose, now standing in a tall pottery cup of water, on the mantelpiece above the parlour fire. Father looked up at it, and all our eyes were drawn after his. “Do you like it, Beauty, child?”

he said. “Yes, indeed, Father,” I said, wondering; “I have never seen its like.”

He said, as if in a trance, staring at the flower: “Little you know what so simple a thing has cost me”; and as he finished speaking, a petal fell from the rose, although it was unharmed and blooming. The petal

turned in the air as it fell, as if it were so feather-light that the warm eddies of air from the fire could lift it;

and the firelight seemed to gild it. But it struck the floor with an audible clink, like a dropped coin. Ger bent down and picked it up: It was a bright yellow colour. He took it between his fingers, and with a little effort bent it slightly. “It’s gold,” he said quietly.

Father stood up as if his back hurt him. “Not now,” he said in response to our awed faces.

“Tomorrow I will tell you all my story. Will you help me upstairs?” he said to Grace; and the rest of us looked after them when they had gone. Hope banked the fire, and we went our ways to bed. The saddle-bags lay untouched where Ger and I had set them; he gave them hardly a glance as he barred the door.

I dreamed that the stream from the enchanted wood turned to liquid gold, and its voice as it ran over the rocks was as soft as silk; and a great red griffin wheeled over our meadow, shadowing the house with

its wings.

Father was still asleep when the rest of us ate a silent breakfast and started the day’s work. After I’d finished eating went into the parlour to look at the rose again: It was still there—I hadn’t dreamed that, at

least. The golden petal lay on the mantelpiece where Ger had set it the night before; it teetered gently on

its curved base when I looked closely at it, but that must have been a draft in the room. The rose had opened no wider; it was as though it had been frozen at the moment of its most perfect beauty. Looking at it—its perfume filled the whole room—I found it easy to believe that this rose would never fade and die. I went out the front door and shut it softly behind me, feeling that I had just emerged from a magician’s cave.

Ger had a skittery colt to shoe that day, and I had promised to help him; so I kept watch through the stable window, as I groomed the horses, for the arrival of the colt with its owner. I worked hastily, since I had two horses to finish in the time I usually spent on one; but something about the horse Father had ridden gave me pause. On its rump, near the root of the tail, were five small, round white spots, like saddle—or harness-marks, but nowhere that any harness might wear them. Four were arranged in a curved line, and the fifth was a little space away from the other four, and at a lower angle: like the four fingertips and thumb of a hand. It would have had to be a very big hand, because my fingers, when I tried

it, did not begin to reach. As I laid my hand flat on the horse’s croup, the animal shivered under the touch

and threw its head up nervously. I saw the white of its eye flash as it looked back at me; and it seemed to

be in such real fear—it had been quiet and well-mannered till then—that I spent several minutes soothing

it.

The skittish colt arrived a little before mid-morning, and I spent a couple of hours hanging on to its headstall and humming tunes in its ear, or holding up the foot diagonal to the one Ger was working on so

that it would have too much to do maintaining its balance to cause more trouble.

Father emerged from the house a little before noon, and stood on the front step breathing the air and looking around him as if he had been gone a decade instead of a few months, or as if he were treasuring up the scene against future hardship. As I watched him walk towards the shop I thought that he had recovered remarkably well after only one night’s rest; and as he came close enough for me to see him clearly the change seemed more than remarkable. I was distracted from the colt, who promptly lunged forwards; Ger yelled, “Here, hold on now!” and dropped the foot he had picked up. When I glanced guiltily back at him I saw him first notice my father, and the bewilderment I had just felt showed clear on his face.