“I want no presents from the Beast,” said Father. “Is he trying to buy us off? Let him take his rich gifts back, and leave us our girl.”
“Please, Father,” I said. “Think of them as presents from me. I’d like you to keep them, and think of me.” Father dropped his eyes, and reluctantly put out a hand and stroked the fur collar of his new jacket.
Ger sighed. “I still don’t understand—and I don’t like not understanding. It makes me feel like a child again, with my mother telling me bogey stories. But I will do as you say—and, since it pleases you—” He picked up his cap, and twirled it on one finger. “Your Beast must be very fond of you, to be so kind to your family.” Father snorted, but said nothing, “Thank you both,” Ger said, and he kissed me too. “I’ve always wondered what it would be like to dress like a lord; here’s my opportunity,” He put the hat on backwards, and pulled it low on his forehead so that the feather tickled his chin. “I feel different already,” he said, blowing at the feather, and Hope laughed. “You look different,”
“Yes, I will cause quite a stir wearing this hat and white satin breeches to shoe horses. It’s a pity I didn’t ask for a new pair of bellows to be thrown in with this deal. The price of the feather alone would probably buy them.” He put the hat on straight, and Hope picked up his cloak and put it around his shoulders, and arranged the golden chain and clasps. Ger stood still while she fussed over him, with a bit of a smile pulling at his mouth. We looked at him as Hope stepped back. He still looked like Ger as we all knew him, but he was different too; you could imagine this Ger commanding armies. With his heavy hair pushed back under the cap, you noticed the height and breadth of his forehead, and the straight proud lines of his eyebrows and mouth.
“I feel silly,” he said. “Don’t stare at me so”; and he took the cap off, and the cloak, and dwindled again to Hope’s husband and the finest blacksmith in a half dozen towns.
“You looked like a lord,” said Hope, smiling.
“Fond wife,” he replied, putting an arm around her waist.
Grace had left her chair, the gold dress heaped over the back of it and spilling across the seat, to light several candles and lamps to augment the firelight, “If we’re going to be grand, we should see what we’re doing,” she said, and as she passed me, she kissed me and whispered in my ear: “Thank you, dear heart. I don’t care that I can’t wear it; I shall look at it every night, and think of you, I’ll even try and think kindly of your dreadful Beast.” I smiled.
Father stood up and smiled at me too, but it was a sad smile. “Very well, my dear, you win the day—as you seem always to do. As Ger says, I don’t understand; but there’s magic at work, so—well, I’ll do what you say, and try to be glad of what we have—of what you tell us. We shan’t let you out of our sight for the week, you know.”
I nodded. “I hope not.”
We all went to bed shortly after this. I realized that I still hadn’t told Grace about Robbie. “Tomorrow,” I thought. “Tonight would have been too soon, too much.
But I mustn’t put it off anymore.” My attic looked just as I remembered it, only somewhat cleaner; Grace kept it much better than I ever had. The sheets on the bed were fresh and clean, not stiff and musty with six months’ neglect, and the bed was made up very neatly, which was not at all how I had left it. I sac on the trunk, under the window, and stared out across the meadow and into the forest.
My thoughts went back to the evening just past, of the scene around the parlour fire, when I had tried to plead for my Beast against my family’s animosity. I knew now what it was that had happened—I couldn’t tell them that here, at home with them again, I had learned what I had successfully ignored these last weeks at the castle; that I had come to love him. They were no less dear to me, but he was dearer yet. I thought of the enchantment that I didn’t understand, of the puzzle Lydia and Bessie expected me to fit together; but suddenly these things mattered very little. I did not need to push them out of my mind, as I had been doing; they simply dropped into insignificance.
And in the meantime I was with my family for a week.
The house fell silent; but the quiet here was simpler than the kind of quiet I had lived in for the last six months. I stared at shadows that moved only with the moon, and my ears strained after echoes that weren’t there. I crept downstairs again and went out to the stable, where I found Greatheart flirting delicately with the new mare, who wasn’t quite ignoring him, “I’m not sure a foal next summer is on the schedule,” I told him. He rubbed his head against me. “But you’re not listening,”
I added. I took his bridle down from its hook and he raised his head at once and watched me intently. I freed the red rose that hung from the strap across the forehead, and replaced the bridle, and the horse relaxed. “Good night, little one,” I said, slapping his massive hindquarters, and made my way softly back to the house. I took a deep bowl from the kitchen, filled it with water, and tiptoed back upstairs. I put rose and bowl on the window sill; and suddenly I realized that I was exhausted. I pulled my clothes off, and fell asleep as soon as I lay down.
5
Two days passed as quickly as a sigh. On the third day Greatheart and Cider were discovered to have escaped the stable, and were grazing, side by side, by the enchanted stream. Greatheart, to everyone’s surprise, was inclined to get a little huffy and snorty when Ger went to catch him, and wouldn’t let him near the mare, who stood still, ears forward, and awaited developments. I had been watching the show from the kitchen door, chewing lazily on a piece of bread and Grace’s blackberry jelly, but then I went across to join them. “Your overgrown lapdog has some temperament after all,” said Ger with a rueful smile.
“I’ll try,” I said. “We could be all day chasing them.
“Here, you great idiot,” I continued, walking towards the horse, who stood in front of his mare, watching my approach, “you’ve had your fun, a proper night of it I daresay. Now you can behave. Duty calls.” I stopped a few feet away, and held my hand out, palm up, with the last of the bread and jelly. “I’ll put you in with the cow if you’re not good,” I added. We held each other’s eyes for a moment, then Greatheart dropped his head with a sigh, and ambled over to me, and put his nose in my hand. “Cart-horse,” I said affectionately, and slid the halter I had thoughtfully brought with me over his head. Greatheart only flicked an ear as Ger slid a rope around the docile Cider’s neck, and we returned them to the stable, Greatheart investigating all my pockets for more bread. “This should be quite a foal,” said Ger. “I hope it takes after its daddy.”
“Maybe she’ll follow the family precedent and have twins,” I suggested. The father of the twins gave me a pained look, and we went in to breakfast.
I still hadn’t told Grace about Robbie; I dreaded it, knowing the heartache she had already been through, and while I knew that what I had seen in the Beast’s glass was true, it was so little, so very little to ruin Grace’s precarious peace of mind. And since the Beast was persona non grata at home anyway, I disliked the prospect of explaining the source of my information; my family would not have the faith I did in his veracity, and the possibility of truth in what I had seen would cause an uproar in several different directions at once. So I continued to put it off, and continued to scold myself feebly for so doing.
But that afternoon the minister came to call, Hope and Grace and I were all in the kitchen, and Grace asked us with a look to stay. I had not seen Pat Lawrey since my return, and I found myself estimating his worth with the cold calculation Ger used on a fresh load of pig iron, as he smiled and shook my hand and told me how well I was looking and how glad everyone was to see me. He was a nice young man, to be sure, I thought, but not much else. Grace can’t marry him, I thought with a touch of fear; no wonder she still remembers Robbie. Tonight, I thought. No more delays.
Melinda’s son John, the boy who worked for Ger, had spread the word of my return the day after my unexpected arrival, and the house since then had seen a
steady stream of visitors, some of them old friends like Melinda and her large family, and some merely acquaintances curious to see the prodigal. All wanted to know what life in the city was like, and I put most of their questions off, and lied uncomfortably when I had to. Everyone thought it was very odd that I had turned up so suddenly, like a mushroom, or a changeling in a cradle.
Melinda had come the very first day; John had gone home for his dinner at noon, instead of eating with us, so he could start broadcasting the news as soon as possible. Melinda came back with him in the afternoon, and kissed me and shook me by the shoulders and told me I looked marvelous and how I’d grown! Her questions were the hardest to turn aside; she wanted very much to know why she hadn’t seen me coming through town—everything that happened in Blue Hill happened in front of the Griffin—and what my aunt meant by letting me come alone, and whether there really had been no warning. She obviously thought I was being treated very shabbily, and only her good manners prevented her from saying so outright. I tried to explain that I’d left the party I traveled with for only the last few miles, but she refused to be mollified. Then she was shocked that I could stay only a week—“After six, seven months, and a six weeks’ journey to come here at all? The woman’s mad. When are you coming again?”
“I don’t know,” I said unhappily.
“You don’t—” she started, saw the expression on my face, and stopped abruptly. “Well, I’ll say no more. These are family matters, and I’ve no call to be meddling. There’s more here than you care to tell me, and that’s as it should be; I’m no kin of yours. But I’m fond of you, child, so I hope you’ll excuse me; I’d have liked to have seen more of you, but you’re here for so little I’ll have to leave you to your family.”
I was glad to see her, but her common sense and my inability to answer her straightforward questions distressed me, and I was relieved when she took her leave. The only bright spot was watching her and Father together: They spoke for a few minutes apart from the rest of us, after she had already bid us good-bye. They were smiling at each other in a foolish sort of way that they obviously weren’t aware of; and I caught Hope watching them narrowly. She caught my eye, smiled just enough for me to recognize it as a smile, and winked slowly. We turned our backs on them and returned to the kitchen, where Grace had gone already, soberly discussing the dyeing of yarn.
John also took home the tale of the wonderful new bellows—brass-bound!—that I had brought from the city, which served to soften the opinions of people like his mother toward my evil-minded aunt. Ger had found the bellows hung mysteriously in the place of the old ones, which had disappeared, a scant few minutes before John had arrived that first morning after I had come home, and had just the presence of mind to explain where they were from. John swore they were more than twice as easy to pump as the old ones, for all they were so much bigger.
The smooth white road that had brought me to my own back door had disappeared as though it had never been. That morning, while Ger was discovering his new equipment, I was walking along the edge of the forest. I could find Greatheart’s hoofprints, where he had jumped over the thorny hedge that grew irregularly it the forest’s border, but behind it, nothing. Nothing but rocks and leaves and dirt and pine needles: no road, no hoofprints, no sign even of arty large animal forcing its way through the underbrush.
I was still staring at Greatheart’s hoofprints as though they were runes when the first visitors arrived with work for Ger and Father, and discovered the lost Iamb returned to the fold. The house was full of people for that day, and the day after, and the day after; I’d forgotten there were so many people in Blue Hill. But my mysterious arrival piqued their curiosity, and many of the men still remembered Greatheart’s strength, and came out to wish us well, and to drink some of our cider.
That third day, Molly arrived shortly before Mr. Lawrey left, ostensibly to deliver a big jar of Melinda’s famous pickles, which she remembered I was fond of, but actually to ask me again about the city. “She must keep you locked in the attic,” Molly said impulsively. “You haven’t seen anything.”
“Well, mostly I study,” I said apologetically.
Molly shook her head in wonder; and then some men who had come to consult with Father and Ger were brought in for tea. It wasn’t till after dinner that evening, the dishes washed and the candles lit, that we were alone, and had time to talk. I had been seeing Robbie in my mind all afternoon, since the minister had left, his thin face lit up by the old happy-go-lucky smile I remembered from the city, when he was making the final preparations for the journey that would make him a fortune and win him a wife.
We were sitting around the parlour fire, busy with handwork, just as I remembered from the days before Father’s fateful journey. I was mending harness; everyone had protested against my working, when I was only a few days home, but I had insisted; and it felt good to be doing this homely work again, although my fingers were slower than they once had been. Everything seemed very much as I remembered it: I derived much comfort from looking around me and reiterating this to myself. I wanted to take as much of this contentment and security back with me as I could.
Hope finished a seam on the dress she was making, and dragged me away from my bits of leather to use me as a dressmaker’s dummy, pinning folds of green cotton around me. “This isn’t going to help you much,” I said, holding my arms out awkwardly as she pinned a swath across my chest. “I’m the wrong shape.”
Hope smiled, and spoke through a mouthful of pins. “No you’re not,” she said. “All I have to do is shorten the hem. Aren’t there any mirrors in that grand castle of yours? I don’t understand how you could help noticing something....”
“She’s never noticed anything but books and horses since she was a baby,” said Grace, golden head bowed over a shirt she was making for Richard.
“An ugly baby,” I said.
“Let’s not start that again,” said Hope. “Don’t fidget, I’ll be finished sooner, you silly thing, if you’ll stand still.”
“The pins stick me,” I complained.
“They wouldn’t, if you would stand still,” Hope said inexorably. “But didn’t you grow out of your clothes, and have to have new ones?”
“Well, no,” I said. “Lydia and Bessie always tend to my wardrobe, and one way or another whatever they put on me fits.”
“Whew,” said Hope. “I wish the twins’ clothes would do that.”
“Mmm,” said Grace, biting off a thread.
“But that even you shouldn’t notice anything” said Hope, kneeling to fold up the hem.
“Well—the day after I came home I looked at Great-heart’s saddle,” I offered, trying to be helpful, “I remember that the stirrup leathers were replaced the first day I was there. I’m using them three holes longer now than I did then. Funny though, I don’t at all remember moving them.”
“What did I tell you?” said Grace, starting on another seam, “Only Beauty would think to measure herself by the length of her stirrups,” and everybody laughed. “Oh dear,” said Hope. “I’ve lost a pin. Richard’s foot will find it tomorrow. All right, foolish girl, you can take it off now,”
“How?” I said plaintively.
After I had been extricated I sat down on the edge of the stone hearth, where I had set my cup of cider, near Grace’s knee. I hated to break the comfortable silence. “I—there’s another reason I came home, just now,” I said; and everyone stopped whatever they were doing and looked at me. The silence was splintered, not just by my words. I looked down into my cup. “I’ve been putting off telling you. It’s—it’s about Grace.”
My oldest sister laid the little shin on her knees and crossed her hands over it before she looked at me; and then her eyes were anxious. “What is it?”
I didn’t know any good way to lead up to it. “Robbie’s come home,” I said, very low. “He put in at the city dock the morning of the day I came home, I came to tell you—so you wouldn’t marry Mr. Lawrey till you’d
seen him again.”
Grace gasped when I first mentioned Robbie’s name, and put out her hands, which I seized. “Robbie?” she said. “Oh, is it true? I can’t believe it, I’ve thought of it for so long. Beauty, is it true?”
I nodded as she stared at me, and then her eyes went blank, and she fell forwards in my lap in a faint. I lifted her gently back into her chair as the rest of the family stood up and started forwards. Father slid a pillow under her head, and Hope disappeared into the kitchen and returned with an evil-smelling little bottle, Grace stirred and sat up, looking at us as we crouched around her. “It had better be true, now,” said Father grimly. “I know,” I answered in an undertone. “But it is.”
Grace looked around slowly until her eyes rested on me, and her gaze cleared. “How do you know? Tell me everything. Have you seen him? But you said he was in the city. Please—”
“I saw him the same way I saw you and Hope talking in the parlour, that morning,” I said, and her eyes widened, and I heard Hope catch her breath. “The White Raven is a wreck; I don’t know how he managed to bring her home at all. And he looks ill, and tired. But he’s alive. And I don’t know what he’ll do when he finds out what’s happened to you—to all of us.”
“Alive,” whispered Grace, and she looked at Father, with her eyes as big and bright as summer raindrops. “We must invite him to come here as soon as he may. He can rest here, and regain his strength.”
Father stood up and walked around the room, and paused as he returned to the fireplace. “You’re sure,” he said to me, wishing for reassurance and yet unsure that he could accept it. I nodded.