CHAPTER

12

Mrs Words-Without-End went to Jeweltongue, who was standing, looking stricken, and seized her hands. Her father gripped Jeweltongue’s shoulder; Mr Whitehand stood close at her side. Mrs Words-Without-End said: “It is only a silly tale, the silliest of tales. I forgot myself in the pleasure of your father’s reading of his most romantic poem. It is all nonsense, of course, as silly tales are—”

Jeweltongue said, stiffly, as if she were very cold: “And the ghost? You never told us who the ghost is.”

“Yes!” said several voices at once. “Who is the ghost?”

Mrs Words-Without-End said to Jeweltongue: “The ghost is the ghost of the simulacrum. Sometimes she is nothing but a breath of the scent of a rose on the air, especially in winter. Sometimes you can just see her, but often only as a kind of shadow, a silhouette, of a woman with long hair, holding a rose to her breast, as if its stem grew from her heart. I saw her often when I was a little girl—I had seen her several times before my grandmother told me the story—and then it was as if she went away, oh, for twenty years or more. But then she came back, about ten years ago now.…”

“But why does she come to you?” said a voice.

Mrs Words-Without-End said to Jeweltongue: “My father was a kind of cousin to the philosopher who disappeared. My father’s great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather inherited the philosopher’s other properties, including this house. I’ve always lived in this house. I made my poor husband come here when I married him. I might have made him change his name, except that he is a cousin too, and already had it. I—I have been afraid that if one of our family no longer lives here, perhaps the ghost will no longer have a home; and if she needs a home, I wish her to have it. I—I don’t know what possessed me to tell the story tonight. I do believe the storm has crept into my head and disarranged all my thinking. I have never told it to anyone but my husband and my daughters, once they were grown, when our ghost returned after her long absence. Except that … it has seemed to me lately that she is around much more than she ever used to be. Even my husband has seen her several times, in the last several months, and he had never seen her before. And she seems to be restless in some way; I have even felt that she has been asking me to do something, and the only thing I can think of to do for her is to tell her story.”

Beauty heard the rain pounding against the windows and the wind thundering as if it would have the house off its foundations, and she felt as if the wind and the rain were dragging and drumming at her, and wished she could hold on to her chair for comfort; but she could not move her hands. She seemed only able to move her eyes, and she stared at Mrs Words-Without-End, stared as the marmalade cat stared at herself, as if she could not look away. A gust against the wall of the house made her quiver, and she had to blink, and blink and blink again, as if rain were running into her eyes. I am dreaming, she told herself again. There is nothing to be frightened of; it is only a dream; I will wake in my bed, I will wake in my bed in …

As Mrs Words-Without-End fell silent, the sound of the storm seemed to swell; the lash of rain against the house struck like a blow from something solid as a bludgeon, and it poured down the windows with a heavy splash like a bucket overturned on a doorstep. Everyone in the room had moved slowly towards the front, to be near Mrs Words-Without-End as she told her story, as if attracted by some irresistible force, and now seemed fixed on the sight of Mrs Words-Without-End with her hand holding Jeweltongue’s, staring into her eyes, and the dumb, amazed look on Jeweltongue’s face; and with the muffling of all other sound by the bellow of the storm, everyone started and looked round in alarm when someone threw back the half-closed doors at the rear of the room.

Beauty still could not stir. She turned her eyes, and her neck consented to move slowly, slowly, slowly, but still not so far that she could look over her shoulder and see who—or what—had arrived. Mrs Words-Without-End seemed to shrink away from whoever it was; she put her arm round Jeweltongue’s shoulders, but whether she wished to comfort Jeweltongue or herself it was impossible to say.

Beauty felt a tap on her shin and looked down; there was the marmalade cat, patting at her leg, as if asking to jump into her lap. Beauty’s lips slowly shaped the words Oh, yes, please, though she had no voice to utter them, nor could she have made herself heard now over the storm bar shouting; but the cat understood, and leapt up, and trod her skirts into a shape it liked, and lay down. Beauty gave up trying to look over her shoulder and, automatically trying to bend her arm to cradle the cat, discovered that she could, and with the first touch of warm fur on her skin a little life seemed to come to her, as if she were in this room in truth instead of only in dream. And as the intruder strode down the aisle towards Mrs Words-Without-End and the little group on the hearth-rug, she was able to turn her head easily and watch.

“The weather has held me up, or I would have been here sooner,” he said, speaking in an authoritative, carrying voice, which rode over the storm like a practised actor’s over hecklers. He took off his wide-brimmed hat and gave it a shake, sending water fanning out over the empty chairs on the side of the aisle away from Beauty. Beauty saw Mr Whitehand’s fists clench at his sides.

“I was delighted when I heard of your little literary occasion, and I planned to come—I know you would have sent me an invitation had you known I was interested—because I have a story to tell too.”

Beauty had recognised the man now: Jack Trueword, the squire’s eldest son. She had only seen him once or twice, in Longchance, riding his glossy highbred horse, looking faintly amused or faintly bored, staring over everyone’s heads, perfectly certain that everyone was looking at him, because he was the squire’s elder and handsomer son. Beauty remembered him chiefly for that conviction of his own fascination, which he wore like a suit of clothes; to her eye he had never been more than a good-looking, spoilt, idle young man. But tonight she looked at him and was afraid, as if the spirit of the storm had entered the room in the person of Jack Trueword. His face was animated, but his smile was so wide as to be a grimace, his eyes were too bright, and his sharp glance moved jerkily round the room. He walked and turned and made his gestures with a barely restrained energy, as if with every motion he had to remember not to knock people down and hurl the furniture through the windows or into the fire.

He tossed back his hair, held his wet hat delicately in one hand, and shrugged out of his cape, deftly catching it with his other hand. He gave the cape a spin, and this time Beauty was spattered by the wet, though she did not feel it. The cat on her lap did and interrupted her purring with little bass notes like growls. If anyone looked at me, thought Beauty, and I am a ghost, where is the cat sitting? Is she floating a handsbreadth in the air?

But no one did look at her; everyone was looking at Jack Trueword. He laid the cape over the back of a chair, and the hat upon it, with a flourish worthy of the villain in a penny pantomime.

“I think I heard the rather interesting end of a story Mrs Oldhouse was telling, as I was entering. Something about a ghost—a woman made of rose-petals—and a sorcerer. Quite a flamboyant mix, perhaps—just the thing for a literary company.” He strolled up the rest of the aisle and turned on the hearth-rug. “My story has perhaps some elements in common with it.” The marmalade cat stopped purring.

“Mrs Oldhouse,” said Jack Trueword solicitously, “you look tired. Indeed, if you were to ask my opinion, I would say you look … drained. As if some … involuntary magic—eh?—had been called out of you. Perhaps something to do with that very interesting story you just told, that you have so rarely told? Magic takes care of itself, you know. I would wonder a little myself about a story of magic that so wishes not to be told. Especially here, you know, in Longchance …”

Mrs Words-Without-End, and Jeweltongue and her father, and Mr Whitehand stared at Jack Trueword as if fascinated. The others in the room began to stir and murmur, as if coming out of a trance, as if waking from some spell that had held them. They looked at one another a little uneasily and started as another particularly fierce blast of wind shook the house.

“Even the storm itself seems a bit … extreme, does it not?” Jack Trueword went on thoughtfully. “As though something were trying to get in. Or perhaps out. The storm is most powerful just here, by the way. When I set out from the Hall, it was merely raining. Even at the other end of Longchance the wind is no more than brisk. But when I turned through your gates, Mrs Oldhouse, I thought the wind would knock my horse off its legs.

“I am very sorry I did not hear more of your story, Mrs Oldhouse. Perhaps if I had, I would have understood it better. Sorcerers don’t disappear, you know. That bit of your story doesn’t make any sense—pardon me, Mrs Oldhouse. But sorcerers can be driven away or even ensorcelled themselves. You have to be very strong indeed to ensorcel a sorcerer, but it can be done. There are stories about it.

“I’m afraid I also don’t accept the idea that any sorcerer would for a moment fail to recognise a simulacrum as a simulacrum—however beautiful she was—especially a simulacrum made by a greenwitch. No, I’m afraid that doesn’t make sense either. I’m very sorry, Mrs Oldhouse, I seem to be ruining your story. But truth is important, don’t you think?

“My story begins … once upon a time and very long ago, but perhaps not so very far away, there were three sorcerers. I think, really, the first sorcerer was only a magician, but little the less dangerous for that, because she was so very ambitious. The second sorcerer had been distracted from the usual paths of power by his interest in immaterial philosophies. He spent his days discussing, with various citizens of various ethereal planes, how many hippogriffs can dance on the head of a pin, and such airy matters.

“The third sorcerer was a practical fellow. He too was ambitious, and his ambition had once betrayed him into carelessness: He had made the mistake of demonstrating that he was a little too clever for his own good a little too soon—and to the wrong man. He decided to move well away from the city where he had made his little mistake, and to stay away, till his name, in people’s minds, and especially in that one wrong man’s mind, should have lost some of its prominence.

“He had heard of a town—let us call it Longchance—quite a small town to have two sorcerers in it already, but it was attractively far away from the city he wished to leave, and rather isolated, and he did prefer to go somewhere that contained at least one or two of his colleagues, because he wished to go on studying and knew that studying in a vacuum always leads to carelessness, sooner or later. He was not going to be careless again, if he could help it.

“And so he moved to this town we are calling Longchance, and was apparently welcomed by both the sorcerers—or the sorcerer and the magician—already in residence, and all went well for some time.

“But sorcerers still have to eat, and unsurprisingly, they most often earn their bread by their sorceries. It so happens that the philosopher-sorcerer was the last of a wealthy family, which is no doubt why he could permit himself the luxury of philosophy in the first place. But the woman, sorcerer as she called herself, needed people to pay for her services, as did the third sorcerer. And after the third sorcerer had been living for some little time in his new home, she began to notice that when people wanted sorcery, they more and more often went to him; her they were only asking the littlest, meanest charms, love philtres, counterspells against the souring of milk by ill-natured persons known or unknown, herbs to take warts off or soothe croup. Greenwitch sorts of things that no sorcerer should be expected to perform.

“Do I begin to see some doubtful recognition on some of your faces? We all know there is some reason no magic has settled here in a very long time. And we think we know it has something to do with some great conflict between sorcerers.

“The greenwitch—for perhaps she was only ever a greenwitch—grew terribly jealous of the third sorcerer, or perhaps she only fell in love with him. That she brewed a beauty potion of rose-petals is true, but she made no simulacrum. She could not have done so much. She brewed the potion for herself and arrayed herself in an irresistible beauty.

“No one recognised her, for she had been a plain woman, and both the sorcerers fell in love with her, and each wanted her for himself. But the philosopher had been a philosopher too long, and his sprites were of no use to him here. The third sorcerer won her, as she meant for him to win her. And she convinced him, for her false beauty was the stupefying sort which throws a shadow over its lover, that she too was a powerful sorcerer and that together they could do anything. Perhaps she even believed it herself.

“I do not know everything about what happened next. I have been researching the story, you see; something that has occurred recently brought the old nursery tale to my mind again, something I will tell you … a little later. But there are gaps in the story I cannot fill. I have even stolen a look at Mrs Oldhouse’s father’s notes—I’m sure you will forgive me, Mrs Oldhouse, as I was only seeking the truth—but I found nothing about anyone weeping rose-petals. That must be a part of the story you had from your grandmother. Women are such romancers. Well, I believe that the third sorcerer and his new mistress went off to that city the third sorcerer had left, to confront the man who had made it necessary for him to leave it.

“The third sorcerer lost that confrontation, of course. But he lost far more than he had over his initial mistake. He was dying, I believe, and, in dying, was half mad with the too-late understanding that he had been betrayed. The woman’s beauty was stripped from her, and he saw it go and knew who she was and what she had done. In order to save her own wretched life—for she had taken little part in the disastrous meeting with her lover’s old nemesis—she told him that it had been the philosopher who had bewitched her—how she lied!—that she herself had only known what had happened to her when the spell was torn away. She said that the philosopher had bewitched her because it had been he who was jealous of the third sorcerer who had come and settled on his territory, as he had long been jealous of her, and he saw this means to be rid of them both.…

“And with his last strength, the dying sorcerer put a curse on the philosopher, a curse as great as he could make it. Perhaps he still loved the woman … a little, even with her beauty gone from her. Perhaps he remembered that the philosopher had not fought so very hard for possession of the woman; perhaps he, being otherwise made and desiring material successes, underestimated the attractions of philosophy. He wanted what the woman had said to be true.

“And he had been nearly a very great sorcerer, before he was cut down, and the end of his strength was considerable. He meant only to seize the philosopher, but he was dying, in pain, and he did not manage very well. His curse blasted not merely his supposed enemy—who, with his house, disappeared overnight, and his servants awoke the next morning in a field, just as in Mrs Oldhouse’s story—but his curse fell on Longchance as well, like shards from an exploding cannon.

“Those shards remain. Their substance seeps into the ground, hangs like scent in the air we breathe; our noses are too dull for the work, but as a man will not build his house near a stagnant bog, no magical practitioner will come to a place that stinks of an old curse. This is perhaps inconvenient, you may say, but little more; Appleborough is not so far away, and there are greenwitches there, and a magician, and what use has Longchance for sorcery anyway? And you might be right—except that is not quite the end of the story.

“If everywhere that had ever had a curse thrown over it became antipathetic to magic, there would be no hands-breadth of earth left where any magical practitioner might stand. The question you must ask is, What became of the woman?

“She was caught by the edge of her lover’s dying spell, like dust by the hem of a curtain, and she was swept along by it, back to Longchance, and spilled there … somewhere. I think, as in Mrs Oldhouse’s story, she is in some sense a ghost, but in some sense she is not a ghost.

“I want you now to think back—only about thirty years. I cannot remember quite so far myself; I was in the cradle when it happened. But we came into a greenwitch again—after years, generations—without one. A greenwitch in Longchance. Rather a good one, I believe. I first remember her for her tolerance of small boys and small boys’ games. I saw less of her later on, for rose wreaths do not interest me … and I have never needed any of a greenwitch’s charms.

“She had an adopted daughter, or there was a girl who lived with her, who grew up to be a very beautiful woman. Very beautiful indeed—eerily beautiful, some said. There were stories that there was something not quite right about her. Stories that went against her. These stories persisted until she decided to leave Longchance. There is a story that she made a very grand marriage in a city to the south, but I do not know if it is true.

“Our greenwitch was never the same again after the girl left, was she? I remember my parents and aunt talking of it. She seemed to fade and to dwindle after the loss of her daughter, and she never recovered. She disappeared herself not so many years later, and greenwitches, you know, generally live a long time, and she was not a very old woman.

“There was a bit of stir created after she disappeared, was there not? When we found out that our greenwitch had gone to a lawyer to tie up what happened to her cottage. The cottage that legend has it had been the cottage of the greenwitch, or magician, or sorcerer, of whom I have just been telling you, though it had been abandoned to ruin many years ago, till our recent greenwitch rescued it. Does anyone know who helped her set brick on brick, lay the rafters, dig the cesspit, thatch the roof? I have not been able to find anyone who does. House-building is not the usual run for a greenwitch’s magic, is it?”

The room was silent. Even the sound of the storm had dropped during Jack Trueword’s story; the rain still fell against the windows, but it made a timid, mournful sound; the wind wept distantly like a lost child. No one inside Mrs Oldhouse’s best parlour stirred; there were no cries of “Go on, go on!” Beauty suddenly realised that the slow measured beat she heard was the tall cabinet clock in the corner. Be Ware, it said. Be. Ware. Tick. Tock. She moved her cold hands on the marmalade cat’s back.

“And then,” Jack Trueword said, his voice very low and smooth, “and then … a few years ago three beautiful girls and their father moved into Rose Cottage. Three girls so beautiful that Longchance was dazzled by them—were you not?

“But wait, you are saying, Was it not two daughters and a son? Very reassuring, that son, was he not, for all that he was also remarkably beautiful? For by his presence we have not needed to worry about that foolish fortune-telling rhyme, the one that describes the final working out of the curse on Longchance.

“You remember I told you that something had happened recently to put me in mind of the old stories? Discretion should forbid me to tell this part of the story, but I began by saying that truth is important, and thus I cannot spare myself. I found myself falling in love with … one of these beautiful sisters. It was a curious experience; it was quite like falling under a spell. Oh, you will say, love is always like that. Perhaps it is, but was never quite like this before, in my small experience.

“Well, I recovered; I would have thought no more about it, except … very recently I found, that my brother has fallen in love with another of the sisters. But the second sister, you will say, disappeared, rather mysteriously, some while ago now—some story about a relative in the city, which is curious, when you think about it, that we had never heard of any relatives in the city before; indeed the family has seemed to have rather ill memories of their life in the city. Well, that is the second sister. The third child, a son, works for our master of horses at the Hall. But that son is not a son; she is a daughter.”

Be Ware, ticked the clock. Be Ware. The rain tapped and pattered; the wind moaned.

Jeweltongue took a step forward, shaking off Mrs Oldhouse’s hand and her father’s. “Curse? What curse? I don’t believe you.” Tears began to stream down her face. “Lionheart mentioned a curse; I didn’t believe her either. Yes, Lionheart is my sister, not my brother. It has nothing to do with your horrid curse; it is that she wanted to work with horses, and she is good at that, is she not? I know she is good at that, and she knew no one would take her on if she were a woman, so she went as a man. What is this curse? Your curse has cursed us, more like, for it is true—although not as Jack Trueword says—that Beauty has not returned to the city. What is this curse! Has it an enchanted palace, and a Beast, and a rose?”

Mrs Oldhouse said: “A Beast? I have never heard of any Beast. Jack, you are a bad man. I do not believe this has anything to do with our friends”—her voice quavered—“even if Lionheart is their sister.”

Jeweltongue said wildly: “Tell me this curse!”

Mrs. Oldhouse recited hastily: “‘Three in a bower / And a rose in flower / Until that hour / Stand wall and tower.’ It’s only a child’s nursery rhyme. We used to skip rope to it. It was our favourite skipping-rhyme because it was ours, you know how children are.

“The three in a bower were three beautiful sisters, we knew that, but the cur—the rhyme doesn’t say anything about their being beautiful, that’s just to make it a better story, that’s what happens to stories that are told over and over. When I was a child, and grew old enough to understand that my favourite skipping-rhyme meant something, it was all the more delicious, do you see? Not having magic is just … not having something … but a curse … Of course the sisters had to be beautiful. And the bower, that had to be Rose Cottage, because of the rose, even though when I was a girl, no one lived there, and the wall and tower were Longchance, although Longchance doesn’t have any towers, but you have to have it for the rhyme, do you see? It’s like the sisters being beautiful. And it was all to do with some great magic that had gone terribly wrong many years ago, and it explained why there was no magic in Longchance now, although it didn’t explain it very well, but then foretellings never do, do they? I never knew a seer who would give you a plain answer.

“And I don’t see why—really, now that I think about it—why our old skipping-rhyme is necessarily a curse. Perhaps it is only a prediction of how—of how it will all be resolved. Maybe that’s why it says tower—not for the rhyme but because Longchance doesn’t have any, do you see? But I have to say I don’t like the sound of your Beast. What Beast? Is it fierce?”

“Look at the cat!” shouted Jack Trueword, pointing at Beauty and looking frightened half out of his wits, but as he did so, the marmalade cat leapt off Beauty’s lap straight at Jack, as if it meant to do him a mischief; he threw up his arms; Beauty said, “Oh, no!” and made a snatch at the cat as it leapt, falling half off her chair as she did so; and Jeweltongue shrieked, “Beauty!”—

—and Beauty found herself falling off the top of a ladder, struck down by wind and rain; she screamed, drowning even the cacophony of wind in her ears, scrabbling for purchase against the rain-slick panes of her glasshouse; her finger-ends found eight strange little hollows in the leading of one frame and dug themselves in, but she would not be able to hold herself there long, sprawled against the slope, and the wind blowing so brutally she hadn’t a chance of regaining the ladder, where her useless feet remained, just touching the rungs—

And then there was a hand on her shoulder, and she was dragged inexorably back the way she had fallen, and her weight was on her feet again, and the wind was partially blocked by something very large bending over her, and a voice she could just hear below the infuriated wind spoke in her ear: “Beauty. I have you. Set your feet firmly on the rungs again; I will shield you. I am too heavy even for this wind to shift. You are quite safe. Listen to me, Beauty. You must come down now.”

But the shock of what had almost happened still gripped her, as mercilessly as the storm itself, and she was too panic-stricken to move. When she opened her mouth to breathe, the wind stuffed it with rain and her own sodden hair. She began to shiver, and she realised she was wet to the skin and cold to the bone, and her shivering redoubled, and her hands seemed to have frozen to the tops of the ladder uprights, she could not make the fingers move.

She whimpered, but he could not hear her, so it did not matter. And she wanted—so terribly wanted—to be off this nightmare ladder and down on the ground again. The rain and wind billowed over her, and the Beast waited, and she thought of what he had said, and she turned her head a little, and looked up; the Beast was only a blackness to her eye, but he must have seen her looking, because one great hand moved from its place below hers on the ladder uprights and wrapped itself gently round her nearer one, and with that touch some feeling and possibility of motion returned to her fingers.

He released her hand, and she stiffly brought it down to the first rung; the finger joints ached with cold and dread. She straightened her body slowly, moved her other hand to the first rung, unsealed one foot from its resting place, and stepped down to the next rung. Now she felt the Beast’s arms round her, outside hers, and his waistcoat buttons brushed her back, and she felt him take a step down, to keep pace with hers.

They went down together very slowly. She still shivered, and felt as exhausted as if she had run a great race, and sometimes fumbled for her hand- or foothold, and sometimes had to stop to rest. But she watched his hands following hers, so that she did not have to look up or down, and she never stopped again any longer than she needed to catch her breath. It was a much longer journey down than it had been going up, and the wind still sang in her ears, but the words it sang were the wrong verse: Lord Goodman died for me today, I’ll die for him tomorrow.

As her feet touched the rung below the first silver girder, the wind slammed in under the Beast’s arm, like a clever swordsman finding a weakness in his opponent’s guard, and seized her and flung her down, and her feet slid off the rungs, one forward and one back, and there was a sharp hard blow to one of her knees and another to her other ankle, and for a moment she did not know which was up and which down, and the wind would have had her off then had the Beast not caught her in his other arm. The wind screamed and hammered at the ladder, and Beauty stared up at the glasshouse and the tumultuous sky, and there was a cracking noise, and the top of one of the uprights was torn off, the rungs broken, and the pieces hurled down on them.

Beauty felt rather than saw one strike the Beast’s back and felt him wince, but he still held her, and he still stood firm upon the ladder. Again he spoke in her ear, calmly, as if he were addressing her across the dinner table: “I fear I need both my hands to climb. But I do not think that will happen again.” She nodded against his breast and put her hands and feet on the rungs again, and he released her, and they started down the last part of their journey.

The last few rungs were even harder than the first ones had been; she was sick and dizzy with the after-effects of the dream-vision of Jeweltongue, and Mrs Oldhouse, and Jack Trueword, and the marmalade cat; and she could not believe she and the Beast could reach the bottom of the ladder safely. He stepped off it first and had his hands round her waist to steady her as her feet touched the wet pebbles of the courtyard, but she slipped and slithered on the suddenly treacherous surface, and her ankles twisted and her knees would not hold her, and she was so tired her mind played tricks on her, and she was not sure but what she was still alone on the top of the ladder and feeling it shifting under her as the wind prepared to throw it down. But no, the Beast was here; he held her still.

He pointed along the glasshouse wall, and she remembered they were still standing in flooding rain, and the wind, even on the ground, was nearly strong enough to lift her off her feet; the pebbles of the courtyard scudded before it like crests torn from the tops of waves. And so they made their way together along the wall and round the corner of the glasshouse, and then at last there was a familiar handle under her hand, and she turned it and pushed, and they were both inside the glasshouse.

The storm dropped away at once, as if it had never been, as if the closing of the glasshouse door were a charm against it, or the end of a spell, and with the silence, and the sunlight now streaming through the panes, and the astonishing sight that met their eyes—and the clatter of too many thoughts and fears in Beauty’s mind—Beauty forgot climbing the ladder, forgot the weather vane, forgot Mrs Oldhouse’s story, and Jack Trueword’s, and Jeweltongue shouting Beauty!, forgot the storm and the fall that would have killed her, forgot everything but what she and the Beast saw—and smelt.

For the glasshouse had come back to life indeed. There were roses everywhere she looked, red roses, white roses, and pink roses, and every shade among them, in great flat platters and round fat orbs of petals, roses shaped like goblets and roses shaped like cups, roses that displayed stamens as fine as a lady’s eyelashes, roses that were full up to the brim with a muddle of petals, roses with tiny green button centres. There were red-tipped white roses, and white-tipped red ones, bright pink ones and soft pink ones that were darker at their hearts and some that were nearly white-centred; white ones that were snowy all through, and white ones just touched with ivory and cream, or the sunset-cloud tints of pink and gold; and the reds were all the tones of that most mysterious and allusive of rose colours, from the warm rosy reds like ripening cherries to the darkest black-reds of velvet seen in shadow; and the purples were finer than any coronation mantle.

And the smell, everywhere, was so rich and wonderful Beauty wanted to cup her hands to it and drink it, and yet it was not one smell, but all the rose scents discernible and individual as all the colours of roses: the spicy ones, and the ones that smelt of apples or grapes or of oranges and lemons, and the ones that smelt of almonds or of fine tea, and most particularly the ones that smelt only as certain roses smell, and they were the most varied and seductive of all.

The foliage was so thick, glossy-green or matte-, hunter green and olive and grey-green and nearly blue, that it should have shut out every wink of sunshine, but it did not; the light was so bright Beauty blinked against it, and the white roses glittered like constellations on a clear night.

“Oh,” said Beauty. “Oh.”

The Beast, as if in a dream, said, “I have not been here in … I do not know how long. It has been a long time. I have not come since the roses started dying.”

Beauty ran forward suddenly, toward the farthest corner of the glasshouse, and there knelt—or would have knelt—by the one rose-bush that had still been in flower when she had first entered here; but it was tall and strong now, as tall as she was, and covered with flowers. She could not count them, there were so many, or rather, she did not wish to spend the time counting them when she could smell and look at and touch them. She turned to examine her cuttings, and all the little bushes were knee-high, and all had flower-buds, and the first of these were cracking open, and at their feet an exuberance of heartsease foamed green and purple. She looked at her seedbed, where the seedlings were only a little smaller than the bushes from the cuttings, and these too bore the first tiny green bumps that would become flowers, not leaves. One precocious seedling had its very first bud just unscrolling, and she wondered what it would be, for while she knew the mothers of all her seeds, she did not know the fathers. She touched it softly, and a whiff of rose scent came to her even among all the perfumed richness around her, and this scent was new, and not quite like any other, and while it reminded her of a scent she had once breathed standing by a meadow watching a woman milk her cows, a fine, wild, pure, magical smell, it was also unmistakably that of a rose.

She looked up, and the Beast stood near her, looking at the dark red rose-bush which had been the only one alive and blooming the day before. “I remember you,” he murmured, as if to himself. “I remember …”

And as he said, “I remember,” suddenly she remembered sitting as a ghost with a marmalade cat in her lap, and she remembered all those other dreams she had had while she was asleep in her grand high bed in the palace and had told herself in the mornings were only dreams, and she remembered Jeweltongue’s voice, as the marmalade cat made its spring, saying Beauty! And Beauty herself did not know if she now believed that the dreams had been more than dreams or if it was only that she was frightened to think that they might be more. And, a very little, she remembered the dream she had once had so often, about a long dark corridor and a monster that waited for her—only for her—and remembered too, so faintly that it was barely a memory at all, how that dream had changed when she came to this place, and how she had hurried along that corridor to comfort the lost unhappy creature there.…

But the look on Jack Trueword’s face was what dazzled her mind’s eye now, the look on his face, and the stricken look on Jeweltongue’s. Jeweltongue, who had never been overset by anything, not their mother’s death, not their father’s ruin, not her broken engagement; Jeweltongue, who had found Rose Cottage welcoming even on that first grey, depressing day, who had found her own skill as a dressmaker and chosen it finally over any chance of being what she had been before. Jeweltongue, who loved the life she had made in Longchance, just as Lionheart loved her life, as their father loved his life, a life, Beauty thought suddenly with a pain like a mortal wound, that they might all lose.… Has Master Jack forgiven you for preferring a short, stoop-shouldered flour-monger with hands like boiled puddings to his tall, elegant, noble self …? D’you want to think about what happens next?… Surely you’ve heard that there’s a curse on this place if three sisters live in it? She remembered Mrs Green-down saying: The tally calls for three sisters, and there’s only the two of you.

What if Jack’s story were true?

They could not be driven out of another town, another life. They could not do it again. It would break them, and they would die of it, die as certainly as Beauty would have died if the Beast had not caught her when she fell off the ladder.

“Beast—”

He turned to her at once. “What is it? What troubles you? Can you not be pleased with what you have done here?” And he sank to his knees beside her and would have taken the hem of her still-soaking skirt in his hands, except that she twitched it out of his reach. “No, no! I will not have you on your knees! Stand up, stand up!”

But he did not want to stand up, and she could not make him. He rocked back on his heels and looked up at her (not very far, for he was tall even kneeling); he was smiling, although there were tears in his eyes, and she noticed that he was not wearing the long black sleeveless gown she had never seen him without. Then we would have taken flight indeed, she thought, remembering the wind. But his remaining clothing was plastered to him by the rain, and she suddenly thought how much he looked like the round-limbed, handsome Beast who stood on a pedestal in the middle of the garden at Rose Cottage.

She almost could not ask what she needed to ask. Timidly she moved forward again and set her hands on his shoulders. “Will you tell me—because I believe I need to know—what—what brought you to this place, and this—this shape?”

His smile faded, but he remained looking up at her. “Oh, please stand up!” she said again, plucking uselessly at his shoulder. “If you will not stand up, I will sit down,” and she did, and drew her knees up under her wet skirts, and put her cheek against them, and told herself the damp was only rain and nothing to do with fresh tears.

There was silence for a few heartbeats and the roses, and the sunlight, and the scent were still round them, and Beauty felt like a starving beggar looking through a window at a feast. And then the Beast said: “I told a sorcerer I believed magic to be a false discipline, leading only to disaster. It was a foolish thing to say, if not always untrue, or—I would not be as I am.”

Beauty whispered, “Is that all?”

The Beast sighed, and the roses fluttered, and the sunlight came and went among the leaves. “Is it ever all? Do you want the full story of my ruin? For I will tell you, if you ask.”

“No … yes … no. I do not know what I am asking.” Her thoughts scrambled among fragments of truth and hope and love and fear, looking for a place to begin: There is a curse on my family—on our coming to Longchance—and it has found us out at last. Then is there not a curse on my coming here?

Why did you ensorcell me to come to this place? Or if not you, who? Who put the rose on my father’s breakfast table?

If you are a prisoner here, who ensorcelled you? Who tends your garden? Who is the old woman who leaves a basket in the night in front of doors that do not open?

Why have the bats and butterflies and toads and hedgehogs returned and not the birds?

Why do you ask me to marry you when you will not tell me who you are?

Again she saw Jeweltongue’s pale desperate face, heard Lionheart saying: The Truewords do what their eldest son tells them to.… And Longchance does what the Truewords tell them.

Her heart ached from the absence—the loss—of her sisters, whom she loved and trusted and knew, whose blood and bone were the same as her own, and to whom for that reason her first loyalty must lie. Her floundering thoughts seized on this as security: Here must her first loyalty lie. Here. She put her fingers to her temples, feeling the blood beating frantically there. “Oh, Beast,” she said, but she could not look at him, and her voice caught in her throat. “Beast, you must let me go.”

He stood up then. “I—”

She scrambled to her feet again too, staggering as her head swam, but when he would catch her elbow to steady her, she backed away from him. “You must let me go. See, your roses bloom again. That is what you called me here for, is it not?” she said wildly, and now the tears were running freely down her face, but she told herself she was only thinking of her sisters. “I have done what you brought me here to do; you must let me go. Please.” Perhaps I can do nothing, but what comes to them must come to me too. If we are the three named, let us at least be together for … whatever happens. And … I must go away from this place. If I carry this curse, let me … at least let me carry it away from … from this place.

The Beast said, as if each word were a blow from a dagger: “I can deny you nothing. If you will go, then I give you leave to go. I have never been able to hold you here against your will.”

“I will come back to visit you,” said Beauty—the words burst out of her. “If I can. I will come back.”

“Will you?” said the Beast. “Will you?”

“Oh—yes,” said Beauty, and put her hand over her mouth to force the sobs back, but perhaps the Beast saw the gesture as for some other purpose.

He turned away from her and snapped the stem of a dark red rose from the bush he had spoken to only a few minutes before. “Then take this rose. As long as it is blooming, as it is now, all is well with me. When the petals begin to fall, then take thought of your promise, for I will be dying.”

“Dying?” said Beauty. “Oh—no—”

“Yes,” said the Beast, as gently as he had said, You are quite safe. “I cannot live without you anymore, Beauty. Not now, not when I have had you here, not now that I have learnt how lonely I was, and am—was—for a little while—no longer. But as I brought you here by a lie, it is only just that I should lose you again.”

“Beast—”

Now he put his hand over her mouth, or just his fingertips. “Listen. Pull one petal of this rose and set it in your mouth, and you will be at home—in Rose Cottage—at once. If you decide you do wish to see me again, pull another petal and set it again in your mouth, and you will at once be here. But if you wait till all the petals have dropped, it will be too late; once they have loosed themselves from the flower, they can no longer return you here, and besides, when the last of them falls, I will die.”

She put her hands over his hand, pulled it away. “No, I cannot bear it—oh—this cannot be happening. Not like this. Not like this.”

The Beast said, “You belong with your family. And I have forgotten too much—too much of what it is to be a man. And I had never learnt what it is to love a woman. It is too late now.

“Go.” He pulled a petal from the rose he held, then handed her the rose. Dumbly she took it. “Open your mouth.”

“I—”

He slipped the rose-petal between her lips. She just touched his hand again—“Oh, Beast”—but he was gone, and the glasshouse was gone, and all that was left was the feeling of the thorns of the rose he had given her stinging the palm of her hand, and the taste of the rose-petal in her mouth.