Beast Read online

  Prologue: Lucie

  Before

  Chapter 1: The Château

  Chapter 2: The Beaumont Curse

  Chapter 3: Le Chevalier

  Chapter 4: Little Candle

  Chapter 5: Beast Rampant

  Chapter 6: The Wisewoman

  Chapter 7: Acts of Charity

  Chapter 8: Transformation

  Chapter 9: Shattered

  Chapter 10: Beast

  Chapter 11: Blooming

  Chapter 12: Water

  Chapter 13: The Library

  Chapter 14: The Moonstruck Poet

  Chapter 15: A Voice

  Chapter 16: The Storm

  Chapter 17: The Bargain

  Beauty

  Chapter 18: Rose

  Chapter 19: Constant Companions

  Chapter 20: Deliverance

  Chapter 21: Open Your Heart

  Chapter 22: Predators

  Chapter 23: Two Grotesques

  Chapter 24: Plots and Visions

  Chapter 25: Restoration

  Beast

  Chapter 26: The Changeling

  Chapter 27: Christ and His Monsters

  Chapter 28: Lady Beaumont

  Chapter 29: Reunion

  Chapter 30: The True Chevalier

  Chapter 31: Flight

  After

  Epilogue: The Heart of the Wood

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgments

  It wasn’t all the witch’s fault.

  She was just the one he saw as his spine hunched forward, as claws sprang out of the furry paws that had been his elegant hands only moments before, as long tendrils of mane erupted out over his eyes.

  “What have you done to me, Witch?” he bellowed, although it was difficult to understand him with the lengthening of his snout.

  “I have done nothing,” she told him with a coolness I had to admire, as if he weren’t crouching before her with animal horns and shaggy, pointed ears sprouting from his head and long rows of raptor feathers cascading down his back. “This is the truth of who you are inside.”

  “Change me back!” he thundered.

  “I cannot,” she told him. “That power lies with you, not me.”

  Well, that wasn’t the whole truth. I had something to do with it, although even I didn’t know it at the time. So I was surprised when the witch suddenly turned to me in her awful majesty. “And you, girl. What do you want?”

  All I wanted then was my revenge, to see him groveling on all fours, his handsome face and manly form reduced to beastliness. Things might have been very different had I left it at that, run off with the other servants on that terrifying night, and taken up a new life in some other place. But as soon as I had what I most wished for, I found I craved more.

  “I want to see him suffer,” I breathed. I was drunk on my own hatred, more powerful than anything I had ever felt before.

  “As you wish,” she said, and that was the end of it. And the beginning.

  I didn’t know then the journey I was on. I could never have imagined any power that burned brighter than hate.

  I had so much to learn from the beast.

  My Beast.

  Until she came.

  They say it’s a turbulent household, where I’m going. They whisper behind their hands and cast baleful glances at me when they think I’m not looking. But I am always looking. I see them nudge one another and smirk at my expense. “Château Beaumont,” they whisper knowingly.

  Before darkness fell at the inn last night, I glimpsed this place, set like a gem in the distance above the wheat fields and vineyards, shining like gold on the green hill, like a royal palace. But the innkeeper’s wife told me it’s only a château, so I mustn’t give myself airs. She said to beware of beauty, for it can deceive.

  It’s no disgrace to be a servant. That’s what my father used to say.

  Working for a wage is proof that you have value to someone, he told me. “Even though your station in life may be low, your character might yet soar. Poor folk have little enough say over their circumstances,” he would say, “but your character is always yours to shape as you will.”

  My father looked at the world with joy and hope, and so he found joy and hope everywhere — especially when he looked at me.

  “You are the light of the world, my Lucie,” he would tell me. “Open your heart to life. You are the best of what will be.”

  While Papa was alive, the world was full of possibilities. Our village was just another cluster of drafty stone cottages and hungry faces, but it was my home. I never knew there was any other place on earth. I never needed any other place.

  But that’s all changed now.

  Mama hoarded her wages for a whole season to send me here, what few coppers she could put by after the sowing and reaping and milling. She says it’s well for me to go now, before my stepfather takes any more notice of how I’ve grown.

  It’s harvesttime, and the perfume of crushed grapes sweetens the air as I make my way up the steep, winding road to Château Beaumont. The town of Clairvallon, where I spent last night, seems very far below me now. At last, I climb to the top of the hill, and there it stands, Château Beaumont, floating like a golden island in the middle of a moat, surrounded by vast, green parkway. I cross a stone bridge over the moat, its water shimmering like jewels in the sunlight. Black-eyed swans glide over the water, ruffling up their white feathers for my admiration.

  I pause at an enormous gate of gilded iron, whose keeper comes grumpily down, a rough-hewn man with a long, drooping mustache and an old scar along one cheek. He demands to know my business. I don’t wish to be taken for a vagrant, so I lie and say I’ve been sent for by my aunt, the head laundress. That part is true; she is my stepfather’s sister, although no blood kin to me. But we have never met, and she has no idea that I have come to beg a position.

  The gatekeeper directs me to empty my pockets — simple enough, as there is nothing inside them — and inspects the underside of my cloak. Satisfied that I carry nothing but the clothes on my back, he opens the gates and nods me inside.

  The courtyard I enter could hold my entire village. Two long wings of the château enclose it on either side, a west wing on the left and an east wing under a row of stone arches on the right. The main house stands beyond the courtyard, three stories of honey-colored stone with a black-domed turret at each corner. A broad gravel driveway sweeps up to the main house, flanked by terraced gardens, so that the château seems to rise to heaven in a cloud of flowers. Ornate balconies, filigree spires, domes, and chimneys clamber over one another in a rush to the sky, under a single high tower with a colored glass window that glows in the sunlight.

  Can this really be my new home?

  My interview with Aunt Justine does not go well. Although we have never met, I recognize her by the same small eyes and sour expression I have seen in my stepfather’s face. I find her in the laundry room, presiding over a roomful of steaming tubs and dishevelled girls. Strands of long, greying hair droop from under her wilted white cap. Her face is red, her hands chapped, and her bodice sweat-stained from the steam and heat. She casts a skeptical glance at me.

  “I have more lazy girls now than I can manage,” she barks.

  She would like to send me away, but I can only hope the shame would be too great for her family if she could not find a place for her relation. “I’ll work hard,” I say.

  All around us girls are thrusting long poles into the tubs to turn the linen. Others are on their knees, pounding articles of clothing in a wide, flat stone basin with a groove along one edge to divert water outside. It may be a challenge for my character to soar here, but I’m determined to prove myself worthy of my father’s faith in me. Besides, I have nowhere else to go.

  They thought me unnatur
al back in my village, a girl my age with no suitors. Did I care nothing for my future? But I saw where it led, their gaming. They paired off because they have always done so, because the winter is cold and the nights are long. Next winter there would be a new baby to feed and their own small share of land to work, and then more babies and more work and their sporting days would be over. I knew my future all too well. I saw it every day in my mother’s careworn face. That’s why I am here.

  I am only a girl, a servant, if God wills it. I possess nothing of value but my character, but that is mine to make of what I will. I cannot choose my circumstances, but I can choose to live nobly in this fine place. That will be my strength — if only I am allowed to stay.

  Aunt Justine wipes her hands on her apron — large, rough hands like her brother’s. “Go see Madame Montant, the housekeeper,” she tells me at last. “She wants a girl.” And she nods back toward a warren of rooms leading to the main house.

  Mumbling my thanks, I turn to go, but not before I see her staring at me with a shrewd and critical eye.

  “Do not disgrace me,” she commands.

  “Watch yourself, girl,” cautions Madame Montant. She can never remember our names; there are so many of us.

  “Yes, Madame.”

  It’s my third day here, and I’m still learning my way around the lower rooms where I am employed as a maid-of-all-work. The château is so large and full of shadows, I often lose my way. This is not the first time Madame Montant has had to redirect me, nor does she bother to conceal her impatience. I am here only on trial at the moment; she might yet dismiss me on a whim if I do not please her. Madame is a solid figure in her black gown with modest lace at the points of her collar, and since there is no mistress of Château Beaumont, she keeps the keys to the wardrobes and coffers on an iron ring at her waist. They jangle with irritation as she leads me back to more familiar terrain.

  The chambers I clean are mostly reception rooms, chilly and neglected, where coffers are kept and the Beaumont silver is stored and displayed, little seen by anyone but the servants. But the rooms are expected to be spotless, whether anyone will see them or not, so I sweep and polish and scrub. I’m told the master takes great pride in his beautiful things.

  “The master cannot abide slovenliness,” Madame reminds me as we trudge along. “And he has a particular aversion to spiders; woe be to any lazy girl who allows a spider to touch his person out of careless housekeeping.”

  We arrive again at my morning chamber, and I can’t resist peeping through the doorway into the formal entry hall, its floor an enormous chessboard of black-and-white marble tiles. In its center stands the grand staircase panelled in rosewood that leads to the mysterious floors above, where I have never been. But Madame catches me looking.

  “Attend me, girl,” she says sharply. “What goes on outside your chambers is no affair of yours!”

  “I understand, Madame.”

  “Be very sure that you do.” Her gaze is unrelenting. “Do not let me ever hear of you straying into the entry hall.”

  “No, Madame.”

  “And never, ever go abovestairs,” she warns me. “That is where Master lives. And, mind me, girl, you will do very well to escape the master’s notice.”

  Master is away from home, attending to business in Paris. But he and his suite of gentlemen are expected back soon, and there is a great deal more bustle about the château now. I hear this from Charlotte, a kitchen girl. She’s been here longer than me but has yet to rise above the hearth. We share a straw-stuffed pallet in the close, dark cubbyholes behind the kitchens, where the servants sleep, near enough to choke on the sooty air at night, yet too far off to feel any warmth from the kitchen fires.

  I prefer to keep my own counsel; I’ll not be one of those servants who gossips and pries. Charlotte, however, has no such scruples. She considers everything that happens at the château to be her affair and eagerly pours all she has gleaned into my ear at night when I hunger only for sleep. She tells me how fortunate I was to come along now, when a position had just opened up at the château. Madame Montant recently had to dismiss a chambermaid who’d let one of the noblemen of the region get her with child.

  “It was no use her weeping and sobbing,” Charlotte tells me eagerly. “Madame would not have her in the house, even though she was the daughter of Madame’s own cousin.”

  I am reminded how tentative my own position is.

  “The silly girl even went to the curé. Can you imagine the humiliation?” Charlotte goes on. “But she hoped he’d compel the one as done it into marriage. Claimed he’d promised to wed her, the little fool. Of course, gentlemen always say that,” Charlotte adds with the absolute conviction of one who speaks from hearsay alone.

  “And did the curé help her?” I ask, hoping to speed the tale along to some conclusion or other.

  She stares at me, slack-jawed, appalled at my ignorance and delighted by her own superior knowledge. “Of course he did not,” she exclaims. “There would be far more scandal in a gentleman of noble birth wedding a commoner — a servant!— than in the birth of another bastard. The curé could lose his living for even suggesting such a degraded union.” She shakes her head at me pityingly. “Don’t be a goose!”

  I am not goose enough to encourage her further, and I say no more.

  But Charlotte’s tongue is accustomed to prattle on, whether or not anyone is listening. “The gentleman in question was one of Master’s companions-in-arms in the war. He is under Master’s protection, and so he may do as he likes.” She wriggles closer to me on the bristly pallet. “No one opposes the master.”

  This morning, I patrol my chamber with a hand brush and dustpan for any dirt that might have collected in forgotten corners of display shelves or behind cabinets beyond the reach of my broom. Near the doorway to the entry hall, I’m surprised by a fragile tinkling sound from a nearby room and a gasp of alarm.

  No official person is in the hall at the moment, neither housekeeper, footman, nor steward. There is no answering sound of rebuke. Perhaps no one else heard. But the sudden silence after the odd noise is all the more profound.

  I take my brush and dustpan out into the back passage and peep around the next doorway. I see only a sideboard with fine things on display against one wall and two cabinets in the center of the room. But between the cabinets, a figure kneels before the sideboard like a penitent at an altar, dressed plainly in grey, like me — another chambermaid. She frets over a little pile of shiny debris on the marble part of the floor uncovered by the central carpet. Then I notice a smudge of red blood on her white apron as she clutches one finger in her hand.

  I ought to turn away and pretend I didn’t see. What happens in other chambers is no affair of mine. But even as I give myself this sensible advice, I hear another voice in my head, my father’s voice, gentle and persuasive. Come, Lucie, it takes only a moment to be kind.

  And because I cannot bear to disappoint my father, I hurry into the room. The girl turns huge, terrified eyes in my direction. She can’t be above fourteen years old, younger than me. She reminds me so much of the sister I used to comfort through all her childish traumas, I feel a sudden wave of homesickness.

  “I didn’t mean it!” she whispers. “It slipped out of my hands!”

  There’s no way of knowing what the thing was she dropped, reduced now to a few brilliantly enamelled porcelain shards and gold dust. Some small ceremonial plate, perhaps, or the sort of delicate, shiny bauble I’ve heard wealthy folk present to each other when they have won a war together.

  “They’ll turn me out,” the girl keens softly. “Where will I go? How will I live?”

  Blood still coats the finger she cradles in her lap. I dig into my apron pocket for a scrap of linen I was going to use for mending, squat beside her, and take her bleeding hand.

  “No one has to know,” I tell her, and I bind the linen around her finger before her blood can stain anything else. “Go to the kitchen and wash your hands as you f
ill your mop pail. I’ll clean this up.” I tilt my head toward my brush and dustpan.

  Her expression is disbelieving, but she slowly begins to nod.

  “There are so many beautiful things here,” I point out. “Surely no one will miss this one.”

  Wide-eyed, she nods again and dares a fleeting smile. “Thank you.”

  “Quickly now,” I whisper, and she scrambles to her feet and dashes out.

  I creep over and brush the glittering remains into my dustpan, the marble floor cold under my knees, even through my skirts. Rising again, I notice the empty space in the row of decorations on the sideboard. With trembling fingers, I nudge the other objects closer together.

  I take up my dustpan again, brush held firmly over the elegant debris, and hurry out. At the back of the great kitchen stands a barrel for sweepings and leavings, but I must weave my way past cooks and potboys and scullery maids to get to it, expecting at every moment to be stopped, my guilty burden discovered. Yet I arrive without incident, dump the contents of my dustpan into the barrel, then poke my brush around inside to conceal the wreckage with ashes and other bits of trash already there.

  I pause briefly to steady my breathing, then go back through the great kitchen. I spy the little chambermaid in a distant corner, rinsing her hand in her mop pail; she glances up at me for an instant, gratitude in her face, but we are too prudent to take any more notice of each other. A spiderweb of shadowy back passages connects the grand rooms of the château, and I am eager to return to the one that leads back to my chambers. But I hear the stern voice of Madame Montant in a nearby room, scolding some other servant for some far lesser infraction, and I hurry into an unfamiliar outer passage to avoid her.

  I choose the darkest path, hoping the shadows will render me invisible until I can get back where I’m supposed to be. But a bend in the passage, beyond the last of the fine chambers, ends abruptly at a small door. It’s rare enough to find any doors to interrupt the flow of splendor between these grand rooms, and this one seems so humble, with plain iron hinges and no ornamentation, I hope its purpose is to lead servants to a more direct route between wings. But when I try the handle, a graceful curve of iron, I find the door is locked.