Beast Page 12

  “M-more than civil; I . . . I should call it splendid,” blathers the man.

  “And this is how you repay me?” Beast demands.

  The old man is bent so low, he can scarcely be heard. “It is . . . only a rose.”

  “But it is not yours,” rumbles Beast. “And neither is this!”

  The old man dares to raise his eyes to see this monster towering above him, a mountain of rage blocking out the sun, as Beast stamps to the horse’s side and plucks me out of the saddlebag. I see the relief in Beast’s eyes as he inspects me, cradling me in his paw, before he glares down furiously at the old man — whose face reflects stark terror at this proof of his thievery. He was in such a panic over Beast, it seems he forgot all about me.

  “Oh, s-sir,” he stammers. “Oh, please, my lord . . .”

  “Never call me lord!” the monster roars. “I am Beast!”

  “Please, Sir Beast, I beg your forgiveness.” His nervous gaze jumps to me. “It was . . . foolish of me. I’m afraid I acted out of desperation. I — I meant no harm.”

  Beast glowers down at the old man, clutching me to his chest. I can feel his heart beating. “Did I not hear you swear yourself indebted to me?” Beast demands.

  “And so I am, more so now than ever,” agrees the old man hastily. “I — I confess myself financially embarrassed at the moment, but —”

  “Your money means nothing to me,” growls Beast. “But in return for all you have received in my home — and for all you presumed to take from me — I propose that you pay off your debt to me with your company.”

  “Stay with you? H-here?” The old man’s voice quavers.

  “Since you are so fond of my roses.”

  The old man lowers his face again to regard the one plucked rose, lying in the gravel where he dropped it. “It was wrong of me to take a . . . a souvenir without permission. But . . . the rose is not for me. It’s for my daughter.”

  Beast frowns down at him. “You have children?”

  “Three daughters, sir. And three stout sons, God be praised. Although my wife was taken from us many years ago.” He straightens up on his knees and hurries on. “We have lately removed to the country in poverty after a cruel reversal of our fortunes. I was a merchant of some prosperity once, but —”

  “Your family?” Beast prompts.

  “My daughters are scarcely accustomed to country ways, poor things. They were so excited when word came that one of my ships had been recovered and that our fortune might yet be restored. I promised the two eldest to bring them back fine trinkets from my journey to the seaport where my last ship lay.” The old man bows his head again. “But my venture did not pay off. I can’t bring them what they ask.” He risks a glance at Beast. “But the youngest asked me only for a single rose. She is as good as she is beautiful, poor child. This is the only promise I could keep.”

  Beast considers this. “And what of your debt to me?” he asks quietly.

  “Good Sir Beast, I . . . I will pay my debt to you. I swear it!”

  Beast gazes at him in silence, still clutching me close to his massive chest, as if to emphasize the enormity of that debt. With an ominous rumble of cogs and latches, the gilded gates at the end of the drive clang shut; the sound reverberates with awful finality under the arch of roses.

  “Kind S-sir Beast,” the merchant stammers. “I am an old man. My days upon this earth are numbered. I will share as many with you as you require. Only —” He dares to raise his face to implore Beast directly. “I beg you, allow me to return home to take leave of my children. I cannot simply disappear without a trace from their lives. Please, I throw myself on your mercy!”

  Of course, he is a merchant, accustomed to bargaining; he calculates his chances in Beast’s mute, dark eyes and presses on. “Accept my word, from one gentleman to, ah, another, that I will return to pay my debt.”

  Beast thinks it over. “One fortnight,” he says at last. “Take your leave, settle your affairs, whatever is required. But at the end of a fortnight, you must return to me. That is our bargain.”

  “Thank you, oh thank you, Sir Beast!”

  The merchant staggers to his feet and, somehow, commands his wayward limbs to hold him upright as he stumbles back to the support of his horse. As the old man clambers into the saddle, Beast goes low on his haunches and sweeps something up from the ground. The merchant reins up his horse and glances hopefully at the still-closed gates, but looking back, he is startled to find Beast standing beside him.

  “Don’t forget your rose,” says Beast, holding it out to the merchant. The red rosebud looks impossibly fragile in his huge paw.

  The old man takes it with nervous fingers and laces the stem carefully through the clasp of his cloak.

  Beast reaches for the bridle, and while the man still cowers in his seat, Beast leads horse and rider down the gravel drive toward the gates, which swing open magically as they approach. At the foot of the drive, Beast turns to regard his guest one last time.

  “Tell me,” he rumbles, “your daughter, the beauty. Has she a name?”

  “Rose,” whispers the merchant. “She is called Rose.”

  Back inside, Beast returns me to my favorite perch in the window, but he is too agitated himself to take a seat.

  “Are you all right?” he rumbles at me.

  I am neither tarnished nor scratched. Yet it infuriates me that I was not able to do more on my own behalf.

  “I hope you know that is not what I meant.” Beast’s paw trembles slightly on the sill beside me.

  I know.

  “I lost sight of him from the stairway,” says Beast. “I didn’t want him to see me, of course. So I didn’t realize what had happened until it was almost too late.”

  So Beast was still hiding in the shadows, watching his guest.

  You mean you didn’t leave me there to tempt him into his bargain?

  Beast is shocked. “I would never risk your safety like that!” He pauses, then glances at me sideways. “Although — perhaps if I had thought of it . . .”

  I wish I could laugh; it would be a relief after the events of this morning.

  Scaring him out of his wits was scarcely the best way to win a companion, I observe instead.

  Beast shrugs. “Perhaps not. But he had to be made to know how serious his crime was. What if he had succeeded? What would have become of you?”

  What indeed? Suppose I had been handed over by the old merchant to pay off some creditor, passed along from one bill collector to another until I ended up locked away in some cupboard of forgotten things. Or perhaps even melted down, my essence squandered for rings or coins. And no one would ever even know. No one but Beast.

  Thank you.

  Beast responds with a brief but decisive nod of his shaggy head.

  But you can’t really expect the old man to come back now?

  “Perhaps not.” Beast sighs in agreement. “But you are safe. That is what matters.” He draws another breath and adds softly, “That is at least one thing I could do for you.”

  Yet Beast’s movements about the château grow more aimless as the day passes. And the next. We go no more to the library, for fear he may not hear his visitor return. He occupies himself among his roses in view of the gilded gate. It surprises me that he would seek further acquaintance with this troublesome old man, no matter how lonely he is. But, surely, Beast can’t possibly delude himself that the merchant will ever come back to this place. To him.

  And when he does not arrive, what will Beast do? He’s not a fairy or wizard, for all the otherworldly forces he can sometimes command. He can’t fly through the air like a witch on his unresponsive wings to snatch up his prey, nor conjure him here through black arts.

  For all his apparent menace, he is the lamb who’s been tricked.

  “Someone is coming.”

  Beast appears beside me at the window overlooking the rose garden. His shaggy ears prick up, and his nose quivers. I stare hard but can see nothing out in the g
arden; dusk is falling, and the shadows are long.

  “There,” says Beast, pointing out past the roses and the gilded iron gate beyond.

  I lower my flame to make the glass less reflective, and we see a cloaked figure making its way up the hill from the vineyards below the château.

  It must be the merchant, drawing his cloak closer against the chill of evening as he presses on. He comes on foot this time and will not condemn his horse to share his fate. His movements are clumsy, furtive, and yet determined.

  Already Beast is vaulting up the stairs to ready a suite of rooms, order a meal, and prepare himself for his guest. I’m left alone in the window to watch the visitor approach the far end of the stone bridge over the moat. Across the bridge he creeps, stopping once to admire the swans and again to stare up in awe at the riot of roses bursting over the top of the château wall. But when the gates swing open before him, he draws back in alarm, as if he has never beheld such a thing before.

  This is not the old man.

  The intruder is in the garden now, crunching up the drive under the archway of roses. At the top of the drive, the figure pauses to gaze up at Château Beaumont in all its grandeur. Even in the half-light of dusk, it must be an impressive sight with its rows and rows of mullioned windows and carved balconies, its domed turrets and skyscraping tower. For a long moment, the stranger is too much in awe to continue, possibly losing his nerve and ready to flee. In that unguarded moment, the cloak falls partly open, and I spy skirts underneath. A woman! A woman in Beast’s lair.

  I see her straighten her shoulders, readjust her cloak, catch up her skirts, and begin her ascent. Only as she gains the porch do I realize that her eyes are on me, the only beam of warmth and light in this dark, forbidding place.

  The grand double doors swing open, soundlessly this time, and the hall sconces light as she steps into the room. She turns around and around, taking it all in: the black-and-white marble tile floor, the brocaded walls, the golden sconces, the grand staircase with its ornate carvings. And as she turns, she pushes back her hood. She is young, with a heart-shaped face, large, liquid dark blue eyes, and long fair hair, artlessly drawn off her face with a single ribbon like a child’s.

  She is beautiful.

  Why is she here?

  On her final rotation, her gaze snags again on me. Then an ominous rumbling calls her attention to the stairway; Beast emerges out of the shadows at the bend of the staircase as a chandelier suddenly flames to life. He gazes down at her, and she draws back where she stands. One delicate hand flies to her mouth, but she doesn’t utter the cry that must be in her throat. For another long moment, they stare at each other. Beast is resplendent in a fine white linen shirt massive enough to confine and conceal his feathered back and furry chest, and breeches — breeches!— that must have adjusted magically to his girth. His burgundy cloak lined in golden satin is thrown back over his huge shoulders, clasped across his chest with a strand of pearls. But he is Beast still, his great head maned and horned, his muzzle covered in downy fur, his paws savage, his hooves cloven beneath his breeches.

  “Who seeks my hospitality?” he calls down.

  Affrighted anew that the monster speaks, the girl loses her resolve and whirls about where she stands, only to see the double doors slam shut behind her. With a gasp, fingertips still at her mouth, she turns back to face her fate.

  “Your name, girl,” says Beast more gently.

  “R-Rose,” says she.

  “So your father sent you in his place,” says Beast. “I had not thought him so cowardly.”

  “My father is not a coward!” she cries. Then she thinks to lower her voice. “But he is old and worn down with his cares. It’s my fault that he offended you; I’m the one who asked for a rose. I could not let him come back here to be . . . to . . .” She does not know what, or can’t bring herself to say it. “So I slipped away before anyone could stop me,” she says. “I only hope you will accept me in his stead.”

  Beast cocks his head to one side, regarding her. “You mean to say you are here of your own free will? No one has forced you to come here?”

  “It is my choice.” She lifts her pointed chin with a pretty show of spirit. “Our family keeps its bargains.” And I see Beast’s expression warm ever so slightly.

  “Then you are welcome. Rose.”

  Beast makes a little bow and comes down two steps. I see the girl tense, but she makes no other move. Beast pauses, eyes fixed upon her face.

  “May I take your cloak?” he offers.

  It’s plain she fears him coming any closer, but she doesn’t want to repay his polite offer with rudeness. So she unlaces her cloak, lets it fall from her shoulders, and stands uncertainly, holding it over her arm. Invisible forces lift it gently into the air, and this time, she can’t suppress a little cry when Beast points one paw, and an ornate coatrack of polished wood suddenly appears at the foot of the stairs; the cloak flies through the air to hang itself on one of the hooks. Rose stands before Beast in a modest frock of blue homespun with a white apron pinned to her bodice and tied at the waist that sweeps nearly to the floor.

  “Why, you are dressed like a servant,” says Beast.

  She glances down at her clothing. “These are all I have,” she tells him. “We are poor now, and what few fine things we still possess belong to my sisters.”

  “You will find fresh garments in your room upstairs and a supper laid whenever you wish it. At eight o’clock — if you will permit it — I will visit you again.”

  She lifts her chin again and gazes frankly into Beast’s face.

  “You are . . . very kind. Sir Beast.”

  She favors him with a half smile, and he gazes back at her, his expression unreadable. Then he disappears into the shadows in a swirl of velvet and gold.

  She looks after him in the gloom, then squares her shoulders and prepares to climb the stairs. But at the last minute, she comes back again to peer at me, although not with the same covetous look of her father. She does pluck me off my windowsill, however. Perhaps she doesn’t trust the magical sconces to stay alight long enough to find her way upstairs. Or perhaps she feels safer with an object in hand she can wield as a weapon.

  The small white hand that curls around me does not feel much accustomed to battle, but there is resolution in her grip as she mounts the steps.

  I light her way upstairs. What choice do I have?

  The sconces upstairs direct her to a cozy bedchamber dominated by a grand canopied bed. Spread across the counterpane, she finds a magnificent gown as blue as the one the stained-glass princess wears in the tower window and trimmed in creamy lace. She gasps when she sees it.

  “But this is too fine for me,” she breathes.

  Who does she mean to impress with her modesty? There’s no one here but me.

  She sets me on the nightstand, and while there are no servants to dress her, her own clothes obligingly fall away, even as her hands rush to her bodice to try to hold them on. She looks all around in fear, expecting to be pounced on, I suppose. But instead a fine chemise floats down over her head, the embroidered material exquisite. Petticoats of equal quality follow, and then the gown itself, the bodice lacing itself up her back. With each new layer, her wide eyes grow more eager. She takes a pinch of shimmering satin between her thumb and fingers, expecting it to melt away like fairy dust. But it’s as real as the roses in the garden that blossomed under Beast’s care.

  She fluffs out her skirt, adjusts her puffed sleeves, tosses back her hair, and turns to the dressing table across from the bed. Its mirror has been magically restored for her convenience. She peers into her reflection for a long moment. Then she smiles.

  “Oh, sisters,” she whispers. “If you could see me now!”

  The hall sconces light her way, yet Rose will not venture out of her room without me.

  Another fire roars in the dining salon. As we enter, music played by ghostly hands on unseen instruments sweetens the air, a wistful duet for lute and
bass viol. Rose’s eyes widen again at the extravagance of the feast laid out on the table before her. Then her face clouds over a bit.

  “Surely he means to fatten me up and devour me,” she whispers, and sets me nervously on the table but well within reach.

  She’s too frightened to indulge. She only picks at a fragrant, yeasty bread, nibbles at some sugared sweets, and scarcely sips the wine. The roast capon, jellied terrine, and poached fish swimming in lemon and tarragon all go untouched. From somewhere, chimes strike eight times — odd, for I’ve never heard a chiming clock here before — and Rose sets down her wineglass with a thump. When Beast’s huge frame suddenly fills the opposite doorway, she tries not to gasp.

  “May I join you, Rose?” he asks her formally. When she cannot quite find her tongue, he remains where he stands. “My supper does not please you?” he inquires.

  “I . . . I’m afraid I have little appetite, Sir Beast.”

  “Because of me?” he murmurs, and withdraws back into the shadows.

  She looks after him, alarmed. Should he be debating whether to devour her, she doesn’t want to insult him into the bargain.

  “No . . . Sir Beast! I didn’t mean it that way. Please . . . come back.”

  He reappears slowly in the doorway, his hairy face etched in the firelight. “You have nothing to fear from me, Rose. I swear it.” She glances up at him again, and he places a paw upon his breast. “On my honor, I swear it.”

  Rose makes up her mind to relent and nods him to a seat at the table. Moving slowly so as not to frighten her any more, he seats himself at the far end of the table opposite her, arranging his fine cape and clothing with care. He glances at me, surprised, and perhaps pleased, to see that Rose has placed me nearby, next to her wine goblet.

  “Will you not eat, Sir Beast?” she asks when he makes no motion toward the platters of food or the flagon of wine, which remain piled before Rose.