Beast Read online

  “We can never know all the consequences of our actions,” says Mere Sophie with a rueful sigh. “But by summoning Rose, by that single selfless act, you regained your own human heart. And that is no small thing.”

  And my human limbs as well, but by then, it was far too late. I remember how often I resented Rose, that she could walk and laugh and smile, all those things I could no longer do. And I recall how desperately Beast tried to find a way to free me by magic. “Beast thought his death might set me free.”

  “Only you could do that,” says Mère Sophie gently.

  Open your heart.

  “If only I’d known,” I fret. “If only I’d regained my human body sooner, I could have saved Beast! But now Beast is gone. Because of me. Because I couldn’t reach him in time.”

  But the wisewoman shakes her head. “Beast would have ended his life right there in his garden had you not sent Rose to stop him. She may have unleashed Jean-Loup, but she did save Beast’s life.”

  My breath catches in my throat. “Beast is still alive?”

  She nods again at me. “The fungus needs its host to survive. Some spark, some essence of Beast lives on. Because you sent Rose to save him.”

  My thoughts are reeling: joy that some part of Beast may yet survive warring with grief that he is trapped inside the illusion of Jean-Loup once more.

  “What is it like for him . . . where he is?” I ask Mère Sophie. “Does Beast know what’s happened to him?” I can’t bear to think that he might suffer.

  It’s a long moment before she speaks again. “He feels — and knows — nothing,” she murmurs at last. “He sees nothing, nor senses anything. He is scarcely more than a dream of the creature he once was, buried inside the shell that is now Jean-Loup. There is not room in the vessel of the body they share for more than one at a time.”

  I frown at this. “But when Beast was restored, Jean-Loup raged inside him for days.” I remember the savagery with which we smashed all the mirrors.

  “He’d had possession for twenty years, and Beast had been dormant just as long,” says Mère Sophie. “Jean-Loup clung to life within Beast out of sheer willfulness for a short while. But without the constant reassurance of his own good looks, his physical superiority over other men, he lost his will. His beauty — the illusion of beauty — was everything to Jean-Loup. His new monstrous shape destroyed his sense of himself, and Beast was able to emerge.”

  I remember Beast’s wonder, exploring the château as if discovering it all anew, inspecting everything, every room — the family portraits, his mother’s library. Did some deeply buried part of himself remember living there once as a child? Is that why he restored the ruined garden with such loving care? The roses he used to bring to the library — did he do so in memory of his mother without even knowing why? It’s no wonder he was so drawn to his mother’s ring. And I recall Beast’s horror the more evidence he found of the shameful way Jean-Loup had lived his life.

  “But why was Jean-Loup able to come back so fast when Rose found him?” I ask.

  “Because in that instant, Beast was letting go of his life,” Mère Sophie tells me gently. “He was ready to die.”

  “For my sake,” I add miserably. “But if some spark of him still exists, somewhere, could it not be possible for Beast to come back again?”

  Mère Sophie smiles sadly at me. “Jean-Loup must be driven completely out — as we once almost did, Lucie — if Beast can ever reclaim the vessel of his body, again, and himself,” she says. “If we had done it with love instead of hate, maybe we could have banished Jean-Loup forever.”

  I grasp at this idea, that love might set Beast free. “What if Rose has a change of heart?” I ask her eagerly. “Say her feelings for him, for the memory of Beast, deepened over time. Might she not . . . bring him back?”

  “It is possible, I suppose,” says Mère Sophie. “If her love was strong enough.”

  Her tone suggests how little hope she holds out for such a prospect.

  “And not likely, now that Rose is so smitten with her chevalier,” I agree sadly. How long before Rose forgets that Beast ever existed? “She ought to have had the sense to fall in love with Beast,” I mutter. “She does not deserve a life of misery wedded to Jean-Loup.” Another thought occurs to me. “Should I not try to warn her somehow?”

  Mère Sophie draws a slow, thoughtful breath. “We cannot know what their married life will be like,” she says. “Rose is likely to suffer his infidelities. But sadly, that is not uncommon among wives of the nobility.”

  And Rose has her family nearby — three stout brothers, as I recall — as I did not. Nor will her reputation be ruined, as I feared for Lady Honoree, when Rose is his lawful wife. And why would she take the advice of a disgraced servant, in any case?

  Mère Sophie gazes at me for another moment. “You have earned a great deal of wisdom,” she goes on gently. “So many learn nothing for all their troubles. It would make me very happy if you would stay here with me as my apprentice.”

  I glance up into her face, astonished. I haven’t had a moment to think what my life will be like now that I am human again or where I will go. How enticing it would be to enter into sisterhood with Mère Sophie, to dine here at her table, to make a place for myself before her comforting fire. To share her work and her wisdom and her knowledge. To feel myself at peace at last with nature. A part of me already loves this wood better than the world, for all its dangers and enchantments.

  Something burns near my heart. I realize it is Lady Beaumont’s ring still tucked into my bodice. I finger the red ribbon to shift it, but Mère Sophie stretches out one gnarled finger and gently tugs at the ribbon. The golden ring with its tiny red jewel emerges from my bodice, and her gaze softens as she lets it dangle into her palm.

  “His mother’s ring —” I begin.

  “I know. I gave it to her,” murmurs the wisewoman. “I found an artisan to craft it for her when we learned she was with child. One perfectly heart-shaped stone, an object of wonder, as wonderful as the babe she carried. She wore it on the day she gave birth to him and all through his childhood.”

  Mère Sophie puts the ring back in my own hand. “You keep it, Lucie,” she murmurs. “I’m sure Christine would be pleased.”

  I remember when Beast found the ring in a book in the library after so many years, how awed he was. How it comforted him. And my heart aches again.

  “I’m too foolish to ever make you a suitable apprentice,” I tell her. All this thinking makes my poor head too heavy, and I lower it into my hands. “I’ve lost Beast. I’ve lost my virtue. I’m not —”

  “Nonsense,” the wisewoman interrupts me crisply. “Maiden you may no longer be, but you are as virtuous now as the day you were born.” My head bobs up, and she smiles again. “Virtue is yours to make of what you will, by your actions, by your character. No one else can ever take it from you.”

  She has quietly taken my hand in hers and gives it a gentle squeeze, and I feel her strength and warmth pumping into me. Perhaps I am not ruined. Perhaps my life has value still.

  “But — I don’t know what to do.”

  “Eat a bowl of my stew,” suggests Mère Sophie. “Stay here and rest for a while. Things may look different in the morning.”

  There’s never any smoke from Mère Sophie’s fire, although it burns cheerily in the grate all night. She conjures a second bed for me, piled high with quilts and pillows and a cat of its own, an elegant brindle that curls up in the small of my back and keeps me warm throughout the night.

  It’s the first night in nearly four months that I’ve had eyes to close and felt the urge and the ability to surrender to sleep, and I long for that sweet release above all things. Yet I can’t quite let go. I’ve been alert, wakeful, watching for such a long time; if I give myself over to human sleep, human dreams, what chaos might engulf me? Still, I murmur a prayer for Mère Sophie’s protection and surrender at last. And I sleep soundly that first night, untroubled by dreaming of an
y kind. My newly restored human body needs its rest.

  In another day, word seeps into the wood that the Chevalier de Beaumont, so recently returned to the château and reassembling his household, has already departed with his bride-to-be. They escort her father to the healing springs at the Cluny Abbey, for his health, where they will receive the blessing of the abbé on their upcoming nuptials. Wedding preparations, we are told, proceed at a furious pace at the château.

  I cannot bear to think of Jean-Loup so completely in command again of the life he stole from Beast, and so I throw myself into my studies with Mère Sophie. Many folk, but especially women, both highborn and lowborn, make their way into the wood seeking her healing remedies. It’s not witchcraft, as I once feared, as put about by slanderous rumors, but a skillful knowledge of natural things that might bring ease and comfort to those in distress. She teaches me the lore of her plants and how the cycles of the moon affect them — new moon for sowing, full moon for growing, waning moon for the harvest. I help her gather wild herbs and dry them by her fire, and I learn to assist in mixing her potions and infusions. Each day, I discover the depth of her knowledge and the patience with which she passes along each tiny morsel of it to me, as awkward as I often am.

  “All you need is time, Lucie,” she assures me. “You have the heart for it and the wit. I can teach you the skill.”

  I have never had such useful work to do, nor felt more at home in any place, not since my father died. I imagine him smiling down at me now. I hope he is pleased that my life has some value at last, that his confidence in the child I was then was not misplaced. And gradually, I allow the calming rhythms of Mère Sophie’s life to bring me a kind of peace.

  I have begun to dream again. And most nights, I dream of Beast, his warm, gold-dusted eyes, his husky laugh, his animal smile. I wake from these dreams giddy with so much happiness, such relief — until the cruel truth dawns on me again. I worry that mine might be the last memories of the dream that was Beast. Rose may have already forgotten him, in her rush to marry the chevalier.

  And every night, even my dreams of Beast grow more faint.

  We are on the cusp of the new moon, the time of beginnings, on the morning Mère Sophie asks if I will run an errand for her into the town. “My dear friend, Madame LeBoeuf, keeps an inn at Clairvallon. I brew a special tisane for her rheumatics, and I would appreciate it if you would deliver a new packet of my brew to her.”

  “Of course,” I agree, always glad to return a favor for my tutor and benefactor.

  “She will offer you lodging as well, for my sake,” says the wisewoman, “if you need it; it’s a long walk to town and back.” And she bustles off to her worktable to measure out her herbs.

  When the manicured trees of the outer park behind Château Beaumont come into view, I make a long, wide detour around the grounds, along the uneven track worn into the earth by peasants and wayfarers who dare not trespass on Beaumont land. By midday, I am far below the château, halfway down the hillside that overlooks the town. From here, the red-tile roofs of Clairvallon cluster together like kneeling penitents in the shadow of the church tower that rises up at the opposite end of the town. I travel down the hill and into the town and stop at the inn where I first came as a green serving girl.

  I introduce myself to Madame LeBoeuf, a plump, merry woman, who is delighted to get the packet from Mère Sophie. The innkeeper doesn’t know she has ever served me before. She doesn’t remember me as the timid little chit who spent a night in the common room on her way to a life of service at the château. She knows me only as Mère Sophie’s assistant and insists that I stay for a midday meal. She is eager to share all the gossip about the chevalier’s wedding; folk talk of nothing else. She tells me the chevalier is now back in residence at the château, along with his bride-to-be and her family.

  “And we’re to have a great deal more excitement, too, mademoiselle,” she exclaims.

  I glance around the room, at the local folk meeting their friends for a cup of wine, at the travelers taking their meals and gossiping with the serving girls. The place is a hive of expectation.

  “More excitement than this?” say I.

  “Oh, much more! The abbé himself has decided to come from Cluny to perform the wedding ceremony tomorrow!”

  So soon? I’ve lost track of the days.

  “It will be a great day for us to see the abbé right here in our town.”

  “Such an illustrious person, here?” I ask her. “Will the local curé not perform the ceremony?”

  “But my dear mademoiselle! The LeNoirs held the very first Beaumont lands in fief from Cluny Abbey back in the old times. They have always been powerful allies. It’s a mark of great favor that the abbé himself will join the bride and groom in matrimony, and the chevalier would accept none less. The chevalier knows no other mortal man as close to God.”

  She bustles off to carry the happy news to some other guest, hoping to persuade them to stay an extra day or two to celebrate the great event. But I can scarcely find joy in her news. They will be joined in the sight of God, Rose and her sham husband, who should be Beast. Once the church has blessed their union, Jean-Loup’s triumph will be complete.

  The wedding preparations at Château Beaumont have the entire town abuzz. From the inn, I can see the barrels of wine carted up the hill to the château and the herds of hogs and sheep driven up for the feast. Armies of cooks, waiters, housemaids, seamstresses, gardeners, and stableboys stop at the inn on their way to their new employment. There’s no longer any talk of the château being cursed. The Beaumont fortune cascades down the hill and into the town like a spring rain, and all talk of monsters and fairy curses is washed away.

  After my meal, I leave the bustling town behind and follow the steep, winding path upward to the ancient stone church of Clairvallon, being readied for the nuptials. I have never been here before, but I want to know more about this God who would sanctify so unnatural a union. The Basilica of Mary Magdalene, they call it, dedicated to the Magdalene, patron saint of sinners who have mislaid their virtue on their journey through life. Pilgrims from provinces far and near have climbed this steep hill on bleeding knees to pray to the Magdalene, so they say. I have forgotten my prayers, if ever I knew any, but folk come here seeking comfort, and I would be comforted.

  But I find this place, too, all abustle over the coming ceremony. Young monks are on their knees, not in prayer, but scrubbing the broad stone steps beneath the huge arched portal. Others are trimming the lush greenery in the yard. Berobed men scurry in and out of the doorway beneath the portal under the supervision of a senior monk with a sour face. I dare not disturb the scrubbers, nor risk the wrath of their superior.

  Yet, as I stand here below the steps like generations of pilgrims before me, I find my gaze drawn up and up to the massive portal carved in stone above the doorway and the tall, narrow Gothic windows above. All are alive with carvings to show folk the ways of the righteous. Giant figures of saints and kings gaze down from the niches of the upper windows, but my eyes are drawn back to the lower portal, an enormous half-moon lying on its side above the doorway.

  The scene carved in the portal is Judgment Day, with Christ seated at its center, surrounded by His holy people. They are the apostles, I suppose, with the Virgin Mary and the Magdalene among them. Surely whatever local noblemen paid for the building of the church centuries ago, and the abbé who dedicated it, had their portraits etched in stone in Christ’s company. But what captures my attention is the long lintel that serves as a base for the half-moon, supporting the scene. Two lines of smaller figures march to meet in the center, eager to be resurrected under Christ’s benevolent gaze. But these figures are not priests and merchants and princes. They are the lame, the poor in rags, the disfigured. Some have hollow, staring eyes, lost to madness. Some are hunchbacked, some clubfooted. Some have the heads of monsters.

  I swallow hard. Monsters at the feast of Judgment Day. The hand of the Christ rises above them one
and all, offering His blessing.

  Perhaps Beast will be welcome in the next world as he is, if not in this one.

  But how unfair that he must wait until then.

  The senior monk peers over at me with suspicion, and I hastily bow my head. When I notice that the gold ring on its red ribbon has jostled loose from my bodice in my journey up the hill, I grasp it in my hand. Twisting it in agitation, I gaze up again at the frieze of monsters. What became of Rose’s sisters, I wonder, and their plot to slay the monster of Beaumont?

  And before I can draw another breath, I find myself standing before the massive gilded gates of Château Beaumont. I can’t be dreaming now; it’s the middle of the day! Yet here I am, standing on the stone bridge across the moat, which is jammed with carts and drays of all sorts making deliveries to the château.

  “Watch yourself there, ma’amselle!” cries a carter as he drives his mule past me, and I grab at the low stone wall to get out of the way. I feel it cold and rough against my hand. A wave of heat from the lathered animal washes over me along with the stinging odor of its sweat. How can this be real? Then I look down and see, to my amazement, that I have somehow fidgeted the enchanted ring over my finger. Its magic has brought me here!

  After pressing myself to the wall, I remove the ring hastily from my finger and slide it back inside my bodice while I peer around. Some of the vehicles crowding the bridge before the gate carry supplies, but many are delivering wedding gifts. The gatehouse is occupied by a new, less ferocious gatekeeper in Beaumont livery who must weigh the merits of each request for entry before signalling the two robust footmen inside to throw open the gilded iron gates.

  Through the gates, I see that the red roses still grow in the terraced beds that fill the courtyard garden, high enough to be seen above the wall. But the bushes have been trimmed and bullied into severe formal patterns, and the blooms do not burst with the same energy they once had under Beast’s loving care. I suspect Jean-Loup has given the task back to his gardeners.