Beast Read online

  On the far side of the rose terraces stand the familiar stone archways that front the east wing and the carriage house. The rooms in this wing, so long unused, are filling up now with wedding gifts and supplies and servants to see to them. Footmen in livery bustle about in the breezeway under the arches, attending to each new arrival. I glimpse the Beaumont carriage gleaming in renewed glory. Another figure bustles about in an official manner. I realize it is Rose’s father, the old merchant. He is back in looks again, ruddy-cheeked, clear-eyed, his pointed little beard now white but neatly trimmed.

  A wagon halts before him, and servants are ordered to unload the chests it carries. Rose’s father marches out to examine their contents.

  “Lace!” he barks to a nearby footman. “Not the best quality, although finer than that stuff the Comtesse de La Roche sent. Tell Jacques to make a note.”

  I return my attention to the archway of roses vaulting over the broad gravel drive and notice that two female figures now stand at either side of the driveway nearest the gate. They are both clothed in grey gowns the color of stone. It’s not servants’ clothing; the silken fabric looks too fine. Still, their dress is almost a kind of livery, with their matching silver lace collars, untrimmed robes, and tall felt hats with modest brims to keep off the sun. They might be taken for statues, but for the way they fret and fidget at their appointed posts. I can’t imagine what purpose they serve until a cart is let through the gate and directed to the lady at the left of the drive. From a purse at her waist, she extracts a coin and hands it to the carter, then gestures him down the side track for the kitchen wing. They are here to dispense the Beaumont munificence, I see, to impress the tradespeople with the chevalier’s generosity.

  Although I have never seen these grey women before, not even when I was in service here myself to Jean-Loup, something about them tugs at my memory. Then I realize where I’ve seen them before: they are Blanche and Violette.

  Another wagon is let in and directed to the right to Rose’s eldest sister, Blanche. We are near enough now that I see her fumble in her little purse, eyes downcast, her expression stony; she produces a coin and hands it to the driver.

  “For your trouble,” she mutters. Then lifting her chin a little, she adds in frosty tones, “The Chevalier de Beaumont and his lady welcome you.”

  So this is how Rose repays her scheming sisters! They are forced to stand and watch the endless parade of servants and sycophants and revellers come to pay homage to their more fortunate sister and her handsome chevalier, doling out coins like common almsgivers in penance for their pride.

  But I was just thinking of them, not a moment ago, at the Basilica of the Magdalene — far, far away from here, at the opposite end of the town. Is that what brought me here to them? In response, the ring warms a little against my skin. I had scooped it up that day for Beast’s sake because it was important to him, but I’d forgotten until this minute that it was enchanted. Now I realize how powerful it is — infused with his mother’s love.

  Weary, now, of the revelry and anticipation all around me, I make my way into the shadows behind the gatehouse and withdraw the ring on its ribbon. I slip it on my finger and wish to go home to Mère Sophie.

  I have little appetite for Mère Sophie’s simmered onion broth at supper. The wedding will take place tomorrow morning, and all the town is invited up to the château for the celebration to follow. We’ve known this day was coming, but I suppose I had not let myself believe it until I miraculously saw the bustle up at the château today with my own eyes. Jean-Loup thrives, and Rose will marry him. That is the simple truth. All else is foolishness.

  It’s impossible to believe that I will ever sleep. Yet I am so weary and heartsore, I crawl into my bed as soon as darkness falls. It must be defeat that weighs me down so, a longing for oblivion that stops my thinking. In truth, I cannot bear another thought.

  It’s full dark when I waken again, and profoundly quiet, but for the low, rumbling purr of my brindle cat. I realize it’s a slight warming of the ring on its ribbon around my neck, inside my chemise, that has wakened me. I roll over to face the shadowy wall away from the fireplace, and I startle to the soles of my feet at what I see.

  A figure sits in the darkness, a woman. It’s not Mère Sophie; I can hear her murmuring softly in her sleep from the other side of the fireplace. The face of the woman before me is bathed in a peculiar light from above, a light that has no source — pale shades of pink, blue, and green. I recognize the careless spill of her curls, escaping their jewelled net, her lovely face, her dark, expressive eyes. They no longer well with tears as she gazes at me, but I know Christine DuVal LeNoir. Beast’s mother. She is moving ever so slightly in the darkness, back and forth, as she was when I first saw her in a mirrored room at Château Beaumont, in a chair made of bentwood, although I can’t quite see it in the darkness. The pale colors on her face are the same ones I saw reflected in my own polished silver surface in her library not so long ago.

  “Lady Beaumont,” I whisper, sitting up in my bed.

  She nods at me. “Lucie.”

  I remember my terror when she first called me by name, but I no longer fear her. I feel a kinship with her now because we both care so much for Beast. And I share her sorrow over what we have allowed to become of him.

  “We tried to bring him back,” I tell her, lowering my voice even further. “Mère Sophie and I.”

  “But you did.” She offers me a soft, sad smile. “He became himself again in your company. My little one, grown so big and strong! It gave me such joy to see it. After what I’d done to him.”

  My heart aches for her, for this lovely, heartsick woman who can never forgive herself, who cannot rest in the next world because of her tragic mistake in this one.

  “He doesn’t blame you,” I tell her. “He may not even realize what happened. But I know that he has very tender feelings for you.” I remember the roses he brought so faithfully to her library.

  She gazes at me, her expression wistful, perhaps wondering if she should let herself believe me. Is this what her eternity will be like, hovering between two worlds, paying in sorrow for accounts she can no longer settle in life?

  “You are very kind to say so,” she murmurs at last.

  “I should have been kinder, sooner,” I say ruefully. “I’m sorry I failed you, my lady. I failed Beast.”

  “I failed him,” she corrects me gently. Her warm brown eyes are so like Beast’s, so full of feeling. She nods at me, and I feel the warmth of the ring under my chemise. I draw it out, and she smiles.

  “I always meant for him to have it,” she tells me, “if . . . by some miracle he might ever be restored. So I kept it on a ribbon for him. A poor enough token of my love, I suppose. But this was all I had to give him. Especially now that I can no longer embrace my child in this world.”

  Her expression sinks into melancholy for another moment before she turns her eyes back to me. “I came here to thank you, Lucie. You were a friend to him for a time — something I think he had never had before. I will treasure the memory of his happiness.”

  I would tell her I don’t deserve her thanks, that I let Beast slip away again, but Lady Beaumont’s image is already fading again into the shadows. But I am far too agitated now for sleep.

  Lady Beaumont’s misery is like a knife blade in my heart. It cannot be possible that there is nothing I can do to help send her to her rest at last, nothing I can do for Beast, now that I have arms and legs and a heart of my own.

  Mère Sophie said a permanent transformation could be done only with something stronger than hate. Lady Beaumont still loves her true child so much, her ring burns with it, although she is gone these many years. I have felt the power of this ring. I felt it this very afternoon — a tiny vessel that contains the vast ocean of Lady Beaumont’s love.

  Jean-Loup may be stronger than all of us. But is he more powerful than love?

  I must have slept, for I’m wakened by the clamor of distant church bel
ls. It’s full day outside, and I know the bells are from the basilica, tolling for the wedding of the chevalier and his bride. I annoy the brindle cat by shifting myself away from the light while I wrestle with what I must do.

  My plan is desperate indeed, especially now that the chevalier has claimed his bride and the seigneurie has a new Lady Beaumont. The entire town of Clairvallon must be wending its way up the hill to the château at this very moment for the wedding feast. If I meant to find a private moment to see Jean-Loup, it will not be today. Yet every moment I delay, there may be less and less of Beast to save.

  Plagued by these thoughts, I drag myself out of bed. The brindle cat rolls over into the warm spot hollowed out by my body and sinks back into contented slumber. But Mère Sophie and I are scarcely full awake when there’s a hammering at the door. A woodcutter begs the wisewoman to come to his cottage to treat his feverish child. She takes me with her to help with her balms and infusions, and I spend the rest of the morning at her side, until the fever is broken and the boy made stable.

  It’s midday by the time we return to our cottage, and my thoughts return to Beast. We have been victorious today for this child, a stranger, and I am more resolved than ever to win a victory for Beast. I may be completely addled to think I can do anything at all for him now, and yet I must try. I can’t let Beast spend the rest of his life suffocated within the illusion that is Jean-Loup, not if there is any possibility, however remote, that I might have the means to free him. Beast was ready to end his own life in hopes of releasing me. I must find the same sort of courage for him.

  I’m lacing my boots again when I find Mère Sophie standing by my side.

  “You are leaving me,” she says.

  “Beast needs my help,” I tell her. “I’m the only hope he has left.”

  Mère Sophie nods thoughtfully. “Be very sure of what you want, my dear,” she says at last.

  I finish lacing my second boot and run my fingers through my hair. I stand and smooth out my skirts, dull and grey and plain.

  Mère Sophie eyes me up and down. “I believe there is a celebration in progress where you are going,” she says, and nods toward the bed where I’ve been sitting. Across it now is spread a modest gown of soft mossy green, the color of the river, with a bodice worked in coppery-colored embroidery. The cat slumbers on undisturbed beside it. I notice a traveling cloak the rusty color of autumn leaves hanging on the hook by the door.

  “Thank you, Mère Sophie,” I whisper. I unlace my old grey frock, pull it off, and put on the green. I feel as if I am wearing the wisewoman’s colors into battle, the colors of the wood. They are nothing fancy, nothing fine, but decent, durable clothing for the task I undertake.

  “Know that there will always be a place for you here by my fire,” Mère Sophie tells me at the door, as if she has been listening to my thoughts. “But you must follow your heart. There lies a power greater than any enchantment.”

  I draw out the ring on its ribbon, but I’m not sure where to go. I need to find where Jean-Loup is, if I mean to unlock Beast, but I cannot very well appear out of the air beside him, as Rose did in Beast’s garden — especially if he is doing some public thing, like standing to receive a toast to his health. So when I slip the ring on my finger, I desire only to join the wedding feast.

  Instantly, I am standing in the courtyard before the grand front steps of the château. The courtyard is so thronging with people, nobody even notices when I am suddenly among them. At least half the folk of the town are still here, roaming about, feasting to their fill from long, narrow tables laden with roasted meats and bread and cheeses and fruit that are set up between the newly formalized rose beds. Brewers’ and vintners’ wagons are parked under the arched porticoes alongside the east wing, and legions of servants, some in Beaumont livery and others attached to the wagons, wander among the crowd, pouring wine, ale, and mead out of large, full-bellied country pitchers.

  More formal tables for invited guests are set up to one side of the steps. Rose’s father sits at the head table, chatting happily among some of the chevalier’s titled guests, but Rose’s sisters and three young men I take for her brothers — the would-be monster hunters — are seated at a middle table, not as close as the nobler guests, but not so distant as to show disrespect. Musicians playing horns and bladder pipes and crook-necked lutes stroll between the tables, sweetening the air with their lilting harmonies beneath the general din of talk and laughter and toasting.

  At the center of it all stands an elevated platform, like a mummers’ stage, on the other side of the château steps. There the wedding party is enthroned, under a canopy of burgundy and gold. It’s an imposing structure, trimmed in flounces and rosettes and bearing the Beaumont device.

  In the middle of the long table sits Rose, radiant in a gown of palest blue silk the color of moonbeams. She is flanked by a few of the chevalier’s closest companions-in-arms and their ladies, although some of the chairs are empty now. And as I circle nearer in the crowd, I see their table is littered with the remains of much feasting: fruit pits, cheese rinds, various small animal bones, and many, many kinds of drinking vessels, from delicate crystal and pewter goblets to more formidable steins.

  Most noticeable about this grand table is that the chevalier is not sitting at it.

  I peer all around, but I don’t see Jean-Loup anywhere. A half-dozen ladies and gentlemen knights still occupy places at the table, chattering idly at one another, but the thronelike chair beside Rose is empty. Rose herself is occupied with being charming to a line of supplicants and well-wishers from the town who come bowing and scraping to the chevalier’s table. She has a smile and a friendly word for every ironmonger or lace maker or washerwoman or shepherd who dares to approach her.

  But I see the way her eyes dart fleetingly from side to side between these brief interviews. I notice one of the noble ladies at the table speaking behind her hand to the gentleman knight beside her, who responds with a sly look. No doubt they are wondering why the Lord Beaumont is not here beside his new bride.

  This may be the perfect opportunity for me, perhaps the only one I will ever get. I duck behind a rosebush thick with blooms and muster out the ring on its ribbon. A dream of Beast still exists somewhere, but to find it, I must go to wherever Jean-Loup is. And so I seek the chevalier and slip the ring on again.

  I open my eyes inside the sitting room, in the middle of Jean-Loup’s private apartments upstairs. I shudder to find myself here again, in my human form, but I know I must confront Jean-Loup in person if I’m to have any prayer of reaching Beast. Still, I keep the ring clutched close in my palm, ready to slip it on again in an instant if I need to escape.

  His sitting room is empty but shows all the signs of habitation. The wardrobe door is partly open with a jacket thrown over it and muddy hunting boots discarded beside it. An empty wine decanter sits beside a goblet on the table next to the armchair. The carved stags still vault over the marble fireplace, and the mirror beneath them has been restored. An unlit pipe trailing ashes lies abandoned on the mantelpiece, and a plumed hat has been rakishly hung on the stone head of the god in its center. But even without these objects, these clues, I would know he is nearby. I can feel him.

  No servant will dare to enter without the master’s permission. Jean-Loup and I will not be interrupted.

  The doorway to the bedchamber stands partly open, but no sound breaks the quiet. Is he sleeping? Is he ill? I creep to the doorway and see articles of fresh clothing — breeches, doublet, linen, smallclothes — neatly laid out across the foot of the bed in preparation for the wedding night. The chamber does not appear to be occupied, yet the very air crackles with his presence; I can feel him nearby, and yet I can’t see him. Where is he?

  But as I pause, heart hammering in my throat, I hear the soft, placid lapping of water. The gentle rippling sound fades away, and I hear a deep human sigh of contentment.

  Jean-Loup is in his bath.

  The mirror above the fireplace op
posite the bed reflects the far side of the room that I can’t see around the door, including the half-drawn velvet curtain. Behind it must be the bay window where the tiled bathtub is located; I remember gazing down into it from my cupboard in the attic. I grip the ring more tightly in one hand and step around the door into the room.

  “This way, mademoiselle,” comes Jean-Loup’s most honeyed voice as he pokes his head out from his bathtub beyond the partly drawn curtain.

  But his voice falls away as his eyes rise to me. His jaw gapes open for an instant as he straightens up in the water. The carpeted steps leading up to the level of the inset tub suggest a throne, and Jean-Loup looks regal enough as he peers out at me, even though he is naked and up to his rib cage in bathwater.

  “Lucie,” he whispers. He remembers me, but I don’t seem to be the one he’s expecting.

  His hair is loose and mostly dry, except for the ends that cling to his neck and scatter across his shoulders in wet curls. His damp skin has a golden sheen in the afternoon sunlight as his arms rise to rest along the rim of the tub. How peculiar his chest looks, slick and naked, without its covering of fur or a long mane curling over it. He seems unformed, somehow, an embryo, not yet born.

  “Chevalier,” I respond with a nod.

  He glances at the door for an instant, then back at me. “And what are you doing here?”

  “I’ve brought you . . . a wedding gift,” I tell him.

  “Why, you astonish me, Little Candle.” I bristle inwardly at the smugness in his voice, but I don’t let him see it. “I thought you cared little enough for my charms.”

  He pushes aside the curtain and stands up. He looks like a fairy king rising there, naked, dripping water, haloed in sunlight, like one of the perfect godlike statues carved in marble on his fireplace.

  I forbid myself to shrink back or recoil in disgust as he comes down the three short steps, although I grasp the ring more firmly. At the bottom step, he plucks up a wine-colored dressing gown thrown over the back of a chair and wraps it around himself.