Beast Page 9

  I am reminded of the night Beast drew himself a bath. But this time he can have no thought for his own luxury; on the contrary, the goal he’s set himself is immense and exhausting. The sun is stretching for its midpoint by the time he’s completed a single row of rose beds on either side of the drive. He rises up on his haunches and shakes back his shaggy mane, surveying the situation. Then he picks up the two buckets and carries them around the side of the château again.

  He does not come back for a long time. I begin to think he must have given up on his project, consigned his beautiful roses to the devil, and stalked off. But I recognize more clattering of buckets in the well, followed by a measured creaking from the yard, and the rattling of some heavy vehicle over the wooden drawbridge that crosses the moat on the eastern side, until Beast emerges into the garden again. He is pulling behind him the yoke of a haying cart. The yoke was built for a team of oxen or mules, and Beast has to pause every few steps to get behind the T-shaped bar and press the contraption forward with the strength of his massive shoulders, an effort that sets him trembling to the very tips of the useless feathers on his back. And I can see why, for the open cart is heavily laden, not with hay, but with vessels. There are buckets from the stables and barrels that once held feed for livestock. There are basins and bowls and iron pots of every size purloined from the kitchens, even some crockery pitchers. Every one has been filled with water.

  Beast is as lathered as any draft animal by the time he brings the cart to rest at the second row of flower beds. But his step is lively enough as he goes to inspect his load and withdraws a pitcher. He waters the first bush from this pitcher after he has turned the soil with his claws. When the pitcher is empty, he takes it back to the cart and dips it into a barrel to fill it again, then returns to the next bush.

  He labors on in this manner all the rest of the day, breaking up the earth and watering each rosebush. When all his containers are empty, he hauls the cartful of them back to the well, draws the water to fill them all again, and hauls the loaded cart back into the garden to begin where he left off. The work is slow, but he keeps his pace steady. I wait for the moment he will throw up his paws in dismay or unleash a bitter tirade of impatience. But it never happens. Neither does he make any more demands of the magical forces, nor whine for their help. His resignation to his task is complete.

  But no, Beast is not resigned. He is eager. Throughout the wearying day, his vigor never flags. He pauses only now and then to refresh himself with water from one of his vessels, and then he is back at his labors again. More labor I think in this one day than Jean-Loup ever accomplished in his entire lifetime.

  The weak sun is drooping toward the west wing when the work is done. Beast stands at the bottom of the garden and gazes up at the rows of neat flower beds on which he has lavished so much attention. There is not much to show for his labors but that the soil beneath each bush is fresh and moist. Dead petals still litter the gravel walkways between the rose beds.

  Beast turns to the cart and extracts an empty kitchen bowl of earth-colored clay. He makes his way along the pathways, picking up forlorn petals and collecting enough to fill the bowl, then climbs the front steps and carries the bowl heaped with red petals into the entry hall. He pauses in the doorway to look around, then carries the bowl to a sideboard against a wall in the shadows and places it just so. There are finer objects on the sideboard, but he removes them all and hides them away inside the cabinet, leaving only the rustic bowl of petals on the surface.

  He considers the effect for a moment, and then he half turns to look at me, although he says nothing. It might have been mere chance that he thought of water at the same moment I did. But what if he heard me in some magical way? And I store away this tiny grain of possibility.

  Beast keeps at his gardening for days. It absorbs his waking hours, except for those times when he must hunt and feed. He has lost interest in exploring the château and discovering its treasures. He does not come for me, but I watch him in his garden from my window perch.

  One afternoon, as Beast is pruning dead heads from his empty stalks, I see a flash of scarlet amid the landscape of brown shrubs and grey sky. It’s not a new bloom, but a little bird with a dapper, crested head. Beast lifts his muzzle, watching, as the creature flits about. It lands on an upper branch, warbling down at him. Beast is very still, getting ready to pounce, I suppose. But then Beast smiles a little, and a moment later the red bird cocks its head and flies off.

  Beast waters his roses every day and feeds them from the pile of rotting vegetation and muck kept in a shed out beyond the stables. He brings a barrow of the foul-smelling stuff into the garden and dallies among his roses all through the night. Snow falls no more in his enchanted garden, but the night air can be bitingly cold. He spends another day hauling in hay bales, building a wall around the beds to keep off the night chill. And as the pale winter sun climbs a little higher and lingers a little longer in the sky each day, I see how his efforts are rewarded. New green shoots begin to thrust up from the old rose wood under tiny clusters of rust-colored leaves.

  Soon enough, the frozen white landscape out beyond the garden wall starts turning to grey slush, and the nights no longer freeze. Beast now seems content to spend his time in the company of his roses.

  It takes a sudden drenching rainstorm to drive Beast back inside the château one night. He drags the doors shut behind him, then stands in the entryway and shakes the water out of his fur and feathers so violently, he staggers on his hooves to keep his balance as tiny beads of water skitter across the marble floor. Yet he stays rooted where he is, fur knotted in wet clumps, dark eyes gazing all around the room. He sniffs at the air, and I suddenly know what has caught his attention. It’s the bowl of rose petals on the sideboard. The petals are long dead; they have lost their bright color and velvety texture and curled into crisp, dry cinders. But their scent is alive and stronger than ever before, rich and heavy and seductive.

  Beast follows his nose over to the sideboard, peers into the bowl, and stirs the brown papery petals gently about. The scent in the room intensifies. He lifts his paw and sniffs at the soft pads, heady with the perfume of dried roses. He shakes his great head in wonder.

  “They are even sweeter in their transformation,” he murmurs.

  The rains continue off and on, and Beast is obliged to spend more time indoors. A beast in nature cannot mind a little wet and must seek whatever poor shelter he may, but some memory, some instinct still roots Beast here, to his château. I am watching a light grey drizzle pattering down on the rose garden when I am aware of Beast beside me, gazing out the window. I notice his paw on the sill next to me, free of dirt and grime.

  “I’ve done all I can for them,” Beast muses, nodding out at his roses. His voice rasps, dry and dusty from disuse. “Now they must thrive on their own.” He takes one step back from the window and sighs. “And so must I.”

  He turns his head to gaze at me with his brown, thoughtful eyes. “There is more to see,” he suggests. “If you like.”

  I make no objection, so he takes me in his paw again. We climb the grand central staircase, past the portraits of Beaumont ancestors, past the formal hallway of the second-floor landing, and on up to the third-floor attic rooms — the rooms that contain the past, all the relics of previous Beaumonts that have been forgotten or banished over the generations.

  Beast hesitates at the landing to gaze down the corridor. It’s daylight outside, but all is shrouded in gloom up here. Is it my light he needs, or my company?

  He heads for the center room facing front, where he once shut me up in the cupboard. But now he seems more intent on inspecting the other objects in the room: small headboards and footboards from children’s beds that are stacked against one wall; forlorn pieces of cabinetry that have gone out of fashion; one or two battered, broken chairs that litter the room like corpses; an old carved rustic cradle that stands in one corner under a thick lacework of cobwebs. Beast thrusts me toward each th
ing in its turn, careful not to snuffle too deeply for fear of choking on the dry dust of centuries.

  At the cupboard, he draws open both doors and gazes for a moment into the empty shelves. He sets me on the lowest shelf, then squats on his haunches to pull open the wide drawers beneath the shelves under my light. The first two are all but empty, yielding up only an ancient ribbon the color of dust and a few scraps of moldy cloth. But when he opens the last drawer, the thick, sweet musk of old roses wafts out. Beast draws back in surprise and sniffs the air. After reaching into the drawer, he extracts a flat bundle wrapped in old paper. He peels open the paper, much of which crumbles to fragments at his touch, and finds inside an article of creamy muslin and delicate lace. He handles it very carefully in his big paws, taking pains not to snag it with his claws. He lays it open at the folds and shakes it out, scattering a few dried rose petals to the floor, then holds it aloft. It looks like a christening gown, foaming with lace at the collar, broad and voluminous below, but oddly cut. It has no sleeves, and it shakes out to a remarkable length; it must have covered its infant wearer like a tent.

  Beast gazes at it curiously, frowns, but does not speak. He sniffs at it gently, then lowers it again into what remains of its paper and lays it back in the drawer. Rooting around with one paw, he finally pulls out what must be the cap that was made for the gown. It’s a simple mob cap with a white satin ribbon to gather it closed. But the cap itself is large and deep; it would easily fit the head of a grown man. Beast toys with one end of the ribbon before he lays the cap back with the gown. I hear the soft crackle of dried rose petals and brittle paper as his paw moves about in the drawer, but he withdraws nothing else: no tiny hose lovingly preserved, no miniature doublet embroidered in gold, no first pair of satin shoes. Perhaps the other infant clothing was passed down to Beaumont cousins in other noble houses or given to the servants. Only these christening things remain, salted away under their cover of dried roses.

  Beast closes the drawer and rises slowly on his hind legs. I don’t know what he’s thinking. Jean-Loup was the last Beaumont infant to be born here. Did these things belong to him? Was it Jean-Loup’s mother, the woman from the portrait, the woman from my vision, who folded these things up and put them away with such tender care?

  Beast takes me up again in his paw, closes the cupboard doors, and makes his way out of the room. His tread is heavy. I can’t tell if he is weary or troubled or simply brooding. Out in the corridor, he pauses and gazes again at the staircase. Perhaps he has had enough of the past. All the familiar things from Jean-Loup’s world are in the floors below. But he turns down the corridor and proceeds to the next room and the next, although we find little more of interest.

  At last, we circle around to a back corner turret, the only place we have yet to enter, but the door is locked. It’s a small single door with an arched top, three beautiful wrought iron hinges stretched across its wooden planks, and a graceful ivory handle. A modest door, by château standards, but one that’s been crafted with care. And one that remains stubbornly secured. The handle will not budge, and there is no longer any key in the keyhole to unlock it.

  Beast wonders what to do about this obstacle; his quick dark eyes survey the door’s height and breadth, and he angles his body to measure his massive shoulder to the old wood. But he doesn’t assault it. Instead, with claws retracted, he gently touches one paw to the wood.

  “Might this open for us?” he asks softly. “Please?”

  The ivory handle, untouched by either of us, tilts downward with a soft click. Beast nudges it, and the obliging door opens inward. He has to stoop to fit his large, burly frame under the arch, but in we go.

  We find ourselves in a small passage under heavy roof beams just high enough for Beast to stand upright. Opposite the door is a short flight of stairs, beautifully carved out of wood, tilting steeply upward through an opening between the beams. Beast holds me aloft as he climbs. As I rise up through the opening, my flame illuminates a plush red-and-gold carpet overlaying the wooden floor. Higher yet, my light falls upon some few pieces of comfortable furniture: an old stuffed armchair worn with use and draped with an ancient paisley shawl, a matching footstool, a small writing table and chair. Beast’s head and shoulders rise up under me, and I am held high enough to cast my light on what is beyond these furnishings.

  I see books — hundreds of books in shelves that line every wall of the room. The shelves are not orderly; books are shoved in every which way, upright, or stacked sideways, or all atilt against various objects that appear to have been undisturbed for ages: an ancient teacup whose contents have long since evaporated; a fat candle half-melted into its saucer. Some are even piled up in corners on the floor, but they are everywhere. On three walls, the book-filled shelves rise nearly all the way up to the high vaulted ceiling, where painted nymphs and satyrs and mermaids frolic among star-dusted clouds. On the fourth, the shelves give way to a round window framing a picture in colored glass. The last of the daylight spills through the glass to illuminate a golden castle, a pink sun, a green dragon, and a princess dressed in blue. I recall a tower room I spied from far down in the courtyard on the day I first arrived at Château Beaumont.

  Beast pauses on the stairs below me, one paw braced on the carpeted floor, and drinks it all in with his eyes, warm and shining in my light. Something stirs in his eyes that I’ve never seen there before. In any other creature, I might call it tenderness.

  After climbing all the way into the room, frowning slightly in concentration, he begins to rove about, gently pawing and sniffing at every remnant of former habitation — a dust-covered plate that may have once held crumbs, long since carried off by mice; a sticky goblet tumbled to the carpet. He prowls along the shelves, snuffling at the spines of books, poking me into dark, dusty corners undisturbed for years, but there is a kind of warmth in the room not even dust and neglect can chase away. We get to the armchair with the paisley shawl tossed carelessly across it, as if its owner were coming right back. Beast caresses the shawl with great care, so as not to snag it.

  At last, he carries me to the writing table. With one brisk puff, he blows the dust off the surface of the little cubbyhole shelf attached to the table and places me upon it. He unlatches the leaf — with no little dexterity for such large paws, maneuvering the catch with a single outstretched claw — and folds it out flat. In the cavity beneath the cubbyhole shelf, a small, slim volume is tucked away.

  Beast gently lifts it out and sniffs at its cover. It’s less dusty than the other volumes, having been shut up in the writing table for so long. From where I perch, I can glimpse the word Sonnets etched in gold on its spine. My father had me taught to read, although I’ve had little enough use for it since then. Poetry is not something with which I have much experience, nor can I imagine Jean-Loup as a boy whiling away his hours in rhymes. But Beast cradles the book as if it’s something precious. When he opens the cover, we see something inscribed in a neat, beautiful hand on the first page.

  Christine DuVal LeNoir.

  Jean-Loup’s mother. Was this her library? Perhaps she was reading this book on the last day she ever spent here.

  He turns the book over in his paws, and something else glints and shimmers in my light. Beast inserts a claw gently between the pages and opens the little book flat. A long red ribbon marks the place, with the shimmering thing dangling from one end. Beast lifts out the ribbon and holds its ornament up to my light.

  I would gasp if I could. It’s a plain gold ring, decorated with a tiny red heart. She was wearing it the day I saw her in the mirror downstairs.

  Beast closes his paw gently around the ring. He eases the book back onto the table, catches up the long, thin red loop of the ribbon, and somehow manages to pull it entirely over his head, stretching it over his horns and muzzle; it must be enchanted, to stretch so far. He paws up long tendrils of his shaggy mane until the ring dangles in the thick fur of his chest.

  He reaches behind him for the wooden chair, lo
wers his bulk into it with no little care, shifts his tufted tail about to find a comfortable position, then draws himself up to the table and turns again to the open book. Nothing disturbs the silence for a while as he bows his huge head over the little book in the halo of light cast from my flames.

  Suddenly, with a deep, rumbling groan, he rises again.

  “Love verses!” he cries, sweeping the book to the carpet. “What use are they to me?” And he charges across the room to the stairway and gallops down the stairs paws-first. Below, I hear the enchanted door slam shut behind him.

  I am too high up now to hear Beast in the rooms below. I wonder if he’s abandoned the château altogether.

  Sunlight makes the stained glass brilliant in the high round window. Its colored figures dance on the carpet and the spines of the books as the sun moves across the sky. Sometimes their images fall on me, and my surface reflects dragon green or princess blue. I have an eternity to contemplate the colored glass, to wonder at its composition. A castle, a princess, and a dragon — all the elements of a fairy story. But where is the prince? Should there not be a prince to slay the dragon? That is how the old tales always go.

  This is a room unlike any other in the château, a place for dreaming, apart from the world. Did Jean-Loup’s mother come here to dream? Is this where her soul was nurtured, where her spirit soared?

  And no sooner do I think these thoughts than I see her shimmering before me again. She kneels on the carpet in the pool of colored light thrown by the window. She wears the golden ring with the tiny heart, twisting it on her finger in quiet distress. Tears gleam on her cheeks, but they are shed silently as her gaze rises to the colored glass.

  “Oh, my sweet child, what have I done?” Her tremulous voice seems to address the images in the colored glass. “How I have wronged you!”