Beauty (17 page)

And just to bed would not be enough. He would have to want to marry me as well. Unfortunately, there was no reason under heaven he should want to marry Havoc the miller's son. Havoc who smelled. Havoc with his lice and his dirty skin and his filthy boy's clothes.

I considered stealing women's clothes. Often the maids put Lady Janet's linens out to air, and I thought I could make away with some of them, leaving a petticoat or two half over the hedge to suggest the wind had blown them away. Lady Janet was twice my size, however, as well as being shorter than I. And even if I took the underthings, I would still need a gown. No one at Wellingford was my size, and none of the girls in the village nearby had nice enough gowns. I could not even make myself a gown, for how would I hide it from my stable mates while working on it?

After a time the obvious answer came to me. There were ladies' clothes aplenty at Westfaire. If one of my mother's gowns had fit me, then all would fit me. I made another midnight expedition to bring some of them out-a few of the dozen I found hung in the attics-and I hid them away in a kind of cubby over the stable, still wrapped in the sheet I had carried them in. I would have been able to do none of it without the horse God had sent me, so I thanked Him by renaming the beast Angel.

Next it was time, so I thought, to find out what kind of women Naughty Ned preferred. Every night for a dozen nights I went to the Dower House, invisible in my cloak, seeking the answer to that question. There were four ladies during those dozen days. One left the first night I watched. One came then for three days. One came then for seven. And one was still there when I stopped watching. At the end of that time, I asked my question still, for the ladies were nothing alike. One was a blonde, two were dark-haired, one had hair the color of carrots. One was slender, two voluptuous, one skinny as a rake. Their eyes and mouths and skins were different as well. I conquered my blushes to watch what they did in bed as well as out of it, or beside the bed or on the way to it. It was nothing any two acrobats could not have done better with less sweat, though possibly with less enjoyment. Though, come to think of it, Naughty Ned had not seemed to enjoy it that much. He had been lively and yet, if I interpreted his look correctly, somehow uninvolved.

There was the one woman who had stayed seven days. He had taken her to bed less often than the others, but she had stayed with him longer than the others. She, though not astonishingly clever, was the wittiest of the lot. Seeing this gave me a faint ray of hope. The time came, as I had assumed it would, when the current lady went away, and there was not yet another lady to take her place. There was not another lady because certain messages had been intercepted or sent mistakenly to people who knew nothing about them. Havoc had been invisibly busy, arranging that letters should go astray.

When the last lady departed, Havoc volunteered to get up at dawn and heat the water for doing the wash, which was done in the same tub and the same room as people bathed in, when they did. It was Beauty who bathed in the water while it was hotting, however, well before dawn and no one knew about that. I washed my hair, as well, and combed the nits out of it before wrapping it up in rags because there are no curlers in this century. The rags I hid under my cap, and I dirtied my face in case cleanliness should cause suspicion. Faces are easy to wash.

When nighttime came, I washed my face again, combed out my dry hair to let it hang in a foamy golden cloud down my back, put on one of Mama's gowns and my cloak, and sneaked away across the meadows. At the Dower House I took off the cloak, hung it carefully over the terrace railing, where I could find it again, and walked down the terrace to the room where Naughty Ned always sat at his ease after his evening meal. I knocked. He came to the tall window himself and let me in, his face a perfect picture of surprise.

"Good evening, Edward," I said. "I am Beauty, the daughter of the Duke of Westfaire. I have come to keep you company and tell you tales to allay your boredom."

Then I sat down by the fire and told him the future of the world. I was witty. I was amusing. I laughed gently and forestalled his advances. I drank but little wine and kept my wits about me. When the bell in the Wellingford chapel rang for Matins, I excused myself and left him there, disappearing into my cloak on the terrace. He came out after me, searching, calling my name. I ran away, down the long terrace and home across the meadows, just in time to put my gown away, get on my boy clothes once more, and catch a scant few hours sleep in the hay.

It had been, I told myself, done as well as I could do it. When I saw how well he liked the wittier lady, I remembered a book I had read in school in the twentieth. It was called the Arabian Nights, and it was about Scheherazade who told clever tales for a thousand and one nights in order to avoid being put to death. I had nowhere near that long. If I couldn't fascinate him sooner, the whole thing was hopeless anyhow. Going to bed with him would not accomplish what I had in mind. He had done that over and over again with many women without wanting to be married to any of them. And though he had tried several times, out of habit, to interrupt me by suggesting something improper, I had always put him off and gone on with my tales. I thought possibly the mystery would reach him where the carnality hadn't.

As Havoc, I watched that day as Edward set off to ride to Westfaire, which was known by most local residents to be under an enchantment. I heard Edward talking about it with the men who were riding with him. "An enchantment of roses," is the way he put it, sounding excited. That evening, when he returned, he looked scratched and frustrated. One of the men told the head groom that Lord Edward had not been able to penetrate the roses around Westfaire though he had repeatedly tried! I considered it a hopeful sign.

That night I put on the second gown-I had brought only three from Westfaire-and went to the Dower House again. Again I told him tales until Matins, and again he pursued me when I ran away.

On the third night I took my cloak in with me, set it beside me on the chair, and in the midst of my discourse sighed and interrupted the tale. When he asked me why, I told him I was under an enchantment. That until I was married to a man who would ask me no questions, I could appear only after dark and the barrier around Westfaire would remain. I said this twice, being sure he understood it, before I directed his attention to a spurious spy at the window and disappeared while his head was turned. He looked around him wildly, cursing and crying my name. I had done it as well as it could be done, I told myself again, making my weary way home across the fields.

The fourth night I did not go at all. Nor the fifth.

On the sixth, I returned in the gown I had worn when he saw me first. He was stalking up and down on the terrace outside his window, clenching and unclenching his fists, muttering and sighing. This was a good sign. I took off the cloak and sighed loudly, myself. The moment he saw me, he went to one knee and asked me to marry him. I turned away, thrusting out one hand as though my maidenly modesty had been deeply surprised. He begged. I looked at my hands and wrung them dramatically. He begged the more. At last, on an expiring sigh, I said yes. I would meet him at the Wellingford chapel at dusk, three days afterward, and marry him there.

He would have time for second thoughts. So did I, when I was awake enough to have any thoughts at all. Lord Robert cursed at me for being asleep in a horse's stall, and Lady Janet told me to wake up when I dozed against the side of the steed she was mounting. Mostly I thought that I did not want to be married. I would not have minded if Giles had been there to marry me, but I did not want to marry Ned. What I really wanted to do and had set out to do was find my mother. I longed for a mother. Someone to tell my troubles to, a shoulder to cry on, a sympathetic hand on my forehead, a voice saying, "There, there, dear, we'll work it all out." I thought of using the boots, assuming they would take me wherever she was, but the thought of going to my mama pregnant! She had told me to come to her at once, before I grew older. Coming to her in my present condition did not seem appropriate. It would be like going home in disgrace. Despite my fretfulness, that night I slept like one dead, and in the morning woke to hear the news everyone was babbling. Lord Edward was going to be married in three days, but he would not say to whom.

I went in my cloak to keep watch on him that night. There were no ladies at the Dower House, nor on the night that followed. It appeared he really intended to go through with it.

The Wellingford chapel was a small one, large enough for the family and servants only, served by a resident priest who said daily masses and took care of christenings and burials. Also, three monks had been taken in from the abbey when it was destroyed, and it was they who rang the bells for the holy office. The chapel was set in a graveyard, and there were Wellingfords buried all around and beneath it, the whole place smelling a bit of sanctity and dust and rot, as well as of incense and tallow.

I did not go openly. I went in my cloak, ready to flee if something appeared amiss, and I stood on the porch for a time, looking in at the people. The priest was there, looking grumpy. So were various members of the family, irritably glancing around to catch a glimpse of the putative bride. Ned was there, jumpy as a cat, darting glances at the door every second or two. The priest gave up his unpleasant look to yawn. Ordinarily, Ned and I would have pledged our respective properties and exchanged rings in the church porch. I had no property to exchange, or at least none I was willing to use as dowry. Ned would have to take me as I stood.

I put the cloak down in the porch and walked slowly down the center aisle. Everyone stared at me and murmured. I pretended not to notice the admiring looks cast my way by some of the gentlemen and even a few of the ladies. I had done what I could to look well. There were summer flowers twined in my hair. I had returned to Westfaire for yet another dress, the pink one I had worn at the banquet the night before Papa had intended to marry Weasel-Rabbit. When the priest asked my name, I told him in a clear and carrying voice that all might hear: "Beauty, daughter of Elladine of Ylles and the Duke of Westfaire, under an enchantment which can only be broken by marrying an uninquisitive man."

Ned looked into my eyes and swore to honor and keep me. He whispered in my ear that he would be uninquisitive. He would not ask questions. He trembled when he took my hand. I looked at his chin and pledged to render him my duty, wondering betime what Father Raymond would have said about all this. Father Raymond had had definite opinions about the sacrament of marriage, and I concluded he would have been disappointed in me, taken all in all. The priest babbled a great deal of comfortable Latin and we took the sacrament together. Ned kissed me, delicately, as though I might break. I curtseyed to his older brother, to Janet, to his younger brother, to other members of the family. Janet gave me a hug, rather quickly, as though she were afraid the enchantment might rub off on her. We left the chapel and walked across to the manor house where the kitchens had been steaming since noon, preparing a feast.

"We didn't have time to prepare anything elegant," said Janet. "Or to think of a proper gift."

"I was given a proper gift," I said in what I fondly hoped were mysterious tones. "A young boy, seeing me approaching the chapel, told me he would give me his dearest possession as a gift for my wedding. The gift is a cat called Grumpkin, he is in the stables, and I would like him brought here."

Someone went for Grumpkin, coming back later rather the worse for wear with my poor cat in a sack. I cursed myself for stupidity in letting anyone else go in my place and turned him loose, giving him a saucer of cut up fowl on the floor at my feet. "We couldn't find the boy, ma'am," I heard one of the servants saying to Janet.

"He told me he was leaving," I said, my words carrying over the clatter of the diners. "Going away. Never to be seen in these parts again."

It was true, then, so far as I knew. What need had the wife of Edward Wellingford for Havoc, the miller's son.

Remembering what I had seen in the Dower House as a voyeur, I made no effort to compete in innovation or athleticism with the women Edward had consorted with in the past. It was no lie to pretend virginity. It was no lie to pretend shyness. I felt them both. When, on the third or fourth night after the wedding, Edward made love to me at last-I having held him off till then out of a genuine feeling of revulsion which I managed to overcome at last only by much purposeful wine-bibing-I felt nothing much except discomfort and relief when it was over. Jaybee had evidently unsuited me for the enjoyments of the flesh, though thereafter, knowing what to expect from Edward, it became easier. I knew it was supposed to be a pleasant experience. Out of curiosity if nothing else, I had read in the twentieth how a woman can assure that it is pleasant, but I felt no impetus toward talking with Edward about it or doing what in the twentieth would have been called "working at our relationship." It would have been a lie. I did not want to work at the relationship because I did not love him. I came quite to like him as the days went by, but I did not discern in myself even so much affection toward him as I had often felt toward Bill or so much as I felt toward Grumpkin. Edward did not know me and never would. Our relationship was built upon a fiction. It was shallow and, I feared, temporary. I could not visualize myself staying at Wellingford long after the child was born. The child itself, I could not visualize at all.

Still, I was carefully gentle and kindly in my mood, receptive in my manner. So much was owed the man, after all. I took my wedding vows as seriously as I might for what time I had. He liked me to look lovely, so I made a point of that. Even when I became, all too soon, swollen as a melon, I could smell sweet as any garden and wear flowing things that rustled gently.

We rode. He insisted I ride sidesaddle, which I hated. My grandfather's invention evidently had gained some little reputation among the neighboring nobility. We read together, he evincing delight that I knew how to read and write, which, indeed, I did better than he. I told him stories, things I had experienced, things I had heard of, and he was mightily amused, wondering how I had come by such a store of tales. I made up a lie about my father's fool, that he was a widely traveled creature with a retentive memory who had fed me on stories from my childhood. It was more or less true. The fool had fed me on stories, right enough, though they had mostly been of a less than salutary kind that made the women he had known the butt of his evil humor.