Beauty (3 page)

Our assumption was mistaken. According to Sibylla's mama-a woman who always looks as though she has a mouthful of something nasty which only courtesy prevents her spitting out-Sibylla could be happy only in the rooms near the kitchens which I have occupied since my earliest memory. It was not, in her mama's words, fitting for Sibylla to be housed too near her intended bridegroom lest some indecency occur prior to the blessing of Mother Church. I turned my mind from the indecency which would undoubtedly occur subsequent to that blessing. Far better, Sibylla's mama went on, for Sibylla to be as far from her intended husband as possible, in the bosom of the aunts, getting to know them better.

Strangely enough, I was rather cheered by all this. It was pleasant to be given a reason for hating her, and this immediate assault upon the daughter of the house by the putative bride told me how right I had been. The rabbit
had
mated with a weasel, and that right gladly. I was furious, of course, but justified. Beloved and I whispered about it, resolving upon mutiny, after which I smiled at the committee which was delegated to approach me, aunts and all, and declined to move.

Aunt Taragon had a few pious words to say concerning Christian resignation and turning the other cheek. I suggested that she convey this message to Sibylla, for whom it could do nothing but good. While this was going on, Beloved hid behind my bed curtains and made faces at me behind Aunt Terror's back. When she left, we collapsed on the bed, giggling. Though Beloved was supposed to be my maidservant, I never ordered her to do anything for me. What she did, she did because she wanted to, such as caring for my clothes because sometimes she wore them while I wore hers.

Aunt Basil was the next to arrive and remind me I had always thought my rooms were so near the kitchens that the smell of aged grease overcame the spices in the clothes press. I suggested she tell Sibylla, who would no doubt change her mind about wanting my rooms. Beloved and I had another giggle over that.

Aunt Lovage came to promise me (or rather Beloved, since by that time we'd changed clothes and were being each other) a bottle of a very special vintage and a picnic on the sward. Beloved suggested we have the bottle and the picnic anyway. This was not a particularly clever rejoinder. Beloved and I look exactly alike, but I am much cleverer. I tried to teach Beloved to read and write, but she isn't interested. She doesn't even care. She sometimes watches me reading and studying, and she says it is a dreadful burden being clever and well-schooled, and she is glad she does not have to carry it.

Aunt Marjoram promised to make me a new cloak, but Beloved told her my old one will last years yet. It will, though it is already faded. Perhaps I will make myself a new one.

And finally, Aunt Lavender promised to play a new song for me, one she had learned from a traveling minstrel. I was being myself by then since it was late afternoon and Beloved had gone home. Since I had spent more time with the minstrel than aunt had and already knew all his songs, I declined.

I had thought they might appeal to Aunt Sister Mary Elizabeth and Aunt Sister Mary George, but Papa gave them no time for that. In the afternoon Papa sent a servant to bring me to the small room where he does business with his bailiff, and there he told me to get myself moved by dark or he'd send me to Alderbury to join my two eldest aunts as a nun.

I would move, I said gayly. I would move happily. I had always felt my rooms were rather too close to the kitchens. What had given Papa the idea I was reluctant to move? I dimpled and curtsied, then rounded up three serving maids, including my old friend Doll, and made a clean sweep of it before Sibylla or her mama could say a paternoster, being sure that everyone heard me chirping happily away about the whole thing.

There were no rooms left except the ones in Papa's wing, including the suite we had intended for Sibylla. All the rooms there were huge. The corridor was obviously one used frequently by Papa's ... friends, whom I did not want to meet going and coming. I sat on my baskets and told Doll that was the last place I wanted to go, feeling quite put out now that my little drama had been played and Sibylla had been installed where I had lately been, in my cosy rooms beside the garden, with my carpet and my bed curtains.

"There's the room your mama used sometimes," said Doll. Doll is older than most of the other servants, and she was present when my mama was still in residence. "Up in the dove tower," she said, raising her eyebrows up under her hair and jerking her head back. Doll is stout and red-cheeked and has more energy than any five other women. She stood there, looking at me intently, hands on hips.

The dove tower is slender and tall, the tallest of all the castle towers, its top decorated with spiky finials and a long pole for flying banners. Around it the white doves make a constant cloud of wings and a liquid tumult like water falling into a fountain.

"Up in the dove tower, then," I agreed, and we all went back through the hall and wound ourselves here and there through little side passages until we came to the tower door. It screamed when we opened it, like a goose being killed, and the dust on the stairs puffed under our feet as we crept up, round and round and round until we were dizzy. The door at the top hung loose with great nails sticking out of it, and the room itself was filthy with bits of bird nest and veils of spider web. Doll sent a girl to ask Martin to come up and fix the shutters and the door, and he did that while one of his boys unstuffed the chimney and two of the women scrubbed the floor and walls and another one swept the mess down the stairs. Martin threw the carpet down into the yard, for it was eaten to rags by moth and mouse. The doves from the cote below had made somewhat free with the space, but under the dirty coverlet the bed was all right, and so were the bed curtains we found in the carved armoire, once they'd been shaken free of dust and well brushed and hung. I cleaned out the armoire myself (finding something interesting in the process) and put my clothes in it. Then I sat on the chair and felt important. It has arms! Only Papa and Aunt Terror have chairs with arms. Everyone else sits on benches or stools. While I sat there, I examined the thing I'd found in the armoire, but there wasn't time really to figure out what it was, so after a time, I put it under the chair seat, which lifts up to make a storage place, and told myself I would examine it later on.

Doll showed me the privy closet over the moat. The door is in the wainscot beside the fireplace. I'll have it all to myself. I can see the lake through the little windows. The tiny panes of glass are quite intact and clear now that the bird droppings have been washed away. There are three windows in a row, and the middle one goes all the way to the floor and opens on a balcony where a kind of pole juts out over the stableyard. Martin calls it a spar, and says he'll fix the pulley and put a rope on it tomorrow, so that water and firewood can be hauled up from the stableyard below. By late afternoon everyone was finished with the cleaning and went off, leaving the room neat and sweet-smelling with my lute hung on the wall, a pitcher of water and a bowl to wash in on the chest, a kettle by the fire for hot water, the woodbox filled, all my things tucked away, and me here alone, looking around at the sky like a bird from its nest.

Without a carpet or rushes, the floors will be very cold. Without tapestries, the walls will be even colder. Still, the hooks are still there to put wall hangings on, if I can find some, and the worst of the cold weather is over. It will be warm enough for a night or two, until Sibylla leaves and I can steal my carpet back from my old room. I must stop writing and go down to supper.

Though we made a noisy enough bustle getting the tower room cleaned, it seems the tower is so high and remote no one heard us. None of the aunts noticed where I went; they all spoke as though I'd moved into a room in Papa's wing. I suppose Sibylla and her mama think that's what I've done. At table this evening she peered at me as a chicken does at a bug, acting very discontented and disappointed, as though she had been counting on my making a fuss about moving, perhaps, which would have given her something to complain to Papa about. Poor fool woman. She doesn't know Papa.

"All settled?" he asked them vaguely, not waiting for an answer. "Good. It's always good to get settled." Then he went back to talking with Father Raymond about the pilgrimages he intends to make before and after the wedding while Sibylla sat there, caparisoned like a tournament horse, playing with a slice of overdone venison and staring at the back of his neck. I thought of telling her that's mostly what she's going to see of him. The back of his neck as he plans some journey or the back of all of him as he rides away.

[The device Beauty found in the tower room was one I, Carabosse, had left there for her: a clock. It has my name on it, and I hope it will serve as an introduction so she will not be completely surprised, later, when we meet. We plan for her to leave Westfaire, which is conspicuous now and will be even more so, and go to another place, a hidden place where she is unlikely to ever encounter the Dark Lord. Thus far, things are progressing precisely as Israfel and I expected they would, as the Pool showed they would. The immediate future is usually quite clear in the Pool, and we had foreseen Sibylla. We had anticipated the succession of events leading to Beauty's occupation of the tower. I had even foreseen her pleasure in it.

What I had not anticipated are my own feelings. I fear I am growing fond of the girl. She has something none of her fairy godmothers gave her, something that came entirely from her human heritage. It is a kind of courage. An indomitability. Like a buoyant little boat, she pops to the top of every wave. Loquacious though she is (and Father Raymond was perfectly right about that), even a little arch at times (and why shouldn't she be? Most of her aunts have exactly that manner), still, she has something attractive about her. Perhaps it is the outward sign of what we did to her, Israfel and I.]

5

ST. ETHELREDA'S DAY, MAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

After Sibylla left, in the days between the betrothal and the wedding, which is supposed to take place very soon, I got the tower arranged to suit me. Martin and I stole my carpet from my old room and replaced it with one out of the attic. Laid over a nice layer of straw, it made the floor much warmer. We could find no wall tapestries in the attic, but we did find some painted wall cloths up there, blue background with a design of little starry flowers in silver, quite good enough to take the chill off the stone. Also, Martin put up a new firewood rope.

After that, I had time to really look at the thing I found. It is round, like a wheel, about as big across as the palm of my hand, and as thick through as four of my fingers held together. It has four little feet like lion's paws. It is made of shiny metal which could be gold, for it is very heavy for its size. The round front is made of glass. Under the glass are nine numbers, Roman numbers, set in a circle. The numbers start at the top right with fourteen, and go on around the circle to twenty-two, which is at the top. There is a lacy golden arrow starting in the middle and pointing to the fourteen. Well, actually pointing about halfway between the fourteen and the fifteen.

On the back of it is a place like a keyhole, but there is no key. On the top is a handle, like two dragons, fighting or kissing or just being heraldic. And that's all.

Except the noise it makes. I can only hear it at night when things are very quiet, but I can hear it then. The tiniest ticking, the faintest crepitation, like something very small inside there, breathing or tapping its toe.

Oh, on the front of it, twining all around the numbers is a design of leaves and vines, and I think they are meant to spell out letters. Sometimes I look at them for a long, long time, trying to make the letters out. Two, I'm almost sure, are Ss. Two, I'm almost sure, are As. I think there's a B and a C, but I can't be sure. Since I don't know what it is, I call it my mysterious thing, and it sits on the chest with my other things.

I like the tower very much.

As it happened, Papa had gone off somewhere before the aunts even found out where I am living. When they found out, there was much consternation, buzzing, and confabulation. The aunts wanted to know who suggested such a thing?

No sense getting Doll in trouble. I told them it had been my own idea.

More wide eyes, open mouths, and thrown up hands. More fussing and steaming and orders to move here, move there.

"My mother lived up there," I said to them at last. "If you want me to get out of it, you'll have to tell me why!"

Which settled them down in a hurry. Not one of them is willing to say why or what or when. Since Papa is off viewing decayed bits of saints' bodies, he isn't available to offer an opinion. Aunt Sister Mary Elizabeth and Aunt Sister Mary George, whose thoughts on the matter were solicited by Aunt Terror in a thick letter sent by messenger, have replied that they are unaware of anything ungodly about the tower room. This sent the aunts into a frenzy of calculation, trying to decide whether either of the elderly nuns was present at Westfaire at any time when my mother was here.

I stood it as long as I could, and then I went to Doll. "Doll," I asked her, "tell me what this is all about." I've asked her about my mother many times over the years, and she has always shaken her head at me. Still, the last time I'd asked had been a long time ago, when I was a child.

"Be my gizzard's worth," she said. "Be worth my life and soul if they found out." She wrung her hands, one in the other, trying not to look at me.

"Not from me," I swore, spitting in my hand and making a cross on my chest with ashes from the cookfire.

She wrung her hands again, staring over my shoulder. Finally she gave a kind of sigh and a shrug and said, almost in a whisper, "When your papa insisted on makin' a great celebration out of your Christenin', she invited some relatives of hers, and when your papa found out about that, they fought about it. I don't know what it was about because I couldn't hear anythin' except them yellin'. Then, when the Christenin' was over, your papa took you away and gave you to a wetnurse down in the village, then he locked your mama in her room up there in the tower. He nailed the door shut, and he went up every day to yell at her through the door, tellin' her the whole thing had been her fault and she'd had no business marryin' him without tellin' him.