Beauty (4 page)

"What did he mean?"

She flushed and twisted her hands together. "It's not something I'd speak of, Beauty. Besides, I don't know for sure. None of us common folk knows for sure. Third day after your mama was locked up, your papa got no answer when he yelled at her, so the carpenter jerked the door open and they found her gone."

"Jumped?" I asked, thinking Doll knew something she wasn't telling me. Her face was red, like she was holding something back, but I didn't want to push her too much or she'd refuse to talk about it at all.

"Too high to jump," she said.

"Went down the firewood rope."

"Your papa took the firewood rope down first thing he put her in there."

"Flew away?" I offered as a jest, watching in amazement as Doll crossed herself.

"There's those that say she did exactly that."

"I did get christened, didn't I?" I asked, wondering why Mama had made such a fuss about it.

"Of course you did, silly," she snorted, going back to her cleaning, obviously not wanting to talk about it anymore. Needless to say, this has given me a great deal to think about.

6

ST. LADISLAS DAY, JUNE, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

Yesterday Papa came back from his trip full of plans for the wedding, which he seems in a monstrous hurry to accomplish, and this has given the aunts something else to worry about besides where I am housed. None of them chose to be the one to tell him I am living in the tower, and I'm certainly not going to tell him.

The weather has been having a sulky spell, with gloomy clouds and chill rain. I've kept the shutters closed and a fire going, to make a warm shadowy space. What with the wall hangings and the carpet and the low ceiling (though it is vaulted up from five stone piers to join in a carved rosette high in the middle), it stays warmer than my old quarters did, even though the fireplace is a tiny little thing next to the door where the stairs go down behind the one straight wall. Though it took him several days to get used to it, Grumpkin has come to like the tower room, both for sleeping and for prowling about on the balcony. I love it. I can practice on the lute without anyone's hearing or learn new songs or read, all by the light of the fire with the one candle making strange shadows.

Which led me to my discovery. This afternoon I saw that a shadow on the chimney piece looked exactly like a face. One of the stones was a nose. I went over and stroked it, watching the shadow of my hand, feeling the nose shake a little. The stone was loose. I fiddled with it and jiggled at it until it slid out into my hands, not heavy at all. It was only a thin piece shaped to fit into the front of a little space. And behind the stone was a box.

I took the box out, replaced the stone, and sat down before the fire to look at it. The box is well-made of a pale satiny wood, and though it has a keyhole, it wasn't locked. Inside was a packet of needles and three hanks of thread, a ring with a carved stone, and some tightly rolled sheets of parchment. These I unrolled and found the top sheet was a letter directed to me.

Dear Beauty:

Since you have not had a mother's love, my child, I believe you deserve at least a mother's explanation.

I did not leave my own country with the intention of marrying anyone like your father. I met the duke quite by accident; he wooed me with great ardor; I fell under the spell of his passion.

As it happens with my people, from the moment of the wooing, my memory of my past existence was dimmed. I was first enveloped by your father's encompassing desires and later smothered by his overwhelming aunts. The former caused me to lose my memory and virginity, though temporarily; the latter have caused me almost to lose my mind. I hope this is also temporary.

Time passed and I learned that I was pregnant. I was not unhappy about this. As I grew large, however, your father began to absent himself. I should say, absent himself more frequently, as it is common knowledge in this household that your father is a libertine. As I grew larger yet, he left me completely to myself. Among my family, celibacy restores both memory and virginity, a useful attribute under certain conditions-if one wishes to trap a unicorn, for example. To say I was horrified at what I had done is to say both too much and too little. I regretted the liaison as being beneath my dignity, but at the same time, I delighted in the prospect of having a child. Children have a very special meaning to our people.

Then you were born. Your father planned to have you christened. I considered this unnecessary and demeaning. His religion is stealing our birthright, day by day and year by year! Why should I take part in it! However, your father insisted not only upon the ceremony itself, but upon making it a cause for semi-public display.

Since all your father's aunts would be attending this ceremony, however, fairness dictated that my own aunts be offered the same opportunity. They would have been mightily offended otherwise.

I let the letter fall into my lap as I considered these confusing words. How very strange. I reread the first of the letter, but it made no more sense the second time. I shook my head and went on.

I did not invite Aunt Carabosse. She came uninvited! For some inexplicable reason of her own, she laid a curse upon you, my child. Upon your sixteenth birthday you were to prick your finger upon a spindle and die.

I crushed the letter to my breast in sudden horror. My sixteenth birthday was only days away. I forced my eyes back to the parchment where it trembled in my hands.

No one heard this except your great aunt, Joyeause, who was standing beside the cradle at the time. She came to me after the guests had departed to tell me she had modified the curse as best she could. The curse now implements as follows: "When Duke Phillip's beautiful daughter reaches her sixteenth year, she shall prick her finger upon a spindle and fall into a sleep of one hundred years, from which she will be wakened by the kiss of a charming prince." Or perhaps it was Prince Charming. I have been much upset by all this and did not pay proper attention to what she was telling me. No one knows what Aunt Joyeause has done but me-and you, if you read this letter before your birthday, as I am confident you will do for I have set a timely discovery spell upon it.

[Most of the above is nonsense. Joyeause did overhear what I said, since she was closest to me at the time. What I said was that the duke's daughter would be pricked by a spindle and fall into an enchanted sleep. All that bit about the hundred years and the prince is pure invention. I never said the child would die, and if Joyeause tried for a thousand years she couldn't change one of my spells. Joyeause has always been a dilettante.]

Your father, already offended by Carabosse's attendance at an event to which she was not invited, became outraged. He raved at me, and I had no time to remonstrate with him before he dragged me off to this tower! He says he has hidden you away and will hide all the spindles in the castle, perhaps all those in the dukedom. He castigates himself for marrying one of my race, and me for being what I am. Men are like that. They marry for reasons that have nothing to do with what they expect from matrimony and then damn their wives for not being what they want later. They marry for beauty and charm and sex, and then expect their wives to be sensible, parsimonious and efficient.

Now that memory and virginity are restored, I need not remain here to be insulted. I choose to return to my ancestral lands.

My powers at the moment have been considerably diminished by the time I have spent here, and I cannot find you to take you with me. You will find this letter when you are old enough. If you cannot come to me before the curse takes effect, come as soon thereafter as you can. I have left you the means to do so. Keep safe the box in which you find this.

I put down the letter and wiped my face where the tears were running down, making an itchy mess of my eyes and nose. I did have a mama. And evidently I was not to die on my birthday, though the fate Grandaunt Joyeause had planned did not seem a thrilling alternative. I could not understand how Mama expected to see me after the curse, since even mothers did not, as a general rule, live more than one hundred years. The letter continued briefly on a separate page.

My dear daughter, too long separated from me, be assured of my affection.
Come to me with all haste before you grow any older.
I will await you with a joyous heart.

Your loving mama, Elladine of Ylles.

You can imagine my amazement. I was struck by how clean the parchment looked upon which all this had been written. It could have been delivered that very afternoon. The more I looked at it, the more I thought that in a sense it had been delivered that very afternoon. After reading the letter several times, both pages of it, I replaced it in the box and the box in its hiding place, sliding the stone carefully into place. Set well in, it cast no protruding shadow. I could only believe she had left it sticking out so that I would see it. It had been put there for me, and me alone, to find. Mama.

I climbed into my bed, pulled the bed curtains shut, propped myself upon my pillows, and pulled the coverlets up to my chin. This was something that required thinking about, though thoughts were slow and reluctant to come. The first one to emerge teasingly into the forefront of my mind was that even though the letter had been written almost sixteen years before, my mother was alive, just as I had always supposed. I thought of Beloved's mother, how she had known at once I was not hers, and something lurched in me, just behind my breastbone.

My next thought was that Elladine had said she had left me the means to find her, though I could not imagine what she meant. The contents of the box included only the ring, the packet of needles and the three hanks of thread. Which led to the fleeting suspicion that Mama, however lovely, might not have had all her wits about her. This would explain the aunts' attitude, certainly. Even women as reconciled to the holy will as the aunts might bridle at having a madwoman in the family. It would also explain papa's locking her in the tower, since such is known to be the fate of madwomen and madmen whenever madness and towers occur in appropriate contiguity. Towers, or, in a pinch, attics.

The letter, however, far from seeming the ravings of lunacy, had been odd but well-reasoned. I was sure that Mama was not mad. Absent, yes, and for reasons that seemed sufficient to her, but not mad. I would have to figure out how to find her.

My final thought was that the name of the wicked aunt was Carabosse. The two adjacent Ss in that name reminded me of something. I got my mysterious thing off the chest and looked at it. One of the letters could be a B, and another an R. Is this the gift she gave me? Is it her name upon it? And if so, what is it?

["Wicked aunt" indeed. I confess, that hurts to read.]

7

DAY OF THE VISITATION, JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

My thoughts and worries concerning my own future have been somewhat interrupted because the wedding guests have started to arrive. The day after I found Mama's letter, Weasel-Rabbit and her entourage came down the roadway on horseback and in two carriages, followed by an enveloping cloud of dust. Other parties arrived thereafter, both large and small, some of them with marquees they have set up in the meadow as though they had come to a tourney. All the aunts have moved together into one suite, and their rooms have been reserved for various countesses and barons. Poor Father Raymond is dithering about, trying to remember where he put the festive vestments. The wedding is to take place in our own chapel; the abbot from St. Paternus (a great, rich, important abbey down the lake a bit, near the main road to London) will officiate. Father Raymond will assist him.

Down in the kitchens, the head cook is screaming at the kitchen boys and having the tantrum he usually has whenever he has to cook for more than just the family. The whole place smells of roasting meat and baking cakes, spices and stewed fruit. There will be a banquet each night, three nights running, with the abbot attending the banquet the night before the wedding.

I have resolved to be very good, for the sake of my soul. Aunt Tarragon always goes on about the state of my soul, much more than Father Raymond does, which is odd. Over the past few days I have stayed out of Weasel-Rabbit's way and out of the aunts' way and out of Papa's way in the easiest manner imaginable, by putting on my boy rags and working in the stables. Besides, that lets me see what kind of horses everyone has and whether they look well-treated or not. Weasel-Rabbit has horses which look ill fed and badly groomed, not at all consonant, I feel, with her rather extravagant equippage. Her carriages have tall painted wheels and a suspended, woven bed with soft pillows to sit upon, very elegant. Such carriages would indicate (though the matter had certainly not been discussed with me) that Papa is marrying into a fortune. Since I can not see why anyone would willingly marry Weasel-Rabbit otherwise, it explains a great deal. Supporting five half sisters takes a bit of doing all by itself, and helping get up a new crusade (which Papa talks of from time to time) is frightfully expensive. Just maintaining Westfaire involves constant outlay. Papa needs a wealthy wife, though I can't figure out why such a wealthy woman should have such poorly cared for horses unless she is at the mercy of idle grooms simply because she does not know the difference.

8

ST. BERTHA'S DAY, JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

The preliminary banquets went quite well. There are enough minstrels about that Aunt Lavender has not felt called upon to entertain us upon the lute. Indeed, all five aunts-in-residence spend most of their time with Sibylla's mama, and I am left largely to myself.