Beauty

  Dinner at midday was bread and beer again, and salad or a bit of fruit and a bite of stringy mutton sometimes, or a piece of boiled fowl, sometimes juicy, sometimes powdery from being in the soup so long, tasting like the memory of chicken. Then there was hay to pitch up from the wains, or stalls to muck. Sometimes Grumpkin would bring me mice, strings of them, laying them out on the stable floor like toy soldiers. He was learning to be a real stable cat again.

  Supper was in hall, everyone there except the kitchen servants, and me at the bottom of the lowest bench of all, quite content to be there, even though I had lice. No help for it. No way for a stableboy to avoid other stableboys, no way to get a hot, soapy bath in the washroom off the kitchen, no way for me to let my hair down until night, when they all slept and I was alone in my loft. I itched all the time, but I was content to be there, nonetheless, listening to the singing sometimes when a jongleur came through, listening to the lords and ladies talking in their stilted French with English words dotted through it like raisins in a pudding, while the rest of us bellowed away in that same English, soon enough to be the language of us all, I supposed. Since they’d spoken something like it in the twentieth, clear enough that it was the tongue to survive.

  In the stables, I’d met Lord Richard and Lord Edward: Naughty Ned. Of the two, Ned was the more interesting. Robert and Richard were both sticks, nice sticks, but sticks all the same, dry and twiggy and given to crepitant stretching when they dismounted, every bone making its own little complaint. Ned was full of the juices of life, wild and ride away, with lips that fairly dripped honey, even to those in the stable. They had not lied about him. He did have his ladies, no better, as cook said, than they ought to be, a new one every few days or weeks. They were not doxies, really. They were widows mostly, women of a certain class who took only noble lovers and accepted “presents” rather than payment, living from invitation to invitation.

  Everyone talked about Robert’s demand that Ned get himself married. Ned said no, and Robert said yes, and it had been that way for a while. Even Lady Janet had put her voice to work on him, explaining how people were needed to work the estate and how it was everyone’s responsibility to produce children.

  Ned only laughed. He’d stand in the stableyard, telling the head groom about it, saying he scattered his seed far enough, it wasn’t his fault it didn’t grow. Scattered among the tares, muttered the chaplain, giving him long penances when he confessed. I was outside, praying. I could not confess, for I did not trust the priest as I had Father Raymond. He might well tell on me.

  I asked about Giles. Sure enough, he had returned—one of the men-at-arms knew of him—but had gone away again when he found Westfaire mounded with roses. That night I wept, wondering where he might be and how I might find him and whether I dared have the boots take me to him. He could be anywhere in the world. He could be married, I was afraid to find out.

  It was a time, a few foolish weeks, during which I returned to the sureties of childhood.

  It stopped abruptly one day when the cook asked me, “Havoc, how long have you been here, now? Five weeks or more? And not stepped foot in the chapel for mass yet or gone to confession….”

  Five weeks. Surely not. And yet when I counted up, it was true. I had been there five weeks. My mouth dropped open in sudden realization.

  I had, using Aunt Lovage’s word, “flowered” only two weeks before Jaybee had attacked me. I had not “flowered” since. Aunt Lovage talked that way when she was a little drunk. Which, come to think of it, was better than the other aunts who hadn’t talked of it at all. It hadn’t mattered that they hadn’t told me however. What I hadn’t learned in the stable or from Doll, I’d learned in school, in the twentieth, about things like this.

  Things like this. Things like probably being pregnant. I wanted to howl, couldn’t howl, not with the cook there, bustling about, not in that soapy, hot-watery place, all grease and yeasty smelling. I wanted a howling place, a place of my own.

  Evening went, and I went with it, mounted on my old friend, Horse, and with Grumpkin on my shoulder. I went back to Westfaire by the light of the moon, determined to get inside those roses. I remembered the water gate, where the lake ran into the moat. I remembered a time Martin and some of the other men had gone to clean it out, and Havoc had tagged along. They had gone under the stone bridge which stood at the shoreline and through a gate into the moat itself. Roses, so I thought, could not grow on water.

  By the light of the moon, I went out into the lake, then waded up to my neck, holding Grumpkin on the folded cloak above my head, my shirt making slithery motions around my thighs. Nothing but roses on the shore, piled into pinnacles and towers, massive ramparts and flowery battlements, roses and more roses. But in the water, nothing. I saw the shape of the bridge, covered with thorny green. Below the bridge, roses draped down to the very surface of the lake, but behind those canes was a gaping hole where the water flowed in. I waded, pushing the canes aside with padded hands. Under the bridge, only water and the soft lop lop lop of it against the curving mossy sides where it flowed. At the inside end was an iron grating, like the portcullis above. That was to prevent people bringing boats into the moat from the lake. I had no key, but the bars were far enough apart that I could slip between them.

  Which I did, scratching myself on the rusty iron and discomfiting Grumkin a little. I stroked him while he growled and clung to me, as though I were a tree. There were slippery steps leading up to the little door in the corner of the wall. I went up, and through, and came out dripping wet in Westfaire.

  So strange a place. Surrounded by darkness. Only open at the very top, so that the moon shone in, silvering the stones. Within the roses, nothing had changed. Everyone was sleeping still, just as I had left them. I sat down and howled, holding onto my cat, crying my heart out, letting the stones hear my grief. Certainly no one else heard it.

  “Mother!” I cried. “I’m pregnant!”

  No wind in answer, no song of bird. Not even the squeak of a bat, high in that moon-tunneled darkness. Silence and sleep. I stood amid watching shadows and wept.

  [We stood in the darkness and watched her, Israfel and I. I think I cried, I who have wept only once since the fountains of the deep grew dry.

  “She was supposed to go from here, into hiding,” I said. “To Chinanga, where no one could hurt her!”

  “Yes,” Israfel nodded. “But she needed a little rest first.”

  “Perhaps we could take it out of her and hide it somewhere else,” I said.

  “We’d kill her if we tried,” said Israfel. “It has grown into her. She permeates it, now. You can’t get it out without killing her.”

  “Is the Dark Lord looking for it yet?”

  “He has been looking for it since he was born. He simply doesn’t know what it is.”

  “And he has not found it yet.”

  Israfel shook his head to tell me no, the Dark Lord had not found it yet.

  I think people sensed it in her. I think Jaybee and Barrymore Gryme had sensed it, without knowing what it was. Perhaps the Dark Lord had sensed it as well, though he had not found it yet.

  “Can we wait until she has the baby?” I asked.

  “We must,” said Israfel “Since it was fathered by someone who may be a minion of the Dark Lord himself, who knows what it is likely to be,” he said. “She cannot have it in Chinanga. She would remain pregnant forever in Chinanga. She could have it in Faery, but everyone would talk of it and the Dark Lord would surety be curious about it Better that she have it here, where it will evoke no curiosity, where it will only be another birth among these fecund humans. If it is a monster, we can protect her from it.”

  “Poor child,” I said. I had said that several times recently. Briefly I wondered, if I had known her before we did what we did, would I have done it?

  “Yes,” said Israfel, reading my mind. “You would.”]

  There was no answer to my cry. I tried again. “What am I going to do?” Still n
o answer. The shadows looked like robed figures, watching me. Almost I expected them to speak, but they did not. Instead they wavered, as in a breeze, and became only shadows.

  What could I do. Go back to the twentieth. Stay where I was. Go somewhere else. Oh God, oh God, where was Father Raymond? Where was Doll? Asleep, deep asleep.

  In the twentieth it wouldn’t be much. Women had children all the time, married or not. As Candy would say, not enough to shed two tears over. Except he was there, Jaybee. Wouldn’t he love it, making me pregnant. Wouldn’t he strut, cock of the walk, cock of the dung heap. Wouldn’t he whisper to me, stroking me like a cat, Beauty, Beauty, come with me, Beauty, or else…. And what would he do to a child?

  I couldn’t. I would rather die. Not merely words, those, but truth. If dying were the choice, then I’d do it. Drown myself out in the lake. Swim out until I couldn’t swim any farther, then go down, choking, just for a little time, into swimmy depths.

  Not to know how it all came out? Not to know where Mama was? Not to know whether it would be a boy, or a girl. Or neither! There was a thought!

  Abortion. I could go back and have an abortion! Go to some other place. New York, New York, the wonderful town. Chicago. It didn’t have to be the States of America, it could be London! I didn’t need to have it. It could be ripped out.

  I howled.

  I didn’t want it to be ripped out. I didn’t want it, either, but I didn’t…

  Didn’t…

  Don’t, I told myself. Don’t do anything. Don’t decide anything. You’re too tired and upset. Go up to your room and sleep, here in Westfaire. Wrapped in your cloak, you’re safe. Sleep.

  I did. I went up the winding staircase to my own tower room, finding it miraculously repaired, all signs of the fire gone away. I started to lie down on the bed but found myself lying there already. Someone had brought Beloved up from the room far below where I had put her. Somebody had put her in the tower, where romance and glamour demanded she be. The fairy aunts, like enough. I would have done it had I been all fairy. On the chest beside her my mysterious thing made its quiet noise, and I looked long at it, convincing myself the lacy arrow had moved. Not much, but some. It was now exactly halfway between the fourteen and the fifteen.

  “Oh, shit,” I said, leaving it there to go thumping my way down the stairs, down to Aunt Lavender’s room. She was asleep on the floor. Her bed would be empty, dust free and sweet scented by the herb she was named after. As it was, for Grumpkin and I lay down there, wrapped in the cloak, and slept, deeply and dreamlessly, until morning.

  Morning was as strange as night had been. Everything was lost in a green murk. Only at noon, with the sun straight overhead, was there any light, for the roses went up to make a great chimney, open at the top. I could look straight up and see clouds passing, birds flying. “Mama,” I called again, thinking she might be about, for perhaps she had helped to move Beloved, “I’m pregnant!”

  No answer. Perhaps Aunt Joyeause had moved Beloved. Perhaps they had all come together, riding on doves, to repair the tower and set things properly, as on a stage, and then had gone far away again, where I could not follow for I knew not where they were.

  Grumpkin meowed at me, saying he was hungry. In the dairy I milked a sleeping cow and we shared the milk. In the kitchen we found a meat pie and shared that. It was enchanted and therefore did not taste as though it had been sitting there for three years. The smell was still there, and the aura flowed down from the tower. I was in my cloak and did not fall asleep. I put a flap of it over Grumpkin as he ate, and he did not fall asleep, though I thought of setting the cloak aside and lying down there in that familiar place, to sleep for a century or so.

  What did I want to do?

  I didn’t want to go back to the twentieth. It was too uncomfortable and too ugly and too threatening.

  I wanted to stay here, where I was.

  I didn’t want to have a bastard child. Life is very hard for bastard children, even when they aren’t called that. Even in the twentieth, life was hard for them.

  Well then. I would need a husband. Preferably a wealthy one. Preferably a charming one. Preferably …

  “I have decided our future,” I told Grumpkin at last. “We’re going back to Wellingford House and seduce Naughty Ned;”

  16

  I am not an accomplished seductress. I am not a seductress at all. At Westfaire, no man would have dared say a word to me about such matters or even make a gesture toward me. In the twentieth there were words and gestures in plenty, but I rejected all of them, too frightened of diseases to risk getting involved with anyone, perhaps, or, perhaps, simply not interested. Still, I knew well enough how babies were planted. What I had not learned at the stables in Westfaire or at school in the twentieth, Jaybee’s assault would have shown me. If Naughty Ned were to be convinced my child was his, I would have to get him to bed with me soon as might be.

  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 wrapp
ing 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 fixture 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.