Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  It was in the stables that I learned about animal procreation and saw enough of stable boy anatomy to draw certain useful parallels. Though the boys’ equipment suffers by comparison to that of the stallions, the similarity of function cannot be ignored. I think it odd that the aunts have never said anything about this matter. There are a great many things they simply do not discuss with me. They did not even tell me about the way of women, and when it happened I thought God was punishing me for having certain feelings about a certain person by letting me bleed to death. It was Doll who found me weeping and told me it was all very ordinary and had nothing to do with sin.

  Doll is Martin’s wife. Doll is short for Dorothy. She was named for St. Dorothy who was a virgin martyr known for her angelic virtue. Doll says she wishes she had been named for someone a little less angelic and a bit more muscular. She is one of the women who keeps the castle swept and the cobwebs pulled down, and that takes muscle. I’m sure she has always known what I was up to in the stables, but she has never told on me. Doll and one of the other women make clothes for me, too, and I thank God for that. If it were up to the aunts or Papa, I’d always be dressed in things out of the attic made for ancient female relatives in their latter years. Doll and Martin are my first two Mends.

  My third friend is Giles.

  Giles is one of the men-at-arms. He is a year or two older than I, well-grown for his age, very broad in the shoulder and slender though well-made in the hip and leg. He has a frank and open countenance and much soft brown hair which falls over his forehead at odd times, making him look like a much younger person. His eyes are blue, deep blue, like an evening sky. His lips … He has very nice features. I have had certain thoughts about him from time to time, thoughts which I have not even told Father Raymond about, because I would blush to do so. Besides, I don’t have any polite words to use because either there aren’t any or no one has taught them to me. I know how the stableboys talk, but Father Raymond definitely would not appreciate that. Nonetheless, when I see Giles, I think of the stallions and their way with the mares, and I get all flushed feeling.

  Also, I see the way he watches me sometimes—Giles, not Father Raymond—which lets me know he feels those same feelings. He is of good birth, but he is only a young man without fortune or rank, and there is no question about his being a suitable prospect for the daughter of a duke. He is not. I know that, and he knows it as well, but he is nice to me. He is thoughtful and kind and has never, even by so much as a word, done anything improper toward me. Sometimes, after a lengthy rain, I will find my bench in the garden carefully dried off and a rose laid upon it. I’m sure it is Giles who does it, but he doesn’t say anything, nor do I. Still, he is my friend. He would not act so otherwise.

  My other friend is Beloved.

  Her mother calls her Beloved, though her name is actually Mary Blossom. She is the daughter of Dame Blossom, an artisan freeholder, a weaver, in the village. Dame Blossom is very much respected by everyone because she is a midwife and can heal wounds and set bones. If there is trouble, better get Dame Blossom and stay away from doctors, everyone says. It’s true. From time to time one or the other of the aunts has consulted a physician, and all the great scholars ever did was sniff at their piss, bleed them dry, and give them some dreadful mixture that—so says Martin—would kill the old ladies off a few years before their time. Beloved is my personal maid. She is also my friend and almost certainly my half sister, almost my half-twin.

  Not that Beloved is the only young one running about the castle who looks a lot like me. Everyone pretends not to notice, but I would have to be blind not to see. When two mares who do not look alike throw foals that look exactly alike, you know the same stallion has been at them, so it’s clear my Papa has been at Dame Blossom. That was sixteen or more years ago, of course, when she was younger and prettier. I remember her when I was a little girl. She was quite slender and gay then. She has put on weight since, and become very grave, which is a suitable style for a respected matron.

  So, Beloved is my half sister, born on the same day I was, and she looks enough like me to be my twin. Sometimes I love her and sometimes I hate her because she has a mother and I don’t. We sometimes dress up as each other and Beloved will take my place in the castle, in the dining hall or sewing with the aunts, and they never know the difference. She can spend all day in the castle without anyone guessing that she isn’t me. But, if I go down to the village pretending to be the weaver-woman’s daughter, Dame Blossom takes one look at me and says, “Beauty, it isn’t nice of you to tease me this way. Go tell my silly daughter to come home.”

  That always makes me feel like crying for some reason. Maybe because she always knows right away I’m not Beloved. You have to notice people to be that sure about them. Though I have thought that maybe it is because she can see the burning thing in me. I know Beloved doesn’t have one of those, because I asked her. She wondered if it was like dyspepsia, and I told her it was not.

  3

  DAY OF STS. PETER AND JAMES,

  MAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

  Yesterday my father, who is thirty-seven years of age, returned from pilgrimage to Canterbury—he has already made pilgrimages to the tombs of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Martin of Tours, St. Boniface at Fulda, and St. James at Compostela, as well as to Glastonbury, Lindisfarne, Walsingham, Westminster, St. Albans, and all places else where there are relics of note. Immediately upon his arrival, he told us he intends to marry again. He told us his intended wife will arrive shortly with a small retinue, and that they will all stay for the betrothal ceremonies. Her name is Sibylla de Vinciennes d’Argent. I detested her from the moment I saw the miniature of her that Papa insisted we all admire.

  You must not think this rejection of a stepmama is provoked by hostility toward another woman who will take a beloved mama’s place. I have heard tales like that, but I don’t know whether I would have loved Mama or not; she has given me no opportunity to find out. As for Sibylla’s taking my place in my father’s affections, she can’t take what I have never had. Though I am almost sixteen, he has done none of the things one expects of a loving papa. He made no provision for my education, merely leaving me to the mercies of the aunts. If Father Raymond hadn’t taken me over, I should be as woefully ignorant about many important things as they. Papa has made no effort to arrange a marriage for me. When I’ve raised the subject with him, he has said, “Wait until—well, until you’re sixteen, Beauty. Then we’ll discuss it.” Not likely! I can count upon the fingers of one hand the number of “discussions” I’ve had with Papa, count them and quote them from memory.

  “Ah, Beauty,” he says. “Doing well with your studies/cooking/music/herbary?”

  “Yes, Papa.”

  “Good girl. Always do well with your studies/cooking/music/herbary.”

  Once in a great while, when I have been greatly troubled, I’ve gone all the way to his rooms to talk with him. This isn’t a journey to take lightly! Starting in my rooms, which are off the long corridor behind the kitchens, I go up one flight of stairs to the corridor outside the small dining hall. This is the tall one hung with crusaders’ weapons and banners and with paneling carved all over with birds and flowers and fish. Then I go through the little suite between and into the large dining hall, an even taller room, where the ceiling is decorated with stone rosettes dependent from the multiple arches, each like lacework, where the long wall is one tall window after another—all looking over the garden with the apricot tree that Beloved and I get all the fruit from because the people in the kitchens always forget it is there—and the other walls are hung with tapestries telling stories of gods and goddesses, most of them naked. At the far end of this dining hall, I come out into the great hall, under the dome. Father Raymond says it is not unlike a cathedral dome, though smaller. Since I’ve never seen a cathedral, I see it as the inside of a lovely shiny melon, pressing up toward the sky, round windows set about it like gems in a ring, poking up in the center to make the high
lantern visitors say they can see from miles away as they approach on the north road. They look for it, they say, as the first sight of the most beautiful building in the world!

  The floor of the great hall is marble, laid in designs. When I was little, I used to play there, walking along the designs as though they were paths in a garden. From the great hall, two curving stairs follow the walls up behind a graceful stone balustrade, joining at the center before three arches with statues of veiled women set beneath them. No one alive made the statues. Grandfather brought them from a country across the sea from the Holy Land, from a man who had dug them up from an ancient city, and Papa says Grandfather did it because the architects of Westfaire told him to. From either side of the arches, other corridors lead left and right, and at the far end of the leftward one, up another flight of curving stairs, are Papa’s rooms. All the floors, except the one in the small dining hall, which is made out of tiny woven strips of walnut wood, are laid in mosaics, ribbons and leaves and flowers and fruits bordering all the walls. It’s hard to walk over them without stopping to look at them. It’s hard to climb the stairs without listening to the way my clothes trail along the steps, the way the smooth stone feels under my hand. It’s hard to go anywhere in Westfaire without stopping and staring, sometimes for a long, long time. Besides, it’s just a very long way to Papa’s rooms, so I don’t go there very often, only when I’m desperate.

  And when I do go, when I get there, I knock on Papa’s door and call, “Papa, may I talk to you?”

  “Not now, Beauty,” he always replies over the sound of female giggles. “I’m very busy just now. Later on, perhaps.”

  Now that is what our filial relationship amounts to! I don’t think that’s enough of one for the new stepmama to threaten.

  I am not jealous of whatever attention Sibylla may receive from the aunts, either. I heartily hope she will take my share along with her own. They pay entirely too much attention to me, all the time, without being in the least comforting or kind.

  No, my revulsion at the idea of a stepmama is not jealousy. It arises from the pictured face itself, a pale, rather long face with a simpering mouth over large teeth and with something thoughtfully devious about the eyes, the kind of face that might result if a rabbit mated with a weasel.

  And perhaps I am jealous of the fact that she will be mistress of Westfaire Castle.

  No, that is not honest. If I am going to write things to remember when I am old, I should at least tell the truth. I am sickened at the thought of her being mistress of Westfaire. Though I have always known it will be my fate to marry and leave it, still I love Westfaire hopelessly. I love the lowe of sunset on the lake at our back, the blossoming trees in the orchard close, the gentle curve of the outer walls resting in the arms of the forest. I love the towers, the shining dome, the delicate buttresses, and the lacy windows. From a hill not far away (we always go there on the first of May to collect herbs and wildflowers) one can look down on Westfaire and see it whole. Whenever I look at it thus, the burning within me grows into a fire, closing my throat, catching at my heart, as though Westfaire and I burned with the same holy light. If I turn in time to catch the aunts staring down, their faces have a look not unlike mine, though not so pained, as though they, too, love the place so much they cannot bear to leave it. I’ve always refused to think about leaving Westfaire, but it is probable my dislike of Sibylla comes from nothing more than simple grief at what she will gain and I will inevitably lose.

  Feeling beauty must be rather like feeling arms and legs. Some of the old men-at-arms talk about losing an aim or a leg in battle and how, ever after, one feels it is still there, even while one grieves over the loss. So I know it will be when I lose Westfaire. I will feel it in me forever, even while I grieve endlessly over losing it.

  I still don’t want to think about that. Instead, I keep telling myself that a wedding offers to be an interesting event which can be anticipated with an observer’s relish of novelty. It will not make much immediate difference to me, personally, so I can resolve to enjoy it as spectacle.

  [I find it interesting that she feels the truth, without understanding it in the least.

  I said as much to Israfel and he remarked that it would be better if she didn’t understand it “Much of life,” he said to me, “depends on our being ignorant of reality. If we understood reality, we would never go on.”]

  4

  ST. MONICA’S DAY,

  MAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

  When I wrote that Papa’s marriage would make little difference to me, personally, I had failed to perceive Sibylla’s capacity for inventive malice.

  She arrived yesterday with her mama and assorted female relatives in a great bustle of boxes and flutter of veils. They trotted briskly through the castle, visiting each of my aunts in her own rooms, which are in various parts of the castle, though not in the long wing where Papa lives, which is virtually empty. We had all assumed the visitors would be quartered there, where the extravagant, lacy vaulting reaches its perfect expression (says Father Raymond) and the tall windows admit the most light. The rooms are comfortably furnished with high, enclosed beds and plenty of benches and hangings and carpets. Besides, in expectation of company, that wing had been given an extraordinarily thorough cleaning. Doll has been at it for days.

  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 t
o 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.