Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  The abbot read the letter. He handed it to Father Raymond. Father Raymond read it, flushed, and gave it back to the abbot, his mouth in a funny little quirk as though he couldn’t figure out whether to laugh or frown. The abbot read it again, mumbling it out loud, then it went to someone else. By this time, Papa had some idea that something was more than merely a little wrong.

  The abbot rose to his feet. “I cannot unite in matrimony a man who already has a living wife,” he said, loud enough for everyone to hear him well below the salt. He got Papa’s attention at last. “Your daughter has received a letter from her mother. It is dated only four days ago, and thus we know you have a wife still living.”

  “Impossible,” said Papa, going very pale.

  “Ridiculous,” said one or two aunts.

  “I knew it,” cried Aunt Terror. “I always knew she’d come back just at the wrong time!”

  I need say no more about the banquet. Papa was so angry he could not speak. It wasn’t an hour after I had come back up to my room that I was startled by the carpenter nailing my door shut. Over the years that poor door has had more than its share of spikes driven through it.

  “You thankless wench,” Papa cried. “You’ll not go off like that flighty witch, your mother.”

  I feel I have achieved considerably more than I had intended. Disrupting the marriage seemed a good idea, merely to get even with Sibylla. Making Papa furious at me wasn’t part of the plan. Papa gets so silly when he gets furious. He puts people in the dungeon and then just forgets about them. We used to have a perfectly marvelous goldsmith who made the most wonderful things. Papa got irritated at him and put him in the dungeon. A month later, Papa wanted the man to make him a new salt, but when they took him out, he was almost dead and didn’t recover. Papa was fully capable of going off on another pilgrimage and just leaving me locked in the tower to die. Then, when he got back, having happened on an advantageous marriage opportunity for me, he’d probably ask, “Where’s Beauty?”

  Remembering what Doll said about the time Mama was nailed up in here, I went out and took the firewood rope down from the spar and coiled it up under my bed. Then I lighted a splinter at the coals of the fire and the candle from the splinter and read Mama’s letter again, the first page. The page I had used ended up with the princeling. He purloined it from the abbot, probably intending to take it back to court and share it with everyone, including the King. On reading the first page over, the story of the curse sprang out at me.

  Maybe I’ve reminded Papa of the curse and he has nailed me into the tower to protect me!

  It would be nice to believe that, nicer than believing he has shut me up to starve out of pure pique. However, if Mama’s Aunt Carabosse managed to get to my christening without an invitation, it is unlikely she would be forestalled by my being locked in a tower.

  I do not want to spend the next hundred years lying in this tower room, waiting for some prince to happen by, however charming he may be. The idea is intensely unpleasant and frightening!

  Now Papa is down in the stableyard, shouting at Martin. I can see him through a crack in the shutters, pointing up and yelling, while Martin holds up the lantern and shrugs his shoulders as though to say there hasn’t been any rope there since I moved in. Good old Martin.

  I may as well get a night’s sleep. There is nothing I can do until tomorrow.

  [We had foreseen all this, down to the details of dress and the menu served at dinner. We had looked deep into the Pool, Israfel and I, and we had foreseen it all.]

  10

  ST. PALLADIUS DAY,

  JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

  Early this morning, before light, I got dressed up in my stableboy’s clothes (the latest of the several sets I’ve had since I was eight), put the firewood rope back on the pulley, and let myself down into the stableyard after first letting down all the things I thought I’d need, including Mama’s box. I have always had a good head for heights, gained through climbing tall trees on a dare when I was very young, which is a good thing for the tower is extremely tall. Almost as though we’d planned it, Doll and Martin were waiting for me.

  “I thought that’s what you were thinkin, missy,” Martin said, wrinkling his nice face at me. “Clever girl. Just like your mama. She was clever. Nice, too.” lien he handed me Grumpkin who settled down in my arms and began to purr.

  “Doll,” I asked, “did my mama leave anything for me here in the castle? Did she leave money for me or anything. A map, maybe?”

  “I never heard of any such thing, dearie,” she said. She sometimes called me “dearie,” though no one else did.

  “In the letter, she said she’d left me the means to go find her, but I don’t know what she meant.”

  Doll looked at her feet and turned red in the face and squirmed her hands around in her apron. Martin said, “Tell her, Doll. Somebody’s got to tell her.”

  “You mean about Mama being a witch?” I asked, flushing. “Papa said that when he nailed my door shut.”

  “She warn’t no witch,” said Doll, firmly.

  “What was she then?” I asked. Looking back on it, I was frightfully stupid, but I really hadn’t figured it out. It’s not the kind of thing that ordinarily occurs to one.

  “She was a fairy,” Doll said. “And I heard the abbot talkin’ to your aunts this mornin’ about havin’ your papa’s marriage set aside because a fairy can’t enter into holy matrimony, anyhow. I’ve never heard that was so, but you know who gave the abbot that idea.”

  I did know who had given the abbot that idea. Sibylla or her mama, one or both. A fairy! I should have realized that myself! How could her aunts have been anything but fairies to go about making and changing curses. And how could she have escaped from the tower if she were not a fairy herself? It certainly explained the attitude of the herbal aunts. Fairies would be repugnant to my aunts, I suppose, totally concerned as they are with food or drink or religion. Mama’s being a fairy also explained why Weasel-Rabbit wanted me shut up in a convent, and it helped explain Mama’s letter. When she’d gotten involved with a mortal, she’d lost her memory of being a fairy. I suppose that’s about the only way a fairy could survive married to someone like Papa, or married to any mortal. She could accept it only as long as she didn’t remember anything else. Then when Papa had gone off and left her, she’d gradually regained her memory, that and the other thing.

  “Am I—am I half fairy?” I asked Doll and Martin. “Does that mean anything?”

  They looked at one another and shrugged. It was the kind of question I couldn’t expect them to answer. In fact, the only one who might be able to answer it was Father Raymond.

  “Never mind,” I said as I turned and left them. I found Father Raymond at last, sitting in the orchard close. I remember the bees making such a sound when I asked him if he knew. He gave me and my boy’s clothes a long look, maybe wondering how I’d escaped, but then he smiled. Father Raymond sometimes had a very gentle smile for such an old, creased face, like a sweet stalk of sunshine growing through rough clouds.

  “Yes, Beauty, I knew your mama was a fairy,” he told me. “She didn’t tell me before she married your papa, because she didn’t remember. Later, she did tell me, when the matter of your christening came up. I intended to discuss it further with her after the ceremony, just to set her mind at rest, but Duke Phillip had her locked away before I had the chance.”

  “Why did Mama object to my being baptized?” I asked.

  He pursed his lips and made the hmming noise in his nose that he makes before he answers complicated questions. “I’ve always understood that fairies were made when the angels were. Long before men, at any rate. There has been conjecture that there’s been some mixing, since. It’s said that Cain’s wife was a fairy. Since the Scriptures give us no account of God creating him a human wife, it stands to reason he must have married something else, and it’s unlikely an angel would have lowered herself so. On the other hand, if people have inherited fairy blood, it
would explain the fascination…” He looked off into the distance. “Your mother had some other objection. She said something to me about the church stealing her birthright….”

  Mama had said that in her letter, though I did not know what she meant. “What about my baptism?” I reminded him.

  “Oh. Well, fairies, being separately created, were not tainted by the original sin of our first parents, so baptism—for them—wouldn’t be necessary. So much of what the Lady Elladine had to say was correct. On the other hand, if the duke is your father, and I have no real doubt of that,” he blushed, obviously remembering that Papa seemed to have sired half the children in Westfaire village, “you are half mortal, and that half needed to be baptized, which your Mama had not considered, and it was properly done.”

  “Holy water and the white cloth around my head and everything?”

  “Exactly so. Exorcised, annointed, and the chrisom bound round your head.”

  “Are they Christians?” I asked him. “F … that is, my mother’s people? Or are they infidels?”

  “Well now,” he wrinkled his brow at me. “I don’t think that question would mean much to ah … them. If they are immortal, then they don’t die. If they don’t die, they don’t fear hell. If they don’t fear hell, then they aren’t stained by sin. If they aren’t stained by sin, why would they need to be Christians? Or you can argue it frontwards to the same effect. The question of their being infidels doesn’t apply, does it?”

  Which just shows you that even though Father Raymond was old and a little dithery he was still capable of reasoned argument.

  [Which just goes to show you how much sheer fantasy exists even outside Faery.]

  “Then Mama wasn’t trying to keep me from being a Christian?” I asked. “When she told Papa it wasn’t necessary?” There was more to this than he had told me, but I had no idea what it was. Mama had seemed to blame religion for something to do with her people, and nothing Father Raymond had said had explained that.

  “I think it more likely she just made a oversight in theology,” Father Raymond said. “She thought it wasn’t necessary, forgetting you were half mortal. We can’t blame her, after all. I don’t imagine fairies spend much time studying catechism. In any case, I was there and I heard your fairy aunts giving you some very nice gifts, and you’ve always been a very good girl, so don’t worry your head about it.”

  “What nice gifts did they give me?” I asked, though Mama had already told me.

  “Oh, they gave you a good nature, for one thing. And charm.”

  I hadn’t known about those, particularly the good-nature one. Sometimes I didn’t feel at all good-natured.

  “By the way, Beauty,” he said. “I wanted to be the one to tell you that Giles has gone away on a journey for me.”

  “Giles,” I said stupidly. “Giles?” wanting to cry.

  “He’ll be away for a year or so,” he said, watching me intently. I didn’t say anything. After a moment he asked, “Is there something you need to tell me?”

  I just stared at him, hating him. Then not hating him, just blank inside. There was a hole there that nothing would fill, ever. Father Raymond had done it for me, because he thought it was best, but I wished he hadn’t.

  I shook my head at him, “No, Father.” I had nothing to tell him, nothing at all. There was a lump in my throat, and I could hardly get the words out. There was nothing I wanted to tell him ever again.

  “Well then,” he said, trying to be comforting. “Well then.”

  By the time Giles comes back, I will either be dead, or married, or asleep for a hundred years, or gone off looking for my mama, and who knows if I will ever return.

  11

  [When Elladine of Ylles had written her letter to her daughter, my hand had helped move the quill. Not that Elladine is incapable of either writing a letter or loving a daughter, but when she writes she is prolix and when she loves she is sentimental rather than sensible. She gave no thought to what would be involved in loving a half mortal child. Elladine is like others in Faery who have taken the easy way. Like Joyeause, she dabbles. Power is painful, in the getting and the keeping, and Elladine has never thought it worth the pain. So, she flutters and travels and glamorizes and enchants and now and again falls in love, sometimes with mortals. Knowing this, I inserted some words in her letter and removed many others and put the box in her hand already equipped.

  Israfel and I were counting on the love of a child for its mother. We had no mothers; we have born no children; so we take the matter largely on faith, but we counted on it nonetheless. Beauty would long to see her mother, off she would go to the place we’d prepared for her, a place remote from the real worlds, a place where the Dark Lord would not think of going for any reason, in short: Chinanga.

  Chinanga is one of the imaginary worlds, well off the mainline of invention. It had taken me a long time to find it, and I’d been looking for it No one who was not looking for it would be likely to stumble over it Elladine would get there only shortly before Beauty herself arrived (Israfel and I had arranged that, as well); once there they could get to know each other, safe in a place time could not touch. So we planned.

  Further, we planned—deviously, dangerously—for Beauty to leave Westfaire without anyone knowing she was gone. She would make use of the things in the box, and when the time was right, she would be ready!

  Unfortunately, we had overlooked who she is and what she is carrying and what Westfaire is, as well We overlooked the forces that bound them together!

  Beauty did not make ready to go off in search of her mother! Instead, she found reasons for delay!]

  ANOTHER TIME. ANOTHER DAY.

  I DON’T KNOW WHEN, YET.

  In the days that followed Giles’s departure, while I was still supposedly nailed into the tower, I moved freely about the stables, fretting about the three significant events soon to occur: my approaching birthday (which I was determined to survive without being victim of the curse), Papa’s postponed marriage to Sibylla (to take place when he got matters straightened out with the church), and my departure in search of my mama, happenings that would occur, I presumed, more or less in that order even though I knew I should forget about the birthday and the wedding and just go, now, while I had the chance. Good sense said go, voices in my head said go, dreams said go, but my stomach said stay.

  I found myself making excuses to go into the great hall and look at the dome, excuses to walk along the walls, peering at the mosaic floors, excuses to go upstairs and downstairs, slowly, listening to the sounds, smelling the smells. I found myself crying at odd moments at the thought of leaving Westfaire at all, and besides, as I frequently told myself, it is hard to plan a journey when one has no idea where one is going.

  I’d never felt quite so alone and lost before. Always before, in the back of my mind, Giles had been there, sturdy and dependable. I’d always known I could go to him if there was real trouble. Or, Father Raymond had been there. Now Giles was gone, and since Father Raymond had sent him away, I couldn’t count on him either. Papa and the aunts were just useless. Martin didn’t have time to help. Doll was busy, bustling around, directing the other maids who were carrying water up and chamber pots down. I grabbed her arm and made her listen to me.

  “Mama said she left me means to find her, but all she left me was this box,” I told Doll. “I can’t find anything helpful in it.” I showed it to her. She looked at it and its contents, quickly, between doing two other things, at the packet of needles and at the signet ring with what I now recognized as a fairy on it and the three hanks of thread: heavy brown, medium black, and fine, silken white. She shook the box to see if there was anything else inside, but there was no secret compartment. It is just a wooden box, and not a very big one.

  “If the Lady your mother said she left something for you, then she did,” said Doll “And if this box is all you have, then this box is what she meant. You keep it safe. Sooner or later, you’ll find out what it’s for.” She turned
away from me to tell a new servant not to use the Duchess’s Staircase, which is what they called the wide curving graceful flight which comes up from the great hall.

  “I wish I knew what to do with it,” I complained, wishing Doll would pay attention to me. Wishing somebody would.

  “Well, you could sew with it,” suggested Doll, glaring at me. “That’s what people usually do with needles and thread, and it would keep you from bothering me while I get this work done.” She ran off after the new maid, who’d gone in the wrong direction.

  My feelings were hurt, but the suggestion made sense. I went into one of the attics and scruffed around, discovering some lengths of black tussah silk, probably left over from Grandma’s time. I took them and a handful of nuts and some dried apples into the empty stall I’d been occupying to keep me out of the aunts’ way and sat myself down on a pile of straw to sew, which was one thing I’d learned to do pretty well in sixteen years, believe me. In the winter there’s not much else to do. I’ve done enough cushion covers and mended enough tapestries to stretch from Westfaire to East Sawley, plus all the hours spent with Aunt Marj mending bodices or starting new tapestries that won’t get finished for a hundred years. I told myself that if the curse got me, and if they went on working while I was asleep, the tapestries might be finished in time for my awakening a century from now, in 1447. The fifteenth century!

  For the first time, I realized what that meant! If I slept for a hundred years, all the aunts and Papa would be dead. Papa would probably die before Sibylla did. With him gone, Sibylla would probably store my sleeping body in a cellar somewhere, if she didn’t go ahead and bury me, out of spite! And then, when Sibylla died, who would come after her?

  I imagined Westfaire abandoned, wrecked, sold off to pay Sibylla’s debts, and I wanted to scream. And who was going to take care of a sleeping person for a hundred years? I simply couldn’t see Sibylla or her children caring whether I lived to wake up or not!