Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  I made myself stop thinking about it by laying out the fabric and the thread and measuring both carefully to see whether there was enough to make a cloak. Straight cloaks are very easy. Father Raymond taught me the pattern, because they’re almost the same as the monks wear, except the monks’ don’t open down the front. First you cut one flat piece as long as from your shoulders to your heels and wider across than your shoulders, for the back. Then you cut four more pieces, the same length and half that wide. Two of these are for the front. The third one gets cut in half, and then each piece folded in half again for sleeves. The last one gets cut in half, and one of the halves gets folded with one end sewed shut for the hood. The hood piece gets gathered on at the neck, which is the hardest part, and if you’re not careful it leaves an ugly bunch of puckers on the inside. If you want to get fancy, you can use the other sleeve-sized piece to make pockets. Since I had a lot of time on my hands, I got fancy and made great deep pockets on both sides. By noon, I had it mostly done except for sewing braid around the hood and down the front to finish it off. I’d used the sides of the cloth, what Dame Blossom calls the self-edge, for the edges of the sleeves and front, so all I had to hem up was the bottom. I heard Doll’s voice outside, so I put it on and went out to show her.

  I stood there, turning around for her to admire me, and she looked right through me at Martin and said, “Where’s Beauty?”

  “Don’t know,” said Martin. “Haven’t seen her since this morning early.”

  “The whole herb garden met and decided they didn’t dare let her out of the tower because of her Papa,” said Doll. “They say he’ll be home for her birthday celebration and he’ll let her out then.”

  I walked a little closer to Doll, flapped my cloak arms at her. She didn’t even blink.

  “But then they decided she might starve by then,” Doll went on. “They’re in there now, tryin’ to decide what to do about that.”

  “How do they expect to feed her?” Martin snorted. “Send nut meats up by pigeon?”

  Martin didn’t see me. Doll didn’t see me. They weren’t pretending not to see me; they really didn’t see me. It took me a moment, but I finally realized why. The black thread had sewn a cloak of invisibility, which is something a fairy gift might be expected to do. It was all perfectly logical. I went back in the stall and took the cloak off, wrapped it in the sack I’d brought my things down in, then came out again carrying the mostly finished cloak wrapped in a neat bundle.

  “There you are, Beauty,” Doll said at once. “Your aunts decided they couldn’t let you loose without making your father murderous at them, but they’re not planning on letting you starve, either, though you’d be a bit hungry by the time they agree on how they’ll get you fed. No point in having Martin haul you back up there, far’s I can see. Do you want to hide out here in the stables or up in the servant’s quarters? There’s empty rooms up there.”

  I said I’d stay in the stables, as it was airier and cooler than the attics where the maids lived, though the flies were much worse. The fact that the aunts wouldn’t turn me loose made me very curious as to what was going on, so I went around the corner, put my new cloak back on and wandered into the castle to hear what I could hear. Not surprisingly, no one noticed me. No one at all except Grumpkin, who insisted on trailing along, batting at my skirts just as he always did. Fairy things don’t impress cats. Fairy things and holy things. Cats are, perhaps, a separate creation.

  I drifted along to my old rooms near the kitchen, wanting to know just what Sibylla was up to, and a good thing I did, for the little Weasel-Rabbit was up to nothing good.

  “She has to die,” she was snarling to her mother as I sneaked in through the slightly open door. “Duke Phillip’s daughter must die.”

  She disliked calling me, “Beauty,” I’d noticed. She usually referred to me as “Duke Phillip’s daughter.” There were certainly a lot of people wanting me dead. Evil fairy aunts. Wicked stepmothers.

  “I had thought,” her mother said in a fussy little coo, “I really had thought that having her enter the convent at Alderbury would be sufficient.”

  “Not at all,” said Weasel-Rabbit. “I’ve spent all morning going over things with Phillip’s steward. In the marriage agreement between Phillip and Elladine, she tied up her dowry for her children. If that girl goes into a convent, the convent will claim Elladine’s estate as dowry. They certainly won’t let the girl into the convent without one!”

  “I thought their marriage could be set aside!”

  “If the marriage is set aside, the Duke will have no right to the estates in Ylles. If there had been no marriage, there could have been no dowry. If the one did not exist, certainly neither did the other!” Sibylla stamped her foot in vexation. “No, the only way is if she dies. With her dead, Phillip will inherit everything she owns.”

  “Why is it so important? Surely there is enough here…”

  Sibylla laughed, a long, mirthless laugh. “Oh, Mother, we have miscalculated most stupidly. There is little or nothing left here. Affairs are in a shocking state. The estates in Ylles and Castle Westfaire itself are virtually the only property the man has not pledged to the moneylenders. The only reason he hasn’t pledged the estates in Ylles is that he has not been free to do so. Beauty seems to own them, though I believe she is not aware of that fact. The Duke never talks to her about anything, thank God. He scarcely knows she is alive except when she annoys him. He will not grieve greatly when she is gone.”

  I found myself crouching along the wall, my face wet. I knew what she said was the truth, but it was very hard to hear.

  “It is unheard-of to pledge land,” Sibylla’s mama whined. “No nobleman of honor would pledge land. Why has he not sold his villeins their freedom instead? Or pledged the crops?”

  Even I knew the answer to that question, but I remained silent, wiping at my eyes, as Weasel-Rabbit answered.

  “He has done all that. I think he would have sold his soul if it had brought him a few guineas. Evidently there was an indebtedness left from the rebuilding of Westfaire in a previous generation. Phillip’s father speculated in order to clear this indebtedness and succeeded only in increasing it. Phillip himself goes to shrines and prays for a fortune. He feels only divine intervention will save him.”

  “Perhaps we had best try again, with someone better off.”

  “We haven’t the time or money to try again,” snarled Sibylla. “The estates at Ylles have good revenues, and though we have not seen them, undoubtedly they will do well enough!”

  “Ah,” said Weasel-Rabbit’s mother in a discontented voice. “I suppose it must be done before Phillip finds out your own dowry is as much fakery as the wealth he promised us. He won’t be impressed by hired carriages for long.”

  Well, well, I thought as I wandered out into the corridor again. Here was a pretty mess. Papa wanted to marry a fortune. Sibylla wanted to marry a fortune. Both pretended to have one, and both were as poor as lackeys. Who had the fortune? I did. Or rather, Mama did, since she was alive and well, assuming she was alive and well, which I did assume. Though there had been no recent word of her (despite the letter I had misdated), I simply knew that she had suffered no harm. Something inside me declared this to be incontrovertibly so. She was waiting for me, and I had to go to her.

  As I was lost in contemplation, Sibylla came out into the hallway and let out a screech to wake the dead. Grumpkin was there, playing with an invisible something, and Sibylla shrieked for someone to come kill the animal at once. I swept him up, hiding him in a fold of the cloak, and went back out to the stables while she had hysterics behind me, screaming about a cat that had disappeared. My only thought was that my life wasn’t worth a fig in that place.

  “Where is Ylles?” I asked Martin.

  “Eels?” he queried. “In the river, Beauty, some seasons. And in the sea others, so I hear.”

  “Not the fish, Martin. The place. A town, maybe?”

  Doll came out just then, so
I asked her as well. She didn’t know.

  “Mama signed her letter ‘Elladine of Ylles,’” I told her. “That means it has to be a place, somewhere.”

  No one knew. I told Doll to ask Aunt Terror and Aunt Basil, but neither of them had ever heard of Ylles, except as an adjunct to Mama’s name, and they got quite offended at being asked by a servant. So I went to the anteroom where Papa’s steward keeps things. He wasn’t there, or the scribe either, for which I was very grateful. The man always wanted to touch me, just a little. Hand on wrist. Arm against arm. Brushing against me in the hall. You know the kind of thing. Whenever I smiled at him, he melted down into a puddle and just lay there, quivering with inarticulate desire. There is something intensely repugnant about people wanting you in that way. That is, unless you want them back.

  I could find nothing that helped. So far as the contracts were concerned, none of them gave direction to Ylles. By the time I had looked through all the dusty scrolls that seemed at all likely to tell me anything, I was starving.

  I stopped in the kitchens to sneak some supper. Cold game pie and a lump of cheese out of the firkin in the storeroom. In the stables I chewed and stared at the other hanks of thread, a brown one and a white one. The brown thread was heavy and waxy. It looked familiar to me, and after a time I figured out that it looked like the thread the shoemaker in the village used. Thread to sew leather, which could mean anything at all. I had no way of knowing what. Something kept teasing at me, as though someone might be trying to whisper words in my ear, and I shook my head in annoyance. If I was half fairy, it had to be my bottom half, for my head told me nothing useful. I put the thread down, and found myself picking it up again. Put it down, pick it up. At length I got tired of thinking about it and went to sleep in the hay with Grumpkin curled up beside me.

  [I have said elsewhere that Beauty is not particularly intelligent The sewing kit was the simplest, easiest method Israfel and I could think of to let her seek her mother with the magical powers to which she was born. She has already sewn a cloak; common sense should dictate that the other threads will sew other magical garments! Stories of such garments are current in every hamlet! I cannot recall ever having felt quite so frustrated before. She will need the other garments very soon! I keep whispering, “Use the thread and needles,” but all she does is yawn!]

  I was so weary from it all that I didn’t wake up until the middle of the night when I heard people shouting. They were shouting because the dove tower was burning. Of course, I wasn’t in it, though no one but Doll and Martin knew that. Except for my carpet, nothing I treasured was in it, which was a good thing because there was little enough left of the tower when the flames were finally extinguished.

  I went to Father Raymond, being very cool and dignified, and told him I’d escaped sure death because I hadn’t been in my room. I said I believed Sibylla had set the fire. I told him why. I said my life wasn’t worth a rotten apple in that place anymore, and I was going away very soon to join my mama. I said that, once I was well away, he could tell everyone I’d gone on a pilgrimage. That would prevent Sibylla laying hands on my dowry lands. He asked me where, and I said I wasn’t sure, but I’d figure it out when I got started.

  “Oh, Beauty,” he sighed at me. “I suppose I might have expected it.” He reached for my hand, but I stepped away from him. He had sent Giles away without talking to me about it, and therefore he was no longer really my friend.

  “I’m not going until after my birthday, though,” I said in a formal voice which only shook a little. “Which is day after tomorrow.”

  “If you’re determined to go, I should think going before would be safer,” he advised me. “Just in case there’s something to the curse. Or another fire.”

  “There is undoubtedly something to the curse,” I said, “Just as there is undoubtedly something to Sibylla’s burning the tower. However, I will simply not be driven from my home before I am ready to go!” The truth was that the thought of leaving made me so panicky and scared I couldn’t do it. I kept putting it off, until this, until that.

  “What shall I tell your aunts?” he asked. “They’ll wonder why you aren’t dead?”

  “Tell them I escaped certain death through a miracle. An angel wakened me and opened the door to let me out.” I thought I was being pert, but he told them exactly that. Sometimes I think Father Raymond doesn’t take things as seriously as he pretends to. Except love. He saw I loved Giles, and he took that seriously. I did love Giles. I do love Giles.

  Between the fire and Father Raymond’s mention of the curse, I decided it was time to make a few defensive plans. While Sibylla and her mama muttered in the corner and I sat safely among the aunts, being exclaimed over for having occasioned divine intervention, I came up with a stratagem.

  The working of it was dependent upon the fact that Beloved knew nothing at all about the curse. It was not something that had been generally discussed (though the aunts had whispered about it when they thought I couldn’t hear). Even I had not known of it until I read the first page of Mama’s letter, but no one knew about that page of the letter but me. Add to this the fact that Beloved adored parties. She loved being “me.” As a result, on the following day, she eagerly fell in with my plan that she play my part on my birthday in order that for a few hours I might escape—so I told her—the edge of Sibylla’s tongue. We had spent hours talking over every aspect of the Sibylla matter, and Beloved liked her no better than I did.

  Papa was to be home for the celebration. Of the neighboring nobility, a few of the nearest had been invited to a modest banquet in honor of the occasion. Beloved and I spent some time going over the guest list so that she would know who they were and how to address them. She loved to speak the affected Frenchiness of the aristocracy rather than the uncouth but lively tongue of the common people, and she did it so well that no one knew she had not been reared in the castle. We shared this ability of mimicry, she and I, which we must mutually have inherited from Papa, though I had never known him to make use of it.

  Very early on our birthday morning, she came to my room—the room I was using in Papa’s wing, though I had slept in the stables overnight, just to be safe—and put on my clothes. I told her to be careful of her language and not to look for me until dark. Then I went out, put on my cloak and waited halfway down the Duchess’s Staircase to see what happened. As I had more or less expected, by midmorning Beloved was being fussed over and adorned and prepared for the banquet, while the aunts peered into corners (looking for spindles no doubt) and made little cooing calls to the Virgin for protection against evil as they fingered their missals in their pockets.

  Grumpkin was not fooled. He knew who was who, and he insisted upon following me about in a worried fashion, so I tucked him into one of the deep pockets, his large, scowling face peering out, visible to me but invisible to anyone else. Though he was a big, heavy cat, I preferred to do this rather than shut him up in the stables. Later, of course, I was to thank God that I had done so. God. Or someone.

  [Not I! Israfel and I had never concerned ourselves with her cat!]

  Afternoon came. The guests began to arrive for the banquet, which Aunts Lovage and Basil had arranged to be held in the late afternoon or very early evening in order to allow the guests to get home before full dark. The aunts buzzed about in a flurry of hospitality, and I saw Beloved, momentarily ignored, looking annoyed, as though she had a pain. I saw her yawn and lick her teeth. I followed her as she wandered back through the large dining hall and opened the door leading to the enclosed garden outside the high windows.

  I knew then that her expression had been the result of simple hunger. She had been so busy being dressed and fussed over, she hadn’t had any lunch, and now she was starved and had remembered the apricot tree in that garden. We’d spent many stuffed and sticky July afternoons there, fighting the wasps for the fruits. The moment the door opened, I smelted them, heavy as incense, more fragrant than I had ever known them to be before.

&
nbsp; Grumpkin muttered something and put a paw on my hand. I stopped to hush him before following her. “Be still,” I said. “You don’t want her to know we’re here.” Then I went out after Beloved, arriving just in time to hear a fading burst of cackling laughter and catch a glimpse of a pair of burning eyes disappearing in midair.

  [I had let myself be seen. Now surely she would leave Westfaire and go in search of Elladine. I had put the thread in her hands a dozen times! Surely now she would go where we had planned for her to go, where we could protect what she carried, forever if need be. I faded into invisibility and remained there, watching, mentally urging her to go.]

  Beloved was facing me, weaving a little on her legs, a look of faint astonishment in her eyes. Though she could not have seen me, her right hand was extended as though to hand me something. It was a spindle, precisely as it had been described to me: a spiky thing that looked rather like a spinning top. I put my hands behind my back. The spindle fell even as I moved toward her, and she went down with it, crumpling, knees and hips and then shoulders and arms, falling in a loose pile, like washing. I kicked the spindle thing away and knelt beside her. Her face was quite peaceful, as though she was sleeping, as indeed she was, though a sleep of a strange and terrible depth. Her breast barely moved. Her skin was chill. A pallor had fallen over her skin so that she seemed to be carved of ivory.

  For a moment, I could not think at all. My mind was blank. I straightened Beloved out, pulled her skirts down and folded her hands on her breast, my tears spotting the satin of her bodice. I left the spindle where I had kicked it, not daring to touch it. I hadn’t really…. I had thought the curse wouldn’t function if it couldn’t find me…. I had never considered that…. Or had I? I didn’t know. Had I planned it, or not? The wording of the final curse referred to “Duke Phillip’s daughter on her birthday.” She was as much his daughter as I was. It was her birthday as much as mine. I had known that!