“His hair wasn’t yellow,” said Elly. “It was gold.” She was sitting in the chimney corner as she often did, and she said it so quietly that no one heard her. If they had heard her, they wouldn’t have paid attention. I had noticed that. No one paid much attention to Elly. Except me, of course. I kept looking for something of Edward in her. His patience. His devotion. Surprising myself, each time, by remembering that he wasn’t her real father. And yet he had given her so much. All to be wiped away like this, lost when he was lost.
“You saw the prince, too?” I asked her in a murmur.
She nodded, pressing her teeth together, making a tight-lipped frown. She has yet to smile at me, except at my embarrassments, and at those she laughs.
“Was he handsome?” I asked.
She took a deep breath. She did not need to answer. Her eyes were answer enough. She looked at me hatefully, detesting this self-betrayal.
“Are we going to the ball?” Harold asked his mother. “We’ll need new clothes.”
“All of you?” Lydia asked doubtfully. “Why, Harry, I don’t know. I’m not sure we can even find anyone to make clothes.”
“Have to go,” he replied, significantly. “Have to show the girls off. You know what he’s doing, don’t you? He’s looking for a wife. That’s why all the young ones are invited.”
“He invited men, too,” Griselda commented.
“Who would the girls dance with, otherwise?”
“Mother, do you suppose he is?” asked Gloriana, face suddenly red as a boiled lobster, eyes hot with hope. Oh, poor child, I said to myself. Don’t hope for it, no. It isn’t fated. It isn’t willed. Poor ugly thing. Her skin was rough as her hands, her hair was a jungle, and she smelled like vintage dirt. My heart swelled with pity for her, and for Griselda, and for all other barnyard geese who long to fly.
“Perhaps I can find a seamstress,” I suggested. “I used to know the neighborhood rather well.”
“Not only a seamstress,” Lydia fussed, “but fabric. Since the second Death, there haven’t been the merchants there used to be.”
“I’ll try,” I said. Edward had set a store of fabrics by, bought for me, bought in anticipation of Elladine needing dresses. He had ordered them from London or purchased them from travelers. He loved to see me in silk from the Far East, in damask and velvet from Florence. There were boxes of folded materials in the attic, set away in linen sheets, dosed against the mice with hellebore, against the moths with wormwood and southernwood, lavender and rosemary. Boys mix the ashes of southernwood with oil and use it to make their beards grow. Lad’s Love and Maid’s Ruin, it is called. When I unfolded the linen, I remembered that, remembered Janet telling me. She was full of herbary, Janet. Fuller than the aunts, despite having an ordinary person-name.
There is a great length of mustard-colored silk, enough to make a gown for Gloriana, and enough greeny-blue damask for Griselda. Edward bought both pieces from a merchant who had brought them from Italy. There are other Italian damasks, too, to make cote-hardies for the boys, and velvet for overmantles. There are silks from the Far East for underbodices, and spools of finer silk for the knitting of stockings, if we had time to knit stockings. It seems there will be no time for that, or for embroidered sleeves, but the fabrics are rich enough. There is nothing in any of the boxes that I like for Elladine. She needs something light, something bright with her dark hair. White. It will have to be white, with short, full sleeves and a slash at the hem to show a bright full-length underskirt. There will be flowers embroidered on the sleeves, if I have to bribe one of Puck’s people to do it.
ST. OMER’S DAY, SEPTEMBER,
YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367
The seven-league boots made it an easy trip to London. I went there late at night, stayed half a day, and returned with white satin and with pairs of silken hose from Spain. So far as everyone was concerned, I had found them all in the attics.
“Mama, keep Elly home or she’ll spoil everything,” I had heard Gloriana saying.
“I don’t think Elly should go,” Lydia said.
“Oh, I agree,” I said to Lydia. “She’s far too young.”
“I’m not too young,” Elly later screamed into my face.
“Of course not, child. But you don’t want Gloriana pinching you black and blue between now and then. And she will, if she thinks you’re going. She might even break an arm or leg for you, or pull all your hair out, so sulk and be still. All will come right.”
She sulked and was still. I suggested to Lydia that it might be wise to start bathing her daughters a week or so in advance to get rid of some of the accumulated grime. She yawned and said she supposed so and did nothing about it. I began working on Elly’s hair, brushing it every night, doing it up on rags, saying quiet prayers of thankfulness for Candy’s ministrations which had taught me all this, even though it did not seem to matter what I did to Elly’s hair. Her hair was a treasure, like tumbling black water, lightless in its ebon flow. In anticipation of the parties, her eyes were slumbrous and her lips seemed swollen with invisible kisses.
While village women struggled with clothing for Lydia’s children, I summoned some help for my own child. Sitting on the side of my bed, late at night, I said, “Fenoderee, I need a friend,” only to look down and see him there.
“You’re lookin’ older,” he said impudently.
“You knew how old I’d look,” I said. “You and Puck, when you sent me back. I heard you chanting at me. Ragtag and motley, indeed!”
“You can look as young as you like,” he told me.
“As Elladine does,” I said. “As Mab does?”
He looked down at his feet, suddenly discomfitted.
“Fenoderee?” I asked.
“Don’t bother him,” said a voice, and Puck stepped out from behind the tapestry on the wall. “He’s afraid to tell you.”
“Tell me what?” I faltered.
“That with Thomas gone and you not there, Queen Mab went into a fury and used your mama as the teind.”
There was a moment of soundlessness, and I came to myself lying flat on the floor with both of them bending over me and Fenoderee saying to Puck, “Ach, you fool, she didn’t need to know that.”
“Yes, she did,” said Puck. “Lest she have her boots carry her back to Faery, expecting Elladine to be there. Lest she say something unwary where Oberon could hear. So far he blames us Bogles for getting Thomas loose. So far he doesn’t know Beauty was involved. Nobody knows but Carabosse.”
“What … is Mama dead?” I asked.
Puck shook his head. “Us of Faery can’t be killed so easy, Beauty. She’s even kin to the Dark Lord. He despises Faery, but it’s not Faery he wants to destroy. Carabosse says to tell you like as not, he’ll play with Elladine for a time, then turn her loose. He does that with things that amuse him.”
They helped me sit up, and Puck gave me a bit of wine from the bottle in the cupboard. He went to it, as though he knew right where it was. As though he had been there before.
“There’s nothing you can do about it,” he said. “Carabosse says you are not to upset yourself or think of doing anything! She says you will understand what she means.”
I did understand. If it came to a choice between Thomas, who was a fellowman, or Elladine, who was my mother but did not much care about that, I was not sure where duty lay. In any case, Carabosse was right. I could do nothing about it. Anything I tried to do would only draw attention to me.
“You wanted something or you wouldn’t have called us,” said Puck.
It seemed foolishness, then, but I told them what I wanted. Someone to make some dresses for Elladine’s namesake, my daughter. I had thought of doing it myself, as I had made dresses in Faery, but I felt insecure with the idea. “I want someone who’s done it a lot, who knows what they’re doing,” I told Puck. A kind of look went back and forth between them, and Puck said he’d send someone along. As he was about to go, I asked him, “When I was a child and saw you in the woods,
was it Carabosse who sent you?”
He looked at me insolently. “Me?” he asked. “Why would I have been in your woods? I’ll send you a seamstress.”
She came. A Bogle seamstress, to make Elly’s gowns. Three bright white dresses: one embroidered with daisies over a yellow underdress; one with periwinkles over blue; one with roses over red. The trader had said the red silk was from the Far East, beyond the Holy Land. It was the only place where the dyers could achieve that color, so much brighter than madder. Cochineal, perhaps. It must have been China, I told myself. Even in the twentieth, some of the finest fabrics came from there. The seamstress also made three spider veils for Elly’s hair. One with pearls, one with sapphires, one with rubies. I am keeping everything hidden as a surprise.
ST. LAMBERTS DAY, SEPTEMBER
When the morning of the first celebration arrived, Gloriana and her sister decided to bathe. Though I stayed as far away as possible, I could not help hearing the screams as tangled hair refused to be combed, and long embedded dirt refused to let go. Elly sat in a corner of my room and smiled remotely, as though she were already far away, dancing with her prince. I spoke to her, cautioning her to keep her temper in check, to smooth the frown lines from her brow. I told her that men like girls who are sweetly spoken. She merely smiled, as though nothing I could say applied to her. It was as though she was fated, and knew it. A small, cold chill made its way down my spine. What could I do?
That evening Harry and Bert rode off with their sisters toward the manor, some seven or eight miles away. I told Lydia that Elly and I were going for a ride also. Instead we repaired to the stables where I had accumulated certain supplies. A pumpkin. A cageful of mice. Six lizards. One fat toad. I had already created a wand, to add to the drama of it all, though a wand is totally unnecessary. With what Mama and Oberon had taught me, I could have done it blindfolded and with my hands tied behind me.
The mice became horses, prancers, matched grays of considerable spirit. The pumpkin made a golden chariot, the like of which no one had yet seen, nor would for several hundred years. It was exceedingly well sprung, and in the fourteenth no one understood springs. The toad became a coachman, and the six lizards the footmen, the one in brown livery and the six in green. Getting the livery just right took almost the last bit of magic I had in me, and I was panting a little as I spoke seriously to Elly.
“Now listen to me. This equippage will get you there in great style. The only reason we’re going to all this trouble is to get the prince looking at you. I’ve cast a spell of glamour over you to keep him looking, and to prevent Gloriana and her sister and brothers from recognizing you. However, none of it will last past dawn. Fairy things often don’t. There’s a monastery near the prince’s dwelling, and when the monastery bell rings for Matins you must leave, or you can’t be sure to be home before the sun rises.” I was reminded of my listening for the bell when I had been wooing her father who was not really her father, Ned. Matins was supposed to be sung about midnight, but in my experience the monks were often late with it.
“The place is only two hours or so away,” she argued with me.
“If you don’t have an accident, yes. But if your coachman has to mend a wheel, it could take longer. You must leave a large margin for error.”
“I could walk home,” she shrugged, giving me one of Jaybee’s intransigent, stubborn looks.
“If you don’t want to go back tomorrow night, of course you could. It’s about eight miles. But if you want to go back tomorrow night, then be home by dawn. I have to reuse what is here.” Once things have been enchanted, it takes less effort to re-enchant them. Besides, it had taken me days to catch six lizards. I was not as agile as I had been as a child, and they do not, unfortunately, enchant until one actually has them in hand. I gave her the dress embroidered in daisies (which she examined critically before saying it would do), combed her hair for her, and told her to be on her way.
“Barefoot?” she asked me. “Fine fairy godmother you are. They’ll laugh themselves silly.”
I had not thought of shoes. I had extended myself on everything else and had not thought of shoes. There was not enough glamour left in me to create three pair. One would have to do. One to go with everything. I meant to make them white. I was tired. They came out transparent, like glass. It shouldn’t have surprised me, but it did. In the future, the story would include a hundred false details, but the damned glass slippers were really part of it.
I hated them. Silly, plastic-looking things. Elly had never seen plastic, so she loved them. “Glass slippers,” she cried. “I almost believe you’re really a fairy!”
I had turned a toad into a coachman, had turned mice into horses, had invented coach springs several hundred years before their time, but it took glass shoes to make her believe in me! I watched silently, wearily as she departed, then put on the seven-league boots and went where she was going. All I wanted to do, I told myself, was see her have a good time. Expiation of guilt, certainly. I would have done her better service to have had a serious talk with her about reality, but who was I to speak of reality? She was one-quarter fairy, as I was half. Perhaps I could even have taught her some of the things Mama taught me.
Better not, my conscience said. Better not. My conscience sounded much like Father Raymond. Elly would not use such power wisely. Or even kindly. Not until she was older, if then.
The prince’s celebration was very minor stuff. A dozen local musicians, scraping and blowing, any one of whom would have made more tuneful sounds killing pigs. Still, there was a certain rude vitality evident which came partly from reliance upon the wine kegs, partly from letting the notes fall where they might, and partly from everyone’s determination to have a good time. The tunes they played were well known. They could not have assayed anything else. They took my added voice as the effects of intoxication and played on, rather better than before.
The prince was yellow-haired and quite good-looking, in a sweet, almost feminine way. He had a straight nose and a gentle, delicate mouth, with dark eyes and brows to lend drama. He was slightly taller than Elladine and a head or more shorter than poor Gloriana. His nickname, given him by his mama, was Charme, or “Charming,” as we would say in the twentieth, and he suited that name well enough. His mama was fat and fond and indulgent. His papa, the King or Prince or whatever, was taciturn and worried about other things. When Mama did not recall Papa to himself, he sat on his gilded chair and looked into distances I could not see. The loss of a kingdom, even a very small one, would weigh on one, I supposed.
The young prince dutifully danced with all the ladies, even the very ugly ones. Of these, Gloriana was the most, and Griselda a close second. There were three or four rather pretty girls, and the rest were what one might expect if one rounded up a sample of the countryside. Elladine arrived a couple of hours before midnight, driving directly up to the terrace beside the ballroom as I’d suggested. I’d made sure the doors were open, and no one could have missed her arrival. I had assured her that this could only add to the mystery and make her more fascinating. Not that she needed additional glamour. What I had given her was quite enough. In fact, looking back on it, what she had of her own might have been quite enough. She and the prince danced, and then again, and then yet again. Several of the young ladies cast angry glances at their partners and one another. Gloriana was quite red and unhappy. I put a quick spell on several of the young men along the sidelines, to make them attentive to her, but it did no good. Gloriana had eyes for no one but the prince.
After a time, I wearied. I went out onto the terrace, took off my cloak, and sat on a bench there, watching through the windows. The evening was still and warm. I heard the song of a nightingale among the trees.
“Will you dance, ma’am,” said a voice at my shoulder.
I looked up. It was Giles. There was no need to speak. I simply rose and let him take me by the hand. We danced, as they danced inside, bowing and circling, only our hands touching. He looked at me, smilin
g, in his eyes something almost like recognition.
“I did meet you,” he whispered. “I wish I could remember where.”
“At Westfaire,” I agreed. “On some occasion or other. Perhaps at one of the wedding banquets.”
He shook his head, laughing. “Oh, ma’am.”
“Catherine,” I said. “My name is Catherine.”
“Oh, Catherine.” He bowed and led me in a circle around him, one hand on his hip, his soft shoes making a brushing sound on the stones. “I remember those banquets well. The lady Sibylla, her face all screwed up. Beauty, the duke’s daughter, like a rose. All the aunts. If I’d seen you there, I’d have remembered.”
When he said “Beauty, the duke’s daughter,” his voice had been soft and yearning. I could not help it. I let enchantment happen. Not a lot. Not to be sixteen again. But to be beautiful.
He smiled at me, his own face becoming younger. We danced. “You look like her,” he said. “Like Beauty. Are you related to those at Westfaire?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Edward of Wellingford’s wife was kin to those at Westfaire. He was Elly’s father. And I am her aunt.”
“I didn’t know anyone got out of Westfaire except Beauty,” he said softly. “And she had to go back. I thought they were all there still.”
“Some weren’t there at the time,” I said. “Elly wasn’t born yet. And I was elsewhere.”
His hand tightened on mine. His eyes feasted on my face. Mine were as greedy. We danced, and he drew me closer to him as hours spun away.
In the nearby monastery, the bell rang for Matins, and I drew away from Giles, reluctantly.
“Tomorrow night?” he asked me.
I nodded, smiling at him. Oh, yes, tomorrow night.
I turned to the window, saw Elly’s head come up, listening. She wavered. She knew if she left, the prince would go on dancing with the others. She knew if she stayed, she might not come back the following evening. Prudence won, and she slipped out of the ballroom and across the terrace to the drive where the horses waited. The carriage got halfway to the main road before the prince realized she was not coming back. She, meantime, lay in the rocking carriage and dreamed, a curved and sensual smile on her face, while I watched invisibly from the opposite seat, wishing I were back there on the terrace, dancing with Giles.
Beauty Page 27
