Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  Mostly, it was Jaybee’s fault. I ask myself if I want Jaybee dead, and tell myself, no. Not dead. Not necessarily. Simply … simply unable to do to anyone else what he did to me. The more I see of Elly, the more sure I am that he should never father other children!

  She sends for me. Every day or so, she sends for me. When I get there, she takes my hand and holds it, as though it were a rope and she were drowning. She looks at her swelling body with terror.

  Well, well, I know. She has heard what all women hear in this time, that babies do not come easily nor safely. Women die giving birth. Many of them die. Life comes through the doorway of death in this time, and Elly is in terror of death. So she sends for me, and I sit beside her and hold her hand. After a time, she grows calm, and her eyes grow soft and her mouth loosens. She begins to think of the prince, and then she sends me away.

  I want to go looking for Giles. I cannot. Not so long as she needs me.

  Daytimes, I go on about my self-imposed duties at Wellingford. Harry and Bert have gone off to London. Some weeks ago I suggested to Griselda that she might look into the convent where Aunts Tansy and Comfrey—”Acquaintances of mine, now dead”—had found so many pleasant years. She did so and liked it. There she will not have to worry about men or clothes or being ugly, though she will have to bathe. Lydia arranged a dowry for her, very quickly, too, considering that young Edward is still a minor, and Griselda left us. Lydia and the two young children are alone with me. I do what I can with the children. The boy seems past help, but the little girl, Catherine, is beginning to respond to consistency and affection, like a flower growing toward the sun.

  ST. BENEDICT’S DAY, MARCH 1368

  Little Catherine is dead. My so-called “namesake.” Sweet Catherine. Winter came, and with it the diseases that always come, and she died and was buried next to her half sister.

  From time to time I go to Edward’s grave and talk to him, telling him I am sorry. I should not have left him and Elly. It was my duty to stay. Even as I say it, I know it’s not true. Nothing I could have done would have changed things. What looks out of Elly’s eyes at the world would have been there even if I had been with her every moment of her life, born in her. Her nature will have its way. Love and good intentions simply don’t solve everything.

  ST. JULIA’S DAY, MAY 1368

  Last night I woke at the Dower House, feeling I had heard someone call my name. Elly’s voice. I put on the boots and went. She was in a room overwarmed by a roaring fire, with the midwives all around her, wringing their hands. She was screaming as I had done when she was born, as all women do in this time, her eyes bulging. “Mother,” she cried. She had never had a mother, but she cried for one. I gave her my hands and would have given her life itself, but it was already too late when I got there. She had waited too long to call my name. She grasped at me, panting.

  “White as snow,” she panted, her eyes fixed on mine. “Red as blood. Black as death.” She pointed to the child the midwives were holding, then died as I held her, sobbing as she had used to do when she was a baby and we put her down for a nap she did not want. The blood ran out of her in a wave. The baby girl had been born early, her white skin bloodied red all over. She did not want to live at all, but the midwives persevered and at last she cried. They washed her and laid her in my arms. Pale as a white rose, with Elly’s dark, wild hair.

  When I came into the outer room, Elly’s young husband wept, but his eyes were full of some other emotion than grief. Was it relief? Was it gladness? He had the look of a man tried past endurance.

  I knew what he was feeling. In college, I had read the Victorian poets. I was much enamored of Swinburne. He had spoken of this same feeling, “the delight that consumes the desire; the desire that outruns the delight.” Elly’s desire had outrun their delight. The prince did not ask how I came there, but his mother gave me a speculative look.

  “There is no question of returning the dowry,” she said plainly.

  “I did not come for that,” I told her.

  “What then?” she asked.

  What had I come for? “I came because she called for me. I would like Elly to be buried beside her father,” I said. “He loved her very much. Perhaps if he had lived, she … things would have been different.”

  Red patches came out on her cheeks. She whispered, “I am glad she is dead. She was destroying my son. She was like an evil spirit, sucking his Me.” It was as though she had to confess it to me, had to receive absolution from me. It came out in a hiss.

  I gave her the absolution she wanted. “I know,” I said. “It is a hunger she was born with.”

  “Her daughter…”

  “It is not in her daughter,” I told her. “Her daughter is your son’s daughter. You may trust in what I say.” I knew it was true. I could sense nothing evil in the child at all. There was nothing there but sweet babyhood, innocent as dawn.

  They let me take Elly’s body away. I have found a priest to bury her in the Wellingford chapelyard, beside her father.

  STS. DONATIAN AND ROGATIAN, MARTYRS

  Only the prince came to Elly’s internment, to stand dry-eyed while they filled in the grave. When it was over, he laughed, then he cried.

  “We are going home,” he said. “The people rose up and killed the pretender to the throne. He was my half uncle, Richard, and I am glad he is dead. They have sent word we are to return.” His words had a childlike simplicity, and for the first time I really looked at him. He met my gaze innocently, without intention or guile. There was no large intellect there. He had none of his father’s ponderous mind.

  “Are you taking the child?” I asked.

  “Oh, yes,” he told me. “My daughter. Mama is very fond of her. So am I. Do not be concerned about her.”

  “Does she have a name?” I asked.

  He gazed at me abstractedly, trying to think of the name. “Mama named her,” he confessed at last. “After a spring flower that blooms through the snow. I cannot remember at the moment. Of course, she hasn’t been christened yet.”

  He sighed, then smiled, without meaning, then said, “There was a man of ours you had an interest in. Father said you had asked after him.”

  “Giles,” I said, my mouth falling open.

  “He was killed. Someone saw the assault and sent word to my father. It was a group of men assaulted him, while he was riding on our business that day.” He flushed, remembering that day. “Father said you had wanted to know.”

  Giles. Dead. Elly. Dead. Edward. Dead. Oh, God in Heaven. All dead. All I had loved. All I had tried to love.

  “Where?” I breathed. “Where is he buried?”

  “There,” he said, gesturing vaguely eastward. “Where they killed him.”

  He left me and rode off with his serving men, still smiling his ineffectual smile, while I wept until there were no more tears. I had brought flowers for Elly’s and Edward’s graves, the roses they both liked. I gripped the bouquet until the thorns sank deep into my hands, knowing it was Giles’s grave my flowers should lie upon.

  I went back to the Dower House and got my boots. “Take me wherever it was Giles was set upon,” I said.

  And I was there, a weedy sunken spot by the side of an unfamiliar road, marked by a rough wooden cross. There was a man working in the field nearby, and he came to the fence, looking at me curiously.

  “I didn’t see you coming on the road,” he said. “Are you looking for the place the fellow died?”

  I nodded yes.

  He pointed at the cross, at the sunken place. “I buried him there. I was over there, on the far side of the field. I saw him coming along, on his horse. They came out of the woods there, and set upon him. Eight or ten, maybe. Too many for me to fight. I saw his horse run off. I went to the village to get help. When we came back, the horse was there, grazing, and the body of the man. Dreadful cut about, he was. They knew him by his horse, though, for it had the King’s arms upon the saddle.”

  I thanked him, and he went ba
ck to his work. I laid my flowers on the grave. They were marked with my blood upon their thorns. I sat there for a long time. When night came, I told the boots to take me home.

  Perhaps in time I can find a stonecutter to make a monument for Giles. But why? In time even a monument will disappear. I remember the twenty-first and shudder. Why make monuments? Why build beautiful things? Why create anything when Fidipur’s billions will tear them all down.

  I don’t know. I have no emotions at all except a sullen anger, which boils away inside me, building up the pressure. I want vengeance against the cause of all this pain. If I had not been pregnant when I came back, I would not have married Edward, I would not have had Elly. If I had not married Edward, I could have had Giles, We could have married, lived together, that ordinary life Carabosse wanted for me.

  If I had not married Edward, if he had not had Elly, Edward might not have died, and he certainly wouldn’t have married Lydia. Oh, what Jaybee had done when he raped me was more hurt than even he had planned!

  When I left the twentieth—how long ago?—Jaybee was raging about, full of fury that he could not find me to do it all again. If I leave him there, he will do it again, to someone else. He will cause this pain again, generations of it, begetting sorrow as a cloud begets rain. It is not fitting that this should be so. I can do nothing for Elly. I can do nothing for Giles. Edward is gone. All I cared for is gone.

  And Jaybee lives to make more sorrow.

  Beauty can be disappointed of its children. The worst thing about being a woman is that things can be begot on us, things we do not want, cannot manage, cannot control. We swell to fruition with disasters implanted in us against our wills. We spew out tragedy. And all the disaster and the tragedy, though begot upon us against our volition, is part us. How much, we wonder. How much was me? What could I have changed?

  Carabosse says I carry importance within me. A kernel of something incorruptible, no doubt. A seed. Yet one begot upon me without my consent. Can even Carabosse be sure of the harvest? Can this seed grow bitter fruit? Can it be twisted and warped, as my own seed was warped?

  And is this, perhaps, what the Dark Lord wants? What Jaybee wanted, whether he knew it or not? To beget horror on innocence? It cannot be borne. It cannot be tolerated. I cannot let it happen again, to anyone.

  All my anger focuses upon Jaybee. Even though magic is thin on the ground in the twentieth, my powers will work there, so I believe, even if only weakly, perhaps enough.

  Grumpkin is here. And my cloak. And my boots.

  [“What’s she doing?” I asked Israfel.

  “She’s going back there. Back to the twentieth”

  “Beauty! You mustn’t Please….”]

  23

  January 4, 1993

  Wisdom Street

  It is not Holy Wisdom, not Hagia Sophia, the street is named for, but William W. Wisdom, who was Manager of Public Works sometime in the forties. Still, I have always liked the name of the street, and seeing it on the sign at the corner gave me a feeling of welcome when the boots set me down only a few feet from our front door. Our front door. Bill’s and Janice’s and mine.

  Bill had been so excited when we rented the house. To him it represented everything he had ever dreamed of: unimaginable amounts of room, safety, warmth, affection, plenty of privacy in which to indulge himself in his harmless eccentricities; all of the things so notably missing in the twenty-first. To me, accustomed to the vaulted spaces and elegant architecture of Westfaire, it had seemed scarcely better than a hovel, though I had agreed it was far better than the twenty-first.

  It was, is, a small frame dwelling, white clapboard with blue shutters and a blue roof, surrounded on its corner lot by a white picket fence. Inside the front door a narrow hall leads back to the kitchen. On the left is a combination living-dining room, on the right, two tiny bedrooms and a bath. Some former owner had built another bedroom and a half bath in the basement, and Bill had chosen those rooms for his own. There he had his closet full of silky dresses and lacy underwear, his high-heeled shoes and fluffy parasols, his full length mirror and his private telephone. Though he never went “out” in his women’s clothes, he wore them while he talked on the phone, endless high-pitched conversations full of flirtatious little interjections and giggles.

  Though the basement rooms had been his place, he hadn’t been stingy with his time and effort in the rest of the house. He and I had refinished the kitchen cabinets, taking endless hours to do it, more than the cheap construction was worth. He had sweated over the tiny lawn, fighting the weeds and mowing it twice a week. He had planted the junipers and the Seafoam roses on either side of the door. In summer they were a cloud of white. Now their brown canes poked through the rare light snow, like old bony fingers. I knocked. Janice opened the door as though she’d been standing in the hallway, waiting for someone. She said, “Yes?” in a tone of voice that told me she didn’t know me. Well, why would she?

  “I’ve come about Bill,” I faltered. “May I come in?”

  She stood back, rather grudgingly, to let me enter, her head tilted to one side, her bird’s eyes fixed on me as though I were a bug. I had an almost uncontrollable urge to tell her who I was, but I fought it down. Telling her would involve too many explanations, and I couldn’t guarantee she’d believe any of them. Besides, I could not depend on her good will. Her relationship with Bill and me had always been a reluctant one. I must have squeezed Grumpkin, for he protested at being held so tightly. I put him down on the floor and he promptly began to sniff his way around the hall.

  “That’s Dorothy’s cat,” she said. “Where did you get Dorothy’s cat?” Once we had agreed that I was to be “Dorothy,” Janice had never used any other name for me. Bill had always called me Beauty when we were alone.

  “I’m a friend of hers,” I said. “She asked me to come tell you what happened.” I made the comeback sign. Janice would trust a comeback sooner than anyone else, though she didn’t trust anyone much. She looked startled, but she made the sign in return.

  “Where is she?” Janice wanted to know. “And Where’s Bill?”

  “Dorothy’s gone away,” I said, breathing in deeply. There was no kind or easy way to tell her what had happened. “Jaybee broke in here while you were away. He told Dorothy he’d come for her, Bill got between them, and Jaybee killed Bill and attacked Dorothy. He hurt her … raped her. She’s gone away.”

  She stared at me, unbelieving. “How did you …? I don’t understand how you….”

  “I was a sort of witness to it,” I said. “I was here when it happened.”

  She fell back into the chair just inside the door, her mouth open. “Jaybee? Bill?” Her eyes filled with tears. “I should have known. Oh God, I should never have left Bill alone.”

  Her emotion seemed genuine, though to my certain knowledge she had only tolerated Bill and me.

  “He was like my son,” she cried, the tears making red tracks down her face. “My son I was bringing to God. Oh, I loved him so.”

  I started to say, “You never let him know that,” remembering just in time that I wasn’t Beauty, wasn’t Dorothy, wasn’t who I was. I was older. A lot older. In the hall mirror I caught sight of myself, a woman in her sixties, perhaps. All gray-haired. With crepey skin on my arms. I looked at my hands, seeing the spots on the backs of them. Time. I had used it up, going back and forth. Used it up. I started crying, too, partly for Bill, partly for myself. All! had seemed to do lately was grieve. Grumpkin came over and extended a paw, asking his “prrrt.” How had he aged so little? I picked him up, to hug, for warmth, for something.

  “Who are you?” she asked. “Do I know you?”

  “My name is Catherine Monfort,” I said through my tears. “I came because Dorothy asked me to, and because she thought you might let me stay here.”

  She threw her hands up, shaking her head, no, then realized how inhospitable that looked. Janice couldn’t bear to look bad, though she didn’t care what she did if no one kn
ew. Finally she nodded, pointing at the front bedroom, tears running down her face. “He was here yesterday. He asked for ‘Beauty.’ He even asked for Bill. That bastard. He was laughing at me. Oh, God will punish him. Oh yes, God will punish him.”

  “Jaybee?” I asked, knowing already that’s who it was. Yes. Jaybee. Still looking for Beauty. He hadn’t given up.

  Janice had her hands folded under her chin, her eyes closed, her lips moving. While she cried and prayed, I went into the bedroom. My bedroom. All my things were still there, except the few I’d taken when I’d run away. My clothes, young clothes, for a college girl. Well, I could wear the nightgowns. The panties. The jeans, maybe. The shoes. Not the brassieres. I had little enough to put a brassiere around. My chest had gone flat, not saggy, just flat, like the fairies. Fairy blood, I guess. Sylph blood. Better than flopping, I suppose. Somewhere, I’d have to get some clothes suitable to a woman my age. I hung up my cloak, set my boots in the closet, put away my book and Mama’s box in the drawer of the bedside table. Grumpkin jumped up on the bed, kneaded a place soft and lay down, eyes slitted, just as his daddy used to do. I turned to find Janice in the doorway, staring at me.

  “Do you have a job?” she asked. She had suddenly realized she might have to support me. Janice wouldn’t do that!

  I shook my head.

  “What can you do?”

  “Handle horses,” I said.

  “Nobody’s going to hire you for that, at your age.” The words were a sneer. Janice was sounding more like herself.

  I nodded, telling her I knew, thinking of Wellingford. “I managed an estate for a family for a while.”

  “If you could get references, that might be useful.”

  “I met Dorothy at college. We were both studying the same things. I’m a fair Latinist.”

  “Maybe we can find something academic. Through the network.”

  She meant the comebacks’ forgery network that provided social security cards, birth certificates, educational documentation, and even jobs for returnees. What I really wanted to do was find Jaybee and follow him around, until I knew what he was doing, what his vulnerabilities were. That might have to wait.