Beauty

by Sheri S. Tepper

  “Prince Charme?” he asked.

  I smiled.

  “And his consort,” the chamberlain said. “Princess Ilene.” He said it Ee-lay-nay.

  “His daughter?” I asked.

  “He has no daughter,” the man said.

  “Never? Never had a daughter?”

  “No children. Not in twenty years,” he said. “I have been here that long.”

  “I am mistaken then,” I smiled, trying not to weep. “It was another family.” How many Prince Charmings could there be? More than one, obviously.

  The chamberlain was as good as his word about the bathwater, and I soaked in the heat of it, letting it take away some of the soreness of the long ride. He sent a maid to see to our clothes. I had already hidden my cloak and boots away, under the bed. I wanted no foreign maidservants playing about with those. When time came for the meal, he sent a footman to escort us down the stairs and into the hall of the castle. Not the great hall, which we passed through on the way, but a smaller one, paneled in dark wood, with numerous candles, a fire blazing, and many trophies of the hunt hung in the high shadows near the cross-beamed ceiling. A dozen men and women, earls of this and countesses of that, introduced themselves and asked us about our journey. Though some of the men were quite handsome, all of the women were remarkably plain. The chamberlain came to the door and announced His Serene Highness, Prince Charme of Marvella; Her Serene Highness, Princess Ilene. We wouldn’t use their names, of course. They would be called, “Your Highness, this,” “Your Highness, that.” She might be called “ma’am.” They made their way slowly across the room toward us, stopping to speak to each of the other guests as they came. Each man bowed deeply, each woman curtsied.

  He was much as I remembered him, sweet-faced, rather feminine-looking, though he now had a little gray beard and moustache to coyer his gentle mouth and a little tummy to cover his gemmed belt. He was considerably fatter, much softer looking, much, much older. His eyelids made sad little swags of wrinkled flesh, hiding his eyes.

  She was taller than he, very regal, very handsome, with a strange, exotic beauty, like a tiger. No. More like a serpent. Sleek. Also deadly. Her hair was dark, rising from a widow’s peak to make a double bow of her forehead, a line completed by her pointed chin to make a narrow heart shape. She wore a close fitting gown of blood-colored damask. Her face could have been twenty-five, her body younger yet. Her eyes were several hundred. I thought of Queen Mab and knew that what I saw was not what was really there, then I carefully blanked out that thought and assumed the much excited smile of an elderly woman who was, oh, gracious mercy, right here in the room with royalty and all.

  They came up to us. I curtsied. Lord, how long had it been since I had curtsied? My old bones barely made it. Giles bowed. He did it very nicely. He’d had more practice than I, so much was obvious. The chamberlain announced the names we had given. Lady Lavender of Westfaire. Sir Giles of Sawley. It no longer mattered what people called me. Beauty. Dorothy. Catherine. Lavender. I’ll be borrowing Aunt Comfrey’s name next. Though I had no sure reason why, I urgently did not want this woman to know who I really was. Or what I really was.

  “We are pleased to welcome you to Marvella,” said the Prince. His wrinkled eyelids rose, exposing his tender soul. Like a quivering oyster.

  “We are greatly pleased to be so charmingly welcomed,” I murmured. “We had not expected such hospitality.”

  “We have so few visitors,” purred the Princess. “So little news of the outside world.” She looked me up and down, noting the good though plain fabric of my gown—one of those I’d had made in Bristol before we left—the simplicity of my wimple and veil. I knew how I looked. Inoffensive. Her eyes cleared. I was an acceptable dinner guest and nothing to worry about. She gave Giles a quick look and dismissed him, as well. Too old, her eyes said. Not worth the effort.

  I felt his hand tremble on my arm. He had caught her look, and it angered him. Well, it had angered me, as well.

  We were seated near the middle of the long table, guests but not honored guests. So much the better. I would not have enjoyed conversing with the Princess. Or with the Prince. We ate a salmi of duckling, fresh fruit, roast venison, bananas (grown, so the Prince said, in the conservatory), salad, river salmon, and finally a soup of almonds and chicken and lemons. I asked my table companion to my left, an aged baron, if dinners in Marvella always ended with soup and was told that they did. “Always with something warm and liquid, to fill any holes previously unfilled, my dear.” I remembered a dinner I had eaten when I was young, in Chinanga, with Don Masimiliano. Had that been any less real than this?

  We drank wine. I watered mine and kicked Giles, on my right, until he watered his. My left-hand companion was watching me closely, and I murmured something about no longer having the head for wine we had had in our younger years. He was as white headed as I, so we talked about that.

  “I’ve outlived all my generation,” he mumbled. “Charme’s father, Prince William, was younger than I by a couple of years, but I outlived my half brother.”

  I had heard his name and title, but had not made the connection. “You’re His Highness’s uncle,” I said. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize…”

  “Nothing to realize. Uncles don’t count for much. Especially half uncles. Prince William was my younger half brother. Our mother was a widow when she married Charme’s grandfather, Prince Enrico. No, no,” he waved the young squire away who was trying to pour more wine into his cup. “Go give it to the Prince, he needs it worse than I.”

  I decided to risk it. “I met the His Highness’s parents. Years ago, in England.”

  “During the Usurpation,” he nodded, putting a capital letter on it. “The usurper was my older brother, Richard. Richard and I were never in the line of succession, but Richard liked to pretend to have royal blood. Mama didn’t have that. All she had was wealth she’d inherited when our father died. We were babies when Mama married Prince Enrico. Then she bore William, the heir apparent. Richard and I more or less grew up with William. He was the only proper heir, but after Prince Enrico died, Richard stirred up a bunch of malcontents and overthrew the throne.

  “William and his wife and the boy fled to England. After they’d been gone a while, and after Richard started passing tax laws right and left, everyone here in Marvella realized what they’d allowed to happen, so they hanged Richard from a gibbet down in the market square and begged William to come home. He did, him and his wife and Prince Charme and the little girl I felt very lucky to keep my neck unstretched, though everyone knew I’d told Richard he was a fool.”

  “Little girl?” I asked, trying to keep my voice only politely interested while my heart thudded away in a fit.

  “Charme’s daughter. Galantha. Beautiful little girl,” he sighed. “She was about ten when William died. Charme ascended the throne, of course, and everyone was after him to get married again and produce an heir. Put it oft a couple of years before he finally married Ilene. Not long after that the little girl got lost in the mountains. Eaten by beasts, they say. No one mentions her anymore, as hearing her name upsets His Highness.”

  “He’s been married to Ilene for how long?” I asked. Giles, next to me, was listening to this conversation with great interest.

  “Oh, it would be thirty-some-odd years now, wouldn’t it? He was twenty or so when he came back. Around thirty-two when he ascended the throne. He must be seventy now. I’m almost ninety, which is a dreadful great age for a man.”

  “His wife looks very young,” I said, casually, as though it didn’t matter.

  “Holds her looks,” he agreed. “I’m told her family always has held its looks.”

  “A neighboring kingdom?” I suggested.

  He snorted. “Marvella has no neighboring kingdoms, Lady Lavender. Except maybe Nadenada, and it’s not really neighboring. We’re a what-you-call-it, a holdover, a survival. Some crusader did a favor for the King of Aragon, I think it was, or maybe the King of Navarre.
Whoever-it-was rewarded him by making him hereditary Prince of cowplop and sheepclip. The main road over the mountains is that way,” and he waved toward the west, opposite to the direction we’d arrived from. “People used to have to hire porters to carry them down into the gorge, across the river, then up the other side. Prince William used Mama’s money to build a marvelous bridge across the gorge, and now Ponte Marvella makes its living charging tolls. From pilgrims, mostly. Going down from France to Santiago.” He sighed heavily. “I told Richard when he started all the fuss that if he wanted to risk his life taking over something, it should at least be something worth taking. Marvella isn’t much.”

  I saw Ilene’s eyes fixed on my aged informer, a tiny frown between her brows. He was talking too much, too intently, so I laughed with great vivacity, as though he had told me a funny story. Her glance went on past, like the course of a comet, burning ice.

  We drank wine. We ate fruit and nuts. We retired to another room and played at cards for a time. The cards were from Germany and were printed, unlike the painted ones I Was accustomed to in that time. The Prince enthusiastically told me how it was done, how the blocks of wood were carved and then painted with ink and pressed onto the paper. I wondered if Gutenberg was at this moment playing at games and being inspired by the unknown carver of playing cards. Printing would be invented very shortly, and one thing always led to another. I put the thought down resolutely and paid attention to my hand.

  We learned a Spanish game in which players put together “bodies,” that is combinations of six cards making up a head, two arms, two legs, and a torso, and then cried “Hombre” to the others as they put down the man entire. It wasn’t unlike rummy, which I had played with Bill in the twentieth, so I learned it rapidly. Giles caught on very quickly, too, and I was glad to see that he had the same sense I did that it would not be wise for either of us to win anything at all from the Princess.

  Christine de Pisan hadn’t covered the subject of manners around royalty, but Aunt Lavender had. No one could leave until the Prince and Princess left, and they seemed determined to spend the night taking everyone’s money. At last the Prince yawned, everyone stood up, and the royal couple departed. One of the earls fluttered about settling accounts. I paid what we had lost, only enough to be polite, no large amount. I said good night to the baron, my dinner companion, who was half asleep in his chair by the fire, then Giles and I went up to our rooms, where yawning servants waited our arrival and tankards of wash water steamed gently before the fires. I told the maidservant she could go on to bed, that I’d take care of myself after I had taken my cat out. She did not like to let me go alone, but I insisted, and when she had gone I put on my cloak, with Grumpkin in the pocket, and let myself out an unlocked side door.

  I waited about near the stables while Grumpkin found a place that suited him. When he had finished, he went back in my pocket while we strolled about, seeing what was to be seen. All the lights in the castle were out except in one squatty tower, which was so close to the precipice it seemed to hang over it, like a vulture perched on a branch. The tower abutted the flat roof of the castle, so I slipped on the boots—when I wasn’t wearing them, I habitually kept them in the deep pocket of my cloak—and went there in one step, interested in knowing who was still up, and why.

  The room opened upon the roof through a casement window which stood ajar. Inside the Princess sat at a table brushing her hair. Her maid was putting her clothes away in the press. When the maid had finished with the clothing, she poured a cup of wine for her mistress and went away, shutting the heavy door behind her. The Princess got up and bolted the door. Interesting, I thought, wondering what interruption she feared. Certainly none from Prince Charming. I had seen no indication he would be inclined to invade her privacy. He had scarcely looked at her during the evening.

  After a time the Princess stood up, walked to the far side of the room, and removed a veil or hanging of some kind. I saw her hand pulling the veil away, but I could not see what it had covered.

  I inched closer to the low, crenelated parapet, which was the only thing between me and the valley floor, a quite dangerous distance below. By craning my neck, I got a better view of her. She was standing naked in front of a tall mirror with wiverns carved about the frame. I had never seen a mirror that size in the fourteenth or fifteenth. I didn’t know they could make flat glass that size. The Princess put her hands out, beautiful hands, then stroked them down her face, and intoned:

  “Lord within the glass, declare!

  Lord, who holds my beauty thrall:

  you have made me passing fair;

  am I fairest of them all?”

  A face formed in the glass. A dark face. Not dark in the sense of color, but dark in the sense of being hidden. It did not really show itself. It merely hinted at being. Despite this, I recognized it. It was Jaybee’s face. Not precisely his, but the paradigm of what his face was and meant in its totality. Seeing it, I could say, “This is the pattern from which Jaybee’s face was made.” When the voice came, it matched the face, full of a mocking, horrid laughter.

  “One time you were, and then were not,

  but now are fairest once again,

  while she whose beauty is forgot,

  sleeps on among her little men.

  Snow white of skin, and black of hair,

  with gentle lips flushed sweetly red;

  full long has she lain sleeping there,

  with all believing she is dead.”

  The Princess made a gesture, a stroking of herself, breast to hip, approving herself. She tilted her head, to get a better look at the line of her throat. “Full long she sleeps,” she cried in a jubilant voice. “Oh, long time, yes. And will, forever.”

  In the mirror the dreadful being smiled and glanced my way. I gasped. Beneath my breastbone something flared into life, aware of deadly danger. My foot slipped on the roof, making a sound. The Princess whirled, like a great hunting creature, eyes wide, ears pricked. “Boots,” I whispered, “take me to my room.”

  I was there! I slipped the cloak beneath the bed and myself into it with Grumpkin beside me, pulling my wimple off as I snuggled down, so my white old locks would show. I let the candle burn so she could see me there plainly. I shut my eyes, knowing she would come. Oh, yes, she would come down from her tower to see who had been spying on her. And she would come faster than any ordinary old woman could have come down all those stairs, thinking to find my room empty and me on the way….

  She was quick! The door opened. Someone peered in. I turned, as though sleepily, saying, “Whaa?”

  The door closed, and she was gone. She believed someone had been outside her room, but she didn’t know who. Down the hall, I heard her open Giles’s door. And then close it. He really was asleep. I let time pass, scarcely breathing, pretending sleep. She might be watching. She might be hovering outside my window, like an owl. The candle burned to a smoky stub and guttered out.

  Would she let it go at that? Would she ask that thing in the mirror who’d been spying on her?

  More important, could it tell her?

  “Fenoderee,” I whispered, “I need a friend.”

  He slipped into bed beside me, yawning. “I thought you’d never ask,” he said. His sickle rattled upon the floor. “Oh, you do need a friend, Beauty. Hastiness here. And you’ve got old Carabosse half sick with worry.”

  “Worse than mere worry,” said a voice on the other side. Puck.

  “What’s going on here?” I said. “Who is Ilene?”

  “A witch,” said Puck, matter-of-factly. “She signed one of the usual witch contracts with the Dark Lord, her soul and body in return for being young and beautiful for a few hundred years. Of course, he threw a trick into it. He always does.”

  “A trick?”

  Fenoderee nodded; I could feel his head going up and down on the pillow. “Ilene remains beautiful only so long as there is no other female in the kingdom as beautiful as she. She started out in quite a large ki
ngdom, had to dispose of quite a lot of pretty girls, and the word got around. They came after her with hayforks and torches, the Transylvanian kind you use on monsters, you know? So she moved to a smaller kingdom, and then one smaller yet. Here in Marvella, there weren’t all that many beauties to start with, and the last one she had to do away with was Galantha.”

  “Galantha?” I asked.

  “Galantha. That little springtime flower, the white one that droops its head.”

  “Snowdrop?”

  “That one, yes.”

  What a really odd name for a child! Hadn’t one fairy tale been enough? Of course, that bit with the mirror had been a dead giveaway. Magic collects magic, Carabosse had said. “My granddaughter?” I asked, trying to disbelieve but not succeeding one whit.

  “That’s right,” said Fenoderee. “Your granddaughter.”

  “Who isn’t really dead!”

  “No. Ilene tried, but she couldn’t kill Snowdrop. She sent a huntsman to kill her, and he couldn’t. She tried a cursed lace, then a poisoned comb, and that didn’t work. Snowdrop is one-eighth fairy, after all. Witches can’t be allowed to go around killing off fairies, even part ones. No, though Ilene tried several times to get Snow taken care of, everything failed except the apple.”

  “The apple?” I started to ask. There was a sound outside in the corridor, and my bed was suddenly empty of anyone but me and Grumpkin. The door opened, and I heard Giles whispering to me.

  “Beauty? Catherine? Lavender? Are you all right?”

  He came in and crouched on the bed beside me. We whispered together as I told him part of what I had seen. It took very little talk between us to decide this place was dangerous and that we wanted to be elsewhere. The Dark Lord had seen me, or sensed me, or at least caught a glimpse of me, so much was clear. What I wasn’t sure of was what else he’d seen. In that moment the thing had flared up within me, and I’d felt like a lantern, throwing light in all directions. Had the thing in the mirror seen that?