by Maia Chance
“She did?”
Ophelia nodded. “She said the Beast is transformed by water from an enchanted spring.”
“An enchanted spring.” Penrose spurred his horse on. “The ruined castle is built over a spring.”
* * *
They passed the château gates and kept going along the river road in the other direction.
“Eerie, isn’t it?” Ophelia said as their horses trotted through the village Vézère. Not a light shone in a window, although it was suppertime now. “It’s almost as though everyone has simply . . . left.”
In the blacksmith’s hut, embers glowed red in the furnace. A crow cackled on the roof. The last building in the village was a pitch-dark stable. A horse whinnied softly as they passed, and Ophelia fancied she saw the white flash of its eye.
Presently they rounded a bend in the road, and there was the ruined castle: jagged and flat-looking, like a cut paper silhouette. The moon drifted to its left, and Ophelia had the spooky feeling that once the moon was right up over the castle, something might . . . happen.
They rode up the steep-pitched castle road and left their horses hitched to trees at the abandoned inn. They went up the stairs on foot.
At first Ophelia thought it was the wind. Moaning. Wailing. But each step up the stairs brought the sounds into sharper focus. It wasn’t the wind; it was chanting. Dozens of voices chanting, underlaid by the hollow plodding heartbeat of a drum.
Her skin went clammy. Penrose quickened his step, and she knew he’d heard the chanting, too. At the top of the stairs, they stayed close to the castle’s outer wall and peered through the archway. The courtyard was empty. The chanting coiled down from somewhere above, where battlements and towers cut the sky like jack-o’-lantern teeth.
* * *
Gabriel and Miss Flax crept to one of the towers. Up. They needed to go up, to where the chanting was. Around and around they climbed until they emerged outside, atop a tower with low crenelated walls.
Gabriel gasped, and Miss Flax whispered, “Mercy.”
On another tower, several yards off and below them several feet, a crowd of people stood. Light from the moon, almost directly above, washed down like pale water. Their chanting droned on and on to the accompaniment of the drum.
Gabriel and Miss Flax went to the wall, crouched, and peered over. They were close enough to make out faces. There was Lucile with her grandmother, Madame Genepy. There were the village adolescent boys, for once still and grave. There was the cook, Marielle, swaying, eyes closed and hands raised as she chanted, and beside her the château gardener, Luc. The stringy brown-clad man was there, and Gabriel caught the white flash of his nose plaster. He’d broken it, then. The entire village, it seemed, man, woman, and child, was ringed around an empty center.
The crowd parted. A huge figure in pale flowing robes emerged from somewhere, a wreath in his hands.
“That’s Marcel,” Miss Flax whispered. “The blacksmith! What’s he holding—it looks like that wreath is made of—”
“Belladonna berries.”
“What is he, some sort of priest? And look what he’s got around his neck. It’s the jawbone, strung like some kind of amulet.”
Marcel lifted the belladonna wreath to the moon, as in offering.
The chanting crescendoed.
Gabriel could scarcely breathe. This was madness. Utter madness. This was the year 1867, for pity’s sake. Who in Europe—at least, in the western nations of Europe—partook in pagan rites? And where was Miss Banks? Gabriel scanned the crowd, but he did not see her. There was Tolbert, though, moving in and out of sight at the back of the crowd.
Marcel lowered the wreath and turned, robes swirling. He held out a commanding hand. Again, the crowd parted.
A woman, head drooped and hands behind her back, was led forward by two men. She wore a gown of pale gold.
“Bernadette!” Miss Flax said with a gasp. “That’s—they mean to sacrifice Bernadette? That’s who they stormed the château to find, and we did not even notice she was missing!”
“God Lord, I am a fool. These tales—the de Villeneuve, all of them—the human bride must be of noble blood. Miss Banks isn’t of noble blood; Bernadette Gavage is. I must go—”
“Look!” Miss Flax whispered. “Here comes . . . Merciful heavens.”
A man led forth a huge furry boar by a rope around its neck.
Gabriel bolted to his feet. “They’re mad. I must intervene.”
“You’ll be outnumbered, professor! Please, stay.”
Gabriel patted his jacket. His revolver was still there, and loaded.
Miss Flax pointed to a pile of crumbled stones. “We could throw rocks if need be, keeping ourselves hidden behind the battlement. Isn’t that what the knights did in the olden days?”
“God only knows what the villagers have planned.”
“That boar won’t hurt Bernadette. Look at it. It’s as docile as a lamb.”
“A six-foot-long lamb with bristles and tusks.”
“Please don’t leave.”
Gabriel’s heart tugged. Miss Flax was frightened. Had he ever seen her so?
He crouched beside her again.
The boar was led to a stop beside Bernadette. Marcel placed the belladonna wreath on Bernadette’s loose, messy hair. Bernadette jerked her arms, which appeared to be tied at the wrist. Marcel cried, “In this land before time began, the Mother of the Seasons made this land lush with animals.”
“What did he say?” Miss Flax whispered.
Gabriel translated, adding, “That is how Madame Genepy’s tale begins.”
Marcel continued, and Gabriel translated softly for Miss Flax. “‘But a deep enchantment put the land to sleep. All of the animals turned to stone. Men and women froze into mineral columns.’” Comprehension unfolded in Gabriel’s mind. Animals turned to stone? The animals in the painted cave. Men and women petrified into mineral columns? Not the marble statues of de Villeneuve’s prettified tale; stalactites and stalagmites. “‘The land will continue to sleep unless Beast and Human are reunited in marriage.’”
“He means to marry Bernadette to a boar?” Miss Flax whispered.
“It would seem so. I hope this means she is not in danger.” Gabriel translated what Marcel said next: “‘That was a magical time, a time of dreams, with no divides between humans and animals, between humans and the world. Today we dwell in a disenchanted world. We have lost the language of the animals. We see only oblivion staring out of their dark eyes. But we may mend this rift, yea, we may mend it!’”
This, then, explained the villagers’ seemingly backward hostility towards Griffe’s scientific improvements. Those improvements included deforestation and more aggressive, large-scale animal agriculture. But the folk of Vézère practiced simple animal husbandry and relied upon hunted meat and foraged wild plants.
Marcel shouted up at the moon, “Mother of the Seasons! Grant us absolution! We are sorry we fell from your grace. Mother, help us!” The crowd moaned, dozens of arms upstretched to the moon. The drum thumped louder, faster. “Mother, take this virgin of noble blood! Make her the bride of this sweet-hearted beast. Through their union gather your people once more to the long-lost bosom of the earth!”
Marcel said something to one of the nearby men, and the man stepped forward to remove the ropes at Bernadette’s wrists. Marcel grabbed Bernadette’s arm and placed it around the boar’s furred neck.
Bernadette screamed.
Gabriel got to his feet. “I cannot stand by any longer. I am sorry, Miss Flax. I shall return.” He kissed the top of her head and ran for the stairs.
* * *
Ophelia considered following Professor Penrose, but then thought better of it. If things got down to the nitty-gritty, she could do more from up here with her pile of rubble than she could if she rushed empty-handed into a crowd of cra
zed heathen villagers.
Still, she fought to keep her breathing steady. For if something were to happen to the professor . . . No, it didn’t bear thinking of.
She couldn’t understand what Marcel was saying without Penrose translating. Marcel was still droning on, arms raised. The crowd kept crying out and moaning, and the drum thumped on.
Bernadette quaked, her arm around the boar. Her face was a mask of fear and disgust. The boar snuffled at something by its hooves.
What would the villagers do when they saw the professor?
Ophelia’s skin began to crawl. At first she figured it was on account of the ghoulish spectacle. Then she reckoned it was the chilly wind. But . . . something made her turn.
* * *
Gabriel crept through the ruined castle, which was here washed by moonlight, there sunk in shadow. The villagers were appealing to the Mother of the Seasons—their goddess, evidently—to stop the marauding beasts as well as Griffe’s deforestation. They were desperate; they felt under attack, and they seemed to think that marrying a wild boar to a lady of noble blood would do the trick.
He followed the throbbing drum and the villagers’ moans up a coiled staircase and out onto the top of the tower. He emerged at the back of the crowd; no one saw him.
Where had Tolbert gone?
Gabriel hid behind a heap of stones and watched, ready to spring forward if need be.
Marcel held up a wooden chalice, and through the din of the crowd, Gabriel pieced together that the chalice held water—enchanted water, if Marcel was to be believed—from the castle wellspring. Marcel offered the chalice to the boar, and the boar took a few messy laps. Marcel offered the chalice to Bernadette. Bernadette reared away in disgust.
“Drink!” Marcel yelled in French.
Shaking, Bernadette took a sip. She gagged.
The crowd keened and shouted.
Another woman stepped into the inner circle. The cook, Marielle. She held something up, and it flashed red. A ruby ring.
Marcel spoke in an undertone, now, as priests sometimes did when administering vows. He addressed the boar first. The boar shifted, eyes rolling. Marcel addressed Bernadette, and Bernadette shook her head. Marcel grabbed her hand and pushed the ruby ring onto her finger. The drum’s tempo lunged forward, and the crowd began to dance.
* * *
Ophelia’s mouth fell open. A dark form stood at the top of the tower steps. Human legs, trunk, arms. But a big, furry boar’s head with tusks that gleamed white.
There was a peculiar hissing sound, and Ophelia realized it came from her own lungs. She dove, still on her knees, for the pile of rubble and grabbed the first stone that she could. She scrabbled to her feet, never taking her eyes from the beast in the shadows.
“Come on, then,” Ophelia said. “Take off your mask. You might’ve had everyone else fooled, but I never believed for a second you were real. Who are you under there? Mr. Tolbert? Mr. Larsen? Gerard?”
Silence. The beast’s shoulders rose and fell.
Ophelia got a firmer grip on the stone and took a few steps forward. “Come on, then, take that moth-eaten mask off. You made it from one of the mounted heads in the château study, didn’t you? How can you breathe in there? Did you poke yourself some nice breathing holes?”
Still, silence.
Who was it under there? It was the murderer, Ophelia was certain, and that ought to have made her turn tail. But by gum, she’d cornered the beast and the murderer. Wild horses couldn’t pull her away now.
She closed the distance between herself and the beast in one second flat. She chucked her stone aside and took the bottom edge of the beast’s furry head in each hand.
The beast grunted and reared back. Weakling. Ophelia tugged harder and downward, so the beast-impostor was bent at the waist and its head was sideways. One last tug and the beast plopped on its rump. The mask was free.
“You little bitch,” Ivy Banks snarled, splay-legged in gent’s trousers.
“What in—what in tarnation are you doing dressed up as a beast, Miss Banks? We came out here, rushed out, searching for you. Professor Penrose fancied you had been kidnapped after you’d headed out into the evening with a broken heart.”
Ivy tittered. “Just like a gentleman, is it not, to suppose a lady’s every action is on account of him?”
“It was you every time, wasn’t it? Every time someone spied a beast it was you in this nasty old boar’s head.” Ophelia looked down at the boar’s head in her hands. It reeked of rancid animal grease. She dropped it. “You whacked Professor Penrose and me over the head that night—you pushed your own fiancé into a canal.”
“Serves him right, cavorting in the night with another woman. It wasn’t me every time, you know.” Ivy got to her feet. “I didn’t kill the livestock.”
“Then who did?”
“How would I know?”
“You meant to scare the villagers,” Ophelia said. “Spook them into thinking their beast legend had come to life.”
“Why not? They believe all that rubbish anyway, or did you not notice their little ritual going on just now? They ought to thank me for making their pitiful backwater theology a reality. I got the idea from that hysterical cook the morning Mr. Knight’s body was discovered in the orangerie.”
Mr. Knight, she’d said. Didn’t Ivy know that really had been Jack Potter?
“It seemed a brilliant way to . . .” Ivy pressed her lips together.
“To what?” Ophelia said. “To distract everyone from the fact that you murdered a man?”
“Do I look as though I could kill a man?” Ivy bent and picked up the stone Ophelia had dropped.
“Yes. You do.”
“It wasn’t me. Father raised me to be a lady. The very thought of me cornering Mr. Knight and poisoning him with belladonna in his wine!”
“Then that is how you did it?”
“I told you, it wasn’t me.”
“But you went through all the trouble of dressing up in a beast costume every night and traipsing about the countryside—”
“It was really quite fun. So very liberating. But you already know the joys of gentlemen’s trousers, don’t you?”
“You’re attempting to convince me that you went to all the trouble of dressing up every night as a moth-eaten boar, even though you didn’t . . .” Ophelia’s voice trailed off. Who would Ivy go through all that trouble to protect besides herself? “Your father is the murderer,” Ophelia said. “Why?”
“I don’t know. He won’t speak to me now, and I did everything for him. To save him.”
A daughter sacrificing herself to save her father. Now why did that sound so familiar?
“That night,” Ivy said, “I saw it all through the orangerie windows. I couldn’t sleep, and I’d seen Papa creep into the orangerie from my bedchamber window. I put on my wrap and followed. I was worried.”
Worried, Ophelia’s foot. Ivy was mad for management and power.
“I saw Papa toast Mr. Knight with a glass of wine. They drank. Soon, Mr. Knight convulsed and Father . . . he did nothing. Only watched a bit, and once Mr. Knight was bleeding horribly from that pitchfork wound—that was an accident—Papa left. But dear Papa had taken no measures at all to conceal his crime. He required my help. I fetched Father’s heart tablets from his chamber—”
“His heart tablets? Then it is a heart ailment!”
“Quite obviously. I went quickly, you see, before Papa returned to his bedchamber. I ran so hard, I had a stitch in my side. I fetched my own traveling sickness medicine, too, because that’s got belladonna in it, and I fancied that would create confusion as well.”
It most certainly had. “You dumped the traveling sickness tablets in the goldfish pool.”
“I needed to be rid of the tablets, and the fish pool seemed as good a place as any. Then I recalled
how everyone had gone on about the roses, so I placed one in the vicar’s hands.”
“To muddle things even more.”
“Yes, and after all that, I fancied Papa would be safe from suspicion.”
“Did he know you’d done all that?”
“Oh, no. It was all going just swimmingly until you began snooping about, Miss Flax—is that a stage name? Then, I assumed the guise of the beast each evening to further create suspicion.”
“And you kept going on about the villagers, how scary and suspicious they were, in an effort to draw attention away from yourself. Why did you kill Madame Dieudonné?”
“I didn’t! Papa did. We both overheard her, right here at the castle, telling you that she knew who the murderer was. I saw the look of dread on Papa’s face. I knew he would kill her when he could. When we were all searching for her after that silly conjuring trick with the mirror, Papa shot her.”
“You allowed Henrietta to take the blame.”
“She’s a criminal.”
“But not a murderess.”
“Does it matter? Women like that ought to be locked up. Women like you.”
“What about tonight?” Ophelia asked. “Why did you come here? Why did you costume yourself as the beast?”
“I hoped Lord Harrington would come here, looking for me, of course, but finding the villagers instead.”
“So he would suppose the villagers committed the murders?”
“Something like that. And the costume, well, my goodness, I could not be recognized, could I? Oh dear. Me and my tripping little tongue!—now you know far too much.” Ivy smiled and took a step towards Ophelia, stone in hands. “I cannot have Papa arrested for two murders, can I? Out here in the hills and the trees, your body will simply vanish into the river or over a cliff, or perhaps a wild beast will devour it before anyone notices you are missing.” Ivy hefted the stone overhead and lunged.
Ophelia dodged around Ivy and stumbled down the tower steps.
31
