The Heart of The Beast

by Susan Kohler

  The Heart of The Beast

  a romantic adult fairytale revealing how the

  power of love can overcome the hardest heart

  Susan Kohler

  CCB Publishing

  British Columbia, Canada

  The Heart of The Beast: A romantic adult fairytale revealing how the power of love can overcome the hardest heart

  Copyright ©2007 by Susan Kohler

  ISBN-13 978-0-9783893-7-6

  First Edition

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Kohler, Susan, 1950-

  The Heart of The Beast [electronic resource]: A romantic adult fairytale revealing how the power of love can overcome the hardest heart / written by Susan Kohler.

  Also available in print format.

  ISBN 978-0-9783893-7-6

  I. Title.

  PS3611.O47H43 2007a 813'.6 C2007-906910-X

  Original cover art design by John Nofsinger.

  Extreme care has been taken to ensure that all information presented in this book is accurate and up to date at the time of publishing. Neither the author nor the publisher can be held responsible for any errors or omissions. Additionally, neither is any liability assumed for damages resulting from the use of the information contained herein.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the express written permission of the publisher. Printed in the United States of America and the United Kingdom.

  Publisher: CCB Publishing

  British Columbia, Canada

  www.ccbpublishing.com

  Dedication

  To all my friends: your faith, your help, your suggestions and your encouragement were all priceless in writing this book, but it's your offbeat, risqué and slightly kinky sense of humor that really keeps me going. You’re the best!

  Other books by Susan Kohler

  The Paddle Club

  Hot Crossed Buns

  Another Batch of Warm Buns

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  Once upon a time…

  There was a grand castle built high on a hill overlooking a small, poor village. The peasants living in the village had a rugged life, but overall it was a tolerable life. They worked arduously planting fields and groves, and tending the green pastures for grazing their small herds of cattle, sheep and goats. Small flocks of chickens, geese and ducks wandered near some of the rough cottages.

  The surrounding countryside was lush and green, the nearby forest filled with wild game. Although they were rarely allowed to hunt there, and the penalty for poaching the lord’s game was stiff indeed, sometimes a deer or boar would find its way onto a villager’s table.

  The villagers were, down to the last man, dirt poor, but most of them were decent and hard working. They had to be, for any man who thought he could gain by taking advantage of others soon faced the wrath of the ruling lord.

  The lord of the castle was well liked and respected by everyone. He was a fair ruler. He could be fierce and stern, but oftentimes he would bring the villagers a bit of game for their tables. He would ask after their families, and when doing so he would show a kindly smile.

  He had ample reason to smile. He had a beautiful wife, whom he loved deeply. The lord and his lady also had a wondrous family: Two strong, handsome sons: one nearing manhood and one still but a small lad. He also had a daughter, an exceedingly lovely daughter. She showed signs of becoming an extraordinarily beautiful woman, with intelligence and a good heart. Her strong will was already apparent, and the lord secretly feared that she might become too headstrong. Even more secretly, he took pride in her strong will. Everyone should have lived happily ever after, and for a while, they did.

  Until one day the invaders came. They came with a large army, heavily armed and well trained. There were dozens of foot soldiers, scores of archers and swordsmen, along with several dozen mounted soldiers, all led by a powerful knight and his retainers.

  The old lord went out to meet them with his small army of guards and foot soldiers. The battle was fierce, bloody and very short. When it was over, the old lord was brutally slain and his fighting men were badly defeated; most of them died with their liege. His despondent wife and three children were feared slain, or so most everyone thought. Some claimed that his wife lived. There were faint rumours that although she was filled with grief, she survived, and that fearing for the safety of her children, she had taken them and fled never to be seen again.

  Since the knight leading the assault on the castle was himself slain in the invasion, the distant King decided to reward one of his other young knights by granting him the castle and the surrounding lands to live in and to rule.

  The knight he chose to reward was young, about twenty-five. He was very special to the King, although few knew the real reason why. The knight, who now was the new lord of the land, was widely known for his fighting skills and bloodthirsty temper. He was a cold and forbidding man, a knight whose very lack of mercy or human compassion gave him a strange and terrifying appellation, one that all knew but few were bold enough to say aloud. That his very brutality worried the King, a King who had shown himself to be harsh and brutal, was a strong testament to how cold and battle hardened the knight truly was.

  Secretly, the King hoped that peace and a permanent home, along with the responsibilities that come with ruling, would tame the fierce, grim knight to some degree. Perchance his own land and serfs to rule would teach the fearsome warrior some basic human emotions, would teach him the import of a man’s life and even the value of his own his happiness, without weakening him too much.

  The King knew that to be a great man, the knight needed to add some human factors to his cruel disposition: Wisdom, mercy, a degree of patience and especially some compassion. Mayhap, the King reflected, now that the war is over, his knight would learn these things well enough so that he would no longer be called by that terrifying appellation, that he would no longer be known by the simple but dreadful name… The Beast.

  Chapter One

  Life in the small village had greatly changed since the day of the terrible invasion. Life was much more tenuous, survival more arduous, and death took many of the villagers through starvation and disease. The villagers were even poorer now than they had been before. Much of their livestock had been either killed outright in the fierce battle or stolen by the invading hordes.

  The villagers had not been able to replenish their meagre flocks of chickens, geese and ducks. The herds of swine, goats and lambs had grown back a little but still remained greatly diminished. There were precious few cattle left in the herds. Virtually all the horses had been stolen or killed, so many of the villagers had to plow the land by hand.

  It wasn’t just the lack of livestock. Nature had conspired with the invaders, it seemed, and followed the invasion with a few years of bad weather, at least for farming. There was precious little rain, and the summers were warmer than normal. The crops had been very poor for the past few years, not yielding nearly enough to replenish the village after the invasion.

  Several oth
er things had hurt the small village as well: The new lord had raised the rents to be paid by the farmers but he saw no need to do anything for them. The villagers worked so hard to pay the rents that they had no time to even begin repairs on any of the small huts they lived in.

  Even the sanitation in the village suffered after the invasion. The old lord had ordered the village to be kept clean, a rule many of the villagers thought to be foolish in the extreme. Still, the village had been spared many of the diseases that scourged the countryside.

  Now, with no one to enforce the order and the villagers working so hard just to survive, filth had built up in the village. All vestiges of the old lord’s sanitary rules were lost. The added waste and refuse had caused several diseases to sweep through the village, greatly decimating the population. Those who remained struggled to merely survive.

  The villagers hunted for game in the forest but it was a very dangerous undertaking because poaching the lord’s game carried a death penalty. The Beast imposed the penalty with absolutely no mercy. Bodies of hanged men lined the road to the castle, even though the Beast periodically ordered them cut down.

  Worst of all, the new lord believed it was his right to use the peasants as he saw fit. There were rumours of women being dragged to the castle on his order. Few returned, and they were greatly wounded, left with scars on their young bodies and their minds that never really faded.

  Beauty, the defeated lord’s daughter, and her family had moved away from the village immediately after the invasion but wherever they travelled, life was extremely rugged. Poverty was rampant throughout the country. The new lord was rebuilding many things, but he had so far kept most of his efforts close to his own home. His reign was still new and tenuous, and he fought to establish control. Outlaying villages were barely noticed.

  Although few in the small village knew the former lady and her family very well if at all, to them the small town still felt like home. They had roots there and a sense of connection to the past. In truth, they felt a sense of obligation to the villagers. So, even with living conditions as bad as they were in the village, the old lord’s widow and her family chose to return there to live as simple peasants.

  They had some fear of the new lord. There were rumours about him. It was said by some that the surviving families of the conquered lords had been hunted down and slaughtered. Nonetheless Beauty’s family hoped the new lord thought them to be dead and would not look for them to be living in the very shadow of their old home.

  It was a beautiful spring morning. The sky was clear and blue with just traces of soft, fluffy clouds. The surrounding hills were plush and green, and the crops in the fields were growing nicely, for the first time in years. There were a few lambs, young and frisky, grazing on a distant hillside. Even a few calves were nursing, but alas there were no playful foals. Wildflowers grew at the entrance to the forest, which abounded with deer, boar and other wild game.

  Beauty surveyed her surroundings with a sigh. She loved this countryside and its splendour but there was always a slight tightening in her throat as she studied the huge stone castle that arose from the distant hillside, casting a shadow of dread over the entire countryside. Waves of emotions washed over her: Regret, longing, despair and resentment, even hatred. She shivered, although the day was much too warm for the uncomfortable way she was dressed.

  She wore a bulky and ill-fitting dress, made of plain, thick, grey wool, with a high neckline and long sleeves. It was monstrous and unflattering, like all the dresses she was used to wearing. Along with the dress, she wore a long, heavy cloak and hood that covered her face, hair and body completely. Under the hood, her long hair was pulled back and crudely tied at the nape of her neck with a rough leather thong.

  She hated the drab and concealing garb but she had no real choice in the matter. Her older brother, Tom, warned her constantly that if she let anyone see her, her unique beauty could be her downfall. She could fall prey to not only the crude attentions of the village men, but she might also be unfortunate enough to draw the barbarous lust of the Beast, the young knight who ruled as lord of the manor. Remembering the few times she’d seen the knight from a distance riding his great, black warhorse, she shivered again and knew her brother had been right.

  Beauty sighed again, softly, and thought to herself, if she hid herself so completely, how would she ever find a man to marry? What man would ever notice her? Who could she ever meet? How could she ever fall in love? She had no idea where to even begin looking for a husband. In truth, she thought ruefully, she had no idea what station or rank of man she should consider since her family’s fortunes had sunk so low. Should she try to make friends with one of the peasant boys? Or should she try to find her life’s mate amongst the nobility? What about the displaced nobles?

  She knew few men from either class, and the few that did know of her had never seen her without the bulky, concealing outfit which was hardly apparel destined to attract a man’s attention or arouse his passion.

  It seemed to Beauty that she was doomed to a life alone, without a mate or children. She could face life without a husband, if need be, but she longed for children to love. Her resentment of the bleak future was yet another fault she placed straight at the feet of the Beast.

  The village men she could handle, it was mainly to avoid the Beast’s odious attentions that she was forced to hide herself in such hideous garb, and it was because of him that she now had to work like the lowest field hand. Cursing the Beast under her breath, she smote the hard soil with her hoe.

  The Beast ruled his newly acquired lands and peasants with absolute authority, dispensing his own form of law absent regard for justice, and wanting the smallest trace of mercy or compassion. Many men had been tortured or even hung after being accused of the smallest of crimes, and without the least question as to their guilt or innocence.

  As lord, the Beast also truly believed he had the absolute right to take any of the women who lived in the village for himself or any of his men. If a woman belonged on his land, he reasoned cruelly, she belonged to him. Both of Beauty’s brothers had told her countless tales of the young and innocent women he had taken to the castle. Wild stories of young girls who were both scared and scarred when they were finally returned, battered and bruised, and they also spoke of bastard children left to starve or to scratch out life as just another peasant.

  The most frightening stories Beauty had heard were of the girls who never returned at all. There had been too many of them since the Beast had come to be the lord of the land. Some of the village girls had run away, to be sure, but others certainly had not.

  There were reports of mangled bodies found in ditches by the roadside or deep in the woods. They had been slaughtered, bloodied and broken before being left to rot. The corpses showed signs of great violence: Bruises, broken bones, rope burns and a multitude of knife wounds. Beauty knew of at least six young girls who had been found murdered in the last five years, all since the Beast had come to rule the castle. More were missing and never to be found.

  Beauty even personally knew of a lass named Molly, no older than herself, who came back from a night in the castle after being beaten so severely that she’d been left crippled. Although she never spoke of what happened to her, it was widely known that she was taken to the castle by the order of the Beast. Molly later found out she was pregnant. In desperation, the lass had killed herself and the babe within her. Beauty’s older brother had been fond of Molly, had even thought of taking the girl as his wife.

  Beauty sighed as she leaned on her crude hoe and rubbed the small of her back with one dirty hand. She paused, exhausted from the sheer drudgery of planting even a small vegetable garden in the rock hard clay, and reflected on the turn her family’s fortunes had taken. Once, Beauty and her family had lived a truly happy life and the future stretched out in front of them like a jewel just waiting to be picked up.

  Now her father was dead and her older brother worked in the stables at the castle, slaving f
or the same man he held accountable for so much grief, both for his own family and for the rest of the villagers. He truly believed the Beast to be a monster. The monster who was responsible for poverty and desperation in the village, his own family’s downfall, and so many serf girls’ bloody and violent deaths.

  Tom despised the Beast with his entire being and hated working in the monster’s castle but he well knew he had no choice in the matter. His family needed his meagre wages, along with the small amount they made from the crops that Beauty and his younger brother Nate worked so hard to eke from the land on their pitifully sparse farm.

  Now, because their father was dead and their lives so filled with despair, their mother, once a beautiful and joyful woman was wasting away, desperately ill in her heart and mind.

  For the sake of his family, Tom had swallowed his hatred and his need for revenge and taken the lowly job. Every instinct he possessed, to the deepest corner of his soul called for him to avenge the wrongs done both to his family and to the lass, Molly. Only the knowledge that to do so would not only further endanger his remaining family but also bring about their total ruination, stayed his hand.

  At times, Tom hated himself, believing himself to be a weakling and a coward for not seeking his vengeance, but to Beauty he was a true hero for putting his family’s survival above his thirst for vengeance. Beauty well knew Tom still held need for that revenge in his heart, only waiting until the right time to strike out and destroy the Beast. She feared the day when Tom’s threadbare patience was finally worn through, when his iron control was shattered beyond all endurance. She feared that day for she knew its mark would mean the end of her brother’s life.

  Beauty returned to her chore, bending her back into the slow, painful job of breaking up the hard clay sod with the hoe, reaching down occasionally to pull up a particularly tough weed. Hearing a faint cry in the distance, she looked up from her toil and saw her younger brother, Nate, running toward her through the fields. She smiled, watching the lad of fourteen years run with all the boundless energy of youth but when he stumbled and almost fell, Beauty knew at once, somewhere deep within herself, that there was grave trouble running along with him.