“It was no use. Princess Marianne refused to forgive me. I don’t blame her.”
“You can’t give up,” Belle insisted. “You can still make it up to them. But we have to get you out of here first.”
A gust of wind shook the vines above Belle, knocking free the raindrops clinging to the leaves. They fell on Belle’s head, and she brushed them off. “The Magic Atlas is in the castle somewhere. I just need to find it.”
“No, Belle.” The Prince reached up and grabbed a bar in each hand, his gaze filled with worry. “You’ll get caught.”
A raindrop hit the tip of Belle’s nose, tickling her skin. She reached up to wipe it off. “I’ll figure out a…a…” A shiver shook her whole body, and she couldn’t hold it back: “Ah-choo!”
“Who’s that!” the squeaky-voiced guard called.
“It came from that way,” the other answered.
“It was just a bird,” Belle heard Lumiere say. “So musical, no?” But his attempt to fool the guards was drowned out by their shouting. Belle didn’t stop to think. She dashed around the way she’d come, the guards’ footsteps echoing behind her.
Lumiere stared at her wide-eyed as she neared the front of the castle and the open gates. “Belle…”
“Go! Go!” she urged, not slowing, trying to keep her voice down. “Before they—”
“Stop her!” one of the guards shouted.
Belle rushed toward the castle door opposite the gates. “Hurry!” she urged Lumiere over her shoulder as she threw her body against the door, forcing it open. She entered the castle, stumbling into a large, empty foyer. Gray stone walls rose on either side of her. “She’s gone inside!” she heard the squeaky-voiced guard shriek.
Belle raced to the end of the foyer and pivoted to enter a long hallway, hoping Lumiere and Cogsworth had taken the chance to flee. The hallway was nearly as gloomy as the foyer. There were no windows, so the only light came from thick candles set in widely spaced sconces. The footsteps of the guards thundered after her.
A tall, reed-thin butler suddenly stepped into the hallway in front of her, staring at her with a mixture of confusion and alarm.
“Stop her!” the guards shouted again.
Belle darted into a room. There was more light here, but it was filtered through a haze of dust. Dust covered not only the floor, but the furnishings as well. Cobwebs hung from the ceiling corners. It was as if she’d stumbled into a ruin.
The guards grew closer, and Belle passed through the doorway to the next room. She looked for a place to hide, but this room was as spare and lifeless as the first, with only a few pieces of furniture covered in dust. There were no cabinets to slip into, no curtains to hide behind.
Another passageway led to a rectangular room lined with bookshelves. It looked like a smaller version of the royal library in the Prince’s castle—except that the shelves were empty.
Where were the books? Where were the castle’s residents, for that matter? Belle didn’t have the time to ponder either question—the guards were right behind her. She raced to the doorway at the opposite end of the room and dashed through, only to find herself back in the hall.
A staircase lay ahead, with wide steps leading to the upper levels of the east and west wings. Next to it was a narrower staircase leading down. Belle took it. After descending about ten steps, she stopped. The guards approached, their boots stomping across the stone floor of the hallway. The stomps grew closer, then paused.
“I don’t see her anywhere,” Belle heard one of the guards say.
“She must have gone upstairs,” the other said.
The steps resumed—clomp, clomp, clomp—and then faded away.
She was safe for the moment. She continued carefully down the steps to a lower corridor, which was even darker than the halls upstairs. There were no lamps here, but the hallway was narrow enough that if she stretched her arms wide, she could touch the walls on either side. She used her hands to feel her way, searching for a gap to indicate a doorway.
Her path took odd and sudden turns as she went on. The floor sloped down, and the air around her grew chillier. It felt like she was burrowing into the earth. She took another step, and her right hand dropped away. She waved the hand around. It touched nothing but air. An opening!
She turned and found the two sides of the open doorway. It took her a second to realize that she could see—sort of. Faint light leaked in through the tiny squares of a vine-covered grate set in the top of the wall opposite her.
She squinted into the dimness. This was definitely not a dungeon cell. It was a vast storeroom of some kind, filled with huge, lumpy forms draped with sheets, like a collection of cloaked, hunched giants. One of the lumps sat in the center of the room, and the rest squatted against the walls.
“She’s not down here, I tell you!” a guard’s voice echoed down the corridor behind her. Belle rushed to one of the covered forms at the side of the room and grabbed the sheet to pull it up, but it was stuck on something.
“We’re wasting time,” the guard continued. “There’s no sign of her here. She’s gone back outside.”
Belle tugged harder, but the sheet still wouldn’t move. She squinted into the gloom and discovered that the edges of the sheet were weighted with large paving stones. She pushed one aside, trying not to grunt as the two guards’ footsteps drew nearer, then raised the sheet.
She paused at what she saw: stacks and stacks of books, carelessly thrown on top of each other in erratic piles. She sniffed, the rank scent of mildew wafting up from the volumes closest to the floor.
“I can’t see anything,” the squeaky-voiced guard complained. Belle billowed the sheet up, ducked under it, and drew it around her. “We need to go back and get a torch.”
“You should have brought one with you,” said the other guard. The chill of the room sank into Belle’s still-damp clothes. As if she hadn’t already been cold enough, the icy stone floor against the soles of her shoes made her even colder. She hugged herself as she fought hard to hold back another shiver.
“Me?” the guard said. “Why me? Why not—”
“What is going on here?”
This was a new voice—a female voice—coming from farther down the hall.
“Your Highness, we—”
“What are you doing down here in the dark? You know the storeroom is off-limits.”
It was Princess Marianne.
“We’re looking for the girl—”
“Girl? What girl?” the princess demanded.
“She snuck through the gates after that fake king and his courtier arrived,” the low-voiced guard said.
“You let yet another interloper into our castle?” the princess cried in fury. “And no one told me? You dolts!”
“She might have snuck back out while we were searching,” the squeaky-voiced guard said quickly.
Belle silently wished the princess would think the same thing and that they would all go back upstairs. She hugged herself harder as nervousness combined with the cold, causing her to tremble.
“Or she could be wandering around the castle,” the princess answered. “She could burst in on my father! Do you want to be responsible for some peasant thief upsetting the king?”
“No, Your Highness,” the lower-voiced guard murmured. “We’ll—”
“Ah-choo!”
Belle winced. The sneeze had burst out before she’d had time to try to stop it.
“What was that?” the princess said.
“It’s the intruder!” one guard exclaimed.
“It came from the storeroom,” the other said.
Seconds later, Belle heard the men enter the room, followed by the lighter footsteps of the princess. A thin ribbon of light appeared at Belle’s feet as the princess’s torch illuminated the space. Belle held her breath, but she knew i
t was too late. She was as good as caught.
She tried to come up with something to say as she heard the scrape of the paving stones being hauled and the whoosh of the sheets being whisked off the lumpy forms one by one. She needed something that would convince the princess she wasn’t a thief—without revealing that she knew the Prince.
Between exhaustion and the cold, Belle’s mind remained a blank. She barely felt it when the sheet was pulled off her. She barely heard the guards cry, “We found her!”
What she did notice was the sudden blinding light of the fiery torch, and the frightening shadows cast by the monstrous contraption at the center of the room—a tilting wooden structure that looked like it was part rack, part guillotine. Its sheet lay on the ground below it in a twisted heap.
The torch swung toward Belle, and she squinted against its brightness. At first, she saw only the outline of Princess Marianne’s face, but then she caught a glimpse of the princess’s haunted eyes as they reflected the torch’s flickering flames.
The princess wasn’t looking at Belle. She was staring at the hundreds of books lining the walls, no longer hidden beneath their sheets. Her eyes were filled with a deep sorrow that Belle had not seen in anyone since she had first met the Beast.
“Why are you here?” the princess demanded. “You and your friends? What was your plan?”
“Friends?” Belle asked.
“Don’t play innocent with me,” the princess said sharply. “It was a bit too much of a coincidence that you slipped in right when your two fellow fools were at the gate. They’ve been locked up. They refused to drop their charade—as if I’d believe that story. That silly man with the pocket watch and the tin crown is no more a king than I am a lizard.”
Lumiere and Cogsworth had been caught. Belle’s heart sank at the news. But at least they hadn’t told Princess Marianne their true identities or revealed their connection to the Prince.
“Are you thieves?” the princess continued. “Because if you are, you’re the stupidest thieves ever to walk on French soil. What is there here to steal? The kingdom is bankrupt. We had riches once, but they’re long gone.”
The princess spoke this last sentence to herself, almost under her breath, but Belle could hear the bitterness in it.
“I can see you’re determined to remain as mum as your accomplices.” The princess turned to the guards. “Take her to the dungeon.”
“Wait—” Belle held up her arms as the guards marched toward her. “There are things of value here.” She swept her arms out toward the books lining the walls.
“Is that what you were after when you broke in here? Books?” the princess said. She let out a cheerless laugh as the guards grabbed Belle’s arms. “I should have just let you steal them. They’re of no use to me. They belonged to my mother.”
“But you’ve kept them.” Belle struggled to pull her arms free. “Although you shouldn’t store them in this damp room. They’re rotting, and—”
“Enough!” The princess gestured to the guards, who dragged Belle toward the door.
Belle twisted free and dashed behind the machine in the middle of the room. “What about this?”
“The printing press? A stupid contraption with no purpose.”
So it was a printing press. Belle had seen pictures of one in books, but she’d never seen one in person. The guards again charged toward her, but she darted out of their reach. “It does have a purpose,” she said urgently as the guards lunged for her. “It can save your kingdom.”
The princess held up her hand, ordering the guards to stop. “What do you mean?” she asked Belle. “How can this rusty old thing save us?” She shooed the guards into the hall. They hovered there, listening.
“You can clean off the rust.” Belle examined the press. It was made up of a long rectangular table, with an upright wooden frame that rose perpendicular to its surface. A huge steel screw stood in the middle of the frame, with a handle attached to its thick base.
“That’s not the point,” the princess said. “My mother bought this thing to print books for the village school she was going to build. We could afford the labor and supplies then. But she died, and her dream died with her. In a way, my father did, too. And then the whole kingdom died.”
Belle caught another glimpse of the sadness she’d seen earlier in the princess’s eyes.
“We never even finished building the school,” the princess went on bitterly. “Much less printed any books for it.”
“You have the supplies, though,” Belle said. She’d noticed that not all the uncovered stacks were books. One was a wide roll of paper. Another was a group of several large canisters filled with a black liquid: ink.
“You’re not listening to me,” the princess said. “We have no money.”
“You can make money.”
The princess stared at Belle in shock. “I should have expected a criminal idea from a criminal!” She raised her hand to summon the guards.
“You can make money printing books,” Belle said quickly. “The few presses in France can’t print enough to keep up with demand. There are many villages that would pay you to print books for them. You’ll have enough money to finish building the school, to fix the roads…to do whatever else the kingdom needs.”
Princess Marianne stared at Belle a moment, pensive. Belle could tell the princess was thinking over her suggestion. “How fast could this thing print books?” she asked.
“Not very fast,” Belle admitted. “But if it was automated, it could print a lot.”
“Automated? You mean run on its own?” The princess laughed. “How do you expect it to do that? With magic?”
“No,” Belle said with a smile. “With steam.”
“It should be a lot easier than the steam balloon,” Belle told the princess.
They were now in the library Belle had dashed through earlier when the guards were chasing her. The princess had brought in a tablet for Belle to write on, and the two sat together at a desk in the center of the room.
“The library is the one room my father will never enter,” the princess had told Belle. “Even with the books gone, it reminds him too much of my mother.” She explained that her father had given up on even trying to rule after the queen had died. “He seems to have forgotten about the village,” she had said, echoing Paul’s earlier words to Belle. “I don’t officially have any power to do anything, not that I thought there was anything we could do, since our wealth was gone.”
The princess had seen the steam balloon when it had flown past the castle, and Belle explained to her how the concept could be adapted for the printing press. “You don’t have to worry about finding water sources, considering how much rain you get here,” Belle said now as she sketched. “You’ll need a pump, though, and pipes for the steam to pass through—and valves to control the flow of the steam.” She showed the princess her finished drawing.
“Where am I supposed to get all that?”
“In the village.” Belle described how she and a few other villagers had gathered the parts from the steam balloon after it had crashed. “I doubt they’ve found other uses for all of the parts yet, and I’m sure they’ll be happy to give them to us once they know it will help finish the school and restore the kingdom.”
Princess Marianne stood, sketch in hand. “If you can make this press work, I’ll let you go, along with that imitation king and fake courtier.”
“I can’t build it by myself, though,” Belle said.
“Fine. Your friends can help. I have enough guards to keep an eye on all three of you.”
“I need my father. Papa is the inventor. He built the steam balloon. I can help him, but without him, I’m only guessing.” Belle didn’t dare suggest enlisting the help of the Prince—not yet. She knew she’d have to tell the princess the truth eventually, but she wanted to wait u
ntil Marianne had developed enough faith in the book printing idea. Once the princess felt certain of a renewed future for the kingdom, she might be ready to let go of the resentments of the past. “Plus,” Belle added, “he has the tools we’ll need.”
Princess Marianne sighed. “Fine, fine, fine.” She waved at the tablet. “Go ahead and write a note to your father explaining everything. After the guards get back from the village with the parts, I’ll send them to collect your father and bring him back here tonight.”
“Villeneuve is too far for them to return that fast, but while we’re waiting, we can at least clean off the press and…” Belle noticed that the princess was staring at her and felt a sinking in her stomach as she realized what she’d done.
“Villeneuve?” Princess Marianne sprang from her chair, her expression hardening into rage. “What. A. Coincidence.”
“Wait, I—”
“Guards!” Princess Marianne shrieked.
“I can explain!”
“Oh! I’m sure you can!” Princess Marianne’s chilly smile was laced with fury. “I’m sure there’s a perfectly fantastic explanation for why you and the Prince just happen to come from the same place. I have one, too: you know him.”
The guards entered and seized Belle as Princess Marianne tore Belle’s sketch to bits. “I should have known when you showed up only days after he arrived. I’m such a fool! He’s the reason you’re here. He’s the thing you wanted to steal.”
As the guards dragged her downstairs, Belle tried to convince Princess Marianne that the printing press idea wasn’t a trick, but the princess refused to believe her. “To think I would have let you and your accomplices loose in the castle!” the princess declared. “And even brought another one of your partners in crime here! Your supposed ‘Papa’! As if I weren’t fool enough already, I would have willingly armed you with ‘pipes’ and ‘cranks’ and ‘valves’!”
Belle denied all of it, but the princess wouldn’t listen. When they reached the dungeon, Princess Marianne ordered the guards to put Lumiere in with Cogsworth and had them toss Belle into the now-empty cell. The Prince watched from the far end of the dungeon, his hands gripping his cell’s bars as he begged the princess to let Belle and the servants go. “They only came to help me,” he pleaded. “There’s no reason to punish them.”
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