As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A)

by Liz Braswell

  He held it up, frowning. It was much longer and narrower than any sort of hunting, eating, or other everyday knife. The entire thing—even the handle—was metal. The butt, at the end of the grip, was almost as thin as wire, and bent in a heart shape.

  “Strange,” the Beast said.

  Belle narrowed her eyes. “It looks more like a surgeon’s instrument than a knife. I’ve read Joseph Charrière’s book on surgery—this looks likes something out of that.”

  “Why read a book on surgery?” the Beast asked in distaste.

  Belle shrugged. “It was the only new book at the bookstore last winter. I had nothing else to read. I wonder what it means. Was he killed by a doctor, or a doctor’s assistant? Or was it something he used on the horses?”

  “I don’t think so,” the Beast said. “I don’t think anything he did with the horses required anything that delicate.”

  Belle frowned. “Is there anything else on him that might help us out?”

  The Beast’s expression was unreadable. This was, she reminded herself, his favorite servant, even if he did as a child think of servants as being of a different class than kings and queens. But he must have seen the logic in her suggestion, and so he began to pat down the body, looking for anything else that might be a clue.

  His eyes grew large as his claws tapped against something unexpected under the cloth of the tattered jacket. With claws extended like pinchers, he pulled out what looked like a little leather-bound booklet.

  Belle hastened over to his side and used her more nimble fingers to gently take it from him. She opened it slowly; its pages were beginning to fall out from dampness and rot.

  “What does it say?” the Beast asked eagerly.

  “‘June fourth,’” she read carefully, turning to a random page. “‘Clarissa’s a sweet one, but not overblessed in the department of fidelity. Sadly, not marriage material, though pleasant enough to look upon.’ Ah, this is a…rather personal journal.”

  The Beast shrugged uncomfortably. “Keep reading.”

  “‘June twenty-first. Champion has a small abscess in his right hind leg, beneath the knee. Worried about it. All the good animal-speakers are gone…A poultice and charm from Baldrick would have fixed the poor boy right up. What to do?’”

  “Horses,” the Beast said with a gentle smile. “Just as important as women.”

  “Only for him. Let’s see what the last entry is,” Belle said, trying to sound pragmatic, not miffed. “‘August tenth. All of the horses miserable—I know the quarantine is for the best, but I’m afraid for their sanity. I’ll have to take a different one out tonight when I go to M’s.’”

  “I wonder what ‘M’s’ is,” Belle said thoughtfully. “Whatever it is, it must be a horse-ride away.”

  “Is there anything about who his killer is?” the Beast asked impatiently.

  “No, it doesn’t say, ‘Oh no, I hear my own murderer sneaking up the stairs, and he is revealing himself to be…!’”

  “There aren’t any stairs in the stable.”

  “You know what I mean. There doesn’t seem to be any hint of mischief at all,” she said, flipping pages. “The last pages seem to be just lists…and names of people…and places…North Country Road? South Boulder Bypass? River Run?”

  “Those are the names of all the major roads in and out of the kingdom,” the Beast said, reading over her shoulder. He tapped a claw at the columns of information. “I recognize some of those names…they were captains of the guards. These are lists of who was guarding which border crossing and when.”

  “That seems like an odd thing for a stablemaster to be interested in—unless he was smuggling,” Belle said thoughtfully. She flipped further back in the book. “‘May sixteenth. Found a goblin-kith hiding in the hayloft. Poor thing—a bunch of hooligans almost got her, so she tried to run away through the woods—but the border patrol turned her back. Violently. What do I do?

  “‘June seventeenth. Goblin-kith still here. People are starting to get suspicious. If word reached the king and queen…or any of them…that I was harboring a charmante, who knows what would happen to me. Or her. Been sneaking her stuff from the kitchen, thanks to B’s generosity and discretion.’ B?” Belle asked, confused.

  “Beatrice,” the Beast supplied. “Mrs. Beatrice Potts.”

  “Oh. Beatrice.” Belle repeated the name and thought of the teapot, trying to make the human image match the porcelain one. It was hard. She went back to reading.

  “‘June eighteenth. I think I have a plan. After midnight I’ll take the goblin-kith on the back of one of the bigger mounts to M’s place, on the other side of the river. Either I’ll try one of the old hunting paths or find out if there’s a sympathetic guard on the western road. I’m sure M and his wife will help out.’…”

  “He was helping the charmantes escape,” the Beast said thoughtfully.

  “But is that enough to be murdered for? Even by the most crazy, anti-magic person? Helping one charmante?”

  She skipped back a few more pages, moving her finger along the text.

  “‘February twenty-seventh: My Wedding Day! I am going to be happy for the rest of my life with B, and hopefully she will make me a bit fatter, too!’”

  “I remember that,” the Beast said softly. “Everyone in the castle—I mean, all of the servants—were so happy for them. There was cake and champagne and I managed to sneak out and see a little bit of it.”

  “‘Wish M and all had been there. They sent a rose somehow—a beautiful white one that smelled like heaven. I couldn’t tell B or anyone directly that it was probably magic, of course. But I did tell her to keep it safe in her drawers.’”

  Belle’s eyes widened.

  “Magic rose? M’s place? It’s…Maurice. M is for Maurice! Alaric brought the goblin to M’s place on the other side of the woods. My place! My home! And I never noticed this?”

  “You were a child. It was at night. Your parents kept you safe, separate from it,” the Beast ventured.

  Belle rubbed her forehead. Her mother, who had abandoned her and laid curses on eleven-year-olds, at risk to herself and family, sheltered and provided escape for a poor creature fleeing persecution. Why was she so complicated? Why couldn’t she have just been…all good, like a fairy godmother in a story, or all bad, like a witch?

  She flipped back to the previous entry she had read. “‘People are starting to get suspicious. If word reached…any of them…who knows what would happen to me. Or them. I’m putting R and her family in danger…’”

  The Beast looked at the corpse skeptically.

  “It does seem unlikely that someone killed him because he saved one person….”

  Belle shrugged. “Yes, I don’t know. But my mother’s disappearance…his disappearance…They knew each other, they worked together on this…and she warned me about betrayal.”

  The Beast raised an eyebrow. “Maybe he betrayed her. And she killed him.”

  “I don’t think someone who curses an entire castle and animates plant statues is going to resort to sticking someone with a knife,” Belle said dryly. “But if you’re right about him being murdered by someone he knew, then it was possibly someone who also knew my mother and father. Someone who betrayed all three of them.”

  The Beast scruffled the back of his neck with a giant paw, his usual gesture when he was embarrassed or stumped.

  “How does that help us find your mother?” he finally asked.

  “I don’t know,” Belle admitted. “But it certainly changes the way things look—for me.”

  Maybe her mother didn’t abandon them. Maybe her mother was murdered—or otherwise disappeared—and taken away from them. Belle felt a funny pain in her body melt, a tiny thread of resentment she hadn’t realized she had had all those years. When she said, “It was fine, just Papa and me,” she never realized how defensive she was being.

  But her mother had never meant to leave her.

  “If your mother is dead now, can we break the
curse?” the Beast asked, trying to put it gently.

  “I don’t know. I really don’t know.”

  She sighed and continued flipping through the journal, looking for clues.

  “Listen to this: ‘April third: Today I am a father. Charlemagne Alistair Potts, born healthy and screaming his wee head off this morning! B is fine, healthy as one of my horses. Just think! Someday he and M’s little lass could meet….I like older women—maybe my little Charles will, too!’”

  She looked at the Beast expectantly. He looked, as usual, confused.

  “Chip,” she said. “Charles is Chip.”

  “Yes,” the Beast said, still not understanding the depth of her reaction.

  “We would have been the same age. Almost,” she said impatiently. “He is five now—five forever. He was five at the time of the curse, ten years ago. He would be only really a few years younger than I am. If he aged normally. If he wasn’t a…teacup.”

  “Oh,” the Beast said, thinking about it. “Yes, he would be fifteen. Maybe my manservant. Unless he left to seek his fortune. He…never got to do that.” The Beast shivered, a strange movement from him, usually so controlled until he had a rage. Sorrow filled his large eyes.

  They remained silent for a moment in the half-light of the stable, staring into space, or at the dead man’s journal, or at nothing at all.

  After a moment Belle and the Beast turned to look at each other, at the same time, both obviously thinking the same thing.

  “We have to go back. And tell Mrs. Potts,” Belle said gently.

  “I would rather stay out here. Forever,” the Beast said honestly. “I could…catch mice, maybe….”

  “Perhaps it will be easier for her now, knowing what happened to her husband,” Belle said with a sigh. Her papa had been a pallbearer and gravedigger at more than one funeral in the village. Although a social outcast, he was also considered a decent, strong-backed person who could be counted on to do what was required. Even in the modern, enlightened world of the eighteenth century, death and sadness and bearing bad tidings were a part of everyday life.

  Belle took the Beast’s arm and they walked slowly and sadly back to the castle.

  The funeral was simple and sad. The Beast insisted Alaric be buried in the cemetery reserved for royalty, with a headstone remarking on what a brave and selfless man he was. All of the castle occupants stood around while an animated secretary—once a real secretary—gave the service. Many members of the staff, including Cogsworth and Lumière, got up and said a few words, praising the quality of Alaric’s character and some of his more charming habits.

  Despite a certain dustmaid’s disgust with the stablemaster’s charity to one of les charmantes, she remained silent and pious. Belle eyed her suspiciously. Alaric had been murdered and her mother had said something about betrayal. While the dustmaid seemed harmless in her little prejudices, who knew what she had been like before she was all feathers….

  A light snow fell, but only Belle could feel it. She looked across the strange crowd of creatures, all of whom had tried to decorate themselves with a little bit of black: a dresser wore a black doily; Cogsworth and Lumière tied black ribbands around their narrower parts.

  Mrs. Potts wore a black cozy. She looked sad and brave with her boy, Chip, cuddled beneath her, confused and plaintive. It had been over a decade since his father had passed away; the man was merely legend or myth in the child’s mind. He only knew something terrible and final had occurred to someone he was supposed to have loved.

  It had taken the Beast’s strength to break through frozen ground and dig down below where the earth was still soft; it was he who had to lower the hastily built coffin down into the pit. From there everyone took turns throwing in a handful of dirt as best as he or she or it could. Finally, the old gardener and his implements took over.

  Mrs. Potts lingered, taking a last look at the grave while everyone else filed past her to go in. Chip had already rushed on ahead with the other children, only understanding that the strange, terrible, and solemn thing was over. Belle knelt in the snow in front of her.

  “I am so, so sorry.”

  I have been saying that so often recently, she couldn’t help observing sadly.

  “No, child, it really is for the best that you found him,” the teapot said, shaking her spout but still keeping it directed at the grave. “My mind can rest a bit now…now that I know what really happened to him. And such a hero! I always suspected, you know,” she added confidentially. “He was always having me make up and steal little packets of food from the kitchen. But he never told me outright. Didn’t want me or Chip getting into trouble if anything happened, I’ll wager.”

  “It might have saved your life,” Belle agreed. She and the Beast had decided not to show her the knife just yet; they would wait for a day or two while the poor woman recovered from the shock of her dead husband suddenly being found.

  “It’s just…” Mrs. Potts trailed off helplessly. “It’s just…part of me had always hoped, just a little, that maybe he had just…I don’t know, disappeared with les charmantes. Kidnapped by some sort of pretty elf queen or something to the Summer Lands. That he was still alive, somewhere, and could come back someday….”

  She shook herself.

  Belle turned her head to wipe away a tear; it wasn’t for her, after all, to show high emotion at this funeral. This was for Mrs. Potts.

  “I wonder what he would have been turned into, if he had lived,” the little teapot said thoughtfully. “A horsewhip? He never liked using them. A bridle, maybe, or a talking horseshoe—there’s a funny image….”

  She hopped back into the castle, shaking her head and murmuring to herself. Belle and the Beast were the last to go in.

  The eerie webbing had made good strides in overcoming the wall. Thick white runners crisscrossed over and under the snow across the courtyards, almost visibly eager to attack the castle itself. In places it had already begun to scale the sides, like a ghostly winter ivy.

  Thinner bits of the strands ran between the main lines, supporting or strengthening them, like leaded glass. Sometimes the enclosed spaces formed by these intersections glittered exactly like glass—and if the sun wasn’t directly on them, they showed strange images. Each was a little slice of memory from the Enchantress, repeating over and over. Picking a rose. Casting a spell. Pouring the last of too many glasses of wine…

  Belle let out a breath which she hadn’t even realized she had been holding. The castle was, in a way, a living monument to the person her mother had been. Her presence infiltrated the entire place.

  Belle watched, both fascinated and beginning to panic.

  “It’s like…my mirror…” the Beast said, his voice full of wonder—and horror. “Someone else’s mirror.”

  “The webs are everywhere now. There’s no stopping them,” Belle whispered.

  The Beast couldn’t hide the look of despair that flicked across his face, adding to all the other sad and dark emotions of the day.

  The two just looked at each other, wordlessly, and went in.

  A light coating of snow covered both of them by then; the Beast shook himself like a dog, starting with his enormous head and then working down his neck and his chest and finally his lower half. Belle almost smiled at the light moment in an otherwise very dark day.

  She hung her own cloak up on a hook. That one act seemed to take the rest of the energy out of her. She slumped against the wall, feeling like maybe it wouldn’t be so bad to get pulled down into the silent, cold earth. There was nothing but misery and sadness for this terrible land—and maybe for her as well.

  The Beast ran his paws through his mane in frustration. But there was nothing beastly about it…it was pure human. “So maybe your mother was also murdered, or something, and maybe it had something to do with Alaric. And saving the charmantes. But how…?”

  Belle gave him a tired look. She noticed that his eyes looked raw and red.

  “I think it might be ti
me for a break. A short one,” she said, thinking. “You’re at the end of your rope and, frankly, so am I. We’re just…going around in circles with the same thoughts.”

  But what to do? What did people do when they were trapped in an enchanted castle, terrified and dispirited, exhausted and out of ideas? Drink? Throw a party? Torture prisoners? Play cards?

  She couldn’t see the Beast liking, or agreeing to, any of that.

  What did she do when she was down?

  “Let’s…go back to the library. I think it’s time for a book.”

  The Beast made a noise that sounded somewhere between an angry goat and a foghorn of doom.

  “No, no,” Belle said with a gentle smile, “I’ll read to you. A story. Something to cheer us up. One of my favorites.”

  “It better be a good one,” the Beast said grudgingly. “With a…a happy ending.”

  “You’re in luck. It is a good one, with a happy ending. Jack and the Beanstalk. It’s about a poor boy overcoming almost insurmountable odds, defeating a giant, and living happily ever after!”

  “What did the giant do to deserve getting defeated?” he demanded with a pout.

  “It was a bad giant. Not like you at all. Come on!”

  Someone must have heard her plan. When they got to the library, it looked like furniture was magically gliding across the floor by itself—which was entirely possible in this enchanted castle—but on closer inspection, Cogsworth and Lumière were pushing a couple of chaises and fainting couches together in front of the fire so she and the Beast could sit next to each other comfortably.

  “Thank you,” Belle said, not just a little suspicious of their otherwise helpful and innocent motivations. “I think we, uh, just need a little quiet time now.”

  “But of course, ma chérie,” Lumière said with a bow. His flames waggled yellow. He turned to exchange a look with Cogsworth.

  The little clock laughed nervously. “Of course. Just trying to make you and the master comfortable. If you need anything…we might not be available.”

  Belle and the Beast both blinked in surprise.