By the time she went back to her room, twilight was falling again. There was the tall rose-enamelled bath waiting for her, its water steaming, drawn up by the fireplace. The sapphire towels had been replaced by amethyst ones. She shook them out very carefully so as not to drop the amethyst necklace, ring, and earrings in the bath. She took off her clothes thankfully and stepped into the water; it was perfumed slightly with roses. But as she sat down, and her arms touched the water, she hissed in sudden pain, for they were covered with thorn scratches. A few thorns had stabbed through her skirt and heavy stockings, and her legs throbbed in short, fiery lines, but the hot water quickly soothed them; her arms were so sore it took her several minutes to slip them under water.
When she stepped out of the bath again, she patted her poor arms very tenderly with the towels and found that the lavender-blue dress laid on the bed for her tonight had slashed sleeves, the material meeting only at the shoulders and wrists and belling out between in a great silken wave. “Thank you,” she said aloud. “How glad I am this is not the grand dinner-party this dress is suited to, however; a rose-gardener’s battle scars might be embarrassing to explain.”
It was nearly full dark now. She had closed the balcony doors while she had her bath; now she opened them again and stood looking out. The headachy glitter of the stone palace and courtyard were quieted by darkness; she surprised herself by drawing a deep breath and feeling at peace. One hand crept to the breast of her dress, where the embroidered heart lay hidden beneath silk and amethysts.
She turned back into her rooms again, leaving the doors wide, and went into the next room, where the four seasons tapestries hung, and lifted a corner of the right-hand summer one and felt for a door frame. She had not wanted to light any candles, and in this inner room there was very little daylight left, merely shadows of varying degrees of blackness. (She had blown out the candles that stood round the bath and the washstand, muttering Stay, as one might to a well-meaning but slightly larky dog.) She found the door edge, and ran her hand down till she found a little concavity in the wall, and pressed it, and the lock uttered a muffled clink, and the door slid open an inch.
She curled her fingers round it and pulled, calling softly, “Bat! Bat! Are you there? It is nighttime again, and if you fly straight out from my balcony windows, you will soon come to a wild wood which I think should suit you very well.”
She heard nothing, but felt a soft puff of air and, between blink and blink, thought she saw a small moving shadow. She turned round to follow it, hoping to see a little dark body fly out the balcony, but saw nothing, and tried not to feel sad. “It was only a little bat, and I meant to set it free,” but it did not work; she was sad, and her sense of peace was gone, and she was lonely again.
But then something caught the corner of her eye, out beyond the balcony, some small moving shape darker than the falling night, but it was too quick for her, and by the time she thought she saw it, it had vanished again. But then the flicker of darkness reappeared, curving round the corner of the balcony doors and flying straight at her. She was too astonished to duck, even had she had time to tell her muscles to do so, and the soft puff of air was not air only—she was quite sure—but the tiniest brush of soft fur against her cheek.
The shadow raced back out through the doors but remained near the balcony for a moment, bobbing and zigzagging, as if making sure that her slow, ill-adapted eyes could see it, and then shot away, and she did not see it again. She closed the doors slowly, smiling, and went down to dinner.
CHAPTER
8
She went gaily through the door from her rooms into the chamber of the star, but her eye betrayed her there, rushing into a count round the circumference before she could cancel the impulse. There were twelve doors.
Having counted once, she counted again, and a third time, counterclockwise for a change, beginning each count with the door to her rooms where she still stood, and there were always twelve doors. And, while she did not want to notice, she also noticed that the shape of the star-points themselves had altered, and the colours of the enamelling, and her memory told her, although she tried not to listen, that this was not the first time her eye had marked this inconstancy. A little of her gaiety drained away from her, and she went pensively through the door that opened for her, not quite opposite her rooms’ door.
She had not seen the Beast all day. If she was again to dress for dinner, she must be about to see him now. She put out of her mind the dreadful question he had asked her at the end of the last two evenings. She wanted to see him—yes, she positively wanted to see him; she wanted to talk to him. She wanted him to talk to her. Talking to bats and rose-bushes was not the same as talking to someone who could talk back. She wanted someone to speak to her using human words—if not a human voice. She would not think of her sisters; she would not. She would think of him; she would think pleasantly of the Beast, of—of her companion, the Beast.
Almost she put out of her mind the size of him, the ease with which he walked through the shadows of his palace, the silence of his footfalls, the terrible irreconcilabilities of his face. She touched the embroidered heart Jeweltongue had given her and, surreptitiously, as if there might be someone watching her, cupped her hands momentarily to feel the salamander’s heat. It rolled against her palms, warming her cold fingers. There was nothing to be frightened of. The Beast had given his word, and she believed him. And she was going to make him happy; she was going to bring his rose-bushes to life—and then she could go home. He would release her, as she had released the bat and the butterflies. He would release her to go home again, home to her sisters, her father, home to Rose Cottage, home to her garden.
A thought pulled itself from nowhere in the back of her mind and formed itself into a terrible solidity before she could stop it. She flinched away from it, but it was too late. It was a thought she had often suppressed in the last year and a half, but here, in the Beast’s palace, where she was distracted and dismayed by too many things, it had broken free of her prohibition.
What was the curse on three sisters living at Rose Cottage?
She had held to her decision not to ask for more details—nor to make any reference to the little Mrs Greendown had told her of it to her family. Nor had Jeweltongue nor Lionheart ever mentioned any disturbing hint of such a tale to her.
Had Beauty’s hopeful guess been correct, that Longchancers, accustomed to their long-standing loss of magic and again disappointed of a greenwitch—and secure in the knowledge of only two sisters living at Rose Cottage—had been content to let the tale lie silent? Could Jeweltongue, who had developed almost as great a gift for gossip as she had for sewing, really never have heard anything of it? Or did she have the same fears of it—and had she made the same decision about it—that Beauty had?
A curse must be a very dreadful thing, but it was unknown, a bogey in the dark, as insubstantial as a bad dream. Her bad dream never had done anything to her, then, had it? It was just a bad dream. But her sisters’ happiness was as near to her as her own heart, and as precious. They were happy at Rose Cottage—happy as they had not been when they lived in the city and were great and grand.
It seemed to Beauty that Lionheart’s imposture was so fragile and dangerous a thing that even thinking too much about a curse—which might only be a folk-tale—could topple her. And then, if it weren’t a folk-tale, destroy them all.
If it weren’t a folk-tale, surely it would have caught up with them—or whatever it was that curses did—by now? When they first set foot over the threshold to Rose Cottage, when they first went to Longchance, when they had lived there for a year and a day? And Mrs Greendown had said that the greenwitch had been a good one and that Longchance had been fond of her—the greenwitch who had left Rose Cottage to three sisters.
Well, three sisters did not live at Rose Cottage now.
What had the princess who married the Phoenix felt about her fate?
And using the same force of will that had enab
led her to sort through and comprehend her father’s papers, when his business failed and his health broke, she thrust all thoughts of the curse away from her again and pretended that her last thoughts had been of bats and butterflies.
The Beast will release me, she repeated to herself. He will release me because … because he is a great sorcerer, and I am only a … a gardener.
He was waiting for her just inside the doorway of the same hall where she had eaten dinner—and he had not—the two nights previous. For the first time since she had closed her balcony windows and turned away to come to dinner, her heart truly failed her, and an involuntary gesture towards her little embroidered heart did not reassure her. Her heart had not sunk when she set eyes on the Beast, but when her eyes had moved past him and into that dark hall. She hoped Fourpaws would come again.
She turned back to the Beast and smiled with an effort. “My lor—Beast,” she said. My Beast, she thought, and felt a blush rising to her face, but the hall was not well lit enough for him to see. But what did she know of how a Beast’s eyes saw? And she remembered, and did not wish to remember, how quickly and surely he had walked into the darkness when he had left her the night before. And the strangeness of him, and of her circumstances, washed over her like a freak wave from a threatening but quiet sea, and she turned away from him and moved towards her seat, grasping at the tall stems of the torchères she passed as if she needed them for balance.
He was at her chair at once, moving it forward as she sat down. She thought of dinner-parties in the city, when some tall black-dressed man would help her with her chair, and of her dislike of making conversation—laboriously with dull, or distressedly with maliciously witty—strangers, and tried to be glad she was here instead. But the effort was only partly successful. The Beast bent to pour her wine, and she wished both to cower away from the looming bulk of him and to reach out and touch him, to know by the contact with solidity and warmth that he was real, even if the knowing would make her fear the greater. She stared at his reaching arm, candlelight winking off the tiny intricacies of black braid, dipping into the miniature pools of shadow in the gathers of his shirt cuff. She folded her hands securely in her lap.
He sat down where he had sat the night before, and the night before that, at some little distance down the table, on her right hand. If she had leant forward and stretched out her arm, she might still have touched his sleeve. She could think of nothing to say after all; distractedly she reached out, took an apple off a silver tray, and began to peel it.
“You have found my poor roses,” he said, after a little silence. “That is, you found them on your first evening here and then knew why I did not wish to show them to you. But today—”
“I—oh, I had not thought!” she said, a whole new reading of the day’s work she had been so proud of opening before her mind’s eye. She dropped her apple and looked up at him, reaching forward after all, and touching his sleeve, but without any awareness that she did so. “I love roses—I wished to do something for you—for them—I did not think—I should have asked—but I cannot bear to have nothing to do. Oh, are you offended? Please forgive—please do not be offended.”
“I am not offended,” he said, obviously in surprise. “Why would I be offended? I love roses too, and it is one of my greatest sorrows that mine no longer bloom. I honour and thank you for anything you can do for them.”
One of my greatest sorrows, she thought, caught away from roses by the phrase. One. What was—were—the others? Why are you here? You would not have killed my father if I had not come. Why did you say you would? “They—they needed tending,” she said hesitantly. “Your roses.”
“And why have I not done so myself?” He raised his hands again. “I am clumsier than you know. Lifting chairs and pouring decanted wine is the limit of my dexterity. I feared to hurt my darlings worse.…” There was another little silence, and then, so low Beauty was not quite sure she heard the words: “And besides, I do not know how.”
He paused again, and Beauty thought: Who is it that conjures gloves and ladders out of the air, who is it that hauls my rubbish to the mouth of the carriage-way—the mouth and no farther? When the Beast showed no sign of continuing, Beauty said timidly: “But … sir … the … the Numen of this place is very powerful.”
“Yes,” said the Beast softly. “It is. But it can touch nothing living.”
Silence fell again, but for the first time in this hall, the silence did not oppress her—although she hoped that did not mean Fourpaws would stay away. She thought: I have something to do; I have earned my bread, and I may eat it.
As she was reaching for a platter of hot food, the Beast began: “I thank you again for your …” and his hand approached hers as she touched the platter. There was a rack of candles just there, and for a moment their two hands and the platter made a graceful shape, the shadows crisp and elegantly laid out, a bowl of fruit and a decanter adding height and depth. Still Life, with Candles, she thought, or perhaps Portrait of Two Hands.
“But—” rumbled the Beast, and his face curled terrifyingly into a frown. Beauty snatched her hand back, shrank in her chair. “What?” he said, standing up, making a grab at her hand as she drew back, and then standing still, visibly restraining himself. He sat down again, leant towards her, and held out his hand. Slowly, feeling like a bird fixed by a snake, Beauty extended her own, laid it in his. The palm of his hand was ever so slightly furry, like a warm peach. “You have hurt yourself,” he said, in his lowest growl; she felt she heard his words through the soles of her feet rather than in her ears.
“Oh,” she said; her arms still stung and throbbed, but she had not thought of them since she counted the doors in the chamber of the star and found twelve. “Oh—it is only thorn scratches.” Relief made her voice tremble. “They—they will h-heal.”
“You must be more careful,” he said.
“Oh—well,” she said. “It is very hard not to be scratched, pruning roses.”
“You must be more careful,” he repeated.
She smiled a little at his earnestness. “Very well. I will be more careful. Perhaps the—the magic that lays out these dresses can come up with a long-sleeved shirt that is thorn-proof but not so stiff and heavy as to prevent me from bending my arms. That will be a very great magic indeed.”
The Beast laid her hand on the table again, as gently as he might have set a bubble of blown glass on its pedestal. He turned and walked away so swiftly she thought he must still be angry; she looked down at her arms and touched the scratches with her fingers, wondering on whose behalf he was angry. Hers, his, for his wounded honour as host, by his guest wounding herself on his rose-bushes, for the roses themselves? It was true, her arms did ache, she had been more careless than she should have been, in her eagerness to get on—her eagerness to have something to do that would prevent her from thinking about her family and her own garden, about why she was here. One or two of the deeper cuts were slightly warm to the touch, perhaps turning septic.
She looked up sharply; the Beast had returned, as silently as he always did. In one hand he held a tiny pot, which he set on the table at her elbow, and raised its lid. Because his hands were close under her eyes, she saw for the first time that he was indeed clumsy; she saw the difficulty with which he closed his fingers round the lid of the pot and how the pot nearly slid from his other hand’s hold as he pulled the lid off, and she wondered for the first time how much of a Beast he truly was. Perhaps his size and strength were as illusory as his ferocity and cruelty. Then why … then what … then who …?
The lid popped free, rolled across the table, skittered into the side of a plate, and fell over, thrumming to itself till its motion was exhausted and it lay still. The pungent smell of an herbal salve eddied up and smote her sense of smell, and the Beast’s own odour of roses, strong from his nearness, was overwhelmed.
She tried to laugh. “That will cure me, will it?” she said, and looked up at him where he towered over her; he was no
thing but a huge black shape against what little light there was. One wing of his robe had fallen on the edge of the table and huddled there like a small creature. As he moved back, and it slid away and disappeared, following his motion, it did not look like the hem of a garment righting itself, but like a small wary lover of darkness regaining sanctuary. He sat down.
“It will. It will cure … almost anything.”
She looked at him, at his face; she thought she could guess something the ointment could not cure. She touched the cool salve timidly, touched it to the back of one hand, to her wrist, dabbed it on her forearm. The Beast sat in silence, watching her, but she felt his impatience. She stopped and looked at him.
“You are less kind to yourself than you are to my roses,” he said. “Like this.” Before she had time to think, he had fumbled at the sleeve catch of her nearer wrist, and it fell open, the light material of the sleeve falling away and leaving her arm bare, pale in the candlelight but for the dark lines of blood. He dipped his own fingers in the pot—one at a time, for the pot was small and his fingers were large—put his other hand over the tips of her fingers, and ran the ointment in one long luxurious swathe up her hand to her arm and shoulder and down again. The long dangerous talons did not reach past the deep pads of his fingers; the glittering tips never so much as grazed Beauty’s skin. He picked up her hand, turned her arm over, and smoothed more ointment down the tender insides of her wrist and forearm and elbow, to the delicate flesh of her upper arm; then he stroked the arm all over, back and front, again and again, till the ointment disappeared. His fingers and palm felt like suede, and the warmth they left was not wholly that of friction.
“Turn towards me, that I may do the other,” he said gruffly. Half in a trance, she turned and held her other arm out towards him, leaving him to unfasten the wrist catch before he drew more ointment deliciously over her skin.