Beauty (11 page)

fell over his withers.

“Child—you must go back. I cannot let you do this—I cannot think what made me agree to it in the first place.

I must have been mad to think that I could let you go—like this.”

“The decision is long past now—you cannot revoke it; and you agreed because you had no choice.”

I swallowed, although my mouth was dry, and went on before he could interrupt: “The Beast won’t harm

me. And perhaps, after all, he is only testing our sense of—fair play. Perhaps I won’t have to stay long.”

The words sounded well, but my voice didn’t, and neither of us believed what I was saying. I hurried on.

“Go. Please. Parting will only be worse later.” I thought: I couldn’t bear to see this Beast
send
you away.

“I’ll be all right.” I rode towards the gates, but before I had wheeled Great-heart so that I could touch them with my hand, they swung open without a sound, and a trackless field of bright green grass lay before me. “Good-bye, Father,” I said, half-turning in my saddle. Father had remounted. Odysseus was standing still, but the stiffness in his neck and ears indicated his tension and fear. One gesture from Father

would send him plunging back down the road the way we had come.

“Good-bye, dear Beauty,” he said almost inaudibly. My ears rang with my heartbeats. I rode forwards before he could say any more, and the gates of mist closed impassively behind me. I turned and

faced forwards before they were quite shut, and did not look back again.

Sunlight and the smell of the sweet grass were better than sleep or food; I felt that I was awakening from a dream left behind in the shadowed eaves of the forest. When we came to the edge of the orchard

we found a white pebbled path leading between the trees towards the castle.

I cannot begin to describe the gardens. Every leaf and blade of grass, or pebble in the path, or drop of water or flower petal, was perfect, in plan and in execution: true in colour and in shape, unworn, and unharmed as if each had been created only a moment ago, as if each were a gem, and the polish of each facet the life’s work of a fairy jeweler. I clung to Greatheart’s mane as he went forwards at a gentle walk;

the motion of his shoulders and flanks seemed like the heaving of a ship in storm.

The castle rose up before us like sunrise, its towers and battlements reaching hundreds of feet into the sky. It was of grey stone, huge block set on block; but it caught the sunlight like a dolphin’s back at dawn. It was as big as a city, I thought; not one building, but many, tied together by corridors and courtyards; I stared around at what I could see of the wings and walls of it stretching in many directions.

I

could not begin to imagine the number of rooms it must contain. But it stood silent, the windows dark, apparently deserted. But not quite deserted, I told myself unhappily. Oh dear.

Greatheart came to a halt before the stable, whose door had slid back at our approach. Inside, afternoon sunlight slanted through tall narrow windows with half-moons of stained glass set in their arched

tops. The coloured glass held pictures of horses, standing, galloping, richly caparisoned or free of harness, with long waving manes and bright dark eyes. The bits of colour sprinkled the marble walls of the stalls and the smooth golden sand of the floor. The door to the fi rst stall slid back, just as it had for Father, as we approached, and straw finished scattering itself into the corners as we looked in.

Great-heart pricked his ears at self-propelled bedding; but when I pulled his bridle off he quickly transferred his attention to the mixed grain in the manger. He did not eat so well at home.

There was a selection of bone-handled brushes, combs, and soft cloths on a shelf on the stall’s outer wall, I groomed the horse carefully, but still I lingered; I did not want to be finished, to leave him in the stable and go by myself into the castle, where the Beast was doubtless waiting for me. The Beast had said that no harm would come to me, but how did I know? I thought of how ready I had been to believe those promises of safety when I had first heard Father’s tale, beside our own hearth. He was only a Beast, What could he possibly want with me anyway? I banished that thought as I had many times before

in the past month. I recalled unhappily the tales of the insatiable monster that lived in the forest and ate all

the game. Perhaps the Beast found young maiden a difficult dish to procure, and had to resort to trickery,

I had cut and carried too much wood in the last two and a half years to make a very delicate morsel; but this was no comfort, since it would undoubtedly be discovered too late.

I remembered that Father’s tack had been mysteriously cleaned while it hung on a rack overnight.

The rack I found, it having conjured itself outside the stall while I was in it. “Won’t you let me wash it myself?” I said to the air, looking up as if expecting to see something looking down; I lowered my gaze hastily and was unnerved by the appearance of a bucket of warm water, soap, sponges, cloths, and oil.

“Well, that is what you asked for,” I told myself aloud; and then “Thank you,” louder, and was rewarded by the same feeling that Father had had: that the air was listening. I didn’t like it.

By the time I had done everything I could do twice over, the sun was nearly gone; lanterns set in the doorposts of the stalls were lighting themselves. It then occurred to me that I liked the idea of going into the castle for the first time after dark even less than I had liked it a few hours ago while daylight was with

me, keeping trolls and witches under cover. Greatheart had finished the grain, and was happily working on the hay hanging in a net; he was not inclined to be sympathetic to my fidgets. I patted him for the last

time and went reluctantly out. The horse was calm and relaxed again, as he had always been at home until the last few days. I tried to tell myself that this was a good omen, but I felt more as if I were being betrayed in my last extremity. I closed the stable door—or anyway my hand was on it when it closed itself—on the sound of quiet chewing. I found myself twisting the griffin ring on my finger as I stepped down from the threshold.

As I stepped outside, the lanterns in the garden were lighting up; there was a warm sweet smell of perfumed lamp oil. The silence was unbroken but for the clear tinkling of the little streams, and the slow scuff of my booted feet; there was still no sign of any living thing. I felt very small and shabby amid all this

magnificence; riding Greatheart lent its own dignity, for he shone through his battered harness. The size and grandness of his new environment suited him; he might have been coming home after exile among the

savages. But there was nothing grand about a small plain girl, poorly dressed, self-conscious, and jittery.

I looked around me, blinking, and then turned back towards the castle. The courtyard was dark as I turned; but it leaped into a blaze of light as I looked towards it. The silver arch around the enormous front

doors glittered and gleamed, and the figures molded on it seemed to come to life: a king’s hunting party,

the horses’ manes flying, and banners and pennoncels bucking in the wind. There were hounds scattered,

tails high, before the galloping horses, and two or three riders carried hooded falcons on their wrists.

There were several ladies riding sidesaddle, their skirts mixing with the trailing saddle-skirts. In front of the field the king rode, leaning forwards over his horse’s neck; he wore a thin circlet around his forehead,

his sleeves and collar were trimmed with fur, and his horse was the largest and finest. I found myself trying to read his face, and could not. He was galloping towards a great wood that stood at the peak of the arch, branches bowed like the petals of a flower. On the other side of the arch the scene was a mirror

image of the first, but the story told was changed. The king’s horse was plunging wildly away from die forest, riderless, its eyes rolling. The other hunters were reining back hard at the forest’s edge, with expressions of shock, dismay, and dawning horror on their faces. The dogs were fleeing, tails between legs and ears flat, and the falcons struggled to be free, wings spread, claws tearing at tasseled hoods.

Both scenes were colourless, icy pale, yet sharp and vigorous; I expected to see the next hoof hit the ground as I looked at a galloping horse, to see the lady’s raised hand brush the scarf from her eyes; and I looked with nervous fascination at the wood, but saw nothing but the silver trees.

I saw this very clearly, but all in the space of a moment. The doors swung silently but ponderously open, revealing a great hall lit by hundreds of candles in crystal sconces. As I stood dumb and staring, a little singing breeze swept out through the doors and curled around me. I could almost hear voices in it, but when I tried to listen I lost them. It was a very small wind, and it seemed to exist only for the purpose

of tugging at my sleeves and twitching the hem of my divided riding skirt, and uttering what sounded like

little cries of dismay at the condition of my hair and my boots. No candle flame shivered in a draft, and no

leaves tapped one against another. The breeze circled eagerly around my shoulders, and feeling that I was being encouraged, I took a few steps forwards^ towards the enormous doors. I wondered how King Cophetua’s beggar-maid had felt when the palace gates had first opened for her. But there was little

resemblance between us; she had a king in love with her, because of her innate nobility, and a beauty that

sparkled even through her rags. So much for comparisons. I went inside.

The breeze giggled and chirped at me as if I were a reluctant horse, and then dashed off before me into the hall. As I crossed the threshold a door swung open, to my right, about fifty feet down the broad from corridor. The clicking of my boot-heels had as much effect on that massive silence as the sweep of a butterfly’s wings might. I went through the open door. This was a dining hall, big enough to be two ballrooms; there were three fireplaces, with windows on the fourth wall that were each three times as tall

as I was, and a many-legged rectangular table that might take half an hour to walk around, but only ten minutes to walk across. I looked up. There was a musicians’ gallery at one end of the room, with heavy dark velvet drapes drawn across it. Its balcony was built where the second storey should have been; the ceilings were very high. I tipped my head farther back, squinting: There seemed to be a design, painted or

sculptured, on the ceiling, but the candles were set no higher than the foot of the musicians’ gallery, and their light did not reach so far.

I returned my gaze to the table, I saw now that it was crowded with covered dishes, silver and gold.

Bottles of wine stood in buckets full of gleaming crushed ice; a bowl big enough to be a hip bath stood on

a pedestal two feet tall, in the shape of Atlas bearing the world on his shoulders; and the hollow globe was full of shining fresh fruit. A hundred delightful odors assailed me. At the head of the table, near the door I had entered by, stood a huge wooden chair, carved and gilded and lined with chestnut-brown brocade over straw-coloured satin. The garnet-set peak was as tall as a schooner’s mast. It could have been a throne. As I looked, it slid away slightly from the table and turned itself towards me, as another chair had beckoned to my father. I noticed for the first time that it was the only chair at that great table, and there was only one place laid, although the table gleamed to its farther end with the curved backs of

plate covers, and with goblets and tureens and tall jeweled pitchers.

“Good heavens, no,” I said. “I can’t sit there. And who’s to eat all this? I can’t,” I said, and thought nervously, I hope it’s not required. The Beast must mean to eat me after all, and means to fatten me well

first. He certainly doesn’t lack for food, my thoughts continued ruefully: Is his palate really so jaded that with all of this he wants young maiden too? Besides, all of this fancy stuff will probably disagree with me.

At once my breeze was back,
tsk-tsk’mg
and scolding and banging at the backs of my knees and all but dragging me to where the great chair waited in lofty silence. I sat on it timidly, feeling smaller and more bedraggled than ever, and much the worse for the day’s dirt. A white linen napkin unfolded itself and blew onto my patched homespun lap. There were seven spoons and seven forks, four knives and five goblets of different shapes and colours lined up before me, A little table walked out of nowhere to my left elbow, bearing hot water and soap and thick towels; while I was occupied with these, dishes were jingling merrily back and forth across the table, and I turned back to a plate heaped high with delicacies.

The tentative thoughts I had entertained about refusing to eat and thus spoiling the Beast’s plans for me melted away at once like butter in a hot skillet. The knowledge that I had eaten nothing since breakfast, and that twelve hours ago, reasserted itself forcefully, and I made an excellent dinner. I recognized very few of the dishes I was offered, but everything I sampled was superb. I was soon bemused by a variety that surpassed anything I had known at the finest banquets in the city. It was after I

was finished, leaning back with a sigh, that my fears rushed back to me, as if they had only been waiting till I was revived enough to pay them proper attention. I stood up abruptly without another thought for that wonderful table, and walked to the door. I wouldn’t wait any longer; I must know tonight what my doom was to be. If the Beast would not come to me, very well then, I would look for him.

Dinner had refreshed me, and I set out if not eagerly at least energetically. I walked across more corridors, up and down more stairs, and in and out of more rooms than I cared to count. I saw furniture and whatnots in all the styles and designs I had ever seen or heard of, plus many more that were entirely

outside my experience. There were tables and chairs and divans in black wood, and in all the hues of brown; in ivory and alabaster and bone; even in brass and copper and jade, silver and gold. I saw no sign of anything less than the finest of craftsmanship. There were tapestries on the walls, and hundreds of