The Wilful Eye (20 page)

The beast never did learn to use a knife and fork; his claws weren't fitted for the task. He did learn to lap up his meat one slice at a time, however, and to make less noise as he ate. His powers of language also improved, while Belle grew better at interpreting the deep bass notes of his pronunciation.

She still held up most of the conversation, chatting away as he gazed at her. He stared at her in the most blatant way, which would have made her blush had he been a human male. Since he was an animal, she accepted and grew used to it.

She mystified him, she realised. If she came down to dinner wearing a pair of earrings or a pendant from the jewellery on the dresser, he gaped at them with open jaws and hanging tongue. Or, if she did her hair in a different style, the intensity of his gaze was enough to burn her up. He was struggling to understand her – but she was in no hurry to be understood. She sensed that her tenuous control over him depended upon her mystery.

She understood him much better than he understood her, yet she was always aware of the yawning gulf between them. Once she talked about becoming friends, the two of them, but even as she spoke, she knew it was impossible. He was too dangerous and incalculable for her to ever feel simply comfortable in his presence.

On the other hand, she grew to half-enjoy the danger. She had developed a confidence in her own power to hold this beast in check and steer him where she wanted. And in the last resort, she knew an infallible way to gentle him, by resting her hand on his paw. The effect was magical.

At home, it had seemed the natural state of affairs that she obeyed her father and her sisters bossed her around. Delphie was ten years older, Elise eight, and they had both been accustomed to giving orders to servants in the grand old days of wealth and influence. They had shared that period of life with their father, her father, and it was somehow the only period of life that mattered to them. As for Father, he liked to boast about his youngest daughter's beauty, as though her beauty was the only quality worth noticing. Belle hardly existed for him as a person.

Now she had discovered resources that her family had never suspected in her, that she had never suspected herself. Delphie and Elise would have been terrified of the beast, would have screamed and fainted at the very sight of him. She was amazed at herself, to have changed so much in so short a time.

The beast had no family so far as she could tell. He never talked about his past, and Belle wasn't particularly eager to talk about her own. One time he asked, ‘Does your family love you?'

The automatic response rose to her lips, then died away. She would have like to say ‘Of course', but the beast had met her father and seen how his merchant's mind worked. Trading away one's own daughter wasn't exactly a proof of love – even a beast knew better than that.

‘They're family,' she shrugged, and changed the topic.

As the days turned into weeks, their dinnertime conversations extended further and further after the actual meal. Although spring was coming and the snowdrifts would soon start to melt away, Belle had ceased to think of escaping from the chateau. The change of seasons gave her thoughts of a different kind.

‘There'll be snowdrops in the forest before long,' she said, and pointed to the rose stalk standing in its vase. ‘We could do with some new table decorations.'

‘No,' he growled.

‘Why not? You can't want to look at that poor, bare thing every night. We'll begin with snowdrops, then primroses, then daffodils. Different flowers for every month of the year.'

For no reason at all, the beast had started to lash his tail,
thwack-thwack-thwack
against the floor. What had she said wrong? Did he hate the idea of her roaming around freely outside the chateau?

‘You'll have to trust me,' she told him. ‘You can't keep me here by force once the snow has gone. I won't be your prisoner.'

The
thwack-thwack-thwack
came faster and faster. His eyes were fixed on the stalk in the vase. She had learned to read expressions on his face beyond the obvious fearsome, brutal look, but she couldn't read this one. He seemed baffled and confused, distressed and raging at the same time.

‘Tell me,' she said. ‘It's not that. Something else?'

He began to champ, and drool dribbled from his jaws. He was reverting to animal behaviour. He couldn't explain, couldn't find human words, couldn't even think out the problem in human terms.

Belle struggled to appear unruffled. She had a nasty suspicion that he usually solved his problems by eating them.

‘Something to do with the rose stalk?' she asked.

He gave a snarling, strangled sort of bellow. Louder and louder – until finally human words came out in it.

‘
Leave it be!
' he roared.

Belle heaved an inward sigh of relief. She still didn't understand, but she knew to leave well enough along.

‘Calm down, Mr Beast,' she said. ‘I promise I won't change a thing.'

She rested a hand on the velvety fur of his paw. The tail-lashing stopped, the rage went out of him and his great ugly head hung down. For a while, he looked almost abject.

Belle didn't mention flowers for the table again.

Every day the sun rose a little higher in the sky, until there was real warmth in its rays. Snow melted from branches and fell with sudden, startling whooshes and plops. On the ground, the snow shrank to irregular icy patches, and there were trickles of melt-water everywhere.

Belle didn't go into the forest, but explored the gardens of the chateau itself. Her favourite spot was a herb garden at the back, surrounded by a shrubbery of laurel and bay. She spent many afternoons on a stone bench there, enjoying the sharp-edged sunlight.

After the explosion over the vase, she was more cautious about probing into things that mystified her. One day when she came back from the herb garden, the oval mirror of her dresser had disappeared, leaving only its plain wooden supports sticking up against the wall. She asked him about it over dinner.

‘Better for you,' he growled.

‘Better how? How can I do my hair without a mirror?'

He let out a warning rumble, and she decided to let the matter drop. He wasn't quite so simple an animal as she had first assumed. Or at least, he wasn't entirely satisfied with being an animal. She sensed a growing restiveness in his behaviour.

One night she awoke to a sound in the corridor. He was padding back and forth on the other side of her bedroom door. Nearer and further, further and nearer. Sometimes the padding stopped for a few minutes, then started up again.

For two hours she lay awake, listening. The door was locked, but what if he was spying through the keyhole? She drowsed off eventually, but couldn't manage more than ten minutes of sleep at a time. Only at dawn did the padding cease.

She didn't question him about it over dinner, but the next night she wedged the chair under the doorknob and stuffed a handkerchief into the keyhole. The padding began again around the middle of the night, but she was more relaxed about it now. Over the following nights, the sound grew more and more familiar until it hardly kept her awake at all.

Of course, he was a creature of the night who slept through the daylight hours. She stood outside his bedroom door and listened to that strange reverberation, midway between a purr and a snore. She even peeped through
his
keyhole, but could see nothing except the drawn curtains of a four-poster bed.

In the end, curiosity got the better of her. What she couldn't ask, she would find out for herself. She waited one day until after noon, then went upstairs to the door of his room. With infinite slow care, she turned the knob. Did he keep his door locked?

She pushed gently and the door opened. Inch by inch, wider and wider. She saw a gold-flecked carpet and walls panelled in rich, dark wood. As well as the four-poster bed, there was a chest of drawers, a wardrobe and a writing desk. A full-length cheval glass stood in the middle of the floor.

Then she saw a second mirror, leaning against the wall. That was
her
mirror!

She entered. The beast was asleep behind the curtains of the bed, and his deep rhythmical breathing filled the room. She stood before her mirror and smiled at herself in the glass. She would have liked to reclaim it for her dresser, but the beast would surely find out . . .

She went to look at herself in the cheval glass. Strange! There was no reflection – or no single reflection. Instead, the glass showed a myriad of tiny images, all different. It was as though this mirror had cracked into a hundred separate fragments. She reached out a hand, but felt no cracks in the glass.

However, her touch brought about a change, a dissolving swirl of colour. Suddenly there
was
a single reflection, a reflection of her . . .

Belle gasped. The reflection was the wrong way round! Not her face, but her hair and back. It was a reflection from behind!

She moved to the side and her hair and back disappeared out of the picture. Now the mirror showed her the chest of drawers, a corner of the four-poster bed – and the cheval glass itself! The reflection was coming from some other source.

She experimented from different angles and finally worked it out. What she saw in the cheval glass was actually the view from her own oval mirror, leaning against the wall.

A magic mirror, then. She had heard of them in fairytales, created by sorcerers to observe secretly from a distance. When her own mirror had been in her own room, the beast would have been able to watch her every move!

Her first reaction was shock and outrage. Her second reaction was more forgiving; after all, he had shifted the mirror out of her room, so he must have chosen
not
to observe her anymore. A very honourable act for a beast . . .

She turned and listened to the rhythm of his slumber. A mischievous impulse crept over her, to observe
him
secretly. She advanced to the side of the bed, found where the curtains overlapped and pulled them apart a fraction.

He lay stretched out on top of the quilt, huge, leonine, magnificent. Even sprawling and splayed, his great limbs had a fluid, animal beauty. His crown of bony spikes dug into the pillow and his eyes were closed.

Most glorious of all was his mane. Staring at that thick, soft, yellow-and-brown fur, she couldn't help wanting to bury her face in it. Unconsciously, her hand crept out and she stroked a tuft of fur between her fingers.

He snorted in his sleep and his breathing came faster. Belle withdrew her hand – too late. His eyes flew open and his amber gaze focused on the intruder.

‘
Wha-a-at
?' A growl like thunder made the curtains billow.

She thought fast. ‘I came looking for my mirror,' she said.

He sprang up on the bed, switching instantly from sleep to quivering alertness. Belle backed away, but he came after her through the curtains.

‘I don't want it back,' she said. ‘It's all right.'

‘
Not all right.
' He stood towering over her. ‘You can never have it back. Do you understand?'

‘Yes. I've heard about magic mirrors.'

‘Your mirror is connected to my mirror.' He swung a paw towards the cheval glass, which had gone back to its original state of a hundred tiny, separate images. ‘Every mirror in this house is connected to my mirror.'

Keep him talking,
thought Belle. ‘So all those little pictures are the views from different mirrors?'

‘Yes.' He brushed one area of the cheval glass with his paw, and the colours swirled and enlarged to a single image. ‘The view from the mirror at the top of the staircase.'

He brushed again, then again and again. ‘The mirror in the dining room. The mirror in the reading room. The mirror in the second bedroom. Fourth bedroom. Fifth bedroom.'

Images came and went in the glass. Belle recognised some of the interiors; other rooms in the chateau she had never yet entered.

‘Wait! What's that?'

He paused. They were looking at a much less opulent interior, with rough painted walls and rugs on bare floorboards. To Belle, it was the most familiar place in the world. And those two figures . . .

‘That's not inside the chateau.'

‘No.'

‘It's Delphie and Elise. In our parlour.'

‘Yes.' His tone changed from stern to apologetic. ‘I should not have shown you that.'

She peered at the wainscoting, the sideboard, the framed needlework on the wall that she had stitched herself. There were cobwebs in the corners of the ceiling . . . obviously Delphie and Elise hadn't taken over the housework in the absence of their younger sister. They were ensconced in the parlour's two rocking chairs, leaning forward, rubbing their hands as if warming them.

‘Hello,' said Belle, but of course there was no response.

She turned to the beast. ‘I don't understand. They're sitting in front of the hearth, but there's no mirror there.'