Beauty (31 page)

I was sensible for the first time of how foolish I had been to come on this ride. "How will I get away? My cloak, my boots are back in Faery."

"They are here," said Fenoderee, holding them up for me to see. He pulled me down, slapped the horse on its rump to send it galloping after the others, and then shoved the boots on my feet and my shoes in my pocket. "They do not know you are involved in this. Better they do not know."

"Ah, Puck, thank you," I started to say, not really knowing whether thanks were due.

"Go, Beauty," he said. "We'll meet again," and he turned me about, whispering to my boots, "Take this lady home."

Then was the familiar whirlwind, and I was gone and so were they.

22

I stood beside the rose-mound of Westfaire. Tottered, I should say, suddenly dizzy, as though something in my head had gone awry. Embarrassment, I supposed, at the prospect of meeting Edward once more. And little Elladine. She would be two, or perhaps even three by now. She would not know I was her mother, of course. She would think the wet nurse was her mother or, if she had been weaned, the nursemaid. I thought of my daughter as I had seen her last, asleep in her cradle beside the fire, her dark hair bubbling over the pillow, like black water in torrent, already long enough to reach her shoulders. A pretty child. Not one a mother should have fled from.

Though Carabosse had said that mothers and daughters might not be sympathetic. "Particularly if the child resembles ... the other side of the family."

Well yes, but she was not a devil. Merely a child who resembled her actual father in some respects. Now she would be walking and talking, but her speech would be the speech of Wellingford. She could not possibly sound like Jaybee.

With these thoughts I calmed myself as I stood beside the shepherd's well, leaning against it almost, pulling myself up straight with an unaccustomed ache, looking myself over to see if I was well enough dressed to go straight to Wellingford. I picked at a fold of my gown, stared at it in confusion, caught in dream, nightmare, pulling the fabric through my hands ...

Aside from my cloak and the seven-league boots, I was dressed in rags. Scarcely one thread held to another. I put hands to my head in confusion, only to feel oily tangles and squirming locks. I had seen myself in the Pool of Delights only this afternoon, with my hair swept up in a net of sapphires and my dress of fine muslin, embroidered all over with flowers. How had I come to be dressed like this? And my hair so filthy? It stank. It smelled of smoke and grease and less acceptable things. My fingers found small hard specks caught in the coils: nits!

Shock held me motionless for a long, calculating moment. Hush, I told myself. Figure it out later. You are only filthy, after all. Filth can be washed away. Hair can be washed and the eggs of lice combed out. You have other clothes to wear. Hush now and do what needs doing. Comforted by decision, though not greatly, I tottered down toward the lakeside. Making myself look decent would necessitate getting into Westfaire, which meant a trip through the water gate. When I arrived at the water, I did not bother to strip. The rags I was wearing could be thrown away once I was inside. I bundled the cloak and boots atop my head. The water was cold. I thought it must be winter, then reassured myself that there were flowers growing in the woods and the trees were in leaf. Still, the water was very cold and very deep and harder to move against than when last I had come this way.

Inside the water gate the steps were taller, too, and more deeply covered with moss. Everything was more difficult than when I had last been there. The stairs to the attic seemed endless, but I had to go there to get a dress. On my way back to the kitchen I stopped in Aunt Love's room to snatch up a looking glass and the fine toothed comb made of tortoise shell she had used on me when, as a child, I had picked up lice from my acquaintances in the stables. The bath place was next to the kitchens, a small, stone-floored room with a stone-curbed well in the corner, a great wooden tub, and over the hearth a huge hanging kettle with a copper to bail the water in and out. Except for Papa, my aunts, and I, who had had tubs brought to our rooms for occasional use, everyone at Westfaire had bathed in this room, sometimes half a dozen of them at once. There was a similar arrangement at Wellingford, though I had never been able to use it when I was being Havoc the miller's son for fear of being found out. Once I was Edward's wife, there had been no need. I had had my own tub again, filled and emptied by sweating servant girls. At least, I assume they sweated for I did by the time I had filled the huge kettle from the well.

I lit the fire, already laid, tied the belt of my cloak around my neck to keep from falling asleep, took off the cloak itself, and sat down to comb my hair while the water heated. The tangles were deep. The comb pulled and the tangles caught in the teeth. I pulled the wad of hair out and threw it into the fire, combing again. The next time I threw the hair toward the fire, a draft caught it and blew it back at me. Gray hair. Not wheat straw, not silver, but gray.

The looking glass lay face down on the table. I polished it with the rags of my sleeve. An old face looked back at me. No ... no, not an old face. Just not a young face. A thirty-fiveish, fortyish face. Not old for the twentieth, but old for the fourteenth, when people did not live so long. There were tiny lines around the eyes, not deep ones, but they were there. There were more lines on my forehead, between my brows, furrows, as though I had often thought deeply, worrying over something. Most of my hair was still gold, but at either temple the gray swept upward in silver wings around a face thin as a chicken's breastbone.

I had only been gone a little time! A few weeks in Chinanga! A few weeks in Ylles! Whence came this protruding skeleton, this skull beneath the wrinkled skin? Whence came this hoary hair, this hip-stiff walk, this pale reflection of beauty gone, beauty done, beauty over! I screamed, I think. It was as though I had found a snake in my bed, a spider crouched upon my food, a monstrous devourer slinking close at my back, death, worse than death, for with death it is done soon and over, but with this, with this, I was still alive to know of it.

Panic and tears and wailing. I came to myself later to find the kettle steaming over the fire, the lid dancing upon the roiling waters, a jolly clangor which seemed to say so you're getting old, you're old, you're old. So what? Hills are old and getting older, rocks are older than that, stars are older still, so what?

"So it's gone!", I cried, half in pain, half in fury. "My youth, my beauty, gone. I didn't even use it up and it's gone! I didn't have time to waste it, time to taste it, time to glory in it, and it's gone! Here I am all sunk-cheeked, droopy-chested, flat-butted, and it's gone."

Bingity-bangety went the lid. You're half a fairy, aren't you? You've learned magic haven't you? What does it matter how old you are?

What did it matter? If I chose to use enchantment, no one would know it but me. Was there a difference if no one knew it but me? Oh, yes, I cried to myself. Oh, yes. There was more weeping, more howling, coming to myself at last with my hands buried in my filthy hair.

Old or not, I could not bear the dirt on me. I filled the tub and stripped the rags away. When I got them off, I recognized what they were: the remnants of the dress I had worn when I left Wellingford. A simple kirtle of fine wool. I had stood on the sandspit in Chinanga in that gown. I had traveled to the wall of Baskarone in that gown. I had met the ambassador in that gown. Evidently I had also grown old in that gown. It was gone. Only tatters.

I heard a voice singing.

"Beauty and rag tag and motley are twins.
When the one's gone then the other begins."

Oh, Fenoderee! How could you be so unkind! I looked around for him, but he was not there.

Chunks of soap lay on the shelf beside the copper. Cook had learned how to make it from some Teutonic connection of his, from tallow and ashes and a lengthy stirring. The aunts had been dead set against soap in the bath, thinking it fit only for the washing of filthy clothes, but water and scented oils alone would do nothing for my hair. I washed it, combed it, washed it again. The body was filthy, too. Not "my" body. It did not look or feel like "my" body. When I was done, I pulled the plug from the drain, then filled the tub again from the kettle and the well, lying in it to soak myself until I felt able to go on.

When I was clean, I fed the body. The body, though not at all familiar, was not as bad as I had feared, only very bony and ugly, like photographs I had seen in the twentieth of starvation victims or one of those unfortunate women with anorexia. Whatever I had been eating in Ylles, or thought I had been eating, whatever I had consumed in Chinanga, it had not been sufficient to sustain a half-mortal person. I felt my breast, feeling a warmth there, as though something simmered gently inside. Being half-starved had not injured what I carried.

Damn, I said to myself, Carabosse should have known!

None of my clothing would fit. Aunt Lavvy had been, was, very thin, as I recalled. Wrapped in a sheet from the linen store beside the bathroom, I went upstairs once more to Aunt Lavender's room. I found the kirtle she had used to ride in, plus several more, all of very plain stuff, with full sleeves to show the tightly buttoned sleeves of the underbodice. Aunt Lavvy's underbodices were all the color of dirt or excrement. Mama's underbodices, in the attic, were of prettier colors: madder red, and dark indigo blue, saffron yellow, and hollyhock root, which is a pale blue. They were soft enough that their fullness did not matter. Thieving through other closets, I took Aunt Terror's new cote-hardie, and Aunt Basil's surcote, which was almost new. I had never worn a wimple and veil, but it seemed a good time to start. Particularly inasmuch as the soap had left my hair as wild as a lion's mane. I found some clean headdresses in Aunt Marj's room, along with a leatherbound box in which everything could be packed. I thought of using the boots to take me to Wellingford from where I stood, inside Westfaire, but the thought of what all those thorns might do to me
en passant,
as it were, dissuaded me. The boots might take me without injury, but
sapiens nihil affirmat quod non probat,
as Father Raymond used to say, and God knows I didn't know for sure. So I went out into the lake, naked as celery, with the box teetering on top of my head, dried myself off on the shore, and assembled myself as best I might.

I had remembered to bring the looking glass and a comb and I'd taken half a dozen tortoiseshell hairpins from Aunt Lavvy's cupboard. Mama's soft linen underbodice clad me almost to my ankles. I chose the one died with madder, soft and faded pink from washing, and buttoned tightly to the wrists and neck. Over that went Aunt Lavvy's kirtle, made from soft brown wool with a low scooped neck and wide, short sleeves. Buff linen for the wimple and veil, and then Aunt Basil's black and brown striped wool surcote with red lions embroidered in the corners of the front and back panels. When I was put together, I gave myself a looking over-as best I could with the small looking glass-and saw a bony-faced but passable woman, much too thin, who would be handsome if she put on about twenty pounds. I put on cloak and boots and commanded them to take me and my box to Wellingford.

I did not say "the Dower House." I said "Wellingford," and it was to Wellingford the boots delivered me. For a moment, seeing the ruins before me, I thought I had repeated my earlier journey to the abbey. When my eyes had had time to clear, I saw that the place was indeed Wellingford Manor, but that some walls were fallen and others barely standing, that one corner of the roof had partly burned, and that no one lived there anymore. Or perhaps someone did. In the ruined hallway, I saw the embers of a fire and heard a deep voice mumble angrily, as though awakened from slumber. "Boots," I whispered, "take me to the Dower House."

One stride brought me to the door. The Dower House stood, and though it had much need of a careful hand, it gave evidence of being occupied. Broken casements sagged crazily on their hinges, paving stones tilted, weeds grew around the door, but there was smoke coming from one of the chimneys and chickens cackled in the kitchenyard.
Deo gratias.
I put the boots in my pocket, replaced them with a pair of Aunt Marj's pointed shoes and knocked upon the door.

A voice screamed inside, words I could not make out. Instructions to a servant, perhaps? Abuse hurled at a dog? The door opened to disclose a surly maidservant in a dirty kirtle and filthier apron who stared at me with her mouth half open. It was the hall of a place which had been my home. It did not look like home anymore. There were chicken feathers on the stairs.

"Who is it?" came the screaming voice from somewhere off to my right where the kitchens were. "Who is it?"

Who was it, indeed? Who was I? Not Beauty, wife of Edward, mother of Elladine. I had not thought of using enchantment. I was what I was, someone else, old enough to be an aunt and dressed like one. I borrowed the name of one of Edward's own aunts, adding Papa's title for verisimilitude.

"Lady Catherine Monfort, Edward Wellingford's aunt."

The slovenly servant trudged away. There were further noises offstage, perhaps a slap, then a door slamming. There were back stairs. Perhaps someone had gone up. After considerable time, someone came down, hand trailing upon the bannister.

"Lady Catherine Monfort?"

She could have been a pretty lady. In her thirties somewhere, rather more late than early. Her hair was red as a bonfire, and her chest as white as chalk. Both owed much to alchemy. Both could have benefitted from washing. Still, the expression on her face was open and concerned.

I nodded politely, wondering who this apparition was. "Come to visit my nephew, Edward."

"You hadn't heard!" She reached out her arms toward me with genuine compassion. "Oh, how dreadful. You didn't know that Edward had died."

"Died?" I asked stupidly. It had never occurred to me that Naughty Ned could die. Not so soon. Not in such a short time. Sweet man, dead? Is kindness and compassion rewarded so? "Not dead?"