Beauty (4 page)
Eventually after a month spent locked away in his apartments, the heartbroken king took his baby daughter in his arms, and as she gurgled up at him, pure white streaks in her soft dark hair, he finally spoke.
‘Beauty,’ he said. ‘We shall call her Beauty.’
A
fter two hours or more of hacking at the thick branches and vines, the tangle of which made up the thick wall, it was clear to all three of the travellers that there was nothing natural about this occurrence. It was also slow, hard work. As the huntsman cut with his axe, the prince and Petra would hold the space he made open and they would all edge forward and beat at the next section. When the branches behind them were released, they would close up again, the splintered wood and severed vines re-linking and entwining so tightly that no break in the join was visible.
They had started the day bantering lightly – especially the prince and Petra, whose excitement was greater than the huntsman’s – but soon the only words any of them spoke were purely related to their task. They were all hot and exhausted and crammed together in a tight space that shuffled forwards very slowly, and the huntsman knew that should they stop, or their axes break, the forest would close in around them and they’d be trapped forever.
They tied handkerchiefs over their faces trying to avoid the heady scents that sprang from several of the flowers and seemed determined to lull them to sleep. Even when Petra’s slim, firm body was pressed again his own as they moved, the huntsman’s body didn’t respond. This forest was dangerous and the trees were clearly against them in their work. The huntsman had always trusted the forest. Nature was honest . . . and nature was very keen to keep them away from whatever lay beyond this wall.
Finally, however, the pig-headedness of men prevailed and they tumbled, gasping and free, from the grip of the wood. The spring sunshine was bright and warm, and they sat on the grass for a moment, laughing and sharing some water and regaining their strength. It was a few seconds before the eerie quiet around them became too much to ignore.
‘I can’t even hear any birds singing,’ Petra said softly as their moods and laughter quietened. ‘On a beautiful day like this they should be everywhere.’ She frowned up at the empty sky. Ahead of them lay a small city and in the distance, as was the way with all the kingdoms, there sat a castle at its heart.
‘It’s not just the birds,’ the prince said. ‘I can’t hear anything. No noise at all.’
He was right. Even the trees dotted along the edges of the narrow road didn’t rustle as the warm breeze moved through them. The hairs on the back of the huntsman’s neck prickled and he kept one hand on the hilt of his hunting knife as they began to walk, once again cursing the king and the prince and the royal necessity for adventures. As if life wasn’t adventure enough.
The cart was just over the other side of the slight hill from the forest’s edge and Petra gasped when it came into view. The huntsman didn’t blame her. It was a strange sight, that was for sure, stopped as it was in the middle of the road with the shire horse laying down in front of it. Around it were a dozen thick-wooled sheep with a dog lying in their midst He wasn’t sure what he’d been expecting, but this wasn’t it.
As the prince clambered onto the cart, the huntsman crouched and touched the horse. It was warm and blood pumped in a steady rhythm through its body.
‘Hey,’ the prince said. ‘I think he’s still alive.’ Up on the cart, a fat man’s head lolled forward, the reins having slipped from his hands. The prince tried to straighten him up, but the man’s weight slid sideways and he lay across the seat. The prince shook him. ‘Hey!’ he said, loudly, the word a stranger in the eerie silence around them. ‘Hey, wake up! Wake up!’ The fat man didn’t move. He didn’t even snore or grunt or shuffle as the prince wobbled him.
The huntsman looked at the animals around him; not one of them dead and rotten as he’d been expecting to find in this lost kingdom. The prince had struck on it without thinking.
‘They’re asleep,’ he muttered. ‘They’re all asleep.’
‘That can’t be right.’ Petra dropped to her knees and stroked the sheepdog. ‘They can’t have been asleep all this time. Not for a hundred years. It isn’t possible.’
But it appeared, as they moved on, that it was entirely possible. Every living creature they passed was lost in slumber, apparently having fallen asleep in the same instant. There was a soldiers’ outpost as they walked into the first main streets of the city, and two were asleep face down on a chess board. Others had crumpled in a heap at their sentry posts. The huntsman counted about fifteen. ‘That’s a lot of soldiers,’ he said.
‘Maybe they were at war,’ the prince answered. ‘The kingdoms are always at war.’
It was an apparently affluent city and there were some beautiful mansions set back in their own grounds, again with sleeping soldiers guarding the high gates, but even the ordinary cottages closer to the castle were well maintained, even though the flower-beds were overgrown with weeds. Here and there long grasses had sprung up everywhere between cobbles and flagstones. Animal life might be slumbering but the plant life still grew, although not to the proportions expected. ‘Whatever this is, it’s affected every living thing,’ Petra said, stooping to examine the flowers.
As they moved closer to the centre of the pretty town the huntsman noticed that some houses had the windows roughly boarded up and when he prised the wood from one they saw that the glass behind was smashed and the contents of the house were either broken or ruined in some way. This had clearly been done before the city fell asleep, and he could find no rhyme or reason to the house that had been wrecked. They were ordinary people’s homes. What had happened to the people who had lived in them?
After a while they split up to explore more thoroughly, and everything they found was the same. Men, women and children, all asleep in a variety of strange places. One woman’s face was badly burned where she’d been making soup on a stove, now a long time cold, and as she slipped to the floor she’d pulled the pan down over her.
Only in one cottage did the huntsman find anyone in their bed. Whoever it was they must have died before whatever happened to send the city to sleep, and all that remained was a skeleton in a nightdress with wisps of thin hair poking out from beneath a black nightcap. A knife stuck through the thin fabric of her dress and now that her flesh had rotted away, it leaned loose against her ribs where some unknown assailant had stabbed it into her breathing body. It was a strange cottage, with none of the bright colours found in so many of the others, and there was a cold, stale dampness hanging in the air as if none of the outside warmth had crept in during the long years that had passed. He looked in the small cupboards and found jars of herbs and bottle of potions with words he didn’t understand on the labels. It was a witch’s cottage, he was sure. He shivered and was about to leave when the small stove in the tiny main room caught his eye. The door was open a tiny fraction and something glittered inside. He crouched and pulled the black iron door open.
Inside, sitting on a pile of soot, were a pair of sparkling slippers. He reached in and took them out. They were light and warm in his hands. Diamonds, he thought. They were made of diamonds, not glass at all. Why would someone have been trying to burn them? Was this the work of whoever had killed her? Were the two deeds linked in the strange history of this kingdom? He stared at them for several seconds until he heard Petra and the prince calling for him. The woman upstairs was long gone. She would not miss them, and he and his companions might need something to barter with at some point. He slipped the shoes into his bag and got to his feet. If the city were to somehow wake and the shoes were declared missing he would return them. For now, he’d consider them his fee for this babysitting task the king had set him.
‘
W
hat do you think they are?’ the prince asked, as he and Petra climbed the stone steps and examined the lines on the base of the statue more closely. ‘These can’t be old, can they?’
‘No.’ The huntsman frowned. Even though it was clear that the whole city was in some kind of a cursed deep sleep, now they were closer to the castle he couldn’t shake the feeling that they were being watched. It was an instinct he was trained not to ignore. ‘Look at those ones round the other side. That chalk is fresh.’ The lines grew more ragged, but they were definitely some form of counting. Were they charting days? Or months? It was hard to tell. There were a lot of them, whichever it was.
‘You mean someone’s still awake?’ Petra asked.
‘That can’t be right,’ the prince said. ‘Even if they hadn’t fallen asleep, they’d surely be dead by now.’
‘Maybe, maybe not,’ Petra said cheerily. ‘None of this is normal, after all. And I used to hear howling sometimes. Through the wall. Something’s alive in here.’
The huntsman wasn’t listening to her. A noise, faint and far to his left had caught his attention. Someone was following them. He was sure of it.
‘Hello?’ he called. ‘Anyone there?’ There was no answer but a return to silence. ‘Come on,’ he muttered. ‘Let’s get to the castle. If there are any answers, we’ll find them there.’ The prince nodded, not picking up on the huntsman’s point. Trouble, when it came to ordinary people, was normally delivered to them by royalty. Whatever had made this city silent, it had started in the castle.
P
etra had never seen anything like it. Even as they’d walked through the city she’d felt slightly overwhelmed by the looming building that rose so high above the ordinary houses she wondered if in the right light it would engulf them all with its shadow, but as they walked through the open gates, carefully stepping over the crumpled heap of soldiers, for the first time in her life she felt small and insignificant. The village, the forest and her grandmother’s cottage had been her world, and all the time this whole city had been sleeping so close by. How much more was there that she would never see, even if she spent a lifetime exploring?
‘Heavily guarded,’ the huntsman said.
Petra glanced at him. His dark eyes scanned the heavily armed men at their feet and she could see the sight bothered him.
‘Perhaps they had more to worry about than my father does,’ the prince said. ‘Who knows what lies on the other side of this kingdom?’
The huntsman nodded but said nothing more. They were a strange pair, this prince and his companion. One so full of charm and courtly grace, the other quiet and hardy. Petra liked them both, but she knew which one she trusted the most. A man of the forest would always win her vote if it came to her own survival. The prince might be good with a sword but she imagined that he’d learned to duel with rules. Killing something living was very different to courtly sword play – the prince had discovered as much in Granny’s kitchen when faced by the winter wolf. There were no rules when it came to fighting for your very existence. They were both handsome, though, she’d give them that.
Vines and ivy had crept up the high stone walls, clinging to the mortar between the heavy rocks as if trying to suffocate the life out of the building itself. In the courtyard men and women slept where they’d stood, one still holding a saddle that was no doubt meant for the horse that slept beside him. Another was surrounded by loaves of bread that had tumbled from his basket.
The huntsman pushed a door open and the hinges shrieked, shocked at the movement after so long. The sound echoed as they stepped inside. Dust danced upwards as they moved, suddenly disturbed from its own slumber on the marble floor. Unlike the smaller houses in the city, no passing wind or weather had been able to penetrate the thick wall and Petra felt as if she had truly walked into a forgotten tomb. Her heart thumped as they walked, leaving footprints in the dirt behind them.
‘We should split up,’ the prince said. His voice was loud and confident. Petra wondered why he didn’t find the castle as eerie as she did but then, she supposed, he was used to castles. He was not in awe of the wealth or beauty that lay under the dust of years passed. ‘I’ll take upstairs. Petra, you stay on this floor.’
‘I’ll search the lower levels and dungeons,’ the huntsman finished. ‘But don’t touch anyone. If you find anything then shout and wait.’
‘Just what I was going to say,’ the prince said.
Petra nodded. The idea of searching alone made her shiver but she wasn’t going to admit her fear to the two men. If they were happy to do it then she would be too.
‘If we can’t find the source of this curse by tomorrow,’ the huntsman said, ‘then we load some riches onto a cart for your father and try and cut our way back out. Agreed?’
The huntsman had barely smiled since they’d found the city. Petra was sure that if it was up to him they’d be leaving it by now. Whatever had brought him here it wasn’t thrill-seeking or adventure, but Petra couldn’t help feeling a little of those things herself. She couldn’t imagine turning her back on this place and not knowing how the story had begun, or how it ended.