Beast: A Tale of Love and Revenge
Lisa Jensen
It wasn’t all the witch’s fault.
She was just the one he saw as his spine hunched forward, as claws sprang out of the furry paws that had been his elegant hands only moments before, as long tendrils of mane erupted out over his eyes.
“What have you done to me, Witch?” he bellowed, although it was difficult to understand him with the lengthening of his snout.
“I have done nothing,” she told him with a coolness I had to admire, as if he weren’t crouching before her with animal horns and shaggy, pointed ears sprouting from his head and long rows of raptor feathers cascading down his back. “This is the truth of who you are inside.”
“Change me back!” he thundered.
“I cannot,” she told him. “That power lies with you, not me.”
Well, that wasn’t the whole truth. I had something to do with it, although even I didn’t know it at the time. So I was surprised when the witch suddenly turned to me in her awful majesty. “And you, girl. What do you want?”
All I wanted then was my revenge, to see him groveling on all fours, his handsome face and manly form reduced to beastliness. Things might have been very different had I left it at that, run off with the other servants on that terrifying night, and taken up a new life in some other place. But as soon as I had what I most wished for, I found I craved more.
“I want to see him suffer,” I breathed. I was drunk on my own hatred, more powerful than anything I had ever felt before.
“As you wish,” she said, and that was the end of it. And the beginning.
I didn’t know then the journey I was on. I could never have imagined any power that burned brighter than hate.
I had so much to learn from the beast.
My Beast.
Until she came.
They say it’s a turbulent household, where I’m going. They whisper behind their hands and cast baleful glances at me when they think I’m not looking. But I am always looking. I see them nudge one another and smirk at my expense. “Chateau Beaumont,” they whisper knowingly.
Before darkness fell at the inn last night, I glimpsed this place, set like a gem in the distance above the wheat fields and vineyards, shining like gold on the green hill, like a royal palace. But the innkeeper’s wife told me it’s only a chateau, so I mustn’t give myself airs. She said to beware of beauty, for it can deceive.
It’s no disgrace to be a servant. That’s what my father used to say.
Working for a wage is proof that you have value to someone, he told me. “Even though your station in life may be low, your character might yet soar. Poor folk have little enough say over their circumstances,” he would say, “but your character is always yours to shape as you will.”
My father looked at the world with joy and hope, and so he found joy and hope everywhere — especially when he looked at me.
“You are the light of the world, my Lucie,” he would tell me. “Open your heart to life. You are the best of what will be.”
While Papa was alive, the world was full of possibilities. Our village was just another cluster of drafty stone cottages and hungry faces, but it was my home. I never knew there was any other place on earth. I never needed any other place.
But that’s all changed now.
Mama hoarded her wages for a whole season to send me here, what few coppers she could put by after the sowing and reaping and milling. She says it’s well for me to go now, before my stepfather takes any more notice of how I’ve grown.
It’s harvesttime, and the perfume of crushed grapes sweetens the air as I make my way up the steep, winding road to Chateau Beaumont. The town of Clairvallon, where I spent last night, seems very far below me now. At last, I climb to the top of the hill, and there it stands, Chateau Beaumont, floating like a golden island in the middle of a moat, surrounded by vast, green parkway. I cross a stone bridge over the moat, its water shimmering like jewels in the sunlight. Black-eyed swans glide over the water, ruffling up their white feathers for my admiration.
I pause at an enormous gate of gilded iron, whose keeper comes grumpily down, a rough-hewn man with a long, drooping mustache and an old scar along one cheek. He demands to know my business. I don’t wish to be taken for a vagrant, so I lie and say I’ve been sent for by my aunt, the head laundress. That part is true; she is my stepfather’s sister, although no blood kin to me. But we have never met, and she has no idea that I have come to beg a position.
The gatekeeper directs me to empty my pockets — simple enough, as there is nothing inside them — and inspects the underside of my cloak. Satisfied that I carry nothing but the clothes on my back, he opens the gates and nods me inside.
The courtyard I enter could hold my entire village. Two long wings of the chateau enclose it on either side, a west wing on the left and an east wing under a row of stone arches on the right. The main house stands beyond the courtyard, three stories of honey-colored stone with a black-domed turret at each corner. A broad gravel driveway sweeps up to the main house, flanked by terraced gardens, so that the chateau seems to rise to heaven in a cloud of flowers. Ornate balconies, filigree spires, domes, and chimneys clamber over one another in a rush to the sky, under a single high tower with a colored glass window that glows in the sunlight.
Can this really be my new home?
My interview with Aunt Justine does not go well. Although we have never met, I recognize her by the same small eyes and sour expression I have seen in my stepfather’s face. I find her in the laundry room, presiding over a roomful of steaming tubs and dishevelled girls. Strands of long, greying hair droop from under her wilted white cap. Her face is red, her hands chapped, and her bodice sweat-stained from the steam and heat. She casts a skeptical glance at me.
“I have more lazy girls now than I can manage,” she barks.
She would like to send me away, but I can only hope the shame would be too great for her family if she could not find a place for her relation. “I’ll work hard,” I say.
All around us girls are thrusting long poles into the tubs to turn the linen. Others are on their knees, pounding articles of clothing in a wide, flat stone basin with a groove along one edge to divert water outside. It may be a challenge for my character to soar here, but I’m determined to prove myself worthy of my father’s faith in me. Besides, I have nowhere else to go.
They thought me unnatural back in my village, a girl my age with no suitors. Did I care nothing for my future? But I saw where it led, their gaming. They paired off because they have always done so, because the winter is cold and the nights are long. Next winter there would be a new baby to feed and their own small share of land to work, and then more babies and more work and their sporting days would be over. I knew my future all too well. I saw it every day in my mother’s careworn face. That’s why I am here.
I am only a girl, a servant, if God wills it. I possess nothing of value but my character, but that is mine to make of what I will. I cannot choose my circumstances, but I can choose to live nobly in this fine place. That will be my strength — if only I am allowed to stay.
Aunt Justine wipes her hands on her apron — large, rough hands like her brother’s. “Go see Madame Montant, the housekeeper,” she tells me at last. “She wants a girl.” And she nods back toward a warren of rooms leading to the main house.
Mumbling my thanks, I turn to go, but not before I see her staring at me with a shrewd and critical eye.
“Do not disgrace me,” she commands.
“Watch yourself, girl,” cautions Madame Montant. She can never remember our names; there are so many of us.