Beauty
Page 26
I thought, her mouth is wide and sensual. She has hooded eyes. Her figure is as graceful and lithe as mine once was. Her breasts curve like the swell of a sail, and her cheeks are softly rose. She is beautiful, not as I was, but nonetheless, beautiful. I cannot tell if she is intelligent. She is hard as stone.
I wondered, how much of her hardness is my fault? How much of this iron rancor came from doing without a mother’s love?
There was no time to weary myself assessing guilt. Someone had to see to her, see to things, and it was obvious that Lydia could not see to boiling an egg. Though Elladine could use a parent, I could scarcely introduce myself as her mother. I had no idea whether Edward settled anything on her or not before he died. Without a dowry, her future would be unenviable. All I could do under the circumstances was to be her aunt, stay with her, and try to remedy the situation.
LATER
Later yesterday I met Lydia’s four older children. The two daughters are awkward and ungainly girls, both with an intransigent dirtiness about them. The younger one, eighteen perhaps, would not be bad looking if she were cleaner, and if she would stand up straight and comb her hair. The older, however, Gloriana, a maiden of some twenty years, is taller than any woman I have ever seen. She has a face that could carve stone and hands as big as a large man’s. I knew at once who was responsible for the bruises on Elladine’s face. Gloriana’s hands twitch, knot, twitch again whenever she looks at Elly, like creatures with a will of their own. She is as full of anger as Elladine is, though from a different cause. An ugly girl who hates girls who are not. When I heard her voice, it was no surprise. Hers was the knife-edged shriek from the kitchen. That both of the girls are slovens simply fills out the picture. Their shifts have not been washed in many a season, their nails are brown with unthinkable dirt, their hair, I warrant, is as full of lice as mine was when I woke at Westfaire.
The boys, Harry and Bert, looked slightly less dirty when I met them. I believe their relative cleanliness may be due to their having been caught in the rain oft times while hunting. Both are beefy boys, red in the face, big in the teeth, with small eyes and large noses. They are even taller than Gloriana. Though Lydia is a woman of average size, her first husband must have been a giant to have begot these monsters.
Of the twins, the least said the better. They have been spoiled so rotten that they smell of corruption. Neither has ever been forced to do anything he or she did not want to do. They have two voices: a whine; a scream. They have no graces at all.
So, if the family is of little use, what about the servants? There are serving women about the place, but I recognize none of them. Besides the two who eventually finished cleaning my room, I found several more, enough to do the washing, sweep out the filthy hall, bring in wood for the fire, heat the kettle and fill the tubs. Lydia’s daughters could have bathed. Their clothes could have been scrubbed. I wonder why they choose instead to go about in dirt? Well, they could do as they chose, but the Dower House need not follow their example.
I slept last night in a clean chamber. I rose this morning at dawn. I found the maids still sleeping, routed them out, and set them to work, though they grumbled mightily when I told them to clean the fireplace in Elly’s chamber, saying that she always did that herself.
“Elly,” I explained sweetly, “is my nephew’s daughter. She does not sweep chambers, carry out slops, or make up fires. You do. You do it well and consistently or you will be eaten alive by dragons!” I glared at them and they cowered.
Elly came upon me in mid-dudgeon, carrying a pail of ashes. She shook her head at me angrily. “It won’t do any good,” she sneered. “Stepmama won’t keep after them once you’re gone. They’re lazy sluts, all of them.” I noticed again that her nails were black.
“They certainly won’t do it if you do it for them,” I suggested. “Go wash your hands.”
One of the maids sniggered behind me. I set a small imp to pinch her black and blue, and her howling could be heard for half a mile. It had a salutary effect on the others. I smiled at Elly, who regarded me with dawning interest.
“You know what these sluts call me,” she asked. “Ella of the Ashes. Just because I carry out the ashes so I can get the fire in my room to burn. The others are so lazy, they’d rather freeze. They all pile in one bed together to keep each other warm. Like pigs.”
“Why won’t Lydia exert herself a little?” I asked, truly interested in Elly’s perception of the situation.
“She doesn’t want to keep Wellingford. She wants to sell it. That’s why she doesn’t take care of it. It used to be beautiful. It’s all ugly now.”
“Whether she wants to keep it or not, there is such a thing as pride,” I said. “Only those without any are filthy and lazy. Perhaps she needs to be taught.”
“When pigs have wings,” said Elly with an ugly snort, leaving me.
It was only later I thought what she had said. Ella of the Ashes. Cinder-Ella.
“Puck,” I cried.
He was there, looking at me sidelong.
“What is this?” I demanded, half hysterically. “I’ve been in the twentieth, Puck. I’ve read books. I’ve seen Disney, for the love of God. I know the Cinderella story. What is this?”
“Did you think the stories were made up?” he asked me. “Did you think there was no real Beauty, no real Cinderella, no real Goldilocks or Rose Red or…”
“But why me? Why my daughter?”
He shrugged. “Did you never notice, in the twentieth, how legends gather around some people. There is the truth about a man, and then the part truths that gather afterward, and then the myths that follow later yet. A legendary man tends to have legendary sons. Power attracts power, so power gathers. It is one of the truths of magic.”
“Am I to expect, then, that there will be a prince?”
He shrugged again. “It depends on what story you learned, there in the twentieth. Was it the true tale, or the part truth, or the myth? Do you know?”
I didn’t know, but knowing that Elly was at the root of a fairy tale made me have some hope for her future, at least.
ST. MARY MAGDELEN’S DAY,
JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367
My daughter is the same age I was when I started writing this story of my life. She is not very like me, as I remember being. She is bad-tempered, quick to strike, eager to continue the fray. She hates her stepsisters and brothers with a hot, even anger. She doses their food with nutshells, boils their woolens to elf size, spreads oil upon the floor outside their rooms to make them fall. They detest her, and she glories in their dislike. Her animosity and their slothfulness seem to have kept her alive. If any one of them had been capable of decisive action, he, or she, would have killed Elly. I look at her and I marvel. So like her father. She would rather have passionate hatred than lukewarm affection.
“What are you looking at?” she snarled at me.
“The indomitable human spirit,” I replied.
“Go domit somewhere else,” she returned. “I’m sick of you always looking at me.”
Perhaps I, too, would be sick of someone always looking at me.
“What was it like when your father was alive?” I asked her.
Pain, then, in her face, swiftly passing but sharp while it was there. “He was … he was very good to me,” she said. “I think he loved me.”
“I know he did,” I said. “He told me so.”
“She says he didn’t,” she gestured toward her stepmother’s window. “She says he only pretended, because I didn’t have a mother. She says nobody could love someone as bad-tempered as I am. He only pretended. He thought he owed it to me.”
“That’s not true. He loved you. Very much. I remember once when you were a tiny baby, only a few months old, I saw him bend over your cradle and tell you that he loved you, and it was not owing, it was real.”
She sat very still, like a cat that is too frightened to move, afraid I would take it back. Her stance made me think of an old friend.
“He did die,” she nodded. “He was my mother’s cat, and Papa said she left him to me when the enchantment took her away.”
I gulped. So Edward had told her that! Poor Edward. He had been curious, and knew it. He had blamed himself.
“Grumpkin slept on my bed sometimes. He lived to be very old. I cried when he died. But he fathered lots of kittens, and I’ve still got one of his sons. Daddy named him Grumpkin the Second as though he were a king.” Her voice had changed. All the hostility had left it. It was for that one moment as open and communicative as a child’s.
“Why did the enchantment take your mother away?” I asked, wondering if I’d been right.
“Because Papa got curious about her,” she said. “He said it was all his fault.”
Oh, Edward. Edward. “Let’s go see Grumpkin’s son,” I suggested, getting up from my chair.
“I have to take out the ashes,” she said, not thinking, merely expressing her habitual contrariness.
“No,” I told her. “Not anymore. While I am here, I will be sure the maids do it.”
Brought to herself, her lip curled into its usual sneer. “How come you can tell the maids what to do and what not to do?” she asked. “You’re not the mistress of Wellingford. You’re only an aunt.”
I had figured out who I was that morning. Even I, who had never cared for children’s stories, could not have failed to notice what role I was playing. In the twentieth, I had seen Disney, after all. Though Elly and I were not privileged to be attended by singing mice, it did not surprise me greatly that this segment of my life had gained a spurious immortality, a glossy, oversimplified and untruthful half-life.
I shook my head at Elly, trying hard to get her to smile. “No, my child. You mustn’t tell anyone at all, but I’m your fairy godmother.”
She laughed at me, thinking I was joking. It was a genuinely amused laugh.
ST. MARTHA’S DAY,
JULY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367
I have my Grumpkin back again. The son is like Grumpkin I, except that he has one white foot. When I picked him up, it seemed almost that he knew me, for he reached out his paw to touch my face as the other Grumpkin used to do. As I write, he is beside me, purring, opening his eyes every few moments to be sure I have not gone away. Though Elly values him, she does not care for him. I saw her slap at him, for no reason except to see him blink. Strange. With her, the having is enough. She uses or ignores. She does not maintain. In that, she is more like Lydia than she would like to think.
Though Lydia is too lazy to take charge of Wellingford herself, she does not seem to resent my doing it. In any case, I have not asked her permission. During the past days the maids have ceased to grumble: they, the household, and the household linens are clean. Elladine has had several baths (as have I), the floors have been swept, and the cook has been instructed to feed us something besides porridge and meat pies. There is plenty of food—it has been six years since the plague came and went again—but acquiring victuals from the gardens and orchards, from the sties and the poultry house and the herds, takes a little attention and good sense, neither of which Lydia seems to be capable of supplying. The small caches of coins I left behind me are still here, for the most part, and I have used some of them to purchase necessities. I also found the warrant upon the usurers of London where I hid it before I left, but I have set it aside against later need.
I have gained several pounds and look less like a skeleton. Elly’s hands have come clean. Her bruises have faded. I set a small spell upon Gloriana that she should get a painful cramp each time she tried to pinch. She, robbed of her usual prey, has turned to accusing a pretty village woman of witchcraft. I will have to do something about that, too. I have not yet decided what to do to extricate Elly from her current problem, but at least the situation has been stabilized, as they would say in the twentieth.
Carabosse asked me, before I left Faery, whether I could just go along, pretending I was only what I am. Here, in this house, I am only what I am. The thing burns beneath my breastbone, but it is no stranger than my heartbeat or the sound of my own breath. It is almost as though I had stayed in Chinanga. Here, as there, no one knows who I am. I am someone else. No one knows I am here.
ST. STEPHEN’S DAY, SEPTEMBER,
YEAR OF OUR LORD 1367
I was not surprised when a herald came to the door yesterday with a pronouncement. I have been expecting something of the kind.
All inhabitants of Wellingford between the ages of sixteen and twenty-five are invited to attend a series of three evening entertainments given in honor of His Royal Highness, Prince Something or Other, by his parents, the ruling family in exile of some tiny kingdom I had never heard of.
I was surprised, however, at the herald’s voice. There was something familiar about it. Something that raised gooseflesh, made echoes in my heart. I went out into the courtyard with a cup of wine and offered it to the man. When I saw him, I knew him.
“Your name is Giles, isn’t it?” I asked him, keeping my voice even only with a great effort. I wanted to throw my arms about him. I wanted to cry on his shoulder. “You were a man-at-arms in service to the Duke of Monfort and Westfaire.” My voice trembled when I said it.
“My lady?” he asked, getting down from his horse and bowing to me. “Have we met?” He looked just the same. Older, of course, but just the same. His eyebrows quirked in the same way. He had that little turn at the corner of his lips that I had used to watch for. There was a new scar at one side of his brow. “I don’t remember…”
I waved my hand in front of my face. “Many years ago,” I said. “I can scarcely remember the occasion, but your voice sounded familiar.” Not only his voice. He stood as I remembered, straight and tall, feet together, one slightly turned out. As though he had been invited to dance.
“Fancy your becoming a herald!” I said. “Why did you leave Westfaire?”
His eyes shut, only briefly, as though remembering an old pain. “The priest there sent me on a journey,” he said. “A kind of pilgrimage, it was. To bring some sacred relics back to the chapel at Westfaire. I had to go a wearisome way, and when I returned…”
“The enchantment,” I murmured.
“The enchantment,” he agreed, letting his eyes shut again. “I think … I think they’re all in there,” he whispered. “All of them. One of them got out for a while, but she had to go back. She’d be a widow now.”
Well, of course that is what he would have thought. It is, after all, what Edward thought, what Edward told everyone. Not about my being a widow, but about my getting out of Westfaire. “Someone you cared about?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, ma’am. Yes, indeed. Someone I care about.”
I breathed deeply, taking note of the present tense. “So then, what did you do?”
“I chose to stay fairly close by, but I sought service where I might. There was plague, as you know. It seemed wisest to stay away from the cities. I lived rough as a man can. I farmed a bit. At least that meant I’d have food. Then, when these little royals took the place over by East Sawley Mill, they offered me good money to be man-at-arms for them. Escort, mostly. And herald.”
“Herald,” I said with a tremulous laugh.
He laughed with me. “I’ve got a good loud voice from calling cows, ma’am, and I remember things.”
Oh, indeed he did. And so did I. “Can you remember the reason for this widespread invitation?” I teased, letting something of my old childish teasing come into my voice.
He cocked his head and smiled at me, recognizing the tone if not the origin of that flirtiness. “These little royals, they got driven out of their wee country, over near France or some such place so I’m told, but when they came, they brought a fortune with them. They bought land past East Sawley Mill and rebuilt the big old house up there. But they don�
��t know anybody, ma’am. What with the plague and the unsettled conditions since, it’s a wonder anybody’s left. They told me to ride to all the noble houses in the surrounding land and pronounce the invitation. There can’t be more than six or eight great houses left, and that’ll be stretching it. Wellingford’s not rightly great, not anymore, but I thought I’d stop.” He flushed, thinking I might take umbrage, but I only nodded, telling him that I understood.
“Will there be a ball?” I asked, doubtfully.
“Close as they can get. They’ve got musicians hired. They’ve got cooks working away, making three days worth of feasts. The boy’s coming of age, ma’am, and his mama wants him to have a celebration. She says they’ve had enough sadness recently.”
He handed me back the wine cup. I watched him go with tears in my eyes and a great longing in my heart, or wherever longing resides. I felt it in my stomach, so perhaps that is where. I had wanted to tell him who I was. The only reason I had not was that he did not recognize me. When I looked into the mirror, it was hard for me to know myself. I was afraid he could not love who I had become.
I went to the kitchens to find Harry teasing his sisters. “It’s him,” he was telling them. “The prince who’s giving the party is the man who came riding by the other day. He’s the prince.”
Gloriana said, “Oh, Harry, it’s not. It couldn’t be.”
“I tell you it is. The boy with the yellow hair.” Harry seized Griselda in one oversized arm and paraded her around the kitchen, stepping on her feet. His hands were the same size as Gloriana’s, and even on him they bulked large. He had jowls already, blue as steel, and a bit of a belly sticking out. Not an altogether prepossessing partner for the dance. “The prince was the one with the yellow hair,” he bellowed raucously.