The Beauty of the Wolf

by Wray Delaney

  Beyond the cage Beau is making his way to the river. An odd sight; a man weighed down with the invisible burden of his love upon his back. She catches a glimpse – a shadow – nothing more – of Randa’s wings trailing in the mud.

  In the bear pit my fury knows no bounds. How dare men mistreat the bears, mistreat the dogs.

  My howl would honour the wildest tempest. I free the animals, bring the building tumbling down, I spread my wings and take to the sky.

  To the river I go and on the foreshore I stand and look up at the bridge. In my mind’s eye, I see again her ghost, my daughter, my Aurelia. Her slight frame crossing on that dark night, on a journey home to her father Herkain to tell him of his granddaughter. The drunken men, laughing, unaware, and she in the river, an accident.

  The crowd has followed me, screaming. What care I now? Now that my clock has long gone with age and near run out of hours.

  I say my words, they ripple on the changing tide, they are heard in the cities, in the forests, on the ears of the dead and the living. I say them loud as the river takes me into its dark embrace.

  No man should have dared to wake me. No man. No man.

  THE BEAST

  CIII

  Beau is with me.

  Until I felt his heart beat I knew not in which of two spheres he belonged: the unstitched seams of consciousness or the loose threads of dreams.

  ‘Why do you love me?’

  I think I spoke aloud and I felt then his tears on my fur, his arms round me, his lips on mine.

  Was that his answer? Such a sweet answer that I asked the question again.

  ‘My little soul,’ he said, ‘what a question. You are the mirror in which I see the truth of myself.’

  ‘The dark side of the glass.’

  ‘No,’ he said with such passion as if words alone can save me. ‘You are the light.’

  Was it the power of his kiss, in which lay the truth of his love, that began it? A strange sensation in my head, my feathers falling from me, my beak gone. A face revealed. What kind of face? I could not tell in the reflection in his eye. I wanted to ask – in all my filth, I wanted to ask – does it please you? And still feathers fell. Alas, my pelt does not lose its hold on me, nor do my wings, my talons.

  I am too weak and sleep plays heavy with the curtains of my mind.

  I fear time cannot hold me, that there are no more hours I can clutch before I sink into infinity.

  In moments of wakefulness I heard the bears growling, the distant rumble of a drum, a trumpet blowing. I heard voices howling for the demon. I know who it is they howl for.

  Beau rocked me, rocked me.

  ‘Go home, my love,’ I said. ‘You cannot save me.’

  ‘You are my home,’ he said. ‘I left you once. I will not leave you again.’

  I looked up into his face. Did I speak when I told him I loved him?

  If Death should creep silently upon me now, if he should try to reel me in, a feather-furred fish, then Beau’s words would catch him.

  ‘You will not die. I will not let him take you.’

  The sorceress. Why has she has come?

  She speaks and to me her words are but dead leaves. Her season has passed. She puts something, a scrap, in my talon and I am lifted onto Beau’s back and I wonder if I am dead after all for I cannot see myself. And I remember her purse, the sorceress’s purse. And such a sleep-filled head as mine cannot make reason stand straight. Yet still I see Beau, feel his spine beneath my breasts, feel his strength carry me.

  I concentrate, try to wake, to pin my eyes wide so that they might see all. A thousand faces pass us.

  ‘Hold on, my little soul,’ says Beau and moves me so gently higher on his back.

  Someone is standing on my wing and we cannot move, never will move again.

  But something has happened. I feel it in the fear – the terror – of those around us, its perfume is of iron and of beating blood. It is behind us. Beau looks, I dare not.

  ‘Do you see her?’

  ‘Yes,’ he says.

  ‘It is not me?’ I ask. ‘You are sure?’

  ‘No, it is not you, it is Sycorax.’

  A yowl of rage, a wail of venom, a wrawl of fury that shakes the ground and sends people scattering. But we are moving away from the madness, down little alleyways, along tight lanes. I can feel his exhaustion, the strength ebbing from him. Then a voice shouting, coming towards us.

  ‘Beau!’ A voice well-versed in drama. A voice I recognise. Gally is his name. ‘Where is she?’

  ‘I am carrying her.’

  ‘Beau, there is no one . . .’ He puts out a hand and touches my fur, my wings. ‘God’s teeth!’

  He helps Beau carry his invisible burden to the water. I smell the river.

  A gentleman. I know him too, it is the man of wealth. He too asks where I am. His is the voice of authority. Gally takes his hand, his gloved hand. How strange the details are so alive. It is a gloved hand of disbelief, a gloved hand of a rational man. He touches me and quickly pulls his glove away.

  ‘My God,’ he says and crosses himself.

  Other voices, all men. They say be quick, they say to leave, they say something terrible is happening at the bear pit.

  We are on the barge and I feel the river beneath me, the rhythm of the oars in the water rocking me gently. I hear my mother singing.

  In the distance a pall of dust and smoke rises into the afternoon sky.

  ‘Has the bear pit fallen down?’ says Gally.

  ‘It is the sorceress,’ says Beau, quietly. ‘She has taken her revenge.’

  CIV

  ‘My little bird, you have the look of your mother about you.’

  I am no longer on the river. Where am I?

  The Widow Bott, her sleeves rolled up, is washing the dirt from me. Gently she cleans my face. Where once was a mane of red feathers is now a mass of curly hair.

  ‘Where am I?’

  I am sitting on a stool, my tattered, torn wings spread out on the floor behind me.

  ‘The House of the Three Turrets,’ she says.

  ‘Beau – where is he?’

  My voice sounds strange even to me.

  ‘Hush, little bird,’ says the Widow Bott. ‘He be here. You were asleep when he brought you to this chamber. He too must wash.’

  Footsteps running down the passage towards us and the door flies open. Here he is, his arms around me, lifting me. His hair is wet, his body naked beneath his gown, he smells of lavender and musk and my tattered wings – crumpled, discarded gowns – fall from me.

  I move my shoulders and my neck, feel my hair tumble down my back.

  ‘It be a birth of a different kind,’ says the widow. ‘But no less difficult for that.’

  What am I being born into? I long to be fully awake, to know who I am.

  When I am dry and smell of rose water, when my eyes are too heavy to stay open, I see my mother, my mother of the river, here in the chamber. In her arms she holds my broken wings that once knew the weight of clouds.

  ‘Sleep, my child,’ she says. ‘Sleep, to rest, to heal.’

  When I wake again I am in bed, wrapped in crisp white linen; I wonder if I am dead, if this be my shroud.

  ‘Is this where they take you when your life is spent?’

  ‘No, my love.’ Beau is beside me, he whispers into my hair, tells me Master Butter is here. I see John Butter’s face. He speaks of the silvery water that once I rose from.

  The Widow Bott is gone. My mother is gone. My wings are gone.

  It is dark now. The servant lights the candles, closes the door, tiptoes away. The house echoes with the sound of contented conversation. Beau holds a cup of wine to my lips, it tastes of nectar. He lies beside me.

  ‘I remember your father’s laugh,’ I say. ‘Raucous and mad.’ I look up at Beau. ‘Break this enchantment as I broke yours. Wake me. Wake me into myself, wake me into you.’ I kiss him. ‘Oh, if I had hands, what I would do.’

  He pulls ba
ck the linen sheets, strokes my stomach and where he touches me, my body begins to melt. I have such need of him, and my need is met with equal passion. He is deep inside me and slowly we become one. Fur, skin all the same. He takes my talon, puts a claw in his mouth, sucks it and I am lost in his touch, alive in him. Forgetting the damage my claws can do I hold his back and am shocked to feel as never before the softness of his skin. In the candlelight I can make no sense of the reflection in the window, two lovers intertwined. Where is the beast? Where am I? Who is he making love to?

  He kisses my thighs, he kisses all of me and velvet is my skin. I shudder with delight, with a pleasure so intense and I am rising from mercurial water, born into a new skin.

  I wake at the first light of day and see I have hands, long fingers, seashell nails. I see all my fur and feathers gone. I own the body of woman.

  ‘Is this me?’

  ‘It is you, my love. Extraordinary beyond words.’

  Beau helps me from the bed and I feel the wooden boards beneath my feet. The weight of my bottom makes me smile; my new skin is to be danced in. He turns me to the mirror and in its elaborate and gilded frame I see Randa, no shadow of the beast, just myself as I am. Flame-red hair, white skin, green eyes.

  I see Beau.

  I see the wolf.

  I see us.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Of all the fairytales, Beauty and the Beast is without a doubt my favourite. It’s a fascinating tale which has been told in many ways. When I was a young woman, it struck me that the genders were the wrong way round. Surely it’s women who are most susceptible to casting themselves in the role of the beast? Fearing our bodies to be out of control, we diet, we shape ourselves, we self-harm. We worry about our selfies, re-examine our images for imperfections and, though we don’t admit it, we often see the beast reflected back at us.

  Young men can be heartbreakingly beautiful, a beauty which in later life is lost to something completely different, and it was this that I wanted to examine when I started to write The Beauty of the Wolf, a novel where sexuality is not pinned down. The hero and heroine are only too aware of their images and the effect they have on other people. As it was in the age of Elizabeth I, so it is today — sexuality is more fluid, less defined, and it is for that reason I placed the story in the rich setting of Shakespeare’s England.

  I want to thank my editors at HQ, Sally Williamson and Clio Cornish. Many thanks go to Adam Mars-Jones who very kindly read an early draft and made some perceptively important suggestions; and to Jacky Bateman whose work on this book has been immense. She has a wicked eye for detail and continuity, and a great ability to keep me on track; ‘thank you’ seems slightly inadequate. And not forgetting Lisa Milton whose enthusiasm I am most grateful for, especially as this book sits slightly at odds on her list. Last but not least, my thanks to my agent, Catherine Clark. I’m very blessed to have one of the best agents around.

  Writing is a solitary business and I’m not as good at selling my books as I should be. So, finally, I must give a great big thank you to the publicity and sales team, the unsung heroes of publishing. Without all their hard work, where would I be?

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