The Beatryce Prophecy

by Kate DiCamillo

  And so it was that Jack Dory made his way to the monastery, to the Order of the Chronicles of Sorrowing.

  When he arrived, he was greeted by a she-goat. She came racing toward him with her head lowered.

  Jack Dory had never before seen a goat run so fast. He took a moment to admire her.

  Yes, she was very fast indeed.

  He let her come toward him, and then at the last possible moment, he took a small, elegant step to the side, and the goat went running past him, still at full speed, on into a field.

  He heard laughter, and then a clear voice said, “You outwitted her. I did not know she could be outwitted.”

  He turned and saw a robed and hooded figure.

  “Aye, I outstepped her and I outwitted her. And I could outrun her, too, I’m sure,” said Jack Dory.

  Just as he spoke those words, the goat returned and butted him in the backside, and Jack Dory went flying through the air.

  He flew for some good distance, and when he landed, he put his hands behind his head and lay in the field and looked up at the blue sky and whistled. He pretended that it was what he had intended all along—to relax in a field, whistling and staring up at the sky.

  The robed figure stood and laughed, and the goat came to Jack Dory and bent over him and snuffled his hair.

  “Hello,” he said to the goat. He sat up. “You might want to know that I have come in peace. I have come to fetch a monk to write down a man’s confessions. The man is dying, and he has been visited by an angel. This man is a soldier, and he is willing to pay a handsome sum to unburden himself of his sins.”

  “Why does this man, this soldier, not just say what he has done wrong?” asked the robed figure.

  “I am speaking with the goat,” said Jack Dory.

  “You are wasting your time. She listens to no one but me.”

  Jack Dory sat up. “And who are you?”

  “Her name is Answelica.”

  “Not the goat,” said Jack Dory. “You.”

  “I am not supposed to say who I am. I am not supposed to talk at all.”

  “Why?” asked Jack Dory.

  There followed a long silence. The goat named Answelica stared at Jack Dory out of her yellow eyes. The wind moved through the field. A bird sang.

  Jack Dory waited. He was good at waiting.

  “What is your name?” asked the small monk.

  “Me? I’m Jack Dory.”

  “Jack Dory, I will tell you a secret.”

  “No, thank you,” said Jack Dory.

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean I do not want to know a secret. Secrets are trouble. Granny Bibspeak was forever telling me that secrets are trouble and that trouble has a very long tail.”

  “Who is Granny Bibspeak?”

  “She was the person who loved me,” said Jack Dory. “Now, I am here to find a monk to write down what this man says, so he may have some forgiveness. Will you help me?”

  “I am Beatryce,” the monk said. She pushed back the hood of the robe to reveal a heart-shaped face and a head entirely without hair. She gave him a look of utter defiance. “And I could do it,” she said. “I could write what the soldier needs written.”

  “You?” said Jack Dory. “You couldn’t write a thing. You’re naught but a girl, a girl without hair.”

  “You’re making me angry,” said the girl.

  The goat went and stood beside her.

  “Look how afraid I am,” said Jack Dory. He stood up and spread his arms wide. “Look how I tremble so.” He smiled. He whistled a small song. He looked the girl—Beatryce, it was—in the eye, and then he looked beyond her to the blue sky.

  It was a sky blue enough to break your heart in two. He knew that blue. It was the blue of unexpected happenings.

  He did not trust that blue at all.

  “Will you lead me to a monk who can write the man’s words for him, or will you not?” Jack Dory said.

  “You don’t know me,” said Beatryce.

  “Aye,” said Jack Dory. “I do not.”

  The goat trotted over to him. She leaned in close, sniffing him. Canny goat, clever goat.

  Jack Dory leaned down so that he was face-to-face with her. He wanted to make it clear that he was not the type of person to be pushed around by a goat.

  He was staring deep into her yellow eyes when the goat drew back her head and slammed it into his with a sudden, terrible force.

  The pain was tremendous. There were stars dancing inside of Jack Dory’s head, and there were bells ringing somewhere, too.

  Stars and bells. Bells and stars.

  He thought that perhaps he would sit back down again, and so he did.

  From what seemed a long way away, he heard the girl—the bald girl in a monk’s robe, the girl who said she could write, the girl named Beatryce—laughing.

  She should not have told him that she could write.

  She should not have spoken at all.

  Brother Edik would despair of her.

  But she liked the boy. More, she trusted him.

  She did not know why; she just did.

  She extended her hand to him. “Here,” she said, “take hold of my hand. Your head will stop ringing in a bit. You’re lucky she did not bite you. Usually, she bites. The brothers believe that Answelica is a demon. She has attacked them all. She has attacked everyone except me.”

  Jack Dory took her hand. She pulled him to his feet. He seemed to weigh nothing at all.

  “You are as light as air,” she said.

  “Aye, it makes me fast. I am the fastest person you will ever meet. I am faster even than your demon goat.”

  “No one is faster than Answelica,” said Beatryce.

  “I could race her and win easily,” said Jack Dory.

  “I doubt it most sincerely,” said Beatryce.

  They walked together through the field to the monastery. Answelica walked between them.

  The goat looked up at Beatryce and then over at Jack Dory as if to say, “Did I not send this one flying through the air? Did I not make his head ring like a bell? Who is the most remarkable goat that has ever lived? Tell me.”

  Beatryce took hold of Answelica’s left ear and gave it a tug.

  In return, Answelica butted her head gently against Beatryce’s leg.

  Beatryce had the sudden thought that she had walked before through a sun-drenched field under a blue sky alongside a boy and a goat.

  But surely, this could not have happened before. It was only that she was happy—happy with Jack Dory, happy with Answelica.

  “Where do you live?” she asked Jack Dory.

  “In Granny Bibspeak’s hut, in the village.”

  “Granny Bibspeak,” said Beatryce. “She is the one who loves you.”

  “Aye, loved me. She is gone now.”

  “Gone where?”

  “She died.”

  “But who cares for you, then?”

  “I care for myself.”

  “What about your parents?”

  “Dead,” said Jack Dory.

  A strange, curled creature flashed through Beatryce’s mind. The thing was bright, as if it were made of light, and it was turning, turning.

  Seeing it, she stumbled.

  Jack Dory reached out and took hold of her elbow. He steadied her. He looked her in the eye. “Truly now,” he said, “can you write?”

  “You can tell nobody,” said Beatryce. “I should not have told you.”

  “But you can write?”

  “Yes,” said Beatryce.

  “How?”

  “I do not know,” she said. “I know nothing. I remember nothing. Only my name, just my name.”

  “Beatryce,” said Jack Dory.

  “Beatryce,” she said in return.

  And then Brother Edik was coming toward them. His face was worried, and his errant eye was rolling wildly in his head.

  “Who are you?” he asked.

  “He is Jack Dory,” said Beatryce, “and he
is almost, but not quite, as clever as Answelica. His parents are dead. Granny Bibspeak loved him, but she is dead as well. He cares for himself, and he has come to fetch someone to write a soldier’s confession. There is money to be had for it. Also, he says that he can run fast, faster even than Answelica.” She paused. “And I told him. I told him who I am.”

  “Aye,” said Jack Dory. “There is the truth of it. All of it, or most of it.”

  He nodded at Brother Edik, and then he stood smiling at both of them.

  “Oh, Beatryce,” said Brother Edik.

  The request that Jack Dory brought to the monastery was deemed by all the monks— excepting Brother Edik—to be the perfect solution to the problem of Beatryce.

  Was this not what they had prayed for? A way to rid themselves of her?

  It was.

  They would send her to the inn, to the soldier who needed something written. They would send the goat with her, and they would be done with the demon girl and the demon goat in one fell swoop.

  “But how can we send her into the world alone?” said Brother Edik.

  “The gold the man gives her will ease her passage through the world,” said Father Caddis. “She will find her way. Do not forget that her presence endangers us. Surely, someone is searching for her. Eventually, they will find their way here. And then what? She must go. She must go and not return.”

  “She is a child,” said Brother Edik.

  “Do as I say,” said Father Caddis. His voice became hard, certain. “Outfit her with a quill and ink and parchment and send her with the boy. I will tell him that he should not bring her back to us. I will tell him that he cannot, under any circumstances, bring her back. The goat must go, too, of course. Providence has provided us with a solution, a way out and through. This is as it should be, as it must be.”

  And so Brother Edik, coward that he was, did as Father Caddis commanded. He filled a satchel with the necessary instruments of writing, along with a candle and a piece of flint. He also put in the bag as many maple candies as he could find.

  As he packed the bag for Beatryce, Brother Edik thought of how he, too, had been sent away as a child, how his father had delivered him to the monastery and told him never to return.

  How could people send their children away?

  How did anybody say goodbye to someone they loved?

  But that was what the world demanded, wasn’t it?

  Again and again, the world insisted upon betrayals, goodbyes.

  How could anyone bear it?

  You will go with Jack Dory,” said Brother Edik when he handed Beatryce the satchel. “You will write down the words this man says.”

  “Yes,” she said. She took the bag from him. It was heavy in her hands. “And then I will come back to you.”

  “We do not know what will happen next,” said Brother Edik. “Only follow Jack Dory. Do as he says. And do not speak. Truly, Beatryce, it is better if you pretend to be mute.”

  Beatryce nodded. “I will write this man’s confession. I will be as silent as silent can be, and then when I am done with his words, I will write something better. I will write the story of your mermaid.”

  “How do you mean?” said Brother Edik.

  “I mean that I will tell the story of her jeweled tail and her beautiful face. I will tell you what became of her.”

  She had meant to cheer him, but he was crying.

  “Brother Edik?” she said. “Do you not want the story of your mermaid?”

  “Yes,” he said. He wiped at his eyes. “I do.”

  “Then I promise I will tell it to you when I return.” She looked into his sad eye, the crooked one, the eye that would not be still.

  She loved that eye. It seemed to her that it was an eye much better suited than any regular eye for observing the crooked and off-kilter world they all inhabited.

  Brother Edik smiled at her. She knew that he did not want to smile, but he smiled for her.

  “We will find each other,” she said.

  “Yes, Beatryce,” he said. “We will find each other.”

  They were three: Jack Dory, Beatryce, and a goat.

  Jack Dory did cartwheels as he walked down the road. He followed the cartwheels with several handsprings.

  “You cannot do this, can you?” he said, calling back to Beatryce.

  “I cannot do it because I must walk along and pretend to be a monk,” said Beatryce.

  The satchel was slung across her chest. It bumped against her hip as she walked. Her heart felt heavy.

  But the goat did not seem worried. Answelica ran to Jack Dory, kicking up her heels and shaking her head, and then she ran back again and walked at a sedate pace beside Beatryce.

  Jack Dory started to whistle a jaunty song.

  Beatryce looked down at the goat. She said, “I think he pretends to be happy. I think that deep inside he is sad. Those he loves are dead. He is alone in the world.”

  Answelica looked up at her, listening.

  “I am not afraid,” Beatryce said to the goat. “I will not be afraid.”

  Answelica nodded.

  She bumped her head against Beatryce’s leg. Beatryce took hold of her ear.

  “I am not afraid at all,” said Beatryce again.

  But she was afraid.

  It was so very dark in the room at the inn.

  “This? This is the creature who will write my confession? Have you brought me the tiniest monk in the world?” said the soldier.

  He was in the bed, the covers pulled up to his chin. His face was red and dotted with sweat and pustules. His hands trembled.

  “Why, it does not even look large enough to be a person. Perhaps it is nothing but a robe that you have arranged in the shape of a monk to trick my failing eyes, my failing heart. The world is going dark and you bring me a tiny monk.”

  “I have brought you what you asked for: a monk who will write exactly what you say,” said Jack Dory. “You did not say what size monk I should bring.”

  “Speak, you!” said the soldier to Beatryce.

  “This monk is mute,” said Jack Dory.

  “I smell goat,” said the soldier.

  “You are imagining things,” said Jack Dory.

  “Never mind. Never mind. It does not matter. Nothing matters now. Leave, boy. And you, tiny little monk, do not look at me. Turn your eyes away from me.”

  Beatryce lowered her head. She had no desire to look at the man in any case. He was so angry. And he smelled horrible. The whole room stank as if it concealed something dead.

  She closed her eyes. She thought of good things, sweet things.

  She thought of Brother Antoine’s maple candy. She thought of the great golden B that Brother Edik had made for her. She thought of Brother Edik’s mermaid and the jewels that were strewn through her hair and encrusted upon her tail.

  She thought of sunlight streaming through the small window of the room at the monastery.

  She thought of Answelica butting Jack Dory so that he flew through the air.

  She thought of the surprised look on Jack Dory’s face.

  Yes, that was a lovely thing to think upon.

  She put out her hand and there was the goat next to her, her bony head as solid and warm as a stone on a summer afternoon.

  Beatryce opened her eyes.

  “I will go now,” said Jack Dory.

  Stay, please stay, she wanted to say to him. But she did not say it. Instead, she nodded, and Jack Dory nodded at her in return.

  And then he leaned close and in a very quiet voice, he said one word to her: “Beatryce.”

  Only that one word. Her name.

  It was as if he were reminding her who she was.

  And then he was gone, and it was just Beatryce and the soldier and Answelica in a dark room on the upper story of an inn, in a village beside a dark wood, not far from a monastery, near a castle where a counselor spoke to a king.

  “Soldiers have been sent out across the land, sire. It is only a matter of
time until she is found.”

  “Do you remember,” said the king, “when you came to me and took me to the monastery and showed me the prophecy as it was written in the great book?”

  “I do,” said the counselor.

  “Wondrous day,” said the king. “I was lost and wandering. I did not know, I would never have dreamed, that such words of prophecy had been written about me. I thought I would lead an unremarkable life. But instead, I am in the seat of power, in the certain hand of fate.”

  “It is so,” said the counselor.

  “Those words that were written about me. . . will you now say them?”

  The counselor cleared his throat. “The youngest son of a youngest son will, against all odds, ascend to the throne.”

  “Yes,” said the king in a voice filled with wonder. “Against all odds. And that was me.”

  “It was. And it did come to pass. With some assistance.”

  “Because we must act to make our fate come true,” said the king.

  “Yes, sire. As I have said: The prophecies are to be heeded. And we are also to act upon them. We will find this girl.”

  Beatryce held herself straighter. She made herself look right at the soldier.

  “Look away from me!” he said.

  Answelica walked closer to the bed. Her hooves sounded an ominous rhythm on the wooden floor.

  “What is that?” said the man. “What evil approaches me?”

  The goat put her face right in the face of the soldier, and he screamed.

  “Demon!” he shouted.

  Beatryce stifled a laugh. She opened the satchel and retrieved the parchment and spread it on the floor. There was no table.

  She lit the candle. She readied the ink.

  Answelica leaned over and snuffled Beatryce’s shoulder. She stuck her head in the satchel and made a noise of delight. The smell of maple rose into the room.

  Beatryce pushed the goat aside. She felt in the bag and found a small maple person. Nestled next to it were a leaf and a star. She smiled. Oh, Brother Edik.

  The soldier sat up.

  “Now?” he said. “Will I speak now?”

  Beatryce said nothing.

  “I smell goat,” said the man. He lay back down. “But who cares? The smell of goat is nothing compared to the terrible stench of the angel. And so I will confess.”