The Beast’s Heart

by Leife Shallcross

  When the bowl had naught but a puddle left at the bottom and Isabeau had even taken a few small bites of the bread, she put the tray aside and sat up a little straighter.

  ‘Can I get you anything else?’ I asked, realising it was time for me to leave and that if I could do some small service for her, the moment of my departure might be delayed a fraction. Isabeau shook her head.

  ‘No, Beast,’ she said in a low voice. ‘I thank you for your kindness tonight. You are a true friend.’

  I bowed to her, partly to hide my disappointment at her dismissal. But I managed a civil ‘Goodnight, Isabeau,’ and left her, looking small and fragile in her chair.

  I was still restless with worry for Isabeau. I did not sleep until the small hours of the morning and even then I awoke when it was still early and the light was fresh and new. I lay sprawled in my bed, feeling the silence of the great house around me. Then I noticed it. The house was not just silent, but quiet. Some tension had gone from the atmosphere, leaving it calm and restful. I stayed in my bed, absorbing the change for several long minutes. It was almost like listening to the slow, measured breathing of some deeply slumbering animal.

  What had changed? My thoughts flew to Isabeau and our small but hopeful exchange last night. Perhaps she had exorcised something of the demon stealing away her serenity. She was still in her room, and if the hush over the house was anything to go by, sleeping peacefully. I dearly wanted to see if she had, in fact, improved over the night, and my anxiety to see her well was filling me with a fitful energy. I decided that rather than roam the house and risk waking her with my own restlessness, I would take a leaf from her book and walk in the gardens.

  I conducted something of a tour, taking myself all over the grounds and seeing for myself the signs that spring was here and casting its own brand of magic over the landscape. Even in the orchards I had habitually kept in perpetual fruit, there was the occasional rogue blossom. My autumn display was looking sadly colourless, with a distinct haze of pale green touching the boughs of those trees closest to the forest. The rose arbour, perhaps because it had been brought entirely into being by magic and had never formed part of the original grounds, was the only section of the garden still wholly and defiantly in high summer.

  Somewhere towards mid-morning I felt a stirring in the house and wondered if Isabeau was waking. By then my explorations had taken me to the side of the house where her rooms were. Her window looked over a pond, framed by gravel paths and low hedges clipped into patterns. I skirted the far edge of this garden. Her curtains were closed and a sense of despondency settled over me for no real reason other than that I missed her terribly. I paced my way to the end of the path, hands clasped behind my back, staring down at the toes of my black leather boots. When I reached the arched doorway in the hedge at the end, I allowed myself one last glance at her window before leaving this part of the garden. I stopped.

  The curtains were now drawn and I could see Isabeau framed in the window. She briefly lifted her hand to me, then vanished from view. Was she summoning me? I hurried through the archway and back towards the house, but in vain. Despite this fleeting moment of hope, she had not left her rooms by the time I reached the door to the entrance hall. I ate a late breakfast in the small dining room slowly, hoping she might join me, but she did not. I was left to myself again and to the fever of desperation growing in my breast.

  After my breakfast, I set up a lonely, sentimental station in the music room. I was reading there on the pretext of being tired of the view from my study, but if I am honest it was merely an attempt to try to glean the dregs of her presence from a place she had visited often. Even so, it was not a cheerful place to be. Instead of music, all I could hear were mice scratching behind the wainscoting. The flowers that had appeared for Isabeau had withered and died in their vases and the whole room had begun to smell faintly of mould.

  I was contemplating a new tracery of cracks spreading across the ceiling when the sound of a door being unlatched echoed quietly through the music room. I realised she was leaving her chamber.

  I left my book and went to the entrance hall and took up my position by the stairs. This time she was watching for me and halted at the top when she saw me. Again she came down slowly, but it was as though she were delaying the moment when she must speak to me, rather than because her pace was dictated by infirmity.

  She was already wearing her cloak (no excuse for me to halt her, then) and had the hood drawn up around her face. But, today, when she came to the foot of the stairs, she did not try to avoid me. Rather she looked directly into my face and nodded gravely.

  ‘Good morning, Isabeau,’ I said, bowing politely.

  ‘Good morning, Beast,’ she replied. Her voice was still low, but it was steady.

  ‘Would you like some company on your walk today?’ I ventured.

  Isabeau’s face grew sad. ‘Please forgive me, Beast,’ she said, ‘but once again I would beg your patience and ask for solitude.’

  My heart sunk with disappointment.

  ‘Isabeau,’ I said quietly, trying to keep my voice even, ‘will you not let me try to help you? Do your dreams still trouble you? Will you not tell me something of what ails you?’

  Isabeau looked down at her feet, her face now entirely hidden by her hood.

  ‘I am sorry, Beast,’ she said. ‘I cannot tell you.’ She looked up again at me and her eyes slid to the side. When she spoke again it was in that same soft, faraway tone she had used when she first spoke of her dreams. ‘I hardly know how to explain it to myself. I dream these dreams and they are so real, and when I wake I am not rested, and all I want to do is fall back into them, but sleep won’t come. All I seem to do is sleep and try to fall asleep.’

  I waited, hardly breathing, trying to will myself into invisibility. I felt as though a rare and timid bird had alighted on the banister beside me and the slightest quiver would send it back into flight. But she turned her eyes back to me at this point.

  ‘I do thank you for your care of me last night. I slept better for it and am much more myself this morning.’

  ‘Have you eaten?’ I interrupted, somewhat roughly. She managed the ghost of a smile.

  ‘Always anxious for my health,’ she said in a tone that would have been almost fond if there had not been a sense of absence, as though her mind had already moved on from me. ‘Yes, Beast, I ate a little breakfast today.’

  She pulled her cloak closer about herself and looked up into my face once more.

  ‘I am sorry, Beast, I know this is poor fulfilment of my part of our bargain. But, please, I must be alone with my thoughts now.’

  ‘I have no thoughts of our bargain,’ I said stiffly, stung she had reduced my concern to merely getting my value out of a transaction. ‘My concern is all for you.’ At this she looked guilty, as though my reproach had found its mark.

  ‘I am sorry,’ she said again, and turned to go.

  ‘As you wish,’ I growled to her retreating back.

  She left and I was confronted by an overwhelming sense of helplessness. Instead of sinking beneath the weight of it, however, something inside me ignited. My belly burned. I leaned forward and gripped the banister with both hands, sinking my talons deep into the polished wood. I closed my eyes, trying to contain my growing rage, but a low growl escaped between my clenched teeth.

  At that moment, I had the sudden sense Isabeau had stopped in the doorway. I straightened up and opened my eyes. She was not there.

  All my anger and impotence and anguish condensed in a ball in my chest. It gathered in my throat and erupted in a great roar of pain. The banister splintered beneath my claws and I tore the wood away. I hurled it to the floor and raised my face and howled again. The sound swelled and echoed and the dusty chandelier above me gave a nervous tinkle as it rocked on its anchor. Crumbs of plaster tumbled down from the ceiling. Somewhere far away, I heard the birds calling in alarm. The sound left me and I staggered backwards unsteadily.

  She ha
d gone. She did not want my company. She would not let me help her.

  I went upstairs to my fencing gallery and worked until my fur was sodden with sweat and my shirt clung to me. I abandoned technique and precision and savaged my targets, slashing at them until they burst apart. A dummy with one wooden arm disintegrated into splinters. When my chest was heaving and the room littered with wreckage, I dropped my abused blade on the floor and swiped the sweat from my eyes. I did not feel better.

  Exhausted, I went to sit in my study and lost myself in morose contemplation of my misery and Isabeau’s plight for perhaps an hour. I racked my brain, trying to hit upon some new strategy to bring Isabeau back to herself, but no revelations were forthcoming. Isabeau was still out walking in the gardens. In fact, my strange sixth sense told me she was just now pacing the walks of the rose garden.

  Determined, though, to set a good example and rouse myself out of my low mood, I picked up a half-read book sitting on my desk. Silverfish scurried away from where I had disturbed them and I had to open the book carefully as the binding disintegrated in my hands. I ignored all this and began to read. Through sheer force of will I made my way through its fragile, water-stained pages until the early afternoon, when I sensed Isabeau making her way back to the house.

  I almost didn’t go down to meet her. Having suffered so many frustrating rebuffs, I was in no mood to open myself to yet more. But I did go and I was waiting in the hall like a footman as she entered.

  The doors opened for her and she stepped in across the cracked tiles accompanied by a fall of golden afternoon sunlight. Her hood was thrown back off her face and her hair was lit up like molten gold. All my gruff irritation disappeared in that instant and the only sensation I was conscious of was my heart throbbing in my chest.

  ‘Beast!’ she said, and – oh joy! – her voice contained no irritation or wariness, but something of pleasure and even relief.

  I went forward to her and offered to take her cloak, but instead of giving it to me, she abandoned her attempts to undo the clasp and took my up my paws in her hands.

  ‘Beast,’ she said again, looking anxiously up into my eyes. ‘Are you well?’ For a moment I was speechless. Then a surge of laughter rose in my throat I could not contain.

  ‘Me?’ I gasped.

  Now her beautiful eyes dropped away from my face.

  ‘When I left you this morning,’ Isabeau said contritely, ‘you looked so despondent. Then …’ She stopped and looked up at me. I realised she must have heard me and I could not meet her gaze. I looked away and my eyes came to rest on the ruined banister and the splinters of wood still scattered over the floor.

  ‘Beast,’ said Isabeau, a catch in her voice. I looked back at her and saw she, too, was looking at the destruction I had wrought that morning. She glanced down at where my huge, black paws rested in her hands. For a moment I was suffused with shame at my outburst, certain she could feel nothing but fear and disgust at such violence. But then her hands tightened about mine.

  ‘I know I have caused you a great deal of worry,’ she said. ‘I am so very sorry for it. Truly, I am more myself today.’ Then, in a gesture that removed any power of speech I might have been about to regain, she lifted my paws and pressed them to one of her cheeks.

  ‘Dear Beast,’ she said in that same low, sad voice, ‘you are so patient.’ Then she relinquished my paws and gave me a watery smile, before moving off up the staircase.

  My meal that evening was a lonely one again, but this time I had more stomach for my meat. Isabeau, it seemed, had turned some sort of corner. While she still did not want my company to any great degree, at least now she was accepting my comfort and was even concerned for my well-being. I had more work to do, to be sure, but her progress gave me hope.

  Chapter XXV

  A solid night’s rest was not to be mine that night, however. At some small, dark hour, I was woken from my slumber by the sound of sobs echoing through the house. I was instantly awake and shrugging into my dressing gown. Somewhere, for some reason, something was breaking Isabeau’s heart. I did not stop to think, but fled through the shadowy passages of the house to her door. I ran so fast the candles did not have time to spring awake to light my way, but sputtered into flame behind me.

  I had barely raised my hand to knock upon her door when it swung open. The scene that greeted me wrung my heart sorely. Isabeau was on her knees in the middle of the floor, her hair falling dishevelled about her face and her nightgown pooling around her. Her face was in her hands and she was weeping.

  ‘Isabeau!’ I cried and she looked up at me from where she knelt. The only light in the room came from the lit hallway behind me and from the guttering fire in her grate. Her eyes looked huge in the gloaming and her face, as she raised it to me, was white and shocked.

  ‘Beast!’ she cried out as she looked up. ‘My Beast, I’m so sorry!’

  The next I knew, I too was on my knees beside her, taking her into my arms. No conscious thought entered my brain. She was in need and she reached out to me, so I went to her. And she clung to me. She held on to me as though she were shipwrecked and I her lifeline. All the time she wept into the brocade of my dressing gown, ‘I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!’ I could do nothing but hold her and stroke her hair until she calmed.

  When the storm of her weeping had subsided, I whispered back to her, ‘Do not fret, my Isabeau! All is well.’ She heaved a deep breath and hid her face further into the folds of my gown. There were a few moments of peace. Then, as I felt her once again able to govern herself, I lifted her and took her to her chair by the fire. As I set her down gently there was a moment (the merest instant!) where she did not seem to want to relinquish her hold on my gown. But release me she did, and settled with a troubled sigh into the velvet cushions of her chair. I stepped away and then seated myself on the footstool, watching her closely.

  Her eyes were shut. Her tears still clung to her lashes and I could trace their journey down her pale cheeks. We sat in silence for a few moments.

  ‘Beast, are you there?’ she asked, eventually.

  ‘I am,’ I answered quietly.

  ‘Thank you,’ she whispered.

  ‘Do you want me to go now?’ I asked her.

  ‘Not yet,’ she said, but she did not open her eyes. I sat and waited in silence, not knowing what to say to her. The minutes passed. I was beginning to wonder if she had fallen asleep when she spoke again.

  ‘Have you been very unhappy?’ she asked, more tears emerging from under her closed lids. It was another moment before I could answer.

  ‘Yes,’ I said, then I could say no more.

  Her mouth twitched miserably and a fresh flood of tears escaped.

  ‘I’m so sorry I made you sad,’ she said after a while.

  ‘Do not think of it,’ I answered her. ‘If you would only be well, I would be satisfied.’ With her eyes still closed, a small, tight smile crossed her face.

  ‘Give me your hand,’ she said, her voice low. Tentatively I put my dark, hairy paw into her slender fingers. She held it for a moment, then softly, so softly, stroked down its length with her other hand, her fingers sinking into the thick fur covering the skin on the back of my hand and eventually finding the smooth cruel points of my talons. New tears slipped out from under her eyelids. Then she opened her eyes.

  ‘Dear Beast,’ she said, relinquishing my hand and pushing herself up straighter in her chair. The mood of exquisite intimacy evaporated. Banished, I understood, by my unfortunate countenance.

  ‘Thank you for coming to my rescue,’ she said, bravely looking into my face.

  ‘I cannot be easy if you are unhappy,’ I said truthfully.

  She bowed her head.

  ‘May I give you counsel?’ I asked tentatively.

  She looked up at me again and smiled ruefully. ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘And I promise to try to value it as I should.’

  ‘These dreams you have,’ I said hesitatingly, ‘they seem to enthral you, to make you wan
t to live in them and not the world. If you try to do that, I fear you will fade away to nothing. Should you want my advice, I would urge you to try to live in the world. Perhaps if you do not allow them to encroach upon your daylight hours, they will cease to trouble you so.’ I fell silent, having said my piece.

  Isabeau frowned and considered my words. For a few minutes she was quiet, not looking at me. Then finally, she spoke.

  ‘I think you may be right,’ she said. ‘My dreams, for all that they are seductive, only grow more unhappy as I try to enter further into them.’ She paused, before looking up at me and smiling sadly. ‘After all,’ she continued, ‘are not our experiences in the world the basis for our dreams? If I forsake the world for my dreams, they will have nothing new to feed upon and can only grow more stale and unsatisfying.’

  I did not know what to make of this, so I tried a change of tack.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ I urged, ‘will you come down to the music room and play again for me?’ I hurried on, seeing the reluctance in her face. ‘Please, just for half an hour?’ She thought this over for a moment, then nodded.

  ‘I will,’ she said. ‘But Beast, it may not be much.’

  ‘For you, perhaps,’ I said lightly. Then, more seriously, ‘Do I have your solemn promise to attend me in the music room tomorrow?’

  She laughed at this and a little more worry melted away in my heart.

  ‘I give you my most solemn promise,’ she said. Then raising her voice and her eyes to the darkened room, she called out, ‘There! House! Do you hear me? On no account am I to renege on my promise or keep the Beast waiting for even half a minute! I must keep my promise and you must help, do you hear?’ Her only response was silence, but she seemed satisfied with that.

  I gazed at her for a few more moments, then rose from my footstool.

  ‘Will you be able to sleep again tonight?’ I asked.

  She gave me a curious searching look, then replied, ‘Oh yes, most assuredly.’

  I hesitated a moment, then I took her hand from where it rested on the arm of her chair, raised it to my beast’s muzzle, and placed it gently in her lap. She watched me with a curious expression on her face: wariness, curiosity, anticipation. To her credit I did not detect revulsion.