Beauty

by Sarah Pinborough

  It was a summer’s day when Rumplestiltskin found Beauty in the orchard picking apples from a tree. He did not look down at the flattened piece of earth close by where her forgotten childhood companion lay buried. She smiled at him as he asked her why she needed so many as she carried in her basket, and said she was baking apple cakes for her father and had been doing so for weeks. He liked them and that made her happy. Her eyes were clear and her face shone. She was innocent. She was sweet.

  Rumplestiltskin was suspicious. For if Beauty lurked within to protect her father and Rumplestiltskin when the Beast was in charge, logic dictated that the Beast likewise lurked within Beauty.

  He watched her from the shadows beyond the kitchen door as she baked. She sang sweetly to herself as she peeled and cored the ripe fruit and prepared the dough. He chided himself for his dark thoughts. There was nothing amiss here – she was still entirely their Beauty. He lingered though, for he was a thorough man, and as he loved Beauty he also loved his best friend, the king.

  Just as the cakes were ready to go into the oven, with Beauty’s face covered in an endearing dusting of flour and sugar, a dark cloud passed across sky and the room darkened. Beauty frowned, suddenly confused. She had opened the heavy oven doors and had the tray in her hand, but she paused. She turned, returned to the table and put it down. Her eyes were glazed and lost as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a small vial of liquid, tipping a tiny drop of brightness onto each cake. Once the vial was again out of sight, she picked up the tray again.

  The cloud passed and life returned to Beauty and she began to hum once more, closing the door and letting the cakes bake. She smiled, content in her work.

  Rumplestiltskin slipped silently away, shivering in horror, his worst fears confirmed. He did not blame Beauty. She didn’t know what she had done. But still, the danger was there. As she grew, who would win the battle there? Beauty or the Beast? He could not watch her forever. One day he would not be able to foil her efforts.

  Separate batches of apple cakes were made that the king could eat in front of his daughter to keep her happy without being poisoned, and when the bell rang and the Beast came, he would walk a little hunched over and feign some illness.

  But the king was troubled. He had grown into a wise king and he knew that above all else his loyalty should lie with his people. There were talks long into the night of what should be done. The Beast grew wilder and less controllable, and her visits more frequent. The king knew that she went to the dungeons and arranged terrible punishments for the prisoners there, then bribed the guards not to speak of it. None would argue with her. It only took one guard to be punished to show the rest that she was not to be disagreed with. She had magic, after all. Worse, there were those among the nobles, Rumplestiltskin could see it, who almost admired her ruthless nature and brought their sons and daughters in to be her companions, and curry her favour. As Beauty herself was divided, she was also dividing those around her. The good and bad in people became more pronounced and factions grew in the court where there had been harmony before.

  The king loved Beauty, but he could not love the Beast. He wept for the water witch and for what their love, which should never have been, had created. When his tears were dry he summoned Rumplestiltskin, his most trusted friend, and asked him to go to the witch in the tower and beg her to help Beauty. Perhaps magic could fight the dark magic in his daughter – perhaps the witch would have a power to ensure that the dark days ended. He told Rumplestiltskin to give her whatever she demanded in return, if she could find a way to free his daughter from the curse of her nature.

  It was the end of summer when Rumplestiltskin left, taking his own daughter with him. She was uncomfortable in court life and although she had been friends with Beauty when she had been little, after Domino’s death Rumplestiltskin had slowly removed her from the princess’s company and sent her to a school on the far side of the city. Now she was grown she was out of place amid the stylish confidence of the nobles, and he feared this would mark her as a victim for the Beast while he was away as she took great pleasure in taunting those whom she perceived to be weak.

  It was a long journey to the white tower that rose above the trees in the distance, one not without its own adventures, and as they drew closer both Rumplestiltskin and his daughter were in awe of the height of the edifice. There were only two windows they could see, one halfway up and another far away at the very top that would no doubt be lost from sight in the misty days of winter.

  There was no visible door and after exploring the perimeter and seeing no way in Rumplestiltskin called up to the window in the hope that the witch would hear him and come down. He shouted himself hoarse, but there was no response. He began to think that perhaps this was a wild goose chase and the witch was long gone or dead within the impenetrable walls. He sat on a rock, ready to give up, and then his daughter shouted for him, begging the witch to show them mercy and hear their plight.

  A door, previously invisible, swung open in the smooth curved wall. The witch smiled and invited them in. Rumplestiltskin was not sure what he had been expecting, but she was unchanged – an ordinary middle-aged woman. As they followed her up the winding stairs inside, however, he caught glimpses of artefacts and objects that were hundreds of years old. She noticed his glance and smiled.

  ‘A witch’s years are different to a man’s. I’ve stopped counting them.’

  She fed them a hearty broth, settled Rumplestiltskin’s daughter down on a soft couch to sleep, and then listened to his tale of Beauty and the Beast. The witch was thoughtful after that. She hadn’t been out in the world since the king had summoned her, before Beauty’s birth, and after hearing his tale she was glad of it.

  ‘A water witch’s daughter,’ she mused, ‘should only be born from a water bed. This trouble is one anyone could have seen coming.’

  She sat by the fire for a while and watched Rumplestiltskin’s daughter sleep, as if that sight brought her some clarity or peace, and then made her decision.

  ‘Can you help?’ Rumplestiltskin asked. ‘I fear for our land if the Beast can’t be controlled.’

  ‘Come with me,’ she told him. They climbed two more flights of stairs until they came to a room with several locks. ‘I have something for you.’

  It was full of spinning wheels and spindles of different shapes and sizes and Rumplestiltskin’s eyes widened. ‘Spindles. Beauty’s curse.’ The witch smiled. ‘They are each bewitched or blessed or cursed, depending on how you use them.’ She walked between them, her fingers lovingly caressing the wood of each until her hand settled on one. ‘I cannot change her nature,’ she said, eventually. ‘She is who she is, and no magic is strong enough to change that. But I can save your kingdom from her inevitable tyranny.’

  Rumplestiltskin stared at her. ‘How?’ he asked, his mouth drying. He knew the answer before she spoke and his heart was heavy with the decision he would have to make.

  ‘I can give you something which will kill her, should you feel that is your only recourse.’ She turned to Rumplestiltskin and in the candlelight he was sure he could see hundreds of years of life in her eyes and a dead heart beating inside her. No good came from magic, his conscience screamed, and he trembled slightly. She looked so very ordinary but in her soul she was a crone. No good could come from a crone. ‘This,’ she said, and lifted one of her precious spindles.

  ‘How does it work?’ he asked, after swallowing hard. Ever since Domino he had known that one day a decision would have to be made about Beauty. And somewhere in his soul, and in his love for the king, he’d known it would be his decision to make. ‘And will it be painless?’ He paused. ‘We all love her, you see.’ He wondered if he was justifying his actions to himself or to her. ‘Hopefully, I will never have to use it.’

  ‘I will need it returning,’ she said. ‘Especially if you decide some less extreme action is called for.’ She carefully lifted it and handed it to him. ‘One prick of her finger and she will die,’ she said,
her voice devoid of emotion. ‘And it will be painless. Like going to sleep.’ She smiled at that.

  ‘It’s poison then,’ Rumplestiltskin said.

  ‘She’ll bleed to death,’ the witch replied. ‘But I assure you she won’t feel a thing.’

  His hands trembled as he took it. ‘I must be sure not to prick myself on the way back then.’

  ‘I’ve given you this magic,’ she said, leading him out of the room and locking it with the keys that hung from a chain around her neck. ‘It can’t hurt you. A curse cannot touch the one who wields it.’

  ‘And what do you want in return?’ he asked.

  ‘You will leave your daughter with me until you bring my spindle back,’ she said, softly.

  Rumplestiltskin felt as if all the air had been sucked from his lungs. His daughter? His only child.

  The witch squeezed his hand. He was surprised at the warmth of her fingers. He’d expected them to feel like the touch of a dead thing. ‘She will want for nothing and I shall teach her many things. She will be happy here and I am lonely. I have been lonely for a long, long time.’ She smiled again. Her lips were thin. ‘And when you return you may reclaim her if you so wish. This I promise you.’ She shrugged. ‘Perhaps she will also be safer here. Dangerous times lie ahead.’

  Rumplestiltskin felt the weight of all his responsibility to the kingdom settle on his shoulders and his heart grew heavy. He had no choice.

  ‘I will come back for her,’ he said.

  ‘I’m sure you will,’ the witch replied.

  He did not wait for his daughter to wake because he knew he would not have the strength to say goodbye, but left her a letter telling her he loved her very much and that he would return soon to take her home. He kissed her forehead and left his darling daughter, Rapunzel, there where she slept.

  By the time he got back to the kingdom two months had passed and much had already changed. The king was dead; killed in a riding accident while out with the princess a mere day after Rumplestiltskin had left. While Beauty mourned for her father, the Beast revelled in her new power. She held masked balls for the wild young things of the city and took her vicarious pleasure not only from their bodies, but also from torturing those unfortunate enough to be in the dungeons. If there were no prisoners there, they were brought in, innocents chosen at random to feed her blood lust, their houses wrecked and looted by the soldiers knowing they would not return.

  She redecorated the third ballroom to suit her tastes; decadent red and black and gold, and music played long and loud as the young people danced and enjoyed each other, and girls from the dairy came and never left again alive.

  The ministers kept these secrets and managed the kingdom around her as best they could until the bell rang once again and they could let out a collective sigh of relief. None challenged her because her mother’s magic was at her fingertips, and they had seen the unrecognisable bodies that left the dungeons. They kept their own counsel and shuffled around the castle trying to look invisible as they did exactly as they were told. With the king gone and Rumplestiltskin away, only the first minister had the true affection of their queen and they left the management of the Beast to him.

  It could not go on, Rumplestiltskin thought, as he held Beauty’s hand beside her father’s grave and cried with her for his oldest friend. It just could not go on.

  Whispers of murders and torture, wild parties and patricide; that was only two months into the new reign and it would only get worse. Beauty was sweet and kind, but the Beast was stronger, he was sure of that. That Beauty had unknowingly killed the king, he had no doubt. He’d spoken to the terrified stable boy who whispered that the girth on the king’s saddle had been nearly cut through and that it had been the princess herself who had prepared his horse for him. Who would be next? Her father’s friends?

  He sat up late into the night, turning the spindle in his hands. One prick, the witch had said, and that would be that. He wished it could be done while she was the Beast. Somehow that would feel easier. But the Beast rarely slept and her magic would protect her from danger. It had to be Beauty he murdered.

  He went to her rooms the next afternoon. It was a beautiful day. The city was full of life. A rose, Beauty’s favourite flower, sat in a glass on the window sill. She sat on the edge of her bed and laughed with delight as she reached for the spinning wheel, happy that he’d thought to bring her a gift from his travels, especially a thing she had never seen before in her life, and in that moment where she was joyous he saw her delicate finger touch the spindle.

  It was done.

  Her eyes widened for the merest moment and then the spinning wheel slid from her hands to the floor and she fell backwards onto her bed. Rumplestiltskin stood and cried, silently begging her forgiveness, for what seemed like forever, before he laid her out on the bed. He was so absorbed in his grief and guilt he failed to notice the sudden unnatural silence around him.

  He did, however, notice that the princess, one arm flopped over the side of the bed, a tiny drop of blood striking the floor from her pricked finger, was still breathing.

  It didn’t make sense. Not at first. Not until he’d been outside and to the forest’s edge and seen the wall that had grown there. And even then it had taken weeks, maybe even months, for the terrible truth to sink in.

  ‘The witch lied,’ Petra said, softly.

  ‘Oh no.’ Rumplestiltskin shook his head. ‘Witches never lie. But they do speak in riddles. The queen would die. She would bleed to death and it would be painless. But she would bleed to death one drop at a time.’ He shuddered and sipped his wine. ‘Before Beauty’s birth, the witch told the king that a spindle would send his daughter to sleep for a hundred years. Her prophesy was not destroyed by my deeds. I brought the spindle. I sent her to sleep as I killed her. She would sleep the hundred years it took her blood to drain from her body and then she’d be gone. A hundred years of waiting. And we were so nearly there, when you woke her.’

  ‘Your daughter?’ the huntsman said.

  ‘Long dead now. After a life abandoned and locked away in a witch’s tower.’

  ‘Locked in a tower,’ Petra repeated, her gaze misty as if she was lost in a different story.

  ‘So why is the first minister so keen that we find you and take you to him? You were doing something that surely they all wanted?’

  ‘If I had succeeded, of course. But I failed. The queen is awake, and there’s only one other person who knew of my plan and my visit to the witch.’

  ‘Him?’ Petra said.

  ‘Exactly. If I’m captured and the Beast tortures me, he knows I’ll have no choice but to give up his name. It’s better for everyone if she thinks I acted alone.’

  ‘Shhh.’ Toby tilted his head and frowned.

  ‘What?’

  ‘The bell,’ Toby said. ‘The bell is ringing. A dark day has come.’

  Rumplestiltskin looked up at the huntsman. ‘The Beast is awake.’

  ‘But what about the prince?’ Petra asked. ‘He’s with her!’

  ‘Hopefully the first minister will look after him,’ the old man muttered. ‘But I fear he’s about to have a very rude awakening about his sweet queen.’

  9

  ‘Perhaps he was in a dream . . .’

  The bell rang out from somewhere at the top of the castle, a steady heavy knell, and as the prince stared up at the ceiling of his apartments he shivered slightly while his heart raced. Whatever affliction had struck poor Beauty the first minister had not been surprised by it, but the prince had also seen that he was afraid and that in turn frightened the prince. Much to his own chagrin, he wished the huntsman were here. Surrounded as he was by the kind of luxury he was used to, he still suddenly felt very alone and far from home. He loved Beauty, he knew that to his very core, but he was unimportant here. The way the minister had spoken to him made that abundantly clear.

  Blue lightning flashed in jagged lines beyond the window and a moment later an almighty rumble of thunder shook t
he sky. He was sure the castle walls trembled. He was about to go to the window to look when the door to his rooms opened and the first minister entered carrying a silver tray.

  ‘I know it is early, but you have had a long night and I thought you might like something to eat,’ he said smoothly, placing it on the table against the wall. ‘And a hot drink to help you sleep.’ His smile was tight. ‘I’m very sorry to have rushed you away like that, but our beloved queen has occasional fits.’ He nodded towards the window. ‘They come with the bad weather.’ The minister had regained his usual poise, but the prince remembered all too well the urgency with which he’d spoken earlier, insisting that the prince leave. What was he hiding? ‘It’s unlikely she will be well again today, so eat now and then sleep as long as you wish. Take time to recover from your long journey.’

  ‘I should be with her while she’s sick. I am her husband to be, after all. It’s my job to look after her.’

  ‘And when you are married of course you shall. But the queen requires privacy at these times – the fits are quite traumatic for her – and you can understand why she might want to keep them private from you at this early stage. She is young and easily embarrassed. Anyway,’ he clasped his hands in front of him and they were lost in the sleeves and folds of his robes, ‘once this one has passed, which I’m sure it shall quickly, I shall teach you how best to deal with them. But for now she is well cared for, so eat, drink and sleep. Then you have a wedding to plan.’

  His eyes lingered a moment too long on the tray and there was a flash of intensity, almost hidden under the first minister’s hooded brows, as he turned his gaze back to the prince.

  ‘Of course,’ the prince said, his mouth drying. ‘You are right. I was simply worried.’ He lifted the goblet and pretended to take a sip. ‘I shall see her tomorrow. Perhaps, if she is unwell, we should delay the wedding for a day. We can plan it together so it can be perfect.’