Beauty and the Werewolf

by Mercedes Lackey

Very full… I wonder what that means… “Please,” she responded, and followed the ribbon as it led her down what she now knew was the south side of the Manor, then around the corner to the east side, then around another corner into what was the arm of the cross that connected the east side of the Manor with the central tower. As was common in older buildings, most rooms led directly into one another, and the only corridors were those designed for defense.

  But this part of the arm actually dead-ended onto the side of the central tower, at least on this level. The room that butted up against the wall of the tower was the stillroom—or rooms, actually, because there were two, the stillroom and the storeroom.

  And now she saw what Sapphire meant by “very full.” Nearly every cupboard strained to hold the bundles of dried herbs stored there. More literally covered the ceiling, and virtually every flat surface. She knew immediately what must have happened here. Sebastian had given the orders to the Spirit Elementals to keep the stillroom supplied. They only knew to keep cutting and drying the herbs. So they had. For at least two years, maybe more.

  She literally rubbed her hands with glee. She had wanted a challenge—well, she had one.

  The first thing to do was to sort this place out. Much of what was here was now too old to be worth anything, and she would need to sort the stuff that was still good from what needed to be thrown out.

  “Sapphire, will you get me two of the stupid servants?” she asked. “We have work to do.”

  She had never been gladder of Granny’s training. She could identify each and every bundle eventually, either on sight, or by crushing a bit of leaf and taking a sniff. There were those bundles of herbs that started to crumble away at a touch; those were obviously much too old to be at all useful, as were those that she could identify but which had such faint aromas when crushed that it was obvious all the virtue was out of them. Now, there was danger here, and quite a lot of it. Some of these herbs and barks were quite poisonous, and burning them in a fireplace would be a very bad idea. So would disposing of them in any other careless way. They had to be handled carefully even when their potency had lessened considerably.

  She sent the Spirit Elementals out with four enormous baskets full of the dangerous herbs and very careful instructions on how to safely disperse them—first treating them with lye, then with vinegar, then burning them, then treating the ashes with lye and vinegar, then spreading the ashes over an acre of land. The rest were safe to throw onto the fire in the fireplace, although this made for some obnoxious odors.

  It was only when her stomach began to growl that she realized what she was smelling wasn’t burning herbs, but something a great deal more savory. She turned, to find Sapphire and Mustard from the kitchen staff behind her. Seeming to float in midair was a covered plate.

  “Oh, dear,” she said contritely, as her stomach rumbled. “I seem to have entirely missed dinner, haven’t I?”

  The plate moved abruptly toward her by way of answer. It seemed that she had better take and eat what was on it before Mustard got further offended.

  So she cleared a spot on one of the tables in the stillroom and sat down to do so. It was quite good, but the flavor wasn’t exactly improved by the addition of the warring aromas of herb-dust.

  Mustard carried away the empty plate, snatching it as soon as she had finished. Evidently by not coming to dinner she had offended the kitchen staff.

  Or at least, she had offended Mustard.

  “How angry at me are they?” she asked Sapphire.

  “Only Mustard,” Sapphire wrote.

  “How long is Mustard going to stay angry?” she asked apprehensively.

  “Not long. Gets mad at Duk to.”

  Well, that wasn’t so bad, then. And the Spirit Elemental probably was angered by Sebastian for the same reason—missing a meal, which the kitchen staff clearly took great care in preparing. “Well, apologize to him for me, will you?” she asked, and sighed. “Or better yet, I will bring a peace offering. I take it that Mustard is quite important in the kitchen staff?”

  “Tym first. Then Mustard.”

  “Oh, dear. I had better make that peace offering a good one.” She turned her attention to the herbs that were still sound. Herb-infused vinegar was probably a good idea at this point.

  Whoever had once used this stillroom had kept it well supplied. Once she cleared out all the unusable bundles of herbs, she found the cupboards well supplied with bottles and jars—labeled and full, unlabeled and empty—supplied with strong wooden stoppers and wax seals. And among the other needful articles she found a keg of good vinegar. Heating that and pouring it over the sprigs of culinary herbs she packed into the bottles would give a good start to the flavored vinegar, although ideally they should rest for at least a month to steep.

  She thought about sending Sapphire with the bottles…but even though Mustard was technically a servant—and could be considered less than a servant, since he was a summoned creature who presumably was something like a slave—she didn’t want to offend him further. So she gathered up her bottles in a basket and went straight to the kitchen.

  It was a hive of work—startling to the eyes and ears of anyone who was expecting a “normal” kitchen, since there were no voices, and all the implements and food were suspended in or moving through empty air—but all the work stopped when she entered.

  She looked around, and spotted Mustard’s little bag of seeds tied to a white armband. She went straight to him and held out her basket. “I’m very sorry I didn’t come to dinner on time, and left it all to get cold—though still delicious. I’d like to apologize for not giving respect to good food that should not have gone to waste, and for making you find me. I’d like you to have these.”

  The rolling pin that Mustard had been using slowly lowered to the table, and she felt a faint tug on the basket. She let go, and the basket moved toward Mustard’s side of the table, where it was lowered.

  “They’re fresh, so they probably won’t be good for another month,” she explained. “And I am here to say that this probably won’t be the last time I get so involved in something I forget the time. If that happens, please send one of the ordinary ones to fetch me if you don’t send one of the ordinary ones with a plate for me.” Now she tilted her head to one side, wishing she could see a face. Any kind of face. “And don’t pretend that the Duke doesn’t do the same thing, because we all know he does. My father does. Anyone who has something that they are going to get completely engrossed in does. And I imagine that you make him up plates all the time. So let’s not get out of sorts over it. It won’t change me or Sebastian, and as Granny says, ‘Getting angry over something that won’t change is like seeing what happens if you hit your hand with a hammer over and over again, and being surprised each time when it hurts. So you might as well stop doing it.’”

  The silence in the kitchen was utterly unnerving, until it was broken by the scratching of chalk on slate. She turned to see a slate held in midair, turned so she could read it.

  “Mustard is laughing.”

  She smiled with relief, and turned back to the place where Mustard stood.

  “Just so you all know, I respect you for the artists that you are. It is very frustrating to prepare what you know is a fine meal only to have it spoiled because people weren’t where they should have been when it was ready. But…” She hesitated a moment. Genevieve would never talk to servants like this.

  But I am not Genevieve.

  “I’d like you to remember what Sebastian is, and what I might change into. Sometimes we escape into things that involve us completely so we don’t have to think about that. When we’re absorbed, we aren’t thinking about the terrible things we might do, or how we haven’t found a cure, or what will happen if the King stops protecting us. Or how very alone we are.” Her voice caught a little on that last and she paused to steady herself before she went on. “Escape into concentration is the only escape we have.”

  She wondered how they would take that. Aft
er all, they had been summoned here. They might be just as trapped as she and Sebastian were. But Sebastian had sworn he hadn’t summoned any who were unwilling to come. She had to take his word for that, not knowing how the magic worked.

  She heard the chalk on the slate again, and turned.

  “You are right.”

  She sighed, and then brightened. “If I can lure him away from his workroom, and you don’t mind, I’ll bring him down here so he can see how much work it takes to turn raw materials into a fine meal. Once he realizes that, he will not take such a meal for granted again. After all, he does much the same sort of work with his spells.”

  “A fine plan!” Thyme wrote.

  She did not need to add that she never forgot how much work it was to make a meal. “I hope my vinegars prove useful” was all she said. “Thank you for hearing me out.”

  The stillroom beckoned, and she headed back to it. Once it was properly organized she could make a great deal more than just flavored vinegar. As she had pointed out, there was a great deal of escape to be found in work—and no matter what the Godmother had said, she still found herself flailing in moments of uncertainty and fear.

  After all, she knew now that the Godmother was quite ruthless. Ruthless enough to lie in order to keep her from doing something desperate. So, no matter how much she wanted to believe both what the Godmother said and Sebastian’s research, the fear never left her for very long.

  It was growing darkness, not weariness nor hunger, that finally sent her back out of the stillroom and into her suite so she could change out of clothing stiff with herb-dust into something presentable for supper. Sapphire must have been horrified to see her as she entered; the Spirit Elemental came up behind her and all but pushed her into the bath chamber.

  She didn’t resist. She knew how dirty she was, and although back home she would have resorted to a “bath in a basin” and the vigorous application of a brush to her hair to get all the dust out, well, home was not equipped with that huge, lovely tub, nor what was an unlimited supply of hot water. So she let Sapphire have her way, and as her clothing vanished out the door—held in a way that suggested the Elemental had it at arm’s length to avoid the dirt—she sank into a hot tub scented with tuberose, and luxuriated for a little before scrubbing every inch, hair included. She was just glad her hair only came down to just below her shoulder blades, not long enough that she could sit on it, like the twins could.

  Sapphire returned, brushed out the clean, wet hair and bound it up in a knot at the nape of her neck. Then, with a flourish that looked like triumph, she presented Bella with one of the remade gowns, which was still much more elegant than anything she had brought with her.

  But at least it was not nearly as restrictive as it had been. She allowed herself to be “helped” into it without a murmur of protest. It was a lovely color between rose and tan, made of soft silk twill, with three rows of very tiny ruffles at the hems and the throat. The ruffles kept it from looking too severe, but they were restrained enough that she didn’t look as if she was dressing in imitation of the twins.

  Even Genevieve knows better than to run about in three rows of deep ruffles.

  When she entered the dining hall, as she expected, Sebastian was deep in another book. But he must have been devoting at least a bit of his attention to watching for her, since he rose as soon as she passed the doorway, and pulled out her seat himself.

  “You look very nice,” he said, sounding a little surprised.

  He didn’t think I could look nice? “I’m told I clean up passably well,” she replied dryly, and he gave a quick smile.

  “I have been doing some further investigation into your Spirit Elementals,” she continued. “Well, that is making it sound as if I was actually doing research, which I haven’t been. I’ve just been seeing what they will do if I ask them to. The stupid ones are as you said, about as bright as an obedient dog. You have to tell them exactly what you want and sometimes show them how to do it. But the smart ones are my equal. They do things they know I will want without being told to, and do it very well. They tend to me as if I was a beloved master—” She paused a moment. “Have you ever given thought to what a good partnership is between a master and a servant?”

  He looked at her as if he was not entirely certain of her sanity. “Erm…no?” he ventured.

  “A servant is not merely someone you give an order to and expect it to be obeyed because you give him wages and board,” she replied, fixing him with a slightly stern gaze. “A bad servant can ruin the household and rob you. A good servant can save you endless time and money, too. But it has to be a proper partnership. The servant must trust that you will not just pay him a fair wage, but be fair to him in other ways—not order him to do more than a reasonable person can, not ask him to do something he finds repugnant, nor something illegal. He trusts you to defend him against outside accusation, and take care of him when he is sick or old. He trusts that you will trust him and not watch over his shoulder at his tasks or send someone to spy on him. In your turn, you must trust him to be competent, honest and capable. He will learn to anticipate your needs, and you will give him praise and respect for doing a fine job. You see? A partnership.”

  Sebastian looked startled. “I never thought of it that way.”

  She sniffed a little. “Most people never think of their servants at all. They treat them like invisible automata and walk past them without an acknowledgment. It is the Housekeeper and the Butler who generally become the real mistress and master in households like that. They are the ones who incur the loyalty or inspire the disloyalty and sloth. And the one who thinks he is the master is merely a figurehead.” She shrugged. “But then, that is what you want, I expect—everything to go smoothly without the need for intervention or even thought on your part.”

  He coughed, embarrassed all over again.

  “It’s perfectly all right,” she hastened to add. “In a household the size of yours, you would put your trust primarily in your Steward or Seneschal. He would be the person in charge of everything. And then, beneath him, your trust would be in your Housekeeper, your Butler, your Land Steward for your farms, lands and mines, your Factor for business matters, your Secretary for correspondence and, I suppose, your Coachman and Head Gardener for anything that had to do with the grounds and stables and so forth. Your partnership would be with them, and they would in turn have that partnership with the rest of the servants that were responsible to them. It is really a contract of trust. Everyone knows his job, knows he will be supported and helped if he is asked to do things outside of his job, and knows he will be cared for if things go wrong for him. And your job is to provide the means for all this to happen.” She smiled. “In a way, you are the one working for them.”

  He pushed his glasses up on his nose, his forehead creased. “I never thought of any of this…except I vaguely remember my father starting to make a similar speech, then cutting himself off and saying, ‘But we’ll talk about this in a few years.’ Except rather than being about the servants as such, it was about the duty of the lord to his liegemen. I do spend one day a week dealing with the common business of the Duchy, not the magical protections—mostly approving what the Factor and Eric recommend—but since my father or King Edmund chose most of the people who work with me, I never had to think much of it. How did you work all this out, anyway?”

  “I didn’t. When Mother died, once Father had recovered a bit and realized I was trying to take over the household though I was only ten, he sat me down and gave me almost this same speech.” She smiled, a little sadly, because both of them had been so grief-stricken still, but the memory was a good one. “Almost, because obviously, we don’t have nearly this many servants, so later when I was older, I found out about how Great Houses like yours are run. This is why and how when we both fell apart, the entire household pulled together to take care of us quietly and invisibly until we could go back to our duties. And it’s why the mirror showed me this morning that things
are going much more smoothly than I had ever dreamed they would….”

  And suddenly, as she said that aloud, she understood that yes, that was exactly what was happening. Everyone in the Beauchampses’ household—well, barring Genevieve and the twins—knew what needed to be done, and they were doing it, as they had when her mother had died.

  And maybe Genevieve will decide that she needs to manage the household in reality rather than pretending to do so…. She couldn’t be as incompetent as Bella had always supposed. Her father loved her and had married her, and he really would not fall in love with a stupid woman. And she had once had her own household and had presumably managed it….

  Bella felt an unaccustomed guilt. What had she been doing all this time? Treating her stepmother like an idiot; refusing to hand over the household—not overtly, but by manipulation; getting up so early that by the time Genevieve awoke, everything was done. Now, Genevieve was more than a bit lazy, and no doubt on one level she enjoyed the fact that she didn’t have to lift a finger and the house ran smoothly. But on the other hand—who was in charge? The wife, or the daughter? The daughter, obviously, and that had to rankle.

  She was so lost in her own thoughts for a moment, that she didn’t notice that Sebastian was lost in his own, as well. It was only when he spoke that she realized that the silence had gone on for quite some time.

  “And what about someone who doesn’t really fit into this whole arrangement?” he said, but it was clear that he was speaking his own thoughts aloud, and not talking directly to her.

  It was also clear whom he meant. Eric.

  “It is the duty of whoever is at the top to find the right place where he fits—or make one,” she said firmly. “That is what my father would say.” He looked at her as if he was surprised to hear her talking, then slowly nodded.

  “Your father is a very wise man” was his only reply. There was more silence, then he looked up at her again. “So what has all this to do with the Spirit Elementals?”

  “The stupid ones really don’t need that sort of organization. The clever ones…I think they have put it together on their own. You might not have been aware of directing them, but you must have been. At least enough for them to count you as their Master in their own minds, and arrange themselves accordingly.” That was the only thing that made any sense.