The Belles

by Dhonielle Clayton

  “I’ll lead them,” Arabella says, lifting a wall tapestry and pushing out a hidden panel.

  “Thank you.” The queen kisses my cheek.

  Rémy disappears with Amber into the dark passageway. I linger and hear Charlotte gasp for breath and mutter.

  The bedroom doors shatter, wood flying in all directions.

  “Go,” the queen shouts.

  Hands find my shoulders. Arabella yanks me through. The door shuts us into darkness.

  51

  We follow behind Arabella. Her long veil sweeps along the cobblestone passage. “There will be guards here in a moment’s time. Sophia has her own tunnels beneath the palace. Hurry.”

  She ducks and turns, seemingly at random, down a series of dark corridors. Pockets of gloom and dead air lurk about. Night-lanterns are hooked to the walls, creating quivering, infrequent splotches of light along the walls and floor.

  My body quivers. Shadowy corners lie ahead. Spiderwebs spin a network of time gone by, stretching from lantern to lantern. I have no sense of where we are in the palace. Arabella knows every stair and turn and pathway through the darkness. The clomping of Rémy’s heavy boots matches the racing pattern of my heart.

  Finally, Arabella slows down. The noise beyond the walls quiets. The scent of fresh bread creeps in, and the stone walls are warm to the touch.

  Arabella drops to her knees and runs her fingers along the ground. She pulls on a latch, lifts a door, and exposes a Belle-trunk. Rémy sets a sleeping Amber on the floor and hoists it out.

  Arabella flips it open and gazes up at me. “You are no longer a Belle.” She pulls a simple green dress from the trunk. “Out of those clothes.”

  Rémy turns around while I change. I shiver with cold and fear. Dread fills every part of my body.

  “Your name is Corinne Sauveterre, and you’re the daughter of a dragon merchant from the Gold Isles.” She ties the House of Rare Reptilians emblem around my neck, and shoves a parcel into my hands. Transport documents. A miniature portrait of me stares back. My new name and the names of my parents. “No one will ask for it unless you draw attention to yourself.” Arabella digs farther into the trunk.

  “Why petit-dragons?”

  “They’re lucky. And they’re worth a lot.” She holds up a pouch and flashes its contents at me. Five tiny eggs. They’re swaddled. “The queen gave them to me for safekeeping so that Sophia wouldn’t get to them. The shells are shatterproof. Just carry them on you. Keep them warm.” She laces the pouch around my waist, then covers it with a waist-sash embroidered with the house emblem. “Sell them when you have to. If you must. But they are also excellent and natural messengers.”

  We lock eyes through her dark veil. She removes it. Her face is as smooth as mine. Her coiled russet hair is studded with jewels in her Belle-bun, and a Belle-emblem circles her neck. Her mouth curves into a smile. She has the same dimple in her cheek that I do. We could be a matching set. Mother and daughter.

  I gasp.

  “You haven’t figured it out yet,” she says.

  “Figured what out?” I ask.

  “I told Du Barry to keep you home,” she says, while packing a small toilette box.

  “You did what?”

  She glares at me. “I knew something terrible would happen if you came to court.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You and I are the same. You’re me. They tried to make another version of me in you. Your mother, Linnea, even gave you my mirror.” She points at the place where I’ve hidden it under my undergarments.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know that we aren’t born. We’re grown like flowers.”

  “I saw Sophia’s pods.” A thousand questions about who and what I am bubble up on my tongue, even though I know there isn’t the time to answer them.

  “Yes, that’s why I’m kept at court. To watch over this process. They use my blood to ensure that enough Belles are born.”

  I step back, and crash into the wall behind me. “You allowed them to do this?”

  “Allow? I do what I’m told. Just like you. Up until today.”

  “You could end it all.”

  “I could have killed myself, but then they would’ve just brought you here and bled you every day. As long as there are strong Belles to use, it will never stop.”

  “It has to,” I say.

  “I know.”

  Noise echoes on the other side of the wall. I suck in a huge breath and hold it until the sound drifts away.

  “Help me change her clothes.” Arabella undresses Amber, who is sitting, spent, on the floor. I rush to help her. “And when you get to a safe place, you should both dye your hair. Especially Ambrosia.”

  There’s a clatter overhead. The sound of rushing footsteps.

  “We need to be on our way,” Rémy says.

  “Yes. I will be in touch again. Send word when you’re safe.” Arabella lifts my chin and lets her fingers drift up the sides of my face, just like Maman did. “Open your eyes wide.”

  She inserts two films to change my eye color. I squeeze my eyes shut after and reopen them. My eyes blur and water.

  “Keep blinking. They will settle into place. There’s more of them in the toilette box, along with skin-color pastes,” she says. “Your faces will be plastered all over the kingdom in a matter of hours. The few who don’t already know you by sight, will.”

  Three knocks rattle the wall.

  “Time to go.” She shoves the toilette box in my hands and drapes a hooded cloak over my shoulders. “I will help you in any way I can.” She kisses my cheek, then turns to the wall and gives it one giant push. The wall cracks open like a hinged door, leading into the palace kitchen.

  “To the courtier dock,” she orders Rémy.

  He nods and leads the way forward. Amber’s still a rag doll in his arms. We go through the servant entrance. The dark wood of the underground palace dock gleams under low-lit sea-lanterns. The whole thing seems carved out of the bottom of the palace, opening up onto the ocean like a great mouth. Glittering boats are loaded with well-dressed passengers.

  “Dock closing,” a man hollers. “Load your boats and go, if you’re going. By order of the queen.”

  “She’s got to stand.” Rémy tries to hold Amber upright.

  I shake her shoulders. She moans. “Amber, you’ve got to wake up.” Her eyes flutter. “I need you to walk.”

  She tries, but her legs buckle under her. Rémy drapes one of her arms around his shoulder and the other around mine. We join a line of passengers boarding several boats. We drag her forward.

  “Gold Isles—this boat,” one shouts. “Docking at Céline.”

  “Glass Isles and one stop in Silk Bay,” another says.

  “Spice Isles,” a man hollers through a voice-trumpet.

  Men and women drop fat coins into his hands and shuffle aboard.

  I pull the hood over my head. “This way, Rémy. Spice Isles.”

  Rémy places a hand on my waist. “Three seats for my wife and me, and her very drunk sister,” he tells the man.

  The man laughs at the sight of Amber but doesn’t look twice at us as Rémy gives him money. Our tickets secure us seats in the steerage class on the boat. Porthole windows expose night views of the water.

  “What’s going to happen?” I ask. “Where are we going to—”

  Rémy brings one finger to his lips. “Say nothing for a while.”

  The boat slides out from the dock and into La Mer du Roi.

  52

  My sisters and I threatened to run away from Du Barry once. Edel made us all pack a tiny satchel full of stolen bread and cheese from the kitchen. Three of us hooked night-lanterns to our Belle-buns. We climbed out our bedroom windows and into the dark. Our nightdresses picked up mud and sticks and leaves. Edel led the way. Amber cried the entire journey. Valerie whimpered and jumped at every sound. Hana held her breath. Padma and I held hands. We marched to the little dock at the south wing of t
he island, and prepared to get in a bayou boat. White cypress trees grew out of the shadowy water like bones, and fireflies skipped along the surface, their little bodies red sparks brightening the night. We argued about the bayou octopus rumored to be living in those waters, waiting to eat us if we ever tried to swim away.

  None of us had the courage to get in the boat before Du Barry caught us. The same feeling creeps into me now as the vessel oscillates under me.

  The sea seems endless, the space between us endless, the questions that I have endless. Du Barry forced us to study the map of Orléans, and I remember the big wall-length tapestry in the main salon of the Belle apartments, but being out on the water—moving away from the imperial island and into the unknown—gives me the dizzying feeling that we are headed to the edge of the world.

  “Are you hungry?” Rémy asks. It’s the first thing he’s said since the ship left the underground palace dock.

  “Yes. Should I go?”

  “No, it isn’t safe. You could be recognized still.”

  I nuzzle the cloak Arabella gave me, pulling it more tightly under my neck, and I cradle my waist-pouch full of dragon eggs. Amber’s head is in my lap, and she sleeps peacefully. I wish I could sleep, too, but worries and questions hum through me, keeping me awake.

  Rémy leaves in search of food, and I watch his back disappear up the ship’s stairs to the surface. The people on this deck hold bundles, and some have jackets embroidered with merchant house emblems like mine.

  “Barley water?” a ship-vendor calls out. “Eases the stomach on the sea. Barley water, anyone?”

  I hold my breath as he comes closer.

  “Barley water, miss?” He taps my shoulder. I jump, and shake my head no.

  I’m flinching at every sound. Is this how your new life will always be? says a voice inside me. I wonder if Charlotte is awake, and if the queen is stronger.

  I shudder and gaze around. Has Sophia sent someone after us? Are all the soldiers in Orléans searching? What bounty did she place on our heads? What is she doing to my sisters? What will Du Barry say when she learns of what happened? What happened to Bree?

  After a few more moments, I become certain that Rémy has been identified and taken into the ship’s custody. I watch the staircase he ascended, and when I spot his familiar shape, I exhale with relief.

  He slips back into the seat beside me like he’s only been gone for a few seconds. He hands me a sausage roll. “All they had. Pick around the meat. Smelled a little rancid.”

  I unwrap the paper and sniff the oozing roll. “Where’s yours?”

  “We have to save for when we dock.”

  “We’ll share it.”

  “No, you eat.”

  I break it in half.

  “Why can’t you just follow instructions?”

  “I thought you knew me by now.”

  We chew in silence. It isn’t the worst thing I’ve ever tasted, but it’s pretty close.

  Amber stretches.

  “Wake up,” I whisper.

  Her eyes flutter and then pop open. “Camille . . .”

  “Shh.” I cup her face.

  She sits up slowly. “Where are we?”

  I lift her hood. “On a ship to the Spice Isles.”

  “What happened?” she says groggily.

  “I’ll tell you when we get off.”

  “Look.” Rémy points out the window. The glowing towers of the Spice Islands’ port city rise in the distance. Gilt-lanterns hang out of windows, casting an aurous glow over all the buildings. Blue-sailed ships are docked in the port.

  “Port ahead! City of Metairie,” a man shouts and rings a bell.

  People gather their belongings and shuffle to the stairs.

  Rémy stands. He shapes the hood around my face. “Eyes down, all right? Both of you. You’re merchants now, not such an esteemed birth.”

  Amber and I nod.

  The boat docks. We shuffle off with the crowd. The pier is a chaos of bodies and sounds and movement. Newsies hold up papers, and a storm of post-balloons whirls overhead.

  “The queen is dead!” one shouts. “The queen is dead!”

  “What?” I gasp, my eyes wide. “No!”

  “Metairie’s latest news!”

  “Read all about it. Ten leas a pop for the Spice Isles Sentinel.”

  “I’ve got the latest pictures in the Orléansian Times.”

  “My tattler tells all. Reputable sources only. Firsthand accounts.”

  I try to glimpse the headlines. The newsies’ hands wave in the air, scattering the ink across the pages. I catch pieces of it.

  QUEEN’S HEART STOPPED

  SLEEPING PRINCESS CHARLOTTE HAS DISAPPEARED

  KING IN RETIREMENT

  REGENT QUEEN SOPHIA TO BE CORONATED

  PALACE IN MOURNING

  THE PRINCESS TO MARRY MINISTER OF

  SEAS’ SON, AUGUSTE FABRY

  QUEEN’S LONGTIME LOVER LADY PELLETIER FLEES PALACE

  My heart shatters. I stop, doubling over. Shopkeepers are working to swap their pier-lanterns with mourning ones. A black glow settles over the small market.

  “We must move,” Rémy says.

  “Where?” I ask dumbly. It is all too much.

  “This way.” Rémy navigates through the crowd, dodging bodies. The crowds thin out. Pockets of men are hunched over wooden crates. They’re playing cards, slamming down chips and hollering out insults.

  “It’s here,” Rémy says. We pause in front of a building with a tiny sign that reads PRUZAN’S SALOON AND BOARDINGHOUSE, FINE WHISKEY, BEDS, AND DECENT FOOD. The saloon has a pass-me-by appearance, with boarded-up windows and post-balloon slots that look wired shut. A wobbly porch wraps around its face like a crooked smile. Stretching five stories high, it swallows nearly half the street, and has three empty storefronts on the first floor with cobwebbed windows and faded signs.

  We climb the stairs.

  “Wait here with Amber,” Rémy says.

  The card-playing men look up.

  “Why are we here?” Amber asks.

  I don’t hear her question at first. My head is buzzing with the headlines about the queen and Auguste.

  Rémy returns with a dangling key. “A room with two beds for my wife and servant.”

  “Servant?” Amber scoffs.

  “You weren’t awake to have an opinion,” he says.

  Inside, the saloon feels like one of our old dollhouses in the playroom at home. Banisters hold constellations of cobwebs. Sitting rooms spill over with tipsy sofas and moth-eaten covers, and the furniture is piled high with old-fashioned post-balloons, buckets, house-lanterns, drapery, older télétropes, bolts of lace, half-burned candles, broken spyglasses, ear-trumpets, and more. “This way.” A woman leads us up the front staircase. She slumps forward, limping like she’s walking over hot coals. “I put you in the back, where it’s quiet.” She wears a long handmade dress that drags at the hem, and little heeled shoes that probably leave sores on her big toes. The halls creak with each step she takes. I keep my head lowered and don’t make eye contact. She shows Rémy how to open the door, and points the way to the bathing room. The humble space has two beds, a desk, a tiny cookstove, and a large window overlooking the street.

  “Dinner’s at eight. Kitchen closes before the midnight star.”

  “Thank you,” Rémy says.

  She shuts the door behind her. I set Arabella’s toilette box on a small table.

  We all find places to sit. A silence stretches between us, and we’re too tired and weary to talk about what we have to do next.

  A knock pounds at the door.

  Rémy steps carefully to it. “Who is it?”

  “Fresh macarons,” the voice says. “For you and your wife.”

  The hairs on my arms lift.

  “We don’t want any. Thank you.”

  The knocking persists.

  Rémy puts a hand on his dagger.

  “They’re the best in Matairie. Best in all of t
he Spice Isles.”

  “Go out there, and shoo them away,” I say. Amber and I pull up our hoods.

  Rémy opens the door. A cloaked woman stands there, holding a tray of yellow macarons. She reveals her face and I gasp.

  Edel smiles back at us. “It took you long enough.”

  Dear Reader,

  This book contains my personal monster.

  I started The Belles almost a decade ago, but it’s a story that’s been living inside me since I was twelve, long before I ever had dreams of being a writer, before I even thought that was possible.

  When I was a pimply, puffy-haired preteen in the mid-1990s, I overheard a conversation at my local suburban mall among several men about their respective girlfriends’ bodies. They were thumbing through a popular magazine as they discussed how much better their girlfriends might look if they had longer and leaner legs, bigger breasts, different hair textures, a more slender frame, softer skin, and on and on, comparing them to the celebrities voted the most beautiful women in the world that year.

  This conversation broke something deep down inside of me, and in that fissure grew a monster.

  I checked out magazines from the public library and spent hours poring over the pages, dissecting the images and studying the women photographed. I housed my obsession in a secret little space inside my childhood bedroom. If you go in my closet and push back the clothes, there’s a tiny door made perfect for a hobbit, a reading nook built by my bookworm parents to foster my love of reading. But I used that little room to explore all the thoughts I was having about bodies and beauty. I cut out pictures of women I thought men would consider beautiful, and pasted them on the little walls: legs, breasts, arms, torsos, eyes, hair textures, skin tones, and hairstyles.

  Over time, the walls held the wishes I had for my own body, and filled me with questions. What would I do if I could change myself completely? How far would I go? How ugly could it get, and why? Was there a way to be the most beautiful woman in the world?

  The world of Orléans is built from the flesh and bones of that monster. It’s ugly, painful, unsettling, and oftentimes disturbing.

  As uncomfortable as it might be, I hope this book pushes us to talk about the commodification of women’s body parts and the media messages we send young people about the value of their exterior selves, what is considered beautiful, and the forces causing those things to shift into disgusting shapes.