The Servants and the Beast

by R. A. Gates

  “Maximus.”

  Her skin flushed along the curve of her cheek and she laughed before saying, “Maximus. I am aware of my own feelings, and of the rules that are set upon us. His Highness would never allow us to be together.”

  “I have enough wages to set us up, and an offer to work for the Duke of Versailles.” I released her hands and bowed grandly. “He is very interested in the great Maximus Stein.” I lowered to a kneel in front of Rebecca, my heart in my hands. “My love, my profession sings with music, but my heart beats for you. I leave tonight, but I couldn’t possibly leave without you. Will you come with me and journey into a new life together?”

  She opened her mouth to respond, and my gut wanted to say she was going to accept my proposal, but we were cruelly interrupted. Darwin announced in his deep boom of a voice, “Monsieur Quillsby, what is your service in the study tonight?”

  Quillsby, his animated gestures only partially blocked by Darwin’s large arm, flared wildly with a flurry of words as he tried to bustle into the room. “My purpose? It is Sunday is it not? I am required to be here for whatever class the Prince so chooses to be mentored in for the evening.”

  Darwin, ever the friend, peeked around the corner and blocked the entryway to give me time to rise. Rebecca’s eyes stayed with my own as I, acting as if I were simply buckling my shoes before sitting at the grand, although withering, piano; I had managed to keep the piano in perfect pitch and I had pride in that.

  As I thought of the lesson the Prince might pay attention to, I heard his highness shouting from down the halls. It began as shouts and somehow morphed into a guttural growl that echoed across the barren castle, lingering and growing with reverberation. A cackle I didn’t recognize drowned in replacing menace as just noise.

  Curiosity peaked and then pushed aside as my focus returned to Rebecca. I kept eye contact and said firmly, “Please consider my offer.” Rebecca bit her bottom lip, released, and resumed her position at the easel.

  Quillsby continued to argue with Darwin, growing more and more ruffled, to say the least. “My word! Do move aside, Monsieur LeGrand!” He bustled into the room adjusting his black coat then straightening the supplies he carried in with him. “Thank you. Well, I say.” His eyes focused on Rebecca and me, and he asserted with more chatter. “I have had it now! I am finished! That boy prince! Well, our fair Queen Marie never would approve. He’s in the ballroom this very moment, fighting with a wretchedly dressed woman. Poor soul probably just needs a hot meal and he won’t give her the time of day!” He shook his head pointedly.

  Quillsby dipped the tip of his favorite quill in the tiny ink pot he’d carried in with him. He began writing along the once used parchment, but after a few strokes he scoffed, “Absurd! How am I to teach if I have no proper materials! Used parchment! Dry inkwells?” He acted as if he would throw the very quill in his hand but thought better of it and gently placed it within an inside pocket of his coat. He sneezed, a claim that he was prone to sneezing fits due to the regular dust of inactivity of the castle, and the flecks flitted about his face. He glanced at his pocket watch that he kept in his vest. “These horrible allergies just get worse for me.” He removed a well-used hanky and sneezed audibly into it before saying, “Well, of course the Prince is late. I wonder if he’ll even show up tonight. Whose turn is it, anyway?”

  I organized sheet music on the piano. “You know he won’t decide who will bear the weight of teaching until he arrives.”

  Quillsby sniffed, “Well, the dear late Queen was never so irresponsible with our precious time.”

  Rebecca's voice rippled with layers that resembled thick brush strokes; raspy and warm. “Monsieur Quillsby, I agree. Queen Marie was quite lovely. Most days.”

  Quillsby acted physically damaged and slumped down. “What could you possibly mean by that?”

  Rebecca turned and gestured to a large painting above the fireplace on the opposite wall. “Her complexity ran deep, pulling her away for long periods of time.” She rested her chin on her hand. “I hoped art might help her find the peace she sought.”

  Quillsby shook his head decisively, his thick unruly hair wriggling about his brow. “Well, a woman of her lovely stature could never find peace knowing what her son has done—”

  She held up a gentle hand, “Of course, you're right, dear Monsieur Quillsby. I tremble with fear when he approaches my works for I never know if he will destroy my pieces or spare them. But, the fair Queen would still love him.”

  The writer sighed, dust poofing out in a large circle from the sheer energy of the air he produced. “Well, I am most certainly NOT the late Queen.”

  At this point I offered a loud yawn, reveling in how it sounded pitch perfect from a tuning fork. I stretched my long fingers in a momentary pause.

  The Prince was cruel in the way he handled his affairs with merchants by short-changing them for hard work, and his anger pushed some of his staff to a point of fear; I never thought of the Prince as anything more than a boy. He had much to learn and not an ear to hear of it.

  I played the beginning of a tune that I knew was Rebecca’s favorite. She watched me as I played. Above the music I said, “Quillsby, of course you aren't anything like the fair Queen! She was the heart of this castle, not the blow hard.”

  “Well, I never—”

  The keys danced elegantly. “Relax, old friend.” I sighed and lowered the intensity of the song play with a higher pitched, fairy melody, while Rebecca adjusted her hair and smiled toward her lap. She met my gaze and I winked.

  Quillsby dusted the shoulder pad of his black workman's coat. “Monsieur Stein, it is appalling how you tease the ladies.”

  He never did care for my flirtation with Rebecca, which made me enjoy it all the more; I laughed heartily, a deep lingering sound in my chest before saying, “Ah, Quillsby. No one asked you. Besides, you're so up in arms against the Prince, rightly so of course, but you can't entirely blame the boy. His father was cruel and his fair mother died when he was so young. How else could he have learned her joy if he’s forgotten it?”

  “Are you making excuses for that ingrate?”

  I paused the music and looked at Quillsby. “Of course not. His choices are his own. I'm merely stating that he comes by it more honestly than not.” I maintained focus on Quillsby until the writer nodded and acknowledged we were indeed soldiers of a familiar truth.

  There was a sound in the distant hall, animal-like and enraged. It was unlike anything I had ever heard before. We paused in our conversation before Rebecca rose from her stool and sat down next to me on the once well-padded bench, placing her hands over mine on the keys. She glanced toward the doorway and said, “Did you hear that? You don’t think an animal found passage inside, do you?”

  I shook my head, “No, of course not. His Majesty is probably annoyed with the old woman.”

  Rebecca smiled. Her presence stole away my interest in what happened in the ballroom, and I began to play again, but a simple tune so that she could keep her hands on mine. The softness of her fingers crept into the longing I felt for her.

  She had yet to accept my proposal. I looked into her eyes as we sat together, hoping she would say something but just as she opened her mouth the calm of the room shifted into a dissonant rage that flowed freely from down the hall.

  Pink dust and resounding rage littered over our bodies; a feeling of discontent and disaster all in one sensation. There was an eerie glow that permeated through the open doorway, pink and obnoxious. The roaring down the hall pulled a shiver along the edge of my spine. The feel of the space strengthened my motive to leave, and soon, but I could not just force Rebecca to do something she did not care to.

  Rebecca’s sincere eyes found my own. I stopped playing and lifted her right hand to my lips; I whispered against the smoothness of her perfect skin, “Do you have an answer my love?”

  Her breath rose and fell with a gentle rapidness and when she spoke every fiber of my body held onto her words. If she
agreed, then the Prince would no longer have a hold on us and we could be free to live a life together. She gestured toward the kitchen where I knew her favorite friends worked, the castle chef and wash maids. “Well, Maximus. I can’t leave without a proper goodbye, now can I?” She reached to my hair and ran her fingers over the sides as she whispered, “My love—”

  Quillsby, who clearly had enough of being a third wheel, sauntered over and bowed ever dramatically. “Not that the two of you care! But, it would seem we are not working tonight. So, good day and until next time.”

  Rebecca pulled back, patted my cheek warmly. “Meet me in here after the Prince retires for the evening. We can talk then.” She turned to Quillsby. “ Monsieur Quillsby, would you be so kind as to escort me back to my room?”

  He held out the crook of his elbow in response, and while I couldn’t see his face, I detected a hint of a smile behind the frowning contour of his chin. I watched them from the lid of the piano as Rebecca collected her canvas from her easel. Rebecca looked over her shoulder at me, and a smile crept across my face. Because there was a very good reason why she never asked me to walk her to her room.

  As they stood to leave, they stalled at the sound of our prince's outrage. The discontent I felt moments before lurched then with color blasts and restraints. Suddenly, I knew. The cackle, the pink dust—this was the workings of an evil fairy!

  The magic at hand somehow exhaled heavily through the glittery air and wrenched my body, painfully shifting my quick moving limbs into tedious slow motion. I reached for Rebecca, at least, I tried. But my arms became heavy and solid like wooden planks wrought together. My face and eyes and legs changed and swerved my balance. I feared sickness as I trembled over the floorboards. When I spoke my words were deep keys from the piano I adored so much, my hands were no longer hands, and my voice no longer my own.

  Even without my seemingly natural eyes, I still managed to see the fear morph over Rebecca’s body she shouted my name across the room before she was absorbed into the very easel she touched, her beauty and demeanor lost on the blank canvas I had brought for her. I tried to call out, but the piano keys were all that effort produced.

  I didn’t see Quillsby at first, but I guessed by the flighty, fidgeting feather that bounced from one spot of the room to the next that he too had transformed, and into the quill he kept so diligently in his front pocket. We were all trapped and lost souls now.

  Five years later, the study that held me captive gave me a perfect view of the sunset over the western mountains. Tonight, the oranges and yellows bled through the dark grey and blue that pulled past the evening light. The stars brightened the darkness in the distance. While I used to play with my dreams over those stars, each passing year imprisoned as a piano stole more of what had made me a masterful musician. The stars that once were glorious and whimsical for song inspiration were now foreboding and as out of reach as the dreams they once represented.

  Of course, I reminded myself that there were worse things than being bound to the glory of a grand piano sitting in a spacious study situated with large windows. After all, I could be stuck in the dusty library as a portrait, or as a dishrag in the kitchen, or heaven forbid I be confined as a footstool.

  My slatted eyes, which I presumed were no longer the green irises I was born with, but instead some strange facet along the piano edge, lingered on the wooden easel nestled on the right side of the closest window to the grand marble fireplace. My ivory keys trembled deeply before I silenced them with a jerk. Rebecca had found her way back to the window, again. Forever the artist trapped in the wooden frame that once held her creations.

  My strings tightened as I watched her against the tattered, red silk curtains. The pink sparkles that seemed to spawn from our curse lingered lightly along her edges as she viewed the sky in silence, her easel angling just slightly to the right and maneuvering left as she analyzed the scene. How my heart ached in the soundboard of my center. It beat no more yet still it pined for her because I could still see her beyond the easel she had been forced to become.

  Quillsby fluttered into the room, very much like he fluttered as a man, saying, “Ah, splendid. I thought I would find you in here, Mademoiselle.” He wriggled as he floated and settled in upon the fireplace mantel. “And hello, Stein. Are you even awake this time?”

  I slammed all my keys in heavy fashion, startling the quill so much he fell to the glitter dusted floor sputtering, “Well, I say! Stein, how awful you are to—”

  Rebecca creaked as she turned to face us, her canvas blank and her voice raspy. “Now, now, gentlemen. Maximus, that was a bit unkind.”

  I spoke, the vibrations of my soundboard muffling my usual tenor with a mix of layered piano tones: “Of course, I know you’re right. But it was a great bit of fun that I don’t have much opportunity for these days.” I turned carefully on the wheels that I was grateful to have, “Monsieur Quillsby, I do apologize. I simply could not resist.”

  Quillsby had puffed up but now relaxed into a more slender profile, “I forgive you but only because I am more noble than you.” He fluttered over to Rebecca and rested gingerly along the top of her canvas. Jealousy stung through me, even as a piano.

  I bit my sound down and muttered in a low growl, “What is it, that you need to grace us with your presence, Quillsby?”

  He relaxed comfortably along the length of the canvas that Rebecca kept blank for the time being, and said, “It has been five years to this day that we were transformed.”

  I rolled back to the dented floorboards that I had come to know as my resting ground. “This is not news.”

  Quillsby hesitated and then said, “I know. But, it felt fitting to return and be with the scholars I once collaborated with.”

  Rebecca’s voice, softer than the bite of my own voice, came through and said, “We are honored, Quillsby.” She turned her canvas toward me and said, “Memories are all that we have.”

  I began the key movement involved with Rebecca’s favorite song as the sun dipped deeper behind the mountainside, the reds oozing beyond the white of the mountain peaks. I sighed, “Another day lost.” The words rang more than I meant for them to.

  Rebecca heard me. “But hope still dances on the backside of the stars.”

  I didn’t reply and instead played out the song of my heart for her, waiting for the day that her sweet hope would come to fruition. Although, with the Prince’s fall into beastly nonsense in both body and spirit, I doubted her hopes would blossom into reality.

  Chapter Three:

  A Young Lady Arrives

  In which a visitor interrupts the reading of the castle librarian

  W

  e lost track of time very quickly, my friend Isadora and I. It’s hard to keep a proper account of days when you’re a sliding ladder and a figure trapped in a painting, respectively. We did well tracking hours, since the tall windows in the castle’s multistory library let in an expansive amount of light, be it of sun or moon. But days all blurred together in this strange new life. Before, I had been the castle librarian, Hugo Livre, and Isadora had served as my assistant. Now, we were fellow victims in this strange curse, unsure if we would ever escape.

  At least until the day the first changes came. Our first hope. That day, I believe several years into the curse, began normally enough. As much as you could talk about normalcy under the circumstances. I woke up curled in the large armchair I was painted into—sometimes I regretted the lack of a bed in the picture—and called a cheery good morning to Isadora.

  “Good morning, Hugo,” she called back, sliding toward me from her venturing around the perimeter of the circular library. The carved figure on the ladder that enabled Isadora to see and speak was fortunately at the same level as my painting, both of us some twelve feet off the ground. She could have been another twenty feet above me, up near the ceiling, making conversation horribly difficult.

  In past days, I had always insisted on formality, and she had called me a very proper Monsieu
r Livre. But in our new trials, we had found it better to be friendlier. All around the castle, servants who had formerly gone by their family names were increasingly known by their first names, and I accepted that this was a matter of decorum that might be better relaxed.

  I stretched, getting the kinks out of my painted shoulders, and leaned on the edge of my frame, automatically brushing away the light coating of pink and gold sparkles that invariably appeared overnight. I could see that dust was accumulating on the books as well, but as I couldn’t reach them I tried my best to put it out of my mind.

  I could not, alas, climb out of my painting. I had tried that, the first terrible day when we found ourselves so strangely altered. Any attempts to leap out of the square that bounded my world bounced me right back in and jarred me not a little. And I did wonder what kind of state I’d be in if I could leap out, seeing as my feet weren’t painted in.

  “What should we read today?” I asked, because at least I could lean and reach out. My painting hung right in with the bookshelves (north wall, amongst shelves 12 through 17). The way books lined every part of the room, it would have been impossible for me to be placed anywhere else. As it was, being a large painting I could reach a dozen shelves around me, and the volumes upon them.

  “Perhaps…some history for a change?” Isadora said in teasing tones, a little of the squeak of her ladder coming out in her voice.

  I was in the history section. History was all I could reach. I had not always approved of Isadora’s sense of humor when we were human—libraries are quiet, serious places, and the ordering of books should not be treated with levity or irreverence—but now I found her light-hearted nature a comfort.

  Although Isadora had free range of movement, she could no longer lift even a pamphlet off a shelf, locked as she was into a ladder with no arms. I regretted the lack of access to the botanical guides (west wall, shelves five, six, and part of seven), but at least I wasn’t in amongst the fairy tales (south wall, shelves three through eight). Silly things, fairy tales. So unrealistic.