Beastly Beauty

Thirty-One

A gust of wind whirled through the stable yard, rattling the barn doors.

It muttered and cackled like a witch in its low, raspy voice, taunting Beau. Telling him that a storm was coming. One that would bring snow and ice. One that would keep him here.

A hammer in one hand, a bag of nails in the other, he ignored it, so the wind tried again, rising and keening until its voice was that of a child’s—high and frightened.

Please don’t go! Don’t leave me, Beau!

Beau knew the voice wasn’t real; he knew it was only his worried mind playing tricks. But knowing it didn’t help. He still saw Matti standing by a window, waiting and hoping and wishing for him to come. And he saw him turn away, crushed, when day after day after day, he didn’t. He still felt as if the keening wind had reached inside him and wrapped its pitiless fingers around his heart.

Hunching his shoulders against it, Beau knelt down and furiously nailed two planks together, end to end. When he’d finished, he hurried to the stable’s workroom, grabbed two more planks, and did the same thing. Then he lapped one end of a newly elongated plank over the other one, nailed them again. He was hurrying and distracted, and the hammer came down on his thumb. Yelping in pain, he shook his hand and let out a string of very unspecific curses.

Arabella wouldn’t be pleased, he thought after the throbbing dulled a little. Well, he didn’t give a hummingbird’s fart what Arabella thought. Because of her, he’d spent the whole day building the world’s crappiest bridge. Dusk was coming down now, and he wasn’t even close to being finished.

He’d come up with the idea last night, after Hope had left him. After he’d raced back to his room and locked himself in. There was no tunnel—she’d convinced him of that—so he’d had to devise another way of getting out: a skinny plank bridge.

The distance across the moat looked to be about forty feet. The nailed-together planks were each ten feet long. Beau planned to make six in all,to give himself ten extra feet on each side of the moat. He’d connect the planks with more nails and some rope, then push the sixty-foot length through the gatehouse and across the moat. Then he’d stabilize the castle-side end of his homemade bridge with counterweights he’d found in the gatehouse and just hope really hard that the other end bit into the bank on the far side and anchored itself there.

And that was the easy part. If he actually managed to get his rickety contraption stretched across the moat, and it actually held, he would then have to walk across it. Across a six-inch wide, sixty-foot long, bouncy-as-hell length of wood cobbled together with rusty nails and some mouse-gnawed rope.

The plan was insane, and he knew it, but it was the only one he had. He picked up the hammer and started to work again, but as he did, the door banged back on its hinges.

“Blasted wind …” he muttered, standing up to close it.

But it wasn’t the wind. It was Valmont. Percival was with him. They didn’t look happy.

Valmont’s eyes traveled from the hammer in Beau’s hand to the planks on the floor and the nails scattered around them. He gave a gusty snort and started toward him. Beau braced himself for a fight. He’d had enough. Of Arabella and her creepy court. Of the sticky-fingered kid. And of murderous monsters who came out at midnight.

“Back off, Monty. You’ve no right to stop me. You’re a pack of liars. All of you. You—”

But Valmont cut him off. “Shut up,” he said, taking the hammer from Beau’s hand and throwing it down. “Come with us.”

“Where to? The dungeon?”

“No, the moat.”

“Why should I?” Beau asked warily.

“So you don’t kill yourself,” said Percival.

The two men turned to go. Beau followed them. They walked in silence until they reached the gatehouse and its moat-side archway.

“Why are we here?” Beau asked, his gaze sweeping down to the murky water. A few slime-covered rocks jutted up from its depths, but nothing seemed to live in it.

Valmont picked up a large stone that had tumbled from the gatehouse wall and tossed it into the moat. It hit the water with a deep, noisy splash. For a long moment, nothing happened. And then one of the rocks moved. It tilted back, and Beau saw a face staring up at him from the water. Its skin was a gangrenous green; its eyes were milky with decay. Fungus crawled over its lips. As Beau stared at the thing, his belly tightening in horror, it growled at him through blackened teeth.

“Wh-what is that thing?” he said, taking a hasty step back.

As the words left his lips, the water began to roil and froth around the creature. A second monster surfaced, and then another, until there were dozens of them, all groaning and thrashing. He saw a man whose skin hung off his bones in a tattered curtain. He saw a fish swim in and out of the eye sockets of another. An eel slithered through the rib cage of a third.

“If you still want to build a bridge, make sure it’s a strong one,” Valmont said, and then he left.

Percival remained. Together, he and Beau watched the sad, sullen creatures, some of them still growling and snapping, others clawing uselessly at the air until, one by one, they submerged again.

Beau stood rooted to the spot, the image of the creatures’ awful faces, the sound of the horrible gurgling that rose from their throats, still with him. One wrong step on his ridiculous bridge and he would be in the water with them.

“Percival, what are they?”

“Soldiers. Mercenaries. Anyone who tried to attack the castle.”

“Are they alive? Dead? Both?”

Percival hesitated, then he said, “There are things here, Beau, things you do not understand.”

“Then explain them to me.”

“They protect us,” Percival said, nodding at the moat. “They protect Arabella.”

Beau gave a bitter laugh. “Please. Arabella doesn’t need protecting. Arabella is as tough as a rock.”

“Spoken like the ignoramus you are.”

The vehemence with which Percival spat the words shook Beau. “I know all that I need to know about Arabella,” he said unconvincingly.

“You know nothing,” Percival shot back. “Nothing of the baby who toddled into the butler’s pantry to stack cups and saucers until they were taller than she was. You know nothing of the girl whose parents took her to Paris to buy her gowns, but who slipped away to see Notre-Dame instead. Or how her parents found her outside the cathedral, sketching the towers, the windows, the flying buttresses. You know nothing of the young woman who wished to build things.”

Beau’s own anger kindled now. He remembered Arabella’s cutting words when they first met and how coldly she’d dismissed him after he taught her how to pick-pocket. “You’re right, I don’t,” he said. “The Arabella I know treats people badly. She uses them.”

Percival’s jaw tightened at Beau’s words. He looked away, turning his gaze to the forest beyond the moat. It was some time before he spoke again.

“Long ago, when I was a boy, there was a judge who presided over this realm, appointed by the old duke, Arabella’s grandfather. His first decree was that every town must erect a jail and a gallows. Every thief, no matter if he stole a sack of gold or a loaf of bread, was hanged. A woman who talked back to her husband was fitted with a scold’s bridle. Adulterers were branded with an A. The stocks were never empty. Blood ran in rivulets from the whipping posts. Bodies rotted on gibbets.

“The judge made himself our moral compass. He and his family never missed church. They dressed plainly and behaved respectably. But once, when I grew older and worked in a shop, the judge’s wife came in to buy gloves. As she pointed to a pair, her sleeve rode up and I saw that her arm was covered with bruises. The laundress, who knew everyone’s business, said the judge beat her. And his children, too. There were more stories. People said the judge swindled business associates and maligned rivals.”

Percival’s eyes found Beau’s. “I’ve always wondered … when the judge gave his harsh orders—to duck a slanderer in a cold pond, to hang a thief—who, exactly, was he condemning?”

And then with a brisk nod, he left, and left Beau standing in the gatehouse. Though it was freezing cold outside, Beau’s cheeks burned. Surely, that old fool wasn’t comparing him to that awful judge?

Unbidden, an image of Arabella, as she looked in her portrait, came to him. He saw her lively eyes. He saw her straight back, the proud set of her shoulders, the defiant tilt of her head. The person she was now was so different from the one in the portrait. What had happened to change her? Who had robbed her of what she’d possessed in that portrait: pride and passion?

Why do you care? he asked himself. She doesn’t care about you. She made you a prisoner. And if you don’t get that bridge built, you’ll remain one.

Another gust of wind howled down, skittering sleet across the cobbles, forcing Beau to hunch into his jacket, sending him back to the stables. As he hurried inside, a sudden fury, red and ravenous, gripped him. He kicked at the bag of nails. He kicked at a cobbled-together plank over and over again, raging at Miguel and Arabella, raging at sheriffs and matrons and schoolmasters, raging at his own foolishness, until he’d kicked what he’d built to pieces.

And then, his chest heaving, his face flushed, he looked at the planks he hadn’t kicked apart. They were a joke. They wouldn’t hold up under him. They wouldn’t hold up under a cat. They’d dip and bow and dump him straight into the moat. He knelt down, defeated, and picked up the nails he’d kicked across the floor. He knew nothing about building things. His good-for-nothing father hadn’t taught him. Neither had Raphael. The only thing he knew how to do was steal. And that wasn’t going to help him now. It wasn’t going to get him any closer to Matti.

“What am I going to do? What the hell am I going to do?” he shouted.

As if in answer, Percival’s voice floated back to him. You know nothing of the young woman who wished to build things …

The nails fell from Beau’s hands. He got to his feet and started walking. By the time he got outside, he was running.

He didn’t have to know how to build a bridge.

Because he knew someone who did.