Sheri S. Tepper - Beauty

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BEAUTY

Sheri S. Tepper

To Malcolm Edwards, who is wisely responsible for these empty pages

FOREWORD

[In the pages that follow, there are certain interpolations written by me, Carabosse, the fairy

of clocks, keeper of the secrets of time. When I stand on the bridge above my Forever Pool, I see

all past and future things reflected, near or far, dim or plain. If I invite others to stand beside me,

they too may see.

That which we do, we do because we see.

This journal is written by Beauty, daughter of the Duke of Westfaire, recipient of many

pleasant gifts. Though it is regrettable that no one gave her the gift of intelligence (a gift not

highly valued in Faery) she has a practicality that often makes up for that lack.

Intelligent or not, she is the coffer that hides our treasure.

Intelligent or not, Beauty is all our hope.]

THE JOURNAL OF BEAUTY

the daughter of

THE DUKE OF WESTFAIRE

Getting started on this writing, I cut five different quills and ruined them all. Father Raymond finally cut

this one for me. I told him he must, since he gave me the book as a reward for good progress in Latin,

rhetoric, and composition, and for going a whole month without complaining. Now I have a place to

write all the things I cannot say to anyone, except to Father Raymond, and sometimes he is too busy to

listen. It is my intention to tell the story of my entire life so when I am aged I can read it and remember

everything. Old people often do not remember things. I know because I have asked them, at least the

ones around here, and they usually say something like, "Beauty, for heaven's sake, child, I just don't

remember."

If I had a mother I would ask her. I never knew my mother. That is probably as good a place to start

as any.

MY LIFE IN WESTFAIRE

ST. RICHARD OF CHICHESTER'S DAY, APRIL, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

I never knew my mother. My father never speaks of her, though my aunts, his half sisters, make up

for his silence with a loquacity which is as continuous as it is malicious. The aunts speak no good of her,

whoever she was and whatever has happened to her, specifics which they avoid, however much ill they

find to mutter about else. I have always thought they would not waste so much breath on her if she were

dead, therefore she is probably alive, somewhere. De mortuis nil nisi bonum, Father Raymond says,

but that only applies to dead people.

When I was very young I used to ask about her. (As I think any child would. It wasn't wickedness.)

First I was hushed, and when I persisted, I was punished. Nothing makes me angrier or more intent upon

finding out things than having people refuse to tell me. I don't mind when people don't know, not really,

but I hate it when they just won't tell. It's not practical, because it just makes others more curious. It was

the aunts whispering about things that started me upon the habit of listening behind doors and dallying

outside open windows. Father Raymond reproaches me for this when I confess it, though he admits it is

not a very great sin. It was my own idea to confess it because it felt slightly wicked, but perhaps curiosity

is not really a sin at all and I need not feel guilty about it. I will try not confessing it for a while, and see.

Sometimes I hear my mother's name, Elladine, and references to "the Curse," or "the Curse on the

Child." The Child is presumably me. If I had known what a curse was during my more tender years, I

might have been irremediably warped or wounded. As it was, I knew no more what a curse was than

what a mama was, except that most children had not the one, but had the other, and that I had had both

without getting any discernable good out of either. Now that I am older and know what a curse is, though

not the particulars as they may relate to myself, I am used to the idea and I do not find being cursed as

frightening as I probably should.

(I know I am being loquacious. Father Raymond says I am very loquacious and affected. I don't

really think I am affected, unless it is by the aunts, and if it is by the aunts, how could I help it? All these

words are something I was born with. Words bubble up in me like water. It is hard to shut them off.)

I have resolved to find out all about Mama (and the curse) as soon as I can. So far I have not found

out much. I do know that Mama was very beautiful, for one of the older men-at-arms said so when he

told me I look much like her around the eyes though the rest of me seems to be purely Papa. Papa is an

extremely handsome man, and therefore I am very beautiful. It is not conceit which makes me say so. It is

a fact. One must face facts, or so the aunts are fond of saying, though they don't do it at all. They say

many things they don't do. I've noticed that about people. The fact is that I shall be ravishing when I grow

up if I continue in good habits and do not take to drink.

Aunt Lovage, I regret to say, is a tippler, though the other aunts are quite abstemious.

Father Raymond took over teaching me when I was ten or eleven years old, but my earliest memories

are of an education supervised by the aunts. I learned cookery from Aunt Basil and wines from Aunt

Lovage, sewing from Aunt Marjoram (who was herself educated by the Sisters of the Immediate

Conception at St. Mary of Perpetual Surprise) and music from Aunt Lavender who, though tone deaf,

plays upon the lute with great brio and a blithesome disregard for accuracy. She refers to her style as

"spontaneous," and urges me to emulate it.

I have found I can play the right notes quite as easily as the wrong ones, though to satisfy Aunt I do

flap my arms rather more than the music requires. I am quite talented in music. I am told I sing nicely.

When I was four or five, Aunt Tarragon taught me my letters in order that I could read improving

works and be confirmed in the faith. Some of the writings I like best do not feel very improving, though

whenever Aunt Terror is around I pretend I am reading religious books. I was confirmed when I was

nine, rather late in life, truly, though Father Raymond considered it soon enough. Even then I thought

some bits and pieces of doctrine were unlikely at best. Aunt Tarragon is very pious. The other aunts call

her the Holy Terror—a play upon her name. They say things like, "Where's the Holy Terror gone?" and

collapse in silly laughter.

It was my grandfather's notion to name his seven daughters after herbs, a black mark in the heavenly

score book which was no doubt wiped clean by his death or enslavement at the age of seventy-four

while on his way to Rhodes to offer his services to the Knights Hospitaler of St. John. We are a long

lived family, so Papa says, and Grandfather was still very hale and fervent at that age. Grandfather's ship

was blown off course in a storm and was taken subsequently by Mamluks, so Grandmama was informed

by an escaped survivor. From what Papa and the aunts say about him, I doubt Sultan al-Maluk an-Nazir

had any pleasure of Grandfather.

Luckily, Grandfather's demise or disappearance came long after he brought home the builders who

saw to the reconstruction of Westfaire Castle. Some say the architects were pagans from the Far East,

and some say they were inheritors of the Magi, but they could not have been anything evil to have built so

beautiful a place. There is no other castle like it in England; there may be no building like it in the world.

Westfaire is without peer. Even those who have traveled to the far corners of the earth, as Father

Raymond did in his younger years, say it is of matchless beauty.

Grandfather's first wife had no sons and two daughters. They are eldest of my aunts, Aunt Sister

Mary Elizabeth and Aunt Sister Mary George, who are nuns at the Monastery of St. Perpituus in

Alderbury. The sisters do not visit us often. I believe they took holy orders simply to escape being called

Tansy and Comfrey, though it is possible they were summoned by God. Sister Mary Elizabeth was rather

infirm when I last saw her, though it is likely Sister Mary George will go on forever, getting a little leaner

and drier with every passing year.

Grandfather's second wife had no sons and five daughters. Aunt Lavvy, at fifty-eight, is the youngest

of them. Aunt Love is sixty. Aunt Terror is sixty-two. Aunts Bas and Marj are twins of sixty-five. I am

almost sixteen, and the difference in our ages (as well as their reticence about things I want to know)

seems an impenetrable barrier between us. They often fail to perceive the things I perceive, and this

makes communication between us exceedingly difficult. I cannot say that there is more than a superficial

affection on either side of our relationship. Father Raymond talks about filial duty, but it seems to me

there should be something more in a family than that.

Grandfather's third wife, my father's mother, died soon after Grandfather vanished, of grief it is said,

though in my opinion she died of simple exasperation. I sometimes imagine what it would be like to be

wife to a man and mother to a son who are always off on pilgrimage, as well as being stepmother to

seven daughters, all of them considerably older than I. I would die of it, I think, just as Grandmama did.

She was only fifteen when she married Grandfather, after all, and about thirty-five when he was killed.

What had she to look forward to but decades more of the herbal sisters, all of them dedicated to

eccentric celibacy? Buried among all those stepdaughters, Grandmama would have been unlikely to find

a second husband, especially since there was nothing left of either her dowry or her dower. Grandpapa

used everything rebuilding Westfaire: all the dowries of his three wives, all his own money, and all the

considerable fortune he had somehow obtained in the Holy Land, about which people say very little,

making me believe Grandfather may not have been quite ethical in amassing the treasure. Grandmama

was left with nothing to attract suitors, and death might have seemed a blessed release. At least, so I

think.

I spend a lot of time thinking about people. If one leaves out religion, there is very little to think about

except people. People and books are just about all there is. I don't have anyone much to talk with and

only Grumpkin to play with, so ... so I spend a lot of time thinking. It comes out in words. I can't help

that.

I do read everything I can get hold of. Books and my own writings are a comfort to me in the late

hours of the night when all in Westfaire are asleep but me, and I am awake for no reason that I know of

except that my legs hurt (Aunt Terror says it is growing pains) or the owls are making a noise in the trees,

or my head is full of things I have do not have enough words for yet—there must be such things!—or my

chest burns as it sometimes does, as though I had swallowed a little star. It burns and burns, just behind

my collar bone, as though it were trying to hollow me out to make a place for itself. I do not know what it

is, but it has always been there.

So, I sit up in my bed with the bed curtains drawn tight, the candle on one side and Grumpkin snoring

into his paws on the other, and make lists of new words I have heard that day or write pages to myself

about all the things I do not understand. Grumpkin lies on his back with his tummy up, his front feet

folded over his chest or nose and an anticipatory smile on his face, as though he is dreaming of mice. I

wish I could sleep like cats do.

DAY OF ST. PATERNUS, BISHOP, CONVERTER OF DRUIDS, APRIL, YEAR OF OUR

LORD 1347

When I was quite young, about eight or nine, I purloined some boy's clothes from a line near the

woodsman's hut, leaving a silver coin in their place. I had gone out of my way to steal the coin, too,

because I had no money of my own, and I thought that though God might forgive my robbing the

well-to-do, he would not forgive my increasing the distress of the poor. Dressed in these uncouth

garments, dirt on my face, and with my hair twisted up under a grubby cap, I presented myself at the

stables asking for whatever work Martin, the head groom, could give me. I am fairly sure Martin knew

who I was, but we both preserved the fiction that I was a boy from the countryside, one Havoc, a miller's

son, whom Martin employed in order to take advantage of youthful enterprise. If we had ever been found

out, I would have sworn on the Holy Scripture that he was guiltless, so grateful to him I was, and I

believe he relied upon my protection in the event our game was discovered.

It was in the stable I learned to ride long before the aunts had me dressed in voluminous skirts and

perched upon a sidesaddle, one of Grandfather's inventions. I do not think the sidesaddle will catch on.

Most women ride sensibly astride, and I cannot imagine their giving it up for something both so

uncomfortable and of such doubtful provenance. According to the stable boys, the sidesaddle was

designed to protect a maiden's virginity, while risking the maiden's neck. Risking rather much for rather

little, I thought at the time, though of course I knew nothing practical about the matter then and scarcely

more today.

Martin sometimes asked me to exercise the horses and take them down through the little wood to the

stream for water. It was there I first met the pointy-eared boy. He came strolling out of the copse,

introduced himself as Puck, and asked my name. When I told him Havoc, he laughed. "I know that's you,

Beauty," he said. When I asked him what he was doing in my woods, he told me he was keeping an eye

on me for someone. I assumed Martin had sent him, simply because I couldn't think of anyone else who

might care to have me looked after. After that, I saw him every now and then. Once in a while he would

tell me stories. They were not like the stories anyone else told. He spoke of God, but not as Father

Raymond did. Some of the things he said sounded greatly like blasphemy to me, and I told him so. I

assumed he was some woodcutter's son, told off to watch me whenever I left the stables, which wasn't

often because that's where things were going on and people talking about things I might not have learned

about otherwise.

It was in the stables that I learned about animal procreation and saw enough of stable boy anatomy to

draw certain useful parallels. Though the boys' equipment suffers by comparison to that of the stallions,

the similarity of function cannot be ignored. I think it odd that the aunts have never said anything about

this matter. There are a great many things they simply do not discuss with me. They did not even tell me

about the way of women, and when it happened I thought God was punishing me for having certain

feelings about a certain person by letting me bleed to death. It was Doll who found me weeping and told

me it was all very ordinary and had nothing to do with sin.

Doll is Martin's wife. Doll is short for Dorothy. She was named for St. Dorothy who was a virgin

martyr known for her angelic virtue. Doll says she wishes she had been named for someone a little less

angelic and a bit more muscular. She is one of the women who keeps the castle swept and the cobwebs

pulled down, and that takes muscle. I'm sure she has always known what I was up to in the stables, but

she has never told on me. Doll and one of the other women make clothes for me, too, and I thank God

for that. If it were up to the aunts or Papa, I'd always be dressed in things out of the attic made for

ancient female relatives in their latter years. Doll and Martin are my first two friends.

My third friend is Giles.

Giles is one of the men-at-arms. He is a year or two older than I, well-grown for his age, very broad

in the shoulder and slender though well-made in the hip and leg. He has a frank and open countenance

and much soft brown hair which falls over his forehead at odd times, making him look like a much

younger person. His eyes are blue, deep blue, like an evening sky. His lips ... He has very nice features. I

have had certain thoughts about him from time to time, thoughts which I have not even told Father

Raymond about, because I would blush to do so. Besides, I don't have any polite words to use because

either there aren't any or no one has taught them to me. I know how the stableboys talk, but Father

Raymond definitely would not appreciate that. Nonetheless, when I see Giles, I think of the stallions and

their way with the mares, and I get all flushed feeling.

Also, I see the way he watches me sometimes—Giles, not Father Raymond—which lets me know he

feels those same feelings. He is of good birth, but he is only a young man without fortune or rank, and

there is no question about his being a suitable prospect for the daughter of a duke. He is not. I know that,

and he knows it as well, but he is nice to me. He is thoughtful and kind and has never, even by so much

as a word, done anything improper toward me. Sometimes, after a lengthy rain, I will find my bench in

the garden carefully dried off and a rose laid upon it. I'm sure it is Giles who does it, but he doesn't say

anything, nor do I. Still, he is my friend. He would not act so otherwise.

My other friend is Beloved.

Her mother calls her Beloved, though her name is actually Mary Blossom. She is the daughter of

Dame Blossom, an artisan freeholder, a weaver, in the village. Dame Blossom is very much respected by

everyone because she is a midwife and can heal wounds and set bones. If there is trouble, better get

Dame Blossom and stay away from doctors, everyone says. It's true. From time to time one or the other

of the aunts has consulted a physician, and all the great scholars ever did was sniff at their piss, bleed

them dry, and give them some dreadful mixture that—so says Martin—would kill the old ladies off a few

years before their time. Beloved is my personal maid. She is also my friend and almost certainly my half

sister, almost my half-twin.

Not that Beloved is the only young one running about the castle who looks a lot like me. Everyone

pretends not to notice, but I would have to be blind not to see. When two mares who do not look alike

throw foals that look exactly alike, you know the same stallion has been at them, so it's clear my Papa

has been at Dame Blossom. That was sixteen or more years ago, of course, when she was younger and

prettier. I remember her when I was a little girl. She was quite slender and gay then. She has put on

weight since, and become very grave, which is a suitable style for a respected matron.

So, Beloved is my half sister, born on the same day I was, and she looks enough like me to be my

twin. Sometimes I love her and sometimes I hate her because she has a mother and I don't. We

sometimes dress up as each other and Beloved will take my place in the castle, in the dining hall or

sewing with the aunts, and they never know the difference. She can spend all day in the castle without

anyone guessing that she isn't me. But, if I go down to the village pretending to be the weaver-woman's

daughter, Dame Blossom takes one look at me and says, "Beauty, it isn't nice of you to tease me this

way. Go tell my silly daughter to come home."

That always makes me feel like crying for some reason. Maybe because she always knows right

away I'm not Beloved. You have to notice people to be that sure about them. Though I have thought that

maybe it is because she can see the burning thing in me. I know Beloved doesn't have one of those,

because I asked her. She wondered if it was like dyspepsia, and I told her it was not.

DAY OF STS. PETER AND JAMES, MAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

Yesterday my father, who is thirty-seven years of age, returned from pilgrimage to Canterbury—he

has already made pilgrimages to the tombs of St. Francis of Assisi, St. Martin of Tours, St. Boniface at

Fulda, and St. James at Compostela, as well as to Glastonbury, Lindisfarne, Walsingham, Westminster,

St. Albans, and all places else where there are relics of note. Immediately upon his arrival, he told us he

intends to marry again. He told us his intended wife will arrive shortly with a small retinue, and that they

will all stay for the betrothal ceremonies. Her name is Sibylla de Vinciennes d'Argent. I detested her from

the moment I saw the miniature of her that Papa insisted we all admire.

You must not think this rejection of a stepmama is provoked by hostility toward another woman who

will take a beloved mama's place. I have heard tales like that, but I don't know whether I would have

loved Mama or not; she has given me no opportunity to find out. As for Sibylla's taking my place in my

father's affections, she can't take what I have never had. Though I am almost sixteen, he has done none

of the things one expects of a loving papa. He made no provision for my education, merely leaving me to

the mercies of the aunts. If Father Raymond hadn't taken me over, I should be as woefully ignorant about

many important things as they. Papa has made no effort to arrange a marriage for me. When I've raised

the subject with him, he has said, "Wait until—well, until you're sixteen, Beauty. Then we'll discuss it."

Not likely! I can count upon the fingers of one hand the number of "discussions" I've had with Papa,

count them and quote them from memory.

"Ah, Beauty," he says. "Doing well with your studies/cooking/music/herbary?"

"Yes, Papa."

"Good girl. Always do well with your studies/cooking/music/herbary."

Once in a great while, when I have been greatly troubled, I've gone all the way to his rooms to talk

with him. This isn't a journey to take lightly! Starting in my rooms, which are off the long corridor behind

the kitchens, I go up one flight of stairs to the corridor outside the small dining hall. This is the tall one

hung with crusaders' weapons and banners and with paneling carved all over with birds and flowers and

fish. Then I go through the little suite between and into the large dining hall, an even taller room, where the

ceiling is decorated with stone rosettes dependent from the multiple arches, each like lacework, where

the long wall is one tall window after another—all looking over the garden with the apricot tree that

Beloved and I get all the fruit from because the people in the kitchens always forget it is there—and the

other walls are hung with tapestries telling stories of gods and goddesses, most of them naked. At the far

end of this dining hall, I come out into the great hall, under the dome. Father Raymond says it is not unlike

a cathedral dome, though smaller. Since I've never seen a cathedral, I see it as the inside of a lovely shiny

melon, pressing up toward the sky, round windows set about it like gems in a ring, poking up in the

center to make the high lantern visitors say they can see from miles away as they approach on the north

road. They look for it, they say, as the first sight of the most beautiful building in the world!

The floor of the great hall is marble, laid in designs. When I was little, I used to play there, walking

along the designs as though they were paths in a garden. From the great hall, two curving stairs follow the

walls up behind a graceful stone balustrade, joining at the center before three arches with statues of veiled

women set beneath them. No one alive made the statues. Grandfather brought them from a country

across the sea from the Holy Land, from a man who had dug them up from an ancient city, and Papa

says Grandfather did it because the architects of Westfaire told him to. From either side of the arches,

other corridors lead left and right, and at the far end of the leftward one, up another flight of curving

stairs, are Papa's rooms. All the floors, except the one in the small dining hall, which is made out of tiny

woven strips of walnut wood, are laid in mosaics, ribbons and leaves and flowers and fruits bordering all

the walls. It's hard to walk over them without stopping to look at them. It's hard to climb the stairs

without listening to the way my clothes trail along the steps, the way the smooth stone feels under my

hand. It's hard to go anywhere in Westfaire without stopping and staring, sometimes for a long, long time.

Besides, it's just a very long way to Papa's rooms, so I don't go there very often, only when I'm

desperate.

And when I do go, when I get there, I knock on Papa's door and call, "Papa, may I talk to you?"

"Not now, Beauty," he always replies over the sound of female giggles. "I'm very busy just now. Later

on, perhaps."

Now that is what our filial relationship amounts to! I don't think that's enough of one for the new

stepmama to threaten.

I am not jealous of whatever attention Sibylla may receive from the aunts, either. I heartily hope she

will take my share along with her own. They pay entirely too much attention to me, all the time, without

being in the least comforting or kind.

No, my revulsion at the idea of a stepmama is not jealousy. It arises from the pictured face itself, a

pale, rather long face with a simpering mouth over large teeth and with something thoughtfully devious

about the eyes, the kind of face that might result if a rabbit mated with a weasel.

And perhaps I am jealous of the fact that she will be mistress of Westfaire Castle.

No, that is not honest. If I am going to write things to remember when I am old, I should at least tell

the truth. I am sickened at the thought of her being mistress of Westfaire. Though I have always known it

will be my fate to marry and leave it, still I love Westfaire hopelessly. I love the lowe of sunset on the lake

at our back, the blossoming trees in the orchard close, the gentle curve of the outer walls resting in the

arms of the forest. I love the towers, the shining dome, the delicate buttresses, and the lacy windows.

From a hill not far away (we always go there on the first of May to collect herbs and wild-flowers) one

can look down on Westfaire and see it whole. Whenever I look at it thus, the burning within me grows

into a fire, closing my throat, catching at my heart, as though Westfaire and I burned with the same holy

light. If I turn in time to catch the aunts staring down, their faces have a look not unlike mine, though not

so pained, as though they, too, love the place so much they cannot bear to leave it. I've always refused to

think about leaving Westfaire, but it is probable my dislike of Sibylla comes from nothing more than

simple grief at what she will gain and I will inevitably lose.

Feeling beauty must be rather like feeling arms and legs. Some of the old men-at-arms talk about

losing an arm or a leg in battle and how, ever after, one feels it is still there, even while one grieves over

the loss. So I know it will be when I lose Westfaire. I will feel it in me forever, even while I grieve

endlessly over losing it.

I still don't want to think about that. Instead, I keep telling myself that a wedding offers to be an

interesting event which can be anticipated with an observer's relish of novelty. It will not make much

immediate difference to me, personally, so I can resolve to enjoy it as spectacle.

[I find it interesting that she feels the truth, without understanding it in the least.

I said as much to Israfel and he remarked that it would be better if she didn 't understand it.

"Much of life, " he said to me, "depends on our being ignorant of reality. If we understood reality,

we would never go on. "]

ST. MONICA'S DAY, MAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

When I wrote that Papa's marriage would make little difference to me, personally, I had failed to

perceive Sibylla's capacity for inventive malice.

She arrived yesterday with her mama and assorted female relatives in a great bustle of boxes and

flutter of veils. They trotted briskly through the castle, visiting each of my aunts in her own rooms, which

are in various parts of the castle, though not in the long wing where Papa lives, which is virtually empty.

We had all assumed the visitors would be quartered there, where the extravagant, lacy vaulting reaches

its perfect expression (says Father Raymond) and the tall windows admit the most light. The rooms are

comfortably furnished with high, enclosed beds and plenty of benches and hangings and carpets. Besides,

in expectation of company, that wing had been given an extraordinarily thorough cleaning. Doll has been

at it for days.

Our assumption was mistaken. According to Sibylla's mama—a woman who always looks as though

she has a mouthful of something nasty which only courtesy prevents her spitting out—Sibylla could be

happy only in the rooms near the kitchens which I have occupied since my earliest memory. It was not, in

her mama's words, fitting for Sibylla to be housed too near her intended bridegroom lest some indecency

occur prior to the blessing of Mother Church. I turned my mind from the indecency which would

undoubtedly occur subsequent to that blessing. Far better, Sibylla's mama went on, for Sibylla to be as

far from her intended husband as possible, in the bosom of the aunts, getting to know them better.

Strangely enough, I was rather cheered by all this. It was pleasant to be given a reason for hating her,

and this immediate assault upon the daughter of the house by the putative bride told me how right I had

been. The rabbit had mated with a weasel, and that right gladly. I was furious, of course, but justified.

Beloved and I whispered about it, resolving upon mutiny, after which I smiled at the committee which

was delegated to approach me, aunts and all, and declined to move.

Aunt Taragon had a few pious words to say concerning Christian resignation and turning the other

cheek. I suggested that she convey this message to Sibylla, for whom it could do nothing but good. While

this was going on, Beloved hid behind my bed curtains and made faces at me behind Aunt Terror's back.

When she left, we collapsed on the bed, giggling. Though Beloved was supposed to be my maidservant,

I never ordered her to do anything for me. What she did, she did because she wanted to, such as caring

for my clothes because sometimes she wore them while I wore hers.

Aunt Basil was the next to arrive and remind me I had always thought my rooms were so near the

kitchens that the smell of aged grease overcame the spices in the clothes press. I suggested she tell

Sibylla, who would no doubt change her mind about wanting my rooms. Beloved and I had another

giggle over that.

Aunt Lovage came to promise me (or rather Beloved, since by that time we'd changed clothes and

were being each other) a bottle of a very special vintage and a picnic on the sward. Beloved suggested

we have the bottle and the picnic anyway. This was not a particularly clever rejoinder. Beloved and I

look exactly alike, but I am much cleverer. I tried to teach Beloved to read and write, but she isn't

interested. She doesn't even care. She sometimes watches me reading and studying, and she says it is a

dreadful burden being clever and well-schooled, and she is glad she does not have to carry it.

Aunt Marjoram promised to make me a new cloak, but Beloved told her my old one will last years

yet. It will, though it is already faded. Perhaps I will make myself a new one.

And finally, Aunt Lavender promised to play a new song for me, one she had learned from a traveling

minstrel. I was being myself by then since it was late afternoon and Beloved had gone home. Since I had

spent more time with the minstrel than aunt had and already knew all his songs, I declined.

I had thought they might appeal to Aunt Sister Mary Elizabeth and Aunt Sister Mary George, but

Papa gave them no time for that. In the afternoon Papa sent a servant to bring me to the small room

where he does business with his bailiff, and there he told me to get myself moved by dark or he'd send

me to Alderbury to join my two eldest aunts as a nun.

I would move, I said gayly. I would move happily. I had always felt my rooms were rather too close

to the kitchens. What had given Papa the idea I was reluctant to move? I dimpled and curtsied, then

rounded up three serving maids, including my old friend Doll, and made a clean sweep of it before Sibylla

or her mama could say a paternoster, being sure that everyone heard me chirping happily away about the

whole thing.

There were no rooms left except the ones in Papa's wing, including the suite we had intended for

Sibylla. All the rooms there were huge. The corridor was obviously one used frequently by Papa's ...

friends, whom I did not want to meet going and coming. I sat on my baskets and told Doll that was the

last place I wanted to go, feeling quite put out now that my little drama had been played and Sibylla had

been installed where I had lately been, in my cosy rooms beside the garden, with my carpet and my bed

curtains.

"There's the room your mama used sometimes," said Doll. Doll is older than most of the other

servants, and she was present when my mama was still in residence. "Up in the dove tower," she said,

raising her eyebrows up under her hair and jerking her head back. Doll is stout and red-cheeked and has

more energy than any five other women. She stood there, looking at me intently, hands on hips.

The dove tower is slender and tall, the tallest of all the castle towers, its top decorated with spiky

finials and a long pole for flying banners. Around it the white doves make a constant cloud of wings and a

liquid tumult like water falling into a fountain.

"Up in the dove tower, then," I agreed, and we all went back through the hall and wound ourselves

here and there through little side passages until we came to the tower door. It screamed when we opened

it, like a goose being killed, and the dust on the stairs puffed under our feet as we crept up, round and

round and round until we were dizzy. The door at the top hung loose with great nails sticking out of it,

and the room itself was filthy with bits of bird nest and veils of spider web. Doll sent a girl to ask Martin

to come up and fix the shutters and the door, and he did that while one of his boys unstuffed the chimney

and two of the women scrubbed the floor and walls and another one swept the mess down the stairs.

Martin threw the carpet down into the yard, for it was eaten to rags by moth and mouse. The doves from

the cote below had made somewhat free with the space, but under the dirty coverlet the bed was all

right, and so were the bed curtains we found in the carved armoire, once they'd been shaken free of dust

and well brushed and hung. I cleaned out the armoire myself (finding something interesting in the process)

and put my clothes in it. Then I sat on the chair and felt important. It has arms! Only Papa and Aunt

Terror have chairs with arms. Everyone else sits on benches or stools. While I sat there, I examined the

thing I'd found in the armoire, but there wasn't time really to figure out what it was, so after a time, I put it

under the chair seat, which lifts up to make a storage place, and told myself I would examine it later on.

Doll showed me the privy closet over the moat. The door is in the wainscot beside the fireplace. I'll

have it all to myself. I can see the lake through the little windows. The tiny panes of glass are quite intact

and clear now that the bird droppings have been washed away. There are three windows in a row, and

the middle one goes all the way to the floor and opens on a balcony where a kind of pole juts out over

the stableyard. Martin calls it a spar, and says he'll fix the pulley and put a rope on it tomorrow, so that

water and firewood can be hauled up from the stableyard below. By late afternoon everyone was

finished with the cleaning and went off, leaving the room neat and sweet-smelling with my lute hung on the

wall, a pitcher of water and a bowl to wash in on the chest, a kettle by the fire for hot water, the

woodbox filled, all my things tucked away, and me here alone, looking around at the sky like a bird from

its nest.

Without a carpet or rushes, the floors will be very cold. Without tapestries, the walls will be even

colder. Still, the hooks are still there to put wall hangings on, if I can find some, and the worst of the cold

weather is over. It will be warm enough for a night or two, until Sibylla leaves and I can steal my carpet

back from my old room. I must stop writing and go down to supper.

Though we made a noisy enough bustle getting the tower room cleaned, it seems the tower is so high

and remote no one heard us. None of the aunts noticed where I went; they all spoke as though I'd moved

into a room in Papa's wing. I suppose Sibylla and her mama think that's what I've done. At table this

evening she peered at me as a chicken does at a bug, acting very discontented and disappointed, as

though she had been counting on my making a fuss about moving, perhaps, which would have given her

something to complain to Papa about. Poor fool woman. She doesn't know Papa.

"All settled?" he asked them vaguely, not waiting for an answer. "Good. It's always good to get

settled." Then he went back to talking with Father Raymond about the pilgrimages he intends to make

before and after the wedding while Sibylla sat there, caparisoned like a tournament horse, playing with a

slice of overdone venison and staring at the back of his neck. I thought of telling her that's mostly what

she's going to see of him. The back of his neck as he plans some journey or the back of all of him as he

rides away.

[The device Beauty found in the tower room was one I, Carabosse, had left there for her: a

clock. It has my name on it, and I hope it will serve as an introduction so she will not be

completely surprised, later, when we meet. We plan for her to leave Westfaire, which is

conspicuous now and will be even more so, and go to another place, a hidden place where she is

unlikely to ever encounter the Dark Lord. Thus far, things are progressing precisely as Israfel and

I expected they would, as the Pool showed they would. The immediate future is usually quite clear

in the Pool, and we had foreseen Sibylla. We had anticipated the succession of events leading to

Beauty's occupation of the tower. I had even foreseen her pleasure in it.

What I had not anticipated are my own feelings. I fear I am growing fond of the girl. She has

something none of her fairy godmothers gave her, something that came entirely from her human

heritage. It is a kind of courage. An indomitability. Like a buoyant little boat, she pops to the top

of every wave. Loquacious though she is (and Father Raymond was perfectly right about that),

even a little arch at times (and why shouldn't she be? Most of her aunts have exactly that

manner), still, she has something attractive about her. Perhaps it is the outward sign of what we

did to her, Israfel and I.]

ST. ETHELREDA'S DAY, MAY, YEAR OF OUR LORD 1347

After Sibylla left, in the days between the betrothal and the wedding, which is

supposed to take place very soon, I got the tower arranged to suit me. Martin and I stole

my carpet from my old room and replaced it with one out of the attic. Laid over a nice layer

of straw, it made the floor much warmer. We could find no wall tapestries in the attic, but

we did find some painted wall cloths up there, blue background with a design of little

starry flowers in silver, quite good enough to take the chill off the stone. Also, Martin put

up a new firewood rope.

After that, I had time to really look at the thing I found. It is round, like a wheel, about as

big across as the palm of my hand, and as thick through as four of my fingers held

together. It has four little feet like lion's paws. It is made of shiny metal which could be

gold, for it is very heavy for its size. The round front is made of glass. Under the glass are

nine numbers, Roman numbers, set in a circle. The numbers start at the top right with

fourteen, and go on around the circle to twenty-two, which is at the top. There is a lacy

golden arrow starting in the middle and pointing to the fourteen. Well, actually pointing

about halfway between the fourteen and the fifteen.

On the back of it is a place like a keyhole, but there is no key. On the top is a handle,

like two dragons, fighting or kissing or just being heraldic. And that's all.

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Sheri S. Tepper - Beauty

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