Beauty, Beast, and Belladonna Page 25

  Griffe sprawled, snoring, in the armchair where Gabriel had left him. He cradled a wine bottle.

  “Wake up!” Gabriel said, shaking him. “They’ve come for you. The villagers have come for you. Come along, we must hide.”

  Miss Flax burst into the room, Abel at her side. Abel carried a brass birdcage. “Who’s that battering at the door?” Miss Flax asked.

  “I daresay the villagers had their fill of Griffe’s tree felling. Come, help me with him. He’s senseless. We might hide in the secret servants’ passageway.”

  The three of them—Abel insisted upon helping with a serious air—dragged the snoring Griffe to the door hidden in the wall panel, the same door through which Madame Dieudonné had disappeared during that fateful conjuring trick. Inside, it smelled of dust and mildew, and it was pitch-black. They stretched Griffe out on the floor. Miss Flax and Abel stuffed themselves inside.

  “Why the birdcage, boy?” Gabriel asked Abel.

  “It’s my parakeet,” Abel said, as though that explained everything.

  “Just a moment.” Gabriel dashed back out into the salon just as a huge splintering crack sounded at the front of the house. The marauders had breached the door.

  “Hurry,” Miss Flax cried. “What are you doing?”

  Gabriel snatched up a candelabra stuck with tapers and a box of matches. He ducked back through the hidden door and shut it. Stifling blackness. Their own quick breathing. Then, men’s voices, closer and closer. They heard the salon doors being booted open, muttering voices, crashing glass. Then the men were gone.

  29

  Ophelia dared not speak for an aching eternity. Abel pressed beside her, hot and sweaty, hugging his birdcage. The parakeet didn’t make a sound. The professor crouched on Ophelia’s other side, his shoulder against hers. That was reassuring. Griffe went on snoring, and his wine breath soon fumed up the passage.

  “Where is Miss Banks?” Ophelia whispered. “What of Mr. Banks and his nurse? Bernadette—oh!—and the maidservant, Clémence, is still here.”

  “We must hope that they are safe. Those men are half mad with blood lust and, probably, drink. It is the count they wish for. Once they fail to find him, they will leave.”

  They waited for another long stretch. They heard boots stomping, doors slamming, distant guffaws, curses, whoops. After fifteen or twenty minutes, silence at last fell.

  “They’re gone,” Ophelia whispered.

  “Yes,” Penrose said.

  “Allow me out of this hen coop,” Abel said, struggling to his feet by bracing his entire weight upon Ophelia’s shoulders. He fumbled around, stepping on everyone, until he found the door and spilled out into the salon with his birdcage.

  Ophelia blinked, even though the salon was lit only by thin blue moonlight. Penrose helped her up—her feet had fallen asleep and they felt like two wooden mallets. They dragged Griffe back out onto a carpet and Ophelia fetched a pillow for his head. Penrose lit a few gas lamps.

  When Ophelia kneeled and lifted Griffe’s head to slide the pillow under, his eyes opened.

  She froze.

  “You,” Griffe said thickly. He moistened the roof of his mouth with his tongue.

  “I will just be going,” Ophelia said crisply, “but first I thought I’d prop up your head, for you’ve had far too much to drink, and I would not wish for anything bad to happen to you if, for instance, you were to be sick.”

  Griffe struggled upright. “Mademoiselle—was it Flax?”

  “Yes,” she said, drawing away. She felt Penrose’s eyes on them.

  Griffe said, “Mademoiselle Flax, I have been most ungracious, most unkind to you. I am sorry. In Paris, I fell in love, not with you, I see, but ah! with the mysterious creature you pretended to be. You tricked and betrayed me, and for that I am most angry, but as I drank wine—my father’s vintage, there is but one bottle left, now—I gazed into my own heart and saw that there is no actress so fine that she could pretend your sweetness or your good heart.” Griffe fumbled for Ophelia’s hand, and she allowed him to take it. “You possess a good heart, Mademoiselle Flax. You made strange, oui, foolish choices, yet I cannot but forgive you.”

  Ophelia’s mouth opened, but she couldn’t think of what to say.

  “I beg your pardon,” Penrose said, “but I must go check on Mr. Banks and the nurse. Master Christy, would you stay here with Miss Flax?”

  “Fine.” Abel was arranging the parakeet’s cage on a table. “But I still haven’t gotten to show you my beetle.”

  Penrose ruffled Abel’s hair. “Soon, lad. Soon.” He left. Abel slumped moodily on a chair and slid a little specimen case from his pocket.

  “What is more,” Griffe said to Ophelia, “I was unkind to you, unforgivably rude, when you asked me about what Madame Dieudonné had told you. It is true, we knew each other, Madame Dieudonné and I, long ago, in my youth. My cousin Roland, older than I and worldly, brought me to her, a famed Parisian courtesan, to initiate me into the ways of love.”

  “Oh. Um.” Ophelia tugged her hand away from Griffe’s. “No need to spell things out too—”

  “She fell in love with me, I but a hapless and selfish young man, she more than twice my age though still a great beauty. I spurned her without a thought. When she returned to the château after all of these years, I did not at first recognize her. She had altered her name and time had not been kind. She felt slighted over again for that. When at last I realized it was she, I was too mortified to admit knowing her to anyone, least of all to you, my betrothed.”

  “But you had nothing to do with her death?”

  “Non! I would never . . . I have been angry, I have behaved poorly, but Mademoiselle Flax, you must know that I would never kill another human being.”

  Ophelia waited for her gut. Finally she said, “I believe you.”

  Griffe smiled fuzzily, like a baby newly awoken. “We both had secrets, oui?”

  Ophelia nodded. “Oui.”

  “Oh, monsieur le comte!” a woman screamed. Ophelia and Griffe looked up to see Clémence bouncing in. She threw herself upon Griffe and kissed him all over his face, hands, and neck, and Griffe seemed helpless to stop her. In fact, he almost seemed to be enjoying himself.

  Ophelia frowned. Of course. Clémence was in love with Griffe. The devotion, the jealous behavior towards Ophelia. Ophelia suddenly knew that Clémence had been behind all the sabotaged wedding preparations.

  Griffe managed to push Clémence away. Clémence was dewy-eyed, her blond hair tumbling. Griffe said something in French about noblemen and servants, and fat tears rolled down Clémence’s cheeks.

  Ophelia cleared her throat. “I beg your pardon, Count—and I do realize this is really none of my concern—but I would like to point out that you engaged yourself to one Miss Stonewall of Cleveland, Ohio, who was not a noblewoman.”

  Griffe shook his head. “But a servant—”

  “Fiddlesticks! Just look at Clémence! All she needs is a new gown.” Ophelia reckoned Clémence had just the one. “Can’t you see that she loves you, Count? That’s a finer thing than money and titles. You love her, too—I can tell. Admit it to yourself and you’ll be ever so much happier. And listen, if you were able to convince yourself that you were in love with me, an actress—and did you know I once worked in the circus?”

  Griffe’s jaw wedged open.

  “Well then, surely you might return the love of this beautiful lady.” Ophelia got to her feet. More pins and needles. Ouch. She limped over to the fireplace to get a blaze going again, leaving Griffe and Clémence to work things out between themselves.

  * * *

  Gabriel bounded up the stairs two at a time and hurried along the upper corridors. Paintings had been ripped from the walls, vases smashed. He smelled urine. In Banks’s chamber, the sick nurse huddled in prayer beside the bed. Banks lay as before, breathing throatily
, eyes shut.

  “The men!” the nurse whispered in French. “The heathen men!”

  “Did they harm you, madame?”

  “No. They said they wished for the lady.”

  “The lady?” Gabriel’s heart turned to ice. Ivy. Young, beautiful—they could only wish for Ivy. How could he have been so blind?

  He ran downstairs and out onto the twilit front drive. He looked left and right. Nothing but rattling bare trees and the low-slung moon.

  He ran to the stables. Perhaps Ivy had gotten away on horseback before the village men had come.

  The stables rustled with the sounds of upset horses. No Ivy and, of course, no groom or stable boy. He pushed out of the stables again. He stopped, and tipped his head. Yes. There. Hoof beats, thudding closer. Ivy returning. She would have realized the folly of going for a ride at such an hour.

  Gabriel went out to the front drive, and the hoof beats thumped louder and louder. A horse galloped up the drive, mane and tail streaming.

  The horse did not have a rider.

  * * *

  “Something has befallen Miss Banks,” Professor Penrose cried, bursting into the salon. His usually composed face was in motion, as though it couldn’t settle upon a sentiment. He scarcely noticed Griffe and Clémence on the carpet, murmuring and embracing.

  “What has happened to Miss Banks?” Ophelia asked. “The men—?”

  “I do not know.” Penrose raked a hand through his hair. “God, I do not know. Her horse has just returned without her. I broke things off with her—that was more than an hour past, now—and she said she would go for a ride along the river road.”

  “But that is madness!”

  “Well, she is mad,” Abel muttered, still sulking with his beetle box.

  “She insisted,” Penrose said, “and before I could stop her, well, the village men arrived—oh God.”

  “You suppose she went off, brokenhearted and distraught?” Ophelia asked.

  “Well, naturally.” Penrose paced back and forth.

  Ophelia could picture Ivy pretending heartbreak, to make Penrose feel guilty and such. But it wouldn’t be at all like Ivy to go off like a poetic damsel and, say, drown herself in a mill pond.

  “I must go search for her,” Penrose said. “Miss Flax, please stay here at the château and look after”—he looked at Griffe and Clémence—“well, perhaps the count no longer requires looking after, but Mr. Banks does, and so does Master Christy.”

  “I do not require looking after,” Abel said. “I am not the village idiot.”

  “You’re a youth,” Penrose said, stopping before Abel. He sucked in a breath. “What . . . is that?” He pointed to Abel’s specimen box.

  “I have discovered a new species of beetle.”

  “May I?”

  Ophelia sighed. Sidetracked by a bug at a time like this?

  The three of them peered into Abel’s specimen box.

  “It is a stag beetle,” Abel said. “Stag beetles are named for their prominent antennae, which resemble stag’s antlers.”

  “But it is white,” Penrose said. “White and gold.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like it,” Abel said. “Isn’t it lovely?”

  Penrose slowly shook his head. “I have been utterly blind. The villagers having no church, the sick nurse and her talk of heathens. Madame Genepy’s tale. De Villeneuve’s tale as well, in fact. . . .”

  Ophelia and Abel exchanged glances: Had the professor gone off his rocker?

  “Would you mind explaining things a little more clearly, Professor?” Ophelia asked.

  “De Villeneuve’s and Madame Genepy’s tales both made mention of white stags with golden horns. I believe they refer to the beetle or, at least, the original tale meant a beetle and de Villeneuve misunderstood and changed it to an actual stag. I misunderstood. I misunderstood everything, hearing only what I wished to hear, or hearing what I assumed I would hear in advance, rather than keeping my mind receptive to something new. Madame Genepy’s tale is something new—or, rather, something very, very old, older than any tale I have encountered. Don’t you see? Hers is not a medieval tale; it is a tale rooted in the very beginnings of human history. When she began her tale saying In this land before time, why, that is precisely what she meant. When she spoke of the Mother of the Seasons, she did not mean the Virgin Mary—she referred to some primeval goddess. And the animals—oh my God, the animals! She spoke of how this valley has been slumbering; when she spoke of the loss of all the creatures, she meant all those creatures on the walls of the painted cave—the bison and bears, the rhinoceroses and mammoths and snakes.”

  Ophelia struggled to follow. “So you’re saying that it’s a really old tale that Madame Genepy tells, and that her tale is rooted in the ancient animals that used to live in this valley?”

  “Yes. Her tale is the tale of this valley, and of the loss of the ancient creatures that once roamed here. And now Miss Banks . . . they have taken her, I know it!”

  “Who has taken her?” Abel asked.

  “The villagers.”

  “But why?”

  “My heart is sick. These tales, the animal groom tales of which the Beauty and the Beast tale is one . . . they are believed by scholars to have their origins in primeval rites of sacrifice.”

  “Sacrifice?” Ophelia said.

  “Virgins sacrificed to appease beast-like deities.”

  “You mean to say that the villagers worship a beast-like deity?” Ophelia asked, amazed that such a sentence came from her lips.

  “To influence the weather, or save livestock—”

  Ophelia thought of the slaughtered livestock.

  “—or in an attempt to control forces beyond their scope of influence.”

  “Such as Griffe chopping down their forest?”

  “Yes. And the shrine, Miss Flax! How could I have thought for a moment that that shrine was Tolbert’s doing? It was the villagers, the servants, the gardener—all of them.”

  Outside the windows, the clear full moon was floating higher.

  “It is the winter solstice,” Ophelia whispered. “Longest night of the year, and a full moon to boot. Nice time for a heathen ritual, wouldn’t you say? Professor, what time do you reckon the moon will reach its zenith tonight?”

  “Six o’clock.”

  “Then we haven’t much time. Miss Banks said she intended to ride up the river road—we ought to retrace her path.”

  Penrose took Abel by the shoulders. “Stay here. The doctor from Sarlat should arrive sometime soon, but if you hear anyone besides the doctor coming—anyone—you are to shut yourself into the servants’ secret passage and stay there until we return. Do you understand?”

  Abel nodded, wide-eyed. “You may depend upon me, Professor.”

  30

  In silence, Ophelia and Penrose saddled two horses in the stables. Ophelia chose a gent’s saddle; she’d never gotten the hang of those prudish side saddles that made her feel like she was always about to go flying into a ditch.

  They rode down the dark château drive. Their horses’ hooves made thumps and crunches aplenty, but Ophelia’s heart kicked when she heard another, more distant snap.

  She swiveled in her saddle. She gasped. A form half hunched in the trees—or—she blinked. No, it was only a thicker clump of bushes.

  “Is something the matter, Miss Flax?” Penrose asked.

  “Right as rain.”

  They continued on. At the château gates, they stopped.

  “Miss Banks said she would ride up the river road,” Penrose said, “but surely she didn’t mean to ride through the village. She seemed frightened of the folk.”

  Frightened wasn’t the word Ophelia would’ve chosen. Ivy had been contemptuous of the villagers. Still, she surely wouldn’t wish to ride through the village and risk contact
with them.

  They turned right. They rode in silence for fifteen minutes without seeing a soul. They stopped. Cold wind slapped off the river. Their horses’ manes blew.

  “Surely we would’ve encountered her by now, if this is the way she had gone,” Penrose said. “She is on foot now. If those brutish villagers carried her . . .”

  Ophelia had never seen Penrose seem so lost. Her heart ached to see how his shoulders hitched, as though he were in pain. “Don’t hold yourself responsible,” she said softly. “Miss Banks is a woman grown. She makes her own choices. Come on, let’s ride along the river road the other way.”

  They turned and broke into a trot. “I should have seen all of this sooner,” Penrose said. “Not after the villagers stormed the château and kidnapped an innocent young woman.”

  “I should have seen it, too.”

  “If they harm her, it is on my head.”

  Ophelia thought hard. “Professor, you said something about animal groom tales. What did you mean by that?”

  “God, it seems silly.” He made a hollow chuckle. “These are tales in which a beautiful woman—a human woman—marries a beast. As in La belle et la bête, for instance.”

  “How do these tales usually pan out? I mean to say, what’s the happily ever after?”

  “Why, that the beast is redeemed and transforms back into a man.”

  “Because the lady kisses him, is that it? Like that frog prince yarn?”

  “Well, no. Usually in animal groom tales, some other mechanism breaks the spell. Water is a common motif.” He glanced into the moon-pale gush of the river.

  “Water?”

  “Enchanted wells, springs, and the like. In the de Villeneuve tale, Belle brings the dying beast water from a fountain, and it is really the combination of the fountain water and Beauty’s declaration of love that transfigures the beast back into a man.”

  Ophelia’s nerves prickled. “Professor,” she said slowly, “that morning when the cook discovered Mr. Knight’s—well, the impostor’s—body in the orangerie and she was so frightened about what she took to be beast-goring marks on his belly, well, she said something about a spring.”