Beauty

the small and large dining halls. The anteroom is a cosy warm place where Papa’s steward and bailiff and the scribe work during the daytimes and where male guests sometimes retire after dinner to play at dice or cards or chess and talk about their travels in ways they cannot do while the aunts are present. Hidden behind the tapestries is a little oriel window, covered over because it lets in the cold, and under it a low seat just large enough for me. Sometimes I go there to hide. It is the one place no one has ever found me. If one can bear the boredom of hearing the same stories over and over, one can learn quite a bit about swiving and having one’s pleasure and what men of Papa’s sort think of various classes and types of women. I have learned that men talk about women quite a lot, when they aren’t talking about hunting or fighting, though considering that they use the same words and the same expressions for all three things, perhaps there is not much difference.

I hid there because I wanted to be alone. I was upset over Grumpkin; I was upset over how I felt about Giles; I was trying to keep my resolution, trying very hard to exercise Christian forbearance, which Father Raymond constantly suggests that I do. At any rate, there I was in the oriel window when I heard voices through the tapestry. One, which I had learned to know well, was Sibylla’s mama. The other I assumed was the abbot, for Sibylla’s mama cooed at him in a tone she uses only with royalty and people of importance.

“Sibylla feels that she cannot take responsibility for the girl, Your Reverence. We have all heard about her mother.” The words “her mother” were said in a very low, meaningful voice, the same tone of voice in which Aunt Tarragon talks about certain bodily functions, as though they were both repellent and inevitable. “Sibylla will undoubtedly bear children. She would not want those children exposed to … well, you understand. Sibylla feels, and I must concur, that it would be wisest to send Beauty to the convent where her aunts are. She can be with her kindred there. As a nun, she may perhaps expiate some of her mother’s … well, you understand.”

Evidently the abbot did understand. He hemmed and hawed, but he said he would discuss the matter with Phillip, Duke of Monfort, Westfaire, and Ylles, that is, Papa, and see if something couldn’t be arranged.

Sibylla had not been content to have only my room and my cat. She also intended to have my future.

Somehow, without even intending it, I found myself back here in my tower room, at my work table with a new quill, a pad of ink, and a bottle of water. Spread out before me was the second page of the letter from mama, which I had rolled backwards to make it lie flat. Mama’s writing is not unlike my own. We both write a fine, curly hand. There was plenty of room at the top of the page, and the words seemed to flow out of the pen of their own accord. “This first day of July, year of our Lord, thirteen hundred and forty seven.” The wedding was scheduled for the following day, the fifth. Dating mama’s letter back to the first allowed four days for the letter to have been on the way from somewhere before reaching me. When the ink was dry, I folded the parchment up and addressed it to “Beauty, the daughter of Duke Phillip of Monfort and Westfaire and the Lady Elladine of Ylles.” I sealed it and marked the wax with the signet ring from the box. It shows a winged being which I take to be an angel.

I feel rather glum as I look at what I am to wear to the banquet, a dress provided by Aunt Lavender which has all too obviously been made over from something previously worn by someone else. It has achieved a pallid limpness much like that of the cleaning rags which are always drying on the kitchenyard wall.

I must not succumb to vanity. It does not matter how I look.

9

 

LATER, MIDNIGHT

As I was about to put on the limp dress, Doll knocked on my door and came in with a gown. It was of heavy India silk, the color of a deep pink rose, worked with silver and seed pearls at the neck and at the edges of the full oversleeves. Beneath the long sleeves were tight sleeves of silver cloth and the underskirt was of silver cloth as well, with roses embroidered in a border at the bottom. It had belonged to my mama, Doll said. All this time it had been folded away in clean linen in one of the attics, awaiting an opportunity to be worn again.

I looked across my room to the dress provided by Aunt Lavender. It was poor, ugly stuff, compared to this. Doll saw my glance and nodded.

“I saw what you were goin’ to wear,” she said. “Thought it wasn’t nice enough. Your mama’d have a fit, seein’ you in that. All her clothes are up there in the attic, and you should make use of them.”

“Did you like my mama?” I asked Doll.

“Nicest lady ever,” she said. “And I don’t care what they all say, she wouldn’t kill herself.”

Well, I’d never thought she had! But there was no time to talk about it, for Doll set about getting me dressed and doing up my hair in a knot in back, with part of it flowing down. Most of the women would be wearing wimples and or headdresses with peaks or wings and veils flowing from them. I hate headdresses because they muffle up my head, but then I wash my hair a lot and most women don’t. Washing the hair is dangerous because it fevers the brain, they say, but I’d never