She cannot see what I see, the smile slowly spreading across his handsome face as he looms behind her. When he speaks again, his voice is low and urgent.
“But there is something you can do for me . . . Honoree. Something that would ease my suffering.”
“You have but to name it, Jean-Loup.” Her voice is small, fluttering like a fan. “You have been so kind to me. What may I do for you?”
“A small thing only, a token,” he murmurs, lowering his face close to her bent head. “The smallest of kindnesses, to carry in my heart for all the rest of my lonely days.” He raises one hand to rest on her shoulder; the other inches around her waist.
Lady Honoree’s posture stiffens immediately. “But, monsieur le chevalier —”
She tries to twist out of his grasp, but he does not let go.
“Come now, Honoree,” he says, more urgently still. “We may never meet again. Why should we not be kind?”
How dare he speak to her like a mistress, like one of his maids!
“You must let me go, Jean-Loup!” exclaims the comtesse.
“Grant me a kiss, and we shall see,” purrs the chevalier, tightening his grip.
Rage boils up inside of me; I mean to throw open the door, upset the wine decanter, overturn chairs — anything to disrupt the scene. But my hand is frozen to the door handle, my feet will not leave the floor, and my words stick in my throat.
“A kiss? A kiss only?” echoes the lady, and there is something strange about her voice. It’s less melodious now, more harsh. She seems to shrink into her gown, eluding the chevalier’s groping hands, and he pauses, bewildered. She whirls around to face him again, and he cries out and staggers back several steps. Lady Honoree’s golden hair uncurls into long, straggly grey-and-white strands, and her dazzling raiment dissolves into shapeless grey rags. Her skin withers, her features wizen, and her black eyes blaze. She is Mère Sophie at her most frightful.
“So that is the price of your kindness, Chevalier de Beaumont!” she crows at him. “A kiss! Had you only told me so at the well, we might have made a bargain. But it’s too late now, as you say. You have sealed your fate.”
“Hag!” he cries as he stumbles backward. “Witch! What do you want with me?”
“My wants?” she taunts. “When have the wants of others ever mattered to you? I’m here to see to your wants.”
“Ferron!” he roars. “Andre! Guards!”
But his gatekeeper was dismissed, and the rest of his men fail to appear.
“You want to dishonor women for the sport of it,” Mère Sophie goes on. “You want to pursue your pleasures without restraint, whatever the cost to others. You want to live like a beast, and so you shall.”
The storm outside has suddenly risen to a horrendous pitch; lightning cracks across the sky, and hailstones rattle the window. And yet, I can hear the panicked shrieking of horses in the stables and dogs howling in fear from the kennels. His yelping for his servants goes unheeded. The nervous buzz of the servants downstairs escalates into frantic shouting; an atmosphere of calamity, sorcery, and doom now grips all within these walls, a fear of unnatural forces greater even than their fear of the chevalier’s wrath. What has become of Lady Honoree’s golden coach? I wonder. Is it crumbling to dust before the servants’ eyes down in the carriage house? Are her footmen turning into frogs skittering away under their feet? Have her snow-white steeds flown off as bats?
In the next heartbeat, the household servants are all in flight, terrified of witchcraft. I see them emptying out of the upstairs rooms and fleeing down the staircase. Their footfalls are pounding down the turret steps, amid wails of mounting alarm. Down the stairs flee Monsieur Ferron, Nicolas the page, and Treville, the abused secretary. None of them come to aid the chevalier. The babble of a hundred terrified voices fills the entry hall below and then bursts outside like a fist shoved through the door. I hear shod feet crunching on the wet gravel in the courtyard as they stream out of the house. And I realize I am suddenly in command of my own limbs again. I might join the others and flee. But I don’t. I am mesmerized by the spectacle of Jean-Loup, Chevalier de Beaumont, crouched low on his haunches now, cowering from the fearsome Mère Sophie, arms thrust up to cover his face, bellowing like a wounded animal.
“You will know what it is to be wretched and alone,” the wisewoman tells him calmly. “What beauty will want you now?”
The chevalier cannot seem to rise. Something is wrong with his body. His trunk is thickening, swaying lower to the ground; his hind end is rising. His howls are deepening, becoming more savage.
But my heart is leaping. Can this be the reckoning Mère Sophie promised me? I am astonished, fascinated, but not afraid.
The chevalier lowers his hands to support himself, and they are covered with hair; they have become large and furry paws. His jacket, tunic, and breeches, his shoes and stockings all split apart and fall away, revealing a thickening hind haunch covered in short, curly brown fur, over goat legs tapering to heavy, sharp-edged cloven hooves. And his head! Devil horns sprout between shaggy, pointed ears above a broad neck. His profile lengthens into a snout, eyes forward, like a predator. A ragged, goatish beard decorates his chin, and great tufts of straw-colored mane erupt from his sloping forehead and down the back of his massive neck, to cascade over his chest. Long rows of raptor feathers sprout out of his fur-covered shoulders and ripple down his back.
He is hideous!
He shakes back his mane in a fury, his expression full of rage.
“Wha . . . what have you done to me?” It’s hard to understand his words because of his new animal snout and the lower, rumbling pitch of his voice.
“I have done nothing,” Mère Sophie declares. “This is the truth of who you are inside.”
“Change me back!” he thunders.
“I cannot. That power lies with you, not me.”
Then Mère Sophie turns to me; her voice seems to be right in my ear, but she is still standing above the chevalier, across the room. “And you, girl.” She lifts her face and fixes me with her black eyes. “What do you want?”
“I want to see him suffer,” I breathe.
The wisewoman nods. “As you wish.”
“Witch!” the chevalier rages. “Undo this spell you’ve put on me!”
Mère Sophie rounds back on him, her words precise and full of rage. “You are such a champion of virtue, Jean-Loup. Find a maid of good virtue to marry you as you are now, and you shall be restored.”
I hear him suck in a breath, shocked at the impossibility of such a task. But I am delighted; what use will Jean-Loup’s wealth and honeyed words be to the beast that stands before us now? With a nod of satisfaction, the wisewoman turns away.
“You cannot leave me like this!” he bellows after her. “Release me, you foul, vile —”
Mère Sophie waves a hand in irritation, and his hateful words freeze on his lips. He rears all the way up on his hind hooves, pawing at the air, his awful mouth open in mute rage. The wisewoman neither shrinks away nor quails, and he hurls himself away from her as if to march out the door. But his heavy chest sways lower and lower toward the ground; he is nearly on all fours when his head swivels around to stare at me for an instant, where I stand in the doorway. Then he lunges past me out the door, through the outer salon, and into the dark, deserted hallway.
Mère Sophie walks toward me. I am surprised at how large she’s become; she towers above me. She bends low, stretches out a hand, and takes me up in her grasp. How still I’ve become, how small. I feel that my arms are upraised, but they don’t ache in that awkward position. My legs seem bound together. She lifts me up and shuffles over to the fireplace. When she sets me on the mantelpiece, before the glass, I see how I, too, have been transformed.
I am woman no more. I am flesh no more. I am made of silver, sleek and smooth and slim. My arms curve upward to hold two long, tapered candles; a third rests in the crown of my head, or what was once my head. I have no human anatomy, no vulnerable parts to be hurt or betrayed, no face, no eyes, and yet I see.