Mère Sophie nods. “He had fortune enough of his own, amassed over time by the cruelty of his ancestors — tactics he learned all too well. In the late wars when the noble families of France battled one another in the streets, the seigneur sold his men-at-arms to whichever side paid most handsomely. In one conflict, he gathered together a company of disgruntled men spoiling for more rights and privileges and rode off in service to the Reformers. But Rene Auguste professed to have a change of heart on the eve of the battle and took his men home. The late king, a staunch defender of the Old Religion, granted him command of the gendarmerie of Clairvallon for his loyalty.” Mère Sophie pronounces this last word with grim precision.
“The seigneur was a hard, cruel man born into privilege and luxury,” Mère Sophie continues. “He was eager enough to get control of the DuVal holdings Christine brought to the marriage. But he grew fond of his new bride and indulged her. He furnished the chateau with grand, beautiful things, copying the luxury of the Italian style so popular at court, hoping to please her.” She shakes her head a little. “The wedding present I gave her must have seemed odd amid so much splendor, a rocking chair fashioned out of bentwood from the forest.”
“But I saw it!” I exclaim. “She had it painted into her portrait.” Mère Sophie smiles. “I believe it was her favorite thing besides her books.”
The wisewoman nods. “Her books,” she murmurs. “It was considered a great scandal among the nobility when Christine had the tower chapel at Chateau Beaumont converted into a library.”
I remember the library with a little pang of longing. What a sanctuary it was from the cold, formal beauty of the rest of the chateau. Beast found comfort there, too, under the image of the stained-glass princess and her dragon.
“It was her private room,” Mère Sophie explains. “But it was prudence on the seigneur’s part as well. In those days, when men were murdering one another over which face of God they chose to worship, the seigneur was glad to remove any element that might link him to one faction or the other — the wrong edition of a prayer book or an altar too ornate or too plain. What had once been a chapel became instead a temple to folklore and fantasy and poetry and magic, for those were the things the new Lady Beaumont loved.”
“But what has this to do with Beast?”
“I am coming to that,” says Mère Sophie. “Christine and the seigneur tried and tried to have a child, but their efforts never came to fruition. Some folk said it was because of the chapel, a punishment from God. Others said the line was cursed by witchcraft, black arts conjured by some enemy. But I know better.” She fixes me with her black gaze. “The LeNoir bloodline has become too corrupted over the generations and will no longer prosper.” She gives a single, significant nod. “Nature wills it.”
“But,” I whisper, “I carried the LeNoir seed. You helped me to . . . to . . .”
She shakes her head. “I did nothing but calm your fears,” she tells me gently. “I knew the babe would never quicken. They never have; I told you you were not the first woman to flee into my wood in that condition. But their fears come to nothing. Jean-Loup is the last of the line, no matter how heroically he scatters his seed.”
“But . . . if that is so . . . how was Beast born?”
Mère Sophie heaves a deep sigh. “My dear Christine wanted a child with all her heart. And her heart was so large, not even Nature could resist her.” The wisewoman shakes her head slowly, ruefully, looking backward in time. “Christine wanted so much for her unborn son, as all parents do — she wanted him swift and agile, strong and generous, stouthearted, kind. But he was born Beast, monstrous and ugly, and all her other considerations vanished into the air.”
An image swims into my memory: a christening gown like a tent, a cap large enough to conceal the misshapen head that wore it. Sewn for an infant Beast.
“The seigneur blamed her, of course,” Mère Sophie continues bitterly. “He swore he would take holy orders in penitence. All the servants who had been present at the birthing were sent far away, but there were soon rumors of a Beaumont Curse. He hid his son within the chateau walls, consulted doctors, mountebanks, conjurers. An alchemist was brought into the household to effect a transformation.” The wisewoman shakes her head again. “But it was far too late for all that. Generations of LeNoir villainy had poisoned the bloodline, and poor, monstrous little Beast was the result. It was time for the LeNoir tyranny over the Beaumont seigneurie to come to its natural end.”
“But then — where did Jean-Loup come from?”
“Christine loved her monster son as fervently as a mother can,” Mère Sophie goes on. “She came to me, begged me to give her son a pleasing human shape. Nothing else mattered to her. She couldn’t bear to see him hurt, shunned, reviled all his life — even by his own father.” The wisewoman frowns. “There is no end to the folly of parents who wish a life without adversity upon their children. It’s adversity that shapes character and makes folk strong. I pleaded with Christine not to interfere, to give little Beast a chance to meet life on his own terms. But she was heartsick that Rene Auguste could not bear the sight of his own son. When the child did not outgrow his monstrosity by the time he could walk and talk, she begged me to make him beautiful — as beautiful on the outside as the lovely spirit that was growing inside him. Her pleas were heartrending. She was like a daughter to me. I — I could not refuse.”
The kettle is singing on the hob, may have been doing so for this last quarter of an hour for all the notice I took of it. But Mère Sophie welcomes the distraction and goes to retrieve it, while I rise to get cups and saucers out of the cupboard.
“But I thought you said it was the will of Nature,” I remind the wisewoman as I slide back into my chair.
She brings a dish of ground chocolate to the table and a pinch of spice, and we pour ourselves steaming cups. Her cassoulet on the hearth is temporarily forgotten.
“There are some forces stronger than Nature,” says Mère Sophie, “and she loved him that much. But it cost him dearly.” She nods at her worktable with its orderly rows of plants in pots, strings of herbs, and bark covered in river mold. “The forgery that was Jean-Loup became like a beautiful fungus that attaches itself to a host plant. He used up all the air and light. All the generosity of character that Beast had developed as a child, blossoming in his mother’s love, was smothered deep within.” Mère Sophie shakes her head. “Although she acted out of love, she made over her sweet beastly boy into the image of his father, of all the handsome, cruel lords of Beaumont before him. And yet, her desperate gamble did not reconcile her husband to him after all. His father did not love him any more as Jean-Loup than he ever had, and it drained away Christine’s strength and her spirit. Rene fostered the youth out to all his relations and dependents, to be rid of him, knowing what he’d been.”
So that’s why his father’s armor lay discarded among the hay bales in the carriage house; Jean-Loup would not have had it anywhere in the house.
“It broke her heart.” Mère Sophie sighs.
“I have seen his mother sobbing,” I confess at last.
Mère Sophie nods sadly. “My poor Christine. She died of it, what she’d done to him.”
I recall the plain little room in the chateau, where the vision of Beast’s mother first appeared to me, rocking sorrowfully in her bentwood chair. All of her sadness comes back to me, like another rebuke. She wasn’t sobbing for Jean-Loup. It was Beast she wanted me to help, Beast she wanted me to save. And I failed her.
“And what became of Beast’s father?” I ask her.
“Rene made good on his threat and returned to the faith of Rome, became a zealot, and joined the Holy League in the siege of Paris. Jean-Loup gained his majority, gathered his companions, and rode in the cavalry of the prince of Navarre against the Spanish invaders. After the prince became the new king, Jean-Loup retired to Chateau Beaumont. His father had died during the siege — starved, diseased, or driven mad, no one knew. All of the seigneurie of Beaumont belonged to Jean-Loup, and he devoted himself to enjoying his birthright at last and to promoting the glory of Beaumont by whatever means necessary.” Mère Sophie sighs. “But that much you know.”