“I know. I gave it to her,” murmurs the wisewoman. “I found an artisan to craft it for her when we learned she was with child. One perfectly heart-shaped stone, an object of wonder, as wonderful as the babe she carried. She wore it on the day she gave birth to him and all through his childhood.”
Mère Sophie puts the ring back in my own hand. “You keep it, Lucie,” she murmurs. “I’m sure Christine would be pleased.”
I remember when Beast found the ring in a book in the library after so many years, how awed he was. How it comforted him. And my heart aches again.
“I’m too foolish to ever make you a suitable apprentice,” I tell her. All this thinking makes my poor head too heavy, and I lower it into my hands. “I’ve lost Beast. I’ve lost my virtue. I’m not —”
“Nonsense,” the wisewoman interrupts me crisply. “Maiden you may no longer be, but you are as virtuous now as the day you were born.” My head bobs up, and she smiles again. “Virtue is yours to make of what you will, by your actions, by your character. No one else can ever take it from you.”
She has quietly taken my hand in hers and gives it a gentle squeeze, and I feel her strength and warmth pumping into me. Perhaps I am not ruined. Perhaps my life has value still.
“But — I don’t know what to do.”
“Eat a bowl of my stew,” suggests Mère Sophie. “Stay here and rest for a while. Things may look different in the morning.”
There’s never any smoke from Mère Sophie’s fire, although it burns cheerily in the grate all night. She conjures a second bed for me, piled high with quilts and pillows and a cat of its own, an elegant brindle that curls up in the small of my back and keeps me warm throughout the night.
It’s the first night in nearly four months that I’ve had eyes to close and felt the urge and the ability to surrender to sleep, and I long for that sweet release above all things. Yet I can’t quite let go. I’ve been alert, wakeful, watching for such a long time; if I give myself over to human sleep, human dreams, what chaos might engulf me? Still, I murmur a prayer for Mère Sophie’s protection and surrender at last. And I sleep soundly that first night, untroubled by dreaming of any kind. My newly restored human body needs its rest.
In another day, word seeps into the wood that the Chevalier de Beaumont, so recently returned to the chateau and reassembling his household, has already departed with his bride-to-be. They escort her father to the healing springs at the Cluny Abbey, for his health, where they will receive the blessing of the abbé on their upcoming nuptials. Wedding preparations, we are told, proceed at a furious pace at the chateau.
I cannot bear to think of Jean-Loup so completely in command again of the life he stole from Beast, and so I throw myself into my studies with Mère Sophie. Many folk, but especially women, both highborn and lowborn, make their way into the wood seeking her healing remedies. It’s not witchcraft, as I once feared, as put about by slanderous rumors, but a skillful knowledge of natural things that might bring ease and comfort to those in distress. She teaches me the lore of her plants and how the cycles of the moon affect them — new moon for sowing, full moon for growing, waning moon for the harvest. I help her gather wild herbs and dry them by her fire, and I learn to assist in mixing her potions and infusions. Each day, I discover the depth of her knowledge and the patience with which she passes along each tiny morsel of it to me, as awkward as I often am.
“All you need is time, Lucie,” she assures me. “You have the heart for it and the wit. I can teach you the skill.”
I have never had such useful work to do, nor felt more at home in any place, not since my father died. I imagine him smiling down at me now. I hope he is pleased that my life has some value at last, that his confidence in the child I was then was not misplaced. And gradually, I allow the calming rhythms of Mère Sophie’s life to bring me a kind of peace.
I have begun to dream again. And most nights, I dream of Beast, his warm, gold-dusted eyes, his husky laugh, his animal smile. I wake from these dreams giddy with so much happiness, such relief — until the cruel truth dawns on me again. I worry that mine might be the last memories of the dream that was Beast. Rose may have already forgotten him, in her rush to marry the chevalier.
And every night, even my dreams of Beast grow more faint.
We are on the cusp of the new moon, the time of beginnings, on the morning Mère Sophie asks if I will run an errand for her into the town. “My dear friend, Madame LeBoeuf, keeps an inn at Clairvallon. I brew a special tisane for her rheumatics, and I would appreciate it if you would deliver a new packet of my brew to her.”
“Of course,” I agree, always glad to return a favor for my tutor and benefactor.
“She will offer you lodging as well, for my sake,” says the wisewoman, “if you need it; it’s a long walk to town and back.” And she bustles off to her worktable to measure out her herbs.
When the manicured trees of the outer park behind Chateau Beaumont come into view, I make a long, wide detour around the grounds, along the uneven track worn into the earth by peasants and wayfarers who dare not trespass on Beaumont land. By midday, I am far below the chateau, halfway down the hillside that overlooks the town. From here, the red-tile roofs of Clairvallon cluster together like kneeling penitents in the shadow of the church tower that rises up at the opposite end of the town. I travel down the hill and into the town and stop at the inn where I first came as a green serving girl.
I introduce myself to Madame LeBoeuf, a plump, merry woman, who is delighted to get the packet from Mère Sophie. The innkeeper doesn’t know she has ever served me before. She doesn’t remember me as the timid little chit who spent a night in the common room on her way to a life of service at the chateau. She knows me only as Mère Sophie’s assistant and insists that I stay for a midday meal. She is eager to share all the gossip about the chevalier’s wedding; folk talk of nothing else. She tells me the chevalier is now back in residence at the chateau, along with his bride-to-be and her family.
“And we’re to have a great deal more excitement, too, mademoiselle,” she exclaims.
I glance around the room, at the local folk meeting their friends for a cup of wine, at the travelers taking their meals and gossiping with the serving girls. The place is a hive of expectation.
“More excitement than this?” say I.
“Oh, much more! The abbé himself has decided to come from Cluny to perform the wedding ceremony tomorrow!”
So soon? I’ve lost track of the days.
“It will be a great day for us to see the abbé right here in our town.”
“Such an illustrious person, here?” I ask her. “Will the local curé not perform the ceremony?”
“But my dear mademoiselle! The LeNoirs held the very first Beaumont lands in fief from Cluny Abbey back in the old times. They have always been powerful allies. It’s a mark of great favor that the abbé himself will join the bride and groom in matrimony, and the chevalier would accept none less. The chevalier knows no other mortal man as close to God.”
She bustles off to carry the happy news to some other guest, hoping to persuade them to stay an extra day or two to celebrate the great event. But I can scarcely find joy in her news. They will be joined in the sight of God, Rose and her sham husband, who should be Beast. Once the church has blessed their union, Jean-Loup’s triumph will be complete.