I have little appetite for Mère Sophie’s simmered onion broth at supper. The wedding will take place tomorrow morning, and all the town is invited up to the chateau for the celebration to follow. We’ve known this day was coming, but I suppose I had not let myself believe it until I miraculously saw the bustle up at the chateau today with my own eyes. Jean-Loup thrives, and Rose will marry him. That is the simple truth. All else is foolishness.
It’s impossible to believe that I will ever sleep. Yet I am so weary and heartsore, I crawl into my bed as soon as darkness falls. It must be defeat that weighs me down so, a longing for oblivion that stops my thinking. In truth, I cannot bear another thought.
It’s full dark when I waken again, and profoundly quiet, but for the low, rumbling purr of my brindle cat. I realize it’s a slight warming of the ring on its ribbon around my neck, inside my chemise, that has wakened me. I roll over to face the shadowy wall away from the fireplace, and I startle to the soles of my feet at what I see.
A figure sits in the darkness, a woman. It’s not Mère Sophie; I can hear her murmuring softly in her sleep from the other side of the fireplace. The face of the woman before me is bathed in a peculiar light from above, a light that has no source — pale shades of pink, blue, and green. I recognize the careless spill of her curls, escaping their jewelled net, her lovely face, her dark, expressive eyes. They no longer well with tears as she gazes at me, but I know Christine DuVal LeNoir. Beast’s mother. She is moving ever so slightly in the darkness, back and forth, as she was when I first saw her in a mirrored room at Chateau Beaumont, in a chair made of bentwood, although I can’t quite see it in the darkness. The pale colors on her face are the same ones I saw reflected in my own polished silver surface in her library not so long ago.
“Lady Beaumont,” I whisper, sitting up in my bed.
She nods at me. “Lucie.”
I remember my terror when she first called me by name, but I no longer fear her. I feel a kinship with her now because we both care so much for Beast. And I share her sorrow over what we have allowed to become of him.
“We tried to bring him back,” I tell her, lowering my voice even further. “Mère Sophie and I.”
“But you did.” She offers me a soft, sad smile. “He became himself again in your company. My little one, grown so big and strong! It gave me such joy to see it. After what I’d done to him.”
My heart aches for her, for this lovely, heartsick woman who can never forgive herself, who cannot rest in the next world because of her tragic mistake in this one.
“He doesn’t blame you,” I tell her. “He may not even realize what happened. But I know that he has very tender feelings for you.” I remember the roses he brought so faithfully to her library.
She gazes at me, her expression wistful, perhaps wondering if she should let herself believe me. Is this what her eternity will be like, hovering between two worlds, paying in sorrow for accounts she can no longer settle in life?
“You are very kind to say so,” she murmurs at last.
“I should have been kinder, sooner,” I say ruefully. “I’m sorry I failed you, my lady. I failed Beast.”
“I failed him,” she corrects me gently. Her warm brown eyes are so like Beast’s, so full of feeling. She nods at me, and I feel the warmth of the ring under my chemise. I draw it out, and she smiles.
“I always meant for him to have it,” she tells me, “if . . . by some miracle he might ever be restored. So I kept it on a ribbon for him. A poor enough token of my love, I suppose. But this was all I had to give him. Especially now that I can no longer embrace my child in this world.”
Her expression sinks into melancholy for another moment before she turns her eyes back to me. “I came here to thank you, Lucie. You were a friend to him for a time — something I think he had never had before. I will treasure the memory of his happiness.”
I would tell her I don’t deserve her thanks, that I let Beast slip away again, but Lady Beaumont’s image is already fading again into the shadows. But I am far too agitated now for sleep.
Lady Beaumont’s misery is like a knife blade in my heart. It cannot be possible that there is nothing I can do to help send her to her rest at last, nothing I can do for Beast, now that I have arms and legs and a heart of my own.
Mère Sophie said a permanent transformation could be done only with something stronger than hate. Lady Beaumont still loves her true child so much, her ring burns with it, although she is gone these many years. I have felt the power of this ring. I felt it this very afternoon — a tiny vessel that contains the vast ocean of Lady Beaumont’s love.
Jean-Loup may be stronger than all of us. But is he more powerful than love?
I must have slept, for I’m wakened by the clamor of distant church bells. It’s full day outside, and I know the bells are from the basilica, tolling for the wedding of the chevalier and his bride. I annoy the brindle cat by shifting myself away from the light while I wrestle with what I must do.
My plan is desperate indeed, especially now that the chevalier has claimed his bride and the seigneurie has a new Lady Beaumont. The entire town of Clairvallon must be wending its way up the hill to the chateau at this very moment for the wedding feast. If I meant to find a private moment to see Jean-Loup, it will not be today. Yet every moment I delay, there may be less and less of Beast to save.
Plagued by these thoughts, I drag myself out of bed. The brindle cat rolls over into the warm spot hollowed out by my body and sinks back into contented slumber. But Mère Sophie and I are scarcely full awake when there’s a hammering at the door. A woodcutter begs the wisewoman to come to his cottage to treat his feverish child. She takes me with her to help with her balms and infusions, and I spend the rest of the morning at her side, until the fever is broken and the boy made stable.
It’s midday by the time we return to our cottage, and my thoughts return to Beast. We have been victorious today for this child, a stranger, and I am more resolved than ever to win a victory for Beast. I may be completely addled to think I can do anything at all for him now, and yet I must try. I can’t let Beast spend the rest of his life suffocated within the illusion that is Jean-Loup, not if there is any possibility, however remote, that I might have the means to free him. Beast was ready to end his own life in hopes of releasing me. I must find the same sort of courage for him.
I’m lacing my boots again when I find Mère Sophie standing by my side.
“You are leaving me,” she says.
“Beast needs my help,” I tell her. “I’m the only hope he has left.”
Mère Sophie nods thoughtfully. “Be very sure of what you want, my dear,” she says at last.
I finish lacing my second boot and run my fingers through my hair. I stand and smooth out my skirts, dull and grey and plain.
Mère Sophie eyes me up and down. “I believe there is a celebration in progress where you are going,” she says, and nods toward the bed where I’ve been sitting. Across it now is spread a modest gown of soft mossy green, the color of the river, with a bodice worked in coppery-colored embroidery. The cat slumbers on undisturbed beside it. I notice a traveling cloak the rusty color of autumn leaves hanging on the hook by the door.
“Thank you, Mère Sophie,” I whisper. I unlace my old grey frock, pull it off, and put on the green. I feel as if I am wearing the wisewoman’s colors into battle, the colors of the wood. They are nothing fancy, nothing fine, but decent, durable clothing for the task I undertake.
“Know that there will always be a place for you here by my fire,” Mère Sophie tells me at the door, as if she has been listening to my thoughts. “But you must follow your heart. There lies a power greater than any enchantment.”