As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) (12 page)

Maurice packed up the cart with all of their wordly belongings and harnessed their newly acquired foal to pull it. With a final tearful good-bye to the little apartment on its bustling street, he and his wife and their baby began the journey to their new home.

They had taken Lévi’s advice and decided to move to the pleasant, if dull, little village where the bookseller himself now lived, trading friends and excitement for a safe country life of chickens and weather and farmers as neighbors. And very little magic. Belle would grow up in a place without witches and enchanted crystals—but also without the violence and dangers of the tumultuous kingdom.

It was tricky driving their fully loaded cart through the busy streets at first. Besides the usual traffic, people often just stopped and stared: Rosalind had a kind of fame. Seeing her leave gave some people pause, and others a triumphant grin.

Approaching the border, where the road began to rise out of the forest, things grew quiet. But at the border, guards blocked their way.

“What is this?” Maurice demanded, pretending ignorance.

“Quarantine. No one is to leave or enter the kingdom without royal permission until the fever has passed,” one answered, not a hint of kindness in his voice. His black eyes flicked over Maurice and Rosalind and the baby—and even the horse.

Rosalind ground her teeth. She clutched her alder wand under her cloak, but there were at least ten soldiers.

“We bought a nice little farmhouse on the other side of the river,” Maurice said amiably. “For our growing family. Our plan was to escape from the plague. All of us are well—you can see that.”

“Escape from the plague,” the guard said nastily, putting a finger to his chin as if in thought. “How convenient. The sickness that rose up just as we began getting a handle on the situation of
les charmantes.
And now you flee.”

“We have a baby,” Maurice said, indicating Belle. “Of course we’re fleeing. It’s not safe.”

“Are you sure it’s the plague you’re fleeing, precisely? How many
naturels
did your wife kill or ensorcel the night of the riots?”

“I did no such thing!” Rosalind said, trying to keep her voice down. “I wasn’t even in town when the fight over the girl happened—I was deep in the woods, picking mushrooms.”

Two other guards closed in around behind the cart. Maurice began to reach inside his belt for his knife; Rosalind, her wand.

A fourth guard spoke up, almost impatiently. “Are you not Rosalind, the one who keeps the garden of magic roses in the park?”

Rosalind looked at her husband. Was this it? Was this where they took her but let her husband and baby go free? Was this the end?

There was no point in lying, either way.

“I am,” she said.

The young man regarded her for a moment. His eyes were unreadable, but unlike his partner’s, they were thoughtful.

“My mother had a cough. It wasn’t consumption but she couldn’t breathe properly, and sometimes blood came out. You gave her roses. Each fortnight, for two months. She put them in a vase and breathed in their perfume. It cured her completely.”

“Madame Guernbeck,” Rosalind said, remembering. “Her lungs were ailing. She loved my simple pink beach roses best, because she had never been to the sea. But the ones that cured her were yellow. I brought her both.”

“Alan,”
the first guard hissed, seeing where this was going. “Who cares? We have our orders. No one in or out.
And
she is a
charmante
—she just admitted it!”

Alan waved his hand without looking at his partner, as if he were no more than a fly. “Move along,” he told the family. “Leave, and if you take my advice, never come back.”

Maurice let out a breath he didn’t even realize he was holding, the buzzing in his ears so loud he forgot his manners and didn’t wish them a good day. Rosalind squeezed her baby tightly.

“Magic always comes back on itself,” Rosalind whispered.

“And also kindness,” Maurice pointed out.

So the little family rolled quietly out of the forest and into their new life. Belle sat on her mother’s lap, reaching for the tiny white moths that fluttered at the periphery of light and dark where the sun just began to meet the forest floor. Hours passed in contemplative silence for all three of them.

Maurice felt some of the weight he had been bearing lift away as they crossed the bridge over the river and into the little village. They were running away, yes, but it was
to
a new beginning. Their house was a nice, sunny little place on the outskirts of town where the fumes and noises from his inventions wouldn’t bother anyone—and the occasional showy spell wouldn’t be seen. Rosalind would, for now at least, doff the role of
enchantress
and confine most of her magic to plants and research. Until the world was safe again.

The first moonless night they spent there she paced out a new garden and circled it three times widdershins, chanting. She also planted the magic acorn and ancient pebble, singing to them as she did. Maurice held the baby in his lap and had her look on, wondering if his daughter would pick up some of the magic, despite the fact that, as Frédéric had accurately deduced, she was not a
charmante.

The next day, under the full sun where everyone could see, Rosalind began planting normal things. Roses, herbs, and even more roses.

Maurice rigged up a wheel in the nearby stream to pump water into the house and the new garden. He mounted a small windmill to the top of the roof and ran belts to various things in the kitchen; the roasting spit and a mechanical spoon over the stove, for instance, to ease their household tasks now that magic had to be hidden.

The little family went into the village proper as often as they could to visit their old friend Monsieur Lévi. He loved his little goddaughter Belle and played with her and made her laugh and gave her all sorts of treats: books and pretty mirrors and tiny kaleidoscopes. But Maurice and Rosalind tended to restrict their visits to market days when there was so much else going on they wouldn’t attract much notice, when gossip about
everyone
flowed as freely as the
cidre
.

Alaric was one of the few friends from their old life who ever visited, using “trying one of the horses out” as an excuse to make the half-day journey to the village over the river, breaking the quarantine with the king’s permission.

Whenever he came it was a happy time for all. Maurice and Rosalind stuffed him with wine and cheese and pulled their chairs close to hear news about the kingdom they had exiled themselves from. It was mostly bleak tidings, however; fever had established a firm grip in the poorer sections of town, and those few who could have done something about it—
les charmantes,
witches, and the like—were missing.

But the stablemaster had also wed his merry housekeeper, and that was cause for some joy. He showed the little family a miniature he kept of her in his pocket, next to his journal, and swore they would all celebrate together properly one day.

And then one day Alaric showed up at
night
, long after Belle had been put to bed.

There was a rider behind him on the horse, a small, terrified-looking woman-thing with eyes that were all black, even the whites, and long, folded-over green ears that spoke of goblin lineage.

“Ah,” Alaric said uneasily to Maurice and Rosalind, who came to the door in their dressing gowns, “a thousand pardons for the interruption of your evening….I was wondering…maybe you could give my friend here a night’s stay…and maybe a loaf of bread to start her on her way in the morning?”

“Of course,” Rosalind said, glancing uneasily over to her daughter’s room to make sure she was asleep. “Any friend of yours is a friend of ours.”

“But why?” Maurice asked, oblivious as always to the finer nuances of emotion in the air: his old friend’s barely concealed nervousness, the
obviousness
of deep night outside, the hastily thrown-on aspect of the woman’s clothes: it looked like she wore everything she owned, all at once. “What’s wrong?”

“They come for me,”
the woman rasped in the hissing, guttural tone of a goblin.
“Thona saw them. A pair of men, all in black, with masks and whatnot. Coming for me in silence like the dead.”

Alaric nodded grimly. “I found her hiding with a rat—uh,
Thona
—in my stables. It seems as if whoever is targeting
les charmantes
is getting sneakier. Just clubbing them over the heads or whatever and dragging them off in the middle of the night. And no one’s finding the bodies.”

“Like ghosts, they are, and God knows what happens to them that gets taken,” the woman said, shivering,

Alaric gave her a pitying look. “She had to get out—it wasn’t safe for her to stay. And with the quarantine, no one can leave now. Legally. So…”

“Oh, my goodness, you poor thing,” Rosalind said with a sad shake of her head. “Why don’t you go on inside, wash your hands and face. We’ll get you a blanket and some hot tea in a moment.”

The woman pushed past them into the warmth without a thank-you—that was not the goblin way—but then turned and looked back for one piteous moment, her black eyes wide and begging as if her hosts could do something.

“I lived there all my life. I sold swamp herbs.
Good, honest swamp herbs. Wild begonia for colds and moss for packing into wounds. I never did black magic or poison arts. Everyone knows that. Everyone knows old Jenny!”

Then she hobbled in through the door, coughing back tears—crying, which was the human way.

“…And then the problem was obviously that the main keep had grown too organically from its medieval origins, and so the symmetry needed for a true baroque makeover was impossible. I speak, of course, of the high middle-gate and flanking annexes you see elsewhere, as in Mansart’s
Chateau de Maisons
….”

Lumière was hopping ahead to light the way, obviously bored by the direction the tour was taking. Belle
was
interested; she had read all about Mansart and dreamed of seeing his palaces in Versailles. But Cogsworth’s stories were also strangely banal. Here was a talking clock, for heaven’s sake. And everything he was telling her seemed straight out of a normal history book. There was nothing about evil wizards, angry gods, or why the castle was the way it was: enchanted and forgotten.

“All of these weapons and armor don’t
seem
to be very baroque,” she interrupted gently, waving her hand at a pair of crossed battle-axes on the wall. The hall they were in definitely had a medieval slant; tarnished suits of armor lined each side and she was pretty sure she heard them squeaking despite their apparent stillness.

“Ah, yes, well, you can never entirely strip the gothic influence from the French,” Cogsworth said proudly. “We’re not ashamed of our heritage.”

Belle pretended to ignore the suits of armor as she passed, which were now quite obviously turning to watch her. She felt less threatened by their martial stance than unnerved by their attention. It was like the first market day after she had developed a figure. That was the moment the tone of the villagers’ gossip about her had changed: from
look at that strange little child
to
what a waste looks like that are on one like her.

“AS YOU WERE!”
Cogsworth snapped at the armor, seeing her distress.

Immediately, with dozens of identical clacks, the suits resumed their original watchful positions.

They entered a wide foyer but walked right by a grand marble staircase that was an exact duplicate of the one that led to the wing where Belle’s room was.

“What’s up there?” she asked.

“Oh, uh, nothing important,” Lumière said quickly. “Nothing to interest
Mademoiselle
…and all the…uh…stairs…”

Aha.

“Ohhhh.
Stairs.
My goodness. So tiring for a delicate girl like me. So…if there’s nothing there, then it doesn’t matter if we go see or not,” she said, turning to go up.

“NO!”
Cogsworth stuttered, running forward. “The West Wing is utterly boring. Nothing up there to interest you!”

Lumière whacked his friend with the brass end of one of his hands.

“So,” Belle said, hesitating a moment with relish. “This is the
forbidden
West Wing.”

“What he meant was…we have so many other places to go first,” Lumière amended quickly. “The gardens, for instance.”

“Too cold,” Belle said, continuing to move forward.

“The armory?” Cogsworth said hopefully. “The orangerie?”

“Too spooky. Too late,” Belle said, not turning back.

“What about…the
library
?”

Belle whirled around. Somehow Lumière managed a look of pleased satisfaction in his flames.

“Library…?” she asked slowly.

“Oh, yes, the Master has
so
many
books,” the little candelabrum drawled.

“Yes, yes!” Cogsworth said, leaping forward to stand next to his friend. So close, Belle saw distractedly, she was surprised he didn’t catch fire. “Rooms and rooms of them!”