The sun was setting at last.
The day was ending.
Sitting at his desk in his father's old study (his study?) a man with reddish blond hair groaned with relief, and rolled his head, cracking the vertebrae in his neck. He was almost finished. The mountain of paperwork was down to its last until at least next Tuesday. And his mind was ready to wander.
Three weeks ago, the guests had all gone home. The last of the champagne had been drunk, and Adam had, to the joy and neverending pride of Cogsworth, introduced himself as the new Duc de Touraine to his people. To the surprise of his guests, Monsieur le Duc revealed that he would take a bride of common blood, the grandchild of a merchant and one of their own-Belle DuPont, a beauty that every man in the village dreamed about and the one woman everyone gossiped about for years. Three weeks ago, the entire castle celebrated a victory over a curse that had consumed it and settled a cloud of misery over all who lived there; where there had been darkness and misery there was now light, and hope, and joy.
Three weeks ago, Belle and himself, Adam, invited people from far and wide to meet their new ruler and "tell them the truth" about Gaston. In the wee hours of the morning after the fireworks shot into the sky and old, foreboding statues changed back to their original, angelic selves, somebody had to go down to the ravine and collect the tavern keeper's body. All within the castle made a pact never to speak of Gaston's very real and vicious attempt to murder their master when it was clear that Mademoiselle loved another. Nobody would breathe a word-except amongst themselves-about the true nature of Belle's captivity in the castle. They owed the new couple their freedom. They at the very least owed them their loyalty.
Eight weeks ago, Maurice, likewise, promised his daughter he would never reveal what he saw that rainy night. No denizen of Molyneux deserved to hear the story his daughter told him while he was sick. Nobody deserved to know Belle's recounting her memories of this enigmatic creature, an enchanted Beast with what she surmised was the soul of a man, her friend; they didn't need to know what had happened to Belle in the six months she was gone. He would not speak of how the questions she was asking him as she sat by his bedside were no longer about some silly fable and ogres and swashbuckling pirates who stole a maid's heart, but questions he wondered once if he'd ever hear from his girl's lips, questions he dreaded ever having to hear-insights into the heart of the opposite sex. He would not bear witness to anyone over his encouragement of her riding off on Phillipe with him to rescue her onetime captor, nor of his own mad dash into the castle when he saw Gaston Robicheaux bellowing like a madman and about to commit murder. Maurice DuPont stood hidden from view in the wings of a decrepit old master bedroom that night, and arrived only to see his daughter weeping over the dying body of her lover. It would be awfully tempting to throw it back in their faces that the Beast they were so terrified of and marched on armed with torches and pitchforks was now their master. But, for the sake of his daughter and the son-in-law with whom he'd had a few long, long talks, he would remain silent.
The reddish blonde man murmured for a minute at this memory. "That is, until, they kept peppering him with questions about his daughter's sudden appearance on the arm of a powerful man long thought disappeared or dead," he mused to himself. "Maurice practically ran into this very room. He was red faced and wearing some bizarre helmet with binoculars and collapsible garden shears and there were musket ball holes in his cloak. Maurice sputtered he'd let some glue he'd invented drizzle on his head before he put it on, thought it was oil. Cogsworth and I tugged at him from both ends that day, trying to get the helmet off. Cogsworth was holding his feet and shouting he was a blithering idiot, and Maurice kept shouting, in between pulls, that he was chased out of town over Gaston. I kept tugging at those putain handlebars he had on his head and trying to avoid getting cut by the scythe that kept popping out of a compartment. I was arguing with him that I wasn't going to give the pig who tried to kill me and would have probably raped my wife if I had died that night any more of a sendoff than quietly returning his body. He said his boomenator machine was running out of gunpowder and it wasn't enough to keep the neighbors away-whatever that meant-and that they demanded he appear at the funeral. When he refused to go, they tried to shoot him and he hid out in his barn, hoping he could hitch up Philippe and slip out the back first thing in the morning. I think it was at the point the damn thing finally popped off Lumiere came in and suggested Maurice unpack his wagon for good and move in- and we waited for Belle to come back so we all could hatch a plan."
He thought about the big crowd they drew at the victory ball, and sending out the invitations to Molyneux. He thought about Belle's yellow gown, and their rehearsal before descending the stairs to the ballroom. It was to be after the first dance. That was the plan. Maurice by then would have been dropping hints all week at the tavern.
Together, Belle and Adam waxed lyrical about Gaston Robicheaux, humanitarian, huntsman, and chevalier noble without equal. Adam went first, and sat on his father's old throne, his back straight and his eyes boring into his subjects, cool and imperious. Inside he was hoping that he was doing a good enough impression of the way his father used to act when he had to deal with official matters and that nobody noticed his palms sweating as he gripped the arms of the chair. He cleared his throat, and described to a spellbound audience how long ago, as a youngster, he was locked away in his own dungeon by a sorcerer whose ugliness and evil was so great within it manifested itself on the outside. The monster enchanted the castle with hundreds of booby traps, including moving furniture and spirits hauting the upper floors, wraithlike guardsmen. This heinous creature even transformed him, their rightful ruler, into a legless statue to ensure he could never escape. he was alive, but no longer human. Always hungry, able to shiver from the cold, but unable to die or feel relief; able to bleed, but unable to heal. For months, as this statue, he and Belle became close, both captors of the sorceror and speaking at night through a loose brick in the wall. She became his first confidante in many years, and he was her protector; it was his duty. When the Beast would come to Belle looking to slake his lust, Adam explained, he would find a way to distract him by making false attempts to escape, and taking many a beating for her. (To gasps, he showed the teeth marks on his right arm, the scars on his backside, and the stab wound that was just starting to heal.)
Together they planned Belle's escape and Adam gave her the one thing that kept him from going mad in his prison, something he had stolen from the Beast long ago-a magic mirror. They thought that if the people of Molyneaux knew the truth about what was ahead of them at the castle, they might not try to help...so that mirror was a bit of reverse psychology. Getting to Gaston to hunt the Beast down and giving him the mirror was the real goal. The only complication was, when the time had come to put the plan in motion, the mirror showed Maurice had tried to come rescue his daughter on his own...and now needed rescuing himself.
From here it was Belle's turn. She sat in the smaller chair next to her husband-to-be and continued where Adam left off. Belle conjured up tears at how clever, sweet, dear Gaston broke the castle free from a spell by smashing an enchanted lily and kicked through the wall risking attack from thousands of imps, trying to rappell down to Adam and bring him into the light for the first time in many years. Their ruler was nearly skin and bones when he emerged, and it was all due to Gaston that he could at last feel human touch and Gaston even gave him the shirt off his back to warm him and help him to safety. There was abject silence and wonder at the climax where Gaston brawled with the Beast on the rooftop for hours and stabbed him through his black, cruel heart, only for Gaston to tragically fall to his death...and not an eye was dry when Adam spoke of his instructions beforehand, "Mon Seigneur, I may go to my death in fighting this horrible creature, but I do not shed a tear for myself as it must be done. Nobody shall be safe until he is dead. I consider it a matter of honor to save Molyneax, my home, and your lordship from ever dealing with this monster again. But I ask of you, please, to look after Belle if I do not come back. Your friendship with her should help her in her grief over me."
The only parts they left out, of course, were that Adam's wounds were really from wolf bites he had garnered while saving Belle and the freshly stitched stab wound in his side was inflicted by their beloved Gaston and it nearly killed him; they equally left out that most of the story was pieced together from Belle's old fableaux books. Adam knew, as soon as Maurice came back from that village, that he had to help Belle come up with a story explaining why they were together and he had to make Gaston look like a hero-the latter he was not terribly happy with as he hated the man even in death. Still, it was necessary, and a little wine to take the edge off having to lionize a woud-be murderer turned into a night of drinking and laughing with her in the library, each suggestion to add getting more zany and bizarre. The one where Adam transmogrifies himself into a 50 foot dragon with a black body and a purple belly and uses Gaston's bones to pick his teeth became something of an inside joke. "Add three fairies to the story," Adam remembered asking, " you remember, the story you read me after Romeo and Juliet! We can make the one with the red dress conjure up bigger muscles and a huge claymore for Gaston! The fat one with the black hair can shoot hail the size of grapefruits out her rump in an attempt to distract me from a tasty morsel such as you!"
"Adam, please, that is disgusting! Nobody would ever believe it and for heaven sakes, you are a grown man. These jokes I would expect from Chip!"
"Oh come on, petit, you said to be creative." he wobbled on his feet a little, and plopped down next to her on her pouf, pouring yet another glass of Cabernet. "After all, it is no more than he deserves to have a ridiculous death scene! That sick enculé would have locked your father in an asylum and with me out of the way he would have had his way with you at last. You yourself said he was totally obsessed and I don't want to think about what he would have done to you with me dead. Now, we already have that bastard finding you in a trance where you are larking around singing barefoot with little birdies in a room that looks like a forest, and blonde to boot. If the sheep in Molyneux are ready to believe that my beautiful, headstrong Belle would ever degrade herself to be such a bubbleheaded idiot, they will believe anything. Belle, they sent fifty men after me and I for one think they should be fed as tall a tale as we can make. Hail farts it is!"
"Darling, be serious. Remember, nobody believed my father when he told them all what you looked like or that you even existed, furry face and all." She took a long sip of her wine. "Besides, why would I spin a yarn about a fairy with hail coming out of her rump when I have my 50 foot dragon sitting right here beside me, "she put her hand on his knee, "and knowing him and how so very mature he is that he would try to put on a much more prodigious display?"
Adam smiled to himself here. That version of the story was still the one that Chip kept pestering him for. Cute little tyke.
He looked down to his desk and realized there were some envelopes he needed to carefully fold his correspondence into and seal with wax. The ink was dry enough now to do it. There was a candle on the mantle with a set of matches. He got up to retrieve them and sat back down again.
Several weeks ago marked the beginning of a whole tidal wave of new responsibilites for the young couple, especially Adam-when he realized that there was little point to pay attention to Cogsworth's lessons on politics and government as an enchanted beast-man, he stopped paying attention. Now, he knew he had much to catch up with and had to do it on the job (Thank heavens for Belle's frenzy of ordering new books from all over the continent involving philosophy and political theory, the new thinking: Locke and Montesqieu were already giving him ideas of how to reign, even if they baffled and ran loggerheads with Cogsworth.) He would wake often just before dawn to start devouring books he had long forgotten and relearn lessons that he had been too stubborn and spoiled to take seriously; this was how his beloved Belle figured out that part of the problem he'd been having for so long with reading had in part to do with his need of glasses, a pair of which she presented him with along with a brand new set of quills.
Cogsworth and Lumiere both were astonished at his ever increasing pace from barely being able to read in the first few tries months ago with Belle to now being able to give his fiancee a run for her money. By breakfast he'd be firing off hundreds of questions on what he had read to Cogsworth and barking for letters from his factors telling him of news from Paris, London, Amsterdam, and Rome...and for reasons that baffled everyone, slowly as they sent these letters, he could read them without an interpreter. Passing him on the staircase one morning, Belle even chided him on his face being unshaven and his shirtlaces undone while he was still reading a scrap of parchment...and to the shock of all within earshot, including himself, he answered her flawlessly in some sort of Italian before correcting himself.
The letters to Versailles and beyond were as unending as the need to clean up the mess that was taxation and a review of finances with accountants: his father's old system was no longer necessary as most of the serfs that lived in the woodland around the castle had long since fled. Many parts of the system no longer even applied. Cogsworth had sold many of his lesser French land assets and reinvested the profit in trade over the years, so it was quite a shock when hitherto unknown obscene amounts of money located in banks in London and Amsterdam appeared, all from just old investments in mining and lumber, accruing interest. What land he did have left, the farmers, most of them freemen, were being overcharged for their grain and rent by an exorbitant price. Adam's choice of words in his joint letters to Rome and Paris were particularly damning, as it would appear that for years the Archbishop in Tours had been stealing money from taxes to lands that were not legally his, and grain profits that rightly belonged to Touraine, its people, and its Lord. The old Archbishop rained down brimstone and gall upon him in his last letter, calling him a young upstart who should mind his own business...or His Excellency threatened to tattle to the Primate at Lyon. (Ironic, since according to yesterday's letter that sat in the top drawer His Excellency the Primate was happy to catch the Archbishop of Tours with his hand in the cookie jar at last-he'd been waiting years for the proof.)
"At least I won't have to invite that old cheat to perform the wedding," Adam thought, taking off his signet ring and pressing his seal into the warm wax. "If he hears that my wife is not of noble blood, who knows-he might try to size her up for how to wring taxes out of her for old time's sake."