Disclaimer: I do not own Beauty and the Beast.
Another two weeks passed relatively uneventfully. The weather grew colder and colder, and Belle was able to spent less time outside. In the absence of the gardens as an option for occupation, and since she still was not good enough at reading to manage more than the simplest books in the library on her own, at first she was at a loss about what to do. The Beast, Jacques and the servants were all busy in the afternoons for the most part making sure the castle and the province ran smoothly. There was no useful work she could do—as she'd noted from the beginning, the servants were all more than competent at keeping the castle immaculate, and they also tended Belle's clothes, room and Belle herself with beautiful efficiency. She didn't know any fancy embroidery, only basic stitches, and those were no use if there was nothing to darn.
On the second bitterly cold December day trapped indoors Belle found herself in the kitchen. At first, she had it in the back of her mind that it would at least be warm and perhaps she could find a corner where she wouldn't be in anyone's way. It was still mildly unnerving to watch things floating about on their own, but at least Belle had gotten used to it enough not to be startled if a spoon hurtled past her head.
She did find a corner by the fire where she could see everything going on in the room. Nearest her was a table where she could see the pastry chef working on some new creations. He—she knew it was a 'he' thanks to Jacques—had rolled out a whitish substance she was certain was not dough and was now busy cutting shapes out of it. As Belle watched, he put the shapes together, then continued to mold them until they had been formed into the petals of a single white rose.
Belle grinned with pleasure at seeing the beautiful thing and clapped quietly. The white rose floated over to her and Belle put out her cupped hands. Once it was deposited there, she felt a finger touch her lips, indicating she was to eat it.
"It's too pretty," said Belle. "Can I save it instead?"
The pastry chef picked up her slate and chalk, which she had with her as usual, and wrote Meant to be eaten. It won't keep.
"Oh." Belle was proud that she'd known the meaning of every word. She nibbled carefully on a petal. Even though she'd watched him build it, the rose resembled the real thing closely enough that it felt odd eating it. The flavor was sweet and delicate. Belle methodically plucked each petal off, reversing what he'd just done to make it, and savored each one. "What is it?" she asked when she was done.
He wrote a word on her slate, but Belle didn't recognize it. She read over the letters a few times, then tried sounding it out. "M-marrr-zeee-pan. Mar-zipan. Marzipan? Are you sure that's a word?"
A squiggly horizontal line on her slate, the servants' code for a laugh. Then, Yes. Want to see how it's made?
"I'd love to!"
She spent the next several hours learning how to make, and then create simple forms, out of marzipan, which turned out to be a paste made from crushed almonds and honey. At dinner that night, she proudly showed off the results to the Beast. He shook his head with a chuckle.
"Sometimes I think there's nothing you can't do if you really want to, Belle."
Thus on particularly cold days Belle found herself getting lessons in cookery and general housekeeping from the invisible servants. They wouldn't let her do any of the really dirty or dangerous work, but they seemed happy to show her the inner workings of the household. She spent most of her time in the kitchen, where the servants taught her all sorts of tricks to make cooking easier, the use of spices she'd never heard of, and how to make foods pleasing to look at as well as delicious to eat.
Occasionally Jacques would allow her to accompany him while he made decisions only the steward could make about how things should be done, stored or arranged, once he had her reassurances that she wouldn't get in the way or try to interfere. He'd begun to adopt her use of a slate and chalk rather than paper, ink and pen to pass notes between himself and the servants, though sometimes they wrote and erased too fast for Belle to follow while peering around Jacques's elbow. Jacques would flare his nose in disgust at the white powder from the chalk on his sleeves, which made Belle giggle, but he admitted that using this method was more efficient than having to dip ink into quill. Jacques's ability to anticipate problems and efficiently solve them awed her as much as watching the Beast in court, though it wasn't anywhere near as riveting.
Somehow as December deepened it was mutually decided among the servants that there was to be some sort of celebration of the Christmas season. Belle at first wasn't really sure what that meant. Christmas to her was just another few hours in church, and then it was back home to work as usual. It was a busy time for Gaston since during the subsequent twelve days people often wanted to hire the tavern for parties and festivities, so he was frequently gone from dawn to past dusk for more than a week. That was what Belle had liked the most about Christmas—the surety of Gaston's absence.
Apparently in wealthy households, Christmas meant something entirely different. It wasn't a quiet time, the servants assured her, but the most busy of the year for them. At least, pre-curse that's how things had been. There would be visitors and grand balls and beautiful feasts with food pyramids so high you couldn't see straight across the table. Belle had trouble picturing this, enough that the servants built her a miniature pyramid with apples and sprigs of mint leaves so that she could get the idea. Jacques walked in on this scene, and Belle suspected the idea of having some sort of celebration of Christmas had had its birth in that moment. In any case, Jacques was certainly the mastermind and had taken the lead in persuading the Beast to agree. For some reason, he decided to use the argument that Belle needed to start practicing her formal manners while laced into an elegant, fashionable dress as early as possible. And what better excuse than Christmas? The Beast finally agreed, but Belle privately thought they were both going to feel very silly, since it would be just the two of them as always.
As a result of this development, Jacques had added dancing lessons to Belle's daily regimen. These took place in the evening after dinner. Belle had thought they would be horrible—she'd never even been allowed to participate in village dances, so she had no idea what the expectations might be for dances among the wealthy. The lessons turned out to be not too bad, though she liked them nowhere near as much as she liked her reading and writing lessons with the Beast or watching the court sessions. She wasn't overly fond of the various minuets—too many complicated steps to memorize—but the country dances were more fun and it wasn't too hard to pretend there was an entire line of people doing the same steps with her and Jacques. Since they tended to be lively dances, they were a good way to move about a bit since she couldn't go outside in the gardens and helped warm her up in the castle's winter chill.
A few times, the Beast came in to watch her dance lessons if he was finished with his paperwork a bit early, before they went off to continue reading One Thousand and One Nights in the library.
The first time he did this, he watched for a few minutes quietly by the door. Belle was concentrating hard on a sequence of minuet steps, and suddenly he was right beside her. Belle jumped a little. "Ack! You scared me."
"Apologies," rumbled the Beast. He looked at Jacques, who stood with his hands on his hips. He pointed at Belle, then made a series of gestures at the Beast Belle took to mean You're distracting her!
"I'm not sure that's the right sequence of steps you just showed her," said the Beast.
Now Jacques scowled deeply. He shook his head.
"No, I think it's—" And here the Beast carefully minced his huge body, balancing precariously on his dog-shaped paws, through a slightly different sequence. Belle carefully backed out of the way.
Jacques shook his head again, but this time he seemed less certain. He and the Beast slowly went through each step, and when they got to the part in contention they both watched the other's feet closely. Jacques tilted his head in consideration, then stepped it out the Beast's way. He reluctantly nodded, then beckoned Belle over to show the new steps to her.
About twenty minutes later, it happened again. This time the Beast did not startle her when he interjected, but again he and Jacques went through a series of steps. This time Jacques won the argument. Belle hid a giggle behind her hand at the Beast's expression, but carefully turned her face away until she had control. She thought Jacques might have noticed her laughing—he narrowed his eyes suspiciously at her—but she was fairly sure the Beast did not.
From then on, this sequence played itself out fairly regularly every time the Beast came to watch her dance lessons. The Beast would frequently interrupt to quibble—a fun new-to-her word from One Thousand and One Nights—with Jacques over the nuances of this step or that. Belle found it both funny and a little sad to watch. The Beast's huge body was just not built for human dance, but when he was absorbed in argument with the steward he seemed to forget to be embarrassed about it. He must have liked dancing once, Belle thought as she watched. Then she would get angry at the curse for making it impossible to do something he enjoyed, and unhappy all over again that she could not help him break it.
She was growing ever more fond of the Beast. Jacques and the servants, too, but there was a special place in her heart for the hulking monster who had once scared her so badly. She had never been so happy in her life before coming to live at the castle. She marveled at the girl who had been so afraid of leaving the cottage and all that was familiar—that girl had been too beaten down to imagine a better life.
Now every day was filled with new things to learn. She was working hard, but it was satisfying rather than monotonous. No one here would think of hurting her when she made mistakes. They just pointed out where she'd gone wrong and expected her to get it right the next time.
The Beast in particular seemed to like being around her. That was an entirely new experience, and one Belle still marveled at occasionally. She hadn't thought it was possible that she would be anything to anyone other than a nuisance. Yet here was this person with many other responsibilities and cares, who had every reason not even to acknowledge she walked the earth, and he not only spent time with her, but made time even when he was busy to make sure he gave her lessons in the morning and read to her each and every night without fail. He'd called her his friend. It made her feel…worthwhile, like she could be someone who actually mattered.
She wanted to please him, to give him something that let him know how much she appreciated all he had done for her. But what could she possibly give him? He had everything he could ever want except his human form back, and of course she couldn't give him that. She couldn't make beautiful things like the servants. She certainly had no money or anything else to trade. The question surfaced at odd times in her head as the days passed, but she was never able to think of anything she could do to show him how much his friendship meant to her.
On an unusually warm winter afternoon in mid-December, she pulled on her heaviest cloak and went out into the gardens, something she hadn't been able to in several weeks. There was snow in patches here and there, though most of it had melted away from the paths. Belle stayed fairly close to the castle, wandering through the kitchen gardens with their neat bedrows. Most of the plants were dead and would be replanted come spring, but a few hardy herbs were tucked into protected corners here and there. She occasionally crushed a leaf or two between her fingers just for the pungent scents. She missed being able to smell the grass and flowers.
Belle rounded the corner of a low wall and found a surprise. She had never been in this section of the household gardens before. Built against the wall on the far side were wooden boxes about knee-high. Their tops were covered with precious glass to let in sunlight. Curious, Belle went over and knelt to examine one. Through the glass she could see dirt piled on the bottom of the box, and in the dirt were small green plants.
Heedless of its chilly touch on her skin, Belle pressed her nose against the glass. It fogged up immediately, making it hard to see clearly, but there were definitely plants growing in those boxes. They looked healthy, despite the cold.
How was this possible? Belle explored the boxes with her fingers, and discovered that the glass tops were set into wooden frames, which had hinges so that the whole top could swing up and allow someone to access the plants inside. Belle didn't quite dare to do that—she didn't want those poor plants to get cold. Instead, she got up and went back inside the castle.
A few questions in the kitchen produced one of the gardeners, the one who was in charge of the boxes. He could write, fortunately, though his letters with the chalk were a little shaky.
Hotboxes, he wrote, so that we can keep the more tender plants going through the winter and start others a little early, before the last frost. We start them at different times so we will have fresh fruits and vegetables throughout the summer instead of one kind of thing all at once. Wealthier households even than this one have greenhouses, whole buildings made of glass to grow plants in the winter.
Belle laughed. "That's amazing! I've never heard of something like that." She tried to picture a whole building made of glass.
The gardener was ahead of her. On the slate, he erased his words and drew a picture of a house that looked like it was made out of squares. Belle could see how the pieces of glass would be put together to form a building and still be sturdy. "I'd like to see one one day. It must be very beautiful."
It is.
Belle looked at the air where she knew the gardener must be. She tried to smile, but she felt a little sad. Another victim of the curse she couldn't help. "How does it work?" she asked, to change the subject.
Warm sunlight goes in, heats up the air inside. Heated air can't get out. Same with the hotboxes through their glass lids.
"What's in the hotboxes now?"
A little of everything.
An idea struck her. "Does the Beast have a favorite food that you grow?"
There was a pause. I'm not certain. Perhaps you should ask M. Saint-Yves.
It took Belle a few moments to realize he meant Jacques. At some point she'd learned the steward's last name, but she rarely heard it used since she and the Beast both used his given name.
"Yes, I'll ask him. But first can you show me more about how the hotboxes work? If you have time? I'd love to learn."
Of course, little mistress.
Belle wasn't sure what to make of that last. She didn't think he was serious in calling her 'mistress' as if she were equal to the Beast, their Master, but she also didn't think he was making fun of her. Then she felt a pat on the head, as Jacques sometimes did when he was in an affectionate mood. Apparently the other servants had been watching that. She smiled up at the invisible person. Her slate and chalk were given back to her, and a hand on her shoulder gently guided her out to the gardens.
She did ask Jacques the question after their dance lesson that evening. Jacques frowned in puzzlement.
Why do you want to know what the Master's favorite food is?
"Oh, I wanted to see if I could grow it for him, maybe in one of the hotboxes if the gardeners would help me. I can't make him anything-the servants can make him whatever he wants only a thousand times better. But he's been so kind to me, better than my father ever was, and I want to do something for him to say thank you."
Jacques's expression was hard to read, for once. His eyes were faraway and his lips were slightly pursed. She could tell he was carefully considering her words. At last he focused back on her.
I may have an idea. He beckoned her to follow him. He led her to one of the storage closets that she knew only he had the key to. There must be something really valuable here. Her curiosity piqued.
The steward rattled around for a few moments until he found what he wanted. When he turned to face her, he had a small jar in his hand, which he passed to her and took her slate.
These are saffron bulbs, he wrote. They will grow into a small purple flower which yields one of the most rare spices in the world. They were given to the household years ago as a gift from the Spanish ambassador. The Master's father had done him some service and he owed a great favor. While he visited, he brought the cooks some of the spice and told them how to use it. The Master loved the food prepared with it. No one in all these years has dared to try to grow the bulbs.
"Would you let me try?" Belle ran a hand over the jar reverently.
We will have to see if we can find any book in the library that tells of them, to make certain we grow them correctly. I am sure M. d'Habille, the gardener in charge of the hotboxes, will be pleased to assist you.
Belle nodded after reading all of this slowly and making sure she'd understood. "I can do it in the afternoons when you and the Beast are busy, and then maybe you can help with the harder words. But…can you help me find the section on flowers, first?" She had learned as she ventured outside the classroom that the library was carefully organized, and that books had to be put back exactly where they had been found.
If we go right after our breakfast manners lessons, the Master will not see us.
"That sounds perfect." Belle skipped off to find the Beast so they could continue their journey through One Thousand and One Nights.
Author's Note: This chapter was tough to get any kind of steam going on. I had up to the previous chapter largely planned out, and I have the rising climax outlined in my head as well, but there was a gap between the two that I've now been straining a little to fill with anything meaningful. For help I turned to my usual partner in literary crime, Storyteller Knight, and she helped me idea bounce and workshop until I had something we both felt was viable. Anybody who tells you writing is a solo act is fooling themselves. There are times when you just get stuck and need a fresh pair of eyes.
