a Disney's Beauty and and Beast Fanfic
by
C. "Sparky" Read
Part V:
"Necessity Is A Mother"
"A quarter franc on five!"
"I've got a quarter on six!" Bertram scribbled madly on a tablet as the men shouted all around him. "All right, so that's Nicodeus with five and Hermes with six. Anyone else?"
"Here he comes," hissed Denis suddenly, and the men fell silent at once, watching the stables eagerly.
LeFou, pointedly ignoring his audience (he knew full well they were there), stepped into the horse paddock behind his house, securing the gate behind him. He walked slowly towards the stables, his jaw set, rhythmically slapping the bridle gripped tightly in his right hand against his leg as he took step after deliberate step. At last he stopped.
"Stella," he said.
The head of a jet-black mare appeared around the wall of the stable, ears erect. LeFou slapped the bridle again. The horse bolted out of the stable and to the far end of the paddock.
The village men leaned over the fence, watching intently.
Resignedly LeFou walked slowly after Stella, not making any sudden moves. The mare flattened herself against the back fence as he approached her and held up the bridle.
"It's for your own good, you know."
Apparently she didn't, for she whinnied shrilly and darted around the short man, straight for the villagers, who knew the unpredictable mare well enough to jump away from the fence. Stella pivoted when she reached the end of the paddock, planting her hooves and arching her neck. She flared her nostrils and grunted.
In the stables, Omri, the grey stallion, peeked out once and withdrew with a long-suffering grunt. He was smart enough to know to stay inside during these exercises.
Again LeFou approached Stella and held up the bridle. "Can't you behave for once?" he muttered, moving closer. Stella stood there frozen, her sides beginning to heave. LeFou steeled himself and slipped the bridle over her muzzle, touching the bit to her lips.
The village men held their breath.
LeFou pushed on the bit. Stella kept her jaws clamped. Man and horse sized each other up. Stella blew loudly.
Determinedly, LeFou walked forward, trying to force Stella to accept the bit. The mare backed up stubbornly, refusing to open her mouth. They began a slow circle of the paddock, Stella walking backwards, her tail flicking in agitation.
"Another quarter says she kills him," whispered Nicodeus. Hermes, the tailor, elbowed him sharply.
"Come on, Stella," LeFou spoke to the horse, pushing firmly. "You've got to let me ride you. A horse that no one can ride and can't even pull a plow has only the future of upholstery to look forward to. I don't want you to be shot," he told her bitterly.
The men at the fence were becoming impatient. "If he can't even get the bridle on today we may as well all go home," remarked Bertram, disappointed.
"Put a lid on it," spoke up Denis. "He'll get it on."
As if to prove the blacksmith right, Stella suddenly took the bit. With a sigh of relief, LeFou fastened the bridle and led her back to the side of the stables. She let him put on the saddle without incident, pawing the ground as if impatient to start the day's session.
"All right, now we're going to see some action." Bertram held up the tablet. "Any last minute bets?"
"Change mine to ten," said Hermes. "She didn't chase him around the yard today. He's still fresh." It was a bold wager. Bertram made a note of it.
"All right he's going," announced Denis. "Who's got the clock?"
"I do," said Nicodeus, holding it up.
The men watched in anticipation as LeFou climbed a stepladder beside the mare.
"Get ready...time it!" hissed Denis as LeFou swung into the saddle.
Stella didn't hesitate. With an indignant scream, she reared and bolted across the paddock in an ebony streak, LeFou clinging doggedly to her neck. When she reached the fence she reared again, twisting, and came down facing the opposite direction. With a single buck LeFou was thrown clean off, sailing over her head through the air in a wide arc. He landed with a splash in Omri's trough, much to the stallion's displeasure. With a snort of disgust Omri stalked away, flinging water out of his mane.
"Who had ten?" asked Bertram.
"I did! Ha!" chortled Hermes gleefully. "Pay up, you dupes!"
"You lot should be ashamed of yourselves," Bain said suddenly, startling the village men. He and Bernaud had shown up a few minutes previous, unnoticed by the engrossed gamblers. "Making wagers on when LeFou will fail at something. Hasn't he opened his taproom to you ungrateful sods, made you welcome in his home and let you sample his selfmade ales asking nothing in return?"
The villagers glanced down at their shoes and made no reply.
"Get on home," said Bernaud gruffly. "None of you would have the wherewithal to try and tame that horse. Mind your own affairs."
As the crowd dispersed the Royal Archers turned back towards the paddock, where LeFou was beginning to try and flounder his way out of the trough. Stella had returned to him, nibbling at his collar mischievously. They had been playing this "game" for weeks now, and it had become her favorite part of the day. Despite her shows of anger, she just loved the attention.
"All right there, LeFou?" called Bain. The archers knew better than to enter the paddock while Stella was loose.
LeFou finally managed to tumble out of the trough. He lurched to his feet and wrung out the tails of his coat. "I think I'm making progress," he answered cheerfully. "Go on in, I'll be right there."
Exchanging amused looks, Bain and Bernaud went around the house and went in through the front door while LeFou went to take the saddle and bridle back off of Stella, until tomorrow.
The past six months had seen a tremendous difference in LeFou's life. Prince Christophe had ruled that, as Gaston had no family, his business partner (i.e., LeFou) was to be the sole inheritor of all his monies and property. That made not only Gaston's house and everything in it (and Stella) LeFou's, but also his bank account in Aglionby; that coupled with LeFou's own savings added up to a respectable sum. It wasn't, however, enough to simply retire on, especially for someone so young. LeFou, at little urging from the villagers as well as his friends in the Prince's employ, decided to try his hand at becoming a professional brewer. Following in the famed "Ol' Harbin" LeFou's footsteps had proved more complicated than he thought, however, and more expensive. Much of the equipment and all of the storage kegs had to be replaced, as did a couple of the more decrepit copper cauldrons. As LeFou was unable to leave Stella in the care of anyone else, he was forced to order everything, ingredients included, through the Molyneaux general store, and the markup was nothing to be sneezed at.
But there was no way around the costs. LeFou pored over his father's small library of brewing manuals and personal notes, and wracked his brain to remember everything he had been taught in his younger days. He couldn't afford to take his time and conduct small experiments, so his first batches were done in full-sized cauldrons (luckily the big house had a big cellar to match) and shared with the villagers and Royal Guard, who had proclaimed them of good quality ("And a damn sight better than that wretched Aglionby stuff," Nicodeus had declared). Thus encouraged, LeFou devoted himself to his work, producing small kegs of ales, beers, stouts, and even that amalgam known as "entire" which combined the flavors of beer, ale, and twopenny, and selling them to the general store to be in turn sold to merchants visiting from neighboring locales. It was in his favor that many people still linked the name LeFou with fine ales.
His greatest crutch, however, had always remained Stella. It was a hindrance to never be able to leave home for more than a day at a time, and at last LeFou had resolved that she must either be broken, or put down. There was no other way around it. And so he had started spending some time every day between breakfast and lunch trying to get Stella to allow him on her back. He had never exhausted more time tending to bruises and minor sprains in his life, and that was certainly saying something. But what LeFou had just told Bain and Bernaud was correct: this time had been the longest he had stayed on since he began the training, and that knowledge had him optimistic.
"So, what have we got today?" Bain greeted LeFou jovially, as the latter entered the taproom through the back door, bravely trying to hide a slight limp.
"A dark single-beer," replied LeFou, as Bernaud fetched three mugs from behind the bar. "It's bitter."
"That means it's merely exceptional. What a shame," replied the older archer with a grin, filling the mugs as LeFou carefully climbed into a chair. "Steady on, my friend. That horse looks to be aiming to be the one to break you."
LeFou waved the remark off airily as Bernaud served the drinks. "She's not the only female in this town trying to do that," he couldn't help himself.
Bain nearly choked on his beer. "My God, is it that bad?" he gasped, between coughs.
LeFou pulled his mug towards himself. "They've started asking for commitment."
"All three?"
"Yep," replied the brewer after taking a drink. "They had me up against the wall of the general store the other day, demanding that I choose. Madame Boulanger had to rescue me."
Bernaud laughed and slapped his knee. "Christ in a carriage, boy! Those triplets are real lookers! Don't you like any of them?"
LeFou rolled his eyes. "Sure, I like them," he said, "but...I don't know...it's a little soon to be asking me to pick just one. I still have trouble remembering which one is allergic to gooseberries."
Bain snorted into his beer. "Well you'd better start getting used to that kind of treatment," he said. "You're a hot commodity in this little village."
It was true. LeFou was one of the very few unmarried young men in Molyneaux, and his recent acquisition of wealth and a promising business had won him more positive attention than he had ever hoped to receive in his whole life. Like it or not, LeFou was currently the most eligible bachelor in town. The Fourreur triplets were keenly aware of this, and had taken to whisking him away on moonlit walks and the like every chance they got. In the past two months LeFou had become well acquainted with the fairer sex. Frankly, it made his head spin a little.
"Hasn't anybody ever heard of commuting?" was all LeFou could come up with. "This isn't the only village in the Principality with bachelors in it. Besides, I have other things to worry about."
"The locals still giving you grief?"
"To put it mildly. I won't reopen the tavern."
"They should be content with what you've already offered them," Bernaud said. "The same system that worked for Ol' Harbin all those years ago."
Like his father, LeFou had finally opted to allow the village men to drop by pretty much whenever they wanted to have drinks in the taproom, paying by trades of services or small donations of money as they saw fit. This suited LeFou just fine (especially as one of the best services he received was home-cooked meals), but it did get a little tedious having people knocking on his door day and night looking for hospitality. He didn't always let them in for the sake of a little privacy, and the men often grumbled that they missed the tavern. But LeFou was adamant: he didn't want to run the place alone, and now that he'd finally gotten his house back, he didn't want to hire people to run it, either.
"But it seems like every man in town wants at least one drink every day - except Sunday, of course," said LeFou. "I can't keep up."
"You know what you should do," spoke up Bain, after draining his beer. "Bottle the stuff. Like they do in the big cities. Let people just buy it that way and drink it at home and give you some peace and quiet. Let their wives worry."
"Bottling is too expensive," LeFou argued. "The bottles alone cost a mint. I couldn't foot it."
"Make your customers reimburse you."
"This isn't a wealthy town, Bain. The men wouldn't go for it."
"Well, heck," said Bernaud. "We can get you bottles. The Palace buys bottled wine as well as kegged. The empties often just sit around, anyways."
LeFou thought about it. "The problem with that is once you open a bottle of ale, you have to finish it in one sitting. I can just hear the men now, fighting over whose turn it is to buy, and who's going to share with who." He shook his head. "No, I think it would cause more problems than it solves. It wasn't a bad idea, though."
Bain shrugged as he went for seconds. "What you need is some small bottles," he mused aloud.
"Say, I've seen some short bottles," broke in Bernaud suddenly. "Empty ones, in a crate, in the wine cellar. Probably been down there for decades, don't know where they came from. We'll bring some by tomorrow."
"Explain it again," said Denis, intrigued.
"Okay." LeFou pulled one of the short ale-filled, corked bottles out of the small wooden crate on the counter in front of him. "Each of these little bottles holds enough ale for one man. Six of them fit in a crate." He replaced the bottle alongside its five companions to demonstrate. "Everyone takes a crate, and every Monday stops by the taproom to get the bottles filled. Every man gets his ale, six days a week, and I get to go to bed early." He looked up anxiously and waited for a verdict.
Bertram picked up one the little bottles and held it to the light. "Yeah," he said slowly. "I think so. What say you fellows?"
"I'm game," said Hermes. The other men murmured a satisfied agreement.
"Now, don't you go breaking any of these bottles," LeFou said as he passed out the crates, "or your weeks are going to suddenly seem a lot longer."
"Say LeFou," remarked Denis as he collected his crate. "This is a pretty good invention. Every brewer should sell these."
"Nah," disagreed LeFou. "It would never catch on."