CHAPTER 6: In which the Capets undertake a change of address.
The fire had been safely put out. Belle and Beast now clung protectively to one another as they spoke to the Parisian police inspectors — a peculiar situation, neither being accustomed to a city that provided its own law enforcement. It was positively strange to have officers of the law who attended to these matters. The Prince threw people in his own dungeon if there was trouble, and Belle's villagers would resort to mob violence when the need arose.
The supposition of the police was that the malefactors had been thieves who intended to rob the wealthy couple.
"But why would they shoot at us?" asked Belle, trying to hold her dress together after it had torn in the struggle.
"Because," said the police inspector, "The penalty is the same for a robbery as for a murder, but one might avoid capture for both with the latter action."
The door of the suite was left open. Suddenly, in a burst, the Marquise Murderella and Mantua Gargantua entered. They were clearly aware of the situation and had arrived worried.
"Beast! Beauty!" cried Gargantua. "We were heading home when the reports broke out! Are you alright?"
"We have extra guns if you need them!" declared Murderella helpfully, dumping several from her reticule onto the tabletop, along with a few other interesting weapons.
The inspector rose to leave. "We will look through our files, compare notes. If anyone matches the description you gave, we will let you know."
Belle and the Prince murmured some words of appreciation. The inspector left, and the two aristocrats took his place at the couple's side.
"Are you two alright?" asked Gargantua once again, sympathetically. "You look tousled."
"More than that — Beast, were you shot?" asked Murderella, horrified.
Beast's coat had a bullet hole and bloodstain on the front, near his collarbone. He seemed to regard it with little heed.
"The bullet only grazed me. I'm fine," he said dully.
"Grazed?" said Murderella, looking him over. "Some graze that makes an exit wound!" From where she stood, standing and peering over him seated, she could see where the bullet left a hole out the back of his coat.
"It must have been how the fabric sat," said Beast, a little agitated now. "I… really am fine."
Murderella let it go; if he lied, he was toughing it out remarkably well.
"We appreciate that you came to check on us," said Belle, a disturbed note evident in her voice. "But we're alright. We just want to get some rest."
"Here?" asked Gargantua.
Belle and Beast blinked stupidly, tired brains trying to reason out any other option.
"Oh, for heaven's sake, you couldn't be dreaming of remaining in this place?" said Murderella. "Come to my mansion. There is plenty of space; and you can bet I have the best armed guards in the city."
Belle and Beast exchanged a glance. They really didn't want to remain at the inn after what had happened. They asked a few more questions and ensured that it was alright for Cogsworth and Cochet to come.
Soon everything was settled. The Capets packed their things and immediately moved over to Murderella's mansion
It was a luxurious old building of scrollwork and marble. Five stories, the façade redone within the last century. Twenty four rooms total, with a grand white marble staircase that gave access to the whole of it. Velvet upholstery. Lots of fine art paintings of people being eaten by monsters. Caches of weapons were hidden in the walls, just in case of emergencies.
By the time the Capets were situated in their new rooms, daylight was upon them. Sobriety had overtaken the Prince at last, and he could process the night's events with full rationality.
The fact was, he was upset with his wife for what he perceived as recklessness on her part. He looked at her, his face betraying that he was unhappy with her. Belle received the look, heart sinking at the thought that her husband had almost been killed and now he was mad at her. She was terrified at the thought of ever losing her him again. Tears welled up in her eyes, and she let out a sob. The Prince immediately felt bad for glaring at her. His face softened as he hit the brink of tearing up himself, and he pulled her close as he could in an embrace that almost flattened her.
Tiredness finally turned to sleep, and the couple rested away the morning, clinging tight to each other. When they woke, hours later, they dressed. Downstairs they were greeted by Murderella, who acted as if it were just any other day.
The Capets had had their evening clothes pretty well ruined in the night's skirmish. Beast understood the logic of the aristocrats' flamboyant dress, and began trying to modify his coat to fit this fashion. Meanwhile, Murderella had a closet that was larger than Belle's old village home. She offered to let Belle borrow something.
The Prince entered the closet in a coat now carefully pierced with bullet holes and decorated with colorful feathers at the shoulder, befitting the wild nobility. He wondered how Belle was managing. Belle had always been the most beautiful girl in her own village — she had never needed to learn to dress well.
Entering, he found Belle and Murderella. The former was presently wearing a very plain, modest, utilitarian dress that really did make her look… rather like a schoolmarm. He forced a smile while his very sensitive eye bombarded his whole nervous system with waves of displeasure that would have had him insulting an Enchantress.
The Prince loved his wife too much to let her embarrass herself wearing that around Paris. He pretended to approve of her outfit, then immediately went searching the closet for something "even better."
"Say whatever you will about him, he has a fantastic eye," said Belle to Murderella, shrugging with a smile.
"Oh yes," said Murderella. "That painting he made proves that much. Beast, tell us about your painting?"
"What about it?" he asked, digging through mounds of silk and tulle.
"Well, what inspired it?" asked Murderella.
The Prince hesitated in answering, preferring to focus on examining two different gowns. He chose one and brought it out to Belle. "You'll look like an angel in this," he said intimately. Then turning to Murderella as Belle went behind the screen to change, he answered her.
"The painting was inspired by something I saw," he said. His voice went cold, like he was reluctant to talk. "A vision. I… I had been stabbed in the back. I really… I should not have survived it. It was unnatural for me to have survived it! But there was a moment… it was like my brain… my soul… that was what I saw. That horrible, beautiful, intense… thing. Haunting me."
Murderella was intrigued by this answer. "We have all been in peril of death, and within its sight. You captured it, and let us look it back in its eye. You gave life to death."
The Prince felt the swell of good feeling an artist gets when receiving appropriate praise for his work.
Belle listened to this as she changed into the selected gown of white gauzy cotton on her own part. She felt conflicting thoughts about this art career. On the one hand it led to her position as the wife of this handsome, intelligent ex-prince who was taking the world by storm. On the other… she had maybe been more comfortable with a sullen beast who never wanted to leave his castle. When she put on Murderella's elaborate gown, and glanced at herself in the mirror, the dress, of course, looked amazing on her — but it was unlike anything she'd ever worn before. She could see she had become part of some other world. She stepped out into full view, and both the Prince and Murderella gave approving looks.
"Do you need any weapons for it?" asked Murderella.
"Weapons?" asked Belle. But then she realized that Murderella always accessorized with weapons.
"I… could use some weapons," said the Prince.
Murderella happily began to search through a box of holsters for anything that might fit him. She produced a wide leather belt style and handed it to him.
The Prince tried it on. He examined himself in the mirror and thought he looked good. An appropriate gun was soon supplied. He didn't know how to shoot but, with it, he felt like he was one of the cool kids now.
"Sure you don't need any weapons, Beauty?" asked Murderella. "If you have another problem like last night, they could come in handy."
Belle shuddered at the thought. "I can't imagine we would be so unlucky as to be robbed every night of the week," she answered.
"I don't think they wanted to rob us," said the Prince, frowning, reflecting on the prior night's events. "You offered them whatever they wanted. And I wouldn't have stopped them if they took it. They didn't seem to want anything we had."
"Paris has been a land of monsters since the Terror," said Murderella. "And there is a fresh wave coming. There is a whole Coalition of foreign armies that are threatening to attack because of what the Emperor has done; and when people in this city get scared, they get strange. Your malefactors could have been blackguards like the ones that kidnapped Pream — it wasn't his money that was valuable to them."
Pream had not shared many fine details of his imprisonment with Beast and Belle, but they had heard enough to understand he was kept as some kind of slave. The Prince went white at the thought that the two attackers from the night before might have intended something similar for Belle.
"And I thought the wolves in the forest were bad!" said the Prince, aghast.
"The wolves are still bad. The blackguards are still bad. Nothing is made less bad just because there's something worse. In any event," said Murderella, "are we all ready to go? The opera begins in three hours and it is best to get there early."
…
Murderella's box at the opera was inhabited on this night by Humongous, Gargantua, Pream, Beast and Beauty, as well as herself. The performance was regarded as something of a background noise for the get-togethers happening in the boxes; no one was really expected to pay attention to the opera. And indeed, the harrowing tale of the attack at the inn was far more interesting to the aristocrats than Paisiello, or the increasingly overweight singers performing it.
Nevertheless, Belle had never seen an opera before, and she wished that the others would be quiet and let her enjoy the show rather than rehash the unpleasantness of the previous night. She particularly felt a connection to the opera's heroine, Proserpine, who had been kidnapped by a sinister god to become his wife. Her own sinister one, though he did not break conversation with his new friends, was seated at her side with his arm hooked through hers.
"If they were kidnappers," said Pream, legs crossed wide with his cane in his lap as he discussed the incident, "I should think they'd have tried harder to actually kidnap someone. You and the Beauty weren't seized and threatened — you were shot at. It sounds like whatever they wanted, you two didn't need to be alive for it."
"But if they weren't robbers, and weren't kidnappers," said Beast, "what else could they be? Murderers?"
"Apparently!" said Gargantua, her mother's skull staring forth morbidly in the dim light.
Belle, wanting to hear the opera and not the chit-chat, inched forward toward the edge of the box. Beast, with his arm still hooked through hers, was pulled into an awkward posture as he had to lean to accommodate her.
"It had to have been mistaken identity, then," he said to Mantua Gargantua. "We don't know anyone but you in Paris — and I should think you'd have taken us out by now."
"PERHAPS YOU HAVE OFFENDED SOMEONE," said Humongous, keeping his voice down as best he could; though at that, he still rivaled the opera singers.
"Or could it be because you're the Dauphin?" said Murderella. "I know you have not advertised that, but neither have you tried to conceal it. Simply being royal was enough to see your father 'Citizen Capet' and his wife to the guillotine. Why not you too?"
On the stage, a sturdy team of oxen were dragging out the soprano for her aria.
"But what would be the point?" protested Beast. "The monarchy is gone."
"A DEAD MAN DEALS NO BLOWS," said Humongous. "AND LET US ADD, THE KING OF FRANCE IS NEVER DEAD. IF YOUR FATHER HAS PROCEEDED TO THE NEXT REALM, YOU ARE KING — AND SHE QUEEN." He pointed to Belle, who desperately tried to focus on the stage story, brow furrowed in concentration. She had not heard a word of the conversation, in spite of Humongous's thunderous delivery. To avoid the noise of the talking she scooted forward again, the action now pulling her husband from his seat. His amazing reflexes were all that saved him from falling to the carpet.
The Prince still wasn't fully buying the aristocrats' theory. "But why now? Why not kill me ten years ago, if that was the plan?"
On stage, a passel of stagehands used pry-bars to force the baritone through the too-small entrance so he could sing his role as a sexy divinity, while ballerinas danced around him.
"Ten years ago, we were not ruled by Emperor Napoleon," answered Pream to the Prince.
And the Prince could not think of any objection to that.
After the opera, the aristocrats wanted to continue their usual carousing, but Belle was exhausted from so much socializing. She begged to be excused from it. The Prince, realizing he had perhaps not been paying as much attention to her as he ought to have, agreed it best if he and his wife retired early.
"We are unaccustomed to these late nights; and we did not get much sleep after the attack yesterday," he said apologetically.
The only difficulty was that Murderella had shared a coach with them. It was decided at last that Beast and Belle should take her coach back to her mansion, and she would ride off with Humongous, who would later see her home. This seemed agreeable to everyone. The young couple headed back to the mansion quietly, arm in arm.
When the coach paused in the street ahead of the mansion gates, Belle and Beast were unaware that they were observed by unfriendly eyes. Lucien and Luigi were on a rooftop across the street, their grey redingotes blowing in the breeze. They peered through a spyglass as the couple approached.
"It is them," said Lucien, pleased that Luigi's intelligence had correctly identified the new location of their targets. "They're arriving in a carriage. They look to be alone!"
Luigi shook his head, understanding his brother and partner in crime was suggesting they should strike immediately. "This is the mansion of the Marquise de Montsangue. She's ancien régime," he said. "If we can even get past the gates, it'll only turn into a firefight with twenty armed guards, and that's if she doesn't have the whole garden booby trapped with firebombs or some godforsaken thing."
"Ah! The Terror really did produce some clever survivors," said Lucien, putting down the spyglass. "I suppose if that's the case, the best place to strike is outside the gates, as they return home?"
"We would have to take out the coachmen, and anyone else who happens to be with them, which probably means the Marquise herself. That's a lot of bullets, even if they don't fight back — which the Marquise definitely will."
"We could lay a trap," said Lucien. "Something to distract the others in the coach long enough to get in with the one bullet required for Blondie."
If the Bonapartes were good at one thing, it was strategy. They began to plan.
…
Belle sat on the bed, still wearing Murderella's loaner dress with the too-large arms. She watched her husband as he examined himself in the mirror, fussing over the lay of his new haircut, frowning as his cowlick refused to stay down, pressing his hand against it only for it to spring back as before.
She rolled her eyes at this. It made her think of Gaston who would check his appearance mid-conversation in whatever reflective surface was around.
"Were you always known for having a good eye?" asked Belle, hesitatingly.
"I suppose," said Beast, giving up on his cowlick in despair. Good enough to offend an Enchantress, he thought, but for some reason didn't say aloud. He turned away from the mirror and moved toward his wife.
Belle was trying to articulate why this was disturbing to her. "When we first met, I didn't really imagine you that way."
Beast blushed at the memory of when he first laid eyes on her in the tower of his castle, and the recollection of what he was at that time. He felt embarrassed, recalling both his behavior and his appearance. "I don't think I had bathed in ten years. Fur was all matted… crawling on all fours… I went around in nothing but a cape…" The memory was upsetting to him. "No, at that point I was trapped in that castle — trapped in that body — trapped with animate housewares that would sing songs at me! The less I could care about how anything looked, the better off I was!" He mentally pushed it away and hurried to Belle, embracing her affectionately, plowing her to her back. "But none of that matters now. All of that's passed. I'm happy now. I'm here with you." He took her hands in his own, his face betraying a desperate grab at happiness.
Belle looked into his eyes, their vivid blue seeming sad and strained all of a sudden. She shied away, still upset.
"What's wrong?" He asked. He had done something wrong, he was sure of it.
"Do you remember the man in the red shirt, who you fought with on the rooftop?" asked Belle.
The Prince shivered. He'd been having nightmares about that guy for months. "I remember fighting with him. He… indicated he was a rival for your hand." He asked it like he hoped she would elaborate on the matter.
Belle winced in disgust. "'Rival!' He was a rude, conceited bully, who didn't care about anyone but himself. He was only interested in me for my appearance, which I did nothing to work for."
"You probably bathed at least every ten years?" said the Prince, smiling and trying too hard to make a joke.
Belle granted him a smile in return for the effort. "I just don't want to have to live like that again. With people like that all around me," she replied softly, her voice betraying sadness. "Your aristocrat friends are very concerned with appearances! Maybe they don't worry about normal aesthetics, but they care about everything superficially beautiful."
He was dismayed at the realization that she didn't like his friends. "When you've seen real ugliness, you look for beauty anywhere you can," said the Prince, trying to explain.
"What about you? You didn't have to cut your hair, or wear bullet holes in your coat, or carry a holster. And I don't think I'd call that beauty."
The Prince, seeing Belle's downcast look, immediately responded by throwing off his coat, pulling off the holster and trying to smooth back his hair. He crawled across the bed, straddling her where she laid, so she could see. "Better? If you like, I can go back to slinking around barefoot in nothing but a cape and a filthy pair of breeches."
The color was returning to Belle's cheeks. She smiled, trying to envision it.
"I can stop having the barber come, grow a great big beard…" he joked, knowing there was little chance she was going to go for this.
As a gruesome beast he had needed to groom himself and wear nice costumes to make himself more appealing. Doing the same thing as a handsome, twenty-one year old hunk just had a way of seeming like too much. But could he help what he was?
"Maybe that's a little too far," Belle replied. She reached up and he bowed his head to meet her touch. "I actually like your new haircut." She fondled the lock at his forehead that pointed itself in opposition to all the rest of his hair. It was funny how these little flaws in appearance were always what proffered the greatest charm.
The Prince could have purred at the touch. He leaned down and kissed her, his heartbeat quickening.
Belle's eyelids slid invitingly. "I suppose I should get out of Murderella's borrowed dress," she said warmly.
…