JMJ
SEVEN
"We didn't know that we weren't supposed to, Master," pleaded the kitchen servants trembling before the beast.
"It's tradition," said one.
"It's important," said another.
"We've always done this, Master, please," begged yet another.
"I don't care!" the Master retorted. "I didn't order you to celebrate. There's no reason to celebrate anything ever again!"
"But, Master—" they said.
The Master banged his fist upon the wall causing a great boom and a shake. "Take it all down!"
"What about the dinner?" asked Chef Honoré.
The Master paused. "I don't care about the dinner!" he said. "Just take everything down. NOW!"
He turned around and noticed Cogsworth in the doorway. There was no reason why he should not have noticed him as he nearly tripped right over the top of the little clock, and Cogsworth let out such a yelp to be almost trodden so besides.
"Tell them!" the Master growled.
"Yes, Master, y—y—your honorableness, you're grace, my lord!" gasped Cogsworth, bowing with all humility and fear.
"And never again! Don't do anything without my permission ever AGAIN! Do you understand!? I like it all the way it IS!"
"Yes, Master," Cogsworth assured him nodding vigorously and adding another low bow. "I understand. I understand perfectly. Wholly and entirely! Never again, Master. Never again. I—I will see to it that no major under taking will occur in the castle without your knowledge or consent ever again."
"GOOD!" snarled the Master and bursting through the door he slammed it with the force of an avalanche behind him.
The kitchen servants and Cogsworth stood in bitter silence for a moment or two. Winter might as well have returned for how chilled everyone felt within their hearts as their small happiness had been wrenched away from them as it had.
Then clearing his throat Cogsworth turned to the other servants. Straightening a bit with one arm thrown behind his back he said with deep solemnity, "Well, I'm sure everyone heard the Master. Everything is to go back to its original state." And without a word of parting, Cogsworth withdrew to tell the rest of the household the unfortunate order from the Master.
#
Bong … Bong … Bong … Bong …
The faint echoes of the cathedral of Saint Clothilde brought little cheer to the castle of the once proud and powerful Prince Adam. As Easter morning dawned and the bells were at last released after their silence for the past few days the rest of the world was in celebration of new life, but the bells that rang so beautiful and joyous might as well have been the bell toll of a funeral for those who heard it from the castle.
At the small kitchen window Mrs. Potts looked out at the dawning of the sun over the wall, and never before had she felt such a prisoner during this curse. A heavy sigh escaped her and she closed her eyes.
Peeking out of the cupboard, which now served as the bedroom of the Potts children, Chip saw his mother in her distress, and bounding out onto the countertop he pressed into his mother's side.
"Are we never going to have any holidays ever again?" he asked.
"Oh, love," his mother said. "It's still a holiday without the decorations and the music."
"Who says we can't have a little music?" demanded Lumiere.
"The Master, Lumiere," hissed Cogsworth quite darkly and dangerously from where he had been sulking in a corner. "We are to be in a perpetual state of eternal mourning until the Master says otherwise. If we still wore clothes we could all be wearing black. In fact we could all just paint ourselves, come to think of it, and be done with it. Or why don't we all throw sheets over our heads as the pieces of furnishing we are in the abandoned house in which we dwell."
"If we were quiet we could celebrate a little," said Lumiere. "Come on, Cogsworth, I hear it in your voice. You don't like this anymore than the rest of us."
"Of course, I don't like it. What do you think I am? But the Master said—" Cogsworth rubbed his temple. "No …" He looked up again. "The Master has decreed in the most explicit terms that we are to remain miserable every second of our lives!"
Chip looked up wide-eyed at his mother.
"Please, you two, don't start an argument," said Mrs. Potts sadly.
"I'm not trying to start one," said Cogsworth still glaring at Lumiere giving him a horrible face in return rather than turning to Mrs. Potts. "I was just fine until this, this, this … oh …" He looked away with a huff and muttered, "I knew it was a bad idea. Why do I let you talk me into these things?"
"I talk you into them?" Lumiere demanded.
Cogsworth sighed, and true to his word, he did not argue back … for now.
"The Master didn't exactly say we couldn't have any music," said Babette suddenly from out of nowhere at Lumiere's side.
"That is true," said Lumiere now smiling warmly upon Babette.
A sigh burst out of Cogsworth and he rolled his eyes.
"Oh, please, Jacque, please at least you sing something," said Babette. "I'm so weary of it being so cheerless. Even if he did command such a thing as no music how could such a thing be obeyed? S'il vous plaît?"
"Ah, là, là! Isn't she right though, mes amis?" said Lumiere throwing his arm around the Duster. "Some commands don't need to be obeyed, and in fact shouldn't be obeyed."
"I think that's only if the order is a sin," muttered Cogsworth.
"And this is not a sin?" demanded Lumiere. "Being forced to not celebrate on such a beautiful spring morning as this? To force ourselves to be glum and grey day after day?"
"Oh, it sounds like a song already, Lumiere," sighed the silly Babette in a full passionate performance worthy of Shakespeare.
The pair of them should have gone into theatre rather than become castle servants, thought Cogsworth as he watched them wearily, but then both Babette and Lumiere had more or less inherited their positions. They had at least done that correctly.
"I'm not going to argue with you, Lumiere," said Cogsworth, "but I'm not going against the Master's orders for your entertainment either. No party. If you want to sing go on ahead, but there will be absolutely no festivities of any sort. End of discussion. That's final. I promised the Master I would keep things in the spirit of the situation, and that's what I intend to do."
Lumiere rolled his eyes this time. "What a flustered, old pheasant you are," he grumbled.
Growing tired of the conversation himself, Chip leapt down from the windowsill and bounded back to the cupboard. He peeked inside and saw that most of his siblings were in the process of waking. At first he intended upon grabbing one of his brothers, but he decided to come back for that later when he was distracted by the bark of the dog.
"Biscuit!" he exclaimed. "Hey, boy. Get ready to catch me, alright?"
The dog barked, and trusting the dog would do as he always did when Chip or his brothers and sisters leapt off the counter, Chip took off without fear and landed perfectly upon Biscuit's back.
"Good boy!" said Chip. "C'mon, let's go see what's going on outside."
"Be careful!" called Mrs. Potts after him.
"Don't worry, Maman, I will!"
As the dog trotted out of the kitchen there was another group of servants sitting also quite gloomy in a corner in the dining room. Chip paid them no mind; though the dog cocked a look toward them curiously before reaching the corridor on the other side of the room.
The group of servants in the dining room was having quite a different discussion from the ones in the kitchen, and they spoke far softer and more mysterious in manner. Though, many servants did speak in hushed tones nowadays almost to simply fit the mood of the castle with nothing truly serious spoken about, in this particular case there was something up.
"And what is so fascinating about an invitation that isn't ours?" asked the Sauce Pan quietly.
"I will tell you, monsieur," said a softly spoken Pen nudging another companion, a Doorstop who looked around in a suspicious manner as if afraid of being overheard. "The House of Count Vespasien is very near here."
"So?" asked the Sauce Pan.
"It's only on the other side of the wood," said the Doorstop, whose voice was like that of a toad's and he kept constantly looking upwards in a rather uncomfortable looking manner as he had no neck with which to perform this task well, and he was the smallest of the company present in the shadow just beneath the window.
"Yes, yes, I know that, but what does that matter?" asked the Sauce Pan with a laugh.
"Shhhh," said an Inkwell, the assistant of the Pen, in a very quiet, raspy voice. "The Master was rarely invited to the Count Vespasien's house and the Master rarely invited him in return. They weren't on good speaking terms."
"No, never!" agreed a Broom and behind her, two Dusters and a Mousetrap shook their heads.
"Shhhh," said the Inkwell again.
"Don't shush me, Monsieur Goutte," said the Broom.
"But many others will attend," said the Pen, propping up the invitation for all to see against the wall. "And I know for a fact that Count Vespasien will have his party outside. Everyone does this time of year. I know every nobleman and noblewoman in all of France, what parties they have, who goes to them. It had at one time been my duty to know who were on good terms with one another."
"Yes, and your idleness seems to have affected you, Monsieur de l'Écriture," sighed the Inkwell, bowing his head, but he was careful to keep the thick black ink inside him from dripping onto the floor.
"Faux!" said the Pen. "I have not been idle, but I have been thinking, and quite a lot, and my thought is that if we are ever going to end this curse we must do it ourselves."
"Ah, the pen is mightier than the sword," laughed the Sauce Pan.
The Pen was not amused, though some of the others were.
"Now, now," growled the Pen with some annoyance. "Don't you want to break the curse?"
"Of course we do," said the Sauce Pan.
"Then," said the Pen. "I suggest you listen to my plan. I've already discussed it with Monsieur la Chaise who has had the convenience of turning into a one man carriage. We know perfectly well that a girl would never come here in a million years."
The Inkwell shook his head and sighed and exchanged glances with the hesitant Doorstop.
"Yes," the others pressed as they leaned in closer.
"Then we bring the girl to us …" whispered the Pen.
Silence.
"But the girl has to love the Master," said the Broom after a time in a very hushed tone now.
"We can orchestrate the right circumstances," said the Pen. "I've already made a design. Drawn it out, wrote it down. M. Goutte was there the whole time and knows exactly what I mean."
Again all the Inkwell could do was shake his head, and this time he did not keep in the drip of ink which splat upon the floor. He straightened himself immediately.
"If the Master were to rescue said maiden from the party of Count Vespasien," the Pen went on. "Then that would start a chain reaction, which I have written here and here." He unrolled two pieces of paper which the Inkwell had held previously under his feet.
The others were doubtful, but the Pen had chosen his audience well and knew they would go along, even if he did not entirely trust his assistant Monsieur Goutte.
"I've seen the rose," said the Pen. "Its petals are already wilting; though, I've heard tell that we get twenty-one years before the curse becomes permanent. Does anyone want to take that chance that it's sooner? And if anything should happen to the rose when the Master is in one of his tempers, what then? No, mes amis. No. We will end it now. Why should we suffer for the Master's temper in any of this? It is through no fault of ours what has happened to the castle."
This small group was especially desperate, especially fearful, and not the brightest people in the household to boot. He had them right where he wanted them, and the little servant who impressed others with a fine vocabulary and a strong and imposing manner with his otherwise calm quiet voice he sounded certain everything would go exactly as he planned. He meant no true harm, it must be stated. He was admittedly just as desperate, fearful and foolish as his followers.
