JMJ

TWELVE

As fast as his legs could carry him, Chip raced through the classical corridors, white and shining as of old beset with angels and holy figures, heroes and ladies, and intensely baroque artistic endeavors and regal animals. As a child, of course, he paid little attention to the décor, but he was one year older. Another year older a month or so ago, and he could hardly believe what he wanted to tell his mother.

"Hey, Maman! Maman! Guess what! Guess what!"

Weaving his way into the kitchen with boyish agility he at last found his mother about to leave with her cart.

"Guess what, guess what!" Chip gasped.

Mrs. Potts laughed. "Alright, what is it, Chip?" she said. "I heard you clear down the hall."

"I measured myself against this one painting I used to measure myself at, and I grew Maman! I grew at least this much!" and he held out his pointer and thumb to so at least two inches worth of height and as far as his thumb and finger to stretch apart, which was an exaggeration, but the intent was all that mattered.

"That's wonderful, dear," said Mrs. Potts with a stroke of a hand through his hair. "Now you can grow to be the finest young man in all of France."

"Really?" said Chip, then he paused. "Isn't that the Master though?"

Again Mrs. Potts laughed a little louder this time, and she just managed to give the little boy a peck upon his moppish head before he darted off again to tell his siblings the good news as well about his growth. He almost ran into Cogsworth as he came in through the door. Cogsworth jumped with a start to get out of the way just in time before the collision.

"What's the whirlwind all about?" he demanded not in true annoyance as he glanced behind him to where the boy had run off. None of the servants had lost all their gaiety at their own freedom, and most never would until moment of death.

"He's just excited," said Mrs. Potts. "It's a year to the day since we've become ourselves again, and dear Chip's finally realized that he won't be a child forever."

"Yes," agreed Cogsworth now that the topic had been brought up, and he furrowed his brow in thought of the idea, "I suppose it was rather strange that way for the children who had to spend twenty-one years without aging not even in mind. I had not thought of that much."

"We were all in just as strange a predicament," Mrs. Potts said.

Cogsworth gave a sage nod. "True, true."

He glanced just the briefest at his pocket watch; though not truly to check the time so much as just a visual reminder of what had happened to him. Not that he needed one, but it felt right to keep it on his person, that very same watch working as good as new.

Certainly it had been what had merged with his body during the curse even if he had turned into a clock rather than a watch, for the clock hands were exactly the same though in miniature as those that had been on his own face for years and years. Sometimes at night he found it eerily silent without the ticking of that pendulum echoing in his head so that he set the watch open upon his bed stand to hear its soft ticking to ease what unfortunately had become normal before he could fade out the need for its sound entirely. But whenever he awoke though a year had passed, he still awoke with the greatest smile to find himself in his own bed and that sleep had to be wiped away and that he had to wash his face and dress himself. Oh, the pleasure in such ordinary things that had been forbidden to him for so long!

Clearing his throat and straightening his posture, he clipped the watch closed and said, "Now then, how is supper getting along?"

"You'll have to ask Chef Honoré," Mrs. Potts replied. "But I'm certain it's all going well."

"Of course!" said Cogsworth. "I'm sure he's doing his finest for the anniversary of our de-enchantment." He chuckled. "Minus, of course, the wedding anniversary of the dear Master Adam and Princess Belle, next week, naturally." He stepped further into the kitchen to speak to the very busy Chef Honoré and his cooks, but before he went more than a couple steps he stopped suddenly and swiveled around. "Speaking of weddings, by the way, Lumiere and Elizabeth are coming back today aren't they, Mrs. Potts?"

"I believe so," said Mrs. Potts. "If not today then very early next week."

They had been married months ago but had been allowed a leave of quite a long time to enjoy themselves. Paris. How could it not be Paris? But they had promised to come back and work their hardest upon their return. The Master, regardless, was more than willing to give this present to the pair, for he was, since he had become human again, quite a new man from the one he had been before, and he realized how much Lumiere, Cogsworth, Mrs. Potts, and many of the other servants had gone far above and beyond the call of duty and how much they had put up with him and tried desperately to help him during his enchantment. He had felt it a simple enough gift to give Lumiere and his new wife paid leave to their favorite city.

"Well, I know," said Cogsworth in a rather serious matter, "that they would not dare to miss next week."

He stepped forward again toward the cooks, but Honoré noticing the head of the household, called out in his booming voice, "Everything is going well, Merci beaucoup!"

"Ah, very good," said Cogsworth and turned to leave to finish his rounds.

In a corridor not far from the kitchen Cogsworth was surprised to find Maurice standing at the window. Well, after all, there were plenty of more comfortable places to situate one's self, but he would have done nothing but given him a pleasant, "Sir" had not Maurice suddenly spoke.

"I can't believe how lucky we are, even after a whole year," Maurice said this in reference to himself and his daughter.

Cogsworth stopped as this declaration seemed in part to be directed at him.

"Can you believe this?" Maurice went on. "I could not have hoped for a better ending in all the world for Belle!"

Maurice then turned his gaze back with a happy smile out the window at Princess Belle and her husband. Leaning into the windowsill with his chin resting upon his palm he let out the most content fatherly sigh, and although this was something Cogsworth could not exactly relate to having no children of his own, he followed the gaze of this happy father with a smile of his own out toward the handsome and now rather dashing Prince Adam in the garden with his beautiful wife Belle playing with Biscuit, and just enjoying each other's company among the young spring flowers just poking out after their long winter's hibernation.

Then he glanced again at Maurice for a moment and could not help but also think that it was far past a year now since he had first been introduced to Maurice under the odd circumstances that they were. He had vowed long before their meeting never to get his hopes up. Even so how could he have possibly imagined how after all his struggles to make Maurice leave the castle so that he would not be locked up or worse that Maurice had been the key, indirect though it may have been, to the freedom of the Master and the freedom of the entire household?

He shook his head and the thoughts out of it.

In reply to what Maurice had just recently, Cogsworth opened his mouth so say something, but just as he began Maurice spoke again.

"I'm the luckiest man to see his daughter so happy," Maurice went on; being of a lower class originally he ever spoke to the servants as equals, and never grew used to the formality of the castle. In the old days this would have annoyed Cogsworth to no end, but not anymore. He was just happy to be alive, and if the little, old man wanted to have informal conversations with the servants in his simple, little way who could complain now? "Can anything be more amazing than all this?"

Cogsworth laughed. "Not that I can think of, sir. Nothing at all."

"Oh!" Maurice said, thinking about what had just transpired and he looked a little embarrassed. "Yes, I guess it may be more amazing for all of you more than it is for me, isn't it? Sorry, I didn't think—"

With a firm shake of his head Cogsworth said, "Please, monsieur, please! Think nothing of it, really. There's absolutely nothing, nothing whatsoever to apologize for. We're all quite happy with how things have turned out and cannot believe it ourselves. In fact the entire castle is most grateful to you."

"To me?" asked Maurice.

"Of course, monsieur," said Cogsworth. "To both you and Princess Belle we are ever indebted, and not just because of the breaking of the enchantment, but for the good you and your daughter have brought to this castle and to Master Adam. The castle is more fully alive than it ever was before the enchantment for as long as I can remember, and though one might say that it is only that the castle is still giddy with its release from the curse, it could never have happened without you two."

"Well," said Maurice a little shyly now, "it wouldn't've had to have been us."

"If I may, monsieur, it most certainly did have to be you and your daughter, for beyond the fact that it was fated that the princess arrived at the very last possible moment before we would have been trapped forever, there could never be a better suited for each other."

"I agree!" said Maurice. "Oh!" he gasped leaping around. "And do you know that I just was told what she's going to name the baby."

There was plenty of time before the baby would be born and for name ideas to be changed, but Cogsworth in patience told him that, no, he was afraid he had not.

He started quickly at first: "She says if it's a boy she will name him after, well, me, actually, but I hope it's a girl," Maurice said and smiled before he continued more slowly, "She'll name her after her mother then."

Cogsworth smiled and nodded not quite certain how to answer.

"Belle is quite like her mother, you know," Maurice went on. "Beautiful, thoughtful, and a natural grace. I would love to hear the name 'Monique' used for her daughter."

Cogsworth at first smiled and nodded some more, "Yes, sir, 'Monique' is an exceptional—" The smile vanished, and Cogsworth's eyes grew wide as he registered what had just been said. "Wh—wh—Excuse me, monsieur?" he said with a bow.

"What is it?" asked Maurice. "Did I say something wrong?"

"No!" gasped Cogsworth. "No, please, I … Did you say, monsieur, that your wife, begging your pardon, that her name was 'Monique'?"

"Well, yes …" said Maurice.

There are a thousand Moniques in France, Basile, Cogsworth drilled to himself. Perhaps ten thousand Moniques in France. It's a coincidence! A pure coincidence.

"Is that …?" Maurice started to say.

"No, no, it's quite alright, monsieur, really," said Cogsworth with a nervous chuckle as he made to leave. "It's nothing, really. I beg your pardon, monsieur. It is a most admirable thing to have one's child name her children after her parents. Prince Adam himself is named after his grandfather. I beg your pardon," he then said again. "I must go, though. I have a very busy schedule."

"Oh, sure, sure …" said Maurice still a little bewildered.

But Cogsworth was not about to try to explain that the name of his wife had brought up in Cogsworth's mind a whole tale now long past. Turning around a corner or two, he paused suddenly and glanced behind him though Maurice had not been following.

It was true, Cogsworth had to admit, that when Belle had first arrived at the castle that she reminded him very much of Monique. For a few paces of the pendulum's seconds he had thought she was Monique before his mind refocused onto the excited Lumiere and reason returned to Cogsworth as he retorted that he knew quite well what Belle was. It had not been so long that he had forgotten what a girl looked like, after all, but after he and Lumiere followed her, and then led her to the tower staircase, Cogsworth had watched her take the flight up those stairs and aside from an acute pity for the young woman still practically a child, he could not help the flashback of Monique as she turned and faced the Master, the beast that one dark morning at the castle steps.

Returning to the present, Cogsworth started walking again.

It could argued that any girl would have reminded Cogsworth of Monique at that point, and yet, there was something in her voice, something in her eyes, something unmistakably Monique even if the provincial life had made belle less delicate than Monique. Had it really been that many years that Monique could have married and had a daughter? Well, twenty-one years was a long time … And there were many other questions besides that such as what had happened to the St. Gervais estate? Who was Maurice that he should marry a duke's daughter? How long had they been living in that village outside the wood?

"But another time," he told himself.

Today was a party, after all, and next week was the wedding anniversary. Cogsworth had not been exaggerating to Maurice that he had plenty to do with the orchestrating of these things, especially with the fact that they were going to invite half of France's elite to the wedding anniversary party. He was not as uptight as he had been in times past, but his duties to the castle and to the prince and princess had not changed in the least. Whatever the past, they were now all free, and he realized more importantly, that Master Adam had become someone that would have made his parents proud, and the angels, the heroes, the ladies, and holy people that guarded the castle in statuary form certainly smiled upon the handsome couple in the gardens outside.

~FIN~


NOTE: Well, that's the end. I hope you liked it despite my taking artistic license with the time frame and when the curse was broken. I had a lot of fun writing this, and I've become a little more fond of this than I thought I would. I also had some fun learning a little bit about 1700's France, which I looked up a little just to add a little flavor to the fic. I'm usually more of a Victorian girl or medieval. All this French stuff has also really made me wish I could take up French again XD. See ya! ^-^