II
He had smiled as he spoke, the master-before-he-became -her-master. "I am looking," he had said, "for a caretaker. For my rather large estate."
Her memories were starting to fade one by one, but she remembered that. She could also recall with painstaking clarity the light pressure of his hand on her waist as he led her out of the echoing throne room, full of people but gravely silent, and gallantly showed her through the first door in the corridor – one which had led to the guards' chamber for as long as she had lived. Instead, she had found herself in a large, unfamiliar dining room, draped in red; looking over her shoulder she could still see a slice of the corridor of her father's castle through the open door.
Following her glance, he had laughed the shrill laugh she had heard in the throne room. "Oh, that's right," he had said and closed the door with an elaborate flourish, then opened it again like a conjuror doing a trick for her benefit – gone was the corridor; she looked out into a darkened hallway now. The last glimpse of her home had gone before she had had time to commit it to memory.
"That's all over and done with," he said. "I suggest you forget all about it. It's what I do."
She nodded, without looking at him; the moment of blind courage that had come over her in the throne room had abandoned her and she suddenly felt very alone. The word her father had used had come back to her, pounding like a heartbeat in her chest. Beast. Beast. Beast.
Impervious, he said: "I'll show you to your room." He had already turned to lead the way when she had blurted out: "What is your name?"
He whirled around as if stung. "What?" he snapped.
"What do I call you?" she asked, cringing.
He appeared to collect himself with an effort. "I'm your master now, dearie," he said. "You have no business calling me anything." A sly finger pointed at her. "But what about your name?"
A cold tingle had crept down her spine. She did not trust the gleam in his eyes, the leering quality of his smile, and she had scraped together what courage she had left. "I won't tell you," she said. "That wasn't part of our deal."
For a long moment he had been silent. Then he shrugged, and leaned in uncomfortably close to study her face with an assessing eye that made it hard to continue looking at him. "Fair enough, dearie," he said, in a voice that was almost tender. "I will call you Belle."
She had expected to wake through her first night in the castle, to spend it pacing up and down the large, musty bedroom the master had shown her to and locked securely behind her, trapped like an animal in a cage. But as it was, Belle had slept like the dead, overcome by an irresistible heaviness only moments after she had thrown herself face-down on the bed to cry – she had realized she had not even said good-bye to her father.
Waking up from blissfully dreamless sleep to the unfamiliar velvet canopy over her head and damp sheets that had wrapped around her legs while she slept was no relief. It was with a heavy feeling that she dragged herself from the bed and, by the light of a single candle, found her way to the windows. They were covered in thick damask curtains which refused to open. She tugged, then yanked; they stayed in place as if nailed down, although there were no constraints that she could see. She could not even pry her fingers between them to catch the faintest glimpse of light – or absence thereof – on the other side. It had been night when she had left her home; she had assumed it would be morning now, but there was no way of telling, and she was starting to doubt herself.
She found her door unlocked and in a craze that felt like it lasted hours she had haunted the castle with a candle in her hand, going from window to window. The place was completely, deathly silent except for her satin slippers thudding on carpets and parquet and marble as she rushed up and down broad stairs and down long, deserted corridors, starting at the sight of her own reflection in large mirrors in cavernous rooms. At first she had called for him, by lack of a name shouting "Master! Master!" until it became clear to her that he was not there. He had somehow left the house while she was asleep. She could not have said how, because the massive front door in the large hall would budge no more than the curtains did. This, then, was a part of the master's peculiar magic: his lair was completely closed off from the outside world and now she was too, like a rat in a box. In a burst of furious energy she had dashed from room to room lighting every candle and every torch she saw – although the house was so large and rambling that she was exhausted before she could have covered even a quarter. Despite her fatigue it was with a sense of rebellious satisfaction that she had stridden through the brightly illuminated red dining room. Let this be the sight to greet the master when he returned! She had left every single light burning when she retreated to her bedroom to rest. She would not have cared if the whole house had burned down.
When Belle awoke again, for a few moments it seemed as if she had dreamed waking up before. A single candle burned by the side of her bed; the rest of her room was drenched in darkness. She sat up as another wave of defeat rolled over her, and with slow movements she had gone to the kitchens, where – although the kitchens were as dark and unused as the rest of the house – she had found the larders stocked to overflowing: shelves weighed down with loaves of bread and round cheeses, great sacks of flour and sugar, bowls of eggs, round barrels of butter and sides of mutton and beef, vats of ale and racks upon racks of wine bottles. She had eaten, although she wasn't hungry. It had done nothing about the empty, desolate feeling.
Upon returning she was startled to find the master in the red dining room as if he had materialized out of thin air, his small slim frame standing by the large, spindly spinning wheel that perched in the corner. His back was turned towards her, and he turned the wheel slowly with one hand, speaking almost as if to himself. But she heard every word clearly across the room.
"I trust you won't waste your time again, dearie," he said. "We didn't strike a deal for nothing."
And so Belle had gotten to work, as he had instructed. She fetched straw, large bundles of it, from the storage rooms to stack neatly beside spinning wheel, and lugged the bundles of spun gold to the last in a series of twenty-six rooms, piled floor to ceiling with riches that would have fed her father's duchy for a year. She wandered among the metallically gleaming piles indifferently; the gold was as meaningful in this house as the straw. She cleaned, dusting and brushing away cobwebs and mopping endless stretches of stone floors. It seemed to make little difference in the massive, dark house, and the mountains of straw just seemed to replenish themselves like the food in the larders of the large kitchens. They were clearly intended to cook for an entire court once but now used only for the plain meals she prepared for herself, and the more elaborate ones she served in the red dining room when the master was home. She would walk in to find him sitting in his customary place at the head of the table as if he had always been there, his long fingers entwined in front of him. "Thank you, dearie," he would say, when she put the platters in front of him. He never ate much, however; he sat mostly in silence, eating little bites, as she stood in mute attendance by the wall waiting to clear the plates and serve tea.
Time went by, but there was no telling how much. Belle slept when she was tired, as there was no distinction to be made between night and day – the curtains were never to open and there was no clock to be found. It was as if she lived in a haunted house, and she was the ghost: a pale wraith in the yellow silk gown she had worn when she had left her home and which grew faded and threadbare, then tore. It was the only tangible reminder she had that there was a world outside this eternal gloom, and it was coming apart at the seams.
"You look atrocious," the master finally said in his drawling voice. "A princess reduced to rags. What would your father say if he knew you'd let yourself go like that?"
He had once again appeared in the dining room waiting silently for dinner, which she had served mutely as ever.
"I have no other clothes."
He waved a languid hand. "There should be some in the wardrobe in your room."
"Those belong to someone else."
"Well," he said, "she's long gone now, and as it is you're offending my eyes."
"As you wish," she said stiffly.
"My, my," he murmured, laying down his fork, "why so petulant?"
"I'm not happy here."
"Was never part of our deal." When she didn't respond, he gestured expansively. "Enlighten me, then."
"I can never leave."
"True."
"I can never get out of this house and see daylight." There was a tremor in her voice that she couldn't suppress.
He studied her closely over his entwined fingers. "I wouldn't be so sure about that," he finally said softly. "A little mouse can always find her way in and out of a big old house like this."
"How?" she whispered. "Where would a mouse find a way out?"
He laughed his odd laugh. "We are talking about a mouse, are we not? I would say, look where the cheese and the bread crumbs are."
The next time she had been in the larder she had caught sight – just as she was about to turn and leave – of something round gleaming in the deep shadows in the back of the larder. It was, she realized after a heartbeat, a brass door knob. She dropped the loaf of bread she was holding and darted forwards, moving aside the sacks of flour and the bushels of dried herbs, and uncovered a small, arched door. It had been half-concealed but she knew with instant certainty that it had not been there before.
She had held her breath as she turned the door knob, half-expecting it to be a cruel prank, to hear his high-pitched laugh behind her. But it swung open effortlessly, admitting a radiant burst from outside that blinded her even as she plunged into it, rushing through the door before it could disappear. This was how she found herself in the garden, running and stumbling blindly as her eyes adjusted to the sudden abundance of bright, white light. She was not thinking of the deal by which she had sold herself into slavery; she was, at that moment, completely determined to run and run and never return. She had cried out in despair when she hit upon the wall, ran along it in the hopes of finding a gate, and had then spotted the large ash tree with the protruding branch.
After she had realized that it was autumn outside the master's garden, she had sat at the foot of the wall for a long time. It had been winter when she left home.