This is not the way I thought this chapter was going to go. However, evidently the information I had about how it was supposed to go failed to excite me enough to write it, and I'm sure it would therefore not have excited you enough to carry on reading. It is therefore for our mutual benefit that I present you with... drumroll please... an unscheduled plot twist!
Belle's mind raced. She'd known this moment was coming – in fact, she'd banked on it as a means of offering her husband some perspective – but there, in that quiet moment, she wasn't prepared for it. She searched desperately for something to say but all she could think was that something unspeakably awful was about to happen and it was all her fault. Beside her, the Beast stiffened and she felt his heart rate increase. She searched the man's wizened face, wondering if he would cry out or run away, if he had companions who would come running, what would happen if they did, when suddenly, and to her surprise, recognition dawned.
"Monsieur Richard?" she found herself asking.
The man, who had been studying the Beast with what now looked like almost passive interest, returned his attention to her. "That's not the little Beauty?" he asked, his face catching cautiously alight.
"It is!" Belle exclaimed.
"And with a..." he squinted, then took a stab at it. "An unusual species of cow?"
Belle flushed. The Beast let out an indignant growl.
"Actually, he's..."
"I'm her husband," the Beast interjected, his voice strained with equal parts relief and humiliation.
Belle took his paw. Best to get this over with quickly. "M. Richard, my husband. Darling, this is Joseph Richard, a merchant from the village where I grew up." In spite of the almost tangible tension, she smiled a little at the memory. "He used to bring back ribbons and little trinkets from his travels for all the children."
The old man gave a smile that could best be described as memorable. "And of all of them, our little Belle was the prettiest. The day that father of yours packed you into that cart and drove out of town broke a lot of young hearts, I don't mind telling you." At this point, Belle made to interject, but the man was of a species whose train of thought was not easily derailed. "So, husband, eh?" He leaned over to peer at the Beast again. "Well, there's no accounting for taste, I suppose. Ours is not to reason why. Judge not yest ye be mauled and eaten, that's my philosophy." Here, he paused and scratched his neck for a moment. "Oh, yes, and it's Joe the Bandit now."
Belle frowned, slightly at sea. "What is?"
"My name. Got to thinking, after a while, that merchanting is a mug's game. There I'd be, having expended money and effort to haul back who knows what from who knows where, and suddenly a man with a false beard and a gun leaps out from behind a rock and demands the lot. Well, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em, that's what I say."
"So you're a thief?"
"In a manner of speaking, yes. Not been doing too well at it so far, though. Need to get myself a cart and a couple of strong horses, which is why you find me examining yours. But seeing as it's you and you say this, er, this individual is your husband, I shall make my excuses and be on my way." He made to withdraw. Then, struck by a new idea, "Here, I tell you what, our Jacques's out here. You wouldn't like to come out and say Bonjour, would you?"
Belle remembered Jacques, his son, as a scrawny boy of sixteen with whom she had shared a desk, now and then, at the little school the village children had attended when their chores allowed. "Yes, alright. But," with a backward glance at her husband, "give us a moment."
"Righto," said Joe the Bandit, and he vanished.
She turned round to face the Beast. She couldn't read his expression. After a moment of trying, she said: "Are you alright?"
"I can't believe it," he said.
"We can leave if you like. I can renew childhood acquaintances any time. But to think what could have happened..."
The Beast wasn't listening. "He wasn't afraid." He smiled, making eye contact with her. "He wasn't afraid!"
Belle smiled back, elation washing over her as she noted not only the implications of this chance encounter but that this was the first smile she had had from her husband in far too long. "You see!" she said. "I told you!" She hesitated. "I should also tell you, though, in the interests of full disclosure –" a princess word she didn't get to use often enough "—that our friend Joe has always been as mad as a bag of frogs."
"Well, you did say you weren't the only one."
Belle thumped him playfully on a sinewy shoulder, laughing louder than the situation required because it felt so good after being, for so long, so close to tears. They enjoyed the moment thoroughly until it passed.
"Let's go and meet Jacques," he said.
"Who?" said Belle, inattentive.
"I don't know, he said to get out and see Jacques. Let's go and see Jacques."
Belle sobered up. "Are you sure?"
"Are you questioning a prince?"
Belle rolled her eyes, levity overcoming surprise. "Alright, let's go and see Jacques."
They fumbled together with the cloth for a moment before emerging, blinking, into the daylight. A moment later Joe the Bandit emerged from the murky depths of the trees that lined the road, a young man in tow. The years had been kinder to Jacques than to his father and he was now a tall, well-built man of twenty with a sharp, handsome face and a strong jaw. His face, like that of his father, illuminated when he caught sight of Belle and he approached her with open arms, folding her into an embrace and kissing her on both cheeks.
"Little Beauty!" he exclaimed. "It's been too long."
"Jacques," Belle smiled. "How are you?"
"Not as good as you! I heard you got married."
"I did." She turned, still smiling, and indicated the hulking form of the Beast. "This is my husband."
Jacques frowned and smiled simultaneously, the look of a man who is aware that he is to be the victim of a practical joke in the very near future and doesn't want to appear embarrassed by it. "I see." Then, deciding to go along with it, he swept a low, mocking bow. "Good afternoon, Mr Belle. How are you today?"
"FIne, thank you," growled the Beast. "And I'm a p-"
"Pierre!" Belle interrupted. "His name is Pierre."
Jacques straightened up and made to exchange glances with his father, but the old man had been distracted by something shiny. He coughed, then pasted a fresh smile across his features. "I hope you're not in a terrible hurry? Papa and I thought you might join us for lunch."
It was fairly late in the evening that it occurred to the Beast that, for all the attention that his selfishness had been getting of late, there was one crucial aspect of it that had been criminally overlooked. Namely, that he had been keeping Cogsworth to himself these years when these peasants could have benefitted immeasurably from his boundless wisdom on the subject of entertaining. In particular – and here, following one particularly memorable incident in his youth, he could quote from memory – "It is essential to entertain all of your guests, not only the ones you would most like to kiss, your highness." He could not, for a moment, object to the assessment that, of the assembled company, Belle was the most kissable. Indeed, in a concerted effort to be fair to his wife, he had been studiously ignoring Jacques' flirtatious behaviour towards her throughout their extended visit. No one could accuse her of reciprocating and, he told himself, if it didn't bother her it shouldn't bother him. What was bothering him was... Well, loathsome as this shape was, it carried one or two advantages, among them a heightened sense of trouble. He could sense it now, a movement in the air, a whisper among the trees. Attuned to danger, he observed everything with a focused intensity – a glance between the two men who where, after all, all but strangers to them, a brief disappearance by one or other of them, an inexplicable sound or movement in the distance.
Later, he would catalogue these, the clues, the signs he forced himself to overlook. He would take them out to examine them, to press them hard against the walls of his consciousness until he had tasted the pain of every one of them.
He would remember, in a quiet moment, muttering to Belle "Something doesn't feel right. I don't trust them." And he would remember her easy calm as she smiled and said, "Then trust me."
He would remember lying down beside her as night fell, curled around the tight little form of her sleeping body, breathing her scent as he faded into unconsciousness.
He would remember being awoken by her scream to find five men binding him while two more dragged her away, his last glimpse of her face, pale in the moonlight, wet with tears, strained in fear and anger.
Most of all, though, he would remember tearing himself free of his bonds and seizing one of the men around the throat, a claw poised to drain his life's blood.
"Let her go!" he roared. "Let her go or I kill him!"
The man spat in his face and grinned. "Ten francs says you won't."
He didn't. He couldn't. And he hated himself for it.
A moment later something very fast and very heavy hit him on the head. After that, all was darkness.
OK. That wasn't perfect. I won't say how it wasn't because there's a chance some of you enjoyed it anyway and I don't want to spoil it. What I will say is that I've probably thought of anything negative you have to say about it and I tried very hard not to do it that way but eventually I just had to go ahead and write something. And I can at least give you my personal assurance that it's a lot less boring than it would have been otherwise. And that I'm really looking forward to writing the next chapter.