The Clockmaker's Daughter

Chapter 3

Belle’s hands slipped, spilling the jug of water. She sighed, rubbing her eyes, bending down to wipe the mess with her apron. She hadn’t been able to sleep for a moment, waiting to receive her father from the awful storm, worried sick that the worst had happened. When she stood, out the window she saw a horse with a rider coming towards their house from a distance.

Oh thank heavens!

Belle ran out the house to meet her father. As he drew nearer, she found his horse laden with bushels of roses.

“I was so worried about you Papa!” she said, running into his arms as he descended the horse. “What happened to you? Whose horse is this? What happened to Creme? How on earth did you get so many roses?!”

“Come my dear,” Leon said, his eyes downcast, his voice soft and low. “Make me some coffee and I shall tell you the entire tale.”

Belle prepared some bread and butter and poured hot coffee for the both of them as Leon recounted the details of the miserable day at market, the storm, the palace, and the dinner with the mysterious lord.

“Then I saw his face,” Leon said, shuddering. “Hardly anything left as a man.”

“What of this debt you owe him?” Belle asked. “How are we going to repay him?”

Leon was silent.

“He’s a cruel creature. A life for a life, he said. He said to pay him back by sending you in my place to be a servant in his palace, to work off the debt,” Leon said. “I refused, saying there must be some other arrangement.”

Leon paused, shuddering again.

“He flew into such a rage from that. I thought he might actually do me violence. He said, ‘A life for a life, there is no other payment.’ In exchange for my life I must give up my happiness.”

Belle was silent. She looked at the mounds of rose bouquets that were piled up by their door, filling the entryway of their humble home all the way up to the ceiling. She walked over to inspect them more carefully. Large, beautiful, perfect blooms, long, healthy stems, leaves without any sign of insects, long sharp thorns.

“I will go,” she said.

“Belle!” Leon started up from his seat.

“You said he only had two servants in that large palace,” she said. “You say he is cruel but perhaps he’s merely lonely. I will go and remind him of society again. He will learn compassion and I will work for him until the debt is paid off.”

She held up one of the roses in her hand.

“Someone who can care for a flower as delicate as a rose and produce blooms like this must have some tenderness in him.”

“This isn’t like another one of your stories Belle! Remember, you are a young girl and he is not just a man but worse than a man. I can’t allow you to do this,” Leon said, grabbing hold of her hands. 

Belle sharply inhaled in pain as he unintentionally pricked her on one of the thorns of the rose. He immediately let go. She quickly sucked on the little blood that was trickling out her finger, looking back up to her father, her eyes full of determination.

“You still have a debt to pay,” she responded. “And if he is truly as cruel as you say he is, he will find us and his horse and make us pay worse. I will go and I will change his mind. I will come back home, I promise.”

Belle’s voice was firm and clear. Leon knew when she spoke this way, there was no changing her mind.

“You are too much like your mother,” he sighed.