Beautiful Beasts

2. Chrysanthème

ADAM

What does it say, that there was no grand funeral for my father? His body returned home, and he was buried on the grounds with only staff and his sons in attendance. His subjects in Villeneuve hated him because of how mercilessly he had taxed them throughout his reign. Even in the leanest years, when the villagers struggled to survive, the Duc took his due.

No one cried. I wanted to, if only to feel human, but nothing happened. My mind left the gravesite before my body was permitted to do the same.

Gaston had laughed outright at my conviction that he and I had been hexed by our dinner guest, which made me doubt my sanity. As I watched the burial, I kept replaying the conversation in which I had professed my belief in the curse. Then came the maze of trying to use one layer of my mind to analyze its other layers. Can you trust the conclusions you come to, when fear of an unsound mind is what launches this internal investigation in the first place?

I can't.

Several sleepless nights revealed to me that I would not reach peace through introspection. I decided to aim the search outward. I had been in charge of the household for two days when I ordered Lumiere to find the woman and shed some light on the mystery of her identity and powers...or lack thereof.

Gaston and I were lunching when Lumiere returned from his mission. I heard him and Cogsworth having one of their hybrid exchanges--for it was always half conversation, half argument with those two--in the foyer. It went on too long for my taste.

"Did I tell you to report to Cogsworth, or to me?" I called out, angry.

He shuffled into the dining room. "To you, Master."

"Well?"

He looked waxen. His angular face was paler than usual, and there was a sheen of nervous sweat covering it. Clumps of thin brown hair stuck to his forehead. "Her name is Agathe, and she lives at the Villeneuve edge of the forest."

"By herself?"

"She keeps some animals, Master."

"Is she known in the town?"

Lumiere looked as though he might melt into a puddle before the fire. "She is from the village and is known as a...as a, ah, medicine woman of some sort. She works with plants...herbs...the villagers say she helps them in exchange for food and other supplies sometimes."

"So she's a witch. You simply don't want to say it." I glared at Gaston, who was eating heartily as Lumiere confirmed my suspicions.

"She has no record of malevolence in the village, Your Highness. She is considered strange, to be sure, but she is often fetched in times of childbirth and--"

"And she's a witch. Who has brought some kind of curse upon our heads."

"Master--"

"How did she know Gaston's name?"

Lumiere whimpered. "I never want to be indelicate, Sire, but there is awareness of Gaston's existence in the village. He lived there until he was one."

"Still, how did she know she was looking upon Gaston that night? Why did she react so strangely?"

"I hate to be indelicate, Sire--"

"Oh, bah!" I interrupted him. "I know, I know. It's all very scandalous. You may go." I was exasperated with all his shaking and sweating and whimpering.

I heard the tussle with Cogsworth continue almost as soon as he was out of my sight.

I could feel Gaston studying me as I stabbed at my plate. "Do you believe me now?" I snapped.

"That we are cursed? No. But if you believe it, you're as good as cursed. You'll struggle under the burden of that belief."

"Have you any doubt she's a witch?"

Gaston chuckled. "Given your expensive education, I'm surprised to hear these outdated notions coming from you. She's a beggar. She came begging for employment."

I stared at him, sitting there at ease. Handsome, looking more like a noble than myself. Unafraid. Arrogant enough to make jokes about my education, the state of my mind. How I hated him at that moment!

He was still smiling, oblivious to my gathering rage. "I believe we are looking at better days ahead, not cursed ones."

"Better days for me, perhaps. My rank has risen. I won't miss Father snubbing me in favor of you."

"And I won't miss being someone's embarrassment," he shot back.

We locked eyes--two identical pairs of forget-me-not blue--and the corners of his crinkled unexpectedly. He was back to grinning. "We can argue at every meal now. We might not hear Cogsworth and Lumiere if we have our own fights."

I refused to laugh, so he laughed for both of us. "When are you taking over the West Wing?" he asked.

"I don't know," I muttered. I glugged my wine, trying to put out the fire of my anger.

"Is there a room in the East Wing I can use now, while you're rearranging?"

I wiped my mouth with my forearm. "What do you mean? Use for what?"

Gaston's smile faltered. "I thought I'd be moving in with you."

It was wicked, but I felt joy at wiping the smile off his perfect face. I went in for the kill, gratified that for once I could be the hunter. "What made you think that?"

My brother spoke slowly, as shock set in. "I thought you'd want my companionship. And that Father was the reason I was banished from the castle. He's gone now."

I twisted the knife in his side: "Why would I require your company? And Father may be gone, but the memory of my mother is not."

He looked close to crying, so I pushed on. "Why would I dishonor her memory by bringing you into the palace to live? As if you have any right to do so, the son of a common whore!"

He was frozen in place, like prey overcome with the sense of their impending death. I delivered the final blow then: "What makes you think you are no longer someone's embarrassment?"

He jumped up, tears springing from his eyes. I felt the burn gather behind my own, and held the torrent at bay.

"You should have told me sooner, Sire. I'm leaving. I won't darken your door again," he choked out.

"Leaving for where, Villeneuve? Where everyone knows your story?" I laughed scornfully.

"Father told me years ago, while we were hunting, that when he took me from the brothel, he spread word it was because my mother was insane, claiming to have birthed the Duke's child. That her story was preposterous, and he removed me from her care as an act of Christian charity."

"And do you expect anyone to believe this now? Gaston, you look exactly like him!"

His cleft chin trembled. Even at his lowest moment, I resented that his jaw was finer than my own. "I may not settle in Villeneuve, but what does it matter if I do? How could I be treated with any more contempt there than I am here? I suspect that in town, descending from nobility will count for something. Here it counts for nothing."

"That is because you are nothing. Certainly nothing to do with the nobility," I sneered. "There are many terms for me. Noblesse ancienne, noblesse d'extraction. There's only one term for you." I smiled, and he sucked in his breath to steel himself.

"Bastard."

Gaston tore out of the room.

Those are the last words I would speak to my brother in person, until the day he decided to hunt me down in earnest. 

Note: Photo by Kristina Flour on Unsplash.