to find her life’s mate amongst the nobility? What about the displaced nobles?
She knew few men from either class, and the few that did know of her had never seen her without the bulky, concealing outfit which was hardly apparel destined to attract a man’s attention or arouse his passion.
It seemed to Beauty that she was doomed to a life alone, without a mate or children. She could face life without a husband, if need be, but she longed for children to love. Her resentment of the bleak future was yet another fault she placed straight at the feet of the Beast.
The village men she could handle, it was mainly to avoid the Beast’s odious attentions that she was forced to hide herself in such hideous garb, and it was because of him that she now had to work like the lowest field hand. Cursing the Beast under her breath, she smote the hard soil with her hoe.
The Beast ruled his newly acquired lands and peasants with absolute authority, dispensing his own form of law absent regard for justice, and wanting the smallest trace of mercy or compassion. Many men had been tortured or even hung after being accused of the smallest of crimes, and without the least question as to their guilt or innocence.
As lord, the Beast also truly believed he had the absolute right to take any of the women who lived in the village for himself or any of his men. If a woman belonged on his land, he reasoned cruelly, she belonged to him. Both of Beauty’s brothers had told her countless tales of the young and innocent women he had taken to the castle. Wild stories of young girls who were both scared and scarred when they were finally returned, battered and bruised, and they also spoke of bastard children left to starve or to scratch out life as just another peasant.
The most frightening stories Beauty had heard were of the girls who never returned at all. There had been too many of them since the Beast had come to be the lord of the land. Some of the village girls had run away, to be sure, but others certainly had not.
There were reports of mangled bodies found in ditches by the roadside or deep in the woods. They had been slaughtered, bloodied and broken before being left to rot. The corpses showed signs of great violence: Bruises, broken bones, rope burns and a multitude of knife wounds. Beauty knew of at least six young girls who had been found murdered in the last five years, all since the Beast had come to rule the castle. More were missing and never to be found.
Beauty even personally knew of a lass named Molly, no older than herself, who came back from a night in the castle after being beaten so severely that she’d been left crippled. Although she never spoke of what happened to her, it was widely known that she was taken to the castle by the order of the Beast. Molly later found out she was pregnant. In desperation, the lass had killed herself and the babe within her. Beauty’s older brother had been fond of Molly, had even thought of taking the girl as his wife.
Beauty sighed as she leaned on her crude hoe and rubbed the small of her back with one dirty hand. She paused, exhausted from the sheer drudgery of planting even a small vegetable garden in the rock hard clay, and reflected on the turn her family’s fortunes had taken. Once, Beauty and her family had lived a truly happy life and the future stretched out in front of them like a jewel just waiting to be picked up.
Now her father was dead and her older brother worked in the stables at the castle, slaving for the same man he held accountable for so much grief, both for his own family and for the rest of the villagers. He truly believed the Beast to be a monster. The monster who was responsible for poverty and desperation in the village, his own family’s downfall, and so many serf girls’ bloody and violent deaths.
Tom despised the Beast with his entire being and hated working in the monster’s castle but he well knew he had no choice in the matter. His family needed his meagre wages, along with the small amount they made from the crops that Beauty and his younger brother Nate worked so hard to eke from the land on their pitifully sparse farm.
Now, because their father was dead and their lives so filled with despair, their mother, once a beautiful and joyful woman was wasting away, desperately ill in her heart and mind.
For the sake of his family, Tom had swallowed his hatred and his need for revenge and taken the lowly job. Every instinct he possessed, to the deepest corner of his soul called for him to avenge the wrongs done both to his family and to the lass, Molly. Only the knowledge that to do so would not only further endanger his remaining family but also bring about their total ruination, stayed his hand.
At times, Tom hated himself, believing himself to be a weakling and a coward for not seeking his vengeance, but to Beauty he was a true hero for putting his family’s survival above his thirst for vengeance. Beauty well knew Tom still held need for that revenge in his heart, only waiting until the right time to strike out and destroy the Beast. She feared the day when Tom’s threadbare patience was finally worn through, when his iron control was shattered beyond all endurance. She feared that day for she knew its mark would mean the end of her brother’s life.
Beauty returned to her chore, bending her back into the slow, painful job of breaking up the hard clay sod with the hoe, reaching down occasionally to pull up a particularly tough weed. Hearing a faint cry in the distance, she looked up from her toil and saw her younger brother, Nate, running toward her through the fields. She smiled, watching the lad of fourteen years run with all the boundless energy of youth but when he stumbled and almost fell, Beauty knew at once, somewhere deep within herself, that there was grave trouble running along with him.
“Beauty!” Nate was gasping from his desperate run, tears streaking his freckled face. “Tis awful! The Beast is going to hang Tom!”
“What?” Beauty shrieked. “Nate, quickly tell me what’s happened.”
“The Beast has learned that someone’s been stealing from the grain in the barn. Two of the stable lads were accused and the Beast couldn’t decide which was guilty, not that he tried very hard.” Nate took a deep breath, trying to choke down his tears. “Beauty, he’s already had them both beaten and whipped to bloody pulps. Now they say he plans to hang them both from the castle gates at sundown.”
“No!” Beauty’s soul seemed to shatter within her and she screamed the single word as she dropped to the stony ground, sobbing.
“I’ve got to save him!” Nate choked out, his young chin trembling as he struggled to hold back tears. “Beauty, I have got to, but how?”
Instinctively, Beauty knew Nate had no chance at all of saving Tom. Terrified and grief-stricken, she tried to think. Before long, a faint thought came to her and a frightening plan formed in the back of her befuddled brain. She worked almost desperately to think of another plan. She tried to hide from the very idea, tried not to hear her innermost soul whispering the plan to her, but she knew deep in her heart there was only one chance to save Tom.
All her fears seemed to crowd at her, like a pack of wolves circling a spring lamb, and she wondered if she had the necessary nerve to follow through with her plan. She would need all the courage she could muster to do what had to be done but she could see no choice, no other course of action.
“No!” Beauty said firmly, gripping her younger brother’s arms. “There is no chance. You cannot hope to save him, but mayhap I can. Go to our mother. Stay with her and comfort her. However this ends, she will truly need both your strength and your support.”
“But Beauty, what will you do?” Nate sobbed, fearing the worst. “The Beast will never listen to you! He’ll kill you… or worse.”
“I have to try,” Beauty said, her voice sounding strangely calm in spite of the terror beating like a second heart in her breast. “It would kill Mother if Tom were to be hung. Go to
