Rose tossed and turned on the four-poster bed. The mattress and pillows were soft, but the heavy quilt was hot, and everything smelled faintly of mildew. Far worse was the prospect of spending a whole year with The Beast. Although a part of her wanted to see the good in him, she could not shake the memory of his anger at dinner, and when she finally slept she dreamed of a great black dog with emerald eyes that hunted her and would not let her rest.
She was awoken the next morning by a gentle knock on her door. “Come in,” she called after sitting up and drawing the quilt to her neck to preserve her modesty. The Beast opened the door and ducked under the lintel, turning sideways slightly to fit his shoulders through. He had a covered tray balanced on his hand like a butler.
“Breakfast,” he stated, making a show of setting down the tray on Rose’s bedside table at arm’s length, so as to keep her out of his reach. “When you are finished, meet me in the hallway. I have something to show you.” He left without waiting for assent.
Rose opened the tray to find a thick slab of toast topped off by a fluffy poached egg sprinkled with some kind of red spice. Picking up the cutlery beside it, she ate sitting on the side of the bed, savouring the rich yolk that bled from the egg and mingled with the peppery spice. Then she put on her second best dress and left to face the first full day of the next year of her life.
The Beast was pacing backwards and forwards across the main hall. As Rose came down the stairs he looked up eagerly. “Good, you’re here,” he said. “I have something to show you. Follow me.”
Rose followed in The Beast’s wake as he strode down the corridor and disappeared around a corner. Scurrying to catch up, she found him waiting poised by a door. As she approached, he pushed it open with a flourish and gestured for her to enter ahead of him. Acquiescing, Rose found herself surrounded by books. She was in a library. “Isn’t it magnificent?” asked The Beast, waving his hand expansively to indicate the room. “I appreciate that this house can be lonely, but here you can find companionship in the greatest writers of history. The Bard, of course, but not only him. Voltaire! Homer! Milton! I think we even have Chaucer somewhere, although it’s slow going to understand what he’s going on about.”
“It’s… lovely,” said Rose, quietly, glancing around and clutching her hands in front of her.
Her nervousness was lost on The Beast, who continued, “I must tend to the garden now, but during your stay you should feel free to treat these books as your own. There is a reading desk over there, or you may take them to your bedroom if you prefer. Look after them, of course, and return them to where you found them. I have a filing system I can explain to you some time. Anyway, I must be getting on; I usually start earlier than this. I’ll leave you to explore. You won’t be disappointed. There is bread in the pantry if you hunger.”
Again, The Beast left without waiting for Rose’s response. Her hands dropped to her sides and she huffed with frustration.
Some hours later, The Beast returned to the house to find Rose on her knees beside a bucket of soapy water, scrubbing intently at the woodwork in the corridor leading to its disused wing. The doors down the corridor had been opened and the curtains in the rooms beyond them thrown wide so that daylight streamed in to the space. Looking around, he saw that the floors had been swept and the panelling behind him was cleaner than he could ever remember it being.
“You’ve been busy,” he said.
Startled, Rose looked up from her work. “Well, I just thought that seeing as you’re working so hard on the garden, I should do something to look after things too,” she said. “I found some soap and things in one of the rooms at the back of the house. I imagine servants must have lived there once.” In the silence that followed, Rose suddenly realised that this might be dancing close to a discussion of The Beast’s past. Given his anger the previous night and that fact that he had not told her a single thing about himself, she suddenly felt like she was treading on extremely uncertain ground. His sheer size was already terrifying. The fact that she was on her knees did not help matters.
The Beast, however, seemed distracted. “So did you like the library?” he asked.
“I liked it very well, yes,” said Rose, carefully keeping her face calm as her heart settled.
“And did you find any books to interest you? If you weren’t able to find what you were looking for perhaps I should show you my system sooner rather than later.”
“That’s quite all right, I’m sure you’re very busy and I don’t wish to be a burden to you.”
“Think nothing of it! Come, I will show you around properly this time.”
Rose looked down nervously.
“What’s wrong?” asked The Beast.
“It’s just that… it’s… nothing,” said Rose, now clearly discomforted.
“Come on, out with it,” snapped the Beast, but his tone softened as Rose cringed away. “I promise I won’t be angry. You can tell me.”
Rose looked up at him. She knew he was trying to reassure her, but she felt like a bird caught in a noose. “To be honest with you, the fact of the matter is, well, to put it plainly…” she trailed off and then swallowed. “I can’t really read,” she admitted.
The Beast blinked. “But your father is a merchant!” he exclaimed. “Did he not attend to your education?”
“I went to a blue coat school for two years,” she said, “But then father fell on hard times so I was sent to a dame school instead. I wasn’t really learning anything there, and I was needed at home. Marguerite and Julianne were making their debuts in society, and my brothers were helping with the business, so someone had to keep the house in order.”
“So your family made a drudge of you while your sisters went to balls and ballets?” roared The Beast incredulously. “Your education sacrificed in the name of the vapidity that calls itself society – that is intolerable! Your father told me about the gifts he was bringing back for you all, you know. Gold and fine fabrics for your elder sisters, but only a single rose for you! It all makes sense now! Of course when some foul monster demands a year of his daughter’s life it’s you he sacrifices. Dear God if he were here again I would teach him shame.”
Rose found herself emboldened now The Beast’s anger was directed at her father rather than herself. “Begging you’re pardon, but I love my father and it would sadden me to see you do him ill. It was my choice to see to the affairs of our home, and I requested that my gift be just a rose. Father has too generous a nature, and I do not like to take advantage of it. I also chose to travel here in Marguerite’s stead. She is making a life for herself, and if she finds a good husband the match will be benefit us all.”
“I see now that your father’s generosity has been passed down to you,” said The Beast. “But where he offers only with gemstones and frippery, you offer your own self, a greater treasure by far.”
There was a brief silence as Rose’s words failed her.
“I can at least right one grave wrong,” said The Beast. “From now on you will join me in the library between the hours of two and four. I will not have a girl in my household who does not apply herself to the written word. Therefore it falls upon me to teach you to read and write. Come, the clock has not yet chimed three. We have a lot of work to do and there is no time like the present to do it.”
This time Rose accepted The Beast’s hand and allowed him to help her to her feet and lead her back to the library.
***
“The… His-tor-y of… Little… Goody… T’woe Shows?” read Rose, tracing over the book’s title page with her finger.
“Two Shoes,” corrected The Beast.
“Really?” asked Rose, sceptically. “That makes no sense!”
“It does seem rather arbitrary,” agreed The Beast. “But some words are like that; you just have to know how they’re spelled and accept it. Your reading is better than I’d feared, which is fortunate, because this is the easiest book we have. Here, write out ‘two shoes’. We’ll make a list of the words you struggle with as you go. Be careful what you do with the quill once it has ink in it. Books are precious, even a children’s book like this one. You must not get ink on it.”
Rose laboriously scratched out the words with the quill, which spattered her hands with black speckles. When she had finished, The Beast explained what was wrong with her attempt and made her begin again. It took her several tries before she had completed her task to his satisfaction.
“Good,” The Beast said, turning the page. “Now, turn to Chapter One.”
The Beast kept up his patient yet insistent tuition until the clock struck four, in which time Rose managed to struggle through the first short chapter of Little Goody Two Shoes and write out an only somewhat shorter list of words that had presented her with difficulties. The Beast read the list to her, and had her repeat it back. “Good,” he said, “Now I have a couple of tasks to complete before I begin our dinner. Read back that list to yourself and study each word until you have committed it to memory. Then you may do as you wish until I see you in the dining room at seven.”
“Thank you,” said Rose nodding and turning away to conceal a small smile. She hadn’t considered that The Beast was the house’s cook as well as its gardener. It was a little embarrassing to have overlooked something so obvious. Resolving to compliment him on his culinary skill at the next opportunity, she turned her attention to her list of difficult words as The Beast left the room.
Dinner proved to be savoury pies followed by steamed pudding, and Rose had plenty of opportunity to make good her intent to pour praise upon The Beast’s cooking.
“This is delicious,” she enthused. “What’s the meat? I’ve not had anything quite like it.”
“It’s venison again, although it takes on a different flavour cooked with bay” The Beast told her. “You’ll get quite used to it during your stay I fear, as we don’t have a ready supply of domesticated animals”
“Oh, so you hunt for your meat?” she asked. “Do you use a rifle?”
“Alas, I’ve not the skill,” he admitted. “Thankfully, I’ve other abilities that compensate for my lack of marksmanship.”
“Oh yes?”
“Indeed, this dark fur you see is occasionally useful. I am light footed and I have excellent senses. It is a trivial matter for me to locate a deer out in the woods at night and creep up to it. I prowl to them from downwind, stealthy and quick in the darkness. And then, when I am almost on top of it…”
He let the silence draw out. “Yes?” said Rose, on tenterhooks.
“I dance,” whispered The Beast with extraordinary intensity.
“You dance?” she asked, puzzled
“Yes, for you see there is nothing a deer finds so irresistible as a seven-foot black-furred beast man dancing solo in the starlight. After I’ve shown them my skill they are only too happy to follow me home and be made into pies.”
Rose blinked several times. Then she burst out laughing. “For a moment there I thought you were serious,” she shouted, throwing a bit of onion at him. “Don’t do that to me!”
“I am serious,” said The Beast, deadpan. “My dancing could not be a more solemn matter. You should see my plié.”
She grinned at him in amused disbelief. From there The Beast took control of the conversation, which led to Rose doing most of the talking. At home, her family had always spoken of their own affairs. Her role, when she had one at all, had been to listen and react as best she could to please them. The Beast, by contrast, quizzed her intently on the minutiae of her life, asked her opinion on the topics that arose, and requested clarification when her answers did not fully satisfy him.
She found herself telling him of her mother’s death when she was still too young to fully understand. Of the sudden absence and the rooms filled with sadness; of the vague explanations and her mother’s half-remembered face. She spoke of the sudden sense that she had become surplus to the requirements of her family, a nuisance to be tolerated rather than child to be loved. She told him, this monstrous stranger, of feelings she hadn’t realised she had until given an opportunity to voice them. Of how life and love gradually returned to the house, but by then she had already learned to make herself small, and unnoticed, and useful. And through it all The Beast listened, a trick as simple as sitting still and caring to pay attention, but one that surprisingly few have mastered.
Eventually, Rose became aware of how long she had been talking. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’ve been talking your ear off.”
“It’s fine, I invited you to do so,” said The Beast. “It’s good to learn about my new guest. You know, you don’t have to do housework to have a place here.”
“Thank you, but I think will continue with it nonetheless,” said Rose. “It will be nice to do it because I want to rather than because I feel an obligation.
“And in any case,” she pulled a comically stern face. “This place is filthy. You should be ashamed.”
“I see how it is,” retorted The Beast with mock outrage. “I give you an inch and you suddenly presume to judge my housekeeping! I shall have to be careful extending such latitude to you in future.”
“I’m filled with contrition, sir” said Rose solemnly. “I will know my place in future.”
The distant clack of the clock in the corridor marked the time uninterrupted for several long measures as Rose recalled too late The Beast’s threat concerning what would happen if she called him ‘sir’.
Then The Beast smiled and said, “See that you do.” He was trying to rekindle the jovial spirit that they had shared only moments before, but his light-heartedness now seemed to contain the grain of a genuine command, like an imperfect pearl formed around a sharp piece of grit.
By unspoken agreement, they left the dining room shortly afterwards and Rose retired to her room. Under the musty bedsheets, her dreams were once again of the black dog, but now it was running beside her, a companion rather than her hunter. And yet she was filled with dread that at any moment it could turn on her and tear out her throat.