Beau et Bête

The dowager countess was a tall, stately woman with the blood of Crusaders in her veins and the poetry of trouvêres in her eyes, eyes, the blue-gray of incense, which were the inspiration of salon sonnets. She was to host another one of her soirées that night where la Fée, a famed illusionist from Fontainebleau was to perform his magic cat-o'-nine-tails trick with a Russian blue, a Turkish Angora, a Siamese from the palace of the king in Bangkok, and a Venetian looking glass. Everything had been prepared--the buckets of chilled Champagne, the spiced almond milk, the pheasant, the chocolate and hazel nuts, the salad and cheese, the tetrahedrons of pomegranates next to puddings à la Trafalgar--thanks to the industry of her maître d'. The flowers, however, for the center pieces on the table and the corsages for herself and her household were the only items amiss. Faced with this lack of gardenias and verbena, she had repaired to the florist who assured her the arrangements would be delivered, fresh and fragrant, to her drawing room within a few hours. Through the falling snow, she only wished the forget-me-nots, which her younger son, the viscount, had especially requested for his boutonniere, had been available but the flower girl only shrugged and said lovers became more wary of disloyalty in the winter, and so none could be found from Saint-Germain to Montmartre.

And yet it snowed, snowed silently and swiftly, covering the ground in a mantle of pearlescent ivory. The northern winds picked up, swirling the powdery snowflakes in the velvet winter, dusting the peaks off the great drifts on the side of the road to the middle of the country lane where new dunes of flakes grew. Her carriage came to a halt as her black geldings neighed, the front pair rearing. An axle had broken, one side sinking into a rut while the other wheel continued till the member connecting them cracked from the torsion. Wrapped in her sables, the countess stepped from her conveyance, inspected the damage, and then calmed her horses with a few light pats on their sinewy necks or a sugar cube for the filly and colt. All was silent and snowy and deserted when she started walking ahead to find help.

Emerging from an ancient cypress forest, she met with a great château looming before her gaze, its Corinthian columns gleaming in the moonlight past the vertical rods of the iron gate with filigree grotesques on the archway flanked by granite obelisks around which wound a ferrous vine of steel-petalled lotus. Having discovered the barrier was unlocked, she climbed the mansion's stone steps, hoping someone was inside as she studied the door knocker, a golden cat of some sort with platinum splotches that resembled a leopard's rosettes on the face, a coral nose, and slanted eyes the green of Russian malachite. The mahogany door swung aside upon her gentle knocking, but there was no one to greet her. Within, she beheld a plush red carpet and a grand staircase of marble and onyx under the orange-yellow illumination from a crystal chandelier.

The door closed when she stepped across the threshold, and she was thankful for the warmth of a fireplace in what she presumed was the sitting room. While she rubbed some heat into her numb fingers, she noticed a collation set out on a satinwood table standing upon a Persian rug: a savory crepe joined by a baguette, sliced apricots and a decanter of vermouth with an empty wineglass on the side. Near the dishes of tapenade for the bread and cream for the fruit was a gilt-edged card bearing the message, "Bonjour et bon appétit." After she had partaken of the delicious meal in the manorial chamber whose walls were adorned with Gobelin tapestries, she wondered what to do about her carriage and horses. As soon as the thought left her, a crinkling of paper could be heard in the quiet, and the countess turned to see from where the noise issued. It was the gilt-edged card creasing and uncreasing its upper right corner. When it had her attention, the letters shifted about, revealing a new message:

Your carriage's axle has been tended to and horses fed. You may find your conveyance outside the door when you wish to leave.

Once she had gathered her furs around her and slipped her hands into her gloves, she arose from the table and returned to the foyer where she scanned the premises a final time for some sign of human occupancy and, finding nothing, ventured into the ice and frost. Sure enough, the chandelier light landed upon her geldings snorting and stamping on the ground, each harnessed to the carriage whose door was currently open as if an invisible footman waited for her to board. When she was at the bottom of the steps, a patch of color caught her eye against the whiteness. There, at the toe of her booted foot was a cluster of three forget-me-nots, tall, erect, and the most delicate blue. Remembering her son, the viscount, who had the same nobility of face as her late husband--a dignified brow, eyes as blue as the Arctic Ocean, a sharply tipped nose, a fair mustache above a tender mouth where a gentle smile suggested itself at the corners, and a complexion that glowed with aristocratic paleness--she extended her hand to the forget-me-nots and plucked them from their lonely parterre, at which point a low menacing growl, full of all the fury of Siberia, sounded beside her accompanied by a great pressure on her back. With the creature snarling and digging its jasper claws deeper into her sables, the countess gasped from the shock and stumbled backwards, peering over her shoulder at what had accosted her so roughly.

"Pardon moi, bo ... bon sieur," she said, endeavoring to regain her balance.

"Bon sieur I am not!" the beast replied in a silky contralto as it flourished a massy paw at the countess. "I am la Bête, and you, Madame, are an ungrateful guest and a dastardly thief. I extend to you perfect hospitality and this is how you repay me? You filch the very last flowers from my grounds."

"Please." She was breathing quickly now as she viewed the thing confronting her.

La Bête, as the creature wished to be called, stood, or rather sat on its haunches, in the snowy patch just beyond the steps over which the chandelier light shone. She, for the beast was most definitely a she in the way she held her feline head, was something between a leopard and a lioness, having the sepia pattern of the former, but the tannish gold coat of the latter. She possessed tufted, triangular ears atop her head sensitive to the howling wolves who made the music of the night, green eyes slashed with a slitted pupil in the shape of a stiletto blade, and a discriminating nose capable of detecting the passion of a hummingbird making love to a rose as well as the metallic sweetness of a man's spilled blood. Scrutinizing the woman before her, la Bete licked her chops, the pink tongue deftly traveling around the fangs which protruded below her nether lip. They were a fine pair of miniature foils or court swords, those terrible fangs.

"Please," the countess went on, tightening her hold on the forget-me-nots.

La Bête narrowed her eyes though her paws were velveted.

"They ... These forget-me-nots, they are for my son. We are to have a soirée tonight, and he has wanted some forget-me-nots for his button hole to join his gardenias. And ... And you must understand that all the flower shops in Paris did not have anymore of this blue herb which, when I saw them growing here, I picked thinking only to gratify my son the vicomte."

La Bête tossed her head back, blinking. "Very well, Madame, take them for your vain little boy. Go to your evening party, but tomorrow, ah, oui, tomorrow, bring Monsieur le Fils here to me."

"What?"

"You heard me correctly, your precious vicomte, or a dead hostess," the creature said, pawing the ground. "I think it is quite reasonable, non? His life for yours. Tomorrow, then, Madame." And with that, la Bête rose to all fours and ascended the stone steps to the chateau, the door shutting behind her. At that moment, the countess realized the eyes on the golden door knocker were not of malachite but emerald, two emeralds which the pharaohs wore as jewels in their headdresses in Cairo when the same gems were but pebbles in the streets of El Dorado.

"Mon dieu, what shall become of us?"