Free Beauty by Sheri S. Tepper Page B

Everyone was asleep, guests and all. Every living thing. The cattle in the byre were asleep, and the chickens in their pens, and the swine, the piglets laid out like rows of barely breathing bottles at their mother's swollen teats. Wasps slept on the fruit on the sunlit walls. Spiders slept in their webs. The weevil slept at the heart of the rose. Papa's dogs lay indolently in the sun, as unmoving as the painted wooden saints in the chapel.
    And in that chapel Father Raymond slept beside Papa-who had arrived home only that morning-both of them on a bench, propped upright by each others bodies. Papa's mouth was open and the faint, infrequent breaths hissed across my ear when I leaned down to shake him. I inadvertently dislodged him so that he fell sidewise, onto the bench, but his sleep did not break, nor did that of Father Raymond when I clung to him, wetting his surplice with my tears. He held a piece of paper in hs hand. Evidently something he and Papa had been looking at. It caught my eye because I saw my name on it.
    It was addressed to Father Raymond. "Tell Beauty that I love her forever," it said. "Tell her I honor her always. Tell her I would never have done anything to hurt her. Tell her no matter what distance separates us, I will love her still." It was signed by Giles. Father Raymond had not shown it to me. He had shown it to Papa! I hated them both for that, but I could not stand there doing it. I put the letter in my pocket and ran on.
    The sleepers included even Sibylla and her mother. I found them in the scribe's office, lying atop Mama's marriage contract in an uncomfortable looking heap. I left them that way, hoping when they woke they would have cramps. Of all living things in all the lands of Westfaire, only Grumpkin and I were free to move about because we were cloaked in magic and invisible to the enchantment. Grumpkin wanted to leave my pocket, but I did not dare let him go.
    I cannot remember what I did then for a while. Though a few other guests had been expected, none arrived. It was as though the castle had been set aside from mortal lands. The sun sank slowly, and I with it. For a time I huddled on the stairs, crying, Grumpkin patting my face with his paws and making the small, trilling noise he makes when he seeks catly companionship, his love call. I clung to him and wept. I reread Giles's letter and wept.
    Tears changed nothing. Eventually, my eyes dried and I realized I had no choice but to go. There was no way I could stay in this place. No way I could maintain myself. I made myself think carefully about going away, made myself consider calmly the things I would need to take with me, gritting my teeth so hard that later my jaws hurt. I needed money. The keys to Papa's chest were around his neck, and the coin he had available, poor though Sibylla had said he was, was locked in the chest in his room. Also in the chest were two warrants making claims upon usurers in London, and I took them both. Papa or his man-of-business had evidently tried to delay the final reckoning by deferring payment of current expenses and putting current income into the hands of the Jews to collect interest. Usury was a sin for Christians, but then so was lust, and Papa had not balked at that. I think anything done to excess must be sinful, including pilgrimages, but if so the poor man was paying for his sins. If he had not neglected Mama, I kept telling myself, none of this would have happened.
    The aunts had some jewels, which I did not hesitate to purloin. They would not need them for one hundred years, and I needed them now. There was the Monfort parure of emeralds and diamonds that Papa intended to give Sibylla for a wedding gift. I took that, too, though I suspected the gems might not be the real ones. Surely Papa had sold them, poor as he was. I wondered how much Papa had received for the jewels when he had sold them and what he had spent it on. If, indeed, Grandfather had not sold the emeralds in his own time and