Chapter Text
Many years ago, before there was such a thing as an independent government, and kings were still thought to have divine right, a young prince lived in a shining castle.
The prince was the youngest of four brothers, each as handsome and terrible as the others, each presented with a gift when they came of age. The dauphin had wit as sharp as his rapier. The second son was as skilled in battle as he was at chess. The third was as lazy as his hunting dogs were vicious. But the fourth son, the prince we are concerned with, was as cruel as the number of grey hairs on his head. A strange gift for a youth of eighteen to receive, but one which he accepted nevertheless. It does not do to offend a witch.
This prince, Francois, continued to study, and ride, and play at his fiddle for many years, until one day, when the first streaks of grey were beginning to show at his ears, he fell in love. A noblewoman, whose bloodline was of little importance, caught his eye as she sat embroidering with his mother’s ladies-in-waiting. Francois decided that she would be his bride, and after only three months’ courtship, they were married.
Francois took his young bride to a chateau deep in the hidden heart of France. She was to be mistress of the castle, and not bother him with any details of running it unless it required his utmost attention. He gave her a large ring of keys, which unlocked every room in the castle, and continued riding, hunting, and studying in the forests surrounding the castle, and the large, airy library.
Despite these inauspicious beginnings, his bride, Yvonne, was happy. Her husband rarely bothered her during the day, and he was often so tired from his exploits that he slept most of the night. She found that managing the castle, and the surrounding estate, fulfilled her in a way that little else had. If she had any complaint, it was that the servants, friendly though they were, kept her ever at a distance, and that after a few months she consequently became very lonely.
No sooner had Yvonne first complained of her loneliness to herself (she would not bring it up before Francois or any of the servants; whatever else she might be, she was not a fool), than she discovered that she was growing heavy with child. More than her adept management of the castle, or her own not insignificant accomplishments, Yvonne’s pregnancy drew Francois to her side, and they spent more time together in those nine months than in the previous eleven they had known each other combined. On a cold January morning, Yvonne birthed a small, squalling girl-child. She screamed until she was placed in Yvonne’s arms, and then blinked up at her mother with silent, out-of-focus eyes. She was named Genevieve, and wherever Yvonne went, so did little Eve. For a time, all was well.
However, as time wore on Yvonne noticed that her husband was beginning to grey prematurely. It was as if a curtain had fallen over the past year and a half, when Francois had been distant but respectful. Now, they rarely met without fighting, and he sneered whenever she offered advice to him, as she had done in the past. Yvonne once again fell pregnant, but this time was beset with melancholy from the first onset. A baby brother joined a toddling Eve and worn-out Yvonne in due course. With the birth of his son, Francois once again softened towards his wife, and noticed that she was no longer the gay, happy creature he had married. He whispered his orders to gardeners and architects, and within a year a walled garden had been constructed. Cleverly concealed within it, behind a sheet of ivy, was another garden – one filled with pleasant flowers, herbs, and a little greenhouse.
“I have built you a small Eden, wife,” he said the day it was finished. “Take care not to lose the key, for I have only made one. You may stay there as long as you like, and come and go freely.”
She added the brass key to her ring, hearing clearly the words he did not say. She had never been a fool, and she knew that Francois had cleverly constructed a way to keep her out the castle while he took his mistresses at his leisure. The next four years passed in a similar way. Yvonne and Eve spent most of their time either in the garden or the library, while Francois drank and cavorted with his mistresses in the other rooms of the castle. The little boy was sent off to be fostered at court when he was four, and Eve wept for her missing brother. With pale gold hair, dark blue eyes, and strong, swift legs, she grew more like her father every day. She read, and played, and learned needlework at her mother’s knee, although just as frequently she played at fencing with the young men on staff and began to ride on horseback.
And so Eve grew, largely happy, nourished by books and the outdoors and her mother’s love. She was frightened by her father’s temper, and annoyed at the women in the palace who clung around his neck, and saddened that her brother did not send her letters as frequently as she did to him.
But when she was eleven, an outbreak of smallpox swept the land. Her father, being away visiting his bothers and their children, was not in any danger, but both she and Yvonne contracted the disease. And in that cruel twist of fate which was too often played out in households from peasant to king, the child survived what her mother could not.
After Yvonne died, Francois returned to the castle to parent his little daughter. He had seen her so rarely since her brother’s birth that he expected the small, obedient seven-year-old he had left. Instead he saw a half-grown twelve-year-old, her long legs beginning to outgrow her skirts and with a well-formed resentment and stubbornness towards her father. For the first few weeks that Francois stayed at the castle, Eve avoided him as she and Yvonne had done for the last twelve years; but instead of being pleased that his daughter was as silent as his wife had become, Francois was irritated.
It took a while, but eventually he realised that Eve spent most of her time in the secret garden. Despite his mostly grey hair, there were still gleams of gold in it, and so Francois stayed away from the ivy-covered door. Not that he could enter, anyways – he had told Yvonne the truth when he said there was only one key.
There was nothing to stop him spending time with his daughter in the castle itself, however, and so whenever she took her lessons Francois would stand in the corner of the library. Over time, he found that she was a good horsewoman, and the two of them began riding together. He taught her how to hunt, and how to dance, but Eve still resented him for taking away her little brother. She asked about the boy often, but every time Eve asked to see him, Francois told her it would be impossible. Her continual questions about the boy began to irritate him, and he drew further away from his daughter. He left abruptly three days before her fifteenth birthday, making sure that both his person and his belongings had been packed away and sent down the road while Eve was in her mother’s garden.
From that day on, it was as if a completely different girl inhabited Eve’s body. Where before she had always been polite to the servants, considerate of their duties, and generally pleasant to be around, now she snapped at any little thing, continually made life harder for them, and glowered at everything and everyone around her. It grieved the hearts of all the staff, but none so much as the housekeeper, who had known the child from the day she was born. The only times Eve retained glimmers of the sweet child she used to be were when she was reading, in her mother’s garden, or riding her horse. Time passed, and the stubborn girl turned into a pig-headed woman, with a tongue sharper than the spurs of her boots and who had reduced more than one servant to helpless tears.
On her eighteenth birthday, Eve saddled her horse before dawn and rode off to the nearby woods. She was in the habit of doing such things fairly often, and had grown adept with a bow and arrow; several times now she had provided dinner for the castle with her skill. After two hours’ patient stalking, she saw a great white hart, the finest creature she had ever seen. Eve notched her arrow before the command had fully formed in her brain, and let it loose on instinct alone.
The housekeeper had meant to take Eve aside before her birthday to inform her about the family tradition – that a witch would come in some form or another to grant her a gift, and to be extra wary of prize animals in the forest. But her own son had fallen ill two nights before, and she had been concerned for his wellbeing, consequently forgetting to advise Eve. It was entirely likely that a word from the housekeeper may have changed everybody’s fate that day – and yet, it was equally likely that Eve would have scorned her advice, and shot the hart anyways.
Eve struck the hart in the shoulder, but did not kill it. She followed for another three hours, suddenly intent on claiming it as her prize, but to no avail. She had wasted three arrows on the creature, but only struck the once; that, and the eventual loss of the animal, as if it had vanished into thin air, put her in a foul mood. A cold, heavy rain fell as Eve rode sullenly back to the grounds, her fair hair in damp straggles down her back.
She had changed into dry, simple clothes, when the knock at the door came. There was something about the quality of the tone that caused each servant to pause where they stood, equally hesitant to disobey orders as to open the door. (The housekeeper, had she heard, would have cautioned the girl about the coming enchantress. but she was still looking after her little son). Seeing that no one was going to the door, Eve opened it herself.
On the doorstep, soaked by the rain, was a tall, thin old man. He held tightly onto a crooked staff, as if the slightest gust of wind would cause him to fall over. But his eyes, Eve noted, looked as fierce as an owl’s, and she shivered to look in them.
“Princess,” he wheezed. “I have waited many years for this day, but now you have finally come of age. I have a gift for you.” So saying, he produced a cream rose from within his robes, brandishing it outwards as a knight would a sword.
“I beg your pardon?” Eve asked. “Who are you? What are you doing here?”
The man grabbed her fresh, young hand with his wizened paw, and Eve shrunk away as far as she could. “Marry me,” he said, surging closer to her face, “and you shall have gifts greater than your uncles, father, and brother combined!”
Eve screamed, pulling her hand free and pushing him away. “No! Go away, you filthy old man! You clearly do not know to whom you speak!”
“Oh, but I do,” he said. “You are a skilled huntress, although you could not land that hart in the forest today. Would it please you to know that if you were my bride, your arrow would never miss another beast or bird again? Choose carefully, my dear.”
The familiarity with which the man spoke rankled almost as much as his cloying attempts to grasp her flesh. Gathering her (considerable) pride, Eve pulled herself up to her full height and spoke again, as calmly as she could. “I have the power to kill you, should I so desire. Leave me alone – I don’t want to marry any man, but especially not you!”
The instant the words left her lips, the gleam in the old man’s eye flashed. Instantly, he revealed his true form – a male witch, clad in white so brilliant that it almost blinded Eve to look at him. Even his skin and hair were the same pale shade, and had he not just grabbed her hand Eve would have thought him a ghost.
“Twice you have insulted me, Genevieve,” he said in a voice unlike any Eve had heard before or since. “Just now, rejecting my suit. and earlier today.” He shifted his cloak to one side, and with a jolt of nausea Eve saw the spreading blood on his shoulder, recognising him as the hart from that morning. “But you have one more chance. Marry me, and all will be forgiven.”
Eve didn’t even take a moment to think through the consequences of her next action before her temper overtook her. “Do you think that this is the best way to gain a wife? To bully and trick a woman through fear?! And no doubt within a year you would tire of me, and move on to the next girl who catches your eye, to pressure her into sharing your fine bed.” With that same stubbornness and bravery which had led her to be a huntress, scholar, and gardener, Eve moved forwards until she was toe-to-toe with the witch. “You may be more powerful than him, but at heart you are just as base and vile as my father.”
With a snarl, the witch struck Eve across the face with his staff, which pulsed with a bright, searing light. She collapsed to the ground, swiftly soaked by the falling rain.
“Very well,” he spat. “Instead of a blessing, a curse. Genevieve, eldest child of Francois and Yvonne, the first daughter of the fourth son of France, I curse you.”
Eve tried to push herself up to her hands and knees, but her arms wouldn’t support her weight. She felt a trickle of blood pour down the side of her face from her temple.
“You have rejected the suit of a witch. You are arrogant, hot-tempered, stubborn and wilful. Your pretty eyes and fair hair hide your true ugliness. From this day forth, you will be as monstrous outside as you are within. Your servants will be as useless as you perceive them to be, and your castle will be as hidden from the world as you wish it was.”
The terrible intonation of the witch, the wild storm outside, and that inescapable brightness struck terror into Eve’s heart, and she screamed again.
“However! Let it not be said that I am entirely heartless,” the witch said, with a cruel smile. “You shall have a chance to lift this curse. This rose,” he said, flicking it down so that Eve could see the cream blossom again, “will serve as an hourglass. You have until the last petal falls to find someone who will love you under my curse – and whom you love in return. If you do, the spell will be broken. If not, you shall remain a Beast for all time, and shall be forgotten by the world.” With a flick of his wrist, the rose was gone. “I have placed the rose in your chambers. Should any harm come to it, the curse will only come closer to permanence.”
Eve sobbed dryly, even as lightning began to flash all around her. The witch raised his staff once more, and brought it down on the back of her head, exactly where the base of her skull met her neck.
When she awoke the next day, still outside the front door of the castle, Eve found that his curse had come true.
And as the years passed, she fell into despair, and lost all hope. F or who could ever learn to love a beast?