Frédéric rolled his eyes. “No good deed goes unpunished.”
“And you? Any good news in your life?” Maurice pressed.
Frédéric’s dour face looked strangely, timidly pleased.
“As a matter of fact, yes. The king and queen, still impressed with my ability to cure their son—utter hogwash, by the way—have given me my own facility for research. It’s all hush-hush, but trust me when I say the freedom I have is more than I ever thought possible going to a traditional college….Let us leave it with the fact that I am able to practice my skills in surgery at leisure, in cutting out that which is too infected to save. I may even be able to cure…myself, someday.”
Alaric and Maurice exchanged a look and a shudder.
“The downside is that it’s all the way out near that boring little village on the other side of the river,” the groomsman said quickly, trying to change the subject.
“We will never see you anymore,” the inventor protested.
“I am not disappearing off the planet,” Frédéric said primly, though obviously pleased that someone cared enough to miss him. “I came today specifically to see you and congratulate you on your wife’s pregnancy.”
“Thank you kindly, Monsieur Doctor!” Maurice said with a little bow. “Have you had any visions about my baby girl? Can you tell me her future?”
Frédéric looked away. “It does not work like that, and I do not encourage their…coming to me. Frankly, the very fact that you know your baby’s sex is disturbing.”
Alaric flushed at the word sex. Maurice just sighed and shook his head at his friends. It was strange to think of them as possible uncles to his little daughter. Well, maybe she could learn something from them at least—the skills of a physician, perhaps some basic horsemanship….
Belle ran to Phillipe, carefully staying out of the way of his hooves. She tried to keep from panicking but the big horse’s fear was infectious. Usually nothing could spook the staid, untroubled beast. He was from an ancient line of war mounts who were bred for size, stamina, and most of all calm in the midst of battle.
Phillipe had also spent most of his life around Maurice’s often exploding inventions. Almost nothing could distract him from a nice patch of clover or a nap.
But now he bucked and snorted and rolled his eyes like a pack of wolves was after him.
“Where is Papa, Phillipe? Did you make it to the fair? What happened?”
The log-splitting device seemed to be more or less altogether on the cart, though some of the more delicate pieces were missing. Had it been a robbery, the thieves would have likely taken whatever seemed precious, including the thing’s grill, which gleamed gold. Belle carefully disengaged the cart and pushed it aside, still holding the reins.
“You’ve got to take me to him, Phillipe,” she said, throwing herself up on the big horse’s back. She pulled his bit firmly, forcing his enormous head back around toward the forest.
Phillipe resisted at first, trying to yank his neck out of the old rope. When he finally gave in, it was with a weary chuff—as if even he knew they needed to go back for Maurice.
Belle had only been on the road through the forest once or twice, and never alone and never that far. Although instinctively she started to direct Phillipe to the left, where the path divided and eventually led to the next town, the horse snorted and pulled to the right, down an ancient, overgrown road that obviously led to places less visited.
The storm had already lent an eerie darkness to the end of the day. That, coupled with the thick, almost monstrously exuberant foliage around them, left the path unnaturally shadowed. Little white moths that should have waited until much later to emerge from their daytime sleeping spots flapped around Belle’s face like it was a lantern they were drawn to. Strange, nearly invisible insects made very different noises from their cousins in the fields or carefully cultivated orchards of the village. Dry leaves crackled in the underbrush, disturbed by things Belle couldn’t see.
She found herself, very much against her will, thinking about how useful it would be to have someone like Gaston along with her on this quest.
Or, actually, someone else with a gun. Anyone else, really.
Minutes played out into what seemed like hours on the lonely black path. Belle’s initial excitement and adrenaline rush were worn down by time and the lack of anything imminently dangerous. The forest was sinister, nothing more.
Her fear for her father grew, however; there was no sign of him at all aside from the occasional cart track that revealed itself in a sandy bank or thick wedge of mud.
Slowly the land began to change around them: the ground rose up steeply on either side of the path, making a ravine that widened out into a small valley. Whatever was left of the sky was obscured by high, sharp hills and black pines. Thick and thorny plants clustered unnaturally at the squat, square roots of trees.
Wait. Square?
Belle gasped as she realized that what she had mistaken for particularly unnatural growth were the ruins of old buildings. She stopped paying attention to where Phillipe was headed and tried to distinguish outlines and patterns in the stones and bricks. The vines that covered them weren’t thick; certainly not more than fifty or a hundred years old. But Belle had never heard of a village this far into the forest and no one in town had ever mentioned it.
“What is this place?” she murmured.
Phillipe stopped, huffing nervously. They were in front of a massive rusted iron gate that hung a little open—but it was not so far decayed that it fell off its hinges. The gap was just wide enough to fit through.
Phillipe pawed the ground with his hoof and snorted.
He would not be going in.
Belle took a deep breath and dismounted. She gave his warm, comforting flank a pat and regretfully left him behind. Then she slipped through the crack in the gate, unwilling to make it squeal by trying to open it farther.
Beyond was a twilit courtyard: wide and gray with a dry and dusty three-tiered fountain in the middle. The whole scene possessed but one splat of color: a dirty mustard-yellow sun hat that lay discarded on the ground.
“Papa!” Belle cried, rushing over and picking it up. There was no other sign of her father—of anyone, really—and no footprints on the cobblestones. She looked around, up at the main building, and started at what she saw.
No inn or hunting retreat this; what she had thought was the entrance to a mews was the base of what appeared to be a small but perfectly preserved castle.
In the gloom it was hard to see the whole thing, but there were shadows of turrets, towers, parapets, and delicate roofs with merlons and crenels too slim and decorative to be of any real use.
Belle frowned. While she hadn’t traveled the world or gone on “The Grand Tour,” she had read enough to know that this wasn’t an ancient castle. It was too tiny, too perfect, and too battlement-free to be from the dark times of yore when neighboring kingdoms often battled each other.
It wasn’t unreasonable to imagine her father, having noticed the mysterious ruins, deciding on a whim to investigate them. Like Don Quixote and his golden helmet of Mambrino, she thought, looking at his yellow hat. Off on a silly quest.
That idea and the notion that he was somewhere on the grounds gave her courage.