As Old As Time: A Twisted Tale (Twisted Tale, A) (40 page)

On a hunch they headed down a hall polluted by the hot and fetid air of an industrial kitchen. She was right; they were soon running through a low-ceilinged cavern of a room that smelled disastrous. Squat metal stoves warmed large, unclean black pots to boiling with soup that was no more than thin broth. Foul things occasionally bubbled to the surface with a pop of sulfurous steam.

The head cook, a giant slob of a man, leaned back on a stool that bowed with his weight while he regarded Belle and her mother with lazy surprise.

“We were never here,” Belle said, gesturing at him with her knife.

The man said nothing, giving a wide, careless shrug.

Belle pulled her mother on.

On the other side of the kitchen were the pantry and receiving hall, where loads of groceries could be easily delivered, as well as a narrow set of servants’ stairs that led to the main floor.

She dashed up them, pulling her mother behind…

…and ran right into a pair of large orderlies, coming down with trays of empty bowls.

All four landed in a tangled mess, Belle’s and her mother’s arms and legs floating more to the top because they were smaller.

“They’re escaping!” one of the orderlies said. “They’re patients!”

“No one is a ‘patient’ here!” Belle snapped, twisting and turning to extricate herself from them. Once she rose she turned to help her mother up.

The female orderly stumbled to her feet and, putting her two hands together, backhanded Belle across the face.

Not expecting such a quick—and violent—attack, Belle staggered back against the wall, stunned. Blood dripped down her face.

Her mother, hunched-over and ineffectual looking, only widened her green eyes in reaction to what had just happened.

The other orderly, a man, was now also up. He grabbed Belle by the shoulder, digging his fingers into the muscle between the bones there.

“Racine,”
Rosalind whispered, holding out her hand and blowing something from it.

Both orderlies’ eyes popped in surprise.

They looked down at their feet. Belle was just recovering from the blow and had tears in her eyes—she couldn’t see anything. But their two would-be captors didn’t seem to be able to lift their legs. They began to panic, screaming in little soundless Os.

Her mother slumped and swayed, utterly exhausted.

Belle grabbed her just as she fell, ignoring her own pain.

“Dirt from the floor of my cell…” her mother murmured, stepping up the stairs with difficulty. “Filled with fungal threads…”

Belle wasn’t sure if she was raving or not, but the guards couldn’t follow, and that was the important point.

At the top of the stairs it was like entering another world: while not precisely light and sunny, the halls were broad and didn’t stink. The stone walls were free from mold and slime, and lanterns hung at regular intervals.

“This feels familiar,” Belle said thoughtfully. She ran on tiptoe down the hall, dragging her mother behind her, coming to a sudden stop as she heard a familiar voice shouting.

“No…only the monsters in the sub-basement. Everything is fine up here. Send everyone you can down!”

D’Arque.

Belle felt a hot hand of rage clamp down on her belly. The atrocities that had been committed on her family by that man…She wanted nothing more than to run at him, knife out.

Reason, still a somewhat dominant force in Belle’s heart, finally prevailed.

She waited until she heard the thumping sounds of guards hurrying away, followed by the cold
click
of the old man’s heeled boots on stone.

She counted an additional fifty seconds after the sound died away before stepping forward.

As she had guessed, they were in the hub of the “normal insane people” wing. There were halls leading off to hospital rooms, wide and almost inviting, with thin rugs. No doubt to impress visiting relatives—who probably had no idea what went on below. Even the sounds were different; there were a few whimpers and moans, but those sounded plaintive. Not
tortured.

Belle would still release everyone up here as well—after she got her father.

“Papa?”
she called as loudly as she dared.

“Belle?”
a voice called back, surprised.

“Maurice,” Rosalind whispered.

The two women hurried over to his cell. Belle fumbled over the keys until she found the right one.

Her father practically knocked them over when he came rushing out, putting a meaty arm around each one’s neck and pulling them both close.

“My girls!” he sobbed. “
My two girls.
I never…I never thought we’d be a family again.”

Belle didn’t want him to ever let go. Mother and father together, hugging her, one happy family like they should have been, never separated. Who knew what would happen in the next few minutes, if they didn’t get out? There might not be another moment like this again….

“We have to go. Now, Papa,” she finally said, regretfully disentangling herself.

“Wait—what about everyone else?” Maurice asked.

“Hey.
You,
” Belle called to a prisoner who had been watching the whole scene quietly, hands on his bars.
“Catch!”

The man seemed only vaguely surprised when she tossed the keys to him. After he looked at them for a moment, bewildered, his eyes finally widened with understanding.

“Let’s go!” Belle said, grabbing her parents by the arms.

And that’s when two guards, passing by the other end of the hallway, saw them.

“STOP!”
one of them ordered.

The prisoner with the keys hid them behind his back and tried to look innocent.

“RUN!” shouted Belle.

She dove forward, fully expecting to pull the full weight of both her mother and father. But although he took a little to get going, Maurice soon began trotting under his own power. He let go of Belle and ran around to grab Rosalind’s other arm and the two dragged her along.

They ran into the closest open room, what looked like an indoor exercise and recreation area for the nonmagical patients. Leather balls and tatty decks of cards littered low, padded tables and backless chairs. Belle and her father scattered the furniture as best they could as they ran, tipping things over and hurling them behind. Belle didn’t dare turn around but was gratified to hear some frustrated grunts and the crashing of furniture behind her.

Not knowing which way to go, Belle picked corridors and rooms at random. They wound up in the laundry: tubs of soapy, soupy hot water and lines of eerily stained linens blocked their way. Calmer patients worked here under the watchful eyes of house nannies, carrying piles of clothes and pushing paddles deep into steamy alkaline tubs.

“You’re free!” Belle shouted at them, ducking around a scalding hot tub.

“Run!” Maurice suggested, pushing a very skinny girl out of the way.

“OUT OF MY LAUNDRY!”
a large woman with an imposing hat shrieked.

Rosalind did her best to keep up, holding Maurice’s hand as they threaded through the maze of dirty and wet clothes.

“There should be a door ahead!” Maurice called up to Belle. “For hanging the clothes out back!”

Belle didn’t have time to wonder how he could have guessed such a thing; she changed directions around a confused-looking medicated patient with a tall pile of white cloth in her arms. Neither managed to quite avoid each other; there was a crash and soon pillowcases and smocks were drifting to earth like angels. Belle managed to recover herself first.

“Sorry,” she said, dashing away. She wasn’t sure the patient even noticed.

The guards were right behind them, tearing clothing lines out of their way and swearing loudly as burning hot water splashed onto their skin.

But the door, as her father had said, was right ahead.

“On three, Belle.” Maurice bent over, aiming his shoulder at the probably locked exit. Belle did the same. “One, two,
three
!”

Father and daughter ran forward and the doors gave under their combined weight and strength—though possibly a bit more of it was Maurice. Rosalind hurried behind as best she could.

What they ran into outside was hard to fathom.

It was dusk and difficult to make out anything clearly in the gloaming. Dozens of people were running around the asylum’s formal great lawn in various stages of dress and distress. Guards were chasing after them, alternately wheedling them coyly to come back or screaming viciously and aiming at their heads with truncheons. It was a scene of hellish chaos, as painted by Brugel or Bosch.

In the near distance, angry lights flickered, coming closer.

Is that
…
Gaston? Leading the
villagers?

“What’s going on?”

One of their pursuers had caught up to them—but just as he was about to lay a hand on Belle he became as transfixed by the odd scene as she.

Maurice took that opportunity to turn and land a blow squarely on the man’s sternum; he doubled over and the inventor hit him again in the jaw. With that, he fell unconscious.

“You big bully,” Maurice growled. “You’re only used to picking on the weak.”

“Aunt! Aunt Foufou!”

Belle recognized LeFou among the torch-carrying villagers. Some of the others were also looking for family members amongst the escaped patients. Everyone else seemed to be out for blood; there were muskets and actual pitchforks in their hands. The look in their eyes was frightening, magnified by the torchlight.

“Let’s…go around this,” Belle suggested. Whatever was happening it would most certainly not end well for her. Nothing involving Gaston and the villagers ever seemed to.

The little family stuck close to the asylum, running alongside it and trying to keep out of everyone’s way. Unless her father had a better plan, Belle’s idea was simply to get to the road or the stables and either steal a carriage—or just keep going.

But when they rounded the corner, they ran almost bodily into D’Arque, who was waiting for them.

D’Arque carried a small musket and smiled grimly.

Belle, Maurice, and Rosalind turned to go back the other way but there were three big guards armed with truncheons bearing down on them with all the ominous finality of a checkmate.

“D’Arque! What is wrong with you?” Maurice demanded, turning back around.

“You mean
Frédéric
,” Rosalind said wearily. “Do you remember now? Frédéric D’Arque?”

Maurice looked confused. His eyes batted in strange blinks. Something not quite natural was going on in his mind. “Frédéric…” he said slowly. “My old friend…Frédéric. D’Arque? How did I…how did I forget who you were?”

“He is—or was—a
charmante
,” Rosalind said. “My own spell made you forget.”

“No longer one of your kind, thank you very much,” D’Arque said with a nasty smile and a nastier little bow. “I managed to cut the impurities out of myself years ago.”

“But…how did you manage all this?” Maurice asked slowly. “All of these people…From here, and our home…How did you get—
kidnap
, I mean—all these people?”

“I had the full support of the king and queen,” D’Arque said, drawing himself up haughtily. “They wanted to rid themselves of the
charmante
problem, but for more…strategic reasons than myself; they considered your kind a threat to their power. Once they heard of my own theories and opinion on the matter, they gave me a generous stipend, the funds to buy the old asylum, and the manpower to collect my subjects and patients.”

“
You
were behind the disappearances from the beginning,” Rosalind said flatly. “
You
kidnapped and killed Vashti.”

“I didn’t kill her,” D’Arque corrected. “She took her own life, here, eventually. Sometimes they do that.”

Belle watched her mother’s jaw drop, her hands slowly gripping and ungripping some object she obviously no longer had.

A wand, maybe?

“Frédéric…” Maurice said slowly. “I don’t understand. We were
friends.
…How could you do this?”

“My apologies for borrowing your innocent self and pure daughter,” he said, lowering his eyes almost convincingly. “I was after larger prey, as it were. You were just the bait.”

Belle’s eyes widened. “Beast. Oh, no…”

“Yes. I made the connection after Gaston told me about Maurice’s ‘beast in the woods.’ It was the little princeling from the forgotten fairy tale kingdom, all grown up. If not into a
man
, precisely.”

Rosalind narrowed her eyes. “Whatever has happened to him, it is not his fault. Leave him be.”

“I cannot let a marauding monster go free in our countryside,” D’Arque said, clucking his tongue. “And who are
you
telling me to leave something be—you who go marching around, cursing princes and changing
les naturel
s into something they are not? What gave you that right?”

Rosalind looked pained. “I made mistakes. I would correct them….Killing the Prince solves nothing.”

Belle’s curiosity made her speak up, despite all that was going on. “Monsieur Lévi said something about you promising not to touch me,” she said accusingly.