Tale As Old As Time

Chapter 2: The Scars of Rossbach

Every musket shot took Gaston back to Rossbach. A failed, disastrous fight against Frederick the Great. The patter of guns like rain falling on stone, the screams of men, the cries of cannons, the stink. The creep of red as white linen turns darker. Smoke before, behind, drums and clicking hooves. His fellows running, Prussian cavalry with swords held high cut down fleeing men and laughed. The sickening wet squelch of his bayonet sticking through a horse, and the dull crunch as its rider was thrown.

He saw, he felt, he tasted that battle in the smell of gunpowder smoke. In the flash and crack of the shot. And he could feel the bullet tearing through his shoulder, as his shot brought down the quail.

Gaston relived Rossbach with every day. Every time he fired a musket.

"Wow, great shot Gaston!" his friend Lefou said. "You must be the greatest shot in the whole world."

"It's true, beyond a doubt," he said with flair. He set one foot on a rock, and puffed his chest. With one hand now tightly squeezing his gun, the other a fist against his hip, he hoped Lefou would miss his trembling grip.

But Lefou was staring up at him, idolizing. While Gaston could not condemn his friend for his loyalty, it left him quite terrified. He feared the day his friend saw though the legend Lefou had dressed him in, to the quivering coward behind.

A figure stepped into view, down the street. A familiar sight, Belle was aptly named. Paintings of Helen of Troy, or patron mistresses of pagan pantheons were homely things compared to her. Her skin was pale as milk, untouched by hard labour below the sun. Her smile was charming, words disarming, and oh could she sing. But more than that, her studious and serious frown while she read reminded Gaston of someone. A nun, from Rossbach, who pulled a bullet free from his shoulder.

Gaston smiled. He waved his hand, gesturing Belle's way. "And I have my sights set on that one."

Lefou began to speak, and did something that frightened Gaston. His friend had doubts. "The inventor's daughter? Are you quite sure? She's so well read, and you're, ah, not quite Voltaire."

"I don't even know who that is," Gaston said.

"So, what sparked your interest in Belle?"

"It just occurred to me, Lefou, that she hasn't fawned on me. Not once, in all these years. Who else in this village can say as much? That makes her the best. And don't I deserve the best?"

"Why yes, of course, Gaston," Lefou agreed.

"She's the one. The lucky girl I'm going to marry," Gaston vowed, and he posed again, as if to dare the world to contradict him. He stepped forward, to boldly go and win his prize.

But fear took hold and squeezed him tight. It wasn't the horror — the terror — of Rossbach, a companion more constant than Lefou. It was an unfamiliar sensation; he was nervous. A surprise, to feel so timid. A feather weight of a fear, compared to the scars of Rossbach. Gaston marched through it, and on to his prize.

He rolled his broad shoulders, he flexed his incredibly thick neck, and admired the cast of his shadow. There was no one as burly and brawny and see he had biceps to spare. A whistle, admiring, came from the goat herder Lafey.

Now the hunt is just as much the chase, as the kill. Lafey is tempting, others call her enchanting. Gaston, though, could only find her disappointing. For nothing worth having came without effort, and pursuing Lafey had all the thrill of hunting goats in a pen.

"And there you go, with that particular look," Lafey was saying to Belle. "And your nose stuck in a book. Certainly not the best of us, you don't fit in with the rest of us, do you Belle?"