The Castle Behind Thorns by Merrie Haskell Page A

Count’s room the night before. He wanted to ask her why she’d held his hand. He thought he knew why, that she’d simply been lonely and scared. But he’d thought he understood things about girls before, and been proved wrong nearly every time.
    He served them both bowls of stew, giving her the spoon while he ate with his hands. While he was thinking about how to phrase his questions, Perrotte asked, “Are there any herbs?”
    â€œAll dried up and withered away, as far as I can tell,” Sand said. “But you are welcome to look.”
    â€œAh. But at least there are onions and garlic. Though . . .” She picked up an onion piece and knocked it against the table. It rustled more than knocked. “So dry. That’s how I felt when I woke: dry.”
    When she “woke.” Sand supposed there was some value in talking about it like that, in not saying “dead.” Christ and several of his saints had resurrected people. Sand wondered how they had all referred to that process of coming back to life. Maybe it felt like waking.
    A cold thought overcame him. He had woken, in the fireplace. He had not known how he’d gotten there—could he have been dead first?
    But—but no. He would know. Wouldn’t he?
    Perrotte poked at her stew. “What was your life like, Sand? Before?”
    He shrugged, sipping broth from the bowl before scooping up a chunk of turnip with his fingers. “I hoped to apprentice with my father, but I guess that was never going to happen.”
    â€œHow do you mean?”
    â€œHe wanted me to leave Boisblanc. He didn’t intend for me to become a blacksmith. He made me learn to read, and study every day with the village priest. Papa meant for me to go to a university and study there.”
    â€œThe village priest? Why not send you to a cathedral school?”
    â€œI don’t know. My father never told me. We lived too far from a cathedral school? We had too little money?”
    â€œCathedral schools are free—but hard to gain entrance to.”
    â€œI don’t think my father ever tried to get me into one.”
    â€œAnd what would he have you study at university?”
    â€œPapa didn’t even know that much! I used to ask him the same question. He would say, ‘Study what you like!’ And I would tell him that I wanted to stay home and ‘study’ blacksmithing, and he would get angry. We fought all the time about it. It didn’t matter how ridiculous his dream was, he wanted it. But me, go to Paris? Or even Angers? Show up at the city gates, alone? And find tutors? With what money? With what sponsors? Even if someone took pity on me, they would not be inspired by my intellect. I am terrible at reading Latin.”
    â€œI could teach you to read better.”
    â€œI don’t want to read better! Everything I want to know, a smith can teach me. Without a book.” Sand laughed, and noticed how bitter he sounded. “I love blacksmithing, and my father refused to teach me any more of it. I used to sneak over the fields in the early morning while my father slept and have lessons with my grandpère.”
    â€œWhy did your father want you to go away so badly?”
    â€œI’ve only wondered that my whole life.”
    â€œYour stepmother?” Perrotte guessed. “She didn’t want you around?”
    â€œAgnote? No! Agnote loves me. She’s tried to make peace between us since I was little. She doesn’t understand my father either.”
    â€œYour mother—died in childbirth?”
    â€œThat would be easy to understand, wouldn’t it? If my father didn’t want me around because I killed my mother by being born? But no—poor Maman died when I was a toddler, from a summer fever.” He scrubbed a hand through his hair, noting how long it had gotten since he’d awakened in the castle. Only as he lowered his arm did he realize his hands