The Castle Behind Thorns

by Merrie Haskell

  “You mean Queen Claude, who is also the Duchess of Bertaèyn?”

  “Queen Claude? I mean Duchess Anna!”

  “Queen Anne died . . .” Sand counted on his fingers, trying to remember the seasons since he and his father had come in from the smithy to find Agnote weeping at the news. “Some three years back.”

  The girl lay down on the bed and buried her face in his pillow. “That can’t be,” she said, muffle-voiced. “How old was she when she . . . died?”

  Sand had no notion. “She was near to my father’s age, I think.”

  “That is impossible!” The girl sat up again. “Anna and I were born the same year. In another month, I was going to her court to wait on her! She can’t be old and dead.”

  “Not so old, when she died, and she had been Queen of France twice over, and mother of two daughters . . .”

  “Queen of France.” She appeared devastated by this, which Sand understood. The duchy had been trying to slip the yoke of the French for years; Sand’s own uncle had died for Bertaèyn’s independence. It had been a blow to all her subjects when Anna Vreizh was forced into marriage against her will, to become Anne, Queen of France.

  The girl blinked, looking around the room as if seeing it for the first time, eyes lingering on the scratched walls. Her gaze fell to his painstakingly crafted bowl of fruit porridge.

  “My lady, I have food for you.” He picked up the bowl—more than three-quarters of a bowl, in fact, and a lucky find—and handed it to her.

  She wrinkled her nose. “What is this?”

  He hesitated to tell her the particulars of where he got food, fearing her disgust. “Porridge?”

  “Are you asking me or telling me?”

  Abruptly, he was tired of her rude manner. Certainly, she was the daughter of a count. But he was the son of a blacksmith. Blacksmithing might be the craft of a peasant, but smiths had an important lineage and many secrets. And many royals had worked a forge as well; Grandpère used to tell him stories about how Richard the Lion-Hearted of England had worked side by side with his smiths, improving techniques for shaping armor.

  He decided: He wasn’t going to call her “my lady” anymore. While they were both trapped in this castle, they were on the same footing.

  No. Not the same. Sand was the lord of this place. He was the one who had started mending it. He was the one setting it aright.

  “Eat it or don’t eat it,” he said abruptly, setting the porridge on the floor beside the bed, tilting the bowl so it didn’t spill. “It’s as good as any food you can find around here. What’s your name?”

  She blinked owlishly at him, looking small and young and lost all of a sudden. “Perrotte,” she said. “That’s my name.” And then hesitantly, in a tiny voice, she said, “I’m sorry. I am not treating you well. My mother would be most upset with me. She taught me greater graciousness than that.”

  Sand had heard plenty of stories about the Countess from other villagers, and he had a hard time imagining the Countess teaching anyone graciousness. But he didn’t say anything.

  Her voice grew tinier still when she asked, “And my father?”

  “The . . . Count of Boisblanc?” Sand stalled.

  “Yes,” the girl said, eyes narrowing.

  “If we are talking about the same Derien, Count of Boisblanc . . . he is dead.”

  In comparison to her reaction to the news of Queen Anna’s death, Perrotte remained much calmer—on the surface. But the way her face went completely calm made him think she was extremely disturbed underneath it all.

  He knew only one other person who generally appeared calmer the worse she felt, and that was his stepmother, Agnote. He’d learned how to read the signs of that kind of control. Perrotte’s eyes gleamed; she blinked rapidly, and then her eyes were normal again. She breathed deeply, and said in a voice only slightly thickened, “He was injured in the League War. He never healed fully—he was quite ill, and had been for some time, before I—” She stopped speaking abruptly, her face still as composed as if it were shaped from metal.

  Sand never knew the right thing to do when faced with grief. He cast about for something else to draw the girl’s attention. He handed her a cup of water, and she drank it, wrinkling her nose slightly.

  “And my sister?” she asked, returning the cup to him. “Rivanon was newborn. Does she live?”

  Her sister, Rivanon! That was the Princess. “Yes. She married a prince of France—we call her the Princess, though she is also our Countess. Your mother yet lives, and though she is the dowager, we all call her the Countess still—”

  “She’s not my mother,” Perrotte said sharply. Sand realized she was shivering. He pulled a mended blanket from the foot of the bed and drew it around her shoulders, then handed her the bowl of porridge again.

  Perrotte bowed her head for a moment; Sand thought she was praying, until he saw that one finger was rubbing the roughness of the bowl’s broken lip, over and over.

  “What happened here?” she whispered. “The castle is so empty, and so many things are broken . . .”

  Sand shrugged with one shoulder. “I don’t know. There are stories—stupid ones. Everyone says that there was an earthquake, and the castle was abandoned—but!” He leaned forward a little. “I don’t believe that story anymore, not any of it!”

  “Why?” she asked.

  He gestured at the bowl. “That could have been broken in an earthquake, certainly—fallen off a shelf, lost a big chunk . . . But there is so much else here that could never have been damaged that way. Sheets torn into pieces! Saddles and blankets rent in two. And . . . whole anvils, just torn in half! Something happened here, but it wasn’t any simple earthquake.”

  Perrotte stirred restlessly on the bed, then subsided.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Nothing,” she said. “That memory of a memory . . . Or maybe a dream.”

  She couldn’t remember the sundering, Sand thought. She had already been dead—hadn’t she? But on the other hand, she had been the only thing in the castle that wasn’t broken into at least two pieces, so maybe she had been alive when the castle broke—or maybe she had died in the sundering, and they had left her in the crypt and then fled?

  He hadn’t checked on the other bodies in the crypt, though. He’d been afraid to.

  He didn’t want to say these things to her, however. It seemed, well, rude, to refer to her dead body, or to mention how he had found her in the crypt, and returned her to the niche and straightened her in her resting place. It felt like touching someone while they slept without their permission. Agnote had many rules in their house, but only one was truly insurmountable: Keep your hands to yourself.

  Sand suppressed a shudder and forced himself to stop thinking of dead Perrotte. She was alive now, as alive as he was. Though, whatever magic had done this, whatever magic had resurrected this girl . . . it was as powerful as anything he’d ever heard of, outside of the miracles performed by saints. In fact, it was rather on par with those miracles, and Sand didn’t know what to think.

  Perrotte appeared to be done with her thoughtful meditation over the damaged bowl, and had picked up a spoon, finally eating the porridge he had prepared. He watched her carefully, waiting to see if she made a face, but she kept her expression smoother than ironed silk.

  She met his eyes. “Well?” she said sharply, through a mouthful of porridge.

  “Well?!”

  She swallowed her bite and put the bowl back on the floor. “Why are you here, son of Gilles Smith?” She stared, her eyes catching the afternoon sun in a way that made them look more green than brown. A small vertical crease appeared between her brows, and she pursed her lips. “Gilles . . .”

  “Pardon?”

  “The shoemaker’s boy, his apprentice . . .” She narrowed her eyes. “You look a lot like him. His name was Gilles.”

  Sand almost fell off the stool. “That—that was my father! He worked in this castle when he was a boy.”

 
“My Gilles was no smith.”

  “No! After the castle was sundered, he apprenticed with my mother’s father.”

  Perrotte shook her head. “I don’t think that was him. He would never have given up shoemaking for something as brutish as blacksmithing.”

  “I beg your pardon,” he said stiffly. “But I think I know my own father. And—” Angry words in defense of blacksmithing leaped so quickly to his tongue that they choked themselves off.

  “No, you don’t understand—he wasn’t really strong enough to be a smith. Not that you look strong enough, either.” She eyed his arms critically. Sand felt heat rise in his cheeks.

  “I’m strong enough,” he said. “And Grandpère always says blacksmithing takes strength of eyes and mind more than strength of arm. I’m plenty strong enough in arm. You are strong enough.”

  She looked dubious. “Still,” she said. “It is hard to see Gilles as a blacksmith, let alone an old man with a boy my own age.”

  “Then maybe what you lack to be a smith is not strength of arm but strength of vision,” Sand snapped.

  “I have terrific vision!” she announced. “I can see eight stars among the Pleaides.”

  Whatever that meant.

  “Not vision of the eyes. Vision like imagination,” he said. “You—” He stopped himself from saying something mean.

  Fortunately for both of them, Perrotte changed the subject. Patting her hair, she asked, almost off-handedly, “So, the Countess. She knows I’m alive?”

  Sand straightened his sleeves. “That would be impossible,” he said. “No one knows you’re alive. At the moment, no one knows I am alive. We’re trapped in this castle. There’s an impenetrable wall of thorns surrounding this place.”

  If he had expected her to have a horrified reaction to this news, he was sorely disappointed. She just made a sideways grimace with half her mouth, and said, “Impenetrable? I doubt that very much, Alexandre.”

  “Call me Sand,” he said, as was his habit when addressed by his full name. He almost swallowed his tongue in an effort not to stick it out at her.

  “And you must remember to address me as ‘my lady.’”

  He just bared his teeth in response, a fake smile. He would not stick his tongue out at her. But no way in Heaven was he doing anything she told him.

  9

  Hook

  EVEN THOUGH SAND WAS SURE THAT PERROTTE WAS his age, he found himself trailing after her like she was one of his littlest sisters and he’d been set to child-minding duty. Certainly she was taller than a toddler, though no less obstinate, and honestly, she walked about as well. She had not regained her full strength, and she stumbled at times, weaving back and forth as she made her way through the castle.

  He refused to offer her his arm at first. She would not take his advice to stay in bed, to trust him that nothing she would see today could not be seen tomorrow—just unpeopled rooms full of dryness, stillness, and broken things. But she trudged on, stubbornly clinging to walls to rebalance herself on the way, peering into rooms as if hoping each time to see someone, something. . . .

  Finally, he couldn’t stand the situation anymore, and offered her his arm for support—but she refused him. She just marched on, all the way from inner courtyard to middle to outer, down to the castle’s gates.

  At the end of the passageway to the outermost gate, Perrotte flung open the night portal and stared silently at the wall of thorns. When she reached for them, Sand swatted her hand away. “Don’t touch!”

  Exactly like minding a toddler.

  She jerked her hand back and glared at him. “You. Do not. Touch me.”

  “It’s just—” He pulled up his sleeve and showed her the purple-red scar on his arm. It was hard to make out in the dim light of the tunnel, but the scar appeared puffier than usual. It also itched horribly just then. He scratched it. “One of the thorns got me, and I almost died from it.” He didn’t know how to explain any better.

  Perrotte looked dubious, but kept her hands folded as she bent forward to examine the thorns. One branch of the brake lifted slightly—it could have been the wind, but it could just as easily have been some malevolence—and snagged at her head, catching her small cloth cap and a few trailing tendrils of her hair.

  “Ow!” Perrotte said, and lifted her hand to her head to disentangle herself.

  “No, stop!” Sand shouted, reaching for her hand. He hesitated a bare fraction of a second, torn between helping her and obeying her order not to be touched. She heard him, though; her hand froze just in time, hovering over the thorns twining in her hair.

  She dropped her hand and stepped back—but the thorns hung on. Perrotte untied the strings of the cap under her chin, took another step, and then with a vicious jerk, pulled her head away. She grunted. The thorns retained Perrotte’s cap and several dozen of Perrotte’s golden-brown strands, but she was free.

  “God’s guts,” she swore, rubbing her scalp.

  Sand’s arm itched furiously. “That was a close thing,” he said. “I almost died of blood poisoning when just one thorn got me.” He rubbed his old wound, surprised by his casual tone.

  At the word “poisoning,” Perrotte shuddered, staring at the little scrap of silk that had been her cap. Slowly, it was pulled from view by the shifting brambles of the thorn hedge.

  Sand scraped at his arm with his fingernails and regarded her curiously. Perrotte slammed shut the portal, spun on her heel, and left the tunnel. In the outer courtyard, she stopped, staring up at the thorns towering over the castle walls. Her eyes seemed unfocused.

  “Perrotte?” he asked. “What’s wrong?”

  “A memory of a memory,” she said absently. Her eyes cleared, and she fixed her keen hazel gaze on him. “Well. Here we are, then, trapped in Castle Boisblanc, where everything is broken.”

  “I’ve mended a few things,” Sand said.

  “Surely,” she said, almost arrogant.

  “Some of which are at the bottom of the well,” he said, remembering the bucket he’d lost just before she’d appeared. He didn’t want the bucket to become waterlogged, and he certainly wasn’t going to wander around child-minding Perrotte all day. He wasn’t quite sure how to take his leave of her, so he sketched what he thought might be a courtly bow, and hurried off toward the smithy, muttering, “Excuse me, then,” under his breath. And notably, not referring to her as his lady.

  “Where are you—” she called after him, but he didn’t stop.

  He wasn’t angry, he told himself. What did her ingratitude and high-handed manner matter? He had things to do. He had a castle to repair.

  He was sorting through his pile of scrap metal, looking for something that wanted to be a hook, when she caught up with him. He ignored her, and chose a likely-looking bar of steel, jagged on one end from the sundering. He no longer remembered what the steel had been, or where he had found it before bringing it to his scrap pile, or even if he had found it. It might have been in the smithy’s scrap pile from the beginning. Iron was too easy to reuse and too hard to wrest from the earth to ever throw any of it away.

  “What are you—?” she began, but he cut her off by noisily shoveling charcoal into the forge.

  “I’m doing what I do,” he said roughly. “I’m mending.” He arranged his tinder and kindling, struck a spark, and pumped the bellows, enjoying the way the flames grew into a blaze and roared.

  “Mending?”

  He didn’t say anything. He piled charcoal around the kindling and pumped the bellows furiously. Smoke died away as the kindling was consumed and the charcoal took light; he spread the lit coals wider, and piled more charcoal on top.

  He regretted that building a fire was a relatively slow process—he’d like to be at the stage of hammering things before she asked any more questions.

  But a good fire couldn’t be rushed, even with a bellows. Fortunately, Perrotte said nothing further. He didn’t look at her, hoping she would leave if he ignored her. But when he glanced away from the fir
e, she was still standing there, watching him work.

  Once the fire was burning well, Sand thrust the steel bar into the heart of the white-burning coals, and pumped the bellows again. When he pulled the bar out with his tongs, the end glowed a lovely light orange. He set to work with his hammer, shaping the end with a few well-placed strokes, smoothing out the jaggedness to something a little more pointed and purposeful. But not too sharp. It wasn’t meant to be a fish hook.

  He put the metal back into the heat, this time pushing it farther so as to heat the center of the bar, and pumped the bellows. He glanced at Perrotte. Still, she said nothing—just stood there, with her arms crossed, watching him, as silent and as still as the stone for which she was named.

  He began to feel a little bit guilty for his ire, for ignoring her. She had just risen from death, or something like it. She was more than twenty-five years removed from everything and everyone she had known. So what if she was a little prickly? Wouldn’t he be a little prickly in her place?

  And he couldn’t ignore the truth of their situation. She was the first person he’d spoken with or touched in so many days they might have been weeks, and she might be the only person he spoke with or touched for the rest of his life.

  Her mere existence changed his world.

  He was about to say something to her, but he didn’t know what. So he angled his heated metal over the edge of the anvil and started bending it, then set it to heat again. Since he was making a mere hook, and it didn’t have to hold up to heavy usage, and also because Sand was in a hurry to retrieve the bucket, he chose not to weld the hook’s eye.

  He got a little lost in the process of working the hook. He came back to the world during the quench. The bubble and hiss of water meeting hot metal was as satisfying as ever.

  He looked over at Perrotte, half-expecting her to have finally left. But she still stood there, watching.

  “Sand,” she said, and now her voice was polite, not prickly. “I would like to learn how to do that.”

  “Quench something?” he asked, not surprised. Everyone wanted to quench something, at least once.