Page 23 of Heart of Snow
“Your father intervened.”
Father had caught the man’s hand in the air, his voice carrying to the coach when he’d warned,“Not in the presence of my daughters.”
The man had glared down at the boy, waiting for Father to walk away before releasing the boy with a shove. He’d yelled at the gawking miners to get back to work, and the ants scurried again.
Left alone, the boy had begun to cry, and I remembered the pity I’d felt to see it. Enough pity that I’d dug a bruised apple from our overturned food basket.
“You climbed down from your coach, defying your sister when she tried keeping you inside. I was so surprised to see you walking toward me in your clean, fine silks.” He huffed a shortchuckle. “But then...” He looked up as we relived the memory together. “You held out the apple for me.”
The boy’s eyes had met mine, and I was shocked by their color. Stormy gray. The same stormy gray I’d recognized upon our meeting at Walpurgisnacht.
The boy had wiped his nose on his sleeve, reaching out a tentative hand before grasping the apple and tucking it to his chest. He’d cradled it against him as though it was something precious, his thumb caressing its crisp, red skin.
Just as his thumb caressed it now.
We were quiet awhile, each lost in our reflections, until I murmured, “I remember you now.”
“Do you?” He pulled his chair so close our knees almost touched. “When I saw you at Walpurgisnacht, I recognized you almost instantly. You were older, of course, and even more—” He swallowed, looking at the apple he rolled between his palms as he rushed through the rest. “Even more beautiful than I remembered.”
I froze, unsure I’d understood him rightly. It was such a bold admission.
“But your eyes,” he continued. “They haven’t changed. As a child they were colored with sadness, almost a private despair. I see it there still.”
He looked up at me then, and I darted my gaze to the fire, working to keep my breath steady. “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean.” My voice was too pleasant, too light.
I felt Friedrich’s scrutinizing stare for a time until he sighed and leaned back in his chair. “Of course you don’t.” He took a bite from his apple and lifted his alphabet for study.
While my breath returned to its steady rhythm, my mind wandered back over our conversation, one point striking me. “You worked in the mine shafts? I thought only grown men and dwarfs worked in the shafts.”
Friedrich raised an eyebrow and gave a surprised chortle. “Dwarfs? There are no dwarfs in the mines.”
“I remember them quite distinctly. They wore the driving hoods and breech leather aprons of miners. They even carried pit picks.”
His smile faded. “Those aren’t dwarfs; they’re boys. Or men who’ve worked in the mines since they were boys.”
“But it’s a man’s work. Why would they employ children?”
“Because some of those tunnels are barely higher than my knee.” He put a flattened palm out beside him. “Only children are small enough to fit, and that’s only if they’re lying down. They have to crawl through the shafts to fill a trolley heavy with ore, then shoulder it back up the tunnels on their hands and knees or pull it with a strap across their chests. The weight of the work makes their spines grow curved. And while their legs stay short and weak, their shoulders and chest grow to the size of a man’s. Working twelve hours a day in almost total darkness, never seeing the sun, they end up pale and sickly. The shafts are like a living tomb.”
“How dreadful! How did you manage to escape it?”
“A lot of things combined that allowed me to escape, but a small part of it was...” Friedrich ducked his eyes, “. . . was because of you and your apple, actually.” He turned away, his jaw flexing as he watched the fire. “As a noble child, you had no business worrying about me, spoiling your gown for a poor orphan boy. Yet you disobeyed your sister and helped me anyway. You lived outside your class, not bound by expectations.”
His prejudice was showing again, exposing his wrongheaded ideas about how nobility behaved, but I let it pass.
“I decided to do the same,” he continued, “ignoring all the expectations of an orphan boy’s fate and finding my own way.That act, that apple... it was a chance to choose something better.”
I very much liked the idea of young Friedrich drawing such grand and grown-up conclusions from my simple deed. And the notion that my small kindness had changed the course of his life created a strange sensation in my heart, like the tingling of blood flowing to a limb once numb. I thought of so many things to say, but none seemed quite right.
Friedrich filled the silence. “But thosedwarfsare good men. They took me in and cared for me when I was sick, then found me work. I do my best to repay their kindness when I can.”
“You still see them?” I asked.
“When I’m not away at war,” he muttered. “My friend, Ernst, is in a bad way. I try to make time for him.”
“He’s ill?” I drummed my fingers against the chair’s arm, pondering an idea. “I could help him, Friedrich. You should take me with you the next time you go.”
His head jerked back. “To Bergfreiheit? I’m not sure how the miners would feel having a countess in their cottage.”
