The Girl in the Tower: A Novel [Hardcover]

USKatherine Ardenis the author of the national bestsellerThe Bear and the Nightingale. Born in Austin, Texas,Ardenspent a year of high school in Rennes, France. Following her acceptance to Middlebury College in Vermont, she deferred enrollment for a year in order to live and study in Moscow. At Middlebury, she specialized in French and Russian literature. After receiving her BA, she moved to Maui, Hawaii, working every kind of odd job imaginable, from grant writing and making crêpes to guiding horse trips. Currently she lives in Vermont, but really, you never know.9781101885963|excerpt

Arden / THE GIRL IN THE TOWER

1.

The Death of the Snow-­Maiden

Moscow, just past midwinter, and the haze of ten thousand fires rose to meet a smothering sky. To the west a little light lingered, but in the east the clouds mounded up, bruise-­colored in the livid dusk, buckling with unfallen snow.

Two rivers gashed the skin of the Russian forest, and Moscow lay at their joining, atop a pine-­clad hill. Her squat, white walls enclosed a jumble of hovels and churches; her palaces’ ice-­streaked towers splayed like desperate fingers against the sky. As the daylight faded, lights kindled in the towers’ high windows.

A woman, magnificently dressed, stood at one of these windows, watching the firelight mingle with the stormy dusk. Behind her, two other women sat beside an oven, sewing.

“That is the third time Olga has gone to the window this hour,” whispered one of the women. Her ringed hands flashed in the dim light; her dazzling headdress drew the eye from boils on her nose.

Waiting-­women clustered nearby, nodding like blossoms. Slaves stood near the chilly walls, their lank hair wrapped in kerchiefs.

“Well, of course, Darinka!” returned the second woman. “She is waiting for her brother, the madcap monk. How long has it been since BlĂ,