“We did state that you must accept our decisions about your curriculum, both present and future. I am simply elaborating upon that clause.”
“I thought you meant how many math classes I had to take, or credits of PE!” She frowned. “Wait a minute. Did I hear you just say you’d pay my college tuition?”
“And room and board. A ‘free ride,’ I believe you call it in the States.”
Caitlyn let the words sink in. She’d always thought that her path to a higher education would be two years at a community college before transferring to a state school. Part-time jobs, school loans, roommates, and cheap apartments: she knew that that was what lay ahead if she went back home.
Having everything paid for by someone else would be so much better.
“It’s the same decision the children of the rich are often forced to face,” Madame Snowe said. “Should they accept their parents’ money and live according to their rules, or seek the freedom of fending for themselves? Money is power, whether we like it or not, and it can persuade us to take actions we find abhorrent.”
“You don’t sound as if you’re trying to persuade me to stay.”
“As I said, Caitlyn, I’m asking you to make an adult decision. I will also expect you to abide by that decision, once made. There will be no going back on your word. You will be expected to give your full energies to the work we set before you. There will be no slacking off. Do you accept?”
Caitlyn hardly needed to think about it. Surely she could bear the educational control of this Sisterhood of Fortuna for a few years; they did, after all, think she had potential.
They believed in her. No one else ever had.
“I accept.”
Madame Snowe smiled. “Good girl.”
“So do I have to sign a blood oath or something?”
“We’re a modern institution. A DNA swab will do.”
Caitlyn laughed, but Madame Snowe’s face remained impassive as she went to the wall and pressed a spot in the paneling that popped open a hidden cabinet door. She retrieved a narrow tube with an oversize Q-tip-style swab inside, and handed the swab to Caitlyn.
“Rub this on the inside of your cheek, please.”
Caitlyn gaped at it. “Are you serious? Why?”
“It will allow us to run tests to determine if you are vulnerable to several diseases, and to take preventive measures if necessary. We would have gathered this information when you had your routine physical in Oregon, with your regular doctor, but your father refused to sign the release we sent.”
Uneasiness squirmed inside Caitlyn, and a grudging respect for her father and his instinctive paranoia. “I didn’t sign away my privacy, you know. I don’t see what my genetic code has to do with my attending the Fortune School.”
“You refuse to do this simple thing for us, when it could save your life?”
“You really meant it about protecting your investment, didn’t you?” Caitlyn asked, reluctantly taking the swab and rubbing it in her mouth before returning it to Madame Snowe.
“You have the potential for a long, rewarding life ahead of you. You may have come from nothing, but fifty years from now—yes, fifty; you should still be vital and active then—you may find yourself to be a woman of influence in the world. Perhaps you will lead a country, or be an adviser in a government cabinet. You may head a charity organization that saves the lives of hundreds of thousands. Or perhaps you’ll move in circles where your opinion is whispered into important ears, and subtly shapes international events. It would be a great loss to the world were you to die young.”
“Those are kind of big expectations.”
“To us, they do not seem so. You see, then, why the Sisterhood will be choosing your courses for you. You know neither what you’re capable of, or what you were meant to do.”
“Isn’t that something most people figure out on their own? I thought it was part of growing up, to find your passion.”
Madame Snowe chuckled. “That’s a pretty bubble of myth that needs popping. Most people never feel a calling for a specific career. They stumble upon work that is more or less compatible with their personalities and abilities, and rise as far as their competence—or incompetence—will allow them.
“The Sisterhood, however, does not wish to see you stumble into a position of mediocrity. We will help you live a life of consequence, and you will repay tenfold to the world that which we give you now, in your youth.”
Caitlyn bit her lip. This Sisterhood thought she was capable of far more than seemed realistic, but what was she going to do? Turn down a couple hundred thousand dollars’ worth of education because of self-doubt? She wasn’t stupid!
Madame Snowe pulled a keyboard shelf from under her desk and tapped a few keys. She slid it back and turned the monitor to face Caitlyn.
The screen showed the home page of the Fortune School. There was the familiar picture of the castle, the name of the school, and beside the name the figure of a blindfolded woman in a blue gown, her hand on a large wooden wheel. A sash floated across her torso, inscribed with a Latin phrase:
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
Caitlyn had noticed the figure before, but hadn’t paid it any attention. Her eyes had all been for the castle.
“Do you understand the meaning of this figure?” Madame Snowe asked.
Caitlyn shook her head.
“She is an ancient symbol, going back to the Greeks in recorded history; although she assuredly originated long before that. The Latin translation is, ‘Fortune, Empress of the World.’ What does that say to you?”
Caitlyn looked closely at the image. Fortune was a woman? And she stood beside a wheel.
Fortune and her wheel. Fortune’s wheel.
The Wheel of Fortune.
A chill ran over Caitlyn’s skin. How had she not seen it? It was so obvious! The tarot card from her mother; it had been telling her that she was meant to come here, to the Fortune School!
“Fortune, Empress of the World,” Caitlyn said, repeating Madame Snowe’s translation of the Latin on Fortune’s sash. “I think it means that we are all subject to the whims of Fortune.”
“Yes, we’re all on the
Rota Fortunae
, Fortune’s wheel,” Madame Snowe said. “The message is that even the mightiest may be laid low, and the lowliest rise.
Fortune rota volvitur
: the wheel of Fortune turns. We intend for you to ride the wheel upward, Caitlyn.”
“Was the castle named for Fortune’s wheel?”
“No. The castle has been Château de la Fortune since the thirteenth century. One of the early owners, Simon de Gagéac, was a Knight Templar—”
“A Knight Templar owned the castle?” Caitlyn interrupted.“They were something to do with the Crusades, weren’t they?” They’d come up in several historical novels she’d read, and in
The Da Vinci Code
.
Madame Snowe nodded. “Their original mission was to protect pilgrims on the way to the Holy Land, but they also joined in the Crusades. Simon de Gagéac, legend says, brought home an immense treasure from the Holy Land. He became convinced that the treasure was cursed, though, and hid it somewhere in the castle, swearing that he would protect the world from its evil influence.”
“Cool!” Caitlyn said.
“Perhaps the treasure
was
cursed, though. Simon de Gagéac went insane.”
“What happened to the treasure?”
“
Alors
, that’s how the castle got its name. The castle and the secret of the treasure’s location was passed down for several generations, but then the family line died out, and with it the location of the treasure.”
“So it’s still here?”
Madame Snowe raised a brow. “It is a story, Caitlyn. The world is full of tales of buried treasure, and few of them have proved true.” Her face softened. “But still. I do like to believe that there is something special here at Château de la Fortune, something
hidden at the heart of it
,” she said with special emphasis, “that gives strength to what we of the Sisterhood try to achieve for the young women within these walls.” She looked at Caitlyn expectantly.
Hidden at the heart …
Were you trying to steal the heart?
Caitlyn heard the words in her head, spoken roughly by Raphael.
A shiver went through her body.
Madame Snowe narrowed her eyes. “Is something the matter?”
She shook her head and tried to smile. “No.” Her eyelid twitched. “But I’m not sure that a treasure with a curse on it is such a great thing to have as the heart of your castle.”
Madame Snowe’s expression tightened in disapproval. “We consider it an inspiration. ‘Fortune’ can mean great wealth, or it can mean fate. We of the Sisterhood of Fortuna choose to educate young women so that they may control both their wealth and their destinies. We wish them to turn their own wheels of fortune to their best advantage, and to the advantage of the world we live in. We expect
you
, Caitlyn, to become a force for change in the world, and not a hapless victim on the rim of the wheel.”
Caitlyn swallowed, feeling small beneath the force of Madame Snowe’s convictions. “I promise to do my best not to become Fortune’s roadkill.”
“An apt, if not particularly lovely, metaphor,” Madame Snowe said, her lips twitching. “We seem to understand each other. You may go now.”
Caitlyn blinked, surprised that the interview was over. “You don’t want to go over the school rules, or any of that?”
“Did you read them all thoroughly?”
“Yes, of course.”
“Did you have any questions about them?”
“No.”
“Then I see no need to review them, do you? You may go.”
Taken off guard, Caitlyn rose and started to leave, then stopped and turned halfway around. “I—”
“Yes, Caitlyn?”
“I want to thank you, and the Sisterhood of Fortuna, for giving me this chance. It means … everything to me. I will do my best not to disappoint you.”
“We know you will. I want to make this clear, though: you have been given a great opportunity, and we expect your efforts to be equally as great in return. If you disappoint us, you will be expelled. Do you understand?”
Caitlyn’s eyelid twitched. “Yes.”
Madame Snowe shooed her out with a flick of her fingers.
Caitlyn went, eyes rising to meet those of Bianca de’ Medici as she passed the portrait. The noblewoman’s supercilious expression seemed to ask,
Are you sure you can fulfill those big expectations?
No, not at all
, Caitlyn silently answered.
But I’ll work until my dying breath, trying.
Caitlyn fled the room, sure of only one thing: she could not afford to disappoint Madame Snowe.
CHAPTER
Eight
FEBRUARY 10
The next two and a half weeks passed in a blur for Caitlyn. Amalia took her under her wing and gave her a tour of the school, introduced her to girls whose names Caitlyn promptly forgot, and showed her how to take care of everything from her laundry to refreshing her toiletry supplies.
Once classes started, Caitlyn immediately found herself drowning in a sea of reading and homework. Amalia showed her quiet places to study and, by her own studious example, helped Caitlyn buckle down to the work and plow forward.
Caitlyn was so frightened of disappointing Madame Snowe, she barely allowed herself time to breathe between waking and sleeping. She devoted herself to schoolwork with an obsession that would have stunned her teachers back home. It was only in the stolen, solitary moments—while taking a shower, or when she lay down her head at the end of the day—that her thoughts would drift to Raphael, and she’d feel a tug at her heart. She hadn’t dreamed of him again, and each morning when her alarm clock went off, she awoke with the sense of an opportunity lost.
The Screechers, unfortunately, were more eager to pay her visits. Three more times, she’d woken Amalia with her screaming nightmares. The princess’s remarkable patience was showing signs of wearing thin; Caitlyn was certain she’d heard Amalia mutter some very rude words the last time she’d been woken.
There had been no other dreams that she could recall, and she wondered why. Stress? The rigidity of her study schedule was starting to chafe, and she had reached her limit on adjusting herself to a new way of life. The term
culture shock
had new validity for her. The food, the people, the classes, the physical environment: everything was new, and it was wearing her out.
Take her class schedule: instead of having the same six or seven classes every day like at her high school, the Fortune School followed a plan similar to universities. On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays Caitlyn had algebra, world history, French, and geology for an hour and a half each. On Tuesdays and Thursdays she had two hours each of English, French conversation lab, and art. And just to make things especially confusing, on Saturday mornings she had a riding lesson.