Caitlyn glanced over at Raphael. He, too, was watching the men fence.
The stocky man lunged, but at the same moment the black-haired man stepped aside, twisted his wrist, and sent the other man’s sword flying through the air. It landed with a clatter on the stones.
“Where did you learn
that
?” the stocky man complained, his face sour with defeat.
“From one of your countrymen,” the slender man said. “Everyone knows that Italians are the finest swordsmen in the world, Giovanni.”
Giovanni’s expression lightened. “This is true, Philippe. We Italians are much better than the French,” he said. “Generally speaking. Not today, perhaps.” He put out his hand with a hint of reluctance, and the two men shook.
“Now it’s your turn, Raphael!” Philippe said, suddenly spinning around and pointing his rapier at Raphael. Caitlyn gasped.
“Perhaps tomorrow, when I haven’t just come in from a long ride,” Raphael said.
Philippe advanced toward him, making feinting motions with his rapier. “When those assassins make another try for you, they will not care if you are tired or in the wrong clothes. If you do not practice, you will make it easy for them to dispatch you. Is that what you want?”
“God forbid you make it easy for an assassin,” Giovanni said as he scooped up his sword and handed it to Raphael. “You wouldn’t want to bore him.”
“That
would
be a tragedy,” Raphael agreed, taking the sword and tossing his hat aside. It landed at the base of the scaffolding, a few feet from Caitlyn. He got into position facing black-haired Philippe, and raised his blade. Caitlyn put her hands to her cheeks, almost afraid to watch.
“I agree with Giovanni. Assassins should at least break a sweat before they skewer you,” Philippe said, and then he and Raphael engaged swords, the blades dancing against each other in short, violent flurries of motion. Caitlyn held her breath, but then just as suddenly as they’d begun, the two of them stepped out of each other’s reach, each assessing the other’s movements.
“I don’t know”—Raphael said between breaths, his eyes locked on Philippe’s every move—“of any assassin”—Raphael parried and thrusted, only to have Philippe dance aside and make his own thrust—“who attacks his target”—he lunged at Philippe. Philippe grinned as he knocked the sword from Raphael’s hand, but the grin disappeared as Raphael continued toward him and his other hand appeared holding his dagger, the point of it held now at Philippe’s throat—“with a rapier, when a dagger will do the job with much less effort,” Raphael concluded.
Giovanni hooted in glee. Caitlyn silently cheered.
Philippe’s look of surprise turned to one of appreciation. “You have a point,” he said, but then in three quick moves knocked the dagger from Raphael’s hand, twisted his arm behind his back, and kicked his feet out from under him. Raphael fell to the ground.
Caitlyn winced, and Giovanni grimaced.
“But in case of a dagger attack, you should know how to defend yourself even if you are without a weapon.” Philippe’s brow rose sardonically. “So as not to bore the assassins, of course.”
Raphael rolled over and sat up, shaking his head but smiling. “You’ll have to show me how you did that.”
“Ah, I have interested the pupil at last!
Bon!
Tomorrow I will teach you. Right now, I want my dinner.”
Raphael returned Giovanni’s rapier, and Giovanni and Philippe headed into the castle. “Are you coming?” Giovanni asked Raphael from the doorway.
“In a minute.”
“The colors change the same way every night,” Giovanni said, nodding to the sky.
Raphael shook his head. “Then you have no eyes to see them.”
Giovanni shrugged, and the two men disappeared inside. Raphael went to the center of the courtyard and, tilting his head back, watched as the orange sky darkened into greens and deep blues. Caitlyn watched him, entranced herself by the wonder on his face. She didn’t want to disturb him.
At long last he lowered his gaze, and then his eye was caught by his hat, forgotten on the ground near the scaffolding. He came toward the scaffolding, and her. Caitlyn nervously clasped her hands together, trying to think of what to say to him. And then he was just a few feet from her, bending down to pick up the hat.
As he reached for it, Caitlyn heard a scraping sound of stone sliding on wood overhead. She looked up just as one of the boards of scaffolding above her came loose and its end tilted toward Raphael.
Her heart caught in her throat and she acted without thought, leaping from the shadows and shoving Raphael out of the way. He yelped in surprise and stumbled backward as a board and large stone block tumbled from above. Caitlyn felt the cold passage of air as they skimmed by her and smashed to the ground.
Raphael’s shocked gaze focused on the shattered stone, and then rose to her. “You!”
Ursino instantly appeared again in the window above. “What was that?” he cried. “Raphael! Are you all right?”
Caitlyn instinctively sank back into the shadows under the scaffolding.
“It’s nothing!” Raphael called back, his voice quavering. “An accident.”
“Holy Mother, did that stone almost hit you?”
“It was an accident.”
“You’ve been cursed with too many near-miss accidents of late!”
“Or blessed with protection from them.”
“The workmen should be whipped for leaving that stone so precariously placed. I’m coming down to look at it.”
“As you wish.”
Raphael turned and sought Caitlyn in the shadows. His expression was impossible to read, but when he put out his hand to her, she hesitated for only a moment and then took it. It was warm and strong, and lightly callused.
He pulled her with him through a doorway and grabbed a candle lantern just inside. Hurrying, he lit the way up a familiar spiral staircase, pulling her along at a run. Caitlyn grabbed up her rose satin skirts in her free hand to keep from tripping on the wedgeshaped, worn stone steps as she struggled to keep up.
A faint feeling of puzzlement flitted through her, and she glanced down at the satin in her hand. Was this her dress? She felt like she’d seen it before, on someone else. But who? When?
There was no time to figure it out. Raphael rushed her down a corridor and up another flight of stairs, dragged her halfway down a hallway, and then pushed open a door into a small storage room devoid of furnishings except for a few leather trunks banded with metal. For a brief moment, Caitlyn’s mind filled it with old desks and chairs, bookshelves and boxes, and the sound of a beating heart. She shook her head to clear it, and the room returned to its near-empty state.
Raphael pulled her in and shut and barred the door behind them. Caitlyn was panting from the long dash up the stairs and down hallways, and from the sheer unexpectedness of what was happening.
Raphael lifted the lantern and looked at her. “You saved my life,” he said in French. He had spoken Italian to the other men.
He thought she was French, she realized. Which made sense, since they were
in
France.
“Either that,” he continued, “or you just tried to kill me.”
Caitlyn shook her head, winded from the stairs, her heart pounding in her chest. “No! I pushed you out of the way!” she answered in French, with easy fluency. It felt as if she’d spoken it from birth.
“But had you tilted the board, first? That’s what I want to know.”
“No! Why would I?”
Raphael set the lantern on a trunk and stalked toward her, as slow and stealthy as a cat. She backed up, afraid of the look on his face. He did not look so carefree now; he looked instead like he might strangle the truth out of her. The pounding in her chest grew stronger.
“I wouldn’t have expected a female assassin. Who sent you?” he demanded, standing virtually on top of her.
“No one!”
“Was it Pius?”
“Who?”
He snorted. “‘Who?’ Who do you think?”
A memory surfaced, the name of the man who had sentenced Bianca de’ Medici to the pyre. “Pope Pius?”
“Is he the one who sent you?”
“No! No one sent me!” Caitlyn cried. Her heart felt as if it would explode from her chest.
“Was it that de’ Medici witch?”
Her ears rang, and she felt light-headed. “Bianca?”
Raphael’s face went white. He clenched his fist, and for a moment Caitlyn thought he was going to strike her. She threw up her arms to defend herself.
Seconds passed, and then she lowered her arms and saw him backing away from her in slow, stumbling steps. He suddenly sank to his haunches and dropped his face into his hands. Caitlyn heard him take a deep, rasping breath. His shoulders shook.
Was he crying?
She inched forward, uncertain whether to flee or to stay and comfort him. “I didn’t have anything to do with that block falling,” she said quietly. “I wouldn’t hurt you.”
The shaking of his shoulders stilled. He dropped his hands and looked up at her, assessing, and then his gaze dropped to her satin gown. A frown creased his brow, and he slowly shook his head as if unwilling to believe what he was seeing.
Caitlyn looked down at her bright skirts, and then smoothed them under her palms, puzzled at what the dress might mean to him. “I would like you to trust me,” she said.
“I’m supposed to trust you, aren’t I?” he asked hoarsely. “That’s why you’re wearing that dress. It’s a message.” He met her eyes. “Who
are
you?”
“I’m Caitlyn. I told you that before.”
He shook his head and stood, then sat on one of the trunks. He stared at her, as if expecting her to do something.
She fidgeted under his gaze. “Er, the stone falling
was
an accident, wasn’t it?” she asked.
“There have been a lot of accidents these past few months. I’ve either become distracted and clumsy, which is possible,” he said with a weak smile, “or someone is helping ill fortune in her efforts to dispose of me.”
“Someone’s trying to kill you?! Who? Why?” Caitlyn’s heart beat in sudden fear for him. The sound of it made an uneasy drumbeat in the back of her skull.
Thu-thump, thu-thump …
“I’m not sure who’s behind it,” he said, but she sensed that he had an idea. “Tell me, how did you get in and out of my room two weeks ago?” he asked abruptly. “I didn’t see you arrive or leave.”
Caitlyn struggled to recall those moments in his bedroom. “I was hiding in the bed curtains, and then … I don’t know what happened next. It was dark,” was all she could think to say. She frowned. She knew that she
had
been in his room, and that she had then somehow
not
been in it, but she could not clearly recall any life or existence beyond the moments she had spent with him.
Who
was
she? He had asked her that question, but she suddenly realized that she did not know.
Raphael looked at her carefully, and then held out his hand, palm up, in invitation.
Caitlyn hesitated, and then inched forward. She laid her hand on his own. His thumb stroked over her knuckles, sending a shiver up her forearm. She met his eyes, deep and unfathomable in the dim light of the lantern. He tugged her toward him. She came, and stopped only when her skirts brushed against his knees. Her heart pounded so hard she thought he’d be able to hear it himself.
Thu-thump, thu-thump, thu-thump!
“You’re good at moving around in the shadows,” he said softly, as if he didn’t want to frighten her. “But you’re not a servant, like you claimed. I asked around about you. No one knows of a servant named Caitlyn, or even of a servant with straight black hair.”
She bit her lip. “I’m not a servant.”
“I didn’t think so. What are you?”
Her mind struggled to find an answer as he gazed at her, but she was distracted by his closeness.
“Do you even know?” he asked.
“Of course I know what I am,” she lied. An answer suddenly came to her out of thin air. “I’m a student. Here.”
“From the convent outside Cazenac?” he asked in surprise.
Caitlyn nodded slowly. Maybe that was right. She had a faint sense that she went to school with a bunch of girls. It was hard to think, though: the beating of her heart now seemed to be
two
hearts, out of synch with each other:
THU-THUMP thu-thump … THU-THUMP thu-thump THU-THUMP thu-thump …
“Why did you come to me?”
“You’re the Knight of Cups,” she said without thought, the words emerging from her mouth of their own volition.
He blinked in surprise. “What does that mean?”
She shook her head. She didn’t know what the words meant, only that they were true. “I didn’t want you to see me, last time I was here. I didn’t
mean
to spy on you in your bath. It just … happened.”