His mouth quirked. “How long
did
you spy?”
Caitlyn’s cheeks heated. “No longer than I could help.”
He chuckled, and tugged her a hair closer. Her knees bumped against his. “Last time you were here, you said you’d seen me earlier. When? Where?”
Her ears rang, the sound of two heartbeats almost drowning out her own voice as she spoke. “In the valley, riding with the others. You lost your hat.”
His face went still. “I didn’t see you.”
“No. You couldn’t.”
“I felt someone watching me. You must have been hiding in the field, or the trees near the river.”
“No, I was right behind you. I knocked your hat off.”
The hand holding hers went cold, as if drained of blood. “The
wind
blew my hat off.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she pulled her hand free of his and circled around the chest he sat on. He twisted to watch her, as far as he could, and then when he could turn no farther she rushed toward him and ran her fingers through the back of his hair, from nape to crown.
He shot off the chest and spun around, staring at her with his mouth agape.
“
I
knocked your hat off,” she said with pride. “Not the wind!”
“She
did
send you,” he whispered in awe.
The sound of the double heartbeats tolled in her head, a hundred times louder. Caitlyn winced and held her hands over her ears. She shook her head, trying to clear it of the sounds. The heartbeat that seemed to be her own was fading, but it left behind that second, alien percussion. Its volume rose.
“What’s the matter?” he asked, his voice coming to her as if from a great distance. “Do you hear something?”
“A thumping sound.”
“I don’t hear it.” He came close to her, examining her, as if looking for a key to who or what she really was.
She started to feel light-headed. The beating got faster, as if it was approaching.
THU-THUMP THU-THUMP!
“Do you know who Bianca was?” he asked. His hazel eyes held hers.
Caitlyn anchored herself for a moment to that gaze, trying to block out the thumping heart sounds. “I know that she was burned as a witch.”
“And?”
Caitlyn held out her hands, palms up, not knowing what he wanted her to say. The heartbeat came back full force, pounding against her eardrums, and she winced. “You really don’t hear anything?” She looked around the room, seeking the source of the noise. It was driving her half mad.
THU-THUMP THU-THUMP THU-THUMP …
“I hear nothing.”
She tilted her head toward a wall. No, not there. She approached a chest. Not there, either. “Earlier, who did you mean by the de’ Medici witch?” she asked.
“Catherine,” he spit out. “Queen mother of France. Who else?”
“You hate her,” Caitlyn said in uneasy wonder.
“Shouldn’t I hate her? She holds my sisters captive.”
“Why?”
He ignored the question. “
What
are you looking for?”
“The source of that thumping! It can’t just be in my head!”
THU-THUMP-THU-THUMP!
“I still don’t hear anything,” he insisted.
“Why don’t you rescue your sisters and take them somewhere safe?” she demanded. The heartbeat, she had to find where it was coming from and stop it!
“Take them where? It would have to be the ends of the earth, to escape Catherine’s grasp.”
THU-THUM-THU-THUM-THU-THUM!
Caitlyn squeezed her temples with her fingertips, trying to block it out. “Why not take them there?”
“Where?”
Caitlyn made herself stand still. She tried to look sane.
“The ends of the earth. The Pacific coast of America. The New World.”
He laughed. “There’s nothing there but Spaniards and savages. I would do better to kill my sisters than bring them to such a place.”
The “savages” comment piqued her. “There must be
somewhere
safe.”
“England might be. But I need to find a fortune first.”
“The Templar’s fortune. Of course.”
“You know about that? What do you know?” He grabbed her upper arms, holding her still. “Tell me!”
“
Where
is that noise coming from?” she wailed. “It’s like there’s an enormous heart in the middle of the room, beating, beating, beating! Can’t you hear it?”
Raphael’s face paled. “What did you say?”
A voice in the corridor called Raphael’s name, and then in Italian, “Are you up here?”
“In here, Beneto!” Raphael shouted, and then to Caitlyn, “What did you say about a heart?”
“The beating! Where’s it coming from?”
Beneto started to pound on the wood planks of the door. “Open up! Ursino told me what happened!”
Frustration filled Raphael’s face, and then with a grunt of exasperation he let go of her arms and turned to open the door. “One moment, Beneto! I have someone in here who has information we can use.”
As Raphael went to the door, Caitlyn dashed to the chest on which he’d been sitting earlier. The sound of the beating heart filled her head and chased out all thought. The black chest was half covered with ornate decorative bands, handles, and latches. With nimble fingers she pressed a series of hidden buttons and inconspicuous curlicues, her hands inexplicably knowing what to do. She could hear each touch move a mechanical part somewhere inside the chest. A moment later she flung open the lid, revealing the elaborate locking mechanism, a cage of wheels and sprockets that covered the entire underside of the lid.
A wool blanket covered the contents of the chest. With the heartbeat banging in her ears, her very body trembling with the force of sound, she tossed the blanket aside. In the depths of the chest, something softly glimmered.
Silence instantly consumed her, and the world faded to black.
CHAPTER
Eleven
FEBRUARY 11
Caitlyn felt a hand on her shoulder, and jerked awake.
“Child, did you spend all night here?” a German-accented voice asked.
Caitlyn’s vision flickered between two scenes: she saw Greta’s concerned, motherly face, and then the blanket coming away from the contents of the chest, revealing—
“Child?” Greta’s face again filled her vision.
“Mmm?” Caitlyn mumbled, and tried to cling to sleep.
“It’s almost eight. You have class in half an hour.”
Caitlyn felt her mind shift into full consciousness, and with it the dream began to shred, its elements floating away from her grasp. As the meaning of “almost eight” sank into her brain, Caitlyn swore, scrambled off the couch, and dashed to the desk where her things were. She grabbed a pencil and her journal and sketched down images, desperate to capture the details of her dream before they disappeared entirely.
“Is there a problem between you and Amalia?” Greta asked.
Caitlyn put up her left hand, a finger raised to beg a moment.
Catherine de’ Medici,
she wrote on the edge of a page.
Beneto
Ursino
Falling stone
Sisters captive
Beating heart
When she had all she could think of, she finally looked up at Greta. “No problem with Amalia. I fell asleep studying, is all.”
“Good sleep is as important as books. You will do better for your brain by sleeping in your own bed, at a decent hour.”
“I’ll try to remember that.” Caitlyn gathered up her stuff. “And thank you for waking me.”
Greta harrumphed. “You have no time for breakfast, even.”
Caitlyn smiled. “I’ll be okay.” She hurried to her room to get dressed, her mind reviewing over and over the fragmented scenes she’d captured in her notes. She willed herself to remember them.
All through her algebra class, she replayed the scenes of her dream in her mind. She was surprised by how hard it was to remember, and by how much of what she did remember seemed tied to her waking life: the rose satin dress that she now recognized as identical to the one Bianca wore in the portrait in Madame Snowe’s office; going to school with girls at a “convent”; the storeroom and the sound of a beating heart; the Templar treasure.
Catherine de’ Medici, queen mother of France, however, was a name she didn’t know, but it was one she could research. Had there been such a person? Or had Caitlyn’s sleeping mind taken Bianca de’ Medici’s name and with it formed another?
Google would soon tell.
She had to wait until lunch to slip in a search on Catherine de’ Medici, but the results came quickly. She was real.
Married to Henry II of France in 1547, and in power until her death in 1589, the Italian-born Caterina Maria Romula di Lorenzo de’ Medici was despised by everybody, accused of murdering Jeanne d’Albret, Queen of Navarre, and of ordering a massacre of Huguenot guests who’d come to Paris for her own daughter’s wedding. Her enemies called her a witch, a devotee of the dark arts who would consort with the devil to keep herself in power.
The confirmation sucked the wind from Caitlyn’s lungs. She stared at the computer screen, almost not believing it.
She’d never heard of Catherine de’ Medici before last night; she’d swear to it.
How had her dreaming mind known the name? How had she known Catherine was called a witch?
If the information hadn’t come from her brain, it had to come from outside it. Raphael was the one who had given her Catherine’s name.
Who
was
Raphael?
Maybe even more important,
what
was Raphael? He couldn’t be a figment of her imagination who existed only in her own mind, if he’d told her about Catherine de’ Medici. So what possibilities did that leave?
Caitlyn frowned. There weren’t any possibilities. Not rational ones, anyway.
Was Raphael a real person? He’d have to be, if he was her Knight of Cups and they were meant to be together. If he was real, then where was he? Maybe he was a living person, meeting her in her dreams. Maybe she was having a psychic connection with some guy here in France, who was right this moment sitting at his own computer, trying to figure out who Caitlyn was. Maybe the dream world was their own virtual reality game, where their avatars sometimes met.
It was an idea, anyway.
There was another possibility, of course. Maybe Raphael
had
been a real person, but wasn’t any longer.
A sensation like a cold wet hand slid down Caitlyn’s spine. Could Raphael be a ghost?
She was tempted to talk to Naomi about it. If nothing else, Naomi would keep her thoughts grounded. On the other hand, Naomi might decide Caitlyn was a complete flake and not worth getting to know better, and Caitlyn could say good-bye to their friendship. Same with Amalia: Caitlyn was already on thin ice with the Liechtenstein princess, given all the times she’d woken her with her nightmares. Sharing fantasies of meeting sixteenth-century ghosts in her dreams didn’t seem the right way to strengthen the bond between them.
Brigitte would probably be delighted by the story, but would not provide any help in figuring it out. And then she’d repeat it to everyone, not out of malice, but out of natural chattiness.
Talking to Daniela was out of the question.
Caitlyn sighed and felt a pang of loneliness. A moment later she put her fingers back to work on the keyboard. A search for Catherine’s name with Raphael’s turned up no obvious connection; hits all seemed about the Renaissance artist Raphael and his ties to the Florentine de’ Medicis.
She didn’t have time to investigate further. She wolfed down a lunch of seared duck breast and asparagus and hurried to her French class, her mind lost over four hundred years in the past.
“Caitlyn,
s’il vous plait
!” Madame said, whacking the blackboard with her stick, its end pointing to the irregular verb
devoir,
“to have to.” She wanted Caitlyn to conjugate it.
Caitlyn felt the class’s attention turn to her, and a clammy sweat broke out in her armpits. Her brain stopped in its tracks, unable to move under the pressure. A vague sense of having known how to speak French in her dreams tickled at her brain, but the skill was as lost to her in the waking world as was Raphael.
“
Devoir
,” Caitlyn croaked. “Er.
Je dev? Tu dev?
”
Madame gaped at her, horrified.
Caitlyn shook her head; she knew those words were wrong. “Er … I mean, uh …” And then out of nowhere came, “
Egli deve, lei dovrebbe …
” These words felt right.
He must, she must …