She quickly thumbed back through the pages until she found the drawing she’d done that past October back in Oregon, of the dream of being burned at the stake. It was almost the same dream, except that this time there had been the addition of watching Beneto sift through the ashes afterward.
The hairs prickled on the back of her neck. “…
just as you risked your life to bring it to me from out of the ashes
,” Raphael had told Beneto.
Was it somehow
her
heart in that crystal box?
She shivered and tried to shove away the sense of horror.
An idea tickled at the back of her mind; she turned the pages of her journal back to the dream tarot reading and looked again at her sketches of the tarot cards.
The cards representing the people coming into her life were the Queen of Swords and the Knight of Cups. The Knight of Cups she thought she understood: Raphael. But who was the Queen of Swords?
Eugenia Snowe
, her unconscious answered. A coldly intelligent woman who could help her, but who could just as easily cut her down.
But couldn’t the Queen of Swords also be Bianca de’ Medici?
It was the next set of cards that was most critical, the three cards representing the situation she was in: the Three of Swords, with three blades piercing a heart; the Fool stepping into the abyss; and finally, Death.
She read the notes she’d scrawled under the card showing the heart:
they seek to destroy the heart, but you must not let them.
Who was trying to destroy it, and how could she possibly stop them?
Caitlyn plucked the tarot card of the Wheel of Fortune out of the pages of her journal and read again what her mother had written along its edge:
the heart in darkness
.
What darkness? And what did it have to do with Fortune’s wheel?
Caitlyn exhaled in frustration and looked at the Fool, stepping into the abyss. Her note beneath said:
I must awake to what is happening. I am at the edge of the abyss.
They were the same words Daniela had used when talking about Brigitte’s brother Thierry:
Je suis au bord du gouffre
. But what could Thierry possibly have to do with anything?
And then there was the third card in the series: Death.
Not always literal
, Caitlyn had written beneath it.
Transformation to new life
. Well, she’d just died in her dream. Did that count?
The final card, of course, was the Wheel of Fortune. She’d thought it a reassurance that the Fortune School was part of her destiny, but she wondered now if she’d been too quick to take that as the whole answer. There was a Templar fortune hidden somewhere in the castle, and Raphael was looking for that fortune. Fortune meant fate, and it meant luck—either good or bad—but it also meant wealth. Raphael needed wealth to take his sisters to England, out of the reach of Catherine de’ Medici.
Was Caitlyn meant to help him find the Templar fortune?
Amalia interrupted her thoughts, returning to the room with a fresh pillow. “Here you are,” she said sheepishly, putting the pillow at the head of Caitlyn’s bed and plumping it. “Nice and dry.”
“Thanks.”
Amalia tilted her head, looking at the journal in Caitlyn’s lap. “I’ve seen you drawing in that before,” she said, a cautious curiosity in her eyes.
Caitlyn bit her bottom lip and unconsciously held the journal against her chest, protecting it from prying eyes. She’d always kept the journal to herself, unwilling to let anyone see into the chaos of her mind.
“I’m sorry,” Amalia apologized, and retreated with pink cheeks. “I shouldn’t have mentioned it. It is obviously private.”
“No, it’s okay,” Caitlyn said, feeling bad for Amalia’s embarrassment. She forced herself to lower the journal. “It’s a dream journal, is all. None of it would make sense to anyone but me.”
“You draw your dreams?”
Caitlyn nodded. “And my nightmares.”
“So you have drawn those things you call Screechers?”
“Yeah.”
Amalia inched closer. “Could I see one?”
Caitlyn hesitated, then flipped back to the drawing she’d done of the Screecher she’d seen on her first night at the school. She held up the picture of the screaming, clawing, femalelike creature with the wet hair.
Amalia’s lips parted. “
Mein Gott
,” she swore. “I think I would wake screaming, too!” She shook her head. “You
must
be tested for sleep apnea, if there is a chance it could rid you of those things. How will you ever get restful sleep, with creatures like that in your head?”
Caitlyn closed the journal. “I know. It’s bad.”
But if she had sleep apnea and it caused her Screecher nightmares
and
her vivid dreams of Raphael, then treating the apnea might put an end to both types of dreams.
Getting rid of the Screechers at the price of losing Raphael was not a deal Caitlyn was ready to make.
CHAPTER
Seventeen
At midnight that night Caitlyn quietly slipped from her room and headed to the Grand Salon, her heart beating with renewed excitement and fear. She’d lain in bed for the last two hours and stared at the ceiling, her mind going over what she would do differently the next time she tried lucid dreaming.
She was so grateful to Brigitte for the idea. It
had
worked, as far as getting her to Raphael was concerned. She had to take it further, though; she had to retain awareness that she was dreaming while she dreamed. It would give her some control over what happened. She could keep Bianca out of her dreams, or at least she could keep from being scared half to death by her, or burned at the stake.
But she was going to take a slightly more scientific approach this next time, and for that she needed the help of someone who could sit awake beside her.
The nightly gaggle of TV-watching girls had long since left, and Naomi was the sole occupant of the Grand Salon, curled in a big chair reading a book. The floor lamp beside her cast a soft, dim light. She glanced up as Caitlyn came in. “
Hoo hoo
,” she called, like an owl.
“
Hoo
,” Caitlyn replied, smiling. It was their night owl greeting to each other. Caitlyn arranged a nest of throw pillows and a blanket on the couch. “I want to try an experiment, and I need your help.”
“Yes?” Naomi sat up and put her book aside.
Caitlyn explained Amalia’s idea about sleep apnea. “So I have this,” she said, taking a compact mirror out of her robe pocket, “and if I seem not to be breathing, I want you to hold it in front of my nose and see if it gets foggy.”
“Like in
Romeo and Juliet
?”
“Yeah. But don’t take poison or stab yourself if you don’t see fog.”
Naomi made a sad face. “You’ll think I don’t care.”
Caitlyn chuckled and set the mirror on the end table, along with a small travel alarm clock set to ring in the morning so she wouldn’t miss class. “Don’t wake me up, either.”
“How could I? If you’re not breathing, you’re dead.”
“It hasn’t killed me so far. If it’s sleep apnea, I’ll wake myself up after a minute or so as I gasp for breath.” She’d done some quick research online, to find that out. “I could be breathing, though, and it’s just too shallow to tell by sight. That’s where the mirror will help.”
“You seem to think I have nothing better to do than sit here awake half the night and watch you sleep.”
“I know you’d rather be off haunting girls with small bladders.”
Naomi shrugged, her eyes twinkling. “We all have our hobbies.”
Caitlyn nestled into place on the couch and pulled the corner of the throw blanket over her eyes to block the lamplight. “Good night.”
“I hope so.”
“Me, too.” That, too, had become a ritual exchange between them.
Caitlyn listened to the soft tick of the clock on the mantel and heard Naomi pick up her book, then turn a page.
She stilled the thoughts in her mind, gently shoving them away. She became vaguely aware of her breathing deepening, and she felt her face and body begin to relax.
Raphael. I want to find Raphael.
She held his face in her mind as she sank into sleep …
And suddenly she found herself standing by an open interior doorway in the castle. She heard male voices, laughing loudly and joking with the rambunctious energy unique to guys playing a game. A serving girl wearing a rough gray bodice with cord lacing up the front, a brown skirt with stained apron, and sleeves rolled up past her elbows brushed by Caitlyn with a tray of food and went into the room.
Caitlyn looked down at her own clothes and saw a rose satin gown. It looked familiar, but her confused, dreaming mind could not place it. She followed the serving girl into the room, irrationally certain that the guys would think she was another servant.
Four familiar young men sat at a table in front of a fireplace, playing cards and drinking. A flush of joy went through her as she spotted Raphael: he was sitting with his back to her, but his hair and the set of his shoulders were unmistakable. Not wanting to interrupt his game, she wandered around the room, hoping he’d see her and abandon the game on his own.
There was a four-poster bed at the far end of the room, its dark blue draperies embroidered with silver thread. Wood paneling covered the walls, and the ceiling was made of thick wood beams spaced only a few inches apart. One wall was composed mostly of windows. A dim sense of recognition crept through her dreaming mind, and she turned to stare at the fireplace, feeling a dizzying sense of déjà vu. She had been here before. She knew this room.
It was Madame Snowe’s office.
As soon as she thought it, she knew she was dreaming. She blinked in surprise and looked down again at her clothes, astonished by the seeming reality. But as quickly as the realization came that she was dreaming, it began to slip away. She fought to hold on to it, but it dissipated like smoke in the wind, and her mind fell back to accepting the present reality as the only reality.
Neither the serving girl nor the men seemed to care about her presence, sparing her not so much as a glance. She walked to the fireplace, above which hung a strange portrait titled
Fire
, of a man whose face had been cleverly constructed out of candles, burning wood, and oil lamps, while his body was made of cannons and guns.
“You’re back,” Raphael whispered beside her, his sudden appearance making her jump.
“So I am,” she said, glancing up at him and then away, his closeness suddenly making her shy. She was secretly pleased, though, that he had left the card game to come talk to her.
“Let’s go where we can talk.” He turned away and started for the door.
Caitlyn grabbed his arm, making him jump and jerk away. She clasped her hands together, embarrassed. He’d pulled away as if he couldn’t bear to be touched by her. She nodded her head toward the young men at the table, who were continuing their game of cards without Raphael. “Will you introduce me to your friends?”
“That wouldn’t be wise,” he said tightly.
Philippe, his blue eyes bright, looked up from his cards. “To whom are you talking, Raphael?” he asked in French.
As if he cannot see me standing right here!
Caitlyn thought, irritated.
“An angel, come to spirit me away before I lose any more money to you.”
Philippe laughed, and Raphael took the chance to leave, apparently trusting Caitlyn to follow.
She was slightly mollified by having been called an angel, but still, that Philippe was very rude to pretend she wasn’t visible. “Who is he to you?” she asked.
“His name is Philippe, le Comte d’Ormond,” Raphael said as he led her down the hall. “He invites us to his room to play cards every night.”
“He’s French?”
“One of Catherine’s spies. Supposedly, he’s here to keep an eye on the Huguenots in the area and to report on any rumors that they are organizing to free the Protestant king Henry of Navarre, who is under house arrest in Paris. Navarre is, of course, just to the southwest of here. Philippe himself will tell you that is a front, though, and that his real job is to make sure I don’t escape Catherine’s clutches. He can be disarmingly honest in that way.”
“And Ursino and Giovanni, who are they to you?”
“They are cousins of mine, of a sort, from Florence.”
“Are you from Florence?” she asked, almost jogging to keep up with his quick pace.
He shook his head. “Rome.”
“And Beneto? Who is he?” she asked. “He does not play cards?”
“He’s likely sleeping. He has been my teacher since I was a boy.”
“Oh. What are all of you doing here? Why did you come to France and put yourself within reach of Catherine de’ Medici?”