But since when did she ever do what was good for her?
CHAPTER
Twenty
That night, Caitlyn sat with the leather album at her usual desk in the Grand Salon. She was all alone, there being no sign yet of Naomi. Naomi usually spent the early part of the night trying to sleep, getting up only when she knew it was hopeless.
Caitlyn once again cursed her poor foreign language skills as she went through the album. There was an old photo of the library that showed a ceiling splotched with a few remnants of paint, some of which seemed to show lines radiating from a point close to the stained-glass window. In a close-up photo of one section of the ceiling, she could barely make out the flaking image of a mason chiseling at a stone.
Under each photo was a handwritten paragraph, in French. Caitlyn had her French dictionary open and on her laptop’s browser had bookmarked a half dozen translation sites. Between the two, and after several hours, she was getting a vague sense of what the paragraphs meant.
They were a catalog of damage, along with a few notes about what could or could not be saved. The final sentences seemed to say that conservation of the ceiling would be all but impossible. The frescoes were permanently damaged by water, which had been seeping in for decades, lifting the plaster from its underlying support. A work crew mistakenly scraped off the remaining fragments of fresco before further documentation could be made.
It looked possible that there had been a sundial on the ceiling. What it may have once said about the Templar’s fortune, however, was lost to history and a work crew’s scrapers.
The renovations had been extensive and had involved craftsmanship that Caitlyn imagined cost a mint: sculptors to repair or replace parts of the fireplaces, the gargoyles, a marble statue of the Virgin Mary in the chapel; painters for the intricate patterns on the walls and ceiling of the Great Hall as well as for the walls of several rooms with painted fabric “wallpaper”; carvers and carpenters for paneling and cabinetry; workers in stained glass, wrought iron, stone, copper; the list went on. Madame Snowe’s great-grandmother had to have been one rich lady, Caitlyn concluded.
There was also a photo of a very old Antoine Fournier, presenting the painting of Fortuna to Madame Snowe’s great-grandmother. Several paragraphs recounted the painting’s history.
In the 1870s, Fournier was an impoverished artist seeking patronage and a place to live. A friend of a friend persuaded the owner of Château de la Fortune to install Fournier in the abandoned castle and create an art studio in its attics, in exchange for a series of romantic portraits of the castle ruins and Dordogne Valley.
Fournier had been overjoyed at his good fortune, ecstatic to have at last found a patron. He wasn’t happy to be living so far from Paris, but that was a minor consideration against the promise of food, shelter, and a place to paint. He persuaded himself that the isolation of Château de la Fortune would be good for his work.
And for a short time, it was. He completed several sketches of the castle and valley, and prepared his canvases for painting. And then,
she
came. The violent ghost. The demanding spirit. She was an enraged feminine force who would give him no rest until he obeyed her wishes and painted the goddess Fortuna with her wheel. Alone in the castle, knowing no way to protect himself from the controlling spirit, he had done as she wished. He abandoned the romantic paintings for his patron and devoted every waking hour to creating Fortuna.
By the time he finished ten months later, his health had been destroyed by exhaustion, drink, and the drafty cold of the castle. The final blow came when his patron visited to see how Fournier was progressing and discovered that his pet artist had not been painting the ruins that he’d requested. Instead, he had created Fortuna.
When Fournier explained the visits by the ghost, his patron had turned white and fled the castle. Fournier himself left the castle soon after, his energies drained, his will to paint gone. He sent the portrait of Fortuna to his patron and returned to Paris. Several months later, the portrait was returned to him, along with a letter explaining that his patron had died of a heart attack soon after his visit to Château de la Fortune. The letter explained that the patron had, as a boy, fancied he saw a ghost at the château and had been convinced that the castle was cursed. The family did not wish to be reminded of his death, and so returned the painting of Fortuna to Fournier’s hands.
Fournier had packed the painting away, afraid to so much as gaze upon it for fear of reviving the female spirit who had sapped his energies. It was only toward the end of his life, when he heard that the château had been purchased by a woman and refurbished, that he was able to face the portrait again and bring Fortuna home.
Fournier insisted that Fortuna be hung at the end of the Grand Salon. “It’s what she wanted,” he told Snowe’s great-grandmother.
Caitlyn felt a chill on the back of her neck and cast an anxious look down the Salon at the painting. The Woman in Black and Fortuna must be connected. But why would the Woman in Black insist on that painting?
Was there a message in it?
Caitlyn got up from the desk and walked down the long room toward the painting. She flipped the switch to turn on the spotlights, and Fortuna glowed to life. Saint George killed the dragon crawling from the abyss; the castle stood strong on its cliff top; Fortuna trod the clouds; and the obsidian wheel stood frozen in its turnings, bejeweled with medallions and stones, and the enormous ruby at its hub.
Caitlyn lifted her fingers to the ruby, her fingertips hovering just above the painted gem. A memory surfaced, of her mother’s tarot reading:
“… if you fulfill your destiny, you will journey to the heart of the wheel, where all is motionless and clear. You will journey to the heart. The heart. The heart,” she repeated, “the heart in darkness.
”
She would journey to the heart of the wheel. Was it a literal wheel, jeweled like the one in the painting? Was that the form that Eshael’s dowry had taken?
And was it a literal heart?
Raphael had said that he needed to entomb Bianca’s heart in the Templar treasure. Maybe the ruby in the painting represented Bianca’s heart, placed at the center of a jeweled wheel.
But where was the wheel?
She sighed in frustration and flipped off the spotlights. She yawned, getting sleepy, and headed upstairs to the bathroom on the second floor to brush her teeth.
The floor was quiet, no light showing beneath anyone’s door. It was a quiet that Caitlyn was beginning to feel belonged to her; it was the time when the hallways were most like they were in her dreams: empty and echoing, and filled with shadows.
She pushed open the door to the large bathroom with its toilets and shower stalls, and long row of sinks in front of a mirror. She was only a few steps inside when the hairs started to rise on her arms with the sense that she was not alone.
Her ears pricked, catching the faintest sigh of air and the hint of movement. She turned slowly around, trying to locate the source of the sound.
There was silence.
A burst of rushing noise suddenly broke through, chasing a squeak of fright from Caitlyn’s throat before she realized it was the flushing of a toilet. A moment later Soma emerged from the last stall, her skin looking ashen under the fluorescent lights.
Soma smiled sickly at Caitlyn and put her hands over her stomach. “I will give you a good piece of advice,” Soma said. “Never try the coconut-oil diet to lose weight. Your stomach will never forgive you.”
“I’ll take your word for it,” Caitlyn said, weak with relief and feeling like an idiot. She’d freaked herself out with all these thoughts of ghosts and unburned hearts and de’ Medicis.
Soma nodded and washed her hands. “I’d rather be fat than go through this again.”
“I think you have a great figure.”
“That’s very kind of you. My too-tight clothes know the truth, though: no more croissants or hot chocolate for Soma.
Bonne nuit
.”
“
Bonne nuit
,” Caitlyn said. Good night.
Caitlyn brushed her teeth and washed her face. As the water ran and she rinsed her skin, the sense came to her again that she was not alone. She tried to ignore it, but the hair on the back of her neck prickled, and she couldn’t resist turning sideways to take a quick look up and down the bathroom.
There was no one this time. All the stall doors were ajar, all the shower stalls had their white plastic curtains pushed to one side. She was alone.
Don’t be silly
, she chided herself. She encountered creepy things only in her dreams, never when awake.
She shut off the water and dried her face, and then a thought struck her. The hair on her arms rose as if it had been rubbed with a balloon.
What if I’m not awake?
A chill poured down her spine.
Remembering the tests Brigitte had taught her, Caitlyn pinched her nose shut. Her breath was immediately cut off. She looked at herself in the mirror with her fingers clamped to her nose, then made a face at herself. She was being ridiculous!
But then her ears caught a noise somewhere behind her:
Shh, shh, shh
…
Like the rustling of silken skirts.
Shh, shh, shh
…
The lights flickered, and Caitlyn’s skin went cold. She shook her head in denial.
No!
She turned around and leaned against the sink, gaze darting in all directions, trying to find the source of the noise. It was coming closer, getting louder.
Shh, shh, shh
…
The hairs on the nape of her neck began to stand. The noise was coming from
behind
her.
Caitlyn slowly turned toward the mirror.
In the mirror’s depths a veiled figure was advancing toward her, her skirts swaying with each
shh
of sound.
Caitlyn was unable to move or think. She watched with growing horror as the thing in the mirror came closer, the rustling of its skirts growing louder and louder with each step.
SHH, SHH, SHH.
Caitlyn sagged against the sink, its porcelain rim the only thing holding her upright.
“Raphael …,”
the figure cried in a whisper, his name a plea from a broken soul. “
Raphael …
”
“No!”
Caitlyn whispered hoarsely. “You can’t be real!”
The bathroom lights flickered and went out, swallowing Caitlyn in darkness. She trembled.
In the depths of the mirror, the figure’s face glowed palely behind the veil.
SHH, SHH, SHH …
The figure stopped a foot from the other side of the glass. Hollow shadows where her eyes should have been seemed to stare through the veil and into Caitlyn’s soul.
Caitlyn whimpered. Stars flickered on the edge of her vision.
On the other side of the glass, white hands grasped the edge of the veil and began to raise it.
Caitlyn’s heart gave one clumsy thump and then she felt herself fainting, a rush of blackness swallowing her, delivering her from whatever horror hid behind the veil.
CHAPTER
Twenty-one
Caitlyn came to lying on the floor in a bare stone hallway, its limestone walls lit by the orange glow of either a sunrise or a sunset coming through the windows at the end of the hall. She sat up, dazed and confused.
She looked down at herself. She was wearing her nightgown and Fortune School bathrobe, just as she had been while studying in the Grand Salon. She didn’t know where in the castle she was—or when she was—but she was glad enough not to find herself on the floor of the bathroom with the Woman in Black hovering over her. A cold shudder ran through her at the memory of the pale face behind the veil.
She was getting up off the floor when Raphael’s cousin Giovanni came around the corner at the other end of the hallway, laughing and tugging a serving girl along by the hand. The girl giggled and feigned reluctance, only to be swept into Giovanni’s arms and soundly kissed.
Caitlyn pressed herself up against the wall and stayed motionless, the couple too engrossed in each other to look her way, and a moment later Giovanni and the girl disappeared through a doorway.
Caitlyn started to relax, then felt a bolt of fresh alarm as she realized she
was
dreaming. Her living body must be passed out on the bathroom floor.
She felt her body, patting her arms and chest. It felt real enough, but that was obviously an illusion. She pinched her nose shut.
She couldn’t breathe.
Caitlyn whimpered and released her nose. No, she
had
to be dreaming! She couldn’t really be here!
She would find Raphael. Everything would make sense—somehow—if she found him.