She crept silently down the hall in her slippered feet, pausing when she came to the door Giovanni and the girl had gone through. It was half open, their whispers and giggles audible. There was a moment of quiet, and Caitlyn leaned her head into the frame of the doorway to take a peek.
Giovanni and the serving girl were together, their clothes in wild disarray.
Caitlyn gasped and pulled away, her heart thudding. She dashed down the hall and away from the too-vivid sounds and images. Her feet seemed barely to touch the stones as she ran. She flew down a flight of stairs and through a series of rooms, then into a dark narrow passageway. There was light at the end of it, the door propped open. She hurried toward the light.
It was a side entrance to a small courtyard near the kitchens. Low voices stopped her before she stepped into the fading sunlight. She hunkered in the shadows.
Philippe, le Comte d’Ormond, pressed a gold coin into the dirty hand of a weather-beaten man dressed like a peasant. She saw a flash of white as Philippe handed the man a message, which was quickly tucked into the depths of his homespun clothing. The man bobbed his head and left.
Philippe watched him go, looked around as if seeking spying eyes, and turned back toward the passageway.
Caitlyn dashed ahead, back into the depths of the château. Raphael might be anywhere, but there was a chance she’d find him in the library, studying the ceiling. She wanted to see it herself before the last of the light faded.
It took only a few minutes to orient herself and find her way there, which still wasn’t enough time to figure out if she was awake or dreaming.
The library—or swordplay gymnasium, as Raphael would have it—was empty. Caitlyn walked to the center of the room and looked up.
The sundial was as clear as daylight on the ceiling. Painted gold leaf rays shot out from a central point above the
Fiat Lux
window. A red dragon entwined itself around that initial point and breathed fire toward a crust of earth above his abyss. Beyond the crust, farther out the length of the rays, were the numbered hours of the days. Each ray ran through the center of a series of paintings, each one depicting scenes the significance of which Caitlyn could not decipher. Some were landscapes; some were esoteric symbols; and others were animals, objects, people, or groups of people. A fair number of angels, demons, and creatures in between filled their own hour spaces, or hopped from one picture to the next.
It was a mad jumble of imagery, and nowhere did Caitlyn see a treasure chest overflowing with gold and jewels. If there was a map up there, she couldn’t see it.
Her neck was starting to hurt from craning, so she dragged a battered table to the center of the room and lay down upon it, folding her hands over her diaphragm. The twilight was quickly fading toward dusk, but the windows faced south, and she could still make out the gross shapes of most of the images. She squinted up at them, certain there was a message there if only she could read it.
“You look like you’re posing for your tomb,” Raphael said.
Caitlyn jerked in surprise and turned her head. Raphael was walking toward her, a candlestick in his hand.
Relief and delight ran through her at the sight of him. “I’m a long way from dead. I want to be at least ninety before I kick off.”
“Do you?”
“If I’m going to have a tomb, though, even if I’m ninety I might like to look like I’m still fifteen.”
He was at the side of the table now, and he set the candlestick on the corner a foot from her head. The gentle light caressed the contours of his face and caught in the bronze glints of his hair. His hazel eyes looked down at her with something like wonder. “Is that how old you are?”
“Almost sixteen,” Caitlyn said, her breath catching in her throat as the image of Giovanni and the serving girl jumped to her mind. “How old are you?”
“Nineteen.” He reached out, caught a lock of her black hair where it spread across the table, and wound it around his finger. She could feel each gentle twist and tug telegraphed down the strands of hair like electricity.
“My mother wouldn’t approve,” Caitlyn said, her heart thumping. “She’d say you were too old for me.”
“Too old for me to do what?” He brushed his finger, wrapped in her hair, against her cheek, then let the black lock uncoil itself and fall to the side. His hand remained, and she watched his face as he brought his fingertips to her lips and slowly traced their shape.
“You’re warm,” he said. His fingers brushed over her lips again, more slowly, the slight pressure making them part, one fingertip catching for a moment in the damp moistness inside her lips. His eyes shut and she saw a muscle flex in his jaw, and then he pulled away. He looked out the windows at the gathering darkness.
Caitlyn sat up, pulling her knees up to her chest and wrapping her arms around them, feeling strangely rejected. “Of course, she’s not my real mother,” Caitlyn said. “Like yours, mine died when I was small, and I was raised by someone else. Joy is just a normal, average woman, though; she’s not like Bianca.”
Raphael turned back to look at her. “Was she kind to you?”
Caitlyn thought of the open arms Joy had always had for her, the hugs, the reassurance, the love offered even when Caitlyn gave little back. She felt a stab of loss, and tears stung her eyes. “Yes, she was kind. Always. And more loving than I deserved.”
“You miss her,” he said, coming closer.
Caitlyn nodded, recognizing that truth for the first time. “I didn’t think I would, but I do.”
“Did the two of you not get along?”
“We’re very different. She wants to understand me, but she can’t.” Caitlyn sniffled. “I can’t understand myself, half the time.”
“But that is what makes the love of a mother: whether she understands you or not, she loves you. A mother is the only person in your life who will ever love you that way.”
“You’re making me cry!”
“Then I will cry with you,” Raphael said. “If you cannot weep for your mother, for whom
can
you weep?”
She reached for his hand and held it.
“I was afraid I wouldn’t see you this time,” she said after a moment, releasing his hand.
“You’ve come other times and not seen me?” he asked, a question in his expression.
“No. But usually I see you right away. This time I just saw—” she stopped, coloring at the memory.
“Saw what?”
She shook her head.
He leaned against the edge of the table, the tops of his thighs almost touching the ends of her slippers. He put his hands on the tabletop to either side of her, leaning so close that she would have to raise her face only a few inches to kiss him. “What did you see?”
“Giovanni … and a girl.”
His eyes widened, and then he was standing straight again, laughing. “Giovanni thinks pleasure is the only point of living.”
“What do you think the point is?”
“God knows I’ve wondered,” he said, his voice strained. He met her eyes. “The only answer I can find is that it’s to take care of those we love.”
“I think that’s a better answer than most,” she said softly.
He gave her a wry smile. “Giovanni’s is easier to live up to.”
“Oh, I almost forgot: After seeing Giovanni, I saw Philippe, at a side door by the kitchens. He looked like he was secretly paying a peasant to carry a letter for him.”
“A peasant?”
“A rough-looking man, dressed poorly. Maybe a laborer of some sort. You said Philippe spied on you for Catherine, right?”
Raphael frowned. “He spies openly and sends his missives in plain sight of us all. This is different. I wonder what he’s up to?”
“Do you know that his room has secret cabinets built into the panels?”
Raphael’s frown disappeared in astonishment. “It does?”
“Maybe he’s the one who has been trying to kill you. Maybe that peasant was a worker on the scaffolding, and he placed the stone so it could fall on you.”
Raphael started to shake his head, then stopped. “Catherine may have ordered Philippe to steal the heart. But no,” he said, thinking aloud, “someone was trying to steal it even as we came north from Rome.” He started to pace. “Could Catherine’s reach extend as far as Rome? Yes. Or Philippe may not be working for her at all, on that score. Perhaps it’s Pius he serves.” He turned to her, his gaze suddenly intense. “Do
you
know who it is?”
“The would-be thief, or the would-be murderer?”
“They’re surely one and the same. Who is it?”
“
I
don’t know. How could I know?” she asked, taken aback.
He stared at her. “You still don’t know what you are, do you?” He shook his head. “Sorry. Ignore me. I’m just trying to figure this out.”
“You and me both,” she muttered.
A hint of a smile played on his lips, his eyes meeting hers for a moment. He touched the emblem embroidered on her robe. “
Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi
. Fortune Rules the World. The motto of your family?”
“Of the … convent where I go to school.” The Fortune School was clear in her mind, and her existence there. She felt able to think, without the usual fogginess of dream thought, but somehow that just made everything more confusing.
How can this be so real?
“Strange motto for a convent,” Raphael said.
“It’s a strange convent.”
He traced the emblem of the wheel with his fingertip, his touch caressing her skin through the layers of fabric. “What message does this hold for me?” he asked, as if to himself.
“Maybe that things are going to get better,” she said, his touch stealing her breath and concentration.
“They will if we find the treasure.” He flattened his palm over the emblem, then slid his hand up to the side of her neck.
Her lips parted. “I … I saw the sundial before it got dark, but I didn’t see anything pointing to the treasure.”
Raphael grinned and dropped his hand. “
I
did.”
“You did?” she said in mild disappointment as his hand fell away.
He leaned behind her and grabbed the candlestick, then vaulted up onto the table and stood. He reached down a hand to help her up. “Look,” he said, holding the candle up above his head. It illuminated one painted scene, of an ocean with a star shining above.
“A star over the ocean. What does that have to do with the treasure?”
“Look more closely at the star.”
She squinted into the candlelight. “There’s something in the center of it. It looks like a crown with a cross stuck through it.”
“Yes!”
“So?”
“It’s a symbol of the Knights Templar. A symbol of Constantine, originally, but they used it as one of their insignia, with the words
In Hoc Signo Vinces
. ‘In this sign thou shall conquer.’ ”
“But what does it mean, here?”
“I think it’s to tell us that we’re on the right track.” Raphael lowered his arm and pointed toward the window. “
Fiat Lux
, remember?”
She nodded.
“You asked me where it was from. That got me thinking. It’s from Genesis, which is the beginning not only of the Old Testament, but of existence. I think that means that this sundial is the beginning of a map.”
“You mean this is the first clue?”
He nodded. “
Fiat Lux
is in chapter one, verse three. One o’clock,” he said, pointing to the gold ray that ran through the ocean, “third picture.”
Caitlyn caught her breath and smiled. “You might be right!”
“But I haven’t figured out where that gets us. A star above the sea.”
“Is there a star anywhere in the château?”
“I spent all day looking. There are several on copper spires on top of the roofs, but I can’t get up there. There are some carved into fireplace surrounds. One room has a tile floor in a pattern of stars. Three windows have stars or suns in them. There’s a—”
“I get the picture,” she interrupted. “Stars everywhere.”
“We need to figure out which star.”
“They rise in the east, don’t they?” Caitlyn offered tentatively.
“I thought of that. Half the stars in the castle are no more clearly east than others, though.”
Caitlyn chewed her lip and looked up again at the painting. She shifted her glance to the other pictures, no more than shadows now. “What
are
all these things?” she asked, pointing to the ceiling in general. “What do they mean?”
“Most of them, I’m not sure. I saw a few biblical scenes, though, and a couple symbols of saints. The severed breasts on a platter, that’s Saint Agatha,” he said, pointing into the darkness.
“Good God,” Caitlyn muttered, revolted. “Maybe the star isn’t a literal star, but is representative of something else. Could this star represent a saint?”