“Now come this way,” Greta said, and pushed through the double doors on the right side of the room. Caitlyn picked up her ecologically sound bag and followed her through an immense medieval hall with a stone checkerboard floor and walls painted in deep red scattered with gold fleur-de-lis; the ceiling high above was royal blue and covered in gold stars. Yellow ocher columns ran down the center in two rows, providing support to the arches above. The room was filled with tables, benches, and the lingering odor of lunch. “The hall dates from the 1140s,” Greta said as she led Caitlyn out through another doorway to a smaller room built of pale stone, and then up a wide spiral stone staircase. The handrail was a rope as thick as Caitlyn’s wrist, strung between steel eyebolts sunk into the curved wall.
Caitlyn lagged a few steps behind Greta, in awe of her surroundings. She’d spent hours poring over picture books of castles; she’d seen them in movies, and read about them in novels; but nothing had prepared her for the wonder of being inside one in real life. Each stone step of the spiral staircase was worn to a bowl by thousands of feet, and her own steps sounded both muffled and loud at once; she could smell the faint, damp, mineral-tinged scent of rock; her skin felt the chill of stone that no modern heating system could vanquish. Her vision spun as they wound higher and higher up the stairs, the rope rail under her hand both rough with fibers and smooth with the oil of hands. She was glad of the weight of the unwieldy duffel bag: its reality kept her tied to earth.
“I hope Amalia has not gone out,” Greta said over her shoulder. “She can show you where everything is. She’s a charming young woman, a princess of Liechtenstein.”
“A what?” Caitlyn said, stumbling on a stair.
“A charming young woman.”
“No, a princess? A real princess?”
“Of course.” Greta stopped and tucked in her chin, frowning at Caitlyn as if she were a slow-witted child.
Caitlyn was too stunned to care. “And she’s from where?”
“Liechtenstein.”
“Ah!” Caitlyn had a vague notion of a tiny country somewhere near Germany or Austria. “Is it this princess’s job to show new students around?”
Greta laughed. “No. But you are special.”
“I am?”
Greta smiled. “You’re her new roommate.”
“Great!” Her eyelid fluttered. No pressure there. Not like a princess was going to notice she’d been stuck with an ignorant peasant for a roommate.
“Do you ride?” Greta continued.
“Ride what?”
Greta chuckled. “Horses.”
“No.”
“Ah, too bad. Amalia is a champion equestrienne. But never mind, I am certain you’ll find you have much in common.”
Oh, sure!
Caitlyn’s muscle twitched so hard her eye closed. “We’ll be like peas in a pod.”
Or like the princess and the pea, Caitlyn thought glumly. And it wasn’t Amalia who was going to be the annoying vegetable stuck under a mattress.
CHAPTER
Five
Late that evening, wrapped in the navy blue Fortune School bathrobe she’d found in the armoire on her side of the room, Caitlyn sat crosslegged on her bed and leaned against the dark, carved headboard. She still hadn’t met Amalia, but she had gotten to know the confines of her gothic, vaguely creepy room and its furnishings very well in the past several hours.
The room was a rectangle, with the door to the hallway centered in the wall on one end, and windows piercing the honey-colored stone wall on the opposite end. The two side walls were richly paneled dark polished wood, like something out of a manor house in a British costume drama. The floors were stone, covered in a worn, dark red Oriental carpet, while the ceiling was high above, crossed by massive beams blackened with age. They’d been charming during the daylight, but now, at night, Caitlyn’s desk lamp couldn’t pierce the darkness above her, giving her the uneasy feeling that anything could be clinging to the beams up in those shadows, watching her.
She and Amalia each had an antique wood bed, desk, chair, bookcase, and armoire. As she’d been told to expect, she’d found an entire Fortune School wardrobe in her armoire, in her sizes: socks, shoes, skirts, blouses, sweaters, even a wrap dress in a geometric print of the Fortune School colors of navy and burgundy. If she was lucky, maybe no one who mattered would ever see the old, comparatively ratty clothes she’d brought from home. Vintage clothing was daring in Spring Creek, but here her clothes felt like the castoffs they were, instead of a creative expression of her personality.
The room had two leaded-glass windows, set in deep embrasures that doubled as window seats. Caitlyn had opened one and stuck her head out earlier, before the sun had set, and seen a sheer drop of hundreds of feet to the treetops and rocks below. She’d clung to the edge of the window, absurdly afraid of falling out. Far below, the Dordogne River flowed in sinuous curves through the valley, with a patchwork of cultivated farmland on either side. She had seen two other castles far to the east, perched on cliffs, and a third castle to the west. Her guidebook to the region said that the Dordogne River had once been the border between France and the English region of Aquitaine, which explained all the defensive castles.
After pulling her head back in, she had looked over her absent roommate’s belongings, seeking some hint of the girl’s personality. On the wall above Amalia’s bed hung a large, modern oil painting; Caitlyn had leaned in close to see the signature on it: Picasso.
A
real
Picasso. Big. In oil. It was probably worth several hundred thousand dollars, if not millions. She, Caitlyn Monahan, was sharing a room with a girl who used a Picasso as a dorm room decoration.
On Amalia’s desk sat a framed photo of a horse. There were no other pictures: no parents, no friends, no goofy bunch of grinning girls squeezing together to fit in a photo. Caitlyn didn’t think that boded well for the princess’s social skills, but who was she to judge?
Maybe the princess was just private. Or maybe, like Caitlyn, a photo of family or friends suggested pain more than comfort.
Overall, this was the most luxurious bedroom Caitlyn had ever been in; it was the most historic, the most foreign, the most romantic, and the most likely to inspire gothic bouts of running down the hallway in a white nightgown during a thunderstorm, carrying a candelabra. The castle itself was the castle of her wildest fantasies, hovering as it did at the edge of a cliff, its walls a millennium old. However, all she wanted to do at this moment was cry.
Loneliness flooded her. For all that she hadn’t thought that she belonged at home, and had felt tolerated rather than understood, at least she’d known deep down that her parents and her runty little brothers loved her.
She sighed as she sat alone on her bed. The laptop computer the Fortune School had provided was in front of her on the down comforter. She’d sent e-mails to her parents and even to her brothers, but no one had responded.
She blinked back the tears and stared at her empty in-box, willing it to fill with something other than the dozen orientation letters sent by school administrators, each with its own set of pdf files with maps, class lists, school rules, schedules.
As if on cue, her laptop softly pinged, striking her with a bolt of joy in the instant before she saw that the message was from Madame Snowe:
Please thoroughly read all orientation materials before our meeting in the morning.
—E.S.
Caitlyn shut the laptop. She’d make herself wait an hour before she checked again. How had anyone stood it, in the old days before e-mail? Imagine waiting a week for a letter; a month; a year or two, even, if you lived far enough away.
Never mind. She wasn’t going to be lonely. She was lonely at this moment, yes, but that was to be expected.
She lay back on her bed and wrapped the plush comforter around her, closing her eyes as she relived her evening. After Greta had shown her to her room and shown her the communal bathroom down the hall, Caitlyn had unpacked, showered, drank the tea and eaten the cookies that Greta brought her, and then sat stewing alone in the room, wondering when Amalia would show up, and feeling too shy to explore the castle on her own.
At seven o’clock, hunger had forced her to gather her courage and go down to dinner. Classes would not begin for four more days, and according to Greta, many of the students had not yet arrived. Caitlyn had stood with her tray and surveyed the lonely dining hall, tempted to sit alone at a table. A spark of anger at her own cowardice finally made her ask a pair of German girls if she could sit with them. They’d agreed, and after asking a few politely inquiring questions in English, they’d slid back into German and held a long conversation with each other that they both obviously enjoyed very much. Caitlyn hadn’t understood a word, and had been surprised by how much the unintentional ostracism had hurt. It had been a relief to scamper back to the safety of her room.
Alone on her bed now, Caitlyn told herself that things had to get better. She knew she wasn’t a uniquely talented or extraordinary person, or particularly socially graceful, but neither did she think she was stupid or inept. People went to new schools all the time and made friends. She would, too.
Probably.
How different could blue-blooded rich girls really be from rural Oregon girls, after all?
A commotion of voices in the hallway made her sit up just as the door opened. Caitlyn quickly rubbed away any hint of tears and plastered a smile on her face as a trio of girls poured through the doorway, laughing and talking in rapid French.
A swarthy, imperious-looking girl with auburn highlights in her long, dark brown hair pulled up short and scowled when she saw Caitlyn. She hit a pudgy dark blond with the back of her hand, provoking a burst of annoyed noises.
The third girl, a brunette with pretty, conventional features and dark blue eyes, looked solemnly at Caitlyn for a long moment, then stepped forward, her hand outstretched. “You must be Caitlyn,” she said, her voice betraying only the slightest of unidentifiable accents. “I’m your roommate, Amalia.”
Caitlyn awkwardly shook Amalia’s hand, wondering if she should stand or curtsy or say something formal and proper. “Hi,” she said.
“This is Daniela and Brigitte,” Amalia said, gesturing to the swarthy girl and the dark blond in turn. The two other girls nodded to Caitlyn.
“Nice to meet you,” Caitlyn said.
“
Mucho gusto.”
“
Enchanté.”
They stared at her, eyes roaming over her loose hair and Fortune School robe, as if seeking keys to her character. Did they know she was here on scholarship?
And even if they didn’t know, could they sense her poverty as easily as she could sense their wealth? Daniela wore black leggings, long loops of a pearl-and-gold necklace, and a wool minidress in an oversize black-and-white houndstooth weave that Caitlyn could swear she’d seen in an ad in the
Vogue
she’d thumbed through at an airport newsstand. Amalia wore a short, tailored black leather jacket over a silk blouse with shades of blue that drew out the dark hue of her eyes; designer jeans; and leather boots. Brigitte had on magenta tights and a strange, unflattering magenta sweater dress with random ruching and wide sleeves, but the fine knit and elaborate workmanship hinted at “cashmere” and “designer,” just as the sparkle at her ears said “diamond.”
“You’re American, yes?” Daniela said.
“Yes.”
“New York?”
“Oregon.”
“
Dónde?”
Where?
“It’s a state on the West Coast.”
“Near Los Angeles?” Brigitte asked.
“North of there. Just south of Canada.”
All three sighed, “Ah.”
“You’re from the ends of the earth,” Amalia said, a teasing smile on her lips.
“Not quite
that
far!”
“Almost!” Brigitte said. “There are still wild animals and cowboys, and naked savages running through the forest,
oui
?” she asked, laughing.
Caitlyn smiled awkwardly, a little taken aback by the teasing. “There
are
cowboys, at least at rodeos. And bears and cougars in the mountains. And if by ‘savages’ you mean descendants of the Umpqua tribe, then yes to that, too. My great-grandfather on my mother’s side was a full-blooded Umpqua,” Caitlyn said proudly. She saw Brigitte’s mouth pucker in surprise and her cheeks turn pink in recognition that her jokes may have verged on offensive. “Although I don’t believe he ever ran naked through the forest,” Caitlyn amended, and smiled to soften the blow. “The weather doesn’t encourage streaking.”
“The rest of your ancestors, are they equally exotic?” Daniela asked, her brow arched. “I can trace my ancestry to Ferdinand of Aragon, who sent Columbus to discover your continent.” A smug smile played on her lips. “Perhaps that gives us a connection, of a sort.”
Of what, conqueror to conquered?
Daniela’s comments didn’t sound as innocent as Brigitte’s.