Free Wake Unto Me by Lisa Cach

Knight of Cups. For a moment she could hear the rich timbre of his voice, and see his hazel eyes staring intently into her own. She could feel the heat of his palm pressed against her forehead, his touch softening to a caress along her cheek.
    Who was he? And was he real?
    And how could he possibly be her Knight of Cups if he existed only in her dreams?
    A tear trickled out the corner of her eye. It didn’t matter.
    The Screechers had followed her. An ocean hadn’t stopped them. Nothing ever would.

CHAPTER Seven
     
    JANUARY 22
     
    “ Entrez! ”
    Caitlyn put a restraining hand over the twitch in her eyelid, willing it to stop, then pushed open the heavy oak door to Madame Snowe’s office. It was nine A.M., and she was right on time for her appointment. She stepped into a space whose warm coziness was at odds with the icy composure of the headmistress.
    Oriental carpets in deep reds and blues covered the stone floor. One long wall was composed of leaded-glass windows looking out over the castle grounds and, beyond, the valley of the Dordogne. Two of the other walls were paneled in dark wood, like Caitlyn’s bedroom.
    The remaining wall was taken up by an immense fireplace, in which flames burned merrily. On the tall stone overmantel hung a gold-framed portrait of a woman in historical dress: a strawberry-blond noblewoman, her braided hair pinned up in a coronet, pearl drop earrings dangling from her lobes. Her face was a perfect oval, her dark eyes filled with knowledge, a hint of a smile playing on her lips. She wore a rose satin dress with puffed sleeves, a ruby-and-gold necklace, and on her lap a book lay open, one of her long-fingered hands holding her place.
    Caitlyn was drawn to the portrait, her feet taking her toward it in complete and inadvertent disregard for Madame Snowe, who was waiting behind her desk. The portrait was obviously an original and must have been several hundred years old. Something about it teased at her memory: a feeling of a dream forgotten, or a place she had been.
    “You like the painting?” Madame Snowe asked, getting up from her desk and coming to join Caitlyn at the fire.
    “It reminds me of something. I can’t think what.” Caitlyn cocked her head, and then suddenly the answer came to her. “I know!”
    Madame Snowe studied her face. “You do?”
    “I have a poster in my room at home, of a painting hanging in a museum in Italy. It’s a portrait of a girl in white, named Bia. It was painted by someone called Bronzino, and it’s called The Pearl .”
    “ La Perla ,” Madame Snowe said, her expression as coolly composed as that of the woman in the painting above the fire, but intense interest was dancing in her eyes.
    “Yes!”
    “This painting was done by Agnolo Bronzino as well, in 1559.”
    Caitlyn felt a bubble of delight and was pleased with herself. She wasn’t such a hick, after all! “Really? I must have recognized something about the style.”
    “Or perhaps it was the sitter you recognized. La Perla is a portrait of Bianca de’ Medici as a girl. This, too, is a portrait of Bianca de’ Medici, as a woman.”
    Caitlyn stared at the portrait. It was kind of a dramatic coincidence. Hey, Bia. Are you following me? “Who was she?”
    “Art historians know La Perla as a courtesan in sixteenth-century Florence. She was more than that, though: she was an illegitimate child of Cosimo the Great, the man who was once head of the de’ Medici family of Italy. She was burned at the stake for heresy in 1572.”
    Caitlyn’s eyelid twitched. “Heresy?”
    “In her case, it meant witchcraft. Her wealth and high-powered connections could not save her from Pope Pius V. He was the one who ordered her burning.”
    Caitlyn remembered the image she’d drawn in her journal on the day she found out she’d been accepted to the Fortune School: a wise woman, being burned at the stake. A shiver ran up her spine, and she broke her gaze from that of the painting and looked at Madame