Authors: Lisa Cach
Tags: #Juvenile Fiction, #Historical, #Europe, #Love & Romance, #Girls & Women
Wake Unto Me (12 page)
Dupont squatted and arched one arm above her head. Thirty seconds later, at Girard’s order of
“Changez
,” she laid on her side. She was in her fourth pose before Caitlyn calmed down enough to look at what Monsieur Girard was doing.
“Changez
,” she laid on her side. She was in her fourth pose before Caitlyn calmed down enough to look at what Monsieur Girard was doing.
At his easel, Girard was making wild scribbles of charcoal that loosely captured the shape of Dupont’s positions. “It is the feel of the movement that you want to capture,” Girard said, his arm moving in sweeps as he covered the paper with continuous black lines. “What is the spine doing? Where is the center of gravity? Which way does the head turn? What is the feeling of the pose? You must exaggerate. Do not give me this,” he said, demonstrating a rigid up and down stick figure. “Give me movement.”
Embarrassment began to give way to interest. Caitlyn and the other girls crowded around Monsieur Girard, watching rapt as the ungainly figure of the cook was translated into graceful looping lines on paper. Dupont’s heavy belly and thick thighs became living lines that spoke of voluptuous grace and the glory of womanhood. Girard’s skillful hand made obvious what Caitlyn had been too blind to see: the beauty of Madame Dupont.
Then it was their turn to draw. Caitlyn picked up her charcoal and stared hard at Dupont’s body, no longer seeing private parts and varicose veins. She sought instead the line of Dupont’s spine, the tilt of her hips, the lyrical swoops of her arms. She wanted to draw forth the beauty of the cook, just as Girard had done.
“Do not draw with your hand!” Monsieur Girard said, coming up beside Caitlyn and gripping both her wrist and shoulder. “Gesture drawings come from the shoulder!” He forced her into the movement he wanted, wielding her arm like a giant paintbrush. “You see? Much better.”
“Oui,”
Caitlyn squeaked.
Caitlyn squeaked.
They moved on to a longer pose, Monsieur Girard working his way around the room to torment each student in turn.
“What are these ugly scribbles?” Caitlyn heard him saying to the Laotian girl.
“Shadowing?”
“You must unify your lines. Draw them all in the same direction. Parallel.”
Caitlyn looked at her own drawing, full of scribbled shadows, and quickly went over them with parallel lines.
Girard moved on to his next victim. “You think that is the size of her head? Really?” he asked Daniela. “You think it is one tenth the size of her body? You are paying no attention to proportion. The head is one seventh to one eighth the height of the body.”
“Of course. I know that. I’m just having trouble putting it on paper,” Daniela said. “I’m a very good artist, but it’s all locked in my head.”
Monsieur Girard snorted quietly, then more loudly, the snort turning into a guffaw of derisive laughter. Caitlyn glanced up as he tapped Daniela on the forehead. “Locked in your head! I have a classroom of brilliant artists, but the art is locked in their heads! Ha! The only true artist who ever lived here was Antoine Fournier, for a brief time in the 1870s. It was he who put in the skylights for the studio. He did the painting of Fortuna in the Grand Salon, upon which the symbol for the school is based. Of course, Fournier said that it was that painting that forced him to leave the château.”
The bait dangled for several seconds until Caitlyn finally bit. “How could a painting make him leave?”
“Because! Fournier said that his model for Fortuna was a ghost, a spirit who haunted him while he worked in his studio. She told him what to paint.” Monsieur Girard threw up his hands. “
Alors!
What painter wants to be told what to put in his picture? There is such a thing as inspiration, as a muse, but a ghost goes too far.”
Alors!
What painter wants to be told what to put in his picture? There is such a thing as inspiration, as a muse, but a ghost goes too far.”
Caitlyn froze.
A ghost. There
was
a ghost in the castle. It
had
been a real presence she’d felt!
Chills moved up and down her arms, and she felt the hair standing on the back of her neck.
A ghost. There
was
a ghost in the castle. It
had
been a real presence she’d felt!
Chills moved up and down her arms, and she felt the hair standing on the back of her neck.
Monsieur Girard grinned at the effect his story had had, and moved on, grunting disparagingly at another student’s efforts. As he approached her, Caitlyn went back to work, afraid to be caught slacking. He came to stand behind her, watching her attempts, and despite her best efforts her arm slowed and then dropped as she was overcome with self-consciousness.
“Do you, too, have a brilliant artist locked in your head?” he asked.
“No. I’m beginning to think I don’t know a thing about art.”
“Class! Do you hear? She knows nothing about art! And she proves it in her drawing.”
Caitlyn cringed.
“This,” he went on, laying his hand upon her head, “is the proper state of mind for learning to draw. Your mind must be blank of your old ideas and old ways of seeing. You must start fresh, like a baby who has never seen the world.” He dropped his hand from her head and pointed to the area she’d shaded with parallel lines. “This is nice.”
“Thank you,” Caitlyn said in soft surprise.
He nodded in acknowledgment. “Keep listening. With open ears, you will be one of the few who learn.”
Caitlyn felt a stab of pride. Monsieur Girard’s smallest compliment was worth a dozen times more than the gushing praise of a gentler person.
After class, Caitlyn and Naomi walked together back to the dormitory wing of the castle. It took up the top three floors of the west side of the box, which was the only side that came right up to the edge of the cliff. The other three sides of the square château were surrounded by formal gardens, a kitchen garden, riding stables, an open meadow, and, just to the south of the castle, a chapel perched atop the cliff. It was a world unto itself, sequestered inside the outer defensive walls. The village of Cazenac was a half mile from the base of the cliff, and the larger, historic town of Sarlat-la-Canéda was close enough that any girls with money for a taxi could go there for a day of shopping and restaurants.
“We have geology together, too, don’t we?” Naomi said.
Caitlyn nodded. She liked Naomi’s casual confidence; the girl didn’t seem to care what anyone thought of her, and that made her strangely comfortable to be around. “How long have you been at the Fortune School?” Caitlyn asked, seeking a way to prolong the conversation.
“This is my second year. I’d gone to a boarding school outside London since I was ten, but my parents decided I’d be safer here.”
“Safer from what?”
“Who knows!” Naomi rolled her eyes. “The evils of London, I assume. They imagine drug pushers and drunken parties, and don’t want to see me in a tabloid, falling out of a car without my knickers.”
“Why would anyone put you in a tabloid?”
“They wouldn’t, I’m sure. But my mother is queen of the Ashanti tribe, and she thinks that everyone is looking at our family.”
Caitlyn’s brows shot up. “Queen? Jeez, everywhere I look around here there’s a princess!”
Naomi laughed. “Which tells you we’re nothing special. Being a princess is overrated.”
Caitlyn doubted that.
“I’m first in line to be queen, but I don’t want to be,” Naomi went on, as blandly as if she were discussing not wanting to go into the family shoe repair business. “I want to go to university in the States, and then to law school. Someday I’d like to do international work for the rights of women.”
“Wow.” Caitlyn was impressed. It was such a noble goal, and Naomi would give up being queen for it! All she’d ever aspired to was getting away from Spring Creek; she hadn’t spent a lot of time considering what she wanted to move
toward
.
toward
.
What
did
she want to do with her life?
did
she want to do with her life?
Of course, now the Sisterhood was going to decide that for her. It might not be her choice; she’d signed it away before she’d even begun. She frowned at the thought.
“What about you? How did you end up here?” Naomi asked.
“Scholarship,” Caitlyn confessed.
“So you’re a genius?”
“Far from it!”
“You’re being modest. Why else would you get a scholarship?”
“Madame Snowe thinks I have potential.”
“Then you must,” she said simply.
Caitlyn smiled wryly. “If so, it’s been thoroughly hidden for fifteen years.”
Naomi laughed. “What about art? You did better than anyone else in class today. Maybe you’ll be the next Rembrandt!”
Caitlyn shook her head, rejecting the compliment. “All I could see in my drawing was what I’d done wrong.”
“That means you’re a true artist: you’re never satisfied.” Naomi smiled and waved a casual good-bye, and headed to her room.
Caitlyn watched her go, then turned her feet toward her own room, lost in disquieting thoughts. What if she did decide that she wanted to study art seriously, and become an artist? Would the Sisterhood of Fortuna allow that?
Caitlyn was beginning to get an inkling that in agreeing to the Sisterhood’s scholarship, she may have sold her soul to the devil.
Thoughts of the Sisterhood, though, reminded her that they were the Sisterhood of Fortuna, and it had been a
ghost
who told Antoine Fournier to paint the portrait of Fortuna in the Grand Salon.
ghost
who told Antoine Fournier to paint the portrait of Fortuna in the Grand Salon.
Caitlyn had seen the painting before, but had not looked at it carefully. She was suddenly sure, though, that there was more there than had met her eye.
It was time for a second look.
CHAPTER
Nine
Nine
“What are you doing here so late at night?” someone asked.
Caitlyn jumped, and looked up from her book, squinting across the dim light of the Grand Salon. A moment later she smiled in pleased relief: it was Naomi.
“Are you hoping to win the blue ribbon for most diligent student?” Naomi asked.
“I didn’t know there was one.”
“There isn’t.” Naomi dropped one pajama-clad hip onto the edge of the desk where Caitlyn sat.
The Grand Salon was a vast living room on the second floor of the dormitory wing. The room had French doors going out to a wide balcony cantilevered out over the cliff. A massive fireplace was centered in the long wall, big enough to roast an ox in. At one end of the room was a flat-screen TV, while the other was dominated by the large painting of Fortuna by Antoine Fournier. In between the two ends, thick Oriental carpets, a grand piano, several desks, and three groupings of sofas and chairs filled the space. Bookshelves displayed the leather bindings of ancient tomes likely never touched by the Fortune School students, who used the space either for watching TV or studying.
“Amalia goes to bed early and can’t sleep if I have my desk light on,” Caitlyn said, which was true but only part of the story.
“It’s past two A.M.” Naomi looked at Caitlyn’s book. “I
know
that
Northanger Abbey
is not engrossing enough to keep you awake this late.”
know
that
Northanger Abbey
is not engrossing enough to keep you awake this late.”
“I’m enjoying it.”
“You’re going to start looking like this if you don’t get enough sleep,” Naomi said, and with her fingertips dragged down the skin beneath her eyes. “And you’re pale.”
Caitlyn closed the book and sat back. “Okay, I confess. I’m not awake just because of schoolwork. I have trouble with insomnia.” Which was another way of saying that she was reluctant to turn out the lights and lay her head down, for fear that sleep would bring another visit from the Screechers. Another visit would mean more screaming, which would mean destroying the last ounce of patience that Amalia possessed.
Naomi’s brows rose. “Then we have something in common.”
“You’re an insomniac, too?”
Naomi flashed a smile. “How else would I have found you here?”
“What keeps you awake?”
“My mother says I was born nocturnal.” Naomi shrugged. “Who can say? But all night my mind churns. If it produced something worthwhile, I wouldn’t mind.”
“You don’t take sleeping pills?” Caitlyn asked.
Naomi wrinkled her nose. “They leave me more groggy during the day than lack of sleep. You?”
She shook her head. “I’m prone to nightmares. The last thing I want is to be less likely to wake up from one.”
“I’ve heard.”
“Amalia told you?” Caitlyn asked, embarrassed and a little angry.
“Not me. Someone, who told someone, until everyone knew. That’s how it works here. It’s not easy to keep a secret.”
“I suppose I should have expected that.” There were only fifty-five girls in each grade. Class sizes averaged fifteen students, which meant no chance of sliding under the radar if you hadn’t done your reading or if your incomprehension of quadratic equations was showing on your face. There were times in the past several days when Caitlyn had missed the relative anonymity of her public high school. “On the other hand, how many secrets worth keeping do a bunch of teenage girls locked up in a castle without boys actually have?”
Naomi chuckled. “More than you might think.”
“Really? Spill!”
Naomi shook her head, her thin, long black braids sliding over her shoulders. “You’ll have to discover them on your own. I listen to gossip, but I hoard it for myself.” Naomi made a motion of zipping her lips and throwing away the key.
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