The Watchtower Read online

  I followed, feeling almost as if he wanted me to, as if he were leading me somewhere. But when I got to the end of the avenue de l’Observatoire, the man was gone. I looked all around and circled the Fontaine des Quatre Parties du Monde twice, even looking hard at the fountain to make sure he wasn’t lurking behind a dolphin or rearing horse, and scanned the street. But no one was in sight but a uniformed guard standing at the locked gates of the Observatory.

  I approached the guard smiling, trying to formulate the French to ask after a mysterious man in long coat and hat without seeming like a crazy American. Five minutes later the guard wore the same blank, slightly bored, and disdainful expression as when I’d approached him.

  “Could I be of some assistance?” a man’s voice from behind me asked in British-accented English.

  I turned, relieved to hear my mother tongue, and found myself staring into a pair of deep-chocolate-brown eyes.

  “Oh,” I said. “You’re at my hotel, aren’t you?”

  “Yes, I recognized you from breakfast. Roger Elden.” He held out a hand and I took it. His skin was warm and slightly damp.

  “Garet James,” I replied.

  “Are you attending the colloquium, too?”

  “Colloquium?”

  He pointed to a poster affixed to the gate. Dark Matter: Theory and Observation, it read in English and in French.

  ="0em" width="1em" align="justify">“Oh, no!” I assured him, thinking I’d had plenty of dealings with another sort of dark matter this past year. “I thought I saw someone I knew heading this way and then he disappeared. I was trying to ask the guard if he’d seen him, but I’m afraid my French isn’t very good.” Briskly, Roger Elden asked me what my friend looked like (“He always wears a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun off his face because he’s … sensitive to the sun,” I improvised), then asked the guard in fluent French whether he had seen a man fitting that description. The guard became pleasant and voluble under Elden’s interrogation, but the end result was that he hadn’t seen any such man and had not let anyone into the Observatory all morning.

  “I am the first one here, you see,” Elden explained to me. “I am using the Observatory’s library for some research. I am, how do you Americans say it, quite the nerd!”

  I grinned. “Hey, I’m a card-carrying nerd myself. I was on my way to the library at the Institut Océanographique.”

  “Really? Are you a marine biologist?”

  Too late I realized I now needed to come up with a lie. It had been fun for a minute to chat with a cute guy and not think about otherworldly assignations. Trying to stick to as much truth as I could, I told Roger Elden that I was researching aquatic shapes for a new line of jewelry. I showed him the watch I’d made. “It’s based on one I saw at the Musée des Arts et Métiers. I put a tower on the back of this one, but I might put an octopus on another.”

  Realizing I was going on a bit and that the British astronomer (even cooler than Italian journalist!) was staring, I shut up.

  “You know,” he said, looking up from the watch, “if you like old gadgets, you’d love to see what they’ve got inside the Observatory. They’ve got fabulous antique equipment. If you like, I could show you one night and show you the night sky over Paris. I have permission to use the Observatory after hours.”

  “Wow, that would be cool … can I get back to you on that? I’m not sure what my plans are.” I might be embarking for the Land of Fairy anytime now, I thought, but luckily didn’t say. I would meet a guy with potential just when I was making some progress on my quest.

  “Sure. I’m in Paris for the rest of the week. Call me if you have a night free.”

  We exchanged cell phone numbers and went our separate ways—he into the Observatory, me back up the avenue de l’Observatoire to the Institut Océanographique. I approached the building a bit more cheerily this time. I had made a friend in Paris—a regular human friend—and a good-looking one at that. Even if this Madame La Pieuvre tossed me out on my ear, it wouldn’t be the end of the world. When I stood in front of the black iron gates, though, I had another attack of nerves. The octopus seemed to be regarding me suspiciously as I opened the gate, as did the orange and white clown fish in the aquarium in the center of the gh-ceilinged atrium. I checked in at an office in the lobby and was told that I’d find Madame La Pieuvre in the library on the third floor. The clerk seemed to be an ordinary human with only the average snootiness of a Parisian bureaucrat. Perhaps this wouldn’t be so bad, I thought, walking three flights up the curving marble staircase. On the third-floor landing was a glass case displaying a huge nautilus shell and a small card that read SONNEZ ET ENTREZ. I rang the bell to the single door and, without waiting to be asked, turned the knob.

  A long corridor lined with glass-fronted bookcases stretched in front of me. At the end an arch framed a small, sunlit alcove where a slender, silver-haired woman sat before a wooden card file. I waited a moment for her to turn and notice me, but she was apparently too absorbed in sorting through a stack of index cards. I started down the hall slowly to give her time to notice me, pausing to glance in the cases, which were full of the hollow shells of strange sea creatures—giant spiny sea urchins, spiraling pink conch shells, pale prickly starfish—none of which were more striking or exotic-looking than the woman who sat in the alcove. She was at least in her mid to late sixties if the polished silver of her hair was an indicator, but her oval face and high forehead were perfectly smooth and unlined even in the strong sunlight filling the nook where she sat. As I got closer I did notice a faint mottling on her skin that might have been freckles or liver spots, but which gave her the look of a rare spotted animal rather than an old woman. Her silver hair was swept back in an elegant twist fastened at the back with a mother-of-pearl clip in the shape of a nautilus shell. Her pearl-gray dress was cut from a heavy silk that shimmered in the sunlight like sharkskin. A matching cardigan was tied smartly over her narrow, sloping shoulders, her slim, bare arms tapering to long, narrow hands that plucked deftly at the stack of cards in front of her. When I was only a few feet away, she turned and, lowering a pair of half-moon reading glasses down her snub nose, smiled.

  “May I help you?” she asked in English. I was used to Parisians figuring out I was American after a sampling of my spoken French, but I hadn’t realized that the very sound of my footsteps was enough to announce my nationality.

  “Are you Madame La Pieuvre?” I asked.

  “Oui,” she answered with a sharp inhalation and a coquettish tilt of her wide, oval head.

  “I have something for you.” I dug in my bag and retrieved Monsieur Lutin’s bouquet—a bit worse for wear from its travel in my bag, but still fragrant.

  Madame La Pieuvre closed her heavily lidded eyes and inhaled, producing two little dimples on either side of her nose. “Ah, Helianthemum ledifolium! It reminds me of walking on Mt. Olympus. And edelweiss!” She opened her eyes and, touching the white flower with the tip of a pink-polished nail, said, “How kind of Monsieur Lutin to remember that it is the favorite of ma chère amie. How is the little man? I haven’t seen him in ages. I am afraid he has become quite the recluse. You must be someone special for him to have given you an audience.” She pushed her glasses up the shallow ridge of her nose and peered at me. Magnified by the lenses, her dark eyes glistened like surf-polished pebbles.

  “Jean Robin sent me to him … first I hung around Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre for a week before I got to see Jean Robin.” Too late I realized how petulant my voice sounded—like the impatient American of stereotypes—but Madame La Pieuvre only laughed and adjusted the sleeves of her sweater over her shoulders.

  “Some sit their whole lives in Saint-Julien without a sign. The path to the Summer Country is harder and harder to find … some say it has vanished altogether.”

  “But Jean Robin said that Will Hughes found it and left Paris in May.”

  “Ah, so it’s Will Hughes you’re following,” she said, her black eyes glittering. “He is a very
charming man … when he was a man at least.”

  “You knew him before?” I asked, wondering how old Madame La Pieuvre really was. And what she really was. Something about the way her hands moved restlessly across the surface of her desk was unnerving, and the sweater draped over her shoulders bunched oddly as she shrugged off my question.

  “Bien sûr. I met him on his first trip to Paris when he was pursuing your ancestress Marguerite. He fancied himself desperately in love, although at the time I wondered which he was more in love with—Marguerite or the idea of immortality. I tried to tell him then how very dull eternity could be, but of course he wouldn’t listen. I suppose you won’t listen either if I tell you to give up your quest to find Will and the road to the Summer Country.”

  “Can you tell me how to find the Summer Country?” I asked instead of answering her question. Or maybe that was my answer.

  “I can put you in touch with those who can,” she said with a sad smile. “Have a seat and I’ll take a look through my files for the best contacts.”

  She brushed the tips of her long, tapered fingers across the brass-plated cabinet drawers like a blind person reading braille. The gesture was somehow so private and sensual that I looked away, examining the alcove more closely. The coffered ceiling was painted in blue and gold, the wall painted pale turquoise, giving the light a faint subaqueous quality. In addition to the sea creatures behind glass, shells and pieces of coral were strewn across the surface of Madame La Pieuvre’s desk. We might have been sitting at the bottom of the sea. Even the way the librarian languidly plucked at the file cabinet suggested a swimmer stroking through water. Mesmerized, I watched as she plucked one card, then another, then another …

  I blinked. She was holding three cards in three separate hands. A fourth hand idly tucked a stray hair back into her chignon. She looked up and noticed me staring.

  “I thought since you’re practically family you wouldn’t mind. I can work so much more quickly like this.”

  “No, not at all. I didn’t mean to stare.”

  She trilled a long musical laugh. “I’m a hybrid. In the old days the sea fairies intermarried wth the sea creatures. My mother was a princess of Ys and my father was an octopus,” she told me as if explaining that she was half Irish and half Italian. “The younger generation is ashamed of the offspring of these unions—the mermaids, selkies, undines, and other hybrids such as myself—but we serve a purpose. We’re not too proud to mingle with what they call the lesser fey—the lumignon and the tree spirits … ah, like this one.”

  She held up a card in one of her hands. It was covered in a series of stray pencil marks that looked like a child’s scribbles. I moved closer and saw that the marks were moving, spreading across the page like tree branches.

  “Sylvianne, queen of the tree spirits. She sent a traveler to the Summer Country a few years ago. She might be able to help you. The trick will be convincing her to do it. I will introduce you, but I can’t guarantee anything.”

  “Does she live far away?” I asked, wanting also to ask why I was being sent to a tree fairy when I’d been told to seek out a sea fairy, but then that seemed rude, as if I were criticizing Madame La Pieuvre for her race’s failings.

  “Oh, no, only a few blocks away, in the Luxembourg Gardens. In fact, why don’t you come to my apartment this evening? It’s right outside the garden and I could walk you over.”

  She wrote down her address—1 avenue de l’Observatoire—on a card while simultaneously reshelving two books and rearranging her hair.

  “It’s hardly a place for a young woman to walk alone after hours. We’ve had some … incidents lately.… I’m afraid your vampire friend is not the only dangerous being to stalk the streets and parks of Paris after dark.”

  8

  A Cloaked Figure

  Several hours later, just before midnight, Will found himself sitting at the same curbside table at Baker & Thread’s where he’d spent the midday hours. As if it were his new home. Wandering late-night streets after a long daytime sleep, as despairing and morbid as dreamless sleep can be, he’d gone there almost out of a sense of routine, a sense that if this was where his mourning over Marguerite had begun, it might as well continue there.

  He reflected back on his long sleep, as a rehearsal for the much longer sleep awaiting him if Marguerite did not somehow still save him with her love, for he had little doubt that he would do away with himself otherwise. His very atoms seemed to have slowed down in sleep with despair, for he’d felt an extraordinary numbness upon awakening. It seemed hours before he’d shaken his limbs enough to sit up in bed, and when he sat up, he was not certain if it was as a living being or as a ghost. But, eventually, he did resume a facsimile of wakefulness, and then he felt the need to soothe the blistering solitude of his hovel by leaving it.

  Though B&T’s was famed throughout London for the singular lateness of its hours, this was a Monday, and as Will looked around, he saw it was nearly deserted. Theonounced shadow of a four-story stone building across the street enveloped his table in deep gray even amid the silver radiance of a full moon. Will could barely discern his own hands, resting atop the table.

  Only one other patron seemed to be on the premises, a figure in a thick black cloak and shawl heavy for the season. He sat in a chair tilted back against a brick wall, well into the interior, his chair pitched so far back it looked as if he were trying to press his body into the brick. What need for protection motivated this posture? Will wondered. He tried to peer more closely at him but his back was turned and all Will could make out was his cloak … which suddenly reminded him of another cloaked figure—the Italian priest whom he’d run into on the street yesterday. Could the knave be following him?

  The server, a graying matron who might have been the sister of his midday waitress, came to take his order, a tankard of ale with some bread and cheese. “Say, do you know who that fellow is?” Will asked as she started to walk off. He gestured toward the cloaked figure.

  “No, never saw him in here before.”

  As she retreated, Will, angry at the thought he was being followed, stood and slowly approached the cloaked figure. Halfway across the room he considered retreating. He didn’t have his sword with him. What if it was the Italian priest? What if he was a spy sent by his father to monitor his behavior and report back on his activities? Or worse—force him bodily to return to Swan Hall? Or even worse—what if he’d been hired by the poet to kill him for daring to court Marguerite? Will hesitated, nearly turned back. But his youthful aggressiveness got the best of him.

  “Reveal yourself, knave,” he proclaimed in a voice that was loud enough to disguise the slight tremor he felt in his throat. “I would know who my tormentor is!” He flicked the cloak away from the man’s face … and nearly fell over with shock. His tongue didn’t work and neither did his ears, for she—it was most definitely and gloriously a she!—had started to speak and he couldn’t hear her. Only his eyes remained steady, eyes that had received an impression that rocked him, which would be the impression come to his mind whenever he thought of this moment afterward, which would be often.

  A cloud in the night sky must have moved, for the water in her glass, perfectly clear a moment earlier, suddenly seethed with moonlight, with a silver brilliance so intense he had to look away. Alchemy again, he couldn’t help but think, though by whom or what he had no idea.

  Maybe love was alchemy, too, it occurred to him. Transmuting matter into spirit.

  “Lord, it’s you,” Marguerite was saying. “The source of my troubles.”

  Hearing this backwardly encouraging comment, Will felt almost invited to sit down at her table and did. He gazed at Marguerite, beside himself with hopefulness. Her blue-green eyes were perfect, so much so that they appeared otherworldly; so were all her oval features. Her expression was grim, befitting some reversal she’d apparently suffered, but there was hope for him, he couldn’t stop thinking. Even to be the source of her troubles, he needed to have
some significance.

  height="0em" width="1em" align="justify">She leaned toward him slightly. “Did you follow me here? Why? Didn’t you get our note this morning?” The harshness of her words, her tone, lashed his hopefulness with mockery. Especially painful was the word our. But he noted also her tears, her quivering lips, and decided not to fall into the trap of offended repartee; solicitude was a much better choice. There was some tangle of emotions and events here, and he needed to untangle it.

  “As the heavens are my witness, I did not follow you here, beautiful lady,” Will said. “I did receive the poet’s message earlier, but it did not banish me from the streets or the taverns. Had it, and had I known it came from your heart as well as his, which I don’t, I’d be at the bottom of the Thames right now, of my own free will. Draw your own conclusions as to why destiny has flung us together here tonight. I do!”

  Marguerite stared into Will’s fervent eyes. Once or twice her lips began moving as though she were going to speak again, but then she would lapse back into silence. Then, with no warning, she put her face in her hands and began to sob. Will moved in a gingerly way to console her, wondering if he might be so bold as to put an arm around her shoulders; which he did. He had only one, wildly exalting thought: If I’m in her tears, I could be in her heart!

  She sobbed so long that the serving woman, having brought Will’s ale to his table first, eventually brought the tankard over to him at his new table. When the sobs ceased, Marguerite looked back up at Will, took a deep breath, and said, “The poet has lost his mind! When I was fool enough to tell him of our encounter at the party, he flew into a jealous rage. He said you would never have behaved so disloyally without encouragement from me, which of course is untrue. Then he insisted that he and I marry immediately, to ward off further transgressions from ‘evildoers,’ as he termed you. This though he is already married and famously so. When I cited the law and Christian decency to him, he said we were beyond the ‘iron rule’ of both. As he put it, ‘Man’s loving heart is the greatest savior this earth has seen, and poetry is that heart’s scripture.’ Fancy words he has a gift for, and I was moved by them. But not enough to enter into a blasphemous marriage, for which refusal he then cast me out of what was suddenly ‘his’ house.