The Watchtower (11 page)

Liverpool drew in a long, whistling breath, as if his patience were sorely tried, before replying, "It is a sort of alchemy, lad, but not of the base-metal kind, you may relieve yourself on that point. I must rebuke you nonetheless, though. Sir Dee, one of the great minds of this or any other time, is an alchemist. That's no mere craft, no sport for gutter guilds. Its source is a heightened spirit, same as any preacher's is. But please, let me not digress..."

Will yawned.

"Along the streets surrounding this tavern, in this very Seething Lane neighborhood sometimes referrred to as Exchange Alley, a new sort of alchemy is coming into our fair land. Slinking in and out of the darkest corners for now, but make no mistake that this is the port of entry and it is coming. From the Low Countries, the exalted spirit of which contradicts their names; note that
Holland,
for example, is but one added letter from spelling
Holy Land.

"The public isn't aware of this tide yet, just a select few. Which I am inviting you to join. Visionaries who ride this tide using their energies, intellects, spirits, and--if I may be so presumptuous--fortunes, though only to what extent prudence dictates, will be richer and more venerated than the greatest of alchemists. The new alchemy requires no tools, no chemicals, no base metals. No fire or air. Only the vision to ride the tide and, if I may add this, a facility with numbers."

"Numbers?" Will was not a mathematician, but he did enjoy working with the numbers involved in writing formal poetry.

"Yes, numbers."

"What exactly is it you speak of, then?" Will asked in a more energetic voice than before.

"The stock market, my boy, the alchemy of which can perform miracles no metal ever forged can dream of." Liverpool propelled his chair back to the table's edge. "A place where a mere piece of paper is worth a pound one day and a hundred pounds the next. Certain streets are starting to seethe with it, on the sly, of course, as the king's agents are all about. It won't be lawful until the chancellor of the exchequer figures out a way for the king to get his fair share! Or more.

"This is the true alchemy, son! I'd like to introduce you to it. The alchemy of 'all that glitters
is
gold.' Where those in the know reap all that glows."

Will allowed himself a minute to ponder the man's ravings.

Wealth could make a crucial diffce to him, for whatever of his hopes remained with Marguerite after the morning's calamity, and for continued independence from his potentially vengeful father. And he
was
attracted to the number logic of poetry, the math of its rhythms, even if the crassness of commerce had never appealed to him. But he suppressed this reaction. He'd received no tangible evidence to support anything Liverpool had said, and John Dee was someone who had summoned demons with aplomb.

Liverpool, observing Will's hesitation, grew more expansive. "If riches are not enough, son, ponder immortality. Eternal glory will come your way for being part of such a grand innovation as the stock market, which will reveal all preceding economies for the crudities they are. But then there's also the physical immortality this wealth can be used to find. Because, in the end, life's all in the blood, my boy. In the blood."

"What?"

"If we can transform the nature of human blood in the same way the stock market is changing money, in the same way the ancient alchemists changed lead, we can live forever, man. Simple as that!"

Will's thoughts went to that sunlight, passing through his hand as if it weren't there, hours ago. Delineating the very atoms of his hand! Was a new sort of blood possible?

But he could not linger on such wild hopes, not with this bearish man still directing a heavy, burdensome stare at him, not on a day when the deepest romantic hope of his life had been dashed. He'd had enough dreams for one day.

Even as Liverpool removed his handkerchief to show that both metal lumps were gold now, something Will dismissed as magic, he got up without a further word and stalked away from the table, onto the crowded pavements. Ten feet away, he turned back toward Liverpool to say, "I'm at Mrs. Garvey's in Harp Lane if you care to bring me actual evidence of this alchemy, more than rhetoric and scheming. Documents, for one. I am neither fool nor waif to be trifled with so. Good day, sir!"

"Expect me soon," Liverpool replied in a booming voice. "As lead turning to gold before your eyes has not been enough!" His eyes were already scanning the tavern's shadowy interior, as if for other prospects.

Will strolled briskly back now to Mrs. Garvey's. He remained exhausted from walking, drinking, exasperating conversation, and heartache, but the prospect of deep rest in his bed overcame all his fatigue.

Though, one thing he couldn't bear much anymore was heat. He crossed abruptly over to the shady side of the street, diving for the shadows as though diving into an ocean of coolness ... and collided with a man so muffled in black robes that he'd been indistinguishable from the surrounding shade.

"Excuse me," Will said.

"Prego,"
the dark-robed figure muttered under his breath, darting quickly into the even deeper black of an alley like an eel slithering into the shelter of a shoal. A flash of gold accompanied his retreat--a cross at his neck that Will recognized. It was the censorious priest from the party. Will shuddered at the coicidence as if a black cat had crossed his path, but then dismissed his reaction as an aftereffect of his earlier disappointment and his meeting with Guy Liverpool. It was little wonder that an Italian priest would lurk in the shadows. Catholicism was a serious offense here in England. The priest was the one who should be afraid. Not him.

7

The Octopus

Early the next morning I took the bouquet Monsieur Lutin had given me (kept fresh in a water glass during the night, then wrapped in wet paper towels and secured in my messenger bag) and started off for the Institut Oceanographique. I took the rue l'Estrapade past the walled garden of the Lycee Henri IV, just one of the many buildings in Paris named for that monarch. Pausing to read the plaque on the school, I realized that Henri IV had ruled France when Will Hughes first came to Paris looking for Marguerite. As I continued down the street, I wondered what Paris had looked like then. Had Will walked on this very street, searching the crowded Latin Quarter for signs of his beloved Marguerite? Certainly now there were "signs" everywhere--a tin cutout of a man cranking some kind of steaming cookpot, an enormous bronze key hanging from a locksmith's shop, the seal of Paris carved into the cornerstone of a building ...

I stopped in front of that one to look closer at a ship riding the waves. Ships were all over Paris--even on the lampposts outside the Opera House--because of the crest. I had never thought it strange, but now that I knew about the
mer
fey I wondered if the symbol was a sign of their dominion over the city. I looked again at the card Monsieur Lutin had given me.
Madame La Pieuvre, Conservateur de Bibliotheque, Institut Oceanographique.
My experience with librarians was limited to the draconian doyennes at the main branch of the New York Public Library, where I often went to research images for jewelry designs. I could only imagine how severe the head librarian at a prestigious Parisian institution might be.

So when I arrived at the building on the rue Saint-Jacques and found the cast-iron gates of the institute locked, I felt a guilty sense of relief enhanced by the forbidding appearance of the building. Twin gold seahorses stood sentinel on either side of the gate. Above them hovered an enormous gold octopus, its tentacles spread out as if to catch the unwary visitor. I quickly checked the library hours on the sign, saw I had an hour to kill, and decided to spend it walking in the nearby Luxembourg Gardens.

I sighed with relief as soon as I walked through the park gates and into the deep greenery of an allee of pollarded plane trees. Could there be anything more French than a double line of old trees evenly spaced? The proportions felt just right, as if the world were ordered. I felt my pace--and my heartbeat--slow. You couldn't rush through an allee; you had to stroll.

The shady allee opened onto a broad, green circular lawn, embraced by a double, curving balustrade topped with marble urns overflowing with purple, yellow, and white flowers. Flowers in the same palette bordered the lawn. I sighed aloud. It was like walking into an impressionist painting--specifically John Singer Sargent's
In the Luxembourg Gardens
. As a child I'd often fantasized about being able to walk into a favorite painting .../p>

I came to an abrupt stop. On the other side of the lawn, in the shadows of the trees, stood a tall man in a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat. I caught my breath at the sight of him not
only
because he was clearly the same man I'd seen the night before last in the Square Viviani and yesterday in the Arenes de Lutece, but also because seeing him here, while I'd been thinking about stepping into a painting, had jarred another memory. When I'd studied the painting of Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, the one I believed Will had sent me, I had experienced a momentary vision of the painting as a live scene--and into that scene had walked a man in a long coat and a wide-brimmed hat.
This
man. Could it be that he was an emissary sent to lead me to the Summer Country? If so, he was a rather coy emissary. He'd already turned and was striding away from me.

I ran after him, into the paths that meandered around the playground and the beehives, bumping into old men playing
boules
and stylish women on their way to work. I caught a glimpse of him exiting the park through the south gates, but then I got held up by traffic crossing the rue Auguste Comte. By the time I got to the other side, I thought I'd lost him. The avenue de l'Observatoire was divided in the middle by a park punctuated by statues and bordered by rows of chestnut trees. I couldn't tell what side of the street he'd gone to, and he could be lurking behind any of the trees or statues ... then I saw him--or his hat, actually--over a statue of a naked woman halfway down the block. He was walking south.

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.

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 Oceanographique."

"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 Musee des Arts et Metiers. 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."