The Watchtower (18 page)

"This is not a matter of unrequited love," Will told Liverpool. "This is a question of one lover needing transformation so two lovers can be together. An insurmountable challenge for any alchemist, I fear."

"Transformation," Liverpool repeated, twisting his hands as if, by their becoming better acquainted with each other, they might help with a solution. Rather than admit his ignorance of Will's meaning, he then tried a little humor. "You are in love with your hunting falcon, perhaps? Or a deer? And you want to cross that natural boundary between them and you? Yes, I'm not sure the alchemist's craft is advanced enough for that."

Disappointment and exasperation merged in Will's expression. He sat in sullen silence and listened to Liverpool's continued rant.

"There is indeed a transformation impending in currency that can grow like a gargantuan, in coins that will jangle louder than an avalanche, and in certificates that will glitter with an aura brighter than the sun's.

"Transformed commerce lies at England's feet now, carried here by secular angels of markets and math. Dee himself spoke of our nation's mathematical future in his brilliant introduction to Henry Billingsley's
Euclid,
recently reprinted. You can be a leader of this new world, son. All it will take is a small investment and the larger portion of your rational mind!"

"Lord Liverpool, what I mean by
transformation
has nothing to do with the crassness of commerce. I have found a love so exalted I could not find the smallest trace of the material world in her if I looked with the finest magnifying glass. I am referring to the plight of a mortal like myself who falls in love with an immortal and cannot cross that boundary to be with her forever. And who therefore requires help in crossing that line, whether from sorcerer or preacher, alchemist or poet, wizard or astronomer, or the devil himself matters not! Your employer, Sir Dee, is rumored to have the most extraordinary powers. Can he help me? Can you? Can anyone in England? In the world?" Will stifled a sob. The solitude of his dilemma, the inability of anyone else to comprehend it--not that he had tried to communicate it before now--seemed one of the most hurtful things about it.

Then he observed out of the corner of his eye a sudden darkening in the street. A corresponding shadow came over Guy Liverpool's features, as if Will's emotional outburst had unnerved him. Sudden clouds must be smearing the sun, but they had arrived with incredible speed, since Will had entered the tavern under a sheer blue sky.

Looking about nervously, as if the change in weather showed the moral darkness of even discussing such a topic as Will brought up, Liverpool then retrieved an engraved card from a purse tied around the peasecod belly of his doublet and proferred it to Will. When Will glanced at it, he saw this card's design was different from the one Liverpool had previously given him. The first card had tiny gold bars superimposed on lead ones, but this one's was simpler: white lettering on a black background, with a few stars here and there. It read,
Sir John Dee, Master of Night. 22 Rufus Lane, Mortlake. By Appointment Only.

"You may approach Sir Dee, any time after sunset, on this matter of which you speak. I will let him know you are coming. But best to be subtle, even obscure, at first. As you have been with me."

"I did nothing of the kind," Will protested. "You wouldn't let me get a word in edgewise."

Liverpool waved off Will's protest as if it were a buzzing fly. "Yes, strike a misleading chord with Sir Dee, so he may think you've come to him on the topic of commerce. He may let his defenses down. Perhaps you will gain his sympathies. And don't think that I'm not sympathetic; I have no doubt your worry is real, but it is a bit beyond my own area of expertise, so that I cannot help you personally. Indeed I wish you well and will only expect suitable compensation, which can be paid me right in this very tavern, if you succeed in your quest through the services of Sir Dee. But if you do embark on this most awesome of journeys, keep in mind that crossing over--'transformation' as you call it--can annihilate the voyager, even dislodge the earth that birthed him. Your beloved best be worth these sorts of risks, son. And you'd better be prepared, from what I've heard rumored over the many years, to die during the journey."

Now there was a second darkening in the street, then a brilliant flash of lightning followed by thunder. Hailstones began to drop with a sound like bullets fired from the clouds striking the pavements, followed by large raindrops falling with a sound like blood spattering.

Will, weary of Guy Liverpool's portentous perspective, said a hasty farewell, slapped two shillings down on the tabletop for his drink, and sped off intoeluge. With a new chance at immortality, he felt as if he could walk between the hailstones and raindrops. And walk between them he nearly did.

13

Harlequin

The next day I caught a train for Fontainebleau.

"I have to go alone," I'd told Madame La Pieuvre after we'd left the Luxembourg. "Sylvianne told me so."

"What else did Sylvianne tell you?" She still looked puffed up, but the inky blotches on her face were fading.

"She told me that tomorrow night the Wild Hunt rides through the Forest of Fontainebleau, and that if I stopped in front of the head rider and demanded passage to the Summer Country, he would have to give it to me."

"Oh, is that all?" Madame La Pieuvre asked, arching one eyebrow. "Why not tell you to stand in front of a speeding train while she's at it?"

I recollected her words as I hurried toward my track at the Gare de Lyon. Surely Madame La Pieuvre had been exaggerating. She'd been angered by Sylvianne, but she herself had said that the tree folk's treatment of humans was harmless.
Mostly
. And sure,
Wild Hunt
sounded scary, but when I'd looked it up last night on the Internet, I'd found out it was merely the name for a gathering of fairies. It was also sometimes called the Wild Host, Woden's Ride, or, in Old North French, la Mesnee d'Hellequin, none of which sounded quite as ominous as
Hunt. Hellequin
turned out to be an ancestor of
Harlequin,
the masked and diamond-suited jester of commedia dell'arte. What could be more harmless than that?

Besides, I was going with a personal calling card from the Queen of the Forest. Sylvianne had given me a small twig from her "hair" to hold up in front of the riders and assured me that it would keep me safe. So I had nothing to worry about ... unless the twig was a secret message like the death sentence borne by Rosencrantz and Guildenstern in
Hamlet
indicating that the bearer should be killed on the spot.

I shook my head free of these thoughts as I boarded the train, took a seat on the upper level, and tried to focus instead on the excitement of the trip. After all, what could be more evocative of adventure and romantic travel than these big, old European train stations? From the top level of the double-decker train I had a wonderful view of the great vaulted ceiling and the enormous clock hanging from it. Shields with the insignia of French provinces lined the walls. At the top of a great staircase was one of the last of the grand railway restaurants: Le Train Bleu. My mother had taken me there for ice cream during the summer I was sixteen, and she'd told me that she had gone there as a girl, first when she and her mother took the train from her little village in the south up to Paris. She'd told me it had been the last place she'd ever seen her mother, who had later sent her back into the country just weeks before the Germans marched into Paris.

Suddenly the bustling train station transformed before me. Instead of tourists rusng to catch their trains for their holidays in the Midi, I saw hordes of frightened families pushed by black-booted soldiers onto freight cars. I heard the cries of mothers calling to their children and the shrill commands in German. And standing in the center of it all was the man in the long coat and the broad-brimmed hat I'd seen five times now. And he was looking right at me....

I startled out of my vision to find myself surrounded by three loud and boisterous teenagers crowding into the seat across from me. One of the girls was opening a window and shouting in English to hurry up,
for fuck's sake
. She collapsed into her seat in a fit of giggles, hiding her face in her friend's lap. Still half dazed by my vision--I'd been having quite a few of them lately, hadn't I?--I stared at the girls wondering why they looked familiar. Then I realized they were the same girls I'd seen a few nights ago in the Square Viviani--the art students who'd rushed off to make their midnight curfew.

"Don't mind Sarah," one of the girls, a redhead, said when she noticed me staring. "She's got Tourette's."

Sarah punched her friend in the arm and collapsed in another fit of giggles.

"I've heard worse," I assured them. "Are you girls going to Fontainebleau to sketch?" I pointed at the portfolios they all carried.

"Yeah," the redhead, apparently the designated speaker, answered. "Our art teacher says that Fontainebleau has been an inspiration to artists for centuries and we ought to 'take our line for a walk' there."

Sarah dissolved into another fit of laughter. "We were going to spend the weekend in Nice, but Becca's parents pitched a fit."

The third girl, a gamine with black bangs and dark eyes, blushed. "They didn't think it was safe. They're freaked out by reports of missing students."

"They think she's going to end up like that boy they found this morning in the Seine," Sarah said, her voice suddenly sober.

"What boy?" I asked.

"Do you still have the paper, Carrie?" Sarah asked the redhead.

Carrie handed me this morning's
Herald Tribune.
On the front page was a photograph of nineteen-year-old Sam Smollett, a sophomore at Bard College, who had gone missing from his dormitory a week ago. He'd been found drowned in the Seine this morning.

Bard Boy,
I thought, recognizing the boy I'd seen with Sylvianne last night. Had he broken away from her dominion last night and thrown himself into the river? Or had someone decided to deprive the Queen of the Forest of her special pet? I recalled the man in the overcoat and hat I'd seen vaulting into the park last night. That made twice that I'd seen him at the scene of a crime. And I'd just seen him standing in the station. Had he boarded our train?

I glanced around the car nervously, but theret wa no sign of the man in the long coat and hat--although, if he took them off, would I recognize him? What if his next target was one of these three girls?

I tried to focus on the girls' conversation again, if only to slip in some warning to them about staying out of dark, deserted parks at night. They were discussing the history of Fontainebleau.

"Our teacher says it's the birthplace of plain air, or something," Carrie was saying.

"En plein air,"
I gently corrected. "And he's right. Before the impressionists, painters came out to the woods of Fontainebleau to paint outdoors instead of in their studios. They were called the Barbizon school for one of the villages." I gave a little lecture on the Barbizon school to the three girls, supplemented by details I'd learned on the Internet last night. They listened patiently and politely, like the three nice American high schoolers they were. I ended by stressing that the painters worked during the daylight. The woods could be dangerous at night.

"Are you an artist?" Carrie asked, ignoring my warning.

"A jeweler." I showed them the watch I'd recently made and the swan ring and pendant I always wore and they immediately became more animated. Sarah had seen some of my pendants at Barneys, which instantly gave me more "cred" than all the art history knowledge in the world. We talked about different art schools in New York City and where the girls were thinking of going to college. Becca, who was from Texas, said her parents were against her going to art school in Manhattan; Sarah said her grandparents refused to let her use her college fund for anything less than an Ivy; while Carrie said her mom wanted her to go to art school but that she wanted a more general liberal arts college.

"I don't think I can take four years of emo art kids," she said.

The girls' chatter made the trip fly by and distracted me briefly from my worries over the two drownings. We were heading away from Paris, where they'd occurred. Still, I was happy to learn we were all staying at the same hotel--the Aigle Noir--right across from the entrance to the chateau and park. I could keep an eye on the girls tonight.

I resisted the urge to follow when they ran off toward the park with their sketchbooks right away. It was full daylight, after all. And I'd be better off resting now so I could be more alert tonight.

I checked in and was shown to a pretty toile-papered room overlooking the town square and the high walls of the chateau. The square was full of outdoor cafes, a carousel, and a stage being set up for some kind of evening theatrics. The bright, colorful scene full of tourists and day-trippers from Paris belied any dark activity behind the high walls. I'd imagined coming to Fontainebleau that I'd be plunged into a dark, trackless wilderness, not this bucolic scene as peaceful and harmless as the shepherds and shepherdesses frolicking across the tame toile landscape on the wall. I fell asleep lulled by the music of the carousel and the plump, smiling faces on the wallpaper.

My dreams started peaceful enough as well. I was in a green meadow. I could hear the bleat of sheep wahe distance and the sound of bells. I walked to the top of a hill and looked down on a valley dotted with quaint stone cottages and hedgerows. A giggling girl ran past me, her frilled petticoats frothing around her plump legs. A boy in striped trousers and loose shirt pursued her. A couple of sheep frolicked nearby. I walked a little farther on and
another
girl ran past me, also in frilly dress and low-cut bodice, and yet again a boy in peasant attire followed her, along with the same retinue of sheep. I had an uncomfortable feeling of deja vu. When the scene repeated a third time, I spun around, annoyed that I seemed to be stuck in a repeating loop ... and then I saw that the same scene--running shepherdess, following shepherd, bleating sheep--was repeated over and over again across the valley. I was stuck in the toile wallpaper; no matter how far I wandered, I kept encountering the same banal scene. I trudged on, looking desperately for a way out, but somehow knowing that I'd be stuck there forever.