The Watchtower (14 page)

"I believe you've met Adele before,
oui
?" Madame La Pieuvre asked, pushing me gently forward with one arm while pouring champagne into a glass with another.

"I didn't realize"--I faltered awkwardly as Madame La Pieuvre handed a glass to me while refilling Madame Weiss's glass and casually draping an arm over her friend's shoulder--"that you were acquainted with the fey, Madame Weiss. Did my mother know when she sta with you?"

"Please call me Adele ... and, yes, your mother knew of my ...
liaisons
. Our families were long acquainted. During the war your grandmother and my mother worked in the Resistance together. And it was your mother who introduced me to Octavia." Adele smiled lovingly at Madame La Pieuvre--a look that suddenly recalled to me the conflicted longing in the marble nymph's eyes. But why conflicted? Octavia La Pieuvre looked gentle and refined--no rapacious triton. It wasn't fear that was mixed with Adele's love, though; it was sadness. When I looked back at Madame La Pieuvre, I saw that same sadness reflected in her dark obsidian eyes. But when she trained her eyes back on me, the sadness vanished.

"Adele's family has long been friends to the Watchtower--as have my people despite the occasional differences of opinion. The more snobbish of the
mer
fey looked down on Marguerite for choosing to become mortal, but I have always respected her choice. She did it out of love--"

"And look what she got for it!" Adele interrupted angrily. "That silly boy became a vampire just as she became mortal. So after all that they still couldn't be together."

"Yes, it was regrettable that Marguerite sacrificed her immortality for a lover who was clearly not worthy of her love
at the time
. But I have noticed as the years have gone by that Will Hughes shows signs of maturing into the kind of man who might someday be worthy of the Watchtower."

As Madame La Pieuvre spoke, her eyes remained on me, but one of her hands slipped into Adele's lap to grasp her hand. I reflected that their version of the Will and Marguerite story was not
exactly
as Will had related it to me, but I didn't think it prudent to get in the middle of their argument.

"If he were worthy, would he have taken the box from Garet and abandoned her?" Adele demanded.

"How--?" I began, appalled that the details of my love life were public knowledge. But the two women ignored me.

"Clearly he loves her. Why else would he send her a sign to join him on the road to the Summer Country? Perhaps he only wished to spare her the difficulty of the initial stages of the journey."

Madame Weiss made an exasperated sound. "Typical of you immortals--always thinking you know what's best for us poor weak humans...."

As Adele continued, complaining about the high-handed approach of supernatural beings to mortals, I realized that the women weren't really talking about me and Will anymore--they were enacting some old conflict in their own relationship. I could see the women's love for each other beneath the anger in the way Madame Weiss looked into Madame La Pieuvre's eyes and in the way Madame La Pieuvre's hands roved restlessly over her lover's hair and arms, trying to soothe her. Clearly, that one of them had two arms and the other had eight was not the problem. The problem was that one of them, Adele Weiss, would age and die and the other, Octavia La Pieuvre, would live forever. At first I thought that perhaps Madame Weild cond begged Octavia to make her immortal--as Will had told me he had begged Marguerite--but as I listened I realized it was the opposite. Madame La Pieuvre was offering to end her life with her Adele.

"I could go with Garet to the Summer Country and ask
her
to make me mortal. Then we could age and die together. It's what I've always wanted," Madame La Pieuvre said, turning to me, her black eyes glistening with unshed tears, "to end my long life with the person I love the most."

Adele opened her mouth to say something but Octavia placed a long finger on her lips. "It might be our only chance, darling. I'm sure that Garet is meant to make the journey. I could go with her ...
let
me go with her,
please
!" Then, turning to me: "That is, if you don't mind, my dear. I promise that I can be of help to you along the way as guide and interpreter."

"I suppose...," I began, but stopped when I saw Adele's tear-streaked face. She shook her head, the droop of her shoulders expressing a resignation that seemed habitual.

"I see there's nothing I can say to stop you," Adele said to Octavia. "And you..." Adele turned to me. "I just hope that the creature you find at the end of the road is worth it."

Then Adele got up, smoothed her skirt, and walked out of the room.

"Mon petit Edelweiss!"
Octavia murmured. Several of her arms drifted in Adele's direction as she left, but didn't touch her. One drifted to her own hair and patted her already immaculate chignon, another plucked a white blossom from the bouquet that I'd brought her from Monsieur Lutin earlier today. She brought it to her snub nose, closed her eyes, inhaled the sweet scent, then put the blossom back into the bouquet.

"Please don't mind Adele. It pains her to think of me giving up a second of my life for her sake, but she simply doesn't know how very wearing immortality is. It isn't for her sake alone that I seek a release from it, but it
would
give me great pleasure to end my life with hers."

"Can't you just..." I faltered, unsure how to delicately suggest suicide.

"Even if I destroyed this fleshly body, the bit of myself that is fey would linger in bodiless form for all eternity." Octavia leaned closer to me, her black eyes glittering and all her arms floating in the air around her like the ethereal spirits she spoke of. "I once encountered a bodiless fey spirit in the forest of Broceliande--a poor tortured creature who had killed herself for love of a mortal. Her cries were enough to tear your heart in two. No, what I crave is the release of mortal death while holding the hand of my beloved."

Octavia held out the hand that had held the white edelweiss blossom, her fingers cupped as if she still held the flower, then held out another, and another, until eight empty hands were before me, each one begging for one thing.

"Of course," I said, unable to resist such an entreaty. EC;I'd be honored to have your company on the journey."

10

Lightning

The next few weeks were the most glorious of Will's life. He saw Marguerite nearly every day, and her insistence that their relationship was to be viewed as "spiritual," not "romantic," seemed to be honored more in the breach than the observance. Or, as Marguerite would occasionally concede, amorousness could have spirituality at its core, and so could Eros.

On a few difficult occasions he was a mere confidant, supporting her in her not-yet-completely-concluded separation from the poet. Those days had their bitterness, but he managed the bravest face possible while with her. And he managed to restore his own spirits afterward, though with a difficulty he compared to ascending the slick, mossy walls of a well.

Their love had moments of ecstasy that he'd never experienced before and hadn't imagined possible. Such moments did not flow only from lovemaking; they could arise from the most innocent of gestures, such as smiling deeply at one another upon first meeting, or holding hands on a London street shadowy enough to make that safe. Or from a few inspired words.

One thread of uncertainty did, however, run through and occasionally threaten to tear this tapestry of love. Will was never quite sure to what degree Marguerite was leaving the poet for him, or to what degree she'd been
tossed
by the poet to him. Not as a favor to him, of course, but in the sense that Marguerite may simply have been taking shelter from their terrible fight. She spoke now of the depth of her spiritual feeling for Will--how even the poet conceded the depth of Will's soul--but both poet
and
Marguerite had signed off on the foul sentry's greeting and that glacially cold note ... where were Will's spiritual qualities then?

Subtly but discernibly, Will could feel himself once or twice holding back from complete immersion in love for Marguerite. No doubt this was a transitional sensation--difficult nuances were to be expected--but he did hold back in moments, if anything because of fear. The ecstasy had been real, but so had been the initial pain, the suddenness of coming together, the change in his life so sharp that it was naturally coupled with insecurity. In rare moments, he even looked for solace at other women. But those moments were few and far between.

This intense love affair lasted for about three weeks. Then came an event so powerful that it changed everything between them. Will was to remember the event as if it were part of his mind since the womb.

They had spent an idyllic afternoon in a meadow by a pond, about twenty miles north of London, where they had ridden on horseback with picnic lunches. The whole afternoon was as serene as any since Eden, Will fancied. The moment he recollected best was when he glanced at the pond after one prolonged and melting embrace and saw two swans swimming side by side, their necks amorously intertwined as if inspired by Will and Marguerite's example. The swans were under an overhang of foliage that shadowed the sun-ribboned water, but Will was sure of what he saw. The male swan was black and the female white, despite the rarity of the former. When he pointed out the near miraculous coupling to Marguerite, suspecting she'd respond to it, as he had, as an omen of their improbable love, instead her forehead creased with worry, her eyes darkened, and she looked away from him without a word.

"What's the matter?" he asked, taking her hand.

She looked back at him, her countenance still cloudy. "These swans remind me of an old family ... tradition. A story of our founding."

"Really? Another coincidence that convinces me we were indeed meant for each other. There is a story about a swan in my family as well."

Instead of receiving this news with joy, Marguerite turned pale. "What is the story?"

"Oh, it's a child's fairy tale, to be sure, about a mysterious and beautiful maiden who fell in love with one of my ancestors and married him on the condition that he never follow her to the water at sunset. Of course he does--what man wouldn't suspect some adulterous dalliance?--and he surprised her in the moment of turning into a swan. At the sight of him she began to rise from the pool, but rather than lose her forever, he shot her down with an arrow."

"How cruel!" Marguerite exclaimed through trembling lips.

"He only meant to keep her from fleeing," Will explained--although in truth this part of the story had always bothered him as well. "She didn't die, but she did leave him. She promised, though, that she and her kind would always look over him and his descendants, see?" Will pulled out the signet ring he still wore on a chain around his neck and showed Marguerite his family crest. She touched the carved insignia gingerly with her fingertips as if the metal were hot.

"Hughes ... it's so common a name," she murmured. "I didn't realize..."

"Realize what, darling?"

But she only shook her head. "You were right. This ...
coincidence
explains so much. We were meant to meet ... why fight it?" She was trembling so hard that Will took her in his arms to warm her, but it took a long time to dispel the chill from her flesh.

* * *

They did not return to the city that night. It was the first time, Will realized with no small excitement and pleasure, that Marguerite had been willing to stay with him overnight. Will could not help but attribute her willingness to the "coincidence of the swans," as he put it to himself. For the first time since he'd fled his ancestral home, he blessed his lineage.

Marguerite led them to a tavern with rooms to let not far from the pond, a place she denied any previous experience with (except having heard of it), though in that regard Will suspected otherwise. But her past was her business. He still preferred not to ask too many questions. Their glorious future together was what mattered.

They dined surprisingly well, given the ruetting, and then, tired from the heat and love of the afternoon, retired early. The sky was now a perfect pitch of lavender outside their room's window, which looked out from the rear of the tavern onto a straggly yard, then a dense stand of maple trees amid tangled underbrush. The unusual light revealed heavy clouds moving in, the air growing damp and close with impending storm. Will and Marguerite embraced as they stretched out on the narrow bed, as if sheltering from the weather. They'd managed to doze off lightly when a thunderclap severe enough to shake the tavern's timbers brought them to sitting up straight. Then a few lightning-to-thunder sequences erupted in quick succession, followed by a fusillade of rain against the bark-shingled roof, volleylike, with a sort of military precision. It sounded to Will as if water might be warring on the earth, an audacious attempt at overthrowing one element by another. Then came another bolt of lightning, not followed by thunder but instead by a piercing cry from the woods outside, perhaps from an animal injured by the lightning bolt, or claw, or teeth, or knife.

Their room was nearly pitch-black now. Marguerite got up clutching her nightgown, then lit the candle on their night table and brought it over to the window, though its glow was not going to penetrate the darkness very far. Beyond the yard, the window looked out on impenetrable obscurity. Will got up as well but more lethargically, not particularly moved by the mayhem of the storm or its possible victim, and came to stand by Marguerite's shoulder. The next bolt, shimmering silver as if a large diamond in the sky had exploded into splinters, illumined nothing below but the yard's high grass.

A second cry pierced the air. Marguerite turned to Will and said, "I've got to go see what that is."