The Watchtower

random passersby from a busy London street, no more. It wasn’t a theater crowd or a rough crowd, an intellectual or a degenerate crowd, a devout or an anarchical crowd, though here and there individuals of all these stripes and many others could be distinguished. Even the footman, a dark-skinned Moor liveried in royal purple, defied easy characterization. In fact, he seemed the most regal of all the occupants. It was a flotsam-of-London, top-to-bottom crowd. Will grew more agitated as he perceived that the nature of this party contradicted the picture the poet had drawn for him, of personally welcoming him to London—surely a more intimate setting could have been found for their reunion!
    Then on some mysterious signal the crowd fell silent throughout the house. Will put his cards down on the table, got up without even a nod to his fellow players, and followed the direction of staring eyes into a large central room dominated by a wide staircase. The going was still tangled and impeded, but he was able to employ the stealth and steel of muscle that had stood him in deft stead as a fencer to maneuver all the way to the staircase railing. A roar of acclaim went up as, Will observed, the poet and his radiant-eyed, dark-haired lover strode out on the second-floor landing, basking with smiles in the applause. Will managed to catch the eye of the poet, who responded with a warm wave and a twinkle in his eye. The poet whispered to his lover, who glanced down at him with a welcoming smile as well.
    Meeting Marguerite’s gaze, Will experienced a transformative shock. He felt at once as if he had known her all his life and that he had never before beheld such beauty. Love for her surged through him, a love so complete it were as if he had physically merged with her. Not the simple merge of lovemaking, but a consummate merge as if their atoms and electricity had intertwined, their veins and brain cells, muscles and bones. For a dizzying instant, he felt as if a second person were within him, filling him with an unspeakable elation that nearly caused him to faint. Then for an even more fleeting instant he was actually inside her mind, gazing down at himself from the second-floor landing and seeing a young man whose face had been transported by ecstasy.
    In that moment of twin vision he noticed something else. The Moorish footman was also looking up at Marguerite with a similar expression on his face, only his passion was mixed with something else. Envy and hatred. Yet, Will wasn’t sure of whom.
    Then he retreated back inside a shaky self. But the upheaval inside him was transcendent. They were each other’s destiny. Not only had he encountered the great love of his life but he had learned something crucial about himself, Will realized. He could fly—not literally, but spiritually. His soul was not bound to his own flesh the way a living person’s should be. It could escape his flesh, as the souls of the dead did. But he wasn’t dead. He was very much alive.
    Will fought with himself to suppress this wild reaction. The poet was important to him, and his bonding in such a way with the poet’s love was worse than backstabbing, it was a sort of treason. Observed in another, it would have disgusted him. But he was in the grip of some unnatural force and could not suppress his emotions.
    The sound of two cymbals clashing came from Will’s left. The timing must have been choreographed: the poet and Marguerite began to address the crowd from the top of the stairs.
    “Heartfelt greetings, friends, without further ado … my beloved Marguerite and I have jointly composed a marriage sonnet by way of thanking you all for coming. Let us recite it now.”
    “Marriage sonnet!” an old man in a shabby black robe standing near Will muttered, with the faintest trace of an Italian accent. “Let the man be free of the wife he already has! Or is bigamy not a crime in sinful London?”
    Several people standing near him hushed him impatiently. Will caught a glimpse of a gleaming crucifix around the man’s neck as he turned his head to glare in turn at his critics with piercing brown eyes, then returned his sharp gaze to the podium. The man’s hostility disturbed Will, despite the deep inconvenience for his new emotions of any nuptials between the poet and Marguerite. Will resolved to keep an eye on him.
    The poet began:
    The sweetest words I’ve ever heard are those
    with which my Marguerite professes love
    for me eternally; this