The Watchtower

Of course, things might be awkward among the three of them for a while if his and Marguerite’s feelings were truly aligned, but the poet’s plays were filled with more entangled circumstances than theirs that were nonetheless overcome by the parties to them. This woman wasn’t one of the inane flirtations at Swan Hall! She was his love and his destiny. He would suffer unbearably over her if she couldn’t be his.
    So engrossed in this view of possible heartbreak was he that he didn’t feel the intrusion of a hand in his satchel until it had begun to withdraw. Whirling, he caught the pickpocket by the arm. It was a young boy—one who had been at the party whom the others had called Finn. Round eyes blinked in a round face beneath a tattered cap.
    “I wasn’t stealin’ nothin’, sir, I was putting something in.” The falsetto voice made Will look twice at his captive. He might be a boy … or might be a girl, he couldn’t say. He snatched the cap from the pickpocket’s head … and was startled to discover pointed ears.
    “If you look, you’ll see I’ve given you the address where they stay. Go there tomorrow morning; the poet will be out. And do not delay. She is smitten by his words but she will be drawn to your blood.”
    “But how do you—”
    The pointed-ears waif twisted out of Will’s grip and vanished into the shadows. Swearing, Will dug in his satchel, expecting that his money would be gone, but found that everything was intact. In addition was a scrap of paper with an address written on it: 39 Rood Lane, written in a flowing script that Will was instantly sure must belong to his beloved Marguerite. It was far too fine and feminine a hand for the androgynous waif. Will kissed the paper, imagining that he kissed the fingertips of she who had written it.
    His steps were much lighter all the way back to the inebriated din of Mrs. Garvey’s tavern. The occasional torch was more than a match for the blackened gloom of London’s night. He was in love, so swept up in his passion that he did not notice the old Italian priest, who had eavesdropped on his encounter with Finn, following him back to his lodgings.

5
    The Labyrinth
    I slept late the next morning—past nine—for the first time since I’d arrived. I awoke to the sounds of guests eating their breakfasts in the courtyard garden. When my father had called the Hôtel des Grandes Écoles to get me a room on such short notice, Madame Weiss, the owner, said she would of course find a way to fit in the daughter of their dear old friend Margot James. On arrival I found that “fitting me in” meant giving me a ground-floor room the size of a largish walk-in closet. But, though I imagined that the ground floor wouldn’t be everybody’s choice, I found I rather liked it. It was just around the corner from the kitchen, where I could get hot water for tea at all hours of the night, and I was close to the pretty garden. So close that I had to keep the shutters of one window closed because it looked out over the little tables where breakfast was served. The other window faced the side garden, which was gated off from the other guests. A black iron grating (but no window screen) was over the window to keep out intruders, and a tall, leafy sycamore blocked the view from the neighboring buildings. The huge tree took up the entire view, filling the room with dappled green light and birdsong. Lying in the double bed that took up most of the room, I felt as though I were floating in a rustic gazebo, an effect reinforced by the room’s blue toile wallpaper featuring frolicking shepherds and shepherdesses, grazing deer, nymphs, and fauns.
    This morning the room was also filled with the smell of coffee and buttery croissants, and the voices of two small American children discussing what they wanted to do that day.
    “The puppet show!” the little girl shouted.
    “The sailboats!” her brother insisted.
    “Another day at the Luxembourg,” the mother sighed.
    “I’ll take them,” the father said. “You go shopping in the Marais and we’ll meet you for falafels on the rue Rosiers.”
    Give the man the Father of the Year award, I thought as I got dressed in navy capris, a crisp white, buttoned shirt, and slip-on canvas shoes. The puppet show and the boat basin at the Luxembourg sounded fun, but I was headed in the opposite direction to find someone called Monsieur Lutin at the Jardin des Plantes. I checked my outfit in the mirror, wondering if it