The Watchtower

his retreat—a cross at his neck that Will recognized. It was the censorious priest from the party. Will shuddered at the coincidence 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 Océanographique. I took the rue l’Estrapade past the walled garden of the Lycée 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 Bibliothèque, Institut Océanographique. 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 allée 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 allée; you had to stroll.
    The shady allée 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 …
    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 Arènes de Lutèce, 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