The Watchtower

were, reveling in the whole scene instead of waiting for a sign that wasn’t going to come?
    The girls talked until the one with the brown, wavy hair looked down at her watch and gasped. “We’re going to miss the midnight curfew if we don’t run!” she said. I was as startled, looking at my watch, as she was by how much time had passed. As they hurriedly left the park, I noticed that all the tourists were evaporating into the night. The last of the concertgoers were hurrying away—all except one tall man in a long overcoat and wide-brimmed hat who’d paused at the gate staring in my direction. Perhaps he was just waiting for someone—or maybe he was a thief waiting for the park to clear out so he could rob me—or worse. Certainly the homeless people wouldn’t be of any help. The ones who were left in the park—Amélie curled up in her raincoat with her companion—were already asleep or passed out.
    I got up to go, my movement startling a pigeon roosting on a Gothic turret. It was the long-necked, brown pigeon. He landed a few feet from me and fixed me with his strangely intelligent eye. Then he fluttered up to the leaning tree, landing on the scarred bark just above the cement gash. His claws skittered for purchase there for a moment. His glossy brown wings gleamed in the streetlight, revealing a layer of iridescent colors—indigo, mauve, and violet—beneath the brown. Across the Seine the bells of Notre Dame began to chime midnight. The pigeon steadied himself and began to peck at the cement. Startled, I noticed he pecked once for each toll of the bells.
    Okay, I thought, someone has trained this bird and is having a laugh at my expense. Could it be that man in the long coat and hat waiting at the gate? But when I glanced over, I couldn’t see the man at the gate anymore. I couldn’t even see the gate. A ring of darkness circled the square that was made up of the shadows of trees, but also something else … some murky substance that wasn’t black but an opalescent blend of indigo, mauve, and violet—the same colors in the pigeon’s wings—a color that seemed to be the essence of the Parisian night.
    As Notre Dame chimed its last note, I looked back at the tree. The gray cement was gone, peeled away like a discarded shell. In its place was a gaping hole, pointed at the top like a high Gothic arch. The brown pigeon stood at the center of the arch staring at me. With a flick of its wing—for all the world like a hand waving me in—he turned and waddled into the vaulted space inside the tree as if going through his own front door. Clearly that’s what the gap in the tree was—a door. But to what?
    Perhaps I had misread my invitation to come to Paris, but surely this was an invitation. Maybe even a sign. I might not get another. I got up and followed the pigeon into the oldest tree in Paris.

2
    Shattered Glass
    “The poet is coming!” Will Hughes said.
    “What?” Bess, his companion of the moment, asked.
    “Christ, I completely forgot!” Will declared. A slender, pale-skinned youth in his late teens, he propped himself up on one elbow in the luxuriant grass. He and Bess had been lying in the shade of his favorite secluded grove on his father’s estate, Swan Hall, and now when he reached into his pocket and extended his pocket sundial into a sliver of sunlight, the shadow indicated it was already past two. The sonneteer must be waiting for him in the great hall. The servants wouldn’t admit him to the study where they usually worked together unless Will was actually in the house.
    He pictured his tutor sitting on one of the huge wooden benches just inside the front door, legs crossed, his features with a superficial air of patience that didn’t quite conceal his irritation at being kept waiting. Which, since his tutor and the poet were the same person, could be a displeased moment that would soon find its way into a sonnet, complaining again about “the young man,” whose father, Lord Hughes, knew to be him, Will. Will thought he’d better hurry, especially as he had to first usher Bess covertly off the grounds of Swan Hall via a winding, secretive route. Neither of them were exactly … dressed yet. Will would pay a price with Bess for rushing her off, yes. But he took a deep breath and clambered to his feet.
    “I’m really late,” he mumbled.
    “You care about that poet so much,” Bess complained as Will hoisted her to her feet. She put up her coils of glimmering black hair