The Watchtower

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 …