The Watchtower

looking at each girl’s work—and I was relieved to see that no harm had come to them during the day. Carrie was clearly the most technically skilled of the three, but Becca had a nice lyrical touch for landscapes, and Sarah had a real flair for capturing gesture and expression—and she was the one who had drawn the most. Even as we spoke, she was sketching the figures in the crowd on her paper place mat. She was working on a portrait of Harlequin.
    “You’ve really captured his devilish air,” I told her, admiring her sketch.
    “He is a little devil, isn’t he?” Sarah said, furrowing her brows together. “But also … kind of handsome, don’t you think?”
    I looked at the figure in his diamond-patterned tights and fitted jacket hewing closely to a slim but muscular form. A black-and-red mask concealed the top part of his face, but his eyes seemed to glitter behind it and his mouth seemed very red beneath it.
    “Yes,” I agreed with a little shiver. “He’s both—devilish and handsome. I read somewhere that Harlequin originated in a figure from the French passion plays called Hellequin, and he’s supposed to be an emissary of the devil…” I trailed off, recalling something else I’d read last night when I’d googled the Wild Hunt. Hellequin had been identified as one of the traditional leaders of the hunt, and the pack of evil spirits he led were called la Mesnée d’Hellequin. Was it a coincidence that a Harlequin performed in the square on the same night the Wild Hunt rode through the Forest of Fontainebleau?
    A strangled cry—like the ones I’d heard earlier during my nap—startled me out of my speculations.
    “What is that?” I asked the girls.
    Carrie and Becca laughed, but Sarah was intent on her sketch.
    “Peacocks,” Carrie told me. “They’re in the Garden of Diana right through that gate. You can still go see them. They’re keeping the park open late tonight for the fête.”
    “Oh, let’s go!” Sarah said suddenly, looking up from her sketch. “I bet the gardens are beautiful at night!”
    Becca and Carrie said they were too tired and wanted to go to bed. Sarah looked as if she was about to argue, but she was distracted by the sudden appearance of Harlequin at the table. He’d popped up as quickly as a jack-in-the-box and grabbed the picture Sarah had done of him off the table. He looked at it, and then, holding it to his lips, bowed at Sarah. As he righted himself, I caught a glimpse of his eyes behind the mask … green eyes with glints of gold in them … definitely devilish and somehow familiar. Sarah blushed bright pink. I decided to use the moment to steal away for a quick turn around the garden. I didn’t want Sarah getting the idea to come along with me. I couldn’t bring anyone where I was going, and I didn’t want her wandering away from me in the dark forest by herself.
    I passed through the gate into the Garden of Diana and saw with dismay that it wasn’t empty. Aside from the tourists there were a number of street performers of the sort that one saw all over Europe these days—mimes dressed in costumes mimicking famous sculptures right down to the marble veins or bronze patina painted on their skin. I spotted a winged Nike, head cloaked in black to approximate the headlessness of the original, and a rather risqué Venus de Milo, who wore long black gloves to give the impression of armlessness. There were lesser-known figures as well—a prancing faun whose original I had seen last night in the Luxembourg, and a host of gargoyles running in and out of the shrubbery. Cute, but I was supposed to meet my escort at the Diana Fountain at midnight, and Sylvianne had been adamant that I be there alone. It was a quarter to.
    I approached the fountain at the center of the garden wondering how I could make everyone leave. A small group of tourists were gathered around the fountain taking pictures. As I got closer, I saw of what. A young woman, skin painted verdigris green and dressed in a belted stola of the same color, posed in front of the circular fountain. She was identical to the statue of Diana standing on top right down to the four hound dogs that surrounded her. The live dogs had also been painted verdigris green, hopefully with no damage to their skin, and sat as still as their bronze counterparts.
    “Magnifique!” a woman in a stylish Breton fisherman’s shirt and capris murmured as she clicked her camera. It was impressive that the street