The Watchtower

news. Isn’t she still entangled with that lout of a poet from Stratford-on-Avon? Which makes you a victim, even one more time over, it would appear? Heh heh. Though your taste in loose women is, of course, no business of mine.”
    Will tried not to take too much offense at Dee’s leering tone. After all, he was offering a sliver of hope now.
    “That’s over, with the poet,” Will replied calmly enough. “Destiny has brought Marguerite and me together. And I’ll make sure it’s for her entire lifetime, not just mine, if it’s the last thing I do.”
    “Yes, of course you will, my boy,” Dee clucked sympathetically. “And I’m going to do my utmost to help. I cannot provide any guarantees, but these are more promising circumstances than I initially perceived. Promising!”
    Will allowed himself to wonder why, but then he was suddenly beside himself with elation. His emotions were those of a man first told he had a month to live and then told he wasn’t ill. “How soon?”
    “Soon enough,” Dee said soothingly. “First there are a couple of practical tasks you must accomplish for me.”
    “Such as?”
    “I will need a couple of the good lady’s possessions. Her silver box and her gold ring. With them worlds will open. Without them, I’m afraid, all is lost. Do you know them?”
    “Just the ring. It has a tower emblem on it. I have seen her wear it, though not often. I don’t know any box.”
    “The box will be unmistakable once it’s brought into your presence. It’s silver, with a swirling design, but I don’t need to describe it. You’ll feel it. It opens onto other worlds; it surges with an energy most people never get anywhere near experiencing in their lifetimes. Once you’ve felt the box, you’ll never regret having been in its presence, nor coming to see me tonight either. And possibly your immortality will be just one more meeting with me away!”
    “But how will I get these things? Are you asking me to steal them?”
    “Well, that’s your challenge. If Marguerite wanted you to be immortal, she’d have already given them to you. Perhaps—I don’t know the woman or what’s inside her psyche—perhaps you’re all the more delectable to her for being fleeting. That would be typical, from a fey point of view.”
    Will bristled, but endured the innuendo. What was crucial for him was to get these things and live on forever with his beloved—not to respond to taunts.
    “It strikes me, Mr. Will Hughes—and by no means am I asking you to steal or commit any other crime—that if you’ve had the singular fate to be this close to an immortal, and if you’ve made such an impression on me, the great John Dee, that I am willing to try the door to immortality on your behalf, that you’ll have the intrepidness to bring me these items. Otherwise I will be disappointed in you, promising youth that you otherwise seem to be.”
    “What will I owe you,” Will asked curtly, put off by such flattery while not being certain of its motive, “for this profound service of yours, if it happens?”
    “Owe?” Dee raised his eyebrows. “The joy of immortal love is more than enough coinage for me, I assure you. I would not dream of something so crass as charging for your transformation!”
    Will was not clear as to motive here either, but when he saw the opportunity to seal such a bargain, he took it. He walked to Dee’s end of the long table and shook his hand. Dee’s grip felt feeble, but the expression in his eyes crackled with intensity, as if he were flush with a lightninglike excitement. Will waited for Dee to escort him back to the front door, but then Dee indicated that Will should exit alone. “I’m feeling a bit old tonight,” he told Will. “Mentally, your visit has been a tonic for me, but physically I’m afraid it has been no help. But I look forward to your return with those items.” Dee turned away and vanished into the dark interior of the house.
    Will, feeling a vague dread despite his new hope, perhaps at the idea that he had uplifted the likes of John Dee even for a moment, walked back out into a night in which the chill sharpness of moonlight was making the carriage horses shiver. Or maybe they were feeling the same dread he was. But after waking the driver with a firm clasp of his shoulder, and climbing back in the carriage, renewed hope bloomed again and distracted Will from dread. The hope was a dark flower, petals of black, but it seemed to be irrigated by his