The Watchtower

sapling about five feet high. A stone bench sat right outside the fence.
    On a maple branch extending over the enclosure, a distinctive-looking pigeon perched. Will had not seen the likes of it in England, with its exceptionally long neck and brown feathers. The bird seemed to have a peculiar intelligence in its eyes, and its gaze held Will’s for a lingering moment. As Will stared, the bird gestured with its beak at the church doors twice, then winked. Accidental motions, perhaps, but when Will pointed at the doors in a questioning manner, the pigeon nodded vigorously. Will was so fascinated by the bird’s apparent intelligence that he set off toward it now instead of the doors, wishing to get a closer look, wondering if it had any more messages for him, but it responded by flying off. Then Will, his eyes bright enough to burn a hole through the church’s stone walls, walked calmly to the front door and slipped inside the dim, shadowy interior.
    The church was smaller than he’d anticipated, maybe ten or so pews in all, and right now no one was in it. This zero registered without even having to cross his consciousness. He took a sharp breath, the damp and chill air feeling like a dagger in his chest. Just then a priest strolled out from behind the altar, beginning to light candles. Will could think of nothing but finding an obscure place among the pews, anonymous enough that he could recover his equilibrium after this disappointment. After all, nothing was lost. It might have been unreasonable to expect Marguerite at dawn. He did not know how long it had been since she’d left the sketch for him. She could not spend all her waking hours here! Patience! Let him give it a day, at least, before feeling any disappointment.
    Will sat at the end of a pew a few rows from the rear. There he could swivel his head and see the entrance behind him, yet he was not an obtrusive presence to the priest. And he need not turn his head constantly. The rustle of a garment, exhalation of a breath, creak of the door, would announce a newcomer. He tried to relax, gaze affixed near an altar buried in shadows. The first glimmer of sunlight was coming through mottled-glass windows but hadn’t reached the main body of the church yet. Will sat in a half world of drowse and love, trying to recover from his disappointment, soon in a reverie of prospective reunion with Marguerite, of her removing her veil to proclaim him her “god of love.”
    A rustle came from the doorway. A slight head motion told him four women were arriving together, the first of the morning’s congregants. None of them Marguerite. Such disappointing rustles repeated themselves right up to the 8:00 a.m. mass. When Will was sure that Margeurite wasn’t coming to attend the morning service, he exited the church, preferring to soothe his disappointment in the fresh air and sunlight. He sat on the stone bench facing the sapling, which also had a view of the entrance. But Marguerite did not come to Saint-Julien-le-Pauvre, not that sun-washed August day or during its pink-veined evening, nor on the subsequent day, on which a wan sky mirrored his declining mood. Nor during the thunderstorms that evening, when he refused to shelter even briefly lest he lose sight of the entrance. Logic said Marguerite would search the grounds for him if she came and did not find him in the church, but logic held no sway. Will sat rain-soaked and grim in the storm for an hour, the very atoms in the lightning bolts visible to him like incandescent pinpricks. Marguerite never came.
    Had she left the sketch to taunt him? Was she urging him to seek Christian immortality, as she was never going to give him any other sort? Or was something more awful lurking behind her absence—some mortal fate that had waylaid her on the way from London to Paris? Or had the insidious Mr. Dee, whom Will now thought he should never have confided in, decided to cut Will out of the situation and pursue box and ring on his own? Being immortal might not prevent Marguerite from being locked in a tower somewhere, until she gave up box and ring, or prevent her from being tortured for them. As far as Will knew, there was nothing unusual about her physical strength.
    Or maybe she’d gone back to the poet?
    Or maybe she just didn’t care?
    *   *   *
    The church locked its doors every evening at eleven. Just once, on the night before this gloomy storm, Will had stayed on afterward anyway, sitting on the bench for a