The Watchtower

ale, he thought for an instant he glimpsed, halfway down rue Quincampoix, Guy Liverpool. He was conversing with two men, one a tall African man in rainbow robes who resembled the Moorish doorman at the poet’s London residence, the other leaving a resemblance to Lightning Hands. Will was so startled that he turned and walked in the other direction without observing further. He did not want to make his presence in Paris known to a past assailant, or an intermediary with Dee, or anyone either man knew. But while walking away, he reflected that if he again spotted Guy or the Moor or Lightning Hands, he might find it diverting enough to approach them.
    The next morning Will as usual visited the church, did not find Marguerite, and went to his bench to wait another hour or two. If he hadn’t been in the throes of despair the fine weather might have cheered him … might even have inspired him to write a poem … Instead the warm sunshine on his face coaxed him into sleep. When he awoke, the sunshine was hot on him, then suddenly blocked by a round face, as if a man had arrived before him out of nowhere. Will blinked, attributing this effect to sun dazzle but not sure that was the cause and reared back to get a better perspective on the man standing over him. He was one of the oddest-looking men he’d ever seen, with a huge, bald head like a gargantuan eggshell, square and compressed facial features, nervous eyes, and a rotund body not quite as small as a midget’s. He wore a gardener’s mud-streaked work clothes and held pruning shears in one hand.
    The man looked as astonished to see Will as Will was to see him.
    After a silence, Will asked, as affably as his nervousness allowed for, “Where did you come here from?”
    The man glanced lovingly at the sapling, then spoke to Will in a peculiar voice. The timbre was that of leaves speaking, a fluttering with a faint rasp of bark in the background, and with a tint of wind, a tone of green that seemed to hue and ripple his words as Will heard them. Nobody could have resembled a tree less, but Will had the uncanny sense that he was listening to leaves.
    “That’s hard to say,” his voice floated. “I don’t know … I dozed off a few hours ago in my workshed and … where do you think I came from?” The man shook his head dazedly, as if the contemplation of such a question made him feel faint.
    Will had a vision of a cluster of twigs in the shape of a hand, of veinlets in leaves carrying human blood. “Let’s start with who you are,” Will suggested. “That might tell me where you came from.”
    “Oh, that’s simple. I’m His Majesty Henry IV’s botanist, Jean Robin. Gardener extraordinaire.”
    Will restrained himself from laughing; he did not want this poor soul to feel humiliated. No doubt his bizarre appearance had made him an outcast, and that could be where his apparent interest in insinuating himself into the society of trees originated. As if to corroborate the thought, the brown pigeon swooped down and perched on Jean Robin’s left shoulder. Then Jean Robin provided a few more details about himself. “I am the discoverer of the tree Robinia pseudoacacia fabacées this sapling will become. And a poet has told me that my head is the green globe around which Paris orbits.”
    Will nodded. “I am most impressed by your résumé, Monsieur Robin.” He paused, pondering what the leaflike quality in Jean Robin’s voice could be. Whatever it was, Will felt he had gained an insight from hearing leaves speak. Just as atoms made matter not quite what it appeared to be, maybe distinctions between life-forms weren’t quite what they seemed to be either. He wondered if Jean Robin could be a sort of bulb that had originally sprouted up from a tree root. The man’s voice wafted from him like green-veined wind from treetops. I am speaking to leaves, Will thought. To leaves. Will shared this insight with the gardener.
    “Likely you did come here from your shed. Or from the garden you have created. That’s not surprising. You are of the leaves, Monsieur Robin. I can hear it in your voice. The very wind could have blown you here!”
    Will thought Jean Robin was blushing, a faint gleam of green streaking his otherwise pinkish skin. He was certainly smiling. “You are much too kind, sir. My weight forbids such transport. Let’s just leave my mode of travel to the mysteries. Life without mysteries wouldn’t be much, would it? But please accept my gratitude