The Watchtower

head while plucking a broken branch off the ground. “I have a dear friend, a scholar of the marine life, who should be able to direct you better. She lives in the faubourg Vauvert, a mile south of here, just beyond the Carthusian monastery. Her name is Madame La Pieuvre. If anyone in Paris can tell you where your beloved is, it’s she. Madame La Pieuvre has her … ahem … hand in every pot.” Jean Robin chuckled as if he’d made a brilliant joke. Will didn’t quite get it, but he happily wrote down Madame La Pieuvre’s name and address and promised he’d seek her out immediately.
    “Good luck on your quest for immortality, young man,” Jean Robin said as he bid him farewell, waving the branch in the air.
    “And on yours!” Will called, glancing back at the little man. Another trick of sunlight eclipsed Jean Robin’s figure for a moment, and all Will saw were swaying branches as if Jean Robin had already merged with his beloved Robinia pseudoacacia and thus found his own leafy immortality ahead of Will’s.
    He took a final glance at the steps of the church as he walked off and spied a scrap of paper there, conspicuous and unmoving despite a brisk breeze. Will could not resist a sudden urge to retrieve it.
    His eyes came aglow, and he beamed more profoundly than he had when receiving Madame La Pieuvre’s name and address from Jean Robin. Remarkably, this apparently random scrap of paper also had her name and address on it. Even more remarkable was the clearly recognizable handwriting the name and address were written in, one that brought elation to Will’s features.
    Marguerite’s.

19
    The Vestiges
    I went straight from the Medici Column to the Gare Montparnesse, glad I’d thought to bring the Poland Spring bottle with me. As soon as I settled into my seat, I fell fast asleep. When I awoke, the train was hurtling past fields of yellow sunflowers. A turreted château flashed by, and the silver gleam of a river. Swans? One black and one white like in my dream? I couldn’t tell for sure; the train was moving too fast. We passed more fields, some green, some tawny gold, limned by dark green rows of poplars. Old stone farmhouses, a lone tower on a hill that reminded me of something, then more buildings clotting together like beads of mercury until the countryside became outskirts and we were pulling into Poitiers.
    I roused myself recalling that I only had nine minutes to switch trains. Plunging out into the chill morning air (the digital clock on the platform flashed 7:39 … then 7:40), I scanned the station signs for the train to Lusignan, didn’t see it, recalled that I had to look for the final destination on the line, which was written on a slip of paper somewhere in my bag, found it while the clock changed to 7:42, and then scanned the signs for La Rochelle Ville and saw that the train was boarding on Track 3—the other side of the station—and would be leaving in six minutes.
    I raced up a flight of stairs and down another, colliding with morning commuters, a nun, and an entire troop of mud-speckled French Boy Scouts. I jumped onto a waiting train, asked breathlessly if this was the train to Lusignan, was told no, and was directed to the train on the opposite side of the platform. As I darted across the platform toward an already closing door, the strap of my backpack snagged on a metal railing, wrenching my shoulder backward and catching the watch chain around my neck. I heard the snap of metal and felt the chain slide from my neck. Stop! I screamed as the watch fell. For one long moment the chaos of the platform seemed to freeze: Boy Scouts arrested in the middle of hauling duffel bags to their shoulders, a nun caught midsneeze, the sweat from a train conductor’s brow suspended in the air as he leaned out the window of the front car, and, directly in front of me, a figure in long black coat and wide-brimmed hat, his face in deep shadow, his hand in mid-air, reaching for the falling watch, then touching it. Alone of all the occupants on the platform the man in black could move, albeit slowly. His gloved hand seemed to be moving through molasses as it reached the time piece, and his fingers splayed across its complicated gears.…
    “Grab it!” a voice inside my head cried.
    I reached out and snatched my watch out of the man’s hands, my hand moving far more quickly than his. I could move faster! For a moment his head rose and I felt the force of his gaze on me even though I still