by Lee Carroll
“Poor thing. I tried to save him last night, but it was too late. Listen. His mate is pining for him still.”
Will became aware then of a plaintive mewling coming from the reeds. The white swan was hidden in them, hiding her face from the sun as she lamented the loss of her mate.
“Is that how you’ll cry for me when I am dead?” Will asked.
Stung by the bitterness in his voice, Marguerite withdrew her hand. “God willing, that day is a long way off. Let us not think of that now.”
“But I must think of it, Marguerite. I have so much less time than you. Please don’t get me wrong. I think it’s wonderful that you can never die, and I will never have the pain of seeing your death, or watching you grow old. I would die a million times rather than subject you to either! But the cruelty of our situation, Maguerite, is that in time I will pass from your sight, then from your memory, in the blurring of other loves you may have.… I will die with you fierce within me, but for you I will be a mere spark of sunlight; a spark on the sea amidst millions of sparks.” He flung his hand at the pond, which had come alive with the rising of the sun. “And I don’t know that I can bear this.”
“It’s not like that, Will. Not at all. You mustn’t think of us that way.” She took his hand in hers and kissed it gently.
But this wasn’t the response he was looking for. Will needed her invitation to join her in the immortal world. “How is it not like that, my love? Tell me! Why will you not have infinite lovers if you live infinitely?” He withdrew his hand as if she were threatening to have an affair.
“I do not experience time the way mortals do. My lives go on, but they are boundaried, and different from each other, in a way a mortal could not understand. Multiple, infinite—whatever you want to call them. But different from one another. Do not lose yourself in silly numbers and the strangeness of time. I am here for you now, fully, and forever. That is all any man can ever expect of a woman. I will never leave you!”
Marguerite took a deep breath, more like a stifled sob.
Words, he reflected, with some bitterness. She was giving him words, and near-incomprehensible ones. They might make sense to another immortal, but not to him.
As the rays from the rising sun reached the side of the pond where they stood, Will held out his hand in the light. Once again he saw his flesh turn transparent. The blood flowing inside seemed to run gold. What if there was an alchemy that could turn not lead to gold, but mortal flesh to immortal? Inspired, Will turned and pulled Marguerite toward him. He whispered, “Make me an immortal, my love. That is the answer. The sadness of mortality will never enter our lives.”
She broke away and replied in a trembling voice, “I cannot do that, Will.” And she began to weep.
He embraced her and tried to wipe away her tears. “Why?” he stammered. “I still do not understand.”
“Being immortal is worse than being mortal,” she finally answered, pulling away. “You watch everyone you know grow old and die. Everyone! Can’t you understand? The desolation far outweighs this splendor that you and I have found. Believe me, it does. Immortality isn’t a blessing. It’s a curse!”
He knelt before her. “But we would always have each other.”
Silence.
“I’m not even sure I can do it,” Marguerite said after several more painful moments had passed. “That crossing is the most dangerous of all. There is always a price to be paid, whether the journey is successful or not. And success can’t be known in advance.”
“We would always have each other,” Wil repeated. It was his only solace, and she tortured him now by not having any interest in it.
“I’d rather die than have you suffer the pain of being immortal,” Marguerite insisted. “That very pain which I have suffered.”
She burst into more sobs and collapsed onto the grass. Will lay next to her to comfort her, but as he did so, he saw his new world going up in flames. As if the gulf between them had caught fire. That gulf, between mortal and immortal, burned as if empty space were as treacherous and flammable as love.
They rode back to London together a few minutes later, silent all the way. They went their separate ways at their usual place of parting, also without another word. And neither turned around to watch the other ride away.
* * *
Until this point, Will and Marguerite had had regular daily meetings. They met at the southwest corner of Prince Street and Orange Lane at 11:45 a.m., a crowded and anonymous spot where their daily time together could begin, or, if some obstacle to such time had appeared, where they could arrange a second rendezvous for later. Will had not yet come to Marguerite’s lodgings—the ones she had obtained after her flight from the poet—because of the danger of the poet spying on her there. Nor had she come to his, for similar reasons. In the rare instance when Marguerite had not been able to come to their rendezvous, she had sent him a note before he left to meet her.
But for three days after returning from the trip to the north, Marguerite did not appear for their rendezvous, and Will had not heard from her otherwise. He’d waited more than an hour for her each appointed time, gazing into the flow of pedestrians in all directions like a sea captain’s wife peering into distant waves for a familiar ship. But crowds remained coldly alien, people mere whitecaps lifted by an inhospitable wind. And the hours after these disappointments had been barren and broken, except for an occasional firestorm of rage or regret. He raged at such an oppressive fate in love, regretted that he had not made clearer (or known sooner) to Marguerite his desire to go on with her no matter what the barriers between them.
Of course he preferred that they go forward as immortals, and of course it seared him to think that he would lose her so quickly to a multitude of future lovers. But just a few moments that first midday without her convinced him that having Marguerite around in the present was much more crucial than morose speculation about some abstract future. In any event, if they could only spend time together again now, he would gradually become so much a part of her that she would be overwhelmed by his pain; then she would feel compelled to make him immortal.
When he doubted such a benign outcome was possible anymore, he found bleak inspiration for the writing of new sonnets in his torment, scribbling in iambic pentameter on scraps of paper he kept in his back pocket while endlessly wandering London streets:
Her ship’s dark shape drifts slowly toward the sun,
whose flaming sphere floats briefly on the sea;
and Marguerite, whom I’ll no longer see
invades my thoughts: my suffering’s begun!
Impossible, that she and I are done!
Yet as the ship turns dot there’s no more “we,”
and once it vanishes our history
is boundaried in the past, like time undone,
as hard to cling to as the pink twilight
or salt-veined breezes winging past the shore.
The sun descends; eternal victor night
engulfs the presence that I so adore.
Nor will new love console me; it’s my fate
to understand my heart an hour too late.
He’d made up a seaside narrative in this poem, to fit a wholly uncertain set of facts. Tragic poems were an outlet, and he often recited “Farewell” and others like it on the long walks he took to distract himself from his sorrow.
On the fourth day of Marguerite’s absence, Will gave in to desperation and started to wander toward her lodgings, which were in Mynchen Lane. He did this against fierce internal resistance that had stalemated this impulse on the first three days. His resistance was made up of fear of further rejection, of not wanting to take any chances of running into the poet, and of pride resisting the implied surrender of going to her lodgings. But in the end nothing could suppress his overwhelming need to be with Marguerite. He felt a need to embrace her that was deeper than his need to breathe.
But Marguerite wasn’t at her lodgings. Not on the first knock and not on the hundredth. He had refrained fr
om pounding too loudly in deference to the neighbors, but there was no way she could have been inside and not heard him.
He’d glanced furtively about for some other means of entrance besides the front door, but even if he’d discovered one, there was no sense to attempting such entry in daylight. Dense curtains rendered all windows inscrutable. Peering down the alleys lining each side of the house, he made out a walled garden well to the rear, belonging to either the house where Marguerite lodged or to a neighbor. Its eight-foot walls topped with thick and sharply pointed black iron spikes did not invite casual entrance, night or day. But he could try coming back with a small ladder, since he was athletic enough to take the wall on from a lesser height. No other possibility came to eye or mind.
Will finally got himself to leave, but only with a mise to himself to return after dark.
He wandered nearby streets, further dejected by her absence at home, for a long time. Finally, he felt a thirst that made him seek shelter in the familiar shadows of Baker & Thread’s, where the hour, well past midday dinner, made privacy likely and prices more modest. (He couldn’t go too long without reflecting on his only other deep concern besides Marguerite, which was how his acting possibilities had vanished and his money would not last forever.)
He sat down at an awning-solaced table. Then almost immediately he caught a glimpse, within the tavern’s interior, of a seemingly familiar set of broad shoulders under a red, collarless Spanish cloak. When the man shifted his shoulders and threw back his rough mane of shiny black hair, Will realized who it was, surprised that recognition was possible through such slivers of appearance. But maybe the man had made more of an impression on him in their first encounter than he’d previously realized.
Indeed, this man had occurred to him as someone to consult with in the terrible days since his breach with Marguerite, due to his employer’s reputation. Any solution this individual could offer would be at best unwholesome, perhaps sinister, not remotely comparable to walking into immortality in a loving way with Marguerite. But Will felt no harm could come from approaching the man and having a small discussion. Marguerite’s absence was destroying him. Only a fool thought salvation needed to be perfect. It just needed to be.
Will walked over to face him, bowed deferentially, and murmured in a low voice, “Lord Liverpool.”
He didn’t recall the man’s having a title and doubted he did, but this was a moment for deference. Liverpool, who was contemplating his glass of ale as if its foam mapped a route to the Orient, did not initially glance up at him. But when Will circled closer, bowed, and called him “Lord” a second time, Liverpool did look up with beer blurred eyes and seemed to think he recognized Will, though his words indicated he had mistaken him for another.
“Trader boy!” he exclaimed. “One of my finest hires. How goes it in the offices of Dr. Dee? Just this very morning his lordship happened to compliment me on how skillful you are in pricing certificates. You must be a lad of great wealth already!”
Then Liverpool glanced more closely at Will’s attire and recognized that that probably wasn’t the case. “Or,” he retreated, “you may be luxuriating in possession of an even greater wealth than gold; that would be time well and happily spent! Are you so employed?” he inquired, observing the blank expression on Will’s features. “But why do I ask?! Who could not be happy in proximity to the greatest intellect of our time, as you spend your days?! Sit down, lad, and let me offer you a drink! What brings you to these dank shadows at a time of day when most traders are closing their books and planning their evenings?”
Will lowered himself into an empty chair at the table. He knew he was being taken for someone else. He sat anyway, as a line of inquiry, concerning the happiness Liverpool had made flippant reference to, had occurred to him.
“My good man, I am not currently in the employ of Sir John Dee.” Will spoke slowly, not entirely trusting Liverpool’s rationality, as a dark-haired serving woman came over to their table. He ordered a glass of ale. “You and I have had a discussion on Sir Dee’s commercial theories recently, but I have not entered his employ. I have been distracted by a much more pressing matter. One that requires a different sort of alchemy than the stock market can offer, or even the traditional lead-based kind.”
His ale arrived, and a gulp soothed Will’s parched mouth and seething throat. He dried his sweaty brow with the thick paper the server had put under his drink.
Liverpool gave him an appraising gaze. “What situation could compare to the alchemy of stock certificates, if you don’t mind my asking? To an entire nation about to convert all its paper to gold?”
“You touched on it a moment ago, mentioning happy moments in the same breath as riches. I am in a crisis of the heart, sir, where happy moments are the rarest currency of all. I beg for a loving moment like a starving man might for a loaf of bread. Indeed my condition is a perfect despondency of love. With no apparent cure.”
“Alchemists of our day, Sir Dee first among them, can concoct a potion for a trauma such as yours,” Liverpool replied. “A not uncommon trauma, in a world that has not been forged to perfection, in affairs of the heart least of all. The only drawback being, such potions usually need to be made to order and are not inexpensive.” Liverpool ran a surveying gaze again over Will’s attire, wondering, Will conjectured, how much of a love-blind spendthrift he might turn out to be if he was so miserly regarding his attire.
“This is not a matter of unrequited love,” Will told Liverpool. “This is a question of one lover needing transformation so two lovers can be together. An insurmountable challenge for any alchemist, I fear.”
“Transformation,” Liverpool repeated, twisting his hands as if, by their becoming better acquainted with each other, they might help with a solution. Rather than admit his ignorance of Will’s meaning, he then tried a little humor. “You are in love with your hunting falcon, perhaps? Or a deer? And you want to cross that natural boundary between them and you? Yes, I’m not sure the alchemist’s craft is advanced enough for that.”
Disappointment and exasperation merged in Will’s expression. He sat in sullen silence and listened to Liverpool’s continued rant.
“There is indeed a transformation impending in currency that can grow like a gargantuan, in coins that will jangle louder than an avalanche, and in certificates that will glitter with an aura brighter than the sun’s.
“Transformed commerce lies at England’s feet now, carried here by secular angels of markets and math. Dee himself spoke of our nation’s mathematical future in his brilliant introduction to Henry Billingsley’s Euclid, recently reprinted. You can be a leader of this new world, son. All it will take is a small investment and the larger portion of your rational mind!”
“Lord Liverpool, what I mean by transformation has nothing to do with the crassness of commerce. I have found a love so exalted I could not find the smallest trace of the material world in her if I looked with the finest magnifying glass. I am referring to the plight of a mortal like myself who falls in love with an immortal and cannot cross that boundary to be with her forever. And who therefore requires help in crossing that line, whether from sorcerer or preacher, alchemist or poet, wizard or astronomer, or the devil himself matters not! Your employer, Sir Dee, is rumored to have the most extraordinary powers. Can he help me? Can you? Can anyone in England? In the world?” Will stifled a sob. The solitude of his dilemma, the inability of anyone else to comprehend it—not that he had tried to communicate it before now—seemed one of the most hurtful things about it.
Then he observed out of the corner of his eye a sudden darkening in the street. A corresponding shadow came over Guy Liverpool’s features, as if Will’s emotional outburst had unnerved him. Sudden clouds must be smearing the sun, but they had arrived with incredible speed, since Will had entered the tavern under a sheer blue sky.
Looking about nervously, as if the change in weather showed the moral darkness of even discussing such a topic as Will brought up, Liverpo
ol then retrieved an engraved card from a purse tied around the peasecod belly of his doublet and proferred it to Will. When Will glanced at it, he saw this card’s design was different from the one Liverpool had previously given him. The first card had tiny gold bars superimposed on lead ones, but this one’s was simpler: white lettering on a black background, with a few stars here and there. It read, Sir John Dee, Master of Night. 22 Rufus Lane, Mortlake. By Appointment Only.
“You may approach Sir Dee, any time after sunset, on this matter of which you speak. I will let him know you are coming. But best to be subtle, even obscure, at first. As you have been with me.”
“I did nothing of the kind,” Will protested. “You wouldn’t let me get a word in edgewise.”
Liverpool waved off Will’s protest as if it were a buzzing fly. “Yes, strike a misleading chord with Sir Dee, so he may think you’ve come to him on the topic of commerce. He may let his defenses down. Perhaps you will gain his sympathies. And don’t think that I’m not sympathetic; I have no doubt your worry is real, but it is a bit beyond my own area of expertise, so that I cannot help you personally. Indeed I wish you well and will only expect suitable compensation, which can be paid me right in this very tavern, if you succeed in your quest through the services of Sir Dee. But if you do embark on this most awesome of journeys, keep in mind that crossing over—‘transformation’ as you call it—can annihilate the voyager, even dislodge the earth that birthed him. Your beloved best be worth these sorts of risks, son. And you’d better be prepared, from what I’ve heard rumored over the many years, to die during the journey.”
Now there was a second darkening in the street, then a brilliant flash of lightning followed by thunder. Hailstones began to drop with a sound like bullets fired from the clouds striking the pavements, followed by large raindrops falling with a sound like blood spattering.
