These Dark Wings (4 page)

Flo said I was special, that it was unlucky to have brothers and sisters like she did, that I would never be left out of things. What things? If I had a sister (I’d never want a brother) she would be here now. A friend. A friend to keep away this mouse.

I saw Flo before she left. She had her father’s suitcase, covered in stickers from faraway hotels. She didn’t seem too sad. Neither did I, of course. We just planned where we would meet.

‘Outside the Notre-Dame Basilica,’ she said. ‘On the steps.’

I agreed, not knowing what the basilica was but sure that I could find it.

‘Will you learn French?’ I asked. I had only ever met one French person before, Mr Pepin, who made a chair for Mum. I couldn’t understand a word he said.

She paused to think. ‘Maybe by then, yeah. Don’t worry, I’ll teach you.’

I can see them now, Flo with her sister and two brothers – both older, short and wide, and not like her at all – all of them playing together in the quiet streets of Montreal.

There will never be a house like ours there. With a small garden with sweet peas and the skinny magnolia tree, never quite as pink as Mrs Weber’s across the street. Old Mrs Morgan and her terrier next door. The photograph of us, of the family together.

All that is gone.

For now I am safe. And I must try to sleep. I blow out the candle, ease on to the stiff mattress, and curl back under the cool blankets. I clamp my eyes shut.

After a few silent moments, from the darkness rises the long, low wail of the siren.

Saturday, 5 October 1940

‘Countess Margaret. The only grandmother ever beheaded at the Tower.’

As often as I hear Uncle’s voice, it is still unfamiliar. The words seem to glide, high and then low, the tone always changing. Nothing like Mum’s firm voice.

‘Seventy-one years old, if you can believe it.’

I look up at him and manage an exhausted smile. We stand together in front of the scaffold. A paved area, hardly three feet, with a brass plate in its centre:
Site of the ancient scaffold: on this spot Queen Anne Boleyn was beheaded on the 19th May 1536
. A notice close at hand gives further names, all familiar from lessons – Queen Catherine Howard; Lady Jane Grey.

‘All beheaded with an axe. Except Queen Anne, whose head was cut off with a sword. The executioner’s block was known as the Ravenstone.’

Of course it was
. Most executions took place on Tower Hill, and only the sensitive (mainly women, it seems) or very famous people were executed here. ‘His head should be rolling on Tower Hill,’ the girls at school would say about a mean teacher.

I grimace and turn away. It doesn’t really bother me, though. Everywhere you look in this place, some awful thing has been done. The Tower is gloomy and horrible and savage. Here people are kept prisoner, killed, or both.
And then eaten by ravens
.

I will not live here.

‘Who would have thought, even after nine centuries – older than the Vatican, the Louvre – that such a place could still hold mysteries?’

Uncle is smiling as we head towards the roost for dusk feeding. I am surprised to see him back in his uniform. (‘He’s been on the “sick list”,’ Brodie told me.) He still looks frail under the heavy cloak, his face thin behind steel-rimmed glasses. He, of course, is talking.

‘On a typical day, Anna, the grounds would be crowded with members of the public, queuing to see the Armoury or the White Tower...’

Still, these are the best times, with Uncle lecturing me as if I am just another visitor – the only wartime tourist in the Tower. I gaze where he points, nod when he stops talking, smile encouragingly. He is, after all, my only family now.

I was not always so nice to Uncle. When I first arrived here, that long month ago, I could do nothing but stare at the knuckles of his hands, covered in thick black hair. He smelled like years of damp.

‘But... Mr Reed—’ I had said.

‘“Uncle”, please.’

Then, before I could stop it: ‘Mother never said your name.’

‘Well, she wouldn’t have.’ He smiled ruefully. ‘Adults can be very foolish, Anna.’

‘You take care of the ravens?’ I asked, not wanting to hear some strange man talk about Mum being ‘foolish’.

‘That is one of my duties, yes. I am the Ravenmaster. Legend has it that there have always been six ravens at the Tower. Charles II himself said,
If the Tower ravens fly away, the kingdom will fall.
So you see how important it is to look after them. In fact, I could use a little help.’

‘To feed them?’ I said in surprise.

‘We are all rationing here, Anna. The ravens get enough to survive, just like the rest of us. Ah,’ he said, interrupting himself as I soon discovered is his way. Once he wandered ahead in mid-lecture, leaving me to imagine how Walter Raleigh met his end. ‘Would you care to observe?’

I wanted to make an excuse, but his pace had quickened. I still felt a little light-headed, a little less than myself. When we reached the winding staircase, it was all I could do to keep my balance. Uncle noticed, slowed, and at one point reached out to steady me.

‘I am just a bit tired,’ I said and we continued.

Now, though, it is Uncle who is always tired; Uncle who can’t make it up the stairs without a ‘short breather’; Uncle who looks drained and grey and small. His speeches are still the same, though.
The Tower is important to the people of London. The ravens are important.

I shiver, thinking about the birds, warm in all their feathers, again waiting to be fed. All except Mabel, who is alone and free.

We walk to the cages, Uncle’s voice gliding on, until the words themselves are gone. If only I had a warm hat – or a fizzy pop.
Or a way out of this ghastly place.

Uncle has fallen silent and for a terrifying moment I worry that my thoughts have become words. But he is merely observing the birds, offering here and there an understanding cluck.

Dusk feeding is difficult. The ravens fuss before returning to their cages. Late to bed, early to rise. We are lucky for the shorter days. Ravens sleep at sunset, so in the summer you must feed them at 5.30 p.m. and then return at 9 p.m. to whistle them to bed. Now, with the bombs, they must be in their cages before nightfall.

Most kids were sent to the countryside, to families, big houses and fireplaces, windows with normal blinds, a life surrounded by flying birds. I was sent here. To live with fat, squatting ravens and a gas mask that Oakes forces me to carry everywhere.

To my own cage.

Dark, swimming eyes watch me.

Raven MacDonald is already in his cage. He must be hungry. I move inside the bars, filling the water bowl (also the bath). My fingers tremble slightly. Ravens are
black.
Black feathers, black beak, black claws, black eyes. The entire head, and nearly half of the beak, is covered in thick, midnight feathers. They move around me now – ravens everywhere, sleek and guilty.

Often, if it proves too coarse, MacDonald will drop the biscuit in the water bowl to soften. He is also known, on his way by, to tug at Uncle’s trouser leg, a sort of greeting. He only glares at me.

‘You are safe here, you know,’ Uncle says, misunderstanding my silence.

‘I know.’

‘You see, Anna, in order to become a Yeoman Warder, one must serve at least twenty-two years in the armed forces.’ He smiles now. ‘Did you know that? We were all there, in the Great War. Now London is the Front, and we are here. Retired, maybe, but soldiers every one of us.’

I think of all the queer old weapons, axes and pokers that line the walls. Black cannons at every corner, old and useless.
Is this how you’ll protect us?

‘Mum would have wanted me to have a weapon,’ I say, knowing I sound like a child.

Something changes in his face.

‘Your mother and I lost our brother to the Great War – he came home, but not like himself. Nerves shattered, and he died not a year later. I’m not sure how well you remember your grandmother, Anna. It was very hard on her, losing Richard like that.’

I don’t remember Gran very well – she was old, shrivelled, quiet. I do remember when the war started, how angry Mum was all the time.

‘I helped out as soon as I could, being the eldest,’ Uncle continues. ‘It was a great struggle for us all. Your mum didn’t want that for you.’

I
know
Mum didn’t like war – she would say things, write things:
wars are always lost
. But people
had
to go and fight. She could not be mad at that.

She was more angry at how hard life became. Even before that I had worn some of Mum’s old dresses, cut and sewn to (almost) fit me. But it was the winter of the war that I was given her trousers. ‘All the girls in Kensington wear trousers and lipstick,’ she said, though her smile didn’t feel right. The girls at school giggled when I wore them, maybe because Mum never got me any lipstick.

And what the hell does Uncle Henry know? Clearly Mum didn’t like him. And it’s obvious he never came to visit me. I can’t even look at him now, afraid my anger will boil over. Uncle only likes the birds because he can hobble after them. He lies about the history and the legends, the need to always keep six, just so he can cut their wings and keep them trapped here.

Mum talked about Uncle Richard, how he died when they were young. She never even mentioned Uncle Henry. Who is this strange, old, sick man?

He is watching me and leans forward. ‘Are you all right, my dear?’

I am being hard-hearted. He is worried about me, that is all. In my thoughts I apologize to him. He is a lonely old man who loves the Tower. I know that he stands at the walls at night, using his secret whistle to try and call Mabel home.

‘Uncle,’ I say, ‘Has nobody ever escaped the Tower? Truly?’

‘No one has ever escaped from the Tower alone. But I suppose one prisoner did... disappear.’

‘Disappear?’

‘Well,’ he sounds strangely pleased, ‘I guess you two have something in common after all.’

I have no idea what he is talking about and can only smile weakly.

‘Did you know that Yeoman Oakes is right now – maybe this very moment – writing a history of the prisoners in the Tower?’

He stares down at me expectantly.

‘That sounds very interesting, Uncle.’

‘Yes, well, I certainly think so. Now, you must go and ask him about the prisoner who disappeared. He can do more than tell you the story. He can
show
you. Go on, I can finish up here.’

He scatters the meat in Cora’s cage, tempting her inside.

What can Yeoman Oakes show me? About a prisoner who disappeared?
While I worry again that Uncle is very unwell, he is red and smiling as he ushers me across the Inner Ward to the Guard’s Hall.

Oakes is not there.

With a sigh of relief, I dash back towards my room. Even the small chamber filled with spiderwebs seems a blessing. Uncle gave me a hot-water bottle earlier, which might still be warm. The wind finds me in corners, chases me round passageways. By the time I climb up the ramparts, I am beginning to feel like myself again.

Then I see Oakes.

He is walking – striding – across the Outer Ward towards Traitors’ Gate. Why? Warders come and go across the bridge at the West Gate. Nobody uses Traitors’ Gate, which is flooded with water and blocked by a spiked gate. Am I imagining it, or does something about him look
guilty
? He certainly isn’t writing a history book.

I stop, peer down at him.

Oakes doesn’t seem like one of those men who had a bad time of it in the Great War – who had their
nerves shattered
, like Uncle Richard. Something, though, is definitely
wrong
with him.

He passes the Watchman, and after some exchange the Watchman leaves. Oakes looks around, clearly checking to see if anyone has their eye on him, and then steps over the chain fence. His hat disappears as he descends.

What – into the water?

I lean over the edge of the ramparts to see. There is no water and Oakes has taken the stone stairs and marched right up to the wide span of the arch.