These Dark Wings (15 page)

Once they have finished eating, it is time to put them to bed. Merlin and Cora are already inside their cage, and Edgar only needs some gentle encouragement. Grip, though, is not in his usual area.

Looking round, I see him, walking heavily towards the Green. I wait a moment, watching, before I go to fetch him. Where is he going? I turn to Timothy Squire, still smiling, and twist back.

Grip, taking slow steps in the dusk, merges with the coming night.

The next morning I watch Oakes heading across the Green.

I almost laugh to think about it – that Oakes could be a spy. That a Nazi – in disguise or not – could march right up to the Tower of London to talk to him. The mystery of MacDonald’s death is still unsolved, though.

My feet stumble. It is impossible. But I can tell, from across the Green, that it is true. There is a figure on the other side of the portcullis. A man.
The
same man.
And Oakes is headed to meet him.

Dully, my eyes follow Oakes’s blue uniform. I take a deep, shaky breath. I must get closer. I rush forward, cursing the echo of my shoes on the stone. A raven jeers; I ignore the sound.

I scurry to the side, out of sight, climb up the cut stairs of St Thomas’s Tower, and push my way inside. In the sudden darkness I move across the creaking wooden floor. I must get
down
there. With lurching steps, I take the first stairs I find.

The narrow room is made smaller by all the ropes and pulleys leading below. I peer down – I can see nothing, but surely I will be able to hear them speak. I stand as close as I dare to the straining rope. The cruel black spikes shine in the darkness.

Even with my heart knocking furiously in my chest I can make out words. And a strange accent.

‘I got a letter—’

‘So did I,’ comes Oakes’s voice.

I inch closer, catching nothing else over the jeering raven. In my mind I throw a rock at him.
Not now.
Leaning forward, I place both hands against the cold metal. I can hear them again, clearly – their voices are raised.

‘I’m beginning to think you don’t have any cousins in Yorkshire.’

I bow my head. How can they sound so angry about something so boring?
Cousins in Yorkshire?
Why have a secret meeting at Traitors’ Gate at low tide to talk about Yorkshire?

‘Then again, you’ve never been known for your honesty, have you, Gregory?’

‘Run back to Germany. If they see you here, you’ll be shot.’

Again the raven’s laughing croak. How is he so loud? It’s as if he’s in here with me.

The croaking goes on, the noise filling my ears. I abandon my position, hurry back down the stairs. There is no sound from the other side of the door, so I inch it open.

I pull it closed as Oakes sweeps past. He was moving quickly,
urgently
, away from the gateway. But I still saw it; his face red, and not just with anger. With fear.

My face must look the same. I was right all along. There is no doubt.

Oakes’s secret friend is a German. Oakes is a spy.

I am frozen, unsure whether to go to Uncle straightaway. They are great friends. He will tell me I am being foolish, that my imagination is running away from me.

The man definitely had a German accent. And Oakes told him to go back to Germany.
If the others see you...
He is clearly hiding him, meeting him in secret. Why? Why else, but some kind of plan to aid Germany? Should I go to Sir Claud? Or maybe tell Yeoman Sparks? Surely I must go to Uncle first.

And if I do – will Oakes kill another bird? Cut off Grip’s head?

I don’t know. What I do know is that even if I tell him Uncle will not hear it. Even the best people refuse to hear what they don’t want to.

He won’t believe the truth.

Monday, 21 October 1940

I sit on my bench, the ravens scolding loudly, frantic for dinner. My mind races over what to tell Uncle.

Shocking me out of my daze, Malcolm, Yeoman Brodie’s son and my supposed best mate, slinks towards me. He lowers himself on to the bench. Of course he does not speak.

‘Long day at school?’ I ask.

He shrugs. ‘I suppose so.’

A raven hops in the distance. I can feel him watching it with his eyes.

‘You don’t like them, huh?’

Malcolm shakes his head vigorously. ‘No. They tear up the grass, kill all the flowers.’

I look out over the bare Green, the grass dead for the season.

‘They rip the putty out of the windows too. It is freezing in my room. We fix it, and they just steal it again. I hope they eat it and get sick.’

It is the longest sentence I have ever heard him speak.

A heavy silence falls. I squirm on the bench. Somehow even his muttering is preferable to the silence.
Surely dinner is almost ready.
One thing I have learned about Malcolm is his love of diamonds. He thinks the ravens are boring but loves diamonds and jewels – almost as much as Timothy Squire loves bombs. The residents of the Tower are strange people indeed.

‘I wish I knew more about, you know, the Crown jewels,’ I say, my voice hopelessly flat. He doesn’t seem to notice or care.

‘Do you know about the curse of the Koh-i-noor diamond?’ he asks excitedly. When he peers up at you, he looks almost like a goat.

‘The what?’ I answer, knowing full well from one of Brodie’s breakfast stories the name of the great diamond put in a brooch for Queen Victoria and then set in the crown of Queen Elizabeth.

‘Koh-i-noor – “the Mountain of Light”. Diamonds from the stone can only be used in a crown worn by a woman...’

Malcolm has plenty of new information as well, and soon I learn that he regrets that the Crown jewels are not here, certain that no ‘secret’ location can be safer than the Tower. But they are here, if you ask Uncle.
The ravens are the Crown jewels.

A figure walks close by – Nell, all bobbed head and lipstick – and I have never been happier to see another person. Silence or this talk of diamonds – I can’t take either for another moment.

‘Nell,’ I call, too loudly. She likely doesn’t even know my name.

She doesn’t seem to know Malcolm’s either, by the look she gives us – two strangers gawking at her from a bench. She is wearing a blouse and short jacket, and navy-blue slacks with broad bottoms. I suddenly feel quite lumpy in my school uniform, which after another week of rations is definitely too big for me.

Nell walks closer, takes a Player’s from the packet, lights it. Is she working as a firewatcher right now? She doesn’t even have binoculars.

I am saved from thinking of an appropriate question by a growing sound. A droning. The drone grows louder. Countless dark shapes, like travelling black birds, cover the sun.

A terrific echo across the sky.

Stunned by the noise – it makes my knees ache – I look up at the barracks clock. It is only 4.05 p.m. The siren wails. This is a raid.

The ravens are still out.

Nell is bolt upright, her narrow shoulders raised, peering into the distance just beyond the turrets. My eyes follow hers. Thirty or forty planes at a great height. Close.

‘Hitler thinks he’s going to get me.’ Nell shakes her head contemptuously. She does not call out or raise the alarm. It is too late. Bombers streak out of the clouds. Loud even to numb ears.

A few peel off and unleash their bombs. I watch as they fall like hammers from the sky. I cannot move. Explosions echo across the river. More planes harden from the clouds. Immediately the docks are on fire, black and red, climbing higher than the cranes. Smoke comes, surging towards the Tower, flooding over the old walls like sudden mist.

A rush of wings overhead.

I try to count the crashes; too many. We must get to the shelter. The White Tower shelter, deep underground. But no one moves. I stare up at the barrage balloon, looming in the wind.

The stone suddenly jumps. A blast fifty feet ahead.

Another erupts just behind us, sending up a fountain of rock. Suddenly unfrozen, people hurry across the battlements towards the shelter. A Wife curses, a boy yells, Warders call for order. The ocean’s roar of bombs silences everything.

The Tower is being attacked. We are too late.

I think of Oakes and the carving in the Salt Tower.

A map of the night sky.

With a series of shuddering bursts, shrapnel tears through the Inner Ward. The noise takes me to my knees. With terrible clearness I see a Scots Guard sink to the stone. I drag my gaze from the charred hair, the expressionless face, the sickening leak of blood.

More planes become visible through the distant clouds, a dozen at least, moving in formation. Everything becomes thunder. I kneel on the shaking stone, numb with terror.

The ravens
.

Another, closer bang, and all the windows on the Martin Tower shatter, hurling glass towards us. Before my eyes snap shut, the explosion burns into my mind. Weightless, my body pushes forward, over the wet stone. I lie on my stomach, my knees torn, my elbows shredded. A screaming voice, now quiet and distant, finds me: ‘To the shelter!’

Without the Tower ravens, the kingdom will fall.

My hands reach out, gripping rock. I blink my eyes open. People run around me, shrieking silently. Another explosion and a Wife in a shawl is thrown six feet in the air, landing in a white heap.

I try to stand only the blast pulls me to the stone – but at the same time
pushes
me, trying to force me apart. One of my shoes is gone, the wind hot on my sock foot. When I can I look up, to see a rolling bank of smoke over Salt Tower, twice as tall as the barrage balloon. The Main Guard burns. The stone, the cold bones of the Tower, are on fire.

I will die here. Burnt in some ancient fortress, away from Maida Vale and the canals, away from Flo, surrounded by the ghosts and ravens and lies.
Oh, Mum.

For an eternity I am lost; eventually I come to my knees. I will not die here. I find my feet, swaying in the hot, scorched air. More bombers snarl in low over the turrets.

A blue hat vanishes in the flames and smoke, reappearing across the Inner Ward. My eyes cling to it. Lurching forward, I dodge several flaming craters. I can still see him, the Warder, running towards the shelter in the Casemates in the walls. Through the billowing smoke and burning stone, I follow.

I close my eyes against the heat, trapping the last sight in my mind. Smoke pouring from Salt Tower.

The daylight raid becomes a night raid. For hours the bombs fall.

We sit, some on chairs and the wood bench, some on the floor, filling the small room. Twenty-five people, doubled by the heavy shadows from the hurricane lamp. Uncle is here.
But where is Timothy Squire?

No one goes to the electric kettle, and the newspapers lie unread. No one brings out the playing cards or takes aim at Hitler’s pocked face on the dartboard. No one moves.

Dust slows my breathing and there is a crunching ache in my head. I think of the flames roaring outside, engulfing the Salt Tower.

Malcolm looks up at me. His voice is calm. ‘I wonder how many of us will be alive in the morning?’