The Tower, the Zoo and the Tortoise Part 2

The silence was broken by the arrival of a footman with a silver tray. After setting it down on the courtier's desk, he poured two cups through a silver strainer and left again without a sound. Oswin Fielding offered the Beefeater a plate of shortbread. Balthazar Jones declined, unsettled by the unruly shape.

"Pity, they're one of Her Majesty's specialities. Almost as good as her scones. Admittedly, they do appear a little strange. Apparently she couldn't find her gla.s.ses," said the courtier, helping himself.

The Beefeater looked with regret at the shortbread made by royal fingers, and then at the equerry who had just taken a bite and seemed to float in a momentary state of ecstasy. Once Oswin Fielding came to, he took a file from a locked drawer and opened it. He then went through the planned building works for the menagerie, pointing out that not only would enclosures be constructed in the moat, but a number of the disused towers within the monument would be converted for the keeping of the beasts.

"I've no idea where any of them should go. I know nothing about exotic animals-I'm more of a labrador man, to tell you the truth-so I'm leaving all that up to you," said the courtier with a smile.

Balthazar Jones pulled at the band of his ruff to ease the constriction around his neck.

"Now I expect you're wanting to know which animals are to be transferred along with the d.u.c.h.ess of York," the equerry continued, turning to another page. "Some toucans. If I remember correctly, they came from the President of Peru. There's a zorilla, which isn't, as one might imagine, a cross between a zebra and a gorilla, but a highly revered yet uniquely odorous black-and-white skunk-like animal from Africa. In the Sudan they call it the 'father of stinks.' We were hoping to send that back before the Queen saw it, but she spotted it and said it was rude to return a gift, no matter how foul smelling. There are a number of Geoffroy's marmosets from the President of Brazil, and a sugar glider from the Governor of Tasmania. Sugar gliders, by the way, are small flying possums that get depressed if you don't give them enough attention. There's also a glutton, sent by the Russians, which looks like a small bear and has an enormous appet.i.te. It costs the Queen a fortune in food. What else? A Komodo dragon from the President of Indonesia. Komodo dragons are the world's largest lizards, and can bring down a horse. They're carnivorous and have a ferocious bite, injecting venom into their victims. So I'd watch that one, if I were you."

The Beefeater gripped his armrests as the equerry turned a page.

"What else?" Oswin Fielding asked. "Ah yes, some crested water dragons, otherwise known as Jesus Christ lizards. The President of Costa Rica sent that lot, G.o.d knows why. And there's also an Etruscan shrew from the President of Portugal. It's the smallest land mammal in the world, and can sit in a teaspoon when fully grown. It's also very highly strung-some die from anxiety just being handled. They say moving is one of life's greatest stressors, so best of luck. Let me remind you that the Anglo-Portuguese Alliance, signed in 1373, is the oldest alliance in the world still in force. We wouldn't want anyone to come along and mess that up. Well, here's the list. You can read about the others at your leisure. There will, of course, be a vet at your disposal, should you need one, but it should all be pretty straightforward. Just make sure they're fed and watered. And jolly them along, I expect."

The Beefeater reached out a white-gloved hand and silently took the file. Just as he was about to stand up, the man from the Palace leant forward. "A word of warning," he said, lowering his voice. "Remember to keep the lovebirds separated. They hate each other ..."

CHAPTER FIVE.

HEBE JONES IGNORED THE URN sitting on her desk as she had done every day since its arrival, and picked up the false eye. As she held it up to her own, the two pupils looked at one another for several seconds. Eventually stared out, she admired the artistry of the tiny brushstrokes on the hazel iris. Her curiosity sated, she picked up the phone, hoping to finally reunite the item with its Danish owner. sitting on her desk as she had done every day since its arrival, and picked up the false eye. As she held it up to her own, the two pupils looked at one another for several seconds. Eventually stared out, she admired the artistry of the tiny brushstrokes on the hazel iris. Her curiosity sated, she picked up the phone, hoping to finally reunite the item with its Danish owner.

It hadn't taken her as long as she had feared to find a number for him. The breakthrough had come when she spotted the manufacturer's name and a serial number on the back of the prosthesis. Due to the mouse-like dimensions of the print, she had needed to borrow Valerie Jennings's gla.s.ses in order to decipher it, a habit that had become a particular source of irritation. The request evoked a sigh of despair that stirred the worms in the earth below, but which Hebe Jones never heard. Valerie Jennings disappeared into a labyrinth of petrifying smears as she waited for their return and suggested once again that Hebe Jones have her eyes tested. "Everyone's sight gets worse as they get older," she said.

"The old hen is worth forty chickens," Hebe Jones replied, when she finally handed over the spectacles.

After dialling the owner's number in rhus, given to her by the receptionist at the eye manufacturer's, Hebe Jones doodled on her pad as she waited.

"Hallo," came the eventual reply.

"Hallo," Hebe Jones repeated cautiously. "Frederik Kjeldsen?"

"Ja!"

"This is Mrs. Jones from London Underground Lost Property Office. I believe we may have something that belongs to you."

There was a moment of pure silence, after which Frederik Kjeldsen began to weep with his good eye. When the damp sound eventually came to an end, the man apologised and began to explain what had happened.

"Two years ago I lost my eye in a road accident and spent seven weeks in hospital," he said. "I was too scared to drive again and had to give up my job as a teacher. I was so depressed, I didn't bother getting a ... what do you call them?"

"A prosthesis?"

"Ja, a prosthesis. It wasn't until my sister announced her wedding that I decided to get one to save her the humiliation of my solitary eye in the wedding photographs. I made the decision that, once the celebrations were over, I would take my own life."

There was a pause during which the two strangers held on to each other through the silence.

"I had to take two buses to reach the manufacturer's," he continued. "But the moment the eye-maker lifted her head from her instruments and spoke to me with the voice of an angel, I fell for her. After eight months, and what I have to admit were many unnecessary appointments, I proposed to her under the same fir tree where my father had proposed to my mother. Our wedding emptied the florists for miles. I was so happy I cannot tell you."

After swallowing loudly, Frederik Kjeldsen continued: "Ten days ago, I was travelling back to the airport after a weekend in London to see my niece when the Tube suddenly stopped. I banged my head against the gla.s.s and my eye flew out. There were so many feet and suitcases in the carriage I wasn't able to find it before arriving at Heathrow. If I had stayed looking for it any longer, the train would have taken me back to London and I would have missed my flight. I needed to get back in time for work the next day, and I had such a headache you wouldn't believe, so I put on my sungla.s.ses and got off. Of course my wife has made me another eye, but I so wanted the one that had brought us together. And now it seems that you have found it. It is truly a miracle."

After Frederik Kjeldsen apologised again for his salty state, Hebe Jones a.s.sured him that she would get it into the post immediately. As she put down the phone, Valerie Jennings approached and peered at the eye over her colleague's shoulder, scratching her nest of dark curls, clipped to the back of her head. She then walked to one of the shelves and returned with a box containing a hand-blown gla.s.s eye purported to have belonged to Nelson, and another made of porcelain, which, according to its accompanying label, was used by a fourteenth-century Chinese emperor whenever he slept with his favourite mistress. After showing them to her colleague, Valerie Jennings, who had started to smell the rank breath of boredom, asked: "Fancy a game of marbles?"

Hebe Jones was certain of winning, particularly as she was prepared to suffer the indignity of lying flat on the office floor to execute a shot. She had honed her skills as a young child on the cool, tiled floors of the house in Athens, and her talent flourished when the Grammatikos family moved to London when she was five, despite the challenge of carpeting. Her ability to win even blindfolded led to the widespread belief that her expertise was due to exceptional hearing, rather than the more obvious explanation that she was peeking. She subsequently claimed to be able to hear the talk of infants still in the womb, and mothers from the Greek community, who were more ready to believe such ability existed in one of their own, presented their swollen abdomens to the girl to learn the first utterances of their child. After demanding absolute silence, she would sit, one ear pressed against the protruding umbilicus, translating the squeaks, whistles, and centenarian groans with the fluency of a polyglot.

"No, thanks," Hebe Jones nevertheless replied, turning over the prosthesis in her hand. "Look. It's concave. And anyway, that poor man's eye has rolled around enough of London as it is."

After sealing up the box with brown tape, kept on the inflatable doll's wrist by mutual agreement following one too many disappearances, Hebe Jones added Mr. Kjeldsen's address and dropped the package into the mailbag with the warm glow of victory. As she looked around her desk for the next task, her eyes stopped at the urn. Feeling a stab of guilt for having ignored it since its arrival, she turned the wooden box round in her hands and ran a finger over the bra.s.s nameplate bearing the words "Clementine Perkins, 1939 to 2008, RIP" in an elegant script. She tried to imagine the woman whose remains had been travelling around the Underground, but felt even greater pity for the person who had mislaid them. Hoping to find something to help her trace Clementine Perkins's relatives, she decided to look up her entry in the national register of deaths.

"I'm just popping out to the library," she announced, standing up. And within minutes, Hebe Jones and her turquoise coat were gone.

Valerie Jennings watched her turn the corner and immediately regretted not having asked her to bring back a Chelsea bun from the high street bakery. Despite her patronage, she had long lamented their offerings, and had once even boycotted the establishment when she noticed two French tourists looking into its windows and discussing whether its wares were for the purpose of plugging holes. But eventually she relented, defeated by patriotism and necessity.

After labelling a yellow canoe, she took hold of one end and dragged it through the office, shuffling backwards in her flat black shoes, uttering a string of profanities. Eventually, she managed to slide it onto the bottom shelf of the nautical section. Standing up, she arched her back, then made her way to the original Victorian counter and noted down the shelf number in an inscrutable code in one of the ledgers.

It was the only office in the whole of London without a computer, the introduction of which the two women had refused with a steadfast obstinacy. When, five years earlier, they were informed that the unfathomable machines were to be installed, both immediately offered their resignation with the freaky concurrency of twins. Then, like two circus curiosities, they demonstrated their encyclopedic knowledge of every item stored on the meticulously numbered shelves, including on which Tube line they had been abandoned.

Their invincible memories were not, however, enough to dissuade the authorities from accepting their resignations until an attempt was made to follow the logic of the cross-referencing in the ledgers. The antique code, invented by clerks to make themselves indispensable, had been handed down from Victorian times, when the office was established to handle the onslaught of m.u.f.fs and canes left behind on the breathtaking new transport.

As soon as management realised what they were up against, one of them filled his pockets with barley sugar and visited the only other staff still alive who had worked in the antiquated office. He found the pair propping each other up in the sitting room of an old people's home, covered in a coat of dust. But despite the joy of an unexpected visitor, and one with such treasures in his pockets, nothing could persuade them, when the mist of senility temporarily parted, to give up the key to the code that had ensured them a job for life. All attempts at modernisation were therefore abandoned until the next change of management, which, despite renewed tactics, always failed as emphatically as its predecessor.

Arriving back at her desk, Valerie Jennings reached into her black handbag and returned a novel to its place on one of the bookshelves. Each volume she borrowed was brought back to the office the next day lest its owner arrive to claim it. There it would remain until she slipped it back into her bag again on leaving. And, once at home and installed in her armchair with the pop-up leg rest, she would rampage through the pages, intoxicated by the heady fumes of fantasy.

On hearing the Swiss cowbell, she brushed away a kink of hair that had escaped from its mooring, pushed her gla.s.ses up her nose, and headed back to the counter. On the way she tried to open the safe, as was the office custom. But it remained as closed as the day it had been discovered on the Circle Line five years ago.

Turning the corner, she found Arthur Catnip partially obscured by a bunch of yellow roses. It was the second bouquet he had bought her. When he found the shutter closed the first time, his courage instantly abandoned him and he fled to the street. He offered the flowers to the first woman he encountered, but she, along with the eleven after her, rejected the gift in the common belief that all fellow Londoners had the potential to be psychotic lunatics.

Flowers were not the only gift the ticket inspector of limited height had bought for Valerie Jennings. Recognising her weakness for literature on account of her habit of reading the back of each novel he handed in, he scoured the capital's second-hand bookshops for something to give her pleasure. Ignoring the bestselling paperbacks, he eventually came across the work of the obscure nineteenth-century novelist Miss E. Clutterbuck. Skimming the pages, he found that the female protagonist who featured in all of her work was graced with stoutness, a fearsome intellect, and a long line of suitors of varying heights. Never once did a tale end without the heroine having discovered a new country, invented a scientific theory, or solved the most fiendish of crimes. It was only then that she would retire to her parlour with a bowl of rhubarb and custard to consider her numerous marriage proposals, surrounded by love tokens of yellow roses. Arthur Catnip bought all the novelist's work that he could find, and would arrive at the original Victorian counter with his latest musty, cloth-backed purchase, claiming he had found it in a carriage. Valerie Jennings's face would immediately light up at the prospect of another installment. And she would gaze with unfettered antic.i.p.ation at the colour plates of the fleshy heroine throttling a serpent in a newly discovered land, introducing her latest invention to awed gentlemen in Parliament, or stepping out with one of her elegantly mustached admirers, a number of whom were of inferior height.

Suddenly finding himself in the presence of Valerie Jennings while holding the flowers of choice of Miss E. Clutterbuck's suitors, Arthur Catnip was unable to speak.

"How lovely!" she said, peering at the bouquet. "They must have been for someone special. Where were they left?"

Panic rattled him, and Arthur Catnip found himself uttering the three wretched words that he spent the following week regretting.

"The Victoria Line."

REV. SEPTIMUS DREW CROSSED THE COBBLES on his way back from the chapel, where he had waited yet again in vain for the woman who had unsettled his heart. As he approached his front door, he looked around hoping to spot her, but all he saw were the first of the loathsome tourists who had started to seep into the Tower. As he reached into his ca.s.sock pocket for the key, he noticed that these visitors were not in fact the first, as there was someone already sitting on the bench next to the White Tower staring straight at him, her knees clamped together, and short gunmetal hair lifting in the breeze. Instantly he recognised the chairwoman of the Richard III Appreciation Society. For months she had been trying to persuade him to become a member, her pa.s.sion for the maligned monarch inflamed by the gasoline of unrequited love for the clergyman. Fearing that she was going to try and convince him yet again of the injustice of the King's reputation as a hunchbacked child slayer, Rev. Septimus Drew quickly unlocked his door and closed it behind him. on his way back from the chapel, where he had waited yet again in vain for the woman who had unsettled his heart. As he approached his front door, he looked around hoping to spot her, but all he saw were the first of the loathsome tourists who had started to seep into the Tower. As he reached into his ca.s.sock pocket for the key, he noticed that these visitors were not in fact the first, as there was someone already sitting on the bench next to the White Tower staring straight at him, her knees clamped together, and short gunmetal hair lifting in the breeze. Instantly he recognised the chairwoman of the Richard III Appreciation Society. For months she had been trying to persuade him to become a member, her pa.s.sion for the maligned monarch inflamed by the gasoline of unrequited love for the clergyman. Fearing that she was going to try and convince him yet again of the injustice of the King's reputation as a hunchbacked child slayer, Rev. Septimus Drew quickly unlocked his door and closed it behind him.

He made his way down the hall to his bachelor's sitting room, where he spent more time than he cared to. Avoiding the unruly spring, he sat down on the sofa, a relic from the former chaplain, along with the rest of the mismatched furniture. Picking up a biography of Jack Black, rat-catcher and mole destroyer by appointment to Queen Victoria, he started to read. But he soon found his mind wandering after the woman who had failed to return to the chapel. His gaze settled on the family portrait on the mantelpiece taken on Christmas Day, when his six sisters had come to his home for lunch with their husbands and numerous children. As his eyes ran along the familiar faces, he tasted the bitterness of failure for being the only one who still wasn't married.

His nose still invaded by the smell of rat droppings from the chapel, he picked up a bottle of Rescue Remedy from the side table and released two drops onto his tongue. His belief in the mystical powers of the blend of five flowers, and the other more lunatic offerings distilled by the druids of alternative medicine, was as strong as his belief in the Holy Spirit. As the chaplain advanced towards middle age, he had begun to grab all the defences against ill health he could find, filling his bathroom cabinet with the latest tinctures and potions brewed for the worried well. For he was firmly of the conviction that the body was more susceptible to disease without the presence of love to warm the organs.

The belief was not without its foundations, however unstable. He had watched his elderly mother, the colour of porridge, lying in a hospital bed for months, while the entire family was convinced that she would meet her maker at any moment. It was such a foregone conclusion that the music for the funeral had been chosen, and the florist put on standby for the approaching calamity. With her sheet pulled up to her whiskered chin, Florence Drew spoke of nothing other than joining her husband in heaven. Her only fear was that he would fail to recognise her on account of the disease that had infiltrated her body.

One night the man in the opposite cubicle, who had never received a visitor, got out of bed and came to sit on the grey plastic chair next to her. Switching on the night-light, George Proudfoot reached into the pocket of the new dressing gown that would be his last, pulled out a paperback, and started reading to her simply to hear his own voice before he died. He returned each night, but never once did the widow acknowledge his presence.

When, one evening, he failed to arrive, she called out to him, unable to bear the thought of dying without knowing the ending. George Proudfoot, by now so close to death he was barely able to speak, eventually made his way to the grey plastic chair. With the hermit's voice that was all that was left to him, he proceeded to make up the denouement, no longer able to read. The twist was so ingenious that Florence Drew immediately asked for another tale, and every night he arrived with his dose of storytelling. The widow would lie hypnotised, her head turned towards him, unable to take her eyes off his lips for a minute. Depending on the nature of the tale, her fingers, twisted like hazel by age, would grip the top of the sheet with dread, or reach for it to dry the tears that cascaded onto her pillow.

Suddenly, she no longer looked forward to death, as George Proudfoot always left the ending to the following night, too weak to complete a whole story in one sitting. He also stopped praying that he would be taken as swiftly as possible, as he wanted time to think up the endings, which he was as eager to know as she was.

One night, after several weeks, he straightened the top of Florence Drew's clutched sheet and planted a kiss on her forehead before returning to bed. The footnote to their ritual continued after every visit. The widow's colour returned with such force that the florist was stood down, and blood tests were repeated three times to check their accuracy. It wasn't long before her heartbeat started to stampede out of range again, this time in the opposite direction, sending her monitors shrieking. Eager medical students formed a queue at the end of her bed to witness the patient who was seized by the mania of love.

Eventually, the staff decided it was such a hopeless case nothing could be done, and the chaplain's mother was discharged, along with George Proudfoot, who was just as badly afflicted. The pair moved into opposite rooms in a nursing home, their doors left open so they could continue their nocturnal courtship, and never once did the man's imagination fail him. They lived in such a state of bliss they became the envy of the young nurses, whose romances were always in tatters.

When, eventually, Florence Drew died, George Proudfoot followed within minutes. Both had left instructions to be buried in the same coffin, as neither could bear to be parted from the other even in death. Her six daughters opposed the request, but Rev. Septimus Drew insisted that the couple's instructions be carried out, as the holy state of love wasn't to be meddled with. And the couple were lowered into the ground together, the first time they had lain in each other's arms.

BALTHAZAR JONES SAT in the small black hut next to the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower, no longer able to feel his toes. He had been unable to use the three-bar electric fire that usually acted as defence against the cold from the open hatch door. For, several moments after turning it on, he had been engulfed by the putrefying smell of bacon fat, a result of the Yeoman Gaoler's second breakfast the week before. in the small black hut next to the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower, no longer able to feel his toes. He had been unable to use the three-bar electric fire that usually acted as defence against the cold from the open hatch door. For, several moments after turning it on, he had been engulfed by the putrefying smell of bacon fat, a result of the Yeoman Gaoler's second breakfast the week before.

It had been a busy morning for the Beefeaters as an unfathomable dry spell had encouraged the tourists to wander round the monument instead of sheltering in the towers, and few could resist the urge to pose them a question of infinite idiocy. Balthazar Jones had already been asked in which tower Princess Diana had been kept following her divorce, whether he was an actor, and if the Crown Jewels, which had been on public display at the Tower since the seventeenth century, were real. These had come on top of the usual enquiries that came every few minutes regarding executions, methods of torture, and the location of the lavatories.

Over the centuries the Beefeaters had kept a written record of the worst of the visitors' queries, as well as their more questionable behaviour. The leather-bound volumes included the tale of the n.o.bleman who, in 1587, read Sir Everard Digby's De Arte Natandi De Arte Natandi, the first book published in England on swimming. Having rigorously studied the woodcut ill.u.s.trations, the n.o.bleman ignored the author's advocacy of the breast-stroke and decided to attempt his first-ever aquatic maneuver on his back. He chose for his initiation not the overcrowded Thames, but the more tranquil waters of the Tower moat. The moment the Beefeater accompanying him turned his back, the gentleman whipped off his breeches and shirt, pa.s.sed his wig to his wife, and scurried round to the steps next to the Byward Tower leading down to the moat. It was never clear whether it was the man's lamentable rendition of the backstroke or the pestilent waters that were to blame. Either way, his bloated body floated around the fortress until the following spring and became the latest landmark people jostled to see, fuelled by dire warnings in the newspapers by doctors who insisted that his unsavoury ending was proof of the hazards of getting wet.

Through the hatch door Balthazar Jones explained with utmost patience to a couple from the Midlands that Mint Street, which they had spotted upon entering the Tower, had nothing to do with the manufacture of sweets, as they suspected. Rather, it had everything to do with the fact that the Royal Mint, which produced most of the country's coinage, had been located at the Tower from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries. Overcome by generosity, he decided to toss them another historical nugget, adding that the great physicist and mathematician Sir Isaac Newton had been Master of the Royal Mint for twenty-eight years. But the couple looked at him blankly and then asked the location of the lavatories.

As he smiled for the inevitable photograph, an evil wind sent the brittle leaves rattling noisily along the cobbles beside them. Dark spots appeared on the stones like the weeping sores of the Black Plague, and the stench of dust nine centuries old filled the air. When the tourists ran for shelter from the downpour, Balthazar Jones unbolted the lower half of the door, stepped outside, and squinted at the sky with the scrutiny of a veteran horse-trader. Cheered by the sudden arrival of a new variety, he reached into his pocket for a slender pink Egyptian perfume bottle. After propping it up against the remains of a wall erected on the orders of Henry III, he returned to the black hut, shut the top and bottom doors, and sat down. The rain hitting the roof with the frenzy of a cannibal's drumbeat, he put on his reading gla.s.ses and unfolded the list of animals given to him by Oswin Fielding.

He was scratching his beard trying to remember what a zorilla was, when there was a sharp knock on the window. The Beefeater looked up, took off his spectacles, and saw the Chief Yeoman Warder standing hunched against the rain. Balthazar Jones hurriedly opened the top half of the door.

"There are two men sitting in a lorry outside the gates insisting they've come to erect a penguin enclosure in the moat," shouted the Chief Yeoman Warder over the downpour. "Apparently you know all about it."

Balthazar Jones frowned. "Hasn't the Palace told you?" he asked.

"That lot never have the decency to tell me anything."

It took him several attempts to persuade the Chief Yeoman Warder that there was to be a second royal menagerie at the Tower. And it took even more to make him believe that Balthazar Jones had been put in charge of it. The Beefeater had never seen such fire raging in a man caught in the devastation of a rainstorm.

"What the h.e.l.l do you know about looking after exotic animals, apart from that knackered tortoise? Good G.o.d, they couldn't have picked anyone worse," said the Chief Yeoman Warder, wiping rain out of his eyes with his embalmer's fingers.

Suddenly the monument flashed silver.

"This is a fortress, not some ruddy theme park," bellowed the Chief Yeoman Warder before running for cover as the thunder rolled.

Balthazar Jones closed the door. Despite his dislike of the man, there was no denying that the Chief Yeoman Warder was right about his lack of experience. Putting his gla.s.ses back on, he looked down at his now sodden list with magnified eyes, and struggled to remember what all the creatures were. He had expected to be entrusted with the sorts of animals that had inhabited the Tower over the centuries, which had in some cases been the first of their kind in England, and which by modern standards would be deemed decidedly pedestrian.

The original menagerie was a subject the Beefeater was intimately familiar with, having studied its history when he first arrived at the fortress in an effort to dispel Milo's dread of his new home. The boy's horror was a result of the tour on which some of the other Tower children had taken him while his parents were still unpacking, the tourists long since locked out for the day. When they called at the Salt Tower to meet the newest and youngest resident, the six-year-old was attempting to lure Mrs. Cook out of her travelling case with a fuchsia filched from one of the tubs his mother had insisted on bringing with her. But with the obstinacy of the ancient, the creature refused to move. After each child had lain on the floor and been formally introduced to the record-holder, whose antique features resembled a tribal shrunken head, they offered to show Milo around the fortress. Hebe Jones, who had no idea what lay in store for her son, immediately agreed, a.s.suming they were going to show him where he could ride his bike.

As the children ran to nearby Broad Arrow Tower, one of them asked Milo whether he knew what Bonfire Night was.

"It's when Daddy lets off fireworks from milk bottles in the garden, while Mummy watches from the kitchen with Mrs. Cook as the noise makes their ears go funny," he replied. The son of the Chief Yeoman Warder then informed Milo that it was, in fact, the anniversary of the day when Guy Fawkes and his gang tried to blow up Parliament. He then pointed out where Sir Everard Digby, one of the Gunpowder Plot conspirators, had chiselled his name on the wall while imprisoned, before being hanged, drawn, and quartered. Milo, who had no idea what that meant, ran his tiny white finger along the carving, wondering where his father would nail the Catherine wheel now that they no longer had a garden shed. When there was no response, one of the older children elaborated: "All the plotters were hanged, then taken down before they died. After their private parts were cut off, and their hearts ripped out, they were beheaded and cut into quarters. Finally their severed heads were then displayed on London Bridge as a warning to others."

Feeling light-headed, Milo followed the children as they ran out of the tower. As they pa.s.sed Waterloo Barracks one of them called out: "That's where they keep the Crown Jewels, but we can't show them to you as the alarms will go off and all the Beefeaters will shout at us, and then we'll be sent to prison."

Another child then shouted: "It's also where the East End gangsters the Kray twins were imprisoned in 1952 after going AWOL during National Service."

When they reached the scaffold site on Tower Green, they all sat cross-legged on the gra.s.s. One of boys lowered his voice and said: "This is the spot where seven prisoners had their heads chopped off, six with an axe and one with a sword." Milo, his stomach in turmoil, immediately wanted to return to the sanctuary of the Salt Tower but was too scared to find his way back on his own.

He followed them as closely as he could as they ran across the lawn, still pierced by the tobacco grown by Sir Walter Raleigh during his thirteen-year imprisonment. As they pushed down the cold door handle of the Chapel Royal of St. Peter ad Vincula, three rats feasting on a tapestry kneeler darted underneath the organ. Once the children had gathered at the altar, Charlotte Broughton, the Ravenmaster's daughter, pointed to the spot at her feet and whispered: "Underneath here is the arrow chest containing the remains of Anne Boleyn. Her husband, Henry VIII, got the most fashionable executioner from France to come and behead her with a sword. She had an extra finger and the sound of them drumming on the box's lid has sent the chaplain mad."

When they left, sending footsteps echoing round the walls, Milo ran as fast as he could to ensure that he wouldn't be the last to leave.

As evening slipped over the battlements, bringing with it the stench of the Thames, the children decided to take the boy on a ghost tour of the fortress. First they visited Wakefield Tower, which they pointed out was haunted by Henry VI, who was stabbed to death within its walls. Then they stood outside the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower, and one whispered that two small ghosts in white nightgowns had frequently been spotted standing in the doorway. Next they ran along the stretch of the ramparts where the spirit of Sir Walter Raleigh strode in the most elegant of Elizabethan fashions. And, after they had visited the other dozen sites, they finally crept into Martin Tower, where the apparition of a bear had startled a soldier who later dropped dead in shock.

Despite his new stegosaurus duvet cover, and the tyrannosaurus poster that Balthazar Jones had eventually managed to fix to the cold wall, that night Milo refused to sleep in his circular room, which had initially filled him with wonder. When it was time to go to bed, he clambered up the spiral staircase in his tiny slippers and crept between his parents' sheets. He lay on his back, arms against his sides, and refused to close his eyes "in case they come and get me." When he finally descended into his dreams, he kicked his father in the shins as he tried to escape his tormentors. Balthazar Jones woke up shrieking, followed within seconds by his wife and son, who instantly joined in the uproar.

The Beefeater tried all manner of rea.s.surance to lighten the shadow that the Tower's abhorrent past had cast over his son. But although he pointed out that the death penalty had been abolished, the scientific world denied the existence of ghosts, and Rev. Septimus Drew was as sane as could be expected from a member of the clergy, it did nothing to calm the boy.

Holding Milo's hand, Balthazar Jones took him on a walk along the battlements. As they looked over the ramparts at Tower Bridge, the Beefeater explained that some of the prisoners had had a much more comfortable existence than the poor living in freedom outside the fortress.

"Remember John Balliol, the Scottish king I was telling you about who was imprisoned in the Salt Tower? He had a splendid time," the father insisted, leaning against the parapet. "He brought loads of staff with him. He had two squires, a huntsman, a barber, a chaplain, a chapel clerk, two grooms, two chamberlains, a tailor, a laundress, and three pages. And he was allowed to leave the Tower to go hunting. He had it better than we do. Your mother's already sent me out twice to the laundrette because the washing machine isn't working. Mind you, he was banished to France after serving his sentence, which was particularly cruel in my opinion."

But Milo, who was standing on his toes to see over the parapet, wasn't convinced.

"What about Sir Walter Raleigh, then?" Balthazar Jones continued. "Remember that man I was telling you about who discovered potatoes and was imprisoned in the Tower three times?"

"Was he put into prison for discovering potatoes?" asked Milo, looking up at his father.

"Not exactly. First it was for marrying one of Elizabeth I's ladies-in-waiting without asking the Queen's permission, then for treason, and finally for inciting war between Spain and England while searching for gold. But you're absolutely right, potatoes are a very questionable vegetable. Personally, I would have locked up the person who discovered brussels sprouts. What was I saying? Oh yes, during his thirteen-year imprisonment in the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower, Walter Raleigh was allowed three servants. Imagine that! You'd like someone to pick up your socks, wouldn't you?"

But Milo didn't reply.

The Beefeater then told him that the explorer's wife and son sometimes stayed with him in the b.l.o.o.d.y Tower, and that his second son had been born there and was baptised in the chapel.

"Raleigh was even allowed to grow the exotic plants he brought back from the countries he discovered in the Tower garden," he continued. "They let him set up a still in an old henhouse there, where he experimented with medicinal cordials that he sold to the public. And he built a small furnace for smelting metals. We could get you a chemistry set, if you liked, and you could try out some experiments of your own. We could make a few explosions, and see if we can get your mother to jump higher than she does on Bonfire Night."

But that evening Milo returned to his parents' sheets, where he juddered in his sleep as if possessed by demons. Balthazar Jones finally managed to reclaim the marital bed after a flash of inspiration during lunch in the Salt Tower's shabby kitchen.

"When can we go home to Catford?" Milo had asked, his mouth covered in bolognese sauce.

"Every time the ewe goes 'baa,' she loses the same number of mouthfuls," Hebe Jones said.

The Beefeater looked at his wife, and then at his son. "I think what your mother is trying to tell you is not to talk with your mouth full," he said. He continued to wind spaghetti around his fork, then added, without raising his eyes: "Milo, you really do live in a very special place, you know. For six hundred years the Tower had its own little zoo as there was a tradition of giving the monarchy live animals as presents."

Milo's eyes shot to his father. "What sort of animals did they have?" he asked.

The Beefeater kept his head lowered. "I'll tell you before you go to sleep tonight, but only if you're in your own bed," he replied. "They may or may not have been descended from dinosaurs."