These Dark Wings (7 page)

Already the day feels a week long.

Why did Mum take that stupid bus? What was she thinking? She has left me here, alone, with a sick uncle and mean commoners. How could she?

It is a short walk to the loo, at least, even if the battlements are freezing. Of course now it is raining, any trace of the sunny morning gone. And I’ve forgotten my umbrella.

Orrk. Orrk.

A raven on the Green, its dead-black eyes following me. Raven Edgar, I am sure.

‘Move,’ I say harshly.

The bird breaks into a reluctant trot.

The loo is a room of cramped, grey stone. I shiver as I grab the pull chain and hurry back outside. Just as I reach the school (Edgar jeers from a stone perch), I feel a headache nagging at me. I am especially frightened by headaches. When Mum had her migraines, it was horrible – ‘savage’, she called it. She would have to lie still on the bed, no sound or lights, with brown paper soaked in vinegar across her temples.

If I can make it through the final class, Uncle will have aspirin. And I will tell him how I can never step foot in this horrible school again.

‘You new?’

A boy is gazing at me. He has bushy, dark hair and a slightly too large head – which I recognize as belonging to the boy who sits two in front of me, just to the left. His eyes are red like everyone’s from the hanging smoke and dust.

He is standing alone in the rain.
Why are these kids so bloody mean?
I squint my eyes at him.

‘Don’t call me Magpie—’

‘Did you see the Heinkels dive and hit the wharf last night? They look like cigars, but they drop breadbaskets. You need sand for those, not water.’

He speaks so rapidly I have trouble following him. The accent is still unfamiliar. At least he isn’t being mean. I let out a breath I didn’t realize I was holding.

‘Yes,’ I say, offering a slow smile. ‘I’m called Anna. Anna Cooper. Who are you?’

‘Me? Bomb expert,’ he says, shaking my hand. ‘Timothy Squire.’

The rain is cold and slanting and we are not quite under the cover of the ledge. I feel my hair growing heavy in the damp.

‘Bomb expert?’

‘You don’t believe me?’ He cocks an eyebrow, which only draws attention to the expanse of his head above. ‘You think I run and hide in the shelter with the old folks? Come on then. Tomorrow afternoon, when the tide’s out, me and the lads’ll go down to Pier Head. Easy enough to find an incendiary in the mud. All you do is unscrew the cap, remove the phosphorous into a paper, right? Then chuck it on the bonfire and watch it go up.’

Timothy Squire talks and talks, the wind whisking his hair. And in those few moments I learn many things. Chiefly, that he doesn’t care where I’m from or why I’m here. Also, and at length, that he escapes the Tower. He meets up with friends, goes bomb-hunting, plays street cricket, explores wreckage. A possible recruit, indeed.

‘Stray cats are everywhere – all fat and lazy because high explosives wrecked the sewers and now there’s too many rats to eat.’

He talks too of ‘fireweed’, the pink flowers that grow and blossom in the ashes of the city. And I know it is true. There is something... a smell... of air and bright wind. He doesn’t smell like stone and darkness, but of freedom – of the world. We are still standing, defenceless, in the rain.

‘Can you show me?’

‘’Course.’

He offers me half a biscuit, pushing the other half into his mouth. I take the biscuit and hold it in my hand. All I have eaten today are eggs from the chickens and some hollow wartime bread.

‘You’ll love it. Bombs leave all kinds of mess,’ he says, chewing. ‘Dead horses. Horse guts all over the road this morning.’

Love it?
I nod anyway.
He can get me out of here
.

A silent moment surfaces, sudden and abrupt, and I rack my thoughts for a way to ask him:
When can we go?
I am too slow.

‘What’re you here for then?’

‘I look after the ravens,’ I say, my voice strangely proud.

‘Ravens? Not for long.’

‘What?’

‘They got rid of all the animals at the zoo. Evacuated, or...’ He runs a thumb across his throat in a sickening gesture. ‘Can’t feed ’em. Same at the aquarium. Drained the whole thing, shot the manatees. You know, sea cows.’

‘They did not! My uncle told me—’

‘You going to feed them? Pay to heat the tanks and all that?’

‘They don’t
shoot
them.’

‘Better than letting them starve, right?’

He flicks some crumbs from his sleeve.

‘Why are you rolling your eyes?’ he asks.

‘I’m not.’

‘What did your uncle say then?’

‘A plan is in place,’ I say, ‘to protect the animals.’

‘Yeah. Like I told you.’

The sickening gesture again.

‘Well,
I
protect the ravens now. So they will be safe.’

Suddenly Miss Breedon appears under a black umbrella at the other end of the corridor. I thrust my hand behind my back, my fist closed round the biscuit.

‘Timothy Squire. Get back into the classroom this moment.’ Her gaze flicks to me. ‘I am not sure what kind of institution you attended previous to joining us, Miss Cooper, but here at the Tower School we arrive on time for our lessons. Come, both of you, out of the rain, quickly.’

Wednesday, 9 October 1940

‘A strange man?’

I swallow, hard, and try again.

‘A man. Not at the Gatehouse. By Traitors’ Gate.’

Uncle turns to me, a glow in his eyes. ‘You know that Traitors’ Gate is a water gate? Prisoners had to enter on a barge, passing under the heads of executed criminals displayed on London Bridge. Queen Anne Boleyn—’

‘Yes, but when the tide is out.’

It was something Timothy Squire had mentioned. Surely that is how the man was able to walk up to the gate.

‘Well, dear, Yeoman Oakes
was
a Company Sergeant Major,’ Uncle answers, ignoring my question about the tides, ‘in conversation with all sorts – Scots Guards, Royal Highlanders. Likely it was an off-duty soldier. And those Royal Highlanders are some of the strangest folks you’ll ever meet.’

I nod, unsure how to continue. What can I possibly say? That I saw Oakes talking to a strange man through the portcullis?
That is the truth.
That he could be planning to kill the prime minister? What would Uncle – what would anyone – say to that?

‘Come on, you lot.’

Uncle gives his whistle and dumps the bowl into the cage. In horror I realize my stomach is growling – I
am
hungry, but not for bloodsoaked biscuits. The chance of having Welsh rarebit for dinner, however, is slim.

Uncle gestures to the birds with a smile. ‘You know where the word “ravenous” comes from?’

I watch them tear and jab for as long as I can.

This week could not get any worse. The girls still whisper, giggle. At least I had the satisfaction of enjoying a leisurely few minutes eating the biscuit under Leslie’s watchful gaze. Timothy Squire – who couldn’t stop talking on Monday afternoon – didn’t say a word yesterday. Not once has his giant head turned round in its seat. He promised to take me out of here.

Why did I tell Timothy Squire that I would protect the ravens?

If the Tower ravens leave, Britain will fall.

Grip arrives – a black flicker, and he is there – to collect his meal, as Uncle Henry predicted. I think I notice a smile of relief, though. Surely Uncle fears Grip will go in search of Mabel.
She is an example for us all.

‘Uncle. Don’t the ravens... want to be with the other ravens? The free ones?’

He gives me a look. ‘When did you last see a raven, Anna?’

I shrug. ‘All the time. On rubbish day.’

He laughs, filling up MacDonald’s bowl. ‘Those are crows, my dear. It’s a hundred years or more since a wild raven has been seen in London.’

Really? I thought these ones were just bigger – well fed and flightless, but the same bird.

‘What happened to the wild ones?’

‘Shot, mostly.’ He is frowning, and after a moment I frown too. ‘Ravens have always been held in suspicion. The dark arts, and that sort of thing. On battlefields, they flocked to the dead soldiers. As you may have heard me say already, they are extremely sophisticated birds. They soon discovered that when groups of men in armour meet in a field, it means dinner is coming.

‘So they would follow the armies and simply wait around.
We
misunderstood, and thought the ravens were an ill omen. We assumed
they
brought the death and destruction.’

When Uncle talks of battlefields and slaughter, I think of Leslie and her giggling friends. But some part of me shivers at the echo of Oakes’s words.
Their big dinner is coming.

‘So how do the ravens protect us?’

Uncle gives a patient smile. I am reminded again how different he is from Mum. It’s not just his voice. Mum always had a quick temper, and she could be horribly brisk when she was doing something else, something
important
. Uncle is kind, his green eyes soft, apologetic. And once I saw him after breakfast reading Agatha Christie, which Mum would never have done.

He thinks I will stay here, with him and the birds.
A sudden swell of pity rises up, but Uncle doesn’t notice me.

‘Since Charles II, the ravens have been here, serving as sentinels. They were kept there, on the top of the White Tower, and whenever they spotted something that didn’t seem quite right, they would croak warnings.’

Aren’t they warning us now?

‘It’s true, Anna. They warned of the Dutch attack, and when Colonel Blood tried to steal the Crown jewels. And who do you think it was that alerted the Warders to Guy Fawkes and his gang?’

‘So the ravens guard the Crown jewels?’

‘My dear Anna, the ravens
are
the Crown jewels.’

Saturday, 12 October 1940

If it was guns that kept the ravens out of London, they won’t be coming back now. If the war continues, Raven Mabel is gone for good.

I have fed the birds and have hours I could spend on the wet bench before my lunch. I used to love the outdoors. At home, usually at night, I would open the back door and take huge lungfuls of air, as if being inside was the same as being underwater. Nothing felt better, even when it was cold out. But this is
too
cold.

I should go the library. The room is dry and almost warm.

Mum would have loved it there. She was always reading. Not the papers – where her own writing went – but big, heavy books, books with boring old covers, without pictures or drawings or any colour at all. She was always arranging and rearranging them in the bookcase, and anyway they were too heavy to carry anywhere. Sometimes, too, there were old
Tatler
magazines and she would sit flipping the thin pages, making sounds under her breath. Except in the last days, when she sat knitting and listening for the silent radio to crackle to life with news.

The moment I rise from the bench, imagining a dry roof, Timothy Squire appears on the Green. He is walking right towards me. There is nowhere for me to go. I sit back down.

He just saw you get up.

Committed, I lean back and gaze around coolly. The sky above is dull with its usual clouds and fog. This, on the other hand, is unusual. All week he has said nothing to me, even when I approached him after class. It is because of the time Miss Breedon yelled at us, I’m sure. I suppose Timothy Squire thinks Miss Breedon is scarier than bombs.

I sit as still as I can. Sometimes – like the time on Speech Day with Flo – I laugh without meaning to and carry on making strange noises. And I can feel it beginning now.

As his footsteps reach me, I look up and see him.

‘I want to show you something,’ Timothy Squire says, standing right before the bench.

‘OK.’ My voice is a little breathless, but he is already marching away.

Now? Are we leaving now? I have not said goodbye to Uncle.
I have not warned him about Oakes.

Smells of roasting potatoes waft towards us, making it hard to focus. Surely we can eat before we go? It is clear we are going deeper into the Tower. If he is taking me to Salt Tower...

Timothy Squire is leading me inside the barracks. Up a broad flight of stairs I follow him to a flat. It is large – there even seems to be an upstairs.
Is this his home?

I stare around, entranced. It is warm, swept – like a proper house. Made of stone, of course, though the air doesn’t seem so heavy and stale. A light switch sticks out from a circle of cut paper. Two glaring eyes above, a stub of a moustache below. Written around it are the words:
Save fuel. Snap Off Hitler’s nose
.

A voice calls from the back.

Timothy Squire is waiting in a small room with oak panelling on the walls. First I notice all the books – though not quite
books
. Thick and sturdy, they are nevertheless comics:
Adventure
,
Wizard
,
Hotspur
,
Rover.
Is this what he wants to show me – a comic book? Mum didn’t let me have comic books after my eighth birthday.

‘Here,’ he says, and begins rummaging around in a thin closet.

In the silence I glance back at the door.
His parents.
Will they be upset to see me here, unannounced? I should have told Uncle I was coming here.

With a happy sigh, Timothy Squire picks up something. He turns, all smiles. It has a beautiful silver polish, with a little fin on the end.

‘Bloody hell.’ I take a step back. ‘Timothy Squire... That’s a—’

‘Incendiary. Like you wanted to see.’

A clock ticks on a high shelf.

‘Don’t worry,’ he says. ‘Moment I found it, I unscrewed the cap. It’s a dud. Polishes up nice, though, doesn’t it?’

‘Yes, but – what I meant was – could you show me bombs and things
outside
of the Tower?’

He tucks the smooth shell away again under a mound of jumpers. I see, for a moment, other glittering objects.
What else does he have in there? Shrapnel? Landmines?