James Herbert - ‘48

I waited a few seconds before entering, looking around first, listening, searching for the slightest sign of life. Ahead of me was the stunted, twin-towered gatehouse, the royal crest cut in stone above its archway: this was the entrance to the Tower itself and I almost expected to find a sentry on guard there, ready to challenge me. I heard and saw no one. But then, who would Hubble expect to invade his fortress?

The Sten gun had been hanging by its sling over my shoulder, and now I took it off, holding it before me, muzzle pointing directly ahead. I went on, feeling exposed, vulnerable, passing through the gatehouse and wondering if anyone had a weapon trained on me behind those arrow slits in its walls.

The air was cooler inside the archway, but it scarcely chilled the sweat on my brow as I studied the stone causeway over the moat. The sturdy wooden gates of the larger, inner gateway towers across the causeway were wide open, but there was nothing inviting about them. I took a look over the low side wall at the dried-out moat below and frowned. During the war, this wide, grassed-over defence ditch had been full of allotments, Tower staff and soldiers digging for victory and supplementing their plain rations with their own fresh vegetables; those same vegetable patches were now unkempt and overgrown, parched by the hot summer. It occurred to me that if the Blackshirts really had taken up residence here, then why hadn’t they maintained the allotments? They might be sick, but they still needed to eat. Suddenly I was doubting my own assumption. Had I got it wrong? When Hubble had referred to his ‘castle’ had he meant something else, using the word as some kind of metaphor for his own grandiose view of himself? So far there’d been no sign of life, no sounds to interrupt that awesome, dead-city silence, so had I made a big mistake?

And then I spotted something down there that made me think again, a splash of red amongst the green and brown vegetation. Another, and still more. Different colours now, some of them easily camouflaged by the shrubbery around them. Most of those tones were faded, but the red was easily recognizable: they were the uniforms worn by the castle’s keepers, the warders, the scarlet tunics of the Beefeaters. I understood instantly what had taken place here.

The inner wards of the Tower had been cleared of corpses by the new squatters, the Blackshirts themselves, those bodies dumped out of sight into the surrounding moat and left there to rot. The less visible carcasses were in khaki, the uniforms of regular soldiers, and the rest, I figured, were the forms of wives, kids and visitors on that fateful day, all dressed in wartime drab. The Blackshirts didn’t give a cuss about the allotments and fresh vegetables, not when other food was so readily and easily available, so the vegetation was left to cover the mass grave.

So okay, the game was still on.

I stole from the cover of the archway and dashed across the causeway. Now I was inside the fortress itself.

Once through the next dim passageway, I grew even more cautious, sure I was drawing closer to the hub of things. To my left was a little road called Mint Street, where in the olden days the Tower had its own money-making operation going; there were quaint, tiny dwellings where the Yeoman Warders and their families lived, as I recalled. Part of the street was in ruins, another lucky bomb-hit. In front of me was Water Lane, its uneven, cobblestone roadway dangerous if you were in a hurry; I made a mental note to watch my step when things heated up later on. At the corner where these streets met was another tower, this one with a bell house jutting from its top, and the windows in its thick walls set me feeling exposed again – it was too easy to imagine marksmen watching me from inside, waiting for the right moment to shoot I moved across the intersection in a crouching run, coming to a halt only when I was around the tower and flat against the wall on the other side. From there I made my way along Water Lane, keeping close to the wall, alert for any sound, any movement, not stopping again ‘til I’d reached another archway opposite a set of steps leading down to the water-filled entrance known as Traitors’ Gate, where criminals, political outcasts and dignitaries alike had been brought to the Tower by boat. Sunlight shone through the bars of the massive gate and the grille-work above it to pattern the still waters below, this grim pit partially roofed by a wide sweeping archway carrying a timbered building, whose windows overlooked my position. Yet again, I felt too vulnerable, so I didn’t linger.

I scurried into the shadows of the passage beneath the Bloody Tower (yeah, that name seemed about right), going down on one knee at the end of it to survey the wide, open area laid out before me, re-familiarizing myself with the lie of the land before advancing any further.

A broad walkway with a couple of sets of rising steps stretched out ahead of me, the long overhanging branches of untrimmed trees from untidy greens on either side creating welcome shadows, the great square edifice of the White Tower, the tower of legend, looming at least ninety feet on the right of the final set of steps, the ragged flag I’d spotted from outside suspended limply from its roof. To my left was a high grey wall, broken by a narrow opening where steps led up to the next level. I knew that up there, beyond the wall, were two adjoining rows of Tudor houses and cottages, all whité plaster and wooden beams, among them the Queen’s House, the official residence of the Tower’s Governor, and there, I guessed, was where I’d find Hubble.

I was about to make my way towards it when movement caught my eye. Keeping perfectly still, I let my eyes search out the disturbance (you never try and duck out of sight if any motion on your part might give away your own position), and then I saw them, sinister black shapes moving about the tall grass in front of the White Tower, creeping, it seemed to me right then, like dark assassins closing in for the kill. I released my breath when one of the creatures fluttered its wings – the same one who’d caught my attention a couple of seconds before – and flew to a post at the top of the timber stairway to the tower’s entrance. The big bird sat there on its perch, its long beak stabbing the air. Another appeared on the side wall to the steps ahead of me, then another hopped across open ground in the distance, and it was only then that I realized that these were the Tower of London ’s legendary ravens. At least six of them had been kept here through the centuries by clipping their wings so they couldn’t fly, the superstition being that any fewer meant the monarchy would fall. Obviously these birds had bred unsupervised after the Blood Death and, although it was common for other ravens to devour new eggs and some males might even kill off their own young out of jealousy, quite a few here had managed to survive. I guessed that this new breed, with no one around to clip their wings, stayed in, or always returned to, the castle grounds out of habit, or because of some kind of natural instinct passed from generation to generation.

Now I understood what had happened to the carthorse on Tower Hill, and was glad I hadn’t examined any of the human corpses lying thereabouts. But with that thought, there came another, one that hit me so hard that my body sagged and my head lowered so that my chin was almost touching my chest. This thought was like a nightmare, one that was constant and came in waking hours as well as in dreams, an image I’d tried so hard to suppress, but one I could never forget It visited me as fresh and horrific as its moment of reality, a harsh vision of Sally, my wife, outside the cheap basement flat we’d rented, lying in the stairwell, so still, so dead, her eyes gone, her…