by Gareth Clegg
“Because the future of the Empire is at stake,” Simmons said.
“How do you come to that conclusion?”
“There is a man named Dent being held in the Black Cells. He’s a skilled watchmaker, and the Black Guard are trying to use him to recreate his father’s work on a very intricate timepiece. This is something that could tip the balance even further in their favour and bring more than just curfews to the streets of London, but a complete military lockdown.”
Simmons caught the man’s eyes through the mask, his voice grave. “Please tell me you harbour no love for the Black Guard and their masters.”
The Ravenmaster, silent for a moment, shook his head. “No, they killed the last of the yeoman warders when they seized control of the Tower. I saw many good friends fall that day, but I was powerless to stop it from happening. I swore I would do whatever it took to repay them in kind.”
Simmons smiled and with a conspiratorial lowering of his voice asked. “Perhaps that day is today?”
“Perhaps it is.”
“You’re saying there is no way to get to the Black Cells via the main Tower courtyard?” Simmons said.
The Ravenmaster looked him in the eye. “There’s a full garrison of the Black Guard stationed there, with elaborate alarm systems. You’d never make it through without being detected.”
“So is there no other way? No secret door always kept locked, and you know where the key is? An unknown entrance, something simple for once?”
The Ravenmaster shook his head, the beak on his plague mask wobbled almost comically, but Simmons wasn’t in the mood for humour. They had talked for thirty minutes, discussing options and details of the Tower and its grounds.
“What about the sluice gates leading to the cistern?” Bazalgette said, breaking his five-minute silence, lost in thought. “There must be a connection to the main water outlet, and from your description of the entrance to the cells, it would appear to be in the same vicinity.”
“You mean the water storage area?” the Ravenmaster asked.
“Yes. The inflow comes from here,” Bazalgette said, pointing to the mass of hand-drawn maps he’d pulled from his satchel, now laying on the desk. “This is where the water enters the Tower grounds and into the collection area in the cistern.”
Simmons sat up, having slouched somewhat in the uncomfortable chair. “Could we get in through there?”
“No, it’s far too small,” his friend answered. “The inflow enters through a wide pipe but then reduces in diameter building pressure to fill the cistern—the large water container.”
“I know what a damned cistern is.” Simmons let out a deep sigh. “Right, so where does this leave us? Why is this inflow so important?”
“Ah,” Bazalgette said. “It’s not the inflow I’m interested in.” Looking towards the Ravenmaster, he continued, “Though there might be mileage in…”
Simmons waited for the conclusion, which he realised would not be forthcoming. Bazalgette had a habit of doing this, trailing off in the middle of a sentence when another idea struck him.
“Yes,” Bazalgette continued, “Yes. If we can devise a means to drain the cistern and stop it refilling, then the outflow would empty. But that would need a pressure release to open the sluices—” He looked up realising that his voice was the only sound in the room. “There may be a way to gain entrance through the outflow.”
“Excellent,” Simmons said, “though why do I feel there’s a ‘but’ coming?”
“They secured all the old outflows when my grandfather built the new deep sewers. If I remember this one has a series of locked gates.”
“There are three gates.” The two men looked to the Ravenmaster. “Each sealed with high-security locks.”
“And you know this how?” Simmons asked.
“I was one of the team that oversaw the securing of those sewers back in 1865.”
Simmons tilted his head, smiling. “Ah. So what else can you tell us about these locks?”
“Only they were the best that money could buy. It wouldn’t surprise me to find them in the same condition as when they installed them, even after being submerged for the last thirty years. There is more,” the Ravenmaster added, “but it is both good and bad.”
Simmons looked back up. “Out with it, man.”
The Ravenmaster reached under his long jacket and pulled out a strong but ornate chain from around his neck. The metal was a dull grey with three ornate keys attached.
“Those are the keys to the locks,” Bazalgette said, the wonder no secret in his voice.
“Aye,” the Ravenmaster said. “It was my duty, and I was honour-bound to keep them safe. I never thought there would come a time when the old words would ring true.”
Bazalgette reached out towards the chain, “May I?”
The Ravenmaster nodded as the thick metal links slid through his fingers.
“It’s so light,” Bazalgette said his eyes widening. “I can’t believe how light this is. Simmons, you have got to feel this.”
Simmons raised a hand to stall his friend. “What did you mean about the old words?” he said, looking back to the masked figure behind the desk.
“You will have heard it,” he replied. “If ever the ravens are lost or shall abandon the Tower of London, the crown shall fall and Britain with it.”
“Yes, even I know that fairy tale, and I’ve lived most of my life out of the country.”
“It’s no fairy tale, Mr Simmons. Even during the invasion, the ravens remained within the Tower grounds. It wasn’t until the war was over, when the Black Guard took control, that they left. Every single one. I was Ravenmaster then, tasked to care for the birds, to see to their needs and whims. They are incredibly intelligent creatures, and they have something special about them, a mystique of their own with distinct personalities. Some are playful, others serious, and then there’s Ravenna. She controls the other ravens, and all the other birds that make London their home roost.”
Bazalgette’s eyes widened. “Ravenna? Ravenna is a raven?”
“Not just a raven, Mr Bazalgette, she is the raven. Brood-mother to them all.”
“But that means—Oh.”
Simmons glanced towards Bazalgette, a question unsaid but painted across his anxious face.
“Don’t you see, Simmons? It’s Lily.”
“What about her?”
“All her friends she plays with, the names are other birds, and Ravenna doesn’t play, she teaches.” Bazalgette looked at the man behind the desk. “She can understand them can’t she?”
The Ravenmaster inclined his head with a slight nod.
“What?” Simmons asked.
“It’s her,” Bazalgette said, he was almost bouncing with excitement. “Lily is the Ravenmaster. She understands them, speaks to them, plays with them.”
“And they do what she asks,” Simmons finished. “She tells them to play, and so they play.”
“Yes, and Ravenna teaches her how to do it all, through games, something a young girl can understand. That’s it, isn’t it?” Bazalgette turned to face the man in the beaked mask. “So what is your role in all this? Who are you?”
The man reached up and unbuckled the plague mask, exposing a much older looking face than Simmons had expected. Liver spots ran down the left side of his wrinkled and blotchy skin between his eye and jawline. He reached out to the chair and collapsed into it.
“Are you all right?” Bazalgette asked, reaching out to steady the suddenly frail-looking figure.
“Yes, I’ll be fine. I’m tired, and this pretence of youth drains me, but Lily is not yet ready to look after herself.” He pushed his back into the chair, rolling his shoulders in what seemed a painful movement.
“As to your question, Mr Bazalgette, I am who I said I was, a yeoman warden of the Tower. Skaife was my name, and as a younger man, they tasked me with looking after the ravens.” He sighed. “Nobody else wanted the job. The man who handed me the title of Ravenmaster told me
this. ‘Lad, I don’t envy you this task. They’re vicious little brutes who take joy in playing tricks on folk. Don’t take your eyes off them or they will be up to mischief, or will have your eye out if they take a particular dislike to you.’ It seemed he was taking it all too seriously and just didn’t enjoy the task. I loved it, and the birds, well they seemed to like me after I realised not to suffer any nonsense from them.”
“What about Lily?” Bazalgette asked. “I take it she isn’t really your daughter?”
“No. Ravenna led me to her when I escaped from that bloodbath in the Tower. She was in a half-submerged ruin on the south bank. God knows how long she had been there. I found her crumpled in a heap of collapsed timbers amidst the most incredible sight I have ever seen.”
He paused for a moment, taking a deep breath before continuing. “A ring of dead rats. Hundreds of the little sods, blood staining the floor around their remains. She looked so tiny, weak and pale. At first, I thought she was dead for sure, but Ravenna croaked at me. That’s what they do when they want your attention. She made me inspect the body.”
Skaife’s eye glistened with moisture, and he took a second to wipe it dry before continuing. “As I got closer, I saw black feathers among the rat carcasses, and then I saw all the dead birds. There were crows, bloodshrieks and razorbills, their mangled bodies lying amongst the rats, and stood around the girl’s body, four great ravens. Injured, but still alive. The birds had protected this little girl from all these rats, a full-on swarm. When I reached her, she was still breathing. Dried blood caked her face, and there were crumbs around her mouth and in her hair. They’d fed her blood and biscuits.”
“Blood and biscuits?” Bazalgette asked as Skaife paused.
“Yes, it’s what I used to feed them in the Tower. They wouldn’t eat the biscuit on its own, much too bland for their refined pallets. So I mixed it with blood when we didn’t have enough raw meat for them, and they wolfed it down. They must have been hoarding them somewhere and then brought them to feed the girl. Must have found a way of getting her water too, not sure how, but she seemed to have been there a while from the look of the surroundings. Anyway, Ravenna and the other ravens had a big conversation croaking and cawing, and then the others left. I carried the girl, following Ravenna until she brought me here. And here we’ve stayed, almost four years.”
Skaife leaned back and exhaled. The noise rattled in his throat, and he coughed, covering his mouth with his sleeve. He looked the part of a tired old man now.
“So we have the keys,” Simmons said. “That I presume was the good news. What was the bad you mentioned?”
“The sewer outlet flooded after the war. The Thames has risen so much since then. You’ll never get in.”
“About that,” Bazalgette said in a way that Simmons knew was begging for a dramatic revelation. He had a knack for making the ordinary into a spectacle. “The outlet may still be accessible at low tide. If, as I mentioned earlier, we can block the inflow. There should be enough airspace in the outflow for us to get through, and with the keys, it should be a simple matter of waiting for low tide.”
Skaife smiled. “It’s a little more tricky than just putting the keys in and turning them. There’s an order to follow, and if it’s not done in the correct order, then the locks will seal, permanently.”
“Typical,” Simmons said. There had to be something else to make it more complicated than it needed to be.
Maybe, when all this was over, he could head back to India. Life had been much simpler out there. His hardest decisions revolved around where to take afternoon tea or whether to have whisky or port after dinner. Simmons longed for the joy of simple choices again. Which type of biscuit to have with his tea, and if he could get away with dunking it in his cup as he’d seen the enlisted men do.
One day all that will be mine again.
19
The hull of Isaac’s boat scraped as he poled it alongside the wall on the north bank of the Thames. It was an hour after midnight, and the fog was thick, swirling around the three densely wrapped men like a sinuous living entity. Simmons sat with Isaac at the stern while Bazalgette leaned forward at the prow scanning through the darkness with the arc-lamp’s intense beam.
They had spent the last few days at St Olaves, drawing up their plans. Bazalgette had pored over the forecasts of the tidal flows of the Thames to calculate when the waters would be at their lowest. When he wasn’t doing that, he was babbling on about volumetric pressure, fluid dynamics and other such things that went way over Simmons’ head.
Bazalgette’s plan for blocking the cistern inlet had been brilliant in its simplicity. After hours of searching for the correct pipes, it only took a few minutes to plug them with waxed cloth, ramming it in and securing with sewer mud. Well, Simmons had thought it was mud, and didn’t want to consider any other alternative.
“There,” Bazalgette said, pointing the intense beam at a section of wall.
Simmons moved forward. The top of an arch of stone stood a few feet above the filthy river water. “We’re getting in through there?”
“There are another fifty minutes before we reach low tide.”
“Will it make that much difference?”
Bazalgette pointed up twenty feet above them. “The tide reaches the top of this wall at high tide, and it drops rapidly too.”
“Crikey, I’d not thought it dropped that far.”
Isaac turned to Simmons. “Yeah, there are areas on the south bank where the water sits above ground level even at low tide. Those places are submerged once the tide rolls in. Makes for interesting currents and navigation.”
“By my calculations,” Bazalgette said. “I’d expect another three to five feet before the hour is out. Then we’ll have our work cut out to get in and back out before it rises again.”
“How long do we have?” Simmons asked.
“I wouldn’t want to leave it over two hours. The quicker, the better.”
They waited as Bazalgette suggested. The water level had dropped, and the metal gate seemed to thrust itself upward from below the waves as the tide continued outward.
“This will be about as good as it gets,” Bazalgette said motioning at the murky waterline. Simmons followed his friends gaze towards the base of the gateway as the red-tinged Thames lapped against the wall and between the bars.
“Are you sure it’s safe?”
“Yes, the mud isn’t usually too thick. We could get Isaac to check if that would reassure you?”
“Well, it might be prudent, don’t you think?”
Isaac approached with the long pole he used for manoeuvring his vessel. “Here,” he said, pushing it into the dark waters. “Mister Bazalgette’s right. It won’t be deep.” It dipped under the waterline and stopped as it met the mud. Isaac leaned his weight onto it, and the wooden shaft descended a short way before meeting more solid resistance. “There you go,” he continued releasing the pole with a subtle twist of his wrist and pulled it back out showing six inches of thick brown sludge.
“Fair enough,” Simmons said, looking to Bazalgette. “We best be off then.”
Isaac steadied the vessel near the wall while Bazalgette and Simmons dropped into the freezing river with two quiet splashes.
The water reached halfway up Simmons’ boots, and he felt the slick mud below sliding around his sole and heel, gripping his foot. It took a moment to steady himself before he tried to cover the few feet to the entry point they needed to breach. After three failed attempts, his boot pulled free with a thick slurp from the muddy river bed before splashing down ahead of him, a little stronger than he’d intended.
Bazalgette stood at the wall watching him. Was that chastisement in his eyes? Simmons awaited the pithy comment about keeping quiet, but it didn’t come.
“If you twist before lifting, it’s much easier. Try to get onto the ball of your foot.”
He transferred his weight forward, trying what his friend had suggested, and found his boot lift from the
riverbed with much less effort.
“There you go,” Bazalgette said, smiling at him. “It’s a technique you learn after you’ve had more than your fair share of mud baths.”
“Sounds like you’re speaking from experience.”
“Hmm.” Bazalgette returned his attention to the gateway. He searched his pocket and pulled out the metal chain, which was the same dull grey even under the intense glare from the arc-lamp. Three keys and three locks as the Ravenmaster had described. Bazalgette turned them in the order Skaife had instructed. A metallic thunk sounded as the mechanism activated and thick steel bars retracted into the walls. The solid gate swung inwards as if newly installed rather than having been underwater for years.
They proceeded through the arched tunnel of brick and sludge. The water level dropped to ankle height as they stepped into the construction and was little more than a trickle.
“Seems blocking the inflow did the job,” Simmons said as he turned to push the heavy gate closed behind them.
“We need to move swiftly if we are to get out this way before the tide turns.” The arc-lamp lit the damp passageway as water dripped from walls and ceiling with soft splashes into the stream they trudged through.
“Was this constructed at the same time as the sewer systems?”
“Yes,” Bazalgette said. “It’s the same brickwork they used, apart from the area around the grates.”
As they approached the next grate, Simmons thought he detected less discolouration where the mechanism recessed into the tunnel wall. “Are you sure you have the sequence memorised?” he asked as Bazalgette pulled the keyring from his coat.
“Yes,” his friend said. “It’s only two digits to recall in three sequences.”
Simmons felt chagrined but chose not to show it. It had been a stupid question. Bazalgette had often proved that his memory was incredible.
Through the shifting grid of shadows created by the current grate, the tunnel ahead twisted out of sight. Simmons waited, suppressing the desire to tap his foot, while Bazalgette turned the keys in the mechanism.