These Dark Wings Page 4

  And I will be gone.

  In the dark my narrow room seems empty. But I know what is there, in the corner. The tightly pulled blanket and warm pillows. And here I stand, feeling the cold from the open door. The half loaf of bread from dinner in my pocket. My wool coat and trousers.

  I am ready.

  My shoes pad softly down the winding stairs, past Uncle’s room. The stairwell is solid and black. Surely he is asleep by now. In silence I reach the main door. I heave it open, guide it softy closed.

  Goodbye.

  Cold rain hits the cobblestones. I walk alone in the darkness, my coat pulled tight. Countless windows from the huge White Tower overlook the Inner Ward. All are dark. The bombing raid may be over; the blackout is not.

  You are mad, Anna Cooper. This is madness.

  Another thought enters my head, another voice.

  You can do this.

  A crumbling wall rings the Inner Ward, and I stay as close as I can. Rain blows everywhere. Only three exits lead out of the Tower of London. All run alongside the south outer wall, and all have guards positioned throughout the night. There is no escape through any door. Ahead march tall peaks of stone, black and hard.

  There is only one way.

  For a moment I think I hear something, a whisper of sound. A low croak.

  The ravens. Have they heard me? Those bloody birds will give me away. Even locked in their cages they are a nightmare.

  Mum used to warn me, Don’t let your imagination get away from you. Flo always said, You are mad, Anna Cooper. Mum is gone. Flo is gone. Lips pressed, I keep moving. It is several hours yet before the birds wake.

  I have seen them for the last time.

  I pause at Cradle Tower gate. Voices, definitely. Human voices, welling out of the night. Warders. A moment of panic threatens to overwhelm me. If I am caught out here...

  The voices grow louder.

  I rush back, crouching against the cold wall. My breathing has stopped. The rush of some distant gutter blocks out sound. They will shoot me.

  You are a twelve-year-old girl. They will not shoot you.

  If Oakes is planning to kill Churchill in broad daylight, he won’t think twice about shooting me now.

  He has already warned me - threatened me - not to tell anyone what I saw. I saw him, talking to a spy. I am sure of it.

  I can’t waste another thought on Oakes. On any of them.

  Noiselessly, the two Yeoman Warders appear, first as huge magic-lantern shapes, then as themselves. One is Yeoman Brodie, obvious from his great size. The other is the Watchman, whose name I’ve clean forgotten. I wait until they disappear inside the Inner Ward, cloaks snapping behind them. Darkness swallows the passageway.

  You can’t turn back now.

  New guards will come. Along the south wall runs a corridor leading to Develin Tower. Silently I step towards it. The entrance steps are cut high and narrow, wet from rain. I take them cautiously, trying to maintain speed. There are no hidden passages, no secret tunnels. There is only one way.

  Climb.

  Waves crash against the banks. Down there, in the glowing night, is the Thames. The Germans target the docks, every night. The fire, the heat – I can feel it from here. The air flurries with something like burning paper. I keep moving, breathing wildly, dodging it as best I can. Not far now, another twist of the passage and I will be at the ramparts.

  Develin Tower, a squat turret at the far corner of the grounds, is hidden in shadows. Unused.

  I reach up, beneath the blanked-out window. I can see nothing. A long breath. Stretching out, my fingers rub off the smoothness before finding a handhold. Not too wet. There. A narrow opening in the stone. The cold singes my fingers.

  Just like a tree. You can do this. Like a tree in Hyde Park.

  With a grasping hand I find the other, deeper hold, then the next, and pull myself upwards into the night. Another long breath. With a series of muffled groans, the toes of my shoes skidding, I climb.

  My foot slips. I barely swallow a scream. Hanging in the darkness, I take deep gulps of black. The stones themselves seem to be listening.

  Climb.

  I scale upwards, reaching the final inches of the old wall and lifting myself on to the wet crown of the tower. The wind comes sharp and quick. I squeeze my hands, lumps of ice, under my armpits.

  For a moment I stand completely still, scared to move. If Flo could see me now. A brief second of satisfaction is all I allow myself.

  I must escape. I must get free of this place.

  Smoke curls among the ruins of East London. Many of the buildings have burned to the ground or split like exploded rocks. Small lights bloom like a sea of candles. Even this rain will never put them all out.

  Smoke, fire, the reek of charred timber and melted brick reaches me.

  I must get out. Another thought rises up, almost instantly. Where can you go?

  I will go to Montreal. I will find Flo.

  Hope, Mum would say with her stern look, is a good breakfast but a bad supper. I think again of the bread in my jacket.

  Come down.

  For a moment, I ignore the voice. For one thing – I don’t hear voices. Only sometimes, when I need a little push, I imagine Flo is still with me, what she might say.

  Come down.

  But I take another step, the air cutting through my jacket, and look over the side of the turrets. Below, the dry vegetable garden is a drop of forty feet or more. I would never make it. The wind sings across the battlements.

  Home may still be out there. Whole and safe. Or smashed like a flower vase.

  A different voice now. Uncle Henry’s voice.

  No one escapes the Tower alone.

  Taking a final look at the cold river, I make the slow descent, hands still numb, the rain driving me to the ground. I land with barely a sound. Through the stone forest of passageways I hurry to my room, hearing in Uncle’s warning a sudden hope.

  No one escapes the Tower alone.

  Then I will need a recruit.

  3

  Monday, 7 October 1940

  In my search for escape, I had forgotten all about school.

  Tower School, it turns out, is in the Mint, my favourite part of the castle. It feels most like a real city here. Not that there are shops, or bakeries or clothing stores, or anything really, but it is a long street filled with homes and people in ties and regular hats. Kids playing with balls and a cat sleeping in a patch of sun. And a dog, all black, that runs around barking its head off. Young trees and potted flowers, and even, on the small cobblestone courtyard, shoots of grass rising between the joints.

  My old school had a grass track behind the main building. Mrs Wilson said that I was the fastest twelve-year-old she had ever seen. I know she’s kind – and I know that Flo is just as fast and she is only eleven; her name, after all, is Florence Swift – but she was the games teacher and wanted to make me like running. I always have: the wind pushing against my face, the jolt of life.

  There is no playing ground here, of course, no track or netball. Not that I can imagine playing – seven o’clock in the morning and only snatched moments of sleep. At least school is different from all the bare halls and stone ramparts; or sitting in front of the silent Green, staring at hopping birds.

  The classroom has a musty smell, like clothes not quite dry on the line. I have dry clothes. The school has issued me a uniform, which Uncle has paid for with eleven ration coupons. A grey skirt and ankle socks. A size too big; it is very unbecoming – not what Mum would call ‘from the Paris collections’ – and cold. But dry, and clean.

  Before Mum’s accident I had only just started second form, and now I’m starting it again, though certain to have forgotten all my lessons. And how can anyone care about trigonometry when bombs are falling? And one of the Warders might be a spy plotting to kill the prime minister.

  The teacher, Miss Breedon, sits behind a high desk, next to a blackboard framed in wood on an easel and already covered in Lat
in verbs. I recognize her from Sunday Chapel, when she wore a large hat. She is pretty, almost young. Her voice is soft, and the way she speaks is familiar. She reminds me of those women from the Red Cross sewing parties next door at Mrs Morgan’s.

  Some of the other girls I recognize too. The one with blonde hair I have seen riding her bicycle around the cobblestone alleys – even at night, with a pen torch (headlights are banned). Girls and boys of all ages, even some babies (reception-year students) in pigtails, talking happily amongst themselves until class begins. Everybody knows each other, of course. Most are pale and thin from lack of sleep and food, with lips chapped white. Some seats are empty, and each one poses a question: evacuated? Gone home?

  The girl who shares my two-seated desk was also at Chapel, I’m certain. She sat across from me, near the altar, her face very pale. I thought perhaps she’d been nervous – I was – but even now she has the pale look of someone who rarely goes into the sun. And again she wears a red ribbon in her hair.

  Once morning break arrives and milk cartons are brought in for the babies, I turn to her and smile. She is pretty, her features small and neat. I’m sure the teacher said her name is Leslie Ballard, but, scared I’ll mix it up, I don’t risk it.

  ‘Hullo,’ I say instead, ‘I’m called Anna.’

  ‘Magpie.’

  I blink. Why did she say that?

  ‘Thought all the useless mouths got sent away.’

  ‘Useless...?’ I cough, at a loss for what to say. ‘I was sent here.’

  ‘So you are a vacuee? Only you’ve come east to do your bomb dodging?’ She says this with a nasty laugh.

  Vacuee. I remember the story Eileen from third form told us. She had been evacuated to Bournemouth with her sister, and the people were so awful that after only two months they came back to London. ‘Bombs are better than people,’ she said.

  I couldn’t imagine such a thing to be true until I met Leslie Ballard.

  All morning I get plenty of knowing looks, but no one else talks to me. I can hear them whispering, though, calling me ‘Magpie’.

  ‘I’ve never seen a ginger one before. What’s all over its face?’

  ‘Disease,’ says Leslie. ‘From eating all that rubbish.’

  My freckles? From eating rubbish?

  Brodie’s son, Malcolm, who Uncle insisted would be my ‘new best mate’, fails to say a word to me. None of these will be likely to help me escape.

  When I am called on in Latin class to answer, my voice is slow and weird.

  ‘Contendo – to stretch, to aim. A sort of, ah, an exertion.’

  It’s as if I’d never had a conversation before. Again and again I am called on.

  Why the flaming hell can’t Miss Breedon just leave me alone? I am not from the East End – so what? Why are you all so proud to be common? My mum was a journalist. I live in Maida Vale!

  In front of them all I should eat the chocolate I took from the kitchen.

  Between classes Leslie walks towards me, a squat girl in tow. I free myself from the clanking seat (almost spilling the inkwell) to meet them. I am not afraid.

  ‘Tell her, Kate.’ Leslie’s eyes are bright, triumphant. She reaches up, patting her hair. ‘What your dad said.’

  Before I can decide if I should simply walk away, Kate is speaking.

  ‘To be vigilant. To look out for people who don’t belong, even girls. It’s in a government booklet. People who seem weird. People like you, Magpie, who might be German spies.’

  ‘I am not—’

  ‘Don’t tell the enemy anything. Don’t talk to the enemy.’

  Now I do walk away, and their giggling follows me. A beastly voice calls out, ‘Send her home’. Girls at my old school could be mean – making jokes about me having freckles or not having a father – but they weren’t this rotten. Leslie’s head should be rolling on Tower Hill.

  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.’