The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (17 page)

Having searched the rest of the fortress, the Beefeater finally arrived at the Brick Tower. Telling himself that the removal man must have shooed the penguins in with the other birds, he climbed the stone steps two at a time. Once he had reached the first floor, he flung open the oak door and rushed to the aviary. As he peered through the wire fencing, his eyes didn’t linger over the charming King of Saxony bird of paradise, its two prized brow feathers stretching twice the length of its body, a sight so extraordinary that early ornithologists dismissed the first stuffed specimen as taxidermic trickery. Nor did he gaze at the green and peach female lovebird that had been separated from its mate lest it be savaged. He didn’t even admire the toucans given to the Queen by the President of Peru, with their alluring beaks believed by the Aztecs to be made from rainbows. Instead he kept his eyes on a pair of ugly feet sticking out of a small bush. Suddenly there was a rustle of leaves, and the Beefeater held his breath. But from out of
the undergrowth stalked the wandering albatross, a species with such voluminous feet sailors once used them as tobacco pouches. The Beefeater sank to the floor, wondering how he was going to explain the penguins’ disappearance to the man from the Palace. As he leant back against the circular wall, he let out a sigh of such momentous despair it woke the emerald hanging parrot from its upside-down slumber.

REV. SEPTIMUS DREW HITCHED UP
his cassock and knelt down by the organ. It took a moment for him to summon the courage to pick up the creature by its tail. Once he had overcome his aversion, he held it aloft and inspected it with an eye that had seen into the dusty depths of countless tormented souls. Despite a disappointing week of mechanical failures, and more pestilent droppings than usual, the sight of its tiny front paws suddenly filled the chaplain with unexpected regret. He lowered his eyes to the rat’s gruesome yellow teeth that had been sunk with unfettered ecstasy into the succulent tapestry kneelers, and all pity vanished. He noted that the creature had been cleanly slain with a single blow to the back of the neck by his latest innovation, a masterpiece of engineering that had been hidden inside a miniature Trojan horse. The whiskered enemy had been lured to its minutely plotted death by the most unholy of temptations: peanut butter.

While part of him opposed a Christian burial for the vermin, rats were, nevertheless, God’s creatures despite their nonappearance in the Bible. He dropped the stiffened body inside one of the old turquoise Fortnum & Mason paper bags that he kept for such occasions, and picked up his trowel. Pulling
open the chapel’s ancient door, he made his way to the Byward Tower, where he descended the steps to the moat, which had been used to grow vegetables during the Second World War. After a quick prayer for the creature’s villainous soul, he buried it in the flowerbed that ran alongside the bowling green. While in life the rodents had little meaningful purpose, in death they played the exalted role of fertiliser to the chaplain’s favourite rosebushes. He then turned his back on the carefully tended patch of lawn, which had witnessed so many accusations of cheating the previous season that all bowling matches had been suspended.

As he headed home, the Yeoman Gaoler, who was looking even more exhausted than usual, caught up with him and placed a plump hand on his arm. “No offence, but you haven’t been pinching my Fig Rolls, have you?” he asked.

Rev. Septimus Drew considered the question. “While I’d hold my hand up to the odd bit of gluttony, theft isn’t my thing, I’m afraid,” he replied.

The Yeoman Gaoler nodded in the direction of the chapel. “Nobody’s happened to confess to it, have they?” he asked.

“Unfortunately we don’t do confessions. Try the Catholics down the road. The priest gets to hear all manner of scandal, though from my experience he’s a bit reluctant to pass it on.”

As he crossed Tower Green, the clergyman spotted Balthazar Jones in the distance weighed down by what appeared to be a bag of fruit and vegetables. He watched his journey, troubled as usual by his old friend’s perpetual air of despair. The chaplain had tried his utmost to encourage him to take up his interests again. He had even offered him the custodianship
of the bowling green, a duty that had fallen to him that year, knowing that there was little that gave an Englishman more pleasure than the torment of tending a lawn. But the Beefeater had declined the offer with a shake of his white head.

Rev. Septimus Drew then tried to smoke him out of his grief by stoking his mania for English history. After service one Sunday, he cornered the Keeper of Tower History and asked him whether there was any new research that had been kept out of the latest edition of the Tower guide. Caught disarmed in the House of God, the man confessed to a revelation of such tantalising intrigue that the chaplain immediately went in search of Balthazar Jones to tell him.

He found him collapsed in his blue-and-white-striped deckchair on the battlements, gazing at the sky. The chaplain strode up to him, an undignified breeze lifting the ends of his nibbled crimson skirts, convinced that he had the key to set his friend free from the prison of his depression.

Sitting down on the ground next to him, the clergyman then recounted the astonishing tale of the ravens’ dubious historical pedigree. It was widely believed that the birds had been at the Tower for centuries. According to the legend peddled to the tourists, Charles II’s astronomer complained that they were getting in the way of his telescope. The King was said to have called for them to be destroyed, only to be warned that the White Tower would fall and a great disaster would befall England if the birds ever left the Tower. He then decreed that there must always be at least six birds present.

“But it’s all rubbish,” exclaimed the triumphant clergyman. “A researcher just scoured the records going back a thousand
years and found out that the earliest reference to the ravens being at the Tower was in fact 1895, and so the legend must have been a Victorian invention.”

But instead of the delight he expected the Beefeater to display at the news, Balthazar Jones turned to him and asked: “Do you think it’s going to rain?”

However the chaplain refused to give up. Sweeping into the British Library, he asked to see the most obscure titles he could find in the hallowed catalogue, much to the irritation of the staff, who were obliged to push aside curtains of cobwebs in the basement in order to reach them. After several months, he finally fell upon a tale of historical fascination that had at its helm a number of doctors. Not only did it show the medical profession to be staffed by baboons, as the Beefeater insisted it was, but it was of such hilarity that the chaplain’s library membership was terminated on account of his explosion of mirth when he read it.

With no hint as to the delight that lay in store for the Beefeater, Rev. Septimus Drew invited him round for supper, having selected his best bottle of Château Musar from his cellar. Once he had served the watercress soup, the clergyman proceeded to tell the story of Mary Toft, the eighteenth-century maidservant who one day began to give birth to rabbits. The local surgeon was called and he helped deliver nine of them, all stillborn and in pieces. The doctor wrote to numerous learned gentlemen about the phenomenon. George I sent his surgeon-anatomist and the secretary to the Prince of Wales to investigate, and both of them saw her deliver yet more of the dead creatures. The woman was subsequently brought to London, and the medical profession was so convinced of her
affliction, rabbit stew and jugged hare disappeared off dinner tables across the kingdom. But she was eventually unmasked as a hoaxer when a porter was caught trying to sneak a rabbit into her room, and she confessed to having inserted the pieces inside her.

The tale, which the chaplain related over three courses, included a number of ambitious theatrical demonstrations. After they had finished the roast capon, the chaplain pulled back his chair and rubbed his back with both hands as if easing the pains of a rabbit gestation. After he refilled their glasses for a fourth time, he raised a finger to either side of his head, bared his front teeth, and twitched his nose. And just before bringing in the summer pudding, the six-foot-three clergyman proceeded to execute what were undeniably bunny hops around the dining room. The Beefeater’s eyes didn’t leave the chaplain for a minute as he related his uproarious tale. But when Rev. Septimus Drew finally wiped his tears of merriment on his white cotton handkerchief and asked his guest what he thought of the story of Mary Toft, Balthazar Jones blinked and asked: “Who?”

ARRIVING BACK AT HIS HOUSE,
the chaplain put the trowel in the cupboard under the kitchen sink, washed his hands carefully, and took down his sorrowful teapot for one. As he sat alone at the table sipping his cranberry infusion, his mind turned once more to the heavenly Ruby Dore. Unable to bear the stab of solitude any longer, he stood up, fetched his pile of recipes from the drawer next to the sink, and set about selecting his weapon of seduction.

Once his choice was made, the clergyman picked up the mail he had collected from his post office box earlier that morning and made his way up to his study to compose his next sermon. Sitting at his desk, he worked his ivory letter-opener across the first spine and reached inside. When he had finished reading, he read the letter again to make sure that he had understood it correctly. He then folded it, returned it to its envelope, and slid it into the desk drawer. And, as he sat back in his chair in astonishment, he wondered whether there was any real hope that he would win the Erotic Fiction Awards, for which he had just been shortlisted.

BALTHAZAR JONES STOOD
at number seven Tower Green and knocked on the door. When, after several long minutes, there was still no reply, he put down the cage, cupped his hands against the windowpane, and attempted to see through a gap in the curtain. Eventually, the Yeoman Gaoler appeared at the door, his dressing gown tied across the crest of his stomach, one hand raised against the glare of the marble clouds.

“Are you all right?” Balthazar Jones asked.

The Yeoman Gaoler scratched at his chest. “I didn’t get much sleep last night.”

“May I come in for a minute?”

The Yeoman Gaoler stepped back to allow the man to pass. “It might be warmer in the kitchen,” he said.

Balthazar Jones walked down the hall and placed the cage on the table. The Yeoman Gaoler sat down and ran a hand through his hair.

“What’s that?” he asked, nodding at the cage.

“The Queen’s Etruscan shrew. I was hoping you’d look after it. It’s of a particularly nervous disposition.”

The Yeoman Gaoler looked at him. “How will the public be able to see it if it’s in my house?” he asked.

“They can make an appointment, but to be honest I’m not too bothered if they don’t. I just want to make sure that it stays alive.”

“Let’s see it then.”

Balthazar Jones stretched his arm into the cage and took the lid off the tiny plastic house.

The Yeoman Gaoler stood up and peered inside. “I can’t see anything,” he said.