The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise (28 page)

He made his way through the gloom to the Salt Tower and closed the door behind him, feeling too defeated to climb the dank stairs to the empty living room. Sitting down on the dusty bottom step in the darkness, he rested his hairy white cheeks on his fists. His thoughts immediately found their way back to his wife, and he cursed himself for losing her. He wondered again about calling, but his conviction that he didn’t deserve her chased away the thought. Eventually he stood up, and as he groped around for the light switch, his fingers brushed the door handle of Milo’s bedroom, which he hadn’t entered since that terrible, terrible day. Overcome by an urge to enter, he pressed down on the latch, the sharp noise echoing in the blackness. Pushing open the door, he ran a hand along the rough wall for the switch and shielded his eyes with his hand until he got used to the light.

It took a while to take everything in. There on the wall above the neatly made-up bed was the world map which had eventually replaced the dinosaur poster he had bought his son from the Natural History Museum to help him settle into his new home. He looked at the little black cross Milo had drawn marking the mouth of the Orinoco River where his favourite prisoner, Sir Walter Raleigh, had started his search for El Dorado. On top of the chest of drawers stood the swing mirror that the Beefeater had spotted in the window of an antique shop and instantly bought, despite the imaginative price, so he wouldn’t have to try mounting one on the circular walls. Next to it was a bottle of fragrant aftershave, despite the fact that the boy had been too young to need a razor, which Hebe Jones had insisted was proof that Milo was in love with Charlotte Broughton.

He approached the chest of drawers, picked up the brush, and touched the dark hairs caught in it. He remembered telling Milo that he hoped the boy had inherited his mother’s genes and wouldn’t turn grey as early as his father had. He stood in front of the bookshelf and bent down to read the spines. Picking up a matchbox in front of the Harry Potter novels, he pushed it open and immediately recognised the fifty-pence piece that had travelled through the boy’s intestines to near lethal effect. He reached for the ammonite next to it, rubbing it between his fingers as he remembered Milo’s delight at finding it. As he returned it to the shelf, he spotted a photograph between two books. He tugged it out and when he looked at the smiling picture of Charlotte Broughton standing on the battlements, he realised that his wife had been right all along.

Pulling back the chair, he sat down at the desk and ran his palms over the wood, which Hebe Jones had kept dusted. He peered at the row of folders and took one out that he recognised. Glued to the front was a piece of paper, not quite square, on which was written: “Escapes from the Tower of London.”

The Beefeater opened the file, remembering the time they had spent working on it together. They had gone to see Rev. Septimus Drew, an authority on the subject, and had sat in his kitchen eating jam tarts as he launched into his dramatic renditions of nearly forty escapes. Balthazar Jones glanced at the first page, devoted to Ranulf Flambard, Bishop of Durham, the first high-profile prisoner at the Tower, who happened to also have been the first escapee. He read his son’s account of how the Bishop had got his guards drunk and lowered himself down the outer wall on a rope smuggled to him in a gallon of wine.

Turning the page, he came across an essay on John Gerard, who asked his warder for oranges and wrote messages in their juice, legible when held against a candle, on seemingly innocent letters to his supporters. A plan was hatched and the Jesuit priest escaped with fellow prisoner John Arden by climbing along a rope from the Cradle Tower to the wharf. When the Beefeater had finished reading it, he recalled all the secret messages he and Milo had sent each other, much to the irritation of Hebe Jones, who could never find her oranges.

At the end of the folder, he came across several blank pages bearing just the name of a prisoner, and he imagined the high grade Milo would have received had he lived long enough to
finish the project. He picked up a pencil from a pot at the back of the desk and held it where his son’s fingers had once been.

Walking across to the wardrobe, he pulled open the doors. Milo’s scent instantly hit him, and for a moment he couldn’t move. Eventually, he raised both hands and pulled the hangers apart, remembering his son in each item of clothing. He then looked down at the shoes at the bottom of the wardrobe and thought how small they seemed. Unable to bear the familiar smell any longer, he closed the doors, switched off the light, and, groping through the darkness, started the slow journey up to his empty home.

A
FTER ONE FINAL CATASTROPHIC SHUDDER
that travelled down to his arthritic knees, the Ravenmaster collapsed on top of Ambrosine Clarke. He lay breathing in the smell of suet from her hair as the birds continued to fly in hysterical circles in the aviary next to them. They had been startled by the chef’s cries of exhalation as she slid back and forth on the wooden floorboards with each thrust of his hips. Eventually the sound of frantically beating wings subsided, and only the toucans continued carving their multi-coloured loops.

As he pulled on his black ankle socks, he glanced at the cook, rounding up her large, white breasts into her bra, the top of her hair still flattened where he had gripped her head for better purchase. Taken aback, as always, by how quickly the inferno of desire could be extinguished, he reached for his uniform, covered in seed husks. As he pulled on his trousers, his stomach turned at the thought of the torment that followed their clandestine meetings. Sure enough, as soon as they were both dressed, Ambrosine Clarke reached for her
basket. Ignoring the Ravenmaster’s protests that his appetite had deserted him, the chef unpacked its contents. As he cast an eye over the dishes, he saw that his penitence that morning was the full Victorian breakfast that she had been threatening for several weeks, which included kidneys, haddock in puff pastry, and jelly in the shape of a hare. And as the Ravenmaster forced it down, he was convinced that it was an even greater torture than that inflicted on William Wallace, whose pitiful moans from being racked were sometimes heard echoing through the Brick Tower.

The cook left first, taking care to look through the window before opening the heavy oak door. After pulling on his black leather gloves, the Ravenmaster followed her a few minutes later, the stench of the zorilla causing his stomach to turn again. As he crossed the fortress, which hadn’t yet opened to the tourists, his anger at the Queen’s animals being housed in the Tower smouldered more fiercely than his heartburn. The visitors had shown little interest in the ravens since the menagerie opened, despite the birds’ reputed historic pedigree and their intelligence, which scientists had proved rivalled that of great apes and dolphins. He had frequently complained about the royal beasts in the Rack & Ruin, the sweetness of his orange juice no match for the bitterness spilling from his mouth. However, he rarely found the consensus that he sought. Despite their initial reservations, most of the Beefeaters had developed an affection for the animals, seduced by the glutton’s breathtaking appetite; the softness of the reclusive ringtail possums that fell asleep in their arms; the showmanship of the fancy rats, which Ruby Dore had taught to
roll tiny barrels along the bar; and the charm of the blue-faced Duchess of York, which clambered into their laps and searched their scalps with the ruthlessness of a nit nurse.

A downpour forced the Ravenmaster into an ungainly run, and he hunched his shoulders to prevent the rain going down his collar. Suddenly the sight of a body stopped him dead in his tracks. He stared in disbelief, then rushed over, emitting a low moan of dread. As the rain pummelled his back, he knelt down on the grass and picked up the raven from a pile of bloodied feathers, searching for signs of life. But its neck lolled backwards, and its glassy eyes failed to flinch despite the rain. He hurried back home with the creature, placed it on the dining-room table, and with frantic gasps began to administer the kiss of life.

AS BALTHAZAR JONES TRUDGED
through the rain, a common variety that fell in fat droplets from the brim of his hat, he noticed the Ravenmaster running in the distance and wondered what he was up to. The previous night, when he had eventually got round to doing his laundry, he picked up the vest he had found and noticed the label of a certain gentlemen’s outfitters which the Ravenmaster swore by. He stood next to the washing machine for a considerable time trying to work out how the man’s undergarment had come to be on the Brick Tower steps, until the sight of a piece of shrivelled carrot on the floor distracted him, and he started another fruitless search for Mrs. Cook.

Clutching a swede for the bearded pig, the Beefeater arrived at the Bowyer Tower to feed the crested water dragons.
He was greeted in the doorway by one of the sullen press officers, who had been forced to abandon their comfortable office on the ground floor in order to accommodate the bright green reptiles. Their resulting loathing of the President of Costa Rica on account of his cursed gift had stretched to a ban on coffee drinking in their cramped new premises on the first floor. Not only had the three women suffered the indignity of shifting their desks, but they were now faced with almost constantly ringing phones on account of the number of enquiries from around the world about the new royal menagerie.

“Ah, Yeoman Warder Jones, I was hoping to catch you,” the woman said, a pink cashmere scarf wrapped around her neck. “We’ve had a call from one of the papers in Argentina. They’re wondering where the rockhopper penguins are.”

The Beefeater scratched at his wet beard. “They’re at the vet’s,” he replied.

“Still?” she enquired.

Balthazar Jones nodded.

“I told her that, but she didn’t seem to believe me,” the press officer said.

The Beefeater looked into the distance. “Penguins won’t be rushed,” he replied.

“I see. We’ve also had an enquiry from the
Catholic Times
wondering why the crested water dragons are also known as Jesus Christ lizards.”

“Because they can walk on water in emergencies,” he said.

There was a pause.

“The other thing is we’ve had a couple of calls about the giraffes,” she continued. “Who were they from again?”

The Beefeater’s eyes fell to the vegetable he was holding. “The Swedes,” he replied.