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 white 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...
The bitterness erupted and suddenly I could no longer see clearly, everything before me had become blurred, watery ... My shoulders hunched over as I leaned forward on my knees, forehead inches away from the ground. But I fought it, I fought hard, forcing myself up again, shaking my head as if to loosen the sight trapped inside. The fingers of my free hand cleared my eyes and slowly, deliberately, I made myself think of what lay ahead of me that morning -after all, it was for Sally as much as Stern and Cagney and all those other victims, and it was for myself, it was especially for myself... And oddly, it was the thought of Cagney among all those others that brought me back to the present. Not because of what the Blackshirts had done to him, but because of those sinister black birds maundering around the castle grounds. What they had tried to do to him.
It hadn't been a couple of miles from this very location that the dog and I had first set eyes on each other, the time I'd been digging in the allotment to look up and discover Cagney watching and sniffing my lunch from a safe distance. The day Cagney had been attacked by ravens and together we'd fought them off. Those ravens had come from this place, I knew it as sure as I knew Hubble and his maniacs had set up camp here. My hands tightened around the Sten gun. I wanted to blast those evil, stinking predators into oblivion, blow every one of 'em into a puff of black feathers and shredded flesh, because I associated them with all the vermin that still roamed this world, human and animal alike. I thought of Cagney on the doorstep, his hind legs bloodied and crippled, and I thought of every victim of the Blood Death, not destroyed by some manufactured disease, but by the wicked intent of the corrupt few we'd once shared this planet with. And I thought of those malign bastards still left running loose to kill and maim, to take what didn't belong to them ... Oh yeah, I wanted to kill those ravens and what they represented, and I even took aim at the one on the post; but the cold calmness came back to me before I could squeeze the trigger. Those creatures were not the real badness; they just looked like it to me at that moment. I lowered the weapon.
I got to my feet and, swiftly and quietly, I entered the narrow opening in the wall on my left and climbed the mossy steps. Before reaching the top, I knelt down and peeked round the low wall that overlooked another neglected lawn and the two terraced rows of Tudor houses and cottages. There didn't appear to be any life inside those dwellings, but I noticed two rusted water trucks parked untidily in front of them, and they told me all I needed to know. The antiquated waterpipe system of the old castle and its quarters hadn't been able to cope with the severity of the previous two winters, the pipes probably cracking, the system flooding, everything breaking down, so the residents here had had to bring in their own supply. I waited a few minutes before making my next move, and when I did it was almost a mistake.
The dark-garbed figure emerged from a concealed set of steps at the far end of the smaller houses opposite just as I came out from the cover of the wall. Whoever it was over there had obviously come from a rampart tower, whose entrance was on a lower level to the cottages and green, so that first the head appeared followed by the shoulders. I'd, already dodged back behind the wall, disobeying my own rule of remaining still because I'd have been noticed anyway. It was a chance I'd had to take, and it seemed I was in luck - there were no shouts of alarm, only the distant scuffing of boots on concrete. The figure was marching - and I mean marching - across the courtyard, past the site of the Tower's notorious chopping block towards the castle keep, the White Tower itself. I stayed out of sight, peering over the wall only when I thought it was safe. But the marching figure was gone from view and I had to stand erect to catch a glimpse of it again. The dark-uniformed man was just disappearing behind the far corner of the White Tower.