‘This way,’ Joe Furnivall said, leading his little daughter through the arch and into the Tower green. It was twenty-five to ten and the ceremony of the Keys was about to begin.
Peggy walked beside him, holding his hand for protection. She had never been out in the Tower at night before, and even though there was a full white moon in the black sky above her head, it was very dark out there beneath the White Tower and now that the visitors had all gone home the place looked enormous and strange and threatening. During the day it had been a village green surrounded by familiar houses, now it was a place of menacing shadows flickering against the walls and patches of terrifying darkness breathing in doorways and arrow slit windows squinting down at her like sharp little eyes. Oh there were certainly ghosts about tonight.
‘Is it far?’ she said, and her voice was no more than a whisper.
‘Traitors’ Gate,’ he said cheerfully, bounding down Broad Walk Steps.
‘When me and Megan was playing…’ she said, making yet another effort.
But he wasn’t listening to her. His mind was set on the treat ahead of them and he was striding towards it so quickly that she had to trot to keep up with him. Down the steps, along the path, under the Bloody Tower. No sign of the Bully boys yet, which was a relief, but once they were through the archway and into Water Lane she could see a group of toffs standing about in front of the terrible bars of Traitors’ Gate. That was a surprise. Had they come to see the Keys too? She thought she’d be the only one.
They were making ever such a noise. The ladies kept giving little high-pitched laughs like rooks cawing, and flicking their fur stoles over their shoulders, and shifting about on the cobbles in their high-heeled shoes. And the gentlemen were all going ‘Waw-waw-waw’ like bloodhounds baying, when they weren’t sucking at their cigars. Oh dear, she thought, he’ll never hear me in all that row, even if I speak up as loud as I can, and in any case she couldn’t do that, because it was a bit private really, not something to go shouting about in front of strangers.
‘Here we are,’ her father said, walking right up to the group and standing beside them. ‘And here’s the others, and your Uncle Charlie.’
Uncle Charlie was really called Yeoman Warder Macpherson and he wasn’t her uncle at all, only her godfather. He was a very loud man who smelt of snuff and brass polish, and had a nasty habit of pulling your hair or tweaking your ears when you weren’t looking, but for once Peggy was quite glad to see him, striding up Water Lane towards them with three other yeoman warders all in their ordinary clothes. If she couldn’t get Dad to forbid it, then the more people she had round her tonight the better.
‘Right on time,’ Uncle Charlie said, rolling his R’s in that Scottish way of his. ‘Looking forward to it eh, girlie?’
‘Oh yes,’ she said, because she was looking forward to the ceremony.
‘Been going on four hundred years,’ Uncle Charlie said. ‘Every evening the same. Never stops. Not for war or plague or peasants’ revolts or anything. While we’ve ravens in the Tower and the Ceremony of the Keys every night, we’ve no need to worry about the safety of the nation, eh?’
Peggy tried to look impressed, but it was difficult because it wasn’t the safety of the nation she was worried about.
‘Here they come,’ her father said. ‘Not a sound now.’
There was a little procession marching towards them along the lane. The toffs stopped talking and turned towards it, craning their necks, and in the sudden silence, Peggy could hear the crunch of boots and something jangling rhythmically. Then peering round her father’s bulk, she saw a lighted lantern bobbing towards her and above its light two ranks of scarlet jackets and a gleam of rifles. And there was the Chief Yeoman Warder in his lovely red uniform marching along between two rows of guardsmen and looking really rather short and stout between their tight-fitting jackets and the great furry height of their bearskins.
She watched absorbed as the procession marched down Water Lane and through the gate beneath the Byward Tower and on through the darkness towards the outer gate in the Middle Tower, the lantern flickering and diminishing but the sound of boots as strong as ever. Keys rattled and clicked, an invisible sergeant-major sang orders, boots stamped, their steel tips sparking quick flashes of fire against the cobbles, and they all came marching back again, as everybody in the little watching crowd stood still, listening and waiting.
And then, when they were no more than fifty feet away, a sentry sprang out of his box by the Bloody Tower and challenged them.
‘Halt! Who comes there?’
It was very dramatic. Several of the ladies jumped, as though the challenge had been directed at them.
But the Chief Yeoman Warder took it all calmly, singing back the answer. ‘King George’s Keys.’
Not the Keys to the Tower of London, Peggy thought, nor the Keys to the Middle Tower, but King George’s Keys, no less. King George’s Keys. It sounded marvellously important.
And it satisfied the sentry, because he was allowing them to march back through the Bloody Tower the way they’d come.
‘Is that it?’ Peggy asked her father. The rich people were following the procession through the arch. Now perhaps she could tell him about the ghost hunt.
‘No,’ he said happily. ‘The best bit’s to come.’ And he took her hand and led her through the arch and through the toffs until they were standing at the foot of the steps leading up to the Green.
It was like the pantomime she’d seen in the theatre last Christmas, when the curtains opened and you saw the stage full of beautiful people in lovely bright costumes all lit up with lots and lots of bright lights. The gaslights on either side of the Broad Walk Steps had been turned right up and the steps themselves were full of guardsmen standing to attention, jackets scarlet, buttons gleaming, bearskins ruffling in the night breeze. There was a trumpeter standing on the top step just above them, and the Keys and their escort had come to a halt at the bottom of the steps and were plainly waiting for something. Now what?
The watchers stood quite still, the guardsmen were motionless, and the trumpeter raised the golden bowl of his trumpet into the night air and sounded the Last Post. As the last sad note drifted away, the Chief Yeoman doffed his Tudor bonnet and called out in a loud clear voice, ‘God Preserve King George.’ And all the guardsmen answered ‘Amen’, their mouths dark O’s in the gaslit pallor of their faces. And at the very same moment the clock began to strike ten, the long notes licking the silent air as the guardsmen stood to attention. Peggy was so moved that she felt tears pricking underneath her eyelids. To live here, in the middle of the great city of London, at the heart of the British Empire, with all the brave men who guarded the king, it was an honour.
‘There,’ her father said when the clock was silent and the crowd began to disperse, ‘what did you think a’ that?’
‘It was like magic,’ she said.
‘Glad I brought you?’
‘Oh yes! Thanks ever so much, Dad.’
‘There you are then, little Peggy. You’re a real Londoner now you’ve seen the Ceremony of the Keys. Never forget it.’
Uncle Charlie was standing in front of them breathing snuff-sour all over them. ‘Are you coming to the Club, Joe?’
‘In a minute,’ her father said amiably. ‘When I’ve seen the child to the door.’
‘We’ll walk with you,’ Uncle Charlie said. ‘We’ll escort you, girlie, as though you were the Keys. How’s about that?’
It was a very fast-moving escort. This time she had to run to keep up, but she was very glad of their presence. Even if the Bully boys were already waiting for her under the arch they could hardly expect her to slip away with five Yeoman Warders guarding her.
‘There you are,’ her father said, when they’d crossed the Green and tramped through the arch into the Casemates.‘Off you go. There’s a good girl. Kiss your old Dad goodnight.’
She kissed him happily. They were in sight of her front door. Almost home. She only had to run a few steps and she’d be safe.
‘Night night. Sleep tight. Pray the Lord the bugs don’t bite,’ Uncle Charlie said, waving as they all marched back through the archway.
Silly old thing, Peggy thought. We don’t have bugs in our house. Just as if Mum would allow that. But she smiled at him politely as she waved goodbye. Then she turned to run home.
And the Bully boys were standing right in front of her.
‘They gone?’ Sam said, squinting in the poor light.
She was so frightened she couldn’t answer.
‘Still on the Green,’ Fred said, peering round the corner of the archway.
‘We’ll go the other way,’ Sam decided. ‘Come on.’
And he was off along the Casemates at a loping trot, with Fred beside him.
What can I do? Peggy thought. If I made a bolt for it and ran home they might….
‘Come on!’ Fred hissed back at her. ‘D’yer wan’ us to be caught?’
‘No,’ she said, finding her voice. But perhaps she did. If they were caught, they couldn’t….
‘Well then!’
‘It’s just…’
‘Shut up and run,’ Sam said, loping back to her and threatening her with his face.
‘And look sharp about it,’ Fred said, equally fierce, pulling her by the hand and dragging her along.
So she had to follow them. There was nothing else she could do when they were bullying her so. She knew there must be an excuse, a reason for not going, something she could say to stop them, but her heart was banging like a side-drum and she couldn’t think of anything. They were running along the inner wall towards the Salt Tower before she’d recovered from the shock of their sudden appearance, and by then her mind was jammed shut and incapable of any independent thought at all.
Despite the moon it was hideously dark, and below them the space between the wall and the White Tower was completely empty except for ghostly shadows and the eerie whispering of the plane trees. Sam had the key in his hand and was thrusting it into the black void of the doorway, making a scraping, grinding noise that sounded very loud and alarming out there in the night air.
But nobody heard it except them and the door opened just a little too easily.
‘Come on,’ Sam whispered. And they all went in.
It was dank and smelly and horribly silent. And when the door shut behind them with a reverberating clang the darkness was total. Oh please God, Peggy prayed, speaking instinctively to her protective deity, don’t let there be ghosts please, don’t let anything happen. And she backed until her hands were touching the chill stones of the wall.
The twins set about their evening’s enjoyment immediately, making ‘ghostly’ wailing noises, and lunging at anything they could sense moving in the darkness.
‘Look behind yer! Ooooooh! Ooooooh!’
‘You don’t sound like ghosts a bit,’ Peggy said into the darkness, alarmed but trying to be scornful. ‘You sound like owls.’
‘Look beside yer!’ Sam’s voice warned on a note of rising hysteria.
She turned despite herself, her skin prickling, for there was something moving and breathing right next to her. And the next minute there was suddenly light in the darkness, and there was Fred, leaning against the wall with an electric torch held underneath his chin. The odd angle of the light made his face look just like a skull, all grinning teeth and huge nostrils and glinting eyes set deep in awful black sockets.
‘Don’t!’ she said.
He grinned at her more vilely than ever, delighted by the fear in her voice.
‘Wooooh!’ Sam howled, his face just discernible in the mist of diffused light at his brother’s shoulder.
‘I’m off upstairs,’ Fred said, lowering the torch. Now that he’d scored first blood, he knew he could really frighten her. ‘There won’t be any ghosts down here. Stand ter reason. Not in a doorway there won’t.’ He was already feeling his way up the spiral staircase.
‘They walk through walls, don’t forget,’ his brother said, panting at his heels, ‘so why not doors?’
‘Up here!’ Fred’s voice echoed down the stairwell. ‘This’ll be the place.’
If it was, Peggy had no desire to see it, but she followed the ascending flicker of the torch, feeling her way along the rough stone of the walls, because it would have been even worse to be all by herself in the pitch darkness. The unseen stones were rough and cold and as tacky as slugs under her fingers. She tried not to think that ghosts were trying to ooze between them.
‘Here we are!’ Fred sang above her head. And she stumbled on and found herself in the upper chamber.
Downstairs in the darkness had been bad enough but this place was worse. There was a faint metallic blue light filtering in through the high window, and the silence was so profound she could hear it hissing. As her eyes grew accustomed to light again, she could make out the brooding mass of a huge stone fireplace opposite her, solid and black-shadowed, and the stones of the tower wall which were a weird unearthly grey and seemed to be flickering and shifting as she watched them. A ghost could come walking through those walls at any moment, she thought. There’d be nothing to stop it. Oh please God, don’t let a ghost walk through the wall.
Sam was prowling about shining his torch at the stones. ‘Over ’ere somewhere is where they used ter call up the devil,’ he said. ‘Here it is. Look. That’s black magic that is.’
The other two went to join him, Peggy trying not to appear too reluctant, Fred with swaggering eagerness.
The torchlight was shining on a complicated carving cut into a broad stone next to another door. It consisted of a circle inside a square, with lots of crisscrossed lines inside the circle and letters and figures all round the square. Despite her apprehension Peggy examined it closely. It had been a mistake to let them see how frightened she was downstairs. From now on she was going to keep her feelings hidden.
‘That’s not black magic,’ she said, reasonably. ‘Somebody’s cut his name on it, look. “Draper of Brystow”. And those figures are times tables. You can see.’
‘No they’re not,’ Sam insisted, annoyed by her calm. ‘They’re black magic. Everyone knows that. Because why? Because this is the very room where the ghosts walk. They used to torture people in ’ere.’
‘No they never,’ she said stoutly, hoping it wasn’t true.
‘They did,’ Fred said. ‘They used to stretch ’em on a great wooden rack. When they’d finished with ’em their arms was so long they used to trail on the floor when they walked. When they come back – you know, as ghosts,’ making the word as hideous as he could, ‘that’s how they look. With their arms all long and horrible.’
‘They don’t,’ she said, but she wasn’t quite sure. It all sounded just a little too likely in a room like this.
‘They had a torture mask to put women in an’ all,’ Fred gloated.
‘Yeh!’ his brother said. ‘When they talked too much. It had all spikes inside and they used ter wind it up tighter and tighter until all the spikes was sticking in. When they come back as ghosts, they come back all covered in blood.’ It was frightening him to think of it and Fred was looking quite green.
She didn’t argue at that, in case somebody walked through the wall and put her in a mask. She was feeling more and more upset by everything they said.
‘I’ll tell you somethink else,’ Fred said, ghoulishly. ‘If the mask didn’t work, they used ter wall ’em up alive.’
The idea of being walled up alive was so terrifying that she couldn’t keep her feelings hidden any longer.
‘They never,’ she said, her eyes bolting with fear. Oh what a dreadful thing to be walled up alive. It was making her feel panicky just to think about it.
‘Straight up. Bricked in they was an’ left ter croak.’
Fear swelled in her throat until she thought she was going to croak herself. She could imagine it, boxed in, with bricks all round her and no light and no air, boxed in, struggling to breathe, waiting to die. Oh it would be a dreadful, dreadful thing to be walled up alive.
‘Come on,’ Sam said, seizing his advantage because he could see how frightened she was. ‘They got the instruments a’ torture in the room above this. I’ll show yer.’
He was through the second door and blundering about in the passage behind it, before she could say anything.
Fred went leaping after him, waving the torch. He was taut with fear himself and it was making him swagger more than ever. ‘There’s the stairs,’ his voice called out of the darkness. ‘Come on, Peg. I dare yer!’
Left on her own with her imagination, Peggy was so frightened she hardly knew what to do. In the horrible half light the great stones of the Tower walls seemed to be moving towards her, inch by inch, ready to crush her. I shall be shut in for ever, she thought, and she could already feel herself being buried alive under all those awful stones with ghosts walking about everywhere, trailing their long arms and covered in blood. Oh please God don’t let me be buried alive. I couldn’t bear it.
‘Wait for me!’ she called, running through the archway towards the stairs. Her heart was beating so wildly she could feel it in her throat and her knees were so wobbly it was an effort to walk leave alone climb stairs, but she couldn’t stay there on her own waiting to be crushed under those walls. She couldn’t.
The second staircase was steeper and narrower than the first had been, but she stumbled up, feeling her way along the stones, peering through the dusty half-light. Then she was round the first spiral and the curve of the walls suddenly cut off the light. She was on her own in total, terrifying darkness, with the hair standing on the nape of her neck and panic crushing her chest like a vice. She turned on the sloping step and flung herself downwards again.
‘I’m going back down,’ she called, trying to be sensible even then.
‘What?’ Sam’s voice answered, eerily from the darkness.
‘I’m going back down.’
But she hadn’t gone more than four steps before something really dreadful happened. Somebody punched her in the small of the back. Somebody punched her. It was such a violent blow and so terrifying when she was already trembling in panic, that she stumbled and fell forward, losing her footing and her control at the same time and screaming like a banshee. ‘It’s the ghost! The ghost! On the stairs! Aaaaah! Aaaaaah!’
Panic and fear were constricting her throat like a noose. She was shaking all over. Even her stomach was shaking. There was nothing in the world except that awful shattering terror. She had to get out. To get out now. To get away. Now. Now.
Somehow or other her feet carried her downwards, stumbling and slipping, and then she was in the moonlight again and there was the high window gleaming before her and she threw herself at it, scrambling onto the stone sill and beating at the glass with both fists. ‘Help! Help! Dad! Oh please somebody help me!’
After that it was as if she was frozen to the glass. She went on beating and screaming, weeping incoherently, on and on, even when she was aware that there were figures on the path below her, looking up and waving their arms. She was locked in with a ghost somewhere behind her and the walls about to bury her alive and she couldn’t bear it. ‘Help! Help! Oh please help me!’
Doors banged, and there were heavy feet on the stairs, men’s feet, not ghosts’, feet with boots on, crunching, and men’s voices. ‘Hold on! We’re coming!’ and then her father was picking her up, cuddling her close, carrying her away.
‘Oh Dad! Dad! Dad!’ she wept, clinging to him. ‘I’m so glad to see you.’
‘Hush, my pretty,’ he soothed as he carried her down the spiral staircase. ‘Hush now. You’re all right.’
They were out in the fresh air, with the moon bright and clear above their heads. Bright and clear and comforting.‘Oh Dad!’
He sat down on the grass underneath the nearest gaslight and cuddled her on his lap and set her beret straight and brushed the wet hair out of her eyes and produced a clean handkerchief and told her to blow her nose like a good girl. And her sobs gradually subsided.
‘Now then,’ he said, when she was calmer, ‘tell yer ol’ Dad all about it.’
‘There was a ghost on the stair,’ she said, still clinging round his neck.
‘Did you see it?’
‘It punched me in the back.’
‘Did you see it?’ he insisted gently.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It punched me in the back.’
‘Ah, then it wasn’t a ghost,’ he said easily, patting her shoulders. ‘It was that ol’ trip stair. Caught a lot a’ people out has that ol’ trip stair.’
The twins were being marched out of the tower by their father. They looked much smaller than they’d done when they were tormenting her, smaller and crestfallen. And they were both crying.
‘A trip stair?’ she said, beginning to take comfort.
‘Oh yes,’ her father said. ‘Caught a lot a’ people out has that. Grown men an’ all. Uneven you see. Makes you trip up and when you start ter fall, well that’s like being hit in the small a’ the back. See? Just a trip stair. That’s all. Now blow yer nose again like a good girl. Time we was getting home. Yer Mum’ll wonder where you are.’
It sounded so reasonable. A trip stair. Yes, that must be it. And yet it had felt just like somebody punching her in the back.
They began to walk towards the Casemates.
‘You won’t tell Mum I was …’ she hoped, trotting along beside him.
‘Not a word,’ he said. ‘It’ll be our secret.’
‘But what if the twins go saying things?’ she worried.
‘The twins’ll have sore backsides by now,’ he said, ‘if I’m any judge of the Ser’nt Major. I don’t think the twins’ll want to tell anyone about it, and especially not your mum, or I might lam into ’em an’ all.’
‘Are we very late?’ she worried. ‘Mum’ll be ever so cross, won’t she?’
But Mum was surprisingly mild. She was sitting by the stove, darning one of Joan’s black stockings. ‘You been a long time,’ she said as they walked into the kitchen, but the words were an observation not a rebuke.
‘Got talking,’ Dad said, stooping to kiss her cheek.
‘You going back to the Club?’ Mum asked.
‘No,’ Dad said. ‘I’ll give it the go-by tonight.’
Mum folded up the stocking and put it back into her workbox. ‘Time that child was in bed,’ she said. ‘She’s all eyes. Up you go, Peggy. We’ll be along presently to tuck you in. Did you have a good day?’
By now Peggy had recovered enough to give a sensible answer. ‘Yes, Mum,’ she said. ‘The Keys was ever so good.’
‘I’ve left the landing light for you,’ Mum said. ‘Mind you don’t wake the others.’
Oh the relief of being back at home, in her own nice neat bedroom, with the light on the landing for her where it always was, and Joan and Baby asleep, the same as always, and Mum and Dad downstairs, the same as always, and everything quiet and peaceful and secure. She undressed quickly and slid between the covers into the chilly space beside her sister. And as if she knew how frightened she’d been, Joan turned over in her sleep and put out an arm to cuddle her.
It was wonderful to feel so safe again, with the great outer wall of the Tower like a strong defence behind her head, and the moat another defence beyond that, and Joan’s arms round her waist, and Dad downstairs to keep all harm away from all of them. As she drifted off to sleep she was warm and easy in the certainty that while she lived in the Tower and her dear lovely old dad was there to look after her, nothing could ever really go wrong.