about me. I was in the Bloody Tower, in Sir Walter Raleigh’s room. I was lying on the four-poster bed and he was sitting beside me passing a foul-smelling bottle under my nose. I pushed it away and sat up. ‘Sweet cousin, believe me you have nothing to fear,’ he said. ‘I am, as you see, a ghost – a misfortune I have had to learn to live with. But certain it is that I mean you no harm. On the contrary, you are my dearest cousin, else I should not have appeared to you as I did.’
My voice found itself again. ‘You? You are Sir Walter Raleigh?’ He nodded. ‘You were at the party? It was you at the party?’ He nodded again.
‘Aye,’ he said. ‘I am Walter Raleigh, or what is left of him.’
‘But that Miss Soper, she said they cut off your head. How . . .?’
‘You mean how is it that you see me now in my undamaged state?’ He chuckled. ‘I cannot tell you, dearest Bess, for I do not know. Faith, it is as perplexing to be a ghost as it was to be alive. But in truth, I am glad to have my head again for it was always the best part of me and, though I say it myself, many considered it a passing handsome face even in old age. What say you, cousin?’ And he turned his head so that I could see his profile against the dim light of the window.
‘Bess used to think my nose was quite perfect – she said as much, and often.’
‘Bess?’
‘Bess Throckmorton. She was my dear, dear wife,’ he replied, suddenly sad. ‘No man ever had such a dear sweet wife and no man ever treated a wife so cruelly. I left her behind in this world with nothing. Nothing. It hurts to say it even now, but I left my whole family with nothing.’
‘But that’s my name too,’ I said. ‘I’m Bess Throckmorton.’
He nodded.
‘Indeed it is, cousin. Indeed it is, and as I told you, you are much like her, too. I miss her, I miss her to this day.’ His voice hardened with anger. ‘You see cousin, when they dubbed me traitor and cut off my head, they cut off my fortune too and reduced my Bess to poverty. My head they were welcome to – I had worn that long enough – but they stole my fortune and impoverished my family, and for that I shall never forgive them. One day I shall have my revenge. Mark me well, cousin. I shall be avenged.’
At that moment I heard footsteps outside the door. Walter Raleigh pulled me close to him and enveloped me in his cloak. He held me tight. ‘Be still, cousin,’ he whispered. ‘Inside my cloak they shall not see you.’
The Beefeater was the first to come in, followed by a troop of several tourists all hung about with cameras and anoraks. ‘Can’t think how the door came to be shut. Always left open,’ said the Beefeater. ‘Anyway, here it is, the Bloody Tower, so called because it was from here in the cold light of dawn that many an unfortunate prisoner was taken down below to Tower Green for his execution. It was here in this very place that Sir Walter Raleigh spent thirteen years of his natural life.’ He bent down, put his hands on his knees and spoke to the children. ‘You’ve heard of Walter Raleigh. He was the one that laid his cloak in a puddle so Queen Elizabeth could walk across without getting her feet all muddy.’
‘What did he want to do that for?’ said someone, but the Beefeater ignored it and went on. ‘And it was here he wrote his famous history of the world and his famous prayer the night before they cut off his head. Let me see now, how does it go? Let me see. Yes.’ He cleared his throat and put his hand on his chest:
‘Even such is time! Who takes in trust
Our youth, our joys, and all we have,
And pays us but with age and dust;
Who, in the dark and silent grave,
When we have wandered all our ways,
Shuts up the story of our days!
But from this earth, this grave, this dust,
The Lord will raise me up I trust.
‘Not bad, eh, to make that up the night before you have your head cut off? Brave man he was, must have been eh? And every evening y’know he’d walk up and down the ramparts out there to stretch his legs. Raleigh’s Walk we call it now.’ He bent down and spoke in a hushed voice to a little boy who was sucking his finger. ‘And there’s some who say he still does.’
‘But you haven’t ever seen him, though?’ said the little boy’s mother quickly, more to reassure herself than her son, I thought. The little boy’s eyes were wide with terror. He had his whole hand in his mouth now.
‘Nope,’ said the Beefeater, smiling conspiratorially and stroking his moustache, ‘not myself I haven’t, but I knowed someone that knowed someone else who knew a friend of his and his cousin’s niece’s nephew said he’d seen it.’ And he boomed with laughter as they all did.
When they’d finished it was the boy’s father who spoke. ‘How come he was put in here anyhow?’ he said. They were Americans. You could tell from their accents and their haircuts and their spongy shoes. ‘After all, didn’t he find America for you British? I mean, we wouldn’t be speaking English if he hadn’t found the good old U S of A, would we? We’d be speaking Spanish or Dutch or something. And didn’t he sink lots of those Spanish galleons for you in the Armada? And didn’t he burn lots of others?’
His wife joined in. ‘Yeah, and wasn’t it Walter Raleigh who brought back the potatoes from Virginia and taught you British how to grow them?’
The Beefeater stroked his moustache and thought for a while. ‘I believe he did, lady. I believe he did. All I know is, he was a traitor and that’s why he found himself inside here. I mean he wouldn’t hardly have been put in here if he was innocent, would he?’ At this the Americans looked at each other and fell silent, until the little boy piped up. ‘Mommy,’ he said. ‘It smells in here.’
‘Well it is old, dear,’ said his mother. ‘Perhaps it’s the damp.’
‘You’re right, son,’ said his father, lifting his nose and sniffing the air. ‘Smells just like tobacco smoke to me – cigars, perhaps.’
A tall man in spectacles at the back of the party spoke next. He was carrying a book in his hand and he spoke very deliberately and earnestly. ‘In zis book it say zat Sir Valter Raleigh was ze virst man’ (he wasn’t an American this one, I could tell) ‘who brought ze smoking of ze tobacco in England.’
‘That’s right, sir,’ said the Beefeater. He leant down and whispered to the little boy again. ‘P’raps it’s old Sir Walter himself puffing away on his pipe, son. P’raps that’s what you’re smelling.’ The boy’s hand went straight back into his mouth and everyone roared with laughter, except the boy and his mother. ‘Before you go, ladies and gentlemen, you’d better take the opportunity to walk up and down Raleigh’s Walk a few times – it’s just outside the door. It’ll give you a feel of the place. Like I said, old Walter Raleigh himself used to pace up and down there every day he was here.’
But the tall bespectacled man had not yet finished. He waved his guide book in the air. ‘But I do not exactly understand,’ he said. ‘Zey cut off his head in ze end, yes?’
‘That’s right sir,’ said the Beefeater, trying his best to be patient.
