Hastening into the daylight, I watched it carry off its treasure, to secrete it somewhere high on the battlements.
I stood transfixed, admiring its fluid, swooping flight until an angry shout from behind alerted me. ‘Hey! Clear the way! D’you want to get killed?’ I jumped to the side again as another laden cart trundled past, the driver red-faced and yelling. ‘God’s blood, woman! There’s no room for stupid skirts in here.’
Fearing more vehicles, I made a run for the gate at the other end of the moat bridge and took refuge through a door in an adjacent building, which I knew should contain the office of the man in charge. I felt in the purse on my belt and removed the letter within.
‘Tell me, what business can a female possibly have in a military fortress?’ The young Lieutenant Constable was hook-nosed and handsome, with all the hubris of noble privilege and not a hint of charm. He had given my letter barely a glance.
‘I am on royal business, sir, as the letter says.’ I held out my hand. ‘May I have it back? I know where I am going.’
His eyes scanned the page and rested on the signature at the bottom. ‘Who is MR?’ he asked, refolding the note and handing it to me.
I could have remarked that he should know but I desisted. ‘Margaret, Countess of Richmond, is the king’s mother – MR is her cypher.’ Knowing the lady well, as I did, I reflected that it could equally be a monogram for ‘Margaret Regina’ but resisted the temptation to point this out.
He did not respond verbally but his curled lip and disapproving sniff were revealing. It was only weeks since Lady Margaret’s son, Henry Tudor, had taken the throne ‘by right and conquest’, to become King Henry the Seventh of England and there were still plenty of dissenting Yorkists among minor royal officials. I didn’t give this one many more days in his present post.
As I hurried along the narrow street between the twin curtain walls that defended the fortress from a river attack, I couldn’t resist searching for more signs of ravens on the battlements of the main keep, which reared above me to my left. These enigmatic birds had haunted my dreams ever since I had made that first fearful childhood trip to the Tower to visit my mother. Whatever the men had said about it being no place for women, I could have begged to differ. My mother, Katherine Vaux, had lived within its intimidating walls for two years and the captive lady she had served there had once been Queen of England.
My grandfather, a doctor from Piedmont, had been physician to the Duke of Anjou’s family and in her childhood my mother had been invited to join their schoolroom. When the duke’s daughter Marguerite married King Henry the Sixth of England, she had travelled with her to his court and later married one of his household knights, Sir William Vaux, becoming an English citizen. When civil war erupted and Edward of York snatched the throne, forcing King Henry and Queen Marguerite to flee their kingdom, my loyal Lancastrian parents escaped with my young brother Nicholas to my mother’s birthplace in Piedmont. A few months later, I was born and baptised Giovanna, after my Italian grandmother.
My baptismal name may be Giovanna, but English is not a lyrical language like Italian is. Here in my mother’s adopted country I have become plain Joan; and plain is what the English think me, as I am not pink-cheeked and golden-haired like the beauties they admire. I have olive skin and dark features – black brows over ebony eyes and hair the colour of a raven’s wing. With my full lips and straight nose, many consider me odd, or probably, to put it bluntly, ugly. ‘Jolie-laide’ is what the French used to call me, more kindly. Perhaps that is one reason why I habitually wear dark colours and am so drawn to the big black birds that haunt the cliff-like walls of the Tower and why, as I hastened to my meeting on that late September day, I was enraged at seeing one of the sentry archers on the battlements take aim at a raven as it flew close to his position on the roof of the Royal Palace. Luckily the arrow missed its target but I was still seething while I negotiated my way past another set of guards and into the fortress’s intimidating limewashed keep, known as the White Tower.
‘May I ask what a young lady like you is doing here?’
At least this time the inquiry was couched politely and came from a trimly bearded man of obvious status, wearing a furred gown, with a gold chain about his shoulders and a black hat pinned with a jewelled brooch. I had almost run into him in the gloom of the main troop-gathering hall, which was empty and echoing and lit only by the daylight filtering through a few high barred windows. Swallowing my first indignant riposte, I made him a brief curtsy.
‘I’ve been sent by My Lady the King’s Mother, sir.’ Once again I offered my letter of charge.
‘Have you indeed? Let me see.’ In order to scan the script he had to squint and hold it up to what little light there was, then he made me a courteous bow. ‘Welcome to the Tower of London, Mistress Vaux. I am Sir Richard Guildford, the king’s Master of Ordnance, in charge of the guns and weapons that are held here. But I cannot believe they are relevant to your purpose. I see you are bidden to the Chapel of St John. For what reason, I wonder?’
I shook my head. ‘We would both like to know the answer to that, Sir Richard, but it is a royal command, which one does not query.’
He inclined his head. ‘Indeed.’
‘I have a question for you though, sir.’ I took a steadying breath before plunging on. ‘If you are in charge of weapons, why are the archers wasting arrows, firing them at the ravens? What harm have they done?’
Even in the dim light I could see his cheeks flush and his next words were delivered with savage emphasis. ‘Those ravens are the devil’s demons – filthy scavengers and harbingers of death! All soldiers hate them and the archers are encouraged to use them for target practice. An arrow is retrievable, preferably with a dead bird attached.’
Or possibly a dead passer-by, I thought. I bit back any comment but he must have noticed my look of angry astonishment. I wondered how a man who lived and worked in the Tower could be ignorant of the widespread belief among Londoners that the presence of ravens was essential to the fortress’s security and that of the city and the kingdom they inhabited. This folk legend and its subjects had stayed with me ever since I had heard it as a child from the old garrison knight and over the ensuing years I had made it my business to read whatever I could find on both the birds and the belief.
During the resulting silence he recovered his composure and gave me a brief smile. ‘Now, Mistress Vaux, may I call someone to show you to the Chapel of St John?’
Although I could not bring myself to return the smile, I made an acknowledging bob. ‘Thank you, Sir Richard, but I know the way.’
I sensed his puzzled gaze following me to the foot of the long stair. Like all castle chapels, it was situated above the other chambers, giving prayers a clear path to heaven, and on other visits to my mother and the captive queen I had made the climb to the top of the White Tower to find them at Mass. On this occasion two Ushers of the King’s Chamber were there still wearing the blue and murrey household livery issued under the Yorkist kings, along with an assortment of other men in civilian dress. I was acquainted with one of the ushers, a landed squire called Nicholas Gainsford, and as soon as I arrived he began lecturing us on how anything we saw or heard that morning was to be considered a state secret and revealed to no one; everything had to be committed to memory and nothing written down. Having calmed my alarm on behalf of the ravens, I felt my heart flutter anew at Usher Gainsford’s stern admonishments.
Bizarrely, the frame of a large bedstead had been erected in the chapel nave and it was to this that he proceeded to direct our attention, impatiently beckoning us to gather around it. I received curious glances from the strange men as we jostled for position, aware that the
