Chapter Twelve The Ghost in the Room #2
Anne ushered Alice, stubborn in her reluctance, down the street, shushing her and exhorting her to hurry.
The two strode past Billingsgate harbor, which was in the process of closing down for the evening.
Dockworkers loaded and unloaded a final few crates of goods from the large ships that kept London’s import and export market humming.
The ground floors of the timber-framed buildings that lined Thames Street, which mostly housed shipping-related businesses—rope merchants, coopers, carpenters, blacksmiths who beat out the many iron parts that held the towering ships together—were darkened, closed for the evening.
The upper floors, residences, were lit with candles, and through the windows Anne could see families finishing their suppers, laughing, playing games.
She wished that she could float up off the street and settle into one of the cozy merchant homes, perhaps play the role of a long-lost cousin come to visit from the countryside, gather a few rosy-cheeked children on her lap, and snuggle in beside a crackling fire.
The two walked on, into Tower Street Ward, where, the Tower now in sight, Anne spied a dirt alley that ran between several crowded buildings, down to the riverbank.
Surefooted, Anne scampered through the narrow alley, pulling Alice behind her.
She knew all the roads and alleys around the Tower, from her time here before her coronation, when she’d been heavily pregnant with Elizabeth and eager to leave her apartments and walk around the grounds and the streets surrounding them.
Of course, a team of ladies had trailed her wherever she went, reminding her to be careful of the prince in her belly.
“Stay here,” Anne instructed when the two reached the paved walkway that ran the length of the river.
Here, past Billingsgate and the quays, the riverside was quiet, dark.
The walkway dropped off steeply, a stone retaining wall separating the higher ground they stood on from the riverbank.
Anne gestured toward a ladder that led to the riverbank.
“Climb down and hide against the wall. The guards are changing. I’m sure you saw the red-coated men in front of us, heading for the Tower. ”
Alice nodded, warily.
“ ’Tis dusk. The light dwindles. I’ll sneak in behind them while they’re distracted with the change,” Anne explained. “I’ll be in and out quickly.”
“My lady,” Alice said, her voice low and full of warning, “you are mad.”
But Anne was already walking away from her.
“Get down by the river and hide,” she urged.
“I’ll be back shortly.” Anne retraced her steps, back up the alley, turning for a moment to see Alice’s head disappearing below the stone wall as she descended the ladder.
Good. Alice would be safe there, hidden.
Back on Thames Street, Anne settled her pace a few yards behind the guards returning to the Tower.
She followed the men as they neared the bridge over the Tower moat.
The bridge to the Tower of London consisted of two portions, joined together at a right angle, so it looked like a backward 7, if one were standing at the Tower side, having already crossed the moat, or a backward L, if one were standing at the bridge’s beginning, on land, waiting to cross.
What starts with L? Anne thought, to occupy her mind as she slunk through the shadows behind the tipsy guards, down the first line of the backward L.
Lion, two of which lived in the menagerie by Byward Tower, which she would pass through shortly.
Lady, which she had been once. Loyalty, which she hadn’t been shown.
Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Beneath the bridge the water of the moat lapped gently.
Anne stepped softly. Licentious, like her womanizing husband.
She ran her hand along the railing, drew her cloak tightly around herself so the gray fabric enveloped her, so she became more like a shadow.
Larder, keep a full one to have ample food for the long winter.
Larks, which would trill here in the morning.
Lanterns, which she hoped no one would light and spy her.
She rounded the corner of the L and passed beneath the arches of the Middle Tower.
Limestone, from which the outer and inner walls of the Tower were constructed.
Liberty, as in a territory, like the Liberty of the Clink, but also as in freedom, which she now had, the liberty of the resurrected to traipse through the Liberty of the Tower.
Love, as she loved her daughter. She trailed the guards up the long upstroke of the backward L, keeping a dozen paces behind.
Lilies, which would bloom soon. Lack, there were so many things that she was missing.
Lust, as Henry had felt for her, and others.
Anne kept a fast pace, kept to the stone wall of the bridge.
Lemons, and other citrus, which arrived in winter on ships from Spain.
Life, which she seemed to have more of than she deserved.
Luck, which she hoped she’d have, glancing at the arrow slits in the Tower wall.
She hoped they weren’t manned by archers.
They must not have been. No arrows flew.
Lilibet, the name she sometimes called her daughter.
Land, which she could see in dark silhouette on the side of the moat she’d just left. Alice waited for her there.
The guards in front of her chattered merrily.
At Byward Tower they greeted their comrades, exchanged news of the day, swapped pleasantries, stories, and ribbings.
They didn’t see the slight woman lurking behind them, hidden by the shadows of the angles and pitches of the Tower wall.
She slipped through the double-arched gates behind the men, beneath the double iron portcullises, which were suspended by metal chains that could be released to send them crashing down, to bar the way.
No one saw her, no one noticed. The guards gathered outside Byward Tower, chatting, waiting for the Ceremony of the Keys, which would commence in about an hour, near ten o’clock, when the gates would be locked.
Anne needed to hurry. From the menagerie pit, she heard the lion and lioness prowl and roar. Late, do not be late.
—
Anne had often thought that the Tower of London was shaped like an uneven pentagon, a pentagon drawn by a child, a drunkard, or a fool.
Though she supposed all kings a bit foolish, puffed up as they were by their councils, chancellors, courtiers, wives, children, by all around them assuring them of their valor and righteousness, of their brilliance.
The Tower was surrounded by two walls, the outer and inner curtains, and a horseshoe-shaped moat that sat abreast the Thames and rose and fell with the tides of the river.
A dozen individual towers dotted the inner curtain.
The Beauchamp Tower. The Flint Tower. The Salt Tower.
The Bloody Tower—Anne shuddered to think of it.
Within the perimeter of the inner curtain: the inner ward and the Tower buildings.
The White Tower sat in the center of the inner ward, that old stone fortress William the Conqueror built, which attracted ravens, who nested on its roof.
In life, Anne had found the birds ominous, their bald caws and intelligent eyes. Hungry for death, they’d seemed.
Off the White Tower, in the southeast corner of the Tower grounds, the much newer royal apartments and queen’s lodgings stretched, and the king’s hall, where feasts were hosted and trials held, including Anne’s.
These newer buildings were large, bold structures, with finely decorated rooms, constructed in the inmost ward, the private courtyard where the king and queen could gather with their favored courtiers.
St. Peter ad Vincula, the chapel from which she’d risen two days ago, stood in the northwest corner of the inner ward, before a series of timber buildings Henry and his father had constructed that housed the vast number of courtiers and visitors that frequented the Tower, as well as their many servants, and sometimes soldiers.
The mint, however, was in the outer ward, the wide lane that ran between the outer and inner curtains, where the guards and other service workers lived and made their lives in houses built between the walls.
The mint wasn’t far north of Byward Tower, in an area of the outer ward known as Mint Street, which also housed the various workshops associated with the mint as well as houses for the minters and their families.
Avoiding the guards gathered at Byward Gate, Anne kept to the shadows, concealed, heading north.
Soon she came upon Mint Street, which at this hour was quiet.
By now the sky was dark. The windows of the minters’ houses, too, were dark, the minters asleep for the night, recovering from long shifts stamping coins, the heat of the mint furnace, and the exhaustion of all the jobs of the mint: smelting metal, pouring the smelted metal into molds to form the disk-shape of a coin, sliding the hot metal disks between two iron dies, holding the iron dies steady, swinging the hammer against the dies to strike the face of the king on each coin.
Anne had visited the mint early in her queenship and been fascinated with the process.
She’d imagined her own son’s face being stamped onto the coins of England one day. Now she imagined Elizabeth’s.