Chapter 4
The entrance to the Wakefield Tower was guarded by both a Yeoman Warder and a Hotspur sentry. Because of the sentry’s requisite impassivity, Daisy couldn’t tell whether they were at daggers drawn. For all she knew, the feud between the two factions might have been grossly exaggerated.
The Chief Warder greeted the yeoman, “Anyone up there now, Mr. Biggle?”
“Just a couple with small kiddies, went up a few minutes ago. Don’t s’pose they’ll be long. Waste of a shilling, if you ask me, taking the little ones up.”
“Right you are. Mrs. Fletcher here’s a friend of the Governor, don’t need a ticket. A journalist she is, too. Member of the press.”
Mr. Biggle saluted, looking properly impressed. Pleased by Crabtree’s recognition of her professional credentials, Daisy warmed further towards him. He couldn’t help being boring.
“I won’t take up any more of your time, Mr. Crabtree,” she said. Mentally crossing her fingers behind her back, she thanked him for getting her tour off to a good start. Wondering whether she ought to tip him, she decided his rank was too exalted, even in the interests of Saint Peter ad Vincula.
Ad Vincula? What was a vincula? Her school had considered Latin too exacting for female brains. Perhaps Sir Patrick would know.
She went into the tower. Another two warders were posted in the ground-floor guardroom, their halberds—no, they were called partizans, Crabtree had told her—leaning against the wall, close at hand. Daisy nodded to them and started for the steps, only to meet Sir Patrick bustling down.
He was closely followed by a small boy at a gallop, who, in turn, was followed by a plaintive female voice. “Not so fast, Johnnie! You’ll take a tumble for sure!”
Daisy and Sir Patrick stepped aside to let the anxious mother collar her son.
The Keeper of the Regalia shook Daisy’s hand with enthusiasm.
“Delighted, dear lady, delighted. It’s not often I get a chance to show off my little baubles.
The yeomen handle tourists, and very nicely, too, and I leave my curator to cope with the general run of journalists, don’t you know.
Excellent fellow, very hard worker. I gave him a few days off while I’m in town. Told him I’d take care of you.”
Daisy wasn’t sure whether she was above the general run because her husband was a Scotland Yard detective or because her father had been a viscount.
Nor was she sure that Sir Patrick would prove the best person to tell her about the Crown Jewels.
But she expressed her appreciation, and, as a man’s shoes and trousers appeared descending the stairs, she asked, “I’ve been wondering, what does vincula mean, as in ‘Saint Peter ad’? Do you happen to know?”
“Vincula?” Sir Patrick looked blank. “Good heavens, that’s quite a poser. Something to do with flowers, isn’t it? Periwinkle, that’s it, the Latin name for periwinkle. I dabble a bit in gardening down at my country place.”
Daisy’s botanical Latin was as sparse as her classical or church Latin, but what Saint Peter had to do with periwinkles was unclear to her. A second opinion was called for, she felt.
Amid objurgations from the anxious young woman—“Stop wriggling, Maryanne, or you’ll make your dad trip!”—the father reached the bottom, a girl child on his shoulders. The family departed.
Daisy preceded Sir Patrick up the winding stair. She came out into a spacious, high-ceilinged octagonal room. In the centre was a plate-glass enclosure, reinforced by steel bars, behind which lurked a fabulous treasure of gems. On each side of the room stood yet another armed Yeoman Warder.
“Plenty of guards,” Daisy observed with a smile.
“Good heavens, yes. Can’t be too careful. Wouldn’t want any funny business on my watch.” The Keeper scowled suspiciously at the man who came around the display at that moment. “Look at him, for instance. No part of his duties!”
Peering through bottle-bottom glasses at a sheaf of papers in his hand, the Resident Governor’s ADC was oblivious of Sir Patrick’s inimical stare.
“Good morning, Mr. F—Webster,” said Daisy.
Webster looked up. “Uh . . .”
“Mrs. Fletcher,” Sir Patrick reminded him testily. “You made the lady’s acquaintance yesterday.”
“Oh, ah, good morning, Mrs. Fletcher.”
“You must be working on your dissertation on the Crown Jewels,” Daisy suggested, wanting to deflect Sir Patrick’s suspicion, the more so since she had had the same unworthy thought.
“I am. I have here notes of ancient descriptions of the royal regalia, and some sketches made by an artist of original paintings of kings and queens. I intend to prove that the ruby now set in the King’s State Crown cannot possibly be that given to the Black Prince by Pedro the Cruel and worn by Henry the Fifth at Agincourt. ”
“Balderdash!” Sir Patrick was furious. “Of course it is the same stone.”
Leaving them to their argument, Daisy wandered over to a sort of large alcove in one wall. One of the yeomen followed her.
“Henry the Sixth’s oratory, madam, where he was murdered at his prayers. Stabbed, he was. They send flowers on the anniversary every year still, Eton and King’s, Cambridge, the colleges he founded. White lilies and white roses. And his ghost walks—”
Sir Patrick overheard. “Balderdash!” he cried again.
“Stuff and nonsense!” muttered Webster. “Ghosts indeed!”
The Keeper glanced at him with a more kindly eye, then turned his disapproving gaze on Daisy. Busy scribbling down this useful tidbit in her own personal version of Pitman’s shorthand, she announced, “Readers love ghosts.”
The yeoman winked at her.
“Mrs. Fletcher,” said Sir Patrick severely, “allow me to point out the various items of the Regalia and tell you something of their history. Unhappily, as Mr. Webster has pointed out, they are not the original crowns worn by the kings and queens of England before the Commonwealth. Those were destroyed by Cromwell. These are, however, set with the same stones, as well as the Koh-i-Noor ruby and the Stars of Africa cut from the Cullinan diamond.”
Daisy dutifully admired the orb and sceptre and a multiplicity of crowns.
The first two were constants, but no monarch, apparently, was content to be crowned with his predecessor’s headgear.
It reminded Daisy of ladies who wouldn’t be seen dead at Ascot in last year’s hat.
She didn’t voice the thought. Sir Patrick might consider it lèse-majesté and have her clapped up in one of the convenient dungeons.
Light reflecting off the polished glass made it difficult to appreciate the splendours of the collection.
Daisy concentrated on noting down the few snippets of information she hadn’t already gleaned from her history book.
The Keeper was more conversant with the Regalia than she had expected, since he had described his position as a “sinecure.” He told the stories well, too, making a fine dramatic tale of Captain Blood’s failed attempt to steal the Crown Jewels.
But she couldn’t help noticing that he kept a watchful eye on Jeremy Webster as he told it.
Webster was oblivious of the scrutiny. He went on poring over his notes and sketches and peering into the glass case, until a sudden ping startled him.
He delved into an inner pocket, in the process scattering papers on the floor.
While one of the yeomen picked them up for him, he brought out a repeater watch, opened and consulted it, and moaned, “Oh dear, I shall be late.”
Oh, my ears and whiskers! thought Daisy as Jeremy Fisher, now playing the part of the White Rabbit, grabbed his papers and dashed for the stairs.
Then he stopped abruptly and took a step backwards, looking appalled.
Sir Patrick gasped.
From the stairwell a huge curved axe-head rose up, on the end of a pole.
After it came a blue Tudor bonnet, beneath which was a face Daisy recognized, much of it concealed by a huge bushy beard.
The Yeoman Gaoler stepped into the room.
With a bland glance at Webster, who scuttled past him and disappeared, he said, “I thought Mrs. Fletcher might like to see my ceremonial axe.”
The Keeper gave him a dirty look. “Mrs. Fletcher, this is Mr. Rumford, whom General Carradine has picked to give you a tour of the Tower. I’ll say good-bye for now, but I hope to see you again while you’re working here.”
With a slight bow, he shook her hand, then abandoned her.
Taking from his pocket a large iron key, he unlocked a door across from the stairs; he disappeared through it, and locked it behind him with a click audible through the thick oak.
Meanwhile, the yeoman at the oratory had sneaked round behind Rumford’s back and vanished downward after Webster.
The remaining yeoman stood stiffly against the wall, holding his partizan with the butt resting on the floor.
No one wanted to be in the same room as Rumford and his axe.
He couldn’t be physically dangerous, Daisy told herself a trifle nervously.
He wasn’t going to attack with that horrible instrument of death, or he wouldn’t be allowed to walk around carrying it, wouldn’t hold the position of Yeoman Gaoler.
No, Fay claimed he had a nasty habit of “seeing through walls.” That was an unendearing trait, enough to make people avoid him, especially anyone with a guilty conscience.
Did Webster really have designs upon the Crown Jewels? What about Sir Patrick? As Keeper, he had far greater opportunities to abstract the odd diamond.
Stuff and nonsense! She was letting her imagination run away with her, all too easy in the melodramatic atmosphere of the Tower. Besides, Rumford’s inquisitorial scrutiny was enough to make anyone feel guilty.
“Good morning,” she said. “I’m looking forward to seeing everything.”