The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart Read Free Book Online Page B

Let’s not forget the Peasants’ Revolt, when all those hoodlums stormed the place.”
    “That was back in 1381, sir.”
    “I’m well aware of that, Yeoman Warder Jones. But the point is that the Tower is not infallible. We must be alert at all times, not gazing around the place enjoying the view.”
    The Beefeater looked through the arrow slit behind the Chief Yeoman Warder’s head as he remembered the last time he had been called into the office. On that occasion the man had bothered to get to his feet when he came in, and immediately offered him his condolences. “I know exactly how you feel,” he had insisted. “When we lost Sally we were just devastated. She had such an extraordinary character. One of the most intelligent dogs we’ve ever had. She’d been with us for nine years. How old was the little chap again?”
    “Eleven,” Balthazar Jones had replied. He then looked at his hands, while the Chief Yeoman Warder’s gaze fell to his desk. The silence was eventually broken with an offer of more time off work, which Balthazar Jones refused, insisting that the three days had been sufficient. He left to walk the battlements, hoping to find a reason to live.

    “ARE YOU LISTENING, Yeoman Warder Jones?” the Chief Yeoman Warder asked from behind the desk.
    The Beefeater, his cloud-white hair flattened from his hat, turned his gaze to him and asked: “How’s the new dog?”
    “She’s fine, thank you for asking. Top of the obedience class.”
    Balthazar Jones’s gaze returned to the view through the arrow slit.
    The Chief Yeoman Warder studied him with a frown. “I don’t think you realise that your future here hangs in the balance. I suggest you sit there for a while and think things over,” he said, getting up. “This can’t go on.”
    The Beefeater jumped as the door slammed. He looked down at his hat and slowly wiped away the raindrops that shone like diamonds on its crown. Too defeated to get to his feet, he stared ahead of him. His mind turned once more to the night Milo died and his terrible, terrible secret. When his stomach eventually settled, his eyes dropped again to his hat, and he wiped it with the tips of his fingers, though nothing was there. Standing up, he put it back on, tugged open the door, and returned to duty.
    By the time the letter arrived from Oswin Fielding asking him to come to the Palace to discuss the new menagerie, Balthazar Jones had convinced himself that his new duty would protect him from losing his job, which had given him a reason to get up in the morning when the weight of remorse pinned him to the sheets. He slipped the letter into his tunic pocket, where it remained hidden from his wife, along with the crumbs from the biscuits she forbade him to eat to safeguard his heart.

    ON THE MORNING HE WAS DUE to meet the Queen, the Beefeater sat on the bed in his dressing gown waiting for the final echo of his wife’s footsteps as she descended the spiralstaircase. He scurried to one of the lattice windows to check that she was on her way to work. Through the ancient glass he recognised instantly the gait of a woman determined to reunite a lost possession with its absent-minded owner. He fetched from the wardrobe his red and gold state dress uniform, which Oswin Fielding had insisted he wear for the occasion. And, with the thrill of a woman about to put on her most alluring underwear, he retrieved his white linen ruff from the trouser press.
    He started to dress in front of the mirror, which for the last eight years had stood on the floor as he had been unable to mount it on the circular walls. It was a miserable room, as miserable as the living room downstairs, despite the efforts he and Hebe Jones had made to disguise the Salt Tower’s repugnant past as a prison. The cheerful curtains he had made for the windows not only failed to keep out the draughts, but threw into sharp relief the wretchedness of the place.
    The couple had pushed the wardrobe in front of the worst