These Dark Wings by John Owen Theobald Read Free Book Online Page B

arts, and that sort of thing. On battlefields, they flocked to the dead soldiers. As you may have heard me say already, they are extremely sophisticated birds. They soon discovered that when groups of men in armour meet in a field, it means dinner is coming.
    ‘So they would follow the armies and simply wait around. We misunderstood, and thought the ravens were an ill omen. We assumed they brought the death and destruction.’
    When Uncle talks of battlefields and slaughter, I think of Leslie and her giggling friends. But some part of me shivers at the echo of Oakes’s words. Their big dinner is coming.
    ‘So how do the ravens protect us?’
    Uncle gives a patient smile. I am reminded again how different he is from Mum. It’s not just his voice. Mum always had a quick temper, and she could be horribly brisk when she was doing something else, something important . Uncle is kind, his green eyes soft, apologetic. And once I saw him after breakfast reading Agatha Christie, which Mum would never have done.
    He thinks I will stay here, with him and the birds. A sudden swell of pity rises up, but Uncle doesn’t notice me.
    ‘Since Charles II, the ravens have been here, serving as sentinels. They were kept there, on the top of the White Tower, and whenever they spotted something that didn’t seem quite right, they would croak warnings.’
    Aren’t they warning us now?
    ‘It’s true, Anna. They warned of the Dutch attack, and when Colonel Blood tried to steal the Crown jewels. And who do you think it was that alerted the Warders to Guy Fawkes and his gang?’
    ‘So the ravens guard the Crown jewels?’
    ‘My dear Anna, the ravens are the Crown jewels.’
    Saturday, 12 October 1940
    If it was guns that kept the ravens out of London, they won’t be coming back now. If the war continues, Raven Mabel is gone for good.
    I have fed the birds and have hours I could spend on the wet bench before my lunch. I used to love the outdoors. At home, usually at night, I would open the back door and take huge lungfuls of air, as if being inside was the same as being underwater. Nothing felt better, even when it was cold out. But this is too cold.
    I should go the library. The room is dry and almost warm.
    Mum would have loved it there. She was always reading. Not the papers – where her own writing went – but big, heavy books, books with boring old covers, without pictures or drawings or any colour at all. She was always arranging and rearranging them in the bookcase, and anyway they were too heavy to carry anywhere. Sometimes, too, there were old Tatler magazines and she would sit flipping the thin pages, making sounds under her breath. Except in the last days, when she sat knitting and listening for the silent radio to crackle to life with news.
    The moment I rise from the bench, imagining a dry roof, Timothy Squire appears on the Green. He is walking right towards me. There is nowhere for me to go. I sit back down.
    He just saw you get up.
    Committed, I lean back and gaze around coolly. The sky above is dull with its usual clouds and fog. This, on the other hand, is unusual. All week he has said nothing to me, even when I approached him after class. It is because of the time Miss Breedon yelled at us, I’m sure. I suppose Timothy Squire thinks Miss Breedon is scarier than bombs.
    I sit as still as I can. Sometimes – like the time on Speech Day with Flo – I laugh without meaning to and carry on making strange noises. And I can feel it beginning now.
    As his footsteps reach me, I look up and see him.
    ‘I want to show you something,’ Timothy Squire says, standing right before the bench.
    ‘OK.’ My voice is a little breathless, but he is already marching away.
    Now? Are we leaving now? I have not said goodbye to Uncle. I have not warned him about Oakes.
    Smells of roasting potatoes waft towards us, making it hard to focus. Surely we can eat before we go? It is clear we are going deeper into the Tower. If he is taking me to