Patriot games - Tom Clancy [63]
"My name's Jack, and my arm's okay."
"I had a cast just like that one back in sixty-eight, I think it was. Training accident," Evans said with a rueful shake of his head. "Landed on a stone fence. Hurt like the very devil for weeks."
"But you kept jumping." And did your push-ups one-handed, didn't you?
"Of course." Evans stopped. "Right, now this imposing edifice is the Middle Tower. There used to be an outer structure right there where the souvenir shop is. They called it the Lion Tower, because that's where the royal menagerie was kept until 1834."
The speech was delivered as perfectly as Evans had done, several times per day, for the past four years. My first castle, Jack thought, looking at the stone walls.
"Was the moat for-real?"
"Oh, yes, and a very unpleasant one at that. The problem, you see, was that it was designed so that the river would wash in and out every day, thereby keeping it fresh and clean. Unfortunately the engineer didn't do his sums quite right, and once the water came in, it stayed in. Even worse, everything that got thrown away by the people living here was naturally enough thrown into the moat-and stayed there, and rotted. I suppose it served a tactical purpose, though. The smell of the moat alone must have been sufficient to keep all but the most adventurous chaps away. It was finally drained in 1843, and now it serves a really useful purpose-the children can play football there. On the far side are swings and jungle gyms. Do you have children?"
"One and a ninth," Cathy answered.
"Really?" Evans smiled in the darkness. "Bloody marvelous! I suppose that's one Yank who will be forever-at least a little-British! Moira and I have two, both of them born overseas. Now this is the Byward Tower."
"These things all had drawbridges, right?" Jack asked.
"Yes, the Lion and Middle towers were essentially islands with twenty or so feet of smelly water around them. You'll also notice that the path into the grounds has a right-angle turn. The purpose of that, of course, was to make life difficult for the chaps with the battering ram."
Jack looked at the width of the moat and the height of the walls as they passed into the Tower grounds proper. "So nobody ever took this place?"
Evans shook his head. "There has never been a serious attempt, and I wouldn't much fancy trying today."
"Yeah," Ryan agreed. "You sweat having somebody come in and bomb the place?"
"That's happened, I am sorry to say, in the White Tower, over ten years ago-terrorists. Security is somewhat tighter now," Evans said.
In addition to the Yeoman Warders there were uniformed guards like those Ryan had encountered on The Mall, wearing the same red tunics and bearskin hats, and carrying the same kind of modern rifle. It was rather an odd contrast to Evans' period uniform, but no one seemed to notice.
"You know, of course, that this facility served many purposes over the years. It was the royal prison, and as late as World War Two, Rudolf Hess was kept here. Now, do you know who was the first Queen of England to be executed here?"
"Anne Boleyn," Cathy answered.
"Very good. They teach our history in America?" Evans asked.
"Masterpiece Theater," Cathy explained. "I saw the TV show."
"Well, then you know that all the private executions were carried out with an ax-except hers. King Henry had a special executioner imported from France; he used a sword instead of an ax."
"He didn't want it to hurt?" Cathy asked with a twisted smile. "Nice of him."
"Yes, he was a considerate chap, wasn't he? And this is Traitor's Gate. You might be interested to know that it was originally called the Water Gate."
Ryan laughed. "Lucky for you guys too, eh?"
"Indeed. Prisoners were taken through this gate by boat to Westminster for trial."
"Then back here for their haircuts?"
"Only the really important ones. Those executions-they were private instead of public-were done on the Tower Green. The public executions were carried out elsewhere." Evans led them through the gate in the Bloody Tower, after explaining its history. Ryan wondered