Читать книгу The Ravenmaster - Christopher Skaife - Страница 7

1

Silhouette

0530. Autumn. First light over London. I’m up and out of bed before the alarm. I get dressed in the dark and head straight out the door. No time even for a cup of tea. There’s always that niggling concern that something might have gone wrong overnight. And if things go wrong, things can go badly wrong.

I can already hear the lorries and the white vans and the early-morning commuters coming into town. Tower Bridge Road, Fenchurch Street, London Bridge. There’s that hum – the sound of the City awakening.

I hurry up the stone spiral staircase by the Flint Tower, the London skyline bright with lights and winking behind me. I see the old Port of London Authority Building, which is now home to a fancy hotel, but was once responsible for the comings and goings of ships all the way up and down the Thames. Behind that stand the Cheesegrater and the Walkie-Talkie and the Gherkin, the big new skyscrapers with their funny little nicknames.

Past the Chapel and the Waterloo Barracks and out onto Tower Green and there’s that proper morning smell of London, that mixture of exhaust fumes, the river, fresh-ground coffee, and the beautiful sweet incongruous smell of fresh-cut grass on Tower Green. Tower Bridge is hunched up ahead, with HMS Belfast reliably anchored on the river to the south.

There’s no one around in the Tower, just me and the shadows of a thousand years of history.

I call out, and at first there’s nothing but silence. I call out again. There’s always that moment of fear as I scan the skyline. But then I see her: perched on one of the rooftops of the Tower buildings, a silhouette against the blue-grey dawn.

‘Good morning,’ I say.

And a good morning it is.

The ravens are at home in the Tower.

I can breathe easy again – the kingdom is safe for another day.