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“Why would anyone do such a dreadful thing?” Collin asked, leaning close.

“Mad Willy was jealous, tha's why. Mary Ann was getting her fair share of attention from a gentleman toff at the tavern where she worked. Proper gentleman toff he was, too. Mary Ann liked to crow about it every chance she got.” Dora's face darkened. “Tried putting on airs even wiff me, she did.” Dora shifted her position on the stool so her thigh was touching Collin's. Then she pitched her voice high in imitation of Mary Ann:

“
‘
Look here, Dora!
'
says Mary Ann to me,
‘
ain
'
t I a fine lady now? I got right lovely clothes, a goodly sum of the ready, and me gentleman friend says there
'
s lots more where that comes from.
'
”
The faintest shadow of a smile touched Dora's lips. “Didn't do Mary Ann no good now, did it?”

“A toff, you say?” Toby pressed. “You know his name, don't you?”

“I might and I may and that's really no rum 'n' coke,” Dora sing-songed the nursery rhyme. “ 'sides, this toff didn't want to do the nasty wiff Mary Ann, just wanted to talk wiff 'er. Imagine that! What a lark, getting a bit of money for nothink in return.”

Toby produced a shiny coin from his vest pocket.

A glimmer of a smile crossed Dora's lips. “Two more of them bob and I'll tell you right proper.”

Toby tugged out one more coin and, flipping it between his fingers, made the pair dance over and under his knuckles. Dora swiped at the coins and pocketed them.

“Toff's name be Oscar Wilde. Mr. Oscar Wilde. Proper toff 'e is, too.”

Toby's eyes went round with surprise. “And the tavern where Mary Ann worked, t'was the Fish and Kettle, eh?”

“Not by a long shot. It be the Cock and Bull on Flower 'n' Dean, near Brick Lane.”

Toby's face was inscrutable when he asked, “Do you know Dark Annie?”

“Lor'! Course I do. She be my cousin's bag o' strife.”

“His wife?”

“Tha's right. Afore Rufus Chapman got chived, Dark Annie was his wife. She's a lucky one. Gets me cousin's soldier's pension, she does. Lives like a princess wiff her very own digs over on Broom Street. Lucky girl.”

“Dark Annie . . . is Annie Chapman?”

“Course she is, Toby! Lord, you're as thick as molasses on a frosty morning.”

Chapter Thirty-four

Death Knells and Fate say the Tower Bells of Traitors' Gate

T
h
e Tower of London
was built by William the Conqueror in the year 1078. Featuring a wide moat, and inner and outer fortress walls, the historic castle had alternately been a royal palace, a prison, and a place of execution. With few exceptions it looked precisely as it did in Katie's own time, including the armory, which held the crown jewels of England.

Katie drew in her breath and stared at the imposing structure, its ramparts gleaming white against the startling grey stones of the battlements. Yesterday Toby and Collin had visited Dora Fowler while Katie sat in the carriage. Today, Toby and Katie were alone. Collin was lunching with Lady Beatrix and Oscar Wilde at the Thespian Club, trying to ascertain why the famous writer had been garnering Mary Ann Nichols's favors before she was brutally murdered.

Toby gestured. “Admission to see the lions in the royal menagerie, behind that gate there”—he pointed—“is the sum of three half-pence, or the supply of a cat or dog.”

“A cat or a dog?”

“For feeding the lions, leopards, and lynxes.”

“What?” Katie gasped. She was pretty sure there were no animals left behind the castle walls in the twenty-first century, except for the ravens.

“Not to worry, luv. Lady Beatrix is heading the committee for animal welfare. She wants to transport the big cats to the Zoological Society in Regent's Park.”

“I hope she's successful.” Katie nodded, but couldn't contain a shudder thinking about feeding time.

“So you don't fancy going to the West Tower and paying three half-pence . . . or a dog?” Toby laughed.

“That is not funny.” Katie crossed her arms and made a face. “Can we change the subject, please?”

Toby grinned. “Beatrix wants to feed them grain. Imagine! Feeding a lion barley corn and hay! As the guv'nor would say:
Bosh
!
”

“Tell me about Traitors' Gate and the Tower,” Katie said, hoping to divert the conversation away from lion food.

“Right. Let's see . . . what can I tell a Yank that you wouldn't already know?” He scratched his chin, but there was a spark of humor in his eyes. “Her Majesty doesn't reside in the Tower of London, like in the old days, but the fortress is still owned by the crown. The outer stone wall completely encloses an inner barricade wall, creating a double defense against attack. Should an enemy attack on English soil, the Queen will be dispatched here for protection.” Toby cleared his throat. “Prisoners arriving at the Tower were brought by boat along the Thames River, there.” He pointed to the gray swath of muddy water rippling against the embankment they were walking upon. “The condemned would first pass under London Bridge, where the severed heads of the recently executed would be displayed on spikes.” With a mischievous grin, he made a slashing gesture across his throat. “Think of the shock of seeing those dangling heads, knowing
yours
would soon be one of them.”

Toby pointed to a corner tower rising above the muddy moat. “Behind those walls rode kings and knights in shining armor. Lady Jane Grey's ghost is said to prowl the grounds of the inner fortress. Can't you just see the jousting tournaments? Medieval ladies tossing their garters? The blazing torches? The chanting? Cockneys say if you listen closely you can hear the echoes of arrows whizzing past, bugles sounding, and the clank of armor weighing down the horses as they thud across the field. Whenever I'm here I always imagine the prisoners mounting the steps to put their heads upon the chopping block. Anne Boleyn, Sir Thomas More, Queen Catherine Howard.”

Toby swiveled his gaze and pointed. “Look there at those slits for windows in the battlement walls. Makes you wonder at all the prisoners who gazed out, praying for their freedom.”

Katie blinked up to where Toby was pointing and had an instant, terrifying image of severed heads on metal spikes, like the ones at Madame Tussauds. She pushed the thought away.

They were almost at Traitors' Gate. There was a chill in the air and a mist rising off the river to their right. After the Duke's carriage had dropped them off at Castle Hill, Toby and Katie had walked down to the river and were moving toward Traitors' Gate, the waterway entrance into the Tower of London.

“Cockneys believe that on chilly days a smoky mist creeps up from the river showing the faces of the executed, mouths crying out for help. Then these apparitions dissolve upward into the battlements. The last thing a convicted traitor would see before his head came off was the flight of a
black raven
, sacred bird of the Tower.”

“Are you quite done? Because if you're trying to scare me, you're not succeeding. I've been here before, several times. I probably know as much of the history of this place as you do.”

“You only arrived in England last week, luv. I was under the impression that this was your first time at the Tower of London.”

“No. I mean, yes. What I mean is, I haven't actually been here,
here
. I've read about being here. And . . . well . . . there's a small re-creation of the Tower of London outside Boston, and I've been
there
.”

“Outside Boston?”

“In Concord, Massachusetts. Right next to the Minuteman reenactment of our Revolutionary War,” Katie lied.

Toby shot her a skeptical look. “A re-creation of the Tower of London?”

“It's kind of smaller. Like a doll house, only bigger.”

“A doll house of the Tower of London in America? Will wonders never cease. You ham shanks amaze me. Are y' pulling my leg again?” Toby asked, lapsing into his Cockney accent.

“We Yanks amaze ourselves.”

“Why replicate the Tower of London?”

Katie shrugged. “For money, I guess. They charge people to see it. Don't look so surprised. Someday we Yanks might even replicate London Bridge . . . or buy it out from under you.”

Toby laughed. “Ham shanks owning London Bridge? When monkeys fly to the moon.”

“That, too,” Katie muttered under her breath as Toby took her elbow and steered her forward down the gravel path skirting the water.

“I'd best tell you about the Oracle of Traitors' Gate. Her name is Mrs. Traitor.” Toby's voice echoed against the lapping waves.

“Mrs. Traitor? At Traitors' Gate? Doesn't that seem a bit—”

“Fanciful?”

“Coincidental?”

“Not a bit of it. Mrs. Fowler, Dora's mum, goes by the name of Fowler because she sells fowl, as did her mum and her mum before her. Her family name is not Fowler, nor is Dora's. It's the way it works. You have your Christian name and your professional name. Lots of the yeoman warders behind these tower walls are known to their mates as “Mr. Yeoman.” Same for tailors, potters, sailors, carters, wheelwrights. It's the old way of things. The Oracle of Traitors' Gate has been called Mrs. Tray, short for Traitor, for so long, no one knows her true name. Rumor has it that her ancestors came here to be executed.”

“Why not call her Mrs. Oracle?”

“That would be daft, now, wouldn't it? She's been standing outside Traitors' Gate for her whole life. People cross her palm with silver and she tells them what they want to know.”

Toby went on to explain that he had visited Mrs. Tray yesterday to find out who Dark Annie was and where she lived. “Mrs. Tray knows every single Cockney who resides within earshot of the bells of Saint Mary Le Bow. She told me what Dora told me. Dark Annie is Annie Chapman and lives in Shoreditch on a soldier's pension from her late husband. Ten to one that's where Georgie Cross is hiding. I'm paying them a surprise visit tonight.”

“I'm coming, too,” said Katie, avoiding his eyes.

“Not a chance, lass. And don't argue. Now, about Mrs. Tray. Be polite, don't gawk at her. Even though she's blind, she sees everything. She's a true mystic, a genuine clairvoyant,
not a counterfeit.
” He stared pointedly at Katie who shot him back a “who me?” look.

“Mrs. Tray is the seventh child of a seventh child. Rumor has it her auntie poked out her eyes so people would believe she had ‘the gift' and pay good coin for her predictions.”

“Now you're pulling
my
leg. You don't honestly mean to tell me that her
own aunt
poked out her—” Katie stopped. She remembered the movie
Slumdog Millionaire
where the child's eyes had been burned with acid the better for him to beg money in the streets.

“That's just rumor, luv. No one knows the truth about old Mrs. Tray. She earns large sums advising Cockneys who come here to Traitors' Gate to ask for advice. She wears rings on every finger worth countless sums, and no one dares rob her because she can put a hex on any man alive.”

“No one can hex someone. That's superstitious nonsense.”

“T'isn't. But whether she can or not is irrelevant. Cockneys
believe
it to be true. That's all that matters. And there's not a one amongst us that would dispute her predictions.”

As they approached Traitors' Gate, Katie saw mist rising off the Thames, shrouding the arched entrance in a blanket of grey vapor. A stone causeway leading up from the river was slick with green moss. Katie shivered. Traitors' Gate was so ancient, but still held something deadly about it. She could almost hear the whispering of sighs and the stamp of long-ago footfalls ringing in the hollow beneath the arch.

She glanced up.

Traitors' Gateway was a long, thick wall of flattened grey stones rising forty feet into the air. The gate itself was an archway of stones set into the wall, the upper reaches curved and funneled like a dark train tunnel. The air was moist and smelled as dank as a wet basement.

Originally, this entrance had been the water gateway into the Tower. The river had flowed under the stone arch so that barges and boats could sail through to moorings on the other side. In this century, heavy reinforcements of oak timbers and vertical bars closed it all off to the public, with the Thames wharf built up beyond, and the vast moat on either side no longer filled with water, but swampy mud. In Katie's own century it would be filled with green grass.

Even in the blurry mist, Katie could see the metal spikes on top of the gate and the iron fence in the distance. No one could enter the Tower from this gate unless ordered by the Queen. Katie took hold of the iron railings, wet with slime, and glanced through the tunnel-like entranceway.

Slow footsteps approached from the wharf, accompanied by shuffling and wheezing. An old woman in a crinoline skirt, black bonnet, and short velvet cape appeared from out of the mist.

“Tobias!” There spread across the woman's face a look of pure delight. “Tobias! Is that you?”

“Yes, ma'am.” Toby took off his cap and made a slight bow.

The old woman shuffled closer, rubbing her hands together. Her black cloak, lined in red, gleamed against her jeweled hands. Her face showed a watchful tension as she peered sightless in Katie's direction. As she stepped closer, the sun peeked through the clouds above Traitors' Gate, etching flat shadows of the iron bars onto the ground across their path. Far away and muffled, one of the tower clocks began to toll the hour.

Katie's first impression of the Oracle of Traitors' Gate was one of pity. The old woman was hobbled and sightless, her eyes as misted and foggy as the vapor rising off the river. When she beamed in Toby's direction, the animation in her wrinkled face made her look cheerful and kind-hearted, like a fairy godmother in a Disney movie. Katie half expected a magic wand to appear from the folds of her hooped skirt.

“Tobias?” The woman called out again, her voice like a tinkling bell as she groped the air searching for him.

“Mrs. Tray,” Toby said, stepping closer so she could take his arm.

“I knew 'twas you, lad,” she chuckled. “You have such a strong presence. There's an aura about you: great blazes of purple and blue as of the wind before a storm. Just like your father. Never did such storm clouds roil around a man as your father, though he be highborn true enough.
Your mum now
, she was a gentle lass . . . I always knew her by the sound a petal makes when it falls to the ground.
God rest her soul
.”

Mrs. Tray patted Toby's arm. “I knew you'd be back. You were troubled yesterday. Tell me what's in your heart, lad, and I'll tell you what's to be.”

“There's someone I'd like you to meet, ma'am. She's visiting from America.”

Mrs. Tray nodded and the waves of her snow-white hair beneath the black bonnet puffed around her cheeks like fluffy clouds. “Bring her tomorrow, then.”

“She's here with me now.”

“Who?”

“The lass I'd like you to meet.”

There was a long, silent pause. The old woman appeared bewildered, then she leaned closer, scrutinizing Toby's face with earnest, sightless eyes. It was this eager earnestness that made Katie's heart constrict.