The Ravenmaster. Christopher Skaife

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СКАЧАТЬ enclosure on the south side of Tower Green. Merlina simply refuses to do so. She treats the rooftops around Tower Green as a penthouse suite – a place to retreat to and from which to contemplate the world. Once I can see her silhouette and I can hear her call, I make sure that the whole area around Tower Green is safe and clear from debris or anything that might harm the birds. Then I proceed to fill the water bowls.

      This might sound silly, but I love filling the water bowls. It’s one of the highlights of my day. I scrub and refill them daily. There are plastic bowls in the raven enclosures and six stone bowls dotted around the Tower’s Inner Ward where the ravens spend their days. I like the simple act of refilling the bowls, the sound of it, the smell of it, the clarity of the water. It’s a ritual for me. It’s my quiet time. This is when I get to clear my head and think about the day. They say that getting up and out early in the morning into the fresh air, no matter what the season, is good for your mental and physical health. All I can say is that I’ve been up and out early in all seasons every day for my entire working life, and so far so good.

      There’s one water bowl up on the north side of Tower Green, by the Chapel of St Peter ad Vincula. It’s believed that there may have been a place of worship there for over a thousand years, predating even the White Tower. Some even claim that this is one of the nation’s ancient holy places, our own little central London Glastonbury or Stonehenge. Legend has it that there was once a spring of fresh water up at Tower Hill, the site of a sacred mound, and you get druids turning up these days in their costumes to celebrate the Spring Solstice, though I’ve never been tempted myself. According to Celtic legend, around here is also where the head of Brân the Blessed, the king of England in Welsh mythology, was buried. Brân means ‘raven’, and he’s supposed to have been buried not far from the ravens’ current enclosures, which seems appropriate. (Bran is also of course the name of a character in the A Song of Ice and Fire series of novels by George R.R. Martin, and its famous television adaptation Game of Thrones. But more about Mr Martin and the ravens later.)

      I’ve heard it said that the name of London derives from Lugdunum, from the Celtic lugdon, meaning town of ravens – mind you, I’ve also heard that London comes from Llyn-don, Laindon, Karelundein, Caer Ludd, Lundunes, Lindonion, Lundene, Lundone, Ludenberk, Longidinium, and goodness knows what else. History and prehistory, legends, fables and stories, they’re everywhere here. I sometimes think that the Tower is just a vast storehouse of the human imagination, and the ravens are its guardians.

      Anyway, I refill the bowl by St Peter ad Vincula, where generations of Tower residents have been baptised – not in the ravens’ water bowl, I might add – and married and, most famously, buried, including Sir Thomas More, Bishop Fisher, Queen Anne Boleyn, Queen Catherine Howard, and Lady Jane Grey, the uncrowned queen of only nine days. Quite a few of them were also executed near the Chapel, or within the walls of the Tower – Anne Boleyn, of course, and Catherine Howard, Lady Jane Grey, Margaret Pole, Robert Devereux – so it’s certainly a church with a colourful history, though I’ve always thought the historian Thomas Macaulay was a bit down on the place in his 1848 History of England:

      In truth there is no sadder spot on the earth … Death is there associated, not, as in Westminster Abbey and Saint Paul’s, with genius and virtue, with public veneration and imperishable renown; not, as in our humblest churches and churchyards, with everything that is most endearing in social and domestic charities; but with whatever is darkest in human nature and in human destiny, with the savage triumph of implacable enemies, with the inconstancy, the ingratitude, the cowardice of friends, with all the miseries of fallen greatness and of blighted fame.

      It’s not that bad! I rather like the Chapel. It’s our parish church, after all, with a chaplain to guide and direct our spiritual lives and a fine choir and organists to lead the worship and uplift our spirits. Though to be honest I prefer to say my prayers outside, with brush and bucket in hand.

      Fresh water sorted, brush and bucket safely stowed, every morning I then make my way to unlock the storeroom where I keep all of the food and equipment needed to aid me in looking after the ravens. I walk under the archway of the Bloody Tower onto the old cobbles of Water Lane (so called because this is where the water of the Thames used to lap up against the walls of the Tower). Water Lane is part of Edward I’s Outer Ward, which was created during his big expansion programme in the thirteenth century. It was reclaimed from the river by sinking thousands of beech piles into the Thames mud. I like having the storeroom here. I’ve always thought that back in the day Water Lane would have been full of wheelers and dealers, and duckers and divers coming in and out of the Tower and the old pubs that used to be here – the Stone Kitchen tavern was one, shut down by the Duke of Wellington long ago. The Tower has always been full of people, inside and out, and the Ravenmaster’s storeroom just sort of fits here, right in the thick of things, behind its own ancient black door, like an old apothecary’s shop.

      On my keyring, like all the other Yeoman Warders, I keep a whistle, to alert the others if there’s a problem. Plus I have a little skull-and-crossbones memento mori – you can’t work with ravens and not develop a bit of a taste for the macabre – and a small wooden raven totem pole, which I keep as a kind of talisman.

      Now, let me open up the storeroom and show you the Ravenmaster’s inner sanctum.

      7

       Biscuits and Blood

      I like to keep the storeroom neat and tidy at all times, the result no doubt of a lifetime in the military. When you join the army as a young recruit you’re taught everything, and I mean everything. You learn how to clean your teeth and how to make your bed and tie your boots, how to iron and fold your clothes. Above all, you’re taught never to just leave stuff lying around. It’s drilled into you. You survive by following routines and procedures. A place for everything and everything in its place. No excuses.

      So, in the storeroom there’s the fridge, the freezer, the sink and the counter tops, all kept spick and span. Raven calendar on the wall, obviously, and our daily diary underneath it, so the whole team can keep up to date and log what’s happening with the birds. There’s the fishing net on its shelf, used for raven-catching purposes, if a bird is injured and needs immediate veterinary attention. Chasing a raven around the Tower in full view of the public, fishing net in hand, like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang – believe me, that really is an experience. The first-aid kit: you certainly know if you’ve had a nip from a raven. Scales for weighing the birds, which we do once a month. Chopping boards and equipment for preparing the meals. Rubber gloves. Leather falconry gloves. Metal gauntlets – which I do not recommend for handling the ravens, because they do sometimes like to try to crush your fingers, and picking metal out of flesh is never nice, as I can testify. A couple of wooden boxes to carry sick birds to the vets we work with at London Zoo. There’s also an old plastic KerPlunk, which we like to use for the ravens’ entertainment. (In KerPlunk: The Raven Edition, the challenge for the birds is to remove the straws in order to win a dead mouse which we place in the tube, ready to fall down and be eaten. Good clean raven fun. Munin is the reigning champion.) I also keep a jar full of raven feathers in the storeroom, kindly donated by the ravens once a year during their moult, and which I occasionally like to distribute to deserving/well-behaved/lucky visitors. If I’m doing a Tower tour, for example, and I discover that a couple are recently married or engaged, I like to give them a pair of feathers – a primary and a secondary, since without one the other is no good. I’m an old romantic at heart. Sometimes people request feathers for use as quills, or for medicinal purposes, or for musical instruments, though exactly which musical instruments or for what medicinal purposes I’m not entirely sure, or indeed whether raven feathers make particularly good quills.

      As the Ravenmaster you get used to СКАЧАТЬ