First they walked down the slope to the twin towers that guard the entrance to the fortress proper, through the great arched gate between them and on to the bridge across the wide dry moat. Gregory glanced into it and quickly looked away again. In peacetime soldiers of the garrison played football down in it; but it was there, so he had been told, that on certain grim dawns spies caught during the war had been put up against the casement wall and executed by a firing squad.
A moment later they passed through a second great gateway, under the Byward Tower, and entered what seemed like a sunken road, as forty foot walls rose on either side, almost shutting out the dim light of the late October afternoon.
From long habit, his Yeoman guide remarked, 'The river used to run here once, sir. That's why it's called Water Lane. The Normans built only the White Tower and the great Inner Wall on our left. It was Richard I, 11891199, who pushed the river back by dumping thousands of tons of earth here taken from widening the moat. The great Outer Wall on our right, with its five additional towers facing the river, was not completed till Edward I, 1272-1307.'
A hundred yards farther on Water Lane passed through an archway between the huge cylindrical Wakefield Tower and, on the river side, an oblong block as big as a small castle in itself, with smaller towers at each of its outer corners. This was called St. Thomas's Tower and held, perhaps, more fascination for visitors than any other. Centrally beneath it ran a high vaulted tunnel which could be reached by a flight of steps down into a part of the moat. The Tower had been built to defend the tunnel, as until Victorian times it had been the entrance by river to the fortress, famous for centuries as Traitors' Gate.
After a glance at the great ten feet high double gates with their crossbars of stout timber, Gregory turned with his guide towards the Inner Wall and accompanied him through it by yet another great gate which ran immediately under the Bloody Tower. As they walked up the steep slope on the far side of the gate he could now see the splendid cube of the White Tower to his right front. Unlike the other seventeen towers there was nothing in the least grim about William the Conqueror's original Palace keep, yet its battlements and four domed turrets dwarfed all the rest into insignificance.
Turning away from it, his guide led him up a flight of steps set in a wall, to higher ground, and across an open space in which trees were growing, to a half-timbered Tudor building called 'The King's House.' Having rung the front door bell he handed Gregory over to another Yeoman Warder, who took his name, asked him to wait in a pleasantly furnished hall, and returned almost at once to say:
'Colonel Faviell will see you, sir. Please come this way.' The Yeoman then ushered him into a ground floor office.
Gregory produced his letter. As soon as the Governor had read it, he reached for his cap and said, 'That is clear enough. I'll take you across to her.'
As they left the house he went on, 'I don't mind telling you, this business has been quite a headache to us. The night of her arrest they put her in Brixton Prison, and why they couldn't have left her there, goodness knows. Perhaps the Government have some idea of making an example of her for propaganda purposes and feel that "Woman Spy Sentenced after Court Martial in the Tower" would ring a bigger bell with other young women who have an itch to do the Nazis' dirty work for them. Anyway, fathering her on us presented me with a tricky problem. You see, there hasn't been a woman prisoner in the Tower since the Lord knows when, and the question was where to put her.'
'Providing you imported a couple of wardresses to look after her, what would have been wrong with putting her in one of the ordinary cells?' Gregory asked.
The Colonel laughed. 'That's just it. There aren't any. People still think of the Tower as a State Prison; but it has long since ceased to be used for that purpose.'
'How about Baillie Stewart; he was confined here?'
'Oh, Baillie Stewart was confined in a first floor tower room in that building over there.' The Colonel pointed beyond the White Tower at a comparatively modern block in the northeast corner of the great quadrangle. 'It contains the Officers' Mess and sleeping quarters. Washing arrangements and so on ruled it out entirely as accommodation for a woman.'
'How did you solve your problem, then?'
'We put her in St. Thomas's Tower. Its interior was converted to modern needs as a residence for the Keeper of the Crown Jewels. There's a flying bridge from it over Water Lane to the Wakefield Tower where the Jewels are kept. I mean, were kept in peacetime. They were moved out of London for greater safety at the beginning of the war. General Sir George Young husband was Keeper of the Jewels, but in April '41 a bomb was dropped nearby and the tower suffered a bit from the blast. In consequence, as there were no longer any jewels here to keep, Sir George decided to move out, and took most of his furniture with him. But there was enough left to furnish a few rooms, and no difficulty about making the place reasonably habitable.'
While they were talking, the Colonel had led Gregory back across the open space, down the steep slope and through the arch under the Bloody Tower. Crossing Water Lane, they went up some steps set sideways in the wall of St. Thomas's Tower that led to a narrow gallery immediately above the great pit in which lay Traitors' Gate. Some way along the gallery there was an ordinary front door. The Colonel rang the bell and a minute or two later it was answered by a muscular middle-aged woman in a dark uniform.
'This is Mrs. Sutton,' the Colonel said. 'She and her colleague, Mrs. Wright, have been lent to us from Brixton.' He then introduced Gregory and told her that he was to be left alone with the prisoner for as long as he wished.
Gregory thanked him and asked if he should report back when he had finished his interrogation, to which the Colonel replied, 'No. All you have to do is to hand back your temporary pass at the gate. That will check you out.'
The wardress conducted Gregory through into a lofty hall in one corner of which a short flight of stairs ran up to rooms on a higher floor. Crossing the hall she took a key from her pocket, unlocked a door, opened it for him, and said in a deep bass voice, 'When you want to be let out, sir, be good enough to ring.'
He stepped forward into a good-sized room. It had narrow mullioned windows at one end, some of which, owing to bomb blast, were boarded over. That, and the early darkness of the afternoon, shrouded it in deep twilight. Gregory could just make out that it was furnished only near the windows and the vague form of Sabine sitting with her feet up on a sofa. The wardress said from behind him:
'Gentleman to see you, ducks. Just what the doctor ordered to put an end to you sitting there brooding in the dark.'
Knowing the brutal treatment meted out by women guards to their prisoners in Nazi concentration camps, Gregory could not help contrasting with it the kindness in Mrs. Sutton's deep voice, and marvelling that she should show such forbearance to an enemy accused of inflicting grievous injury on her country. As the thought flashed through his mind, the wardress flicked on the light, shut the door and locked him in.
Next moment Sabine was on her feet, crying, 'Gregory Gregory! Oh, how marvellous to see you! How clever of you to persuade them to let you visit me in this awful place.'