Traitors' Gate: and Other Doorways to the Past - Hardcover

Claire Earner is the author of Super Crocs and Monster Wings. She is an editor, short-story writer, and non-fiction author who lives in Whitehorse, Yukon.

Excerpt

Opening the Door

Traitors' Gate is a giant archway leading into the Tower of London. The Tower, a huge fortress that squats on the north bank of the River Thames, has served as royal palace, armory, prison, and many other things for more than nine centuries.

When the tide rolls up the Thames from the sea, water floods the archway and small boats can sail through to a stone wharf within the Tower's outer walls. In the days when the river carried much of London's traffic, Traitors' Gate was a handy way to carry cargo and people to the Tower.

Sometimes the people who entered through Traitors' Gate were prisoners -- important prisoners. During the 16th and early 17th centuries, state prisoners were often brought by boat to Traitors' Gate, led up the stone steps of the wharf, and locked in the Tower. Many died there, some by the executioner's ax.

Elizabeth Tudor, who became Queen Elizabeth I of England, stepped through Traitors' Gate twice and lived to tell the tale. The first time she entered in terror, the prisoner of her sister, Queen Mary. The second time she entered in triumph, a queen herself.

What's unusual is that both passages through that famous doorway were described in writing. History generally records what happens on one side or the other of a door, but rarely what happens in the doorway itself.

And that's a pity, because doors have a special magic -- the magic of potential. They can open in or out. They can hide or reveal. They can separate places and people or join them together. They can mark a passage from one way of life to another -- or from life to death.

When you open the door to your home, you touch the same surface and pass through the same space as family, friends, visitors -- and, perhaps, complete strangers who lived in the home before your time.

Think of how many people touch the doors and pass through the doorways of schools, stores, apartment blocks, and office buildings. Who might have stepped through the door of an old house or an ancient temple or a tumbledown barn? What were their lives like? What did they feel when they stood in that doorway?

Feelings are part of the magic of doorways. Think of stepping into a strange classroom on your first day in a new school. Or opening the door to your home after a long time away. Or crawling out through a tent flap into a glorious summer morning by a lake. Excitement, fear, relief, awe -- the emotions associated with a place start at the doorway.

In this book, you'll find an assortment of very different doors and doorways, from an oddly shaped opening in an old stone wall to a multistory gateway designed to frighten people. You'll meet some of the people who passed through these doorways or stood and gazed at them in awe, and you'll get a glimpse of their lives, on both sides of the door.

Just open the door and come on in!