The Beast of Buckingham Palace Read online

  The Lord Protector smiled and sighed. “Please forgive me, Your Majesty, but you are quite wrong. This is not my doing. Your arrest is a direct order from your husband, the King.”

  Neither the Queen nor the prince could believe what they were hearing.

  “Father,” called out the boy.

  But the man did not respond.

  “FATHER!”

  The King’s black eyes came to some semblance of life and fixed on his son.

  “Alfred?” he asked. “Is that you?”

  “Yes, Father. It’s me, your son, Alfred!”

  It had been days since he’d seen his father, and he seemed more distant than ever. “What are you doing, Father? Mother is being taken away by the guards. And the Lord Protector says it is on your direct order!”

  The King gathered his thoughts and began. He spoke slowly and softly. “The revolutionaries struck again tonight. St Paul’s Cathedral has been destroyed.”

  “A place of worship,” sighed the Lord Protector. “Cruel and callous even by the standards of the revolutionary scum.”

  “What on earth has that got to do with me?” demanded the Queen.

  The Lord Protector’s mouth twitched into a ghoulish grin, but he said nothing.

  The King continued, refusing to look his wife in the eye. “It has everything to do with you.”

  “This is nonsense!” she protested. “UTTER NONSENSE!”

  The King’s eyes flickered again, and he turned away. He couldn’t bear to look at his wife as he spoke. “For some time, I am sorry to say, you have been under suspicion.”

  “Me?” she demanded. The lady was incredulous. “But I am the Queen!”

  “You have been spied upon. And the All-Seeing Eye sees everything,” added the Lord Protector.

  “Intelligence information has been brought to my attention,” continued the King, still unable to look at her, “that points to you being in direct communication with the revolutionaries.”

  The Queen glowed red and began spluttering her innocence. “But… I…”

  “You don’t deny it, Your Majesty?” pressed the Lord Protector.

  “No, I, er…” the lady stuttered. “Of course, I deny it!”

  “Then,” began the Lord Protector, “why did you have this hidden in your bedroom?”

  He lifted a cloth to reveal an old-fashioned radio crouched guiltily on a metal table. It had a microphone, a speaker and an aerial, and looked as if it dated back nearly two hundred years to World War Two.

  “I have never seen that before in my life!” protested the Queen.

  “It was found hidden in a secret compartment in your dressing room.”

  The radio crackled into life. A muffled voice on the other end said,

  The Queen bowed her head.

  Alfred thought he recognised that voice, but he couldn’t be sure. A voice from his dim and distant past, perhaps.

  “Regina. The Latin word for Queen,” began the Lord Protector. “Hundreds of coded messages going back and forth over the last few weeks. Here, in the throne room, we intercepted them all. Then tonight, moments after your last message, KABOOM! Another precious building in flames. Sickening. Absolutely sickening.”

  Alfred couldn’t believe it, didn’t want to believe it, but he knew from the look on his mother’s face that it was true.

  “Mama? How could you? The revolutionaries are evil! They want to kill us all!” he exclaimed.

  “I can explain,” she spluttered, turning to the King. “My darling husband, you’ve changed. Something has happened to you, something very wrong, and I don’t know what. Please, I beg you. Don’t do this!”

  The Lord Protector turned to the King. “Your Majesty, what would you like me to do with the traitor?”

  Alfred was stunned into silence as that dreaded word sank in. TRAITOR.

  “Take her to the Tower,” ordered the King.

  “NO!” screamed the Queen. “Henry, it’s me, your wife. The mother of your child. I love you. Why are you doing this to me? Or is this really all the work of the Lord Protector? He has you under some kind of spell!”

  On the Lord Protector’s nod, the royal guards seized her arms tightly and began dragging her out of the room.

  “MAMA!” cried Alfred, and he reached out to grab her hand. But, before he could, a guard shoved him away.

  “ARGH!”

  The boy fell to the floor.

  THUD!

  “You are now the kingdom’s only hope,” said the Queen. “Goodbye, Lionheart!”

  Alfred watched as the huge metal doors to the throne room slid open…

  WHOOSH!

  …and closed behind her.

  His mother was gone. Perhaps forever.

  The Lord Protector paced over to the prince. “There, there,” he said, reaching out to comfort him.

  “No. I don’t want you. I want Mama back. PLEASE! I BEG YOU!”

  “Your Royal Highness, I realise this is deeply upsetting news, that your mother, the Queen, is a traitor. But I want you to know that I am always here for you. I am, and will forever be, your loyal servant. If you need to talk about your feelings, you know my door is always open, as it has been for your father.”

  “Please leave me now,” said the King, still staring off into space. “I need to be alone.”

  “Of course, Your Majesty,” replied the Lord Protector. He took the prince tightly by the hand. “This must be a difficult time for you more than any of us.”

  Still holding the boy tightly by the hand, he made his way over to the metal door.

  “Father?” said Alfred, turning towards the King.

  “Please, you heard His Majesty – your father needs to be alone,” said the Lord Protector.

  “Mama is a good person,” said the boy. “The best. If she did this, there must be a reason.”

  “The reason is that there is evil inside her,” interjected the Lord Protector. “The Tower of London is the best place for her. The Executioner should be able to cast the evil out. By hook or by crook.”

  Alfred gulped. Whatever “by hook or by crook” meant, it sounded deadly.

  No one sent to the Tower of London ever came back.

  “Now come on, young prince, a sickly child like you shouldn’t be out of bed at this late hour. You might catch your death,” said the Lord Protector. “You will be King yourself one day. We wouldn’t want anything happening to you, now, would we?”

  The huge metal door slid open…

  WHOOSH!

  …and he led the boy out of the throne room.

  Alfred allowed himself one last glimpse of his father. He was searching for a flicker of kindness in his eyes. A shadow of the man he used to be.

  But there

  was

  nothing.

  As the Lord Protector led him slowly along the corridor, Alfred could sense something hovering behind.

  He looked round to see a giant eye staring back at him. It was the All-Seeing Eye, a huge roving robot camera.

  It was powered by thousands of tiny jets, which allowed it to move silently in any direction.

  Up.

  Down.

  Left.

  Right.

  And everything in between.

  The All-Seeing Eye could soar high up into the air above the palace to see for miles around, or glide silently down into the depths of the building.

  What it saw through its unblinking eye was beamed right back to that huge television screen in the throne room. There the King, and of course the Lord Protector, could see EVERYTHING.

  Nothing and nobody could escape its unblinking stare.

  Alfred was drained, not just physically but also emotionally. It took all his strength to climb the long, winding staircase back up to his room at the top of the palace.

  When he finally reached his bedroom, the Lord Protector said, “Goodnight, Your Royal Highness. I know how much you love a good book. Would you care for a goodnight story?”

  “No,” cam
e the terse reply. “I am not a baby.”

  The boy’s eyes were still stinging with tears.

  “Forgive me, sir, but you do sometimes cry like one.”

  Alfred wanted to thump him. If only he had the strength.

  “Just a little joke, sir. There’s no point shedding tears over traitors. After you,” purred the Lord Protector, guiding the young prince through the doorway with a little bow.

  Then, with the precision and speed of a close-up magician, he took the key from out of the lock on the inside.

  “I think it best I hold on to this, sir, for your own protection, of course,” he said.

  “But—!”

  “I wish you goodnight. Sweet dreams.”

  The Lord Protector patted him on the head. Alfred couldn’t bear the man’s long, thin fingers touching him. He shuddered.

  With the All-Seeing Eye still hovering behind, the Lord Protector shut the prince’s bedroom door and locked it.

  CLICK!

  Alfred staggered to his bed and lay down, burying his head in the pillow.

  He wanted to cry until his body turned inside out. Just like a baby. But, right now, tears solved nothing.

  Alfred had to do something.

  He sat up on the bed. From his window he could see that St Paul’s Cathedral was still ablaze. By morning this historic monument, an icon of London’s skyline, would be little more than charred rubble.

  In his heart, the boy knew that his mother couldn’t be behind this terrible attack. It went against everything he knew about her, and he knew her better than anybody. She was kind and loving, the best mother he could ever imagine. The Queen was not capable of such unspeakable horror. What’s more, why would she ever do such a thing?

  The revolutionaries were the sworn enemies of the royals. They wanted the royal family dead. It didn’t make sense.

  Alfred was determined to find out what was really going on.

  The mysterious chalk markings on the floor.

  The strange cuts on his father’s hands.

  His dearest mama being branded a traitor.

  It couldn’t be true.

  Alfred was determined to prove his mother’s innocence.

  To do that he had to turn detective.

  The boy tiptoed back over to his bedroom door. Peeping through the crack under it, he could see a shadow on the floor. The All-Seeing Eye was still hovering outside, keeping watch over him. Even if he could find a way of unlocking the door, royal guards would be here in seconds. His next stop would be the Tower of London.

  Instead, Alfred tiptoed over to his window.

  As the glory days of Buckingham Palace were long gone, in the prince’s bedroom there was an infestation of woodworm – the larvae of beetles that eat through wood. There were tiny holes in his bedframe, his cupboard and, when he rolled back the stained silk rug that lay in the middle of his room, there were holes in the floorboards too.

  The window frames were made of wood, and the wood was rotting. Alfred ran his fingers along the hundreds of little holes in the frame. Cold air was whistling through them. That meant that, even though the glass was bulletproof, there might be a way of taking the whole window out.

  Alfred crept over to his wardrobe. He pulled a wire coat hanger off the rail.

  CLANK!

  Next, he untwisted it…

  RINK! DINK! KINK!

  …then bent it so he was left with a long metal rod. He made sure the end had a little bend in it, then fed it through one of the tiny holes. Next, he grabbed another coat hanger…

  CLANK!

  …and did the same to a hole below. Then another two on the other side of the window, top and bottom.

  Now, already feeling the worse for wear, Alfred gathered up the ends of all four coat hangers in his hand and pulled. At first nothing happened. No wonder. It was a real struggle for the boy to muster any strength in his thin little arms. Alfred took a deep breath and pulled again. Harder this time. Still nothing. Then he closed his eyes, and yanked the ends of the coat hangers as hard as he possibly could.

  SUCCESS!

  The whole window came loose. Now a huge slab of glass was coming straight towards him!

  WHOOSH!

  It was so heavy it could flatten him.

  Just in time, he caught it in his hands.

  CHONK!

  “OOF!”

  Immediately Alfred realised he wasn’t strong enough to keep holding it, and so lowered it to the floor as slowly and silently as he could.

  THUNK!

  A blast of cold air swept into his bedroom.

  WHISH!

  Alfred hadn’t breathed air from the outside for as long as he could remember.

  Next, he peered out. There was a drainpipe on the wall within arm’s reach that he might be able to climb down. However, he couldn’t just leave the window frame lying there. A missing window on the side of Buckingham Palace would arouse suspicion. So, he righted it, swapped the coat hangers to the other side, and stepped out on to the slippery windowsill.

  Suddenly, it dawned on Alfred that it was an awfully long way down from the top of the palace to the bottom. If he lost his grip, he’d be nothing more than human jam.*

  Next, using his weight as a lever, he pulled the window back into place from the outside.

  SHTONK!

  Then, summoning all his strength, Alfred shimmied over to the drainpipe.

  Avoiding the royal guard’s searchlights that raked the walls day and night looking for intruders, the boy slid over to the side.

  Right next to his room was the King’s bedroom. He and the Queen had had separate bedrooms for as long as Alfred could remember.

  The room was vast, with a huge four-poster bed, two sofas arranged around a coffee table and a marble fireplace. From outside the window, Alfred saw his father sitting alone on the end of his bed. The man stared straight ahead. At first Alfred was worried that his father had glimpsed him. But no. The man was staring into space.

  The King rubbed the palms of his hands. That is where those strange cuts were.

  Just then, the door to the King’s bedroom opened.

  CLICK!

  It was the Lord Protector. Alfred ducked out of view.

  Then, after a few moments, the boy lifted his head so he could peer through the window again.

  He could see the Lord Protector leading his father off somewhere. But where?

  As the King’s bedroom door closed behind them, Alfred began his

  slow

  descent

  down

  the

  drainpipe.

  The next window was the library. This was one of the largest rooms in the palace, stocked from top to bottom with antique books, all of them extraordinary. Some even unique.

  Alfred was surprised NOT to see the Lord Protector in the library. He was often to be found there alone, reading late into the night. The library was where the man had begun his career at Buckingham Palace, all those years ago when he was just a humble librarian. This was decades before he became Lord Protector.

  There was a narrow gap in the curtains, and Alfred manoeuvred himself closer to the glass, so he could peek through.

  The lights were out, and the room was dark.

  But the light of a candle flickered in the gloom.

  There was a lone figure with their back to the window. Who were they? And what were they doing?

  It was hard to make out. Alfred kept very still and watched.

  Someone was trying to force open the cabinet that held the most special books. Frantically, though. As if their life depended on it.

  Alfred pressed his face right up against the window to get a better look, but as he did so he lost his footing for a moment, and his head hit the glass.

  THUNK!

  Immediately, the candle was blown out, and the library was plunged into darkness.

  Alfred moved out of sight of the window.

  Just then a searchlight came towards him.

  Were
the royal guards going to shoot him from the ground?

  Alfred stayed as still as the stone gargoyle right next to him on the wall of the palace as the searchlight passed over him. The prince didn’t even dare take a breath.

  Then he heard the sound of the window opening.

  SHUNT!

  Just as he tried to hurry back up the drainpipe, a hand reached out of the window, and yanked him inside.

  “ARGH!” he screamed.

  * * *

  * Human jam is considered to be the most revolting of all the jams. Other unpopular varieties include:

  “What are you doing out there in the dead of night?” demanded a voice.

  Alfred was lying on the floor of the palace library with a figure looming over him. He knew that voice better than his own.

  “Nanny?”

  “SHUSH!” she shushed.

  “It is you.”

  “Yes, I know it’s me. You know it’s me. But we don’t need the whole wide world knowing about it.”

  “What are you doing here?” asked the boy, scrambling to his feet.

  “I asked first,” replied Nanny.

  This lady must have had a name, but everyone called her “Nanny”. The plump and cheery old girl was in her eighties. She was so old that she’d been alive when there was still sunlight over Britain. Before the darkness came.

  Nanny had looked after two generations of royal children: the prince and his father, the King. As a result, she was one of the most trusted members of the royal household. Needless to say, Nanny was the person you would least expect to see up to no good in the dead of night.

  “Well,” began Alfred, “I was looking for something.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “How can you look for something when you don’t know what you are looking for?”

  “That’s a good question,” he replied. “I think I’ll know when I find it. Now, what are you doing here?”

  “Just browsing.”

  “Browsing?”

  “I’m looking for a book.”