The Queen's Corgi

by David Michie

  ‘But . . .’ I struggled to understand him, ‘if something is in plain sight, doesn’t that mean it’s not hidden?’

  Margaret was pretending to be deeply absorbed in removing loose soil from her snout with her front paw. Winston fixed me with a knowing expression. ‘That is what common sense might tell you, dear boy,’ he said. ‘But not all sense is common. Look sharp.’

  I had ended up leaving my bone behind the low, outdoor shed housing the rubbish bins, an action which became engrained as habit over time. But every Friday, when we sat with our bones, I would also gnaw over Winston’s words about things being hidden in plain sight. What could he possibly mean?

  I began to discover the answer to this quite some months later. Regrettably, Winston wasn’t present at the time. It was during the deepest of wintry days in January, with the outside world a place of unremitting bleakness, the branches of the trees outside Windsor Castle stark and barren and the grey skies leaden with rain. The Queen was just emerging from a very bad cold and it seemed that poor Winston had also succumbed to a seasonal bug, as he was eating less food than usual and with none of his customary zeal. He had taken to spending a great deal of time in his basket.

  All three of us were with Her Majesty in her private sitting room one afternoon when, having glanced at the clock, she rose from her chair and made her way towards the door. Winston remained in his basket, his breathing laboured. Margaret looked up, ears alert. She was usually punctilious about accompanying Her Majesty on even the most routine of encounters, but that afternoon she seemed not to realise that the Queen was on her way to a meeting.

  I followed Her Majesty when she left the sitting room. Her movements were slow but deliberate, on account of her still somewhat frail state. She took her time slipping into her coat and making her way from her private quarters. I had no idea where she was going, but I did have an idea who she was planning to meet. As I trotted along beside her, aware of my responsibilities as the only royal corgi on duty that afternoon, I knew that during her most recent appointments’ meeting with private secretary, Julian, no mention had been made of an engagement today.

  ‘Does the Queen ever receive unscheduled visitors?’ I remembered Winston asking me during those early months, before answering his own question emphatically. ‘Never! Nobody just drops in to see Her Majesty. Nobody, that is, except Michael.’

  The Queen’s footsteps led her through the castle and, shadowed discreetly by security, in the direction of St George’s Chapel.

  For me, St George’s Chapel is the most magical chamber in the whole castle. It was in this sacred place that members of the royal family had been married over the centuries. It was here that the remains of kings and queens of Britain have been interred for the past six hundred years, including those of the first Queen Elizabeth in 1492.

  In the semi-darkness, with the only light coming from the lamps in the warm, wooden choir stalls and the gold of the altar, there was a sense of mysticism, of connection to other dimensions of experience. Her Majesty and I made our way to the front of the chapel, along the black and white chequered floor. Above us, rows of heraldic flags were draped from both sides of the chapel, standards of ages past, magnificent colours rich with symbolism.

  As security remained discreetly at the door, the Queen went to sit in one of the choir stalls nearest the altar. Her movements fragile, she sat down carefully, contemplating the altar, before taking in much more than that. It was as though ancient mystery reverberated down the ages to this particular place, on this silent midwinter afternoon. Had the energy of extraordinary events and people become imbued in the fabric of this medieval building? Was the Queen able to slip into an experience of timelessness that enabled her to put whatever was happening in her life into different perspective? I wondered if Her Majesty visited here to be touched by the transcendent and to experience a special kind of peace.

  For a while, she remained in silent contemplation. Then there came a noise from the entrance to the chapel and we looked up to see Michael approaching. In a white cloak that seemed more like monk’s robe than raincoat, he seemed to reflect the warm gold of the altar as he came closer, his bright blue eyes dazzling in the pale light.

  As he drew closer he paused, bowing. ‘Your Majesty,’ he said, greeting her.

  She met his eyes with a grateful smile. ‘I’m pleased to see you,’ she said. ‘Very nice cloak.’

  ‘The colour of the moon,’ he responded. ‘In Christian mysticism, Jesus can be seen in a robe of this colour. It symbolises resurrection.’

  He stepped over where I’d settled at her feet, before sitting on the pew beside her. Gazing in the same direction as she was, he soon observed in a soft voice, ‘In all the world, there are few places of such antiquity and transcendence. You can feel the devotional energy, like milk and honey.’

  She nodded. ‘The cross is always a source of deep contemplation about what it means to be human.’

  ‘Indeed, ma’am. A universal symbol. The horizontal line representing matter. The vertical representing spirit. Man as the intersection of spirit and matter.’

  ‘Many people today think of themselves as nothing more than matter.’

  Michael nodded. ‘It’s unfortunate how many have been so seduced by conventional appearances that they will even deny the possibility of anything beyond their limited senses. But perception is misleading. The material world is not as it seems. Little do many people realise that the matter they believe to be so solid is nothing more than their own imagining.’

  The Queen shifted in her seat. ‘Even when one knows this to be true, one still needs to deal with . . . conventional concerns,’ she observed.

  ‘Of course. The dilemma. But in doing so, we need to recollect that what we are witnessing is merely the dance of appearances, whose only importance is the opportunity it gives us to act in accordance with the divine purpose. To manifest God’s love.’

  Her Majesty sat in silence for a long while considering this, before she observed, ‘I suppose I come to this place to be reminded of what you say. Understanding the concepts may be helpful, but it needs to go deeper, doesn’t it? We need to truly realise it.’

  ‘Indeed, Your Majesty. Knowledge on its own gets us only so far. To be of real benefit, knowledge needs to change our behaviour.’

  Although I was resting at Her Majesty’s feet, I was paying close attention to every word that was being spoken. I recognised how very similar it was to what Winston had told me at the summer party.

  ‘Contemplation can help. Casting a stone into a tranquil lake has a much greater impact than throwing the same stone into a turbulent sea. So, too, the understanding of a settled mind.’

  After a while the Queen turned to Michael. ‘I am fortunate to have you to advise me.’ Her voice was warm with appreciation. ‘Both fortunate and very grateful. It seems to me that we are all surrounded by symbols and wisdom which can be transforming. But we need to learn their meaning.’

  ‘Hidden in plain sight,’ agreed Michael.

  As he spoke, I shifted where I was lying on the floor, turned to look at him and pricked up one and a half ears. Again, the exact words Winston had used when stacking his bones beside the flowerpots. Could it be that he had learned his wisdom while sitting at Michael’s feet?

  ‘Someone seems very interested in what you just said,’ observed the Queen.

  ‘Oh, he has been listening to it all very carefully,’ said Michael with complete confidence.

  I wondered how he could be so sure.

  Leaning over to pat me, he asked Her Majesty, ‘How is our little alchemist?’

  ‘Coming on in leaps and bounds,’ she said with a chuckle. ‘Turning base metal into the finest gold.’

  ‘I had no doubt that would happen.’

  Her Majesty recounted the recent visit to Gloucester and the rescue of Cara that had led to my being named Nelson. Michael regarded me closely, warm appreciation showing in his blue eyes.

  ‘A telling start
to what will be a most auspicious life.’ His words seemed filled with significance.

  The Queen regarded him closely. ‘I’m so pleased you said that.’

  ‘Without question.’ He nodded, ‘I see great things ahead for Nelson. Great purpose.’

  Great things were not to unfold that same afternoon, however. On leaving the chapel, Her Majesty decided to take a short stroll near the river. I was more than pleased to join her. With security lurking in the background, we set off on that dullest of afternoons, the pallid winter sunlight unable to break through the heavy clouds, the grey riverbanks and spindly silhouettes of branches as dark as before. But after our time in the chapel, the outside world didn’t seem so gloomy. As Michael had explained, the way that outward things appeared had to do with the way we saw them. And as beings whose true purpose was the manifestation of love, even a solemn, winter afternoon could be an invigorating place for adventure.

  Without a lead and with Her Majesty making no attempt to keep me by her side, I was soon scampering through the gardens and sniffing curiously in shrubs, pausing to detect what canines or other creatures may have passed that way, and lifting my leg to mark my royal canine territory. Absorbed in this important activity, I didn’t realise how far ahead of me the Queen had progressed until, looking up, I saw her on the path which, inexplicably, angled sharply away from the river bank, before turning back towards it. An unnecessary detour it seemed to me. Seeking to catch up with Her Majesty, I set off at some speed, opting for the short cut.

  The earth was dark and wet, I discovered. It was muddy—very muddy. It was not like any ground I’d ever walked on.

  Suddenly I wasn’t moving very fast. In fact, I wasn’t moving at all. I was stuck. My paws were disappearing below the surface. I was sinking into the mud, a putrid swamp at that! I yelped . . . twice. But there was no-one to hear me. The path ahead disappeared behind a boathouse and Her Majesty had disappeared with it. Would a burst of energy be enough to pull me from the mire?

  I tried exactly this, but the faster I moved, the more I seemed to get bogged down. It wasn’t just my feet that were below the surface now—I was sinking to my knees! It was becoming a real struggle to stay upright. The greater my efforts to break free, the more I was drawn downwards into the thick, black stench.

  As my stomach began to submerge, I became desperate. I barked with all the loud urgency I could muster, fixing my attention on where the path emerged from behind the boatshed. A strong gust of wind blowing in the wrong direction meant that the Queen couldn’t hear me. But I redoubled my efforts when I saw her making her way from the other side of the boatshed.

  She stopped to pause, looked to each side, before glancing behind. I can’t say whether it was my frantic yapping coinciding with a momentary calming of the wind or Her Majesty detecting a movement in the swamp. But she suddenly turned and returned at speed, pointing towards me as two dark-clad men from security materialised. One of these, appearing from behind her, headed first towards the boatshed. Then he was hurrying in my direction with a canoe paddle in his hand. Like all security men, he was large, fast and muscular. In moments he was on the pathway next to me, slipping the oar into the mud underneath my stomach. Using the paddle as a lever he was hauling me upwards. Then he was dragging me towards him.

  The Queen, flanked by another security man, was fast approaching as I was safely brought back to the path. There I rewarded my rescuer by shaking myself vigorously, casting a hundred flecks of stinking black mud all over his navy police uniform, not to mention a generous quantity onto his face too.

  ‘Oh, dear!’ said the Queen, arriving just in time to see him wipe his face with the back of his hand, succeeding only in smudging the mud more evenly across his features. ‘But thank you.’ She nodded in my direction. ‘We’re very grateful.’

  Disaster averted, I looked up at her, wagging my now very black stump.

  ‘Would you like me to carry him back?’ offered security.

  ‘I think he can manage,’ replied Her Majesty. ‘You’re alright aren’t you, Nelson?’ She beckoned to me, so I took a few muddy steps in her direction. ‘But he’ll need a bath once we get home.’

  Far from recoiling from this prospect, the policeman had obviously been touched by the Queen’s unfailing ability to conjure up the highest motives in those around her. ‘Very good, ma’am’ he replied, as though he could think of no happier way to spend a winter’s afternoon than bathing a filthy and foul-smelling corgi.

  Soon afterwards, we were making our way back to the castle, this time with me walking most obediently to heel, with the security officer, making no pretence to remain invisible, a short distance behind us.

  ‘So, Nelson, what have we learned from that?’ asked Her Majesty conversationally.

  To avoid the black swamp and not be fooled into taking short cuts across that particular part of the riverbank, I would have replied.

  ‘It was just as Michael said, don’t you think?’ she continued. Her Majesty was making a connection that I had so far failed to grasp. ‘Perception is misleading,’ she reminded me now. ‘The material world is not as it seems. Things we believe to be solid can be nothing more than our own imagination.’

  I could see what she was getting at and looked up at her, black booted and chested no doubt, but my brown eyes bright with appreciation. Far from blaming me for my foolishness, she seemed to be saying that what had happened to me was simply part of being alive. ‘The dance of appearances,’ she confirmed a short while later. ‘Queens and canines. We can all be fooled.’

  Her Majesty is well known for the very wide variety of people she meets at public events, such as state banquets, garden parties, Royal Variety concerts and the innumerable other events which crowd her calendar. But as you will already have gathered, my fellow subject, the really interesting meetings, the conversations when intriguing things are said, are almost always held in private.

  One such conversation occurred only a few days after our visit to the chapel. It was the timing of it, as much as the insights themselves, which held a curious synchronicity.

  A number of very eminent scientists had joined Her Majesty one afternoon for tea at Windsor Castle for a regular, if not frequent, get-together to explain recent developments in their fields. Seated on a variety of sofas and chairs, the scientists told the Queen and her advisers about important trends to do with the environment, nanotechnology and alternative energy sources. Lying on one of the rugs, I was much more interested in the mouth-watering display of savoury snacks laid out for afternoon tea.

  After the briefing and the discussion that followed, the more interesting part of the proceedings commenced. The Queen and her guests rose to stretch their legs, while a butler and footmen began to serve the refreshments. Winston, Margaret and I did our bit to mix and mingle, engaging in our perennial quest for titbits. Winston, still ailing somewhat from his winter bug, had recovered sufficiently to fix his attentions on a professor who was so genuinely absent-minded that, during a previous visit, he had put a plate of salmon crudités on the floor, in order to draw a diagram on his napkin, while demonstrating some arcane principle of dematerialisation. Winston had seen to it that the crudités were soon no longer on the plate, thus providing a less arcane manifestation of the same principle.

  Margaret was following a very portly environmentalist, perhaps in the hope that his passionate concern for the natural world would extend to her.

  I tried my luck with a Cambridge artificial intelligence expert, who was deeply engrossed in conversation with a nanotechnologist. But after a while, I realised the two men were so engrossed in their highbrow conversation they hadn’t even noticed me. This was why I found myself heading back towards where Her Majesty was standing in discussion with a man with a very red nose, whose specialist field I couldn’t remember, and a female quantum scientist.

  ‘Most people are still stuck in direct perception theory,’ the man was saying. ‘They believe that their brains are passive receivers
of whatever streams through their eyes, ears and so on. Neuroscientists abandoned that view years ago.’

  ‘Really?’ asked Her Majesty. ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Apart from anything else, only 20 percent of fibres in the part of the brain that deals with visual imagery comes from the retina. The other 80 percent comes from the cortex, which is the part of the brain governing functions like memory.’ The neuroscientist had the Queen’s undivided attention. ‘So the process of perceiving something is more complex than people may assume. When we see, smell or taste something, it has far less to do with the thing itself than with our own cognitive processing, especially memory.’

  At this point, the female quantum physicist became so excited that she launched into the conversation. A striking woman in her forties, with shoulder-length dark hair, dusky skin and an aquiline nose, her dark eyes were ablaze and her teacup rattled in its saucer. ‘What you’re saying, Professor Monday, is that what we see is not so much what’s out there, as what we expect to see?’ she asked.

  ‘Precisely!’ he chimed. ‘We call them brain hypotheses.’

  ‘One’s experience,’ observed the Queen, ‘is indirectly related to the external world.’

  ‘Indeed!’ His nose deepened its glow. ‘What we’re doing, at any one time, is projecting brain hypotheses onto the physical world. We think we’re just seeing what’s there. But what’s there is more a product of our mind than anything.’

  ‘A product of our mind?’ asked Her Majesty perceptively. ‘Or of our brain?’

  ‘My mistake, Your Majesty.’

  At this point, Professor Monday’s nose turned positively beetroot in colour. ‘As a neuroscientist, I am unqualified to talk about anything except the workings of the brain. Mind is a different phenomenon.’

  ‘And how do the two interrelate?’

  ‘The brain is like a television set. We’re learning more and more about how it operates. But we’re still unable to explain basic facts like how consciousness is produced. There is a growing conviction that the brain is to consciousness as the TV receiver is to a broadcast. Even if the TV set breaks down, that is not necessarily the end of the broadcast.’