“I wonder if when one of your son’s limbs is smashed to pieces it might just jog your memory.”
“NO! PLEASE!” she pleaded. “I DON’T KNOW ANYTHING. I SWEAR!”
The Executioner shook his head, before holding aloft an iron hammer, ready to strike the boy, and smash his bones into smithereens.
Alfred shut his eyes tight. He couldn’t bear to watch what was about to happen to him.
“STOP!” called out the Queen. “I will tell you everything I know.”
“I knew you’d see sense,” replied the Executioner.
“Now, untie my son, and I will talk.”
The Executioner was not used to taking orders. The man bristled and paced over to the cage.
“Where are the revolutionaries hiding?” he demanded.
“I said, untie my son first,” said the Queen sternly.
Alfred was amazed that his mother could retain her composure at a time like this.
The Executioner nodded to the guards, who began loosening the ropes round the boy’s wrists and ankles.
“Don’t tell them anything, Mama,” pleaded Alfred.
The Queen chose to ignore her son. She waited for him to be freed from the Breaking Wheel. The boy’s eyes were streaming, and he was completely out of breath. He had to be helped up by one of the royal guards.
“Your precious little prince is free,” began the Executioner. “Now you tell me what you know. Right. Now.”
The man swung the head of the hammer into the palm of his hand.
THWACK!
A tiny bit too hard.
He had hurt himself.
“Ouch,” he said, no doubt wincing underneath that hood. “I am waiting.”
Next, he dragged the end of the hammer slowly down the bars of the cage.
CLUNK! CLANK! CLINK!
“Please. I am a very busy man. I have a whole tower full of prisoners to torture, and a list of executions as long as your arm!”
The Queen stared straight at Alfred and nodded her head. He struggled to understand what she meant. Without giving the game away, he furrowed his brow as if to ask, What?
The Queen nodded her head again, tilting it to one side.
This, the prince thought, must mean she wanted him to get the Executioner’s attention.
“I will tell you where the revolutionaries are,” announced Alfred. The Executioner turned round.
The Queen smiled. Her plan was working.
“Will you now, you nasty little wretch?” asked the Executioner, not sounding at all convinced. “Or are you just playing games?”
With all eyes on the prince, the Queen was free to rock her cage to and fro. In a few swings, the cage was gathering momentum.
WHOOSH!
Alfred did his best to let his face portray absolutely nothing of this at all. Which was hard, as it wasn’t every day that he saw his mother swinging around in what looked like a giant birdcage.
“The revolutionaries have a number of secret bases across London,” continued Alfred. “They hide in what used to be the Underground stations.”
The Executioner rolled his eyes. “That is old information, and you well know it. The rats were driven out of those sewers years ago.”
Now the cage was swinging violently. So violently, in fact, that it was very nearly reaching the Executioner.
“Executioner!” called out the Queen.
He turned round. “What?”
Only to be whacked on the head by the cage.
CLONK!
“OOF!”
He toppled over and fell off the top of the tower...
“ARGH!”
...plunging into the river below.
SPLOSH!
“I CAN’T SWIM!” he cried.
Standing on one of the turrets of the Tower of London, Alfred looked over to his mother for the next part of the plan.
Sadly, she didn’t seem to have one.
“RUN!” she shouted.
“But, Mama, I have to save you!”
“RUN! PLEASE RUN!”
The boy looked across the turret. Guards were blocking the way down.
What’s more, one of them was coming straight for him. Alfred escaped by darting round the back of the cage.
“WHACK HIM!” called out his mother.
With all his might, he swung the cage forward and it smashed straight into the guard.
CLONK!
“EURGH!”
The guard toppled backwards, knocking over a few more guards, as if they were
skittles.
BISH!
BASH!
BOSH!
“AH!”
“OW!”
“HURGH!”
“Nice work, young prince,” said his mother.
The guards scrambled to their feet and were now circling Alfred.
“RUN, LIONHEART, RUN!” shouted the Queen. “Only you can save the kingdom now.”
“NO! I’m not leaving you!”
With that, the boy leaped on to the back of the cage to make it swing faster.
BASH!
It smashed into one of the guards.
“Four down! One to go!” said Alfred.
“Don’t get cocky!” remarked his mother.
However, Alfred didn’t listen. He began swinging the cage as fast as he could. To create more momentum, he arched his back to go faster and faster.
As he did so, DISASTER STRUCK! Just as it swung off to the side, his hands slipped from the bars of the cage!
“ARGH!”
Alfred found himself falling through the air, heading straight for the River Thames!
“AAARGHHH!”
SPLASH!
Alfred plunged deep into the black water.
He had dropped from so high that the force of the fall took him down and down and down into the depths. It was so dark and cold and dirty that he didn’t know if he were upside down or the right way up.
Gasping for air, he desperately tried to propel himself to the surface to take a breath. But, as much as he tried, he couldn’t. Instead Alfred felt himself being swept along by a powerful current. His body was being twisted and turned by the flow of the water.
THUD!
Alfred’s head had bashed into what felt like a brick wall. It must have been one of the legs of Tower Bridge. As much as he was dazed and confused, he knew that the bridge was the only thing that could save him. The water was pinning him to it. He grabbed on to the bricks with his hands. They were slippery and thick with slime, but the boy just managed to haul himself up.
GASP!
He took a breath. He was alive. But not for long.
Not if those royal guards shooting at him with their laser guns were anything to go by.
ZAP!
ZAP!
ZAP!
The bricks just above his head exploded.
BOOM!
BOOM!
BOOM!
With his feet, Alfred pushed himself away from the wall and swam for his life.
The boy was coughing and spluttering, having taken in several mouthfuls of the filthy river water. It was years since any fish had lived in the Thames. It had returned to being little more than a giant sewer for the City of London, as it had been hundreds of years ago.
Hearing something surging through the water, Alfred turned round to see that the royal barge was giving chase.
As fast as the boy could swim, the boat could go faster.
There was only one thing for it.
GASP!
Alfred took a deep breath.
Then he swam down, down, down into the depths of the Thames until his ears went POP!
With his hands, he searched the muddy bottom for something, anything, to hold on to. The riverbed was a graveyard of wrecks. Old cars, sunken boats, even train carriages often poked out of the water at low tide. Finding a long piece of metal, he yanked himself down, and passed through what felt like a window. On the other side of the opening Alfred saw there was an air bubble
just above him.
GASP!
He took a breath.
Feeling his way around, Alfred realised that there were rows and rows of seats. He couldn’t believe it! He was on the top deck of a double-decker bus!
One of London’s famous modes of transport, the once bright-red bus must have plunged off Tower Bridge many years before. Now it was an underwater hiding place for a prince.
The boy took slow deep breaths, counting in his head.
ONE…
TWO…
THREE…
He counted all the way to two hundred. Only then could he be sure that the guards on the royal barge would have presumed him drowned and moved off.
By now the oxygen in the bubble of air was thinning.
Alfred took one last breath…
GASP!
…before pulling himself out of the bus and letting himself float to the surface.
GASP!
He was alive!
His head bobbing out of the river, Alfred looked all around. There was now no sign of the royal barge, and the boy felt safe enough to swim again. However, the freezing-cold water was tiring him quickly. He had little energy at the best of times, and this was the worst of times. His arms and legs felt like lead weights, and in seconds he found himself whooshing downriver. The tide was taking him, and if Alfred didn’t do something fast he would be swept all the way out to sea!
At speed, he passed through what was left of the Thames Barrier, like giant clogs in the water. It had been designed and built nearly two hundred years before to prevent a flood. Many years later, the barrier had been destroyed by one. Now it was little more than a mangled mess of metal, rusting in the water. Alfred tried to cling on to part of it, but the tide was so strong it pulled him off.
“NOOO!” the boy cried.
As Alfred was taken further and further downriver, he felt something move past him under the water. It was something fast and silent. At first, he thought it might be a whale or even a shark, but that was impossible.
Could it be some kind of monster?
Alfred was panicking and kicking his legs as hard as he could to escape from whatever was powering through the depths.
However, this thing was gaining on him.
WHOOSH!
What’s more, it was rising to the surface.
WHAASH!
Alfred could feel the water around him being swept aside. Whatever it was, it was right underneath him.
And it was rising fast!
The boy couldn’t bear it and closed his eyes.
He was about to be eaten alive!
The prince lifted his hand as high into the air as he could. Maybe, just maybe, if he struck this creature hard enough, it might descend into the murky depths forever.
THWACK!
“OUCH!” cried Alfred.
This monster was made of metal.
As it emerged from the water, Alfred realised it wasn’t a monster at all.
It was a submarine.
He was lying right on top of a submarine!
It looked like a relic from World War One, a rusty old antique that Alfred was surprised was still operational. On the front of the craft was emblazoned HMS Sceptre.
Sceptre!
That was the code word he’d heard on the radio.
Revolutionaries!
Near the name was a painted Union Jack.
A hatch on the submarine opened, and to Alfred’s surprise an elderly lady popped her head out. She was tall and proud, and dressed in a way that suggested she was making the best of things: a hat, a string of pearls and white gloves that had gone grey.
“The captain requests you come aboard, Your Royal Highness,” she announced in a posh voice.
Alfred rose to his feet. Soaked to the skin and shivering with cold, he trudged over to the hatch.
“Ladies first!” he said.
“Very kind, but, please, after you, Prince Alfred,” said the old lady, beckoning for him to make his way down the ladder. For the first time in his life, the prince was standing in a submarine.
“SUBMERGE!” barked someone from the shadows, and all at once half a dozen elderly ladies set to work. All Alfred could do was stand still as they bustled around him. Despite their age and in many cases infirmity (Alfred spotted some hearing aids, a walking frame and even a wheelchair), in seconds the submarine was sinking into the depths of the Thames.
“My goodness, you must be little Alfred,” said the voice.
“Less of the little, please,” he replied. “I’m now twelve years old.”
“I haven’t seen you since you were a toddler.”
Then the owner of the voice stepped into the light and Alfred recognised her at once.
“GRAMMY!” he exclaimed.
“The very same!” she replied brightly. She held out her arms, and he raced towards her. It felt so good being held again by someone who loved him.
The King’s mother had mysteriously disappeared from Buckingham Palace half a dozen years before. She was dressed in that way old queens often are: all in one colour. Today it was canary yellow, with a matching hat, handbag and long white gloves. Just like the lady who had welcomed him aboard, her clothes had seen better days. Living on an old, oily, dusty submarine couldn’t help.
Grammy was a good deal older than Alfred remembered. She was stooped, and her skin was pale and wrinkled, though she still had that magical twinkle in her eye that made you fall in love with her in a heartbeat.
“You are wet through!” she remarked.
“I was swimming, Grammy,” he replied.
“And you used to be such a sickly child! Well I never. Still, it’s a ruddy stupid thing to swim in that dirty old river.”
“I had to escape!”
“Yes. We’ve been spying on the Tower of London for some time now. We saw a figure dive from the very top. Must have been you. Extremely brave, I must say.”
Alfred didn’t tell his grandmother that it was not a dive at all, but rather a fall.
“Thank you, Grammy,” he replied. “What are you all doing on board this submarine?”
The Old Queen smiled. “We’re waiting for the right moment to strike!”
Surely they couldn’t be?
Could they?
“Don’t tell me that YOU are the revolutionaries?” he spluttered.
“YES! You are looking at them. I know we look like a group of nice old dears ready to judge a cake competition.”
Alfred did not disagree.
“But,” the Old Queen continued, “we are ready for REVOLUTION!”
All the ladies stood to face the prince and saluted.
“Are there any others?” asked the boy.
“Of course! We are just one group,” continued Grammy. “One group of many.”
“But you are a member of the royal family!” exclaimed the boy. “How can you be a revolutionary too?”
“What binds all us revolutionaries together is an idea. An idea that the way this once-great nation is being run is wrong. There must be a better way. A fairer way. We need a government. We need a police force. We need food and water for everyone, whoever they are. Power can never lie in the hands of just one man. Especially if that man is the Lord Protector.”
“So how many revolutionaries are there?” asked Alfred.
“Impossible to say. The Lord Protector and his goons have done their best to crush all of us. We hid in Knightsbridge Underground station for many years…”
“Very handy for looting Harrods,” chirped one of the old ladies.
“But like many of the other revolutionaries we were driven out of our hiding place.”
“How?” asked Alfred.
“The royal guards pumped poison gas down into the tunnels. We were lucky to get out alive. Some of our friends weren’t so lucky.”
The old lady’s eyes glinted with tears at the memory. Alfred put his arm round his grandmother to comfort her.
“I’ve missed you so much, Grammy. I wi
shed you hadn’t left the palace,” he said softly.
“I am sorry, Alfred, but I had no choice. The Lord Protector accused me of being a traitor. I was only a traitor to him, never to my son the King. My ladies-in-waiting and I escaped by a bit of ram-raiding!”
“What?”
“We all piled into an old Rolls-Royce and smashed through the palace gates!”
“Jolly good fun it was too!” added one of the others.
“Rather!” said another.
“I haven’t introduced you properly!” exclaimed Grammy. “You will have seen these ladies bustling around the palace, but you were just a baby. This is Enid!”
“Good day!” trilled Enid.
“Agatha!”
“A pleasure,” said Agatha, performing a curtsey.
“Virginia!”
Virginia did a little wave from her wheelchair.
“Daphne!”
“Charmed to meet you.”
“Beatrix!”
“Or ‘Beatie’ for short!”
“Judith!”
“What?” said the old lady.
“I’m introducing you!”
“Pardon?”
“Judith is a little deaf.”
“Half past two.”
Alfred smiled to himself. “So how did you come to be on this submarine?”
“We stole, I mean ‘borrowed’, the Sceptre from the naval museum. Ancient old thing she is, a little like me!”
“Ha! Ha!” chuckled Alfred.
“Now, Alfred, we need you to share with us all the intelligence you have from the palace.”
The boy was worried he was going to be laughed at. “You are not going to believe this…”
“These days, there is nothing that can surprise me,” replied Grammy.
Alfred took a deep breath before blurting out, “There is a beast in Buckingham Palace. A griffin. Made of fire.”
There followed a pause long enough to sail a warship through it.
“I have to be honest, that has surprised me,” replied the Old Queen.
“I knew you wouldn’t believe me!” protested Alfred.
The Beast of Buckingham Palace Page 10
