“Now, a bit of a quiz for you, Alfred,” began Nanny as the pair stood together in the middle of the vast vault at the bottom of Buckingham Palace. “Can you name all ten of the King’s Beasts?”
Alfred sighed. The old lady could be annoying at the best of times, and this was the worst of times. She’d been working at the palace for so many years, over two generations, that she knew more than most about anything royal.
“Of course I can!” he protested. “I am Prince Alfred. One day I will be King. And they will be my beasts!”
“Go on, then,” she replied, a know-it-all sing-song tone creeping into her voice.
Alfred sighed louder this time, then took a moment to gather his thoughts.
“Well, the Lion of England.”
“Anyone can get that one,” scoffed Nanny.
“The RED DRAGON OF WALES, the UNICORN OF SCOTLAND…”
“Those three are easy-peasy lemon-squeezy!”
“Nanny!” said the boy sharply. “You are actually distracting me by interrupting all the time.”
“I won’t say another thing,” replied the old lady, looking unbearably smug.
“Thank you.”
After a moment, she added, “Three. You’ve got three.”
“That’s you saying another thing!” he protested.
Nanny then performed the internationally recognised mime for zipping up your mouth. The boy continued, lighting up the statues one by one with his lantern to prompt him. They were all a good deal taller than he was.
“The White Greyhound of Richmond, the White Horse of Hanover, the White Lion of Mortimer, the Black Bull of Clarence, the Falcon of the Plantagenets…”
Nanny nodded her head, impressed, before pointing to the last stone statue in the line.
The prince took a closer look at this particular beast. It was the weirdest-looking creature of all, and he knew it had the weirdest name too. He shook his head. NO! He always forgot the last one!
“Can I give you a clue?” asked the old lady, grinning.
“NO!” he snapped.
“The Yale of Beaufort,” she announced.
“That’s not a clue!” exclaimed Alfred. “That’s the actual answer!”
“Well, we haven’t got all night.”
Alfred counted them. “One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine! Nine statues. Nine. There should be ten King’s Beasts! One is missing. The one I said the Lord Protector was using!”
The boy felt vindicated.
Nanny swung her lantern around the vault and stopped when she spotted something.
“No, no, no,” she said. “I am sorry, my little prince, but you are wrong. Quite wrong. It is right here!”
She lifted her lantern up to the statue.
“What?” He paced over to it.
Nanny was right. The stone statue of the griffin was standing there.
“The Griffin of Edward the Third,” she announced in a smugger-than-smug tone. “This great thing can’t have been upstairs in the ballroom coming to life or some such nonsense, because it’s been down here all along! Now! Can we please go back to bed?”
Alfred was stumped.
He knew what he’d just seen in the ballroom. If only Nanny would believe him.
“The guards must have brought it back down!” he protested.
“No, no, no,” she replied. “We would have heard them. And look! These great blighters weigh a tonne!”
To prove her point she slapped the stone.
SLAP!
It was rock solid.
The old lady shook her head. “There is absolutely no way one could be carried all the way upstairs to the ballroom and all the way down here in so little time.”
“How can you be so sure?” asked Alfred.
“It’s just common sense, child.”
Common sense was something Alfred knew he had precious little of, being a prince and all that.
The boy brought his lantern up close to the statue of the griffin. He noticed a dark patch on its head.
“Blood!” he exclaimed.
“You what?” replied Nanny.
“This was the statue the Lord Protector was using to bring the griffin to life. Look! There are spots of my father’s blood on it!”
Nanny furrowed her brow before peering in for a closer look. She shook her head.
“That’s not blood. That’s just a dark patch on the stone!”
Alfred dabbed his finger on it.
“Then why is it still damp?” he asked, proudly showing her his stained red fingertip.
“It looks like dirt to me!” she muttered, dismissing him again.
The boy couldn’t hide his frustration any more. “Why is everything ‘no, no, no’ with you?”
Nanny shook her head. “My little prince, you’re tired. Overtired. You need to go to bed. Right now! If you really, really want to, we can look again in the morning. Once you’ve had your eggy-wegg, you will feel right as rain!”
“The morning may be too late! Who knows what the Lord Protector will have used his dark arts to do by then!”
“I’ve heard quite enough of this nonsense, young man! Come on, I am taking you up to bed. RIGHT NOW!”
With that, she grabbed the boy sharply by the wrist.
“OW!”
It hurt. In the struggle, he dropped his lantern on the floor.
CRASH!
The shock of this made the pair fall silent.
They listened, and to their horror heard a noise.
RUSTLE!
They were not alone down there.