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 wished 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.
“What do you mean ‘a griffin made of fire’? Griffins are the stuff of myth and legend! They are not real!”
“No, this one is real, Grammy. I promise you. The Lord Protector has used some dark arts to bring a stone statue of a griffin to life. If we don’t stop him, this beast will kill every last one of us.”
The old lady pondered this for a moment. She took out a long, thin white thing from her handbag.
“What’s that?” asked the boy.
“A cigarette.”
Grammy put the cigarette in an elegant black holder, which she placed between her teeth. Then she found some matches and lit the end.
STRIKE!
Instantly, foul-smelling smoke clouded the air.
“What on earth are you doing, Grammy?” spluttered Alfred between coughs.
“Smoking…” She took a long, deep drag. “Something foolish folk like me used to do in the olden days. Something that you must never, ever do.”
The boy shook his head. Grown-ups were weird. This was a disgusting habit.
Next, the old lady brought out a little silver container, called a hip flask, and took a swig.
“What’s in there?” asked Alfred.
“Gin! Yes! I am drinking alcohol. Another thing you must never, ever do.”
“Anything else while you’re at it?” asked the boy.
The Old Queen took another drag on her cigarette, before enjoying another swig of gin.
“Gambling. Swearing. Cheating at cards. Putting ten sugar lumps in your tea. Eating toast in bed. Picking your nose. Peeing in the bath. Blowing off and blaming it on someone else. Scratching your bottom in public. All horrible habits that you must promise to never, ever do.”
Alfred couldn’t help but smile when he replied, “I promise, Grammy.”
“Good boy. Now if what you say about this beast is true…”
“It is true.”
“…then this Lord Protector is more powerful than we had ever imagined.”
The Old Queen took the cigarette holder out of her mouth and hollered, “LADIES!”
The old dears gathered around their mistress.
“We must stop the Lord Protector in his evil plan! We will strike… tonight!”
“TONIGHT?” spluttered Enid.
“Yes. Tonight! We will sound the signal for the people of Britain to rise up against this tyranny!”
“Thirteen bongs of Big Ben!” said Alfred.
“So you are one of us!” replied Grammy. “We will make a revolutionary of you yet! Set sail for the Houses of Parliament!”
“But, Your Majesty,” began Agatha, the rotund lady with the walking stick, “the Houses of Parliament are still under the control of the royal guards. The intelligence tells us they have doubled their soldiers there. To break into the bell tower now would be suicide.”
Grammy took another long drag on her cigarette.
“Then, Agatha, I, the Old Queen, will lead the attack.”
Silence descended upon the submarine.
“Grammy, with respect, you are too old to take on such a dangerous mission!” protested Alfred.
“You are never too old for adventure!” she retorted.
There was a hurrah from the ladies on board.
“HURRAH!”
Looking around, Alfred realised that his grandmother, who must have been eighty-something, was probably the youngest of these revolutionaries.
“I’ll come too!” he announced.
“Alfred, with respect, you are too young for such a dangerous mission.”
The boy thought for a moment, before exclaiming, “You are never too young for adventure!”
There was another hurrah from the crew. This one was much more hesitant than the last.
“HURRAH!”
“That’s my boy,” said Grammy, patting her grandson on the head a little too hard for his liking.
PAT! PAT! PAT!
“Now, Enid, set a course for Big Ben!” announced the Old Queen.
“Aye, aye, Captain!” replied Enid, and the submarine surged through the water.
