“That’s simple,” Dad said, “but it’s also quite impossible. We all have an impossible dream. We want our team, Leicester City, to win the next match, don’t we, son? And—”

“Easy, it’s a deal,” the voice interrupted. “Get me out of here and I’ll make sure you win the next match.”

“No, no, I hadn’t finished, Your Kingship,” Dad went on. “We don’t just want to win the next match, but the one after, and the next after that, and the next, and go on winning. We want to beat Spurs and Man United, and Man City and Liverpool – wipe the floor with them all, especially Chelsea. Us, the Foxes, Leicester City, we want to be top of the Premier League, top of the world. Me and my little cub here, and my family and my kind, we have supported the Foxes for ever. But we never win a thing. Last season we were almost bottom of the league, nearly went down. Do you know, the betting against us winning the league this season is five thousand to one? You help us win the league, Your Kingship, help us achieve the impossible dream, and we’ll dig for you, tunnel our way to you, and help get you out of there. That’s the deal. Take it or leave it.”

“You strike a hard bargain, Mister Fox. Very well. I agree. You have my word. You get me out of here, and I will guarantee your team wins the league this season. And that’s a promise.”

“Promises, promises,” said Dad. “There’s always a problem with promises: they are so easy to make, and so easy to break. How, pray, Your Kingship, will you do it? How do we know you can do it, and how can we be sure you will?”

“I do not break my promises. You are speaking to the rightful king of all England, Mister Fox,” he said, sounding haughtier again. “What I say should happen in this land, happens. I am king, do you hear me? I rule here! And when I am laid to rest as befits a king I will be able to do stuff, make stuff happen, impossible stuff – ‘such stuff as dreams are made on …’ Oh rats! There I go. You hear that? I can’t seem to help myself. I’m always quoting that villainous scribbler Will Shakespeare, that ‘rogue and peasant slave’. Rats! You see? His words again! They haunt me. He haunts me. He’s inside my head: his voice, his words, his poems, his plays. That infernal dramatist haunts my life and my death to this very day.”

The voice was becoming more agitated and angry, and louder now, with every word he spoke.

I crept under Dad’s brush and hid myself away. But I could not stop myself from trembling.

“Alack, alack,” the voice went on, the pitch rising, “but for a horse a kingdom was lost, my kingdom. ‘A horse, a horse! My kingdom for a horse!’ There I go again! Losing my horse, losing my throne, losing my life on Bosworth Field that day, was bad enough, painful enough too, I can tell you. But worse, so much worse – Will Shakespeare took my reputation. ‘Reputation, reputation! Oh, reputation, I have lost my reputation!’ By his play of Richard III, that vile villain made a villain of me, a traitor, a murderer. I may not have been the best of kings, not whiter than white maybe, but not blacker than black either. And who do they celebrate now all over the world? Me? A crowned King of England? No, that wretched man, that ruinous rhymster, that dastardly dramatist, that William Shakespeare.

“And as for me? I end up buried in a car park in Leicester, not in my rightful place, not honoured in a tomb in a cathedral like other kings and queens. But if they find me, these archaeologists, I will be famous again, a king again, and honoured. The people, history, may even begin to remember me as I was, not as that which Shakespeare made me to be. Just get me out of this horrible car park, I beg you, my foxy friends, and I will ensure the Foxes of Leicester City win the league. You have my promise, the promise of a king.”

Well, Dad liked digging anyway. So did I. What had we got to lose? You get worms if you dig, great fat wriggly ones if you’re lucky.

And if the king kept his promise we would be getting a lot more than worms for the Foxes, for Leicester City.

So we dug.