Alfie couldn’t believe what he was seeing. He was standing with LC at one end of a vast underground hall. The windowless stone walls were draped with enormous tapestries depicting some of the most famous events in British history. Except that these were not the versions he had been taught at school: He did not recall the Spanish Armada of 1588 being sunk by a gigantic squid; he had thought the Great Fire of London in 1666 was started by a careless baker, not a fearsome red dragon; and if there had been a rampaging army of ogres at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815, he was pretty sure he’d have remembered hearing about it. But that wasn’t all. In each woven image, right in the thick of the action, was a sword-wielding knight in sleek white armor flying on a phantom horse.

“Hey, isn’t that the fake superhero guy from the papers? You know—the Defender.”

“Ah, you’ve heard of him, good.” LC smiled. “That will save some time.”

The low hum of industrious work echoed around the great chamber. The main floor was covered with an enormous mosaic of a Tudor rose painted a brilliant red. Positioned in each petal was a cluster of heavy oak desks, each manned by a beefeater. There were maybe twenty of them in all, mainly gray-haired and stocky. Most were men with bushy beards, although Alfie noticed a couple of women too, bustling around in their traditional scarlet-and-black tunics. There was not a computer in sight. A network of transparent pneumatic tubes ran above the desks, delivering capsules that whizzed to and fro. Once in the hands of a beefeater, the capsules were cracked open and their contents unloaded by the recipient, before being sucked back into the pipes again. On every desk were old-fashioned phones with large enamel receivers in bright red, white, and blue, which rang intermittently.

“What is this place?” asked Alfie.

“We call it the Keep,” replied LC.

The Lord Chamberlain struck his staff on the floor. The beefeaters turned to them and stood at attention, as one.

“GOD SAVE THE KING!”

The force of their cry startled Alfie. He felt like they were waiting for him to say something.

“Um … thanks?”

LC gave a slight nod of his head and the beefeaters returned to their work. Alfie scurried down the wide stone steps and followed LC through the hall. At its center sat a grand table-map of Britain, the size of four pool tables pushed together. It was carved from wood and dotted with ornate icons representing a host of important national sites—Wembley Stadium, Sizewell B nuclear power station, the Forth Bridge—as well as the locations of ancient castles and battlefields—Corfe, Bosworth, Dover. Alfie paused to watch a beefeater wearing bulky black headphones push a little lead model of a lizard man to the place on the map marking Stonehenge.

“This is the Map Room, Majesty,” said LC. “The operations table helps us keep an eye on what’s going on in the kingdom.” He spoke as if it was the most natural thing in the world to be monitoring—what?—monsters?!

Alfie realized what this place reminded him of: the Cabinet War Rooms—the bunker in Whitehall, now a museum, where they had re-created the headquarters from which Churchill had conducted Britain’s Second World War operations. Except that there the figures sitting at desks gazing at maps and manila folders were dummies. Here they were living, breathing men and women, most of them with pretty impressive beards.

“What are the beefeaters doing here in the middle of the night, LC?”

“They prefer ‘yeoman warders,’ sir. And they are Your Majesty’s bodyguard. They are never off duty.”

“I thought Brian was my bodyguard? Speaking of which, does he even know we’re—”

“’Fraid so, boss.”

It was Brian, pushing an ancient-looking stone casket on an upright trolley. Its surface was covered with a carving of the Defender. He stopped and pulled a startled Alfie into a hug. “Sorry about your dad. He was a good bloke.”

LC frowned. “A little decorum when around His Majesty, if you please.”

Brian pushed the trolley away. “It’s only a man hug. Don’t get your tights in a twist.”

“They’re called breeches. You know they are, because I’ve corrected you on that point several times before.” LC composed himself and ushered Alfie on through the hall. “Brian may be rather unconventional, but his skills as the king’s armorer make up for it. Just about.”

“I have an armorer?” Alfie asked, perplexed.

“One thing at a time, Majesty.”

The old man guided him through a thick velvet curtain and into a private alcove, lit by candles. Alfie saw that he was standing on a giant engraving of his family’s coat of arms—a white shield adorned with a blue cross, held on one side by a black swan and on the other by a red boar. Beneath it was the House of Arundel’s motto: Non ducor, duco. I am not led, I lead.

But the last thing Alfie felt like right now was a leader. “LC, tell me what’s going on. What is all this? What am I doing here?”

The Lord Chamberlain fixed him with an intense stare. He seemed nervous, which wasn’t something Alfie was used to seeing. “Sir, your father did not die of a heart attack. He was killed. In battle.”

Alfie laughed. “Battle? What are you talking about? What battle?”

With great ceremony, the Lord Chamberlain produced an ornate key and unlocked an ancient carved cupboard. Alfie, curious, strained to see, but the old man stepped aside anyway to reveal a dusty television and an ancient-looking video recorder. He took a videotape from his jacket, inserted it into the machine with a loud clunk, and turned on the TV. Static fuzzed on the screen. Then LC punched a couple of buttons. Nothing happened.

“Every time,” tutted LC.

A beefeater leaned through a curtain. “You need to stick it on channel six.”

Alfie looked from side to side, bewildered, as another beefeater popped in. “Make sure the plug hasn’t come loose at the back.”

LC had put on a pair of reading glasses and was flicking through a moth-eaten instruction manual.

Brian barged in and smacked the VCR on the top. Sure enough, the screen cleared. “If in doubt, give it a whack.”

Before Alfie knew it, everyone else had melted away and he was alone in the alcove. He felt his way around the dark curtains, but could not find a gap. It was as if the drapes had become a wall. There was no way through, no way under.

“Alfred.”

His father’s voice. Alfie spun around, almost losing his footing. There he was on the TV screen, King Henry, sitting by the fireplace in one of the palace drawing rooms. He was addressing the camera, like he was giving one of his boring Christmas broadcasts.

“If you are watching this, then it means I am gone and you have taken my place as king. If this has happened while you are still young, then I am truly sorry. The burdens you now carry are not something a young man should have to bear.”

Even from beyond the grave he was struggling to drop the formal tone, thought Alfie.

“Unlike most people, you have always known your destiny. And I realize that has not been easy. But there are some things you do not know—things that now you must learn. For a thousand years the head of our family has been the custodian of certain powers, passed down through our bloodline. Not merely symbolic, empty titles as you might think. These are real, unique abilities that have been used at times of crisis to protect our nation and its people. This great kingdom has more enemies than you can possibly imagine … ”

Alfie thought about the giant tapestries hanging in the hall with all the fantastical monsters. Could they be real?

His father continued. “At the moment I died, you became king. But you also became something else: Defender of the Realm. That has been your true destiny since the day you were born, and I believe it is yours for a reason. There are those who will help you become accustomed to your new role: faithful and wise allies. Listen to them. But in the end, know that the power growing inside you is a lonely gift. Only you can decide how to use it. Duty is not something you do because you are told to; it is something you do because you believe it to be right. I have done my duty to the best of my ability since the night I stood where you stand now, but there are things I wish I had done differently—so much I could have done better. I love you, Alfred. Good luck, my son.”

The image of his father disappeared and the screen returned to a storm of static. Alfie’s feet felt as if they had become one with the floor, as if he were turning into just another statue that would remain rooted there forever.

Behind him the curtain parted once more, and the Lord Chamberlain stepped back into the alcove. He laid a hand on Alfie’s shoulder. Alfie flinched as if stung. There were tears in his eyes. “Why are you doing this to me?” he whispered.

He pushed past the Lord Chamberlain and bolted back into the hall. He didn’t know where he was going, but he needed space to think. He needed to get away from all this madness. LC strode after him, surprisingly quick on his long legs, catching up with Alfie amid the maze of beefeaters’ desks. “Your Majesty, please wait—”

But Alfie didn’t want to hear any more. “My father was no hero. He couldn’t even kick a ball in a straight line! I never even saw him ride a bike! You expect me to believe he could fly through the sky at will?”

“Of course not, sir. His horse flew; he merely rode it.”

Alfie let out a hollow laugh and looked around the chamber at the beefeaters. They were doing their best to carry on with their work, but he could tell they were all listening. He marched back to the door and pulled at the iron handle, to no avail.

“Could somebody tell me what special code I need to get out of this place?” Alfie shouted and waved his hand angrily at the locked door.

Suddenly he felt a rush of blood to his head, heard his pulse loud in his ears, and the door flew open with a bang that echoed around the hall. Shocked, he gazed at his palm and saw the veins in his hand glow blue beneath his skin for a moment.

The Lord Chamberlain watched, disappointed, as Alfie ran out into the tunnel without looking back. Brian strolled over to join him. “Go easy on the boy; he’s just lost his dad.”

The Lord Chamberlain gazed back at the ops table and the figurine of the Black Lizard next to Stonehenge. “We don’t have time. He needs to be ready.”