The Beast of Buckingham Palace

by David Walliams

  WHOOMPH!

  CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!

  The All-Seeing Eye raced straight into the cloud of dust. Losing sight of where it was headed, it bashed into the wall.

  DONK!

  It must have short-circuited. The life went out of it, and it began bouncing down the steps like a mighty bowling ball.

  BOINK! BOINK! BOINK!

  Alfred looked over his shoulder again.

  CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!

  The ball was bounding straight towards him!

  BOINK! BOINK! BOINK!

  CLUNK! CLUNK! CLUNK!

  As he reached the bottom step, he leaped off the tray and rolled to the side.

  BOINK!

  The All-Seeing Eye bounced down on to the tray, sending it flying.

  BOOM!

  CLATTER!

  The robot came to a stop further down the passage.

  Alfred looked up from the floor. The thing was fizzling back to life.

  FIZZLE!

  Exhausted, the boy clambered to his feet.

  With his mother in the Tower of London, Alfred had only one ally in the palace.

  Nanny.

  She was the only one who could help him right now.

  Ahead of him was a little hatch in the wall, just big enough for a boy, but too small for a giant eye. It was a laundry chute, where all the sheets could slide down to the laundry room.

  As the All-Seeing Eye rose off the ground, its deadly pupil swivelling round in his direction, Alfred had no choice. He ran for the laundry chute, and threw himself in.

  WHIZZ!

  He sped down the slide, landing in a big pile of dirty laundry collected in a huge wicker basket.

  Alfred looked up from his comfy, if slightly smelly, bed.

  There were rows and rows of sinks and washing machines. This was the laundry room all right. Knowing the All-Seeing Eye would still be looking for him, he leaped up from the pile of sheets and raced across to the door. Now he was in a corridor deep underground.

  Alfred knew the servants’ quarters were all the way down here, even if he’d never been. There was a strict division in the palace. The royals would never, ever venture down here.

  The boy crept along the rows and rows of doors until he found the one he was sure was the right one. The door had the word NANNY engraved upon it. Alfred lifted his hand, about to knock, before thinking better of it. It was far too dangerous to risk waking anyone else up. So, instead, he pushed down on the door handle.

  LOCKED!

  Just then, he heard the sound of boots stomping along the ground not far off.

  STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!

  It must be members of the royal guard on patrol.

  Alfred bent down so his mouth was right next to the keyhole.

  “Nanny?” he whispered through it.

  Nothing.

  “Nanny?” He was louder this time.

  “Nanny?” Louder still.

  Just as the bootsteps were growing closer and closer…

  STOMP!

  STOMP! STOMP!

  …the key in the lock clicked.

  CLICK!

  A hand reached out from behind the door and smothered his mouth.

  Alfred wanted to scream, but he couldn’t let out a sound!

  The prince was hurled up and over…

  “HUH!”

  …and landed on his back, sprawled out on the floor.

  THUD!

  “OOF!”

  A figure was standing over him in the blackness.

  “What do you think you are doing out of your room at this time of night?” the voice demanded. “I thought you were locked in!”

  “Nanny! You’re surprisingly strong,” said the boy as he lay there, dazed and confused.

  The old lady proudly shared her fitness regime. “Porridge every morning and a bottle of port each night.”

  Indeed, the stench of alcohol coming from the old lady was overpowering. Alfred thought he might get drunk on the fumes.

  “Would you like a hand up, Your Royal Highness?” asked the tough old bird.

  “Yes, please.”

  With ease, the old lady yanked him to his feet.

  “You won’t believe what I’ve just seen,” said Alfred.

  Outside the door, the bootsteps were growing louder.

  STOMP!

  STOMP! STOMP!

  “SHUSH!” shushed Nanny. “The guards will hear us. And we’ll both be sent to the Tower!”

  The pair waited until the sounds of the bootsteps rose then fell, disappearing off down the corridor.

  “Now you and I need to have a talk, young man.” Nanny’s tone was the one grown-ups use just before they tell you off.

  “Let me tell you something first,” pleaded Alfred. “It is super important!”

  “No! No! Sit down, young man! Let me tell you something!”

  “All right, all right, I’ll sit down. But where?”

  The problem was that it was pitch-black in Nanny’s bedroom.

  “Sit on my bed,” said the old lady.

  Alfred shuffled around the room with his arms out, attempting to feel his way to it.

  “No, that’s not the bed – that’s a chest of drawers,” hissed Nanny. “That’s the coffee table. And what you’re sitting on right now is me.”

  “Oh, sorry, Nanny.”

  Eventually, the boy found the bed and Nanny began her whispered tirade.

  “You are going to get yourself killed, prince or no prince, sneaking around the palace at night. It’s dangerous.”

  “Have you finished?” asked Alfred.

  “Don’t you ‘have you finished’ me!” she hissed.

  “Nanny! Please! You have to listen! I have to tell you something, something that you’re not going to believe.”

  “I can believe a lot,” mused the old lady.

  “Trust me, you are not going to believe this!”

  “Well, get on with it, then!”

  “I am getting on with it!”

  “Go on, then!”

  “If you stop speaking, then I can!”

  “I won’t say another word,” replied Nanny.

  Alfred took a breath, and then began. “There is a beast in Buckingham Palace.”

  There was a pause before Nanny asked, incredulous, “A what?”

  “A beast. A real-life griffin, just like on the flags and armbands!”

  “A real-life one?”

  “YES!”

  “That’s impossible,” she scoffed.

  “It’s not impossible. I saw it with my own eyes!”

  “Oh, my little prince, you just had a bad dream, you poor thing. A nightmare.”

  “This was no nightmare. This was real.”

  Nanny shook her head, and tutted. “Tut! Tut! Tut! What an imagination you have, young man! Let’s get you back to bed right away. Come on. Chop chop!”

  “NO!” replied Alfred firmly.

  They sat in silence for a moment.

  “I wish you wouldn’t raise your voice like that, Your Royal Highness,” began Nanny. “The guards will hear us.”

  “I’m sorry, Nanny,” he whispered. “But, please, I beg you. I need you to believe me.”

  The old lady dismissed him again. “But it’s not true, Alfred. A beast in Buckingham Palace! It can’t be.”

  The boy thought for a moment before he replied. “Then let me prove it to you.”

  The next thing Nanny knew, Alfred was leading her out of her bedroom in the dead of night.

  “Being out of our beds at this late hour with the palace teeming with guards – are you nuts?” she demanded as they tiptoed along the corridor of staff bedrooms.

  The prince pondered this for a moment. “Probably a little bit, yes. It runs in the family. Always has!”

  “Where on earth are you taking me?”

  “I think I know where the statue of the griffin came from – the one they used to bring the beast to life. Come on!”

  Alfred dragged the old lady alo
ng the corridor to a steep flight of ancient stone steps. He didn’t dare turn on the lights. That would alert the royal guards, or, worse still, the deadly All-Seeing Eye. Instead, the pair lit two old lanterns that were left at the top of the stone steps to light their way down.

  Slowly,

  they descended

  the steps

  until they were in the

  deepest

  depths

  of Buckingham Palace. They lifted their lanterns to reveal a vast cellar – so vast it spanned the entire length and width of the palace.

  The vault.

  It was bigger than a football pitch.

  The vault was where all the countless gifts given to the royal family over hundreds of years were stored. Most of them were unwanted, but far too precious to throw away. There were thousands of wooden crates and boxes storing treasures, and plenty of bizarre items on display too.

  AN AFRICAN TRIBAL MASK.

  A harp that plucked itself.

  A stuffed polar bear from the Arctic in mid-roar.

  A samurai suit of armour complete with sword.

  A model of an ancient warship.

  A dozen ornate jewelled Fabergé eggs from Russia.

  A giant marble throne from Ancient Rome.

  A 500-piece gold tea set.

  A death mask for an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh.

  A bronze bust of some dictator or other, who had gone by the name of “Trump”.

  Since the kingdom had been plunged into darkness, many royal treasures had been moved down to the vault to keep them safe. Priceless paintings, gold statues and ANTIQUE FURNITURE were now stored amongst the many curiosities.

  Alfred had been down to the vault many times before. It was the perfect place for a game of Hide and Seek. His mother used to bring him here when he was little, and together they had whiled away many a happy afternoon – him hiding, and her scooping him up in her arms when she found him.

  On one of those afternoons, the pair had stumbled upon a number of spooky stone statues. They were statues of creatures.

  The mightiest of them was the griffin.

  On discovering the statues, the Queen had taught her son that these creatures were the King’s Beasts: ten creatures that represented the British royal family through the ages. Intrigued, the boy then spent many an hour reading up on them.

  “There should be ten stone statues down here somewhere,” Alfred began.

  “So?” asked Nanny.

  “So one of them was used to bring the griffin to life.”

  “Oh, we’re back to that, are we?” sighed the old lady, rolling her eyes.

  “Yes! We are!”

  “It’s way past your bedtime.”

  “I don’t care about boring bedtime!” snapped the boy. “We need to find them! Now!”

  Nanny huffed and puffed. “Well, can you at least remember where they were? This place goes on forever.”

  Alfred lifted his lantern to take in the vast room. “Turn left at the sphinx…”

  He began walking, with Nanny staying close behind. Their footsteps echoed in the darkness.

  “Straight on to the gold coffin,” he continued as they walked. “Then a left. Then look out for the bust of Medusa.”

  Alfred placed his hand on the head of snakes.

  “If I remember right, the beasts should be just ahead of us.”

  The boy lifted his lantern. Leaning out of the gloom were a number of stone statues.

  The King’s Beasts.

  “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 sti
ll 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.

  RUSTLE!

  There was that noise again.

  Alfred and Nanny didn’t say another word. Instead, she dimmed the light on her lantern until the vault was all but black.

  RUSTLE!

  And again!

  In a room as vast as the vault, it was impossible to work out exactly where a sound was coming from. Every step they took on the stone floor echoed down the rows and rows of boxes…

  SHUNT! SHUNT! SHUNT!

  …and bounced off the walls.

  The sound could be coming from far away…

  Or much closer than you think.

  RUSTLE!

  Again!

  Nanny indicated with her eyes where she thought the noise might be coming from, and they tiptoed through the dark towards it.

  Alfred’s mind was racing. After what he had seen tonight, he was half expecting one of the terrifying treasures down here to come to life.

  A golem.

  An Egyptian mummy.

  A Native American thunderbird.

  An Ancient Greek Hydra, a nine-headed snake.

  Vlad the Impaler, so called because he executed thousands of people by stake.