betrayed his movements. In his head Alfred counted to a hundred. As much as he wanted to race through the numbers, he knew that was a foolish idea. He needed to count until he thought the coast would be clear.
“Ninety-seven, ninety-eight, ninety-nine, one hundred.”
On one hundred, he opened his bedroom door slowly and silently. Then he peeped out and checked that no one was around. The corridor was clear. So he tiptoed down it, before hurrying down the long, sweeping staircase, and across to the grand ballroom. This room once played host to the world’s most extravagant parties. Now it was a ghost of a room. The chandelier was hanging by a thread, the silk curtains drooped on the floor and damp had blotted the walls with dark, ugly patches. Desperately out of breath, the sickly boy stumbled again. This time he fell flat on his face.
BANG!
“OOF!”
Alfred noticed there was some kind of powder on his hands and face. At first, he thought it was dust – the palace was encrusted with the stuff. But it wasn’t dust. This had a smell to it that was different. Chalk!
Scrambling to his feet, he noticed that there were faint chalk markings all across the vast floor. It was as if the boy were standing at the centre of a life-sized chessboard. Someone had tried to rub the lines and markings off, but traces were left behind. Alfred bent down. There were words and symbols, but, despite his love of books, he couldn’t recognise any of them. What’s more, there were burn marks on the wood, and a large discoloured area where something heavy had been moved.
Alfred shivered as he realised something: there were strange goings-on in the palace.
The boy stood up and walked slap bang into someone.
D
O
O
F!
Or, rather, not someone, but something.
THE OCTOBUT.
A robot programmed to do all a butler’s duties, it was meant to make life easier, but it actually made it harder. Much harder. It looked not unlike an octopus, if an octopus were made of metal and trundled across the ground. Crucially, though, it did have eight arms, each one with a special attachment for performing different tasks. Hence the name: “Octo” for “octopus”, and “but” for “butler”, although its name made it sound more like it was an octopus’s bottom.
“Good morning, Mr President!” jabbered the Octobut. It was always getting things wrong.
“Oh, hello, Octobut,” whispered Alfred. “I wasn’t expecting to bump into you. Please can you keep your voice down?”
“Roast chicken,” replied the robot, before announcing, “You will be pleased to know I have boil-washed your underpants.”
With that, the Octobut flung a gigantic pair of unwashed men’s underpants at the prince. They must have belonged to some humongous old man.
WHOOSH!
They landed SLAP BANG in the boy’s face.
“Thank you, Octobut,” whispered Alfred as he removed the still-stinky underpants from his nose.
“Now, are you ready for your game of croquet?”
“No!” hissed the boy.
The robot swung its croquet-mallet arm so hard it bashed the wall.
BANG!
So hard that the arm itself came loose.
It fell to the floor with a CRASH.
With seven arms rather than eight, it was now not so much an Octobut as a Septemabut.*
Outside the ballroom, Alfred could hear the bootsteps of royal guards growing nearer.
STOMP! STOMP! STOMP!
The soldiers were just outside the tall wooden double doors that led into the ballroom.
“You go that way!” urged the boy, spinning the Octobut round to face in their direction. “The pope needs his toenails clipping.”
“Very good, Princess!” came the reply.
With all his might, Alfred pushed the Octobut so it trundled off in the direction of the doors.
As the boy tiptoed out of the ballroom, he looked back to see the OCTOBUT CRASH straight into the guards, knocking them to the floor, and accidentally slapping one in the face with its corgi-stroking hand.
SLAP!
SLAP!
SLAP!
The guard grabbed the arm to make the robot stop, and it came off in his hands.
“Oh no!” exclaimed the robot. “I will never stroke a corgi again!”
The poor Octobut was now down to six arms. It should really be renamed the Sexabut but that sounds far too rude.
Ahead of Alfred was the entrance to the throne room.
This was the fortress within the fortress of Buckingham Palace. In a way, it was a panic room, like a giant safe. It had been installed in case of an attack, or, horror upon horror, in case the revolutionaries ever managed to break into the palace itself. The walls of the throne room had been made of metre-thick steel. The only way in or out was through a huge metal door, which opened only with fingerprint recognition. Just two people had access to that room.
The first was the boy’s father, the King.
The second was the King’s chief adviser, the Lord Protector.
The Lord Protector was an elegant figure in his sixties. He was well-spoken and refined, with impeccable manners. A learned man, he spoke with great authority on any subject you might care to mention. Art. Literature. Philosophy. He wore a black shirt buttoned up to the top without a tie, and a smart grey suit. On his lapel he sported a gold pin badge, which, like the flag and the armbands the royal guards wore, depicted a griffin.
The Lord Protector had worked at Buckingham Palace for as long as anyone could remember. He’d started off in the palace library, tending to the thousands of ancient books collected
