us.”
Still holding the boy tightly by the hand, he made his way over to the metal door.
“Father?” said Alfred, turning towards the King.
“Please, you heard His Majesty – your father needs to be alone,” said the Lord Protector.
“Mama is a good person,” said the boy. “The best. If she did this, there must be a reason.”
“The reason is that there is evil inside her,” interjected the Lord Protector. “The Tower of London is the best place for her. The Executioner should be able to cast the evil out. By hook or by crook.”
Alfred gulped. Whatever “by hook or by crook” meant, it sounded deadly.
No one sent to the Tower of London ever came back.
“Now come on, young prince, a sickly child like you shouldn’t be out of bed at this late hour. You might catch your death,” said the Lord Protector. “You will be King yourself one day. We wouldn’t want anything happening to you, now, would we?”
The huge metal door slid open…
WHOOSH!
…and he led the boy out of the throne room.
Alfred allowed himself one last glimpse of his father. He was searching for a flicker of kindness in his eyes. A shadow of the man he used to be.
But there
was
nothing.
As the Lord Protector led him slowly along the corridor, Alfred could sense something hovering behind.
He looked round to see a giant eye staring back at him. It was the All-Seeing Eye, a huge roving robot camera.
It was powered by thousands of tiny jets, which allowed it to move silently in any direction.
Up.
Down.
Left.
Right.
And everything in between.
The All-Seeing Eye could soar high up into the air above the palace to see for miles around, or glide silently down into the depths of the building.
What it saw through its unblinking eye was beamed right back to that huge television screen in the throne room. There the King, and of course the Lord Protector, could see EVERYTHING.
Nothing and nobody could escape its unblinking stare.
Alfred was drained, not just physically but also emotionally. It took all his strength to climb the long, winding staircase back up to his room at the top of the palace.
When he finally reached his bedroom, the Lord Protector said, “Goodnight, Your Royal Highness. I know how much you love a good book. Would you care for a goodnight story?”
“No,” came the terse reply. “I am not a baby.”
The boy’s eyes were still stinging with tears.
“Forgive me, sir, but you do sometimes cry like one.”
Alfred wanted to thump him. If only he had the strength.
“Just a little joke, sir. There’s no point shedding tears over traitors. After you,” purred the Lord Protector, guiding the young prince through the doorway with a little bow.
Then, with the precision and speed of a close-up magician, he took the key from out of the lock on the inside.
“I think it best I hold on to this, sir, for your own protection, of course,” he said.
“But—!”
“I wish you goodnight. Sweet dreams.”
The Lord Protector patted him on the head. Alfred couldn’t bear the man’s long, thin fingers touching him. He shuddered.
With the All-Seeing Eye still hovering behind, the Lord Protector shut the prince’s bedroom door and locked it.
CLICK!
Alfred staggered to his bed and lay down, burying his head in the pillow.
He wanted to cry until his body turned inside out. Just like a baby. But, right now, tears solved nothing.
Alfred had to do something.
He sat up on the bed. From his window he could see that St Paul’s Cathedral was still ablaze. By morning this historic monument, an icon of London’s skyline, would be little more than charred rubble.
In his heart, the boy knew that his mother couldn’t be behind this terrible attack. It went against everything he knew about her, and he knew her better than anybody. She was kind and loving, the best mother he could ever imagine. The Queen was not capable of such unspeakable horror. What’s more, why would she ever do such a thing?
The revolutionaries were the sworn enemies of the royals. They wanted the royal family dead. It didn’t make sense.
Alfred was determined to find out what was really going on.
The mysterious chalk markings on the floor.
The strange cuts on his father’s hands.
His dearest mama being branded a traitor.
It couldn’t be true.
Alfred was determined to prove his mother’s innocence.
To do that he had to turn detective.
The boy tiptoed back over to his bedroom door. Peeping through the crack under it, he could see a shadow on the floor. The All-Seeing Eye was still hovering outside, keeping watch over him. Even if he could find a way of unlocking the door, royal guards would be here in seconds. His next stop would be the Tower of London.
Instead, Alfred tiptoed over to his window.
As the glory days of Buckingham Palace were long gone, in the prince’s bedroom there was an infestation of woodworm – the larvae of beetles that eat through wood. There were tiny holes in his bedframe, his cupboard and, when he rolled back the stained silk rug that lay in the middle of his room, there were holes in the floorboards too.
The window frames were made of wood, and the wood was rotting. Alfred ran his fingers along the hundreds of little holes in the frame. Cold air was whistling through
