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First published in Great Britain by
HarperCollins Children’s Books in 2019 Published in this ebook edition in 2019 HarperCollins Children’s Books is a division of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd, HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street London SE1 9GF The HarperCollins Children’s Books website address is www.harpercollins.co.uk Text copyright © David Walliams 2019 Illustrations copyright © Tony Ross 2019 Cover lettering of author’s name copyright © Quentin Blake 2010 Cover design copyright © HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd 2019 David Walliams and Tony Ross assert the moral right to be identified as the author and illustrator of the work respectively. This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Apart from famous historical figures, any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook onscreen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins. Source ISBN: 9780008262174 Ebook Edition © November 2019 ISBN: 9780008385651 Version: 2019-11-21
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Copyright
Dedication
Thank-yous
Britain: The year is 2120
These are the characters in the story …
Map
Prologue
Part One: The Coming of the Beast
Chapter 1: Dark
Chapter 2: Lionheart
Chapter 3: Faceless Fiends
Chapter 4: A Lost Soul
Chapter 5: Unblinking Stare
Chapter 6: Dead of Night
Chapter 7: The Room With No Door
Chapter 8: Prince of Nothing
Chapter 9: Festering
Chapter 10: Metal Menace
Chapter 11: An Ungodly Hour
Chapter 12: Runaway Pram
Chapter 13: Talking toilet
Chapter 14: Eggy-wegg
Chapter 15: Ruins
Chapter 16: Spying Through a Keyhole
Chapter 17: A Beast of Fire
Part Two: Power over Life and Death
Chapter 18: The Mouth of Hell
Chapter 19: Silent Scream
Chapter 20: Porridge & Port
Chapter 21: The Vault
Chapter 22: The King’s Beasts
Chapter 23: The Impossible
Chapter 24: The Secret Passage
Chapter 25: The Shadows
Part Three: A Tower of Traitors
Chapter 26: Black Water
Chapter 27: Traitors’ Gate
Chapter 28: Sickness of the Mind
Chapter 29: Deception
Chapter 30: The Executioner
Chapter 31: Disaster Strikes
Part Four: Revolution
Chapter 32: Some Kind of Monster
Chapter 33: HMS Sceptre
Chapter 34: A Carpet of Rats
Chapter 35: The Opposite of Vertigo
Chapter 36: BONG!
Chapter 37: Hotty Botty
Chapter 38: Life & Death
Chapter 39: Limb from Limb
Chapter 40: Doomed
Chapter 41: Human Torpedo
Chapter 42: A Trap
Chapter 43: Deadly Weapons
Chapter 44: The Secret
Chapter 45: Storming of the Palace
Chapter 46: The Book of Albion
Chapter 47: Super-being
Part Five: The Final Reckoning
Chapter 48: Fireball
Chapter 49: A Final Farewell
Chapter 50: Light
More from the World of David Walliams
Also by David Walliams
About the Publisher
For my brave friend Henry.
David x
These are the characters in the story…
PRINCE ALFRED is a sickly boy of twelve, who has never known life outside Buckingham Palace.
THE KING was once a great ruler and a kind father. Now he is as lost as his kingdom.
THE QUEEN is an impossibly posh lady, who is much loved by her son. She and Alfred have an unbreakable bond.
THE LORD PROTECTOR is a learned man who began his royal career forty years ago in the palace library. He has risen to become the King’s closest adviser, but yearns for more power.
MITE is a homeless orphan from the outside. She is so called because of her small size. Her parents were killed when she was a toddler, and since then she has had to fend for herself.
NANNY is a lady in her eighties who in her job has looked after two generations of royal children. She cared for the King when he was a boy and is now the nanny to Prince Alfred.
THE OLD QUEEN is an elderly lady who was Queen when her husband was King. Now she is deemed to be a traitor, and is living somewhere in exile, though no one knows where. Except her, of course.
LADY AGATHA and LADY ENID are two of the Old Queen’s ladies-in-waiting. As ladies-in-waiting, they performed various duties for the Old Queen, such as tending to her dresses, carrying bouquets of flowers and typing letters. Now they too live in exile with four other ladies-in-waiting: Lady Beatrix, Lady Virginia, Lady Daphne and Lady Judith.
ENID
AGATHA
BEATRIX
VIRGINIA
DAPHNE
JUDITH
THE ROYAL GUARDS are elite soldiers in gold skull masks and flowing red robes. They are armed with laser guns, and their mission is to protect the palace at all costs.
THE EXECUTIONER is a giant of a man whose face is covered by a black hood. He is in charge of all the torture and executions at the Tower of London.
THE OCTOBUT is an eight-armed robot that is meant to perform the same tasks as a human butler.
THE ALL-SEEING EYE is a flying robot that resembles a giant eye. It is under the control of the Lord Protector, so he can monitor everyone and everything in Buckingham Palace.
It is half eagle (the King of the Birds) and half lion (the King of the Animals). The head and wings are those of an eagle, while the body and back legs are those of a lion.
For centuries, the beast has been thought of as the stuff of legend.
Early civilisations worshipped the griffin – it can be found in stories from both Ancient Egypt and Ancient Greece.
In medieval times, this half eagle, half lion became a symbol of godlike power.
The power over life and death.
The power to create or destroy the universe.
Infinite power for all eternity.
The sight of a griffin would inspire terror in the hearts of all men. That is why the beasts were used as symbols through the centuries by kings and queens. Griffins can be seen on coats of arms, flags and shields. The message was simple: kneel or you will suffer a terrible fate at the claws of this beast.
It looks a little like a dinosaur, those terrifying creatures that stalked the Earth millions of years ago. However, unlike dinosaurs, no one has ever found the skeleton of one.
But that doesn’t mean that a griffin never lived.
Or one day might not live again…
It was noon, and the sky was black.
There had been darkness over the kingdom for half a century. For, many years before, the people of the Earth had not taken care of their home.
They had burned down all the forests, reducing every last tree to ash.
They had pumped the rivers, lakes and seas full of waste, killing all the fish.
They had dug deeper and deeper under the ground for oil, until the planet was hollow to its core.
Eventually, the Earth took its revenge.
The ice caps of the Arctic and the Antarctic melted. The floods were so mighty that whole countries became submerged underwater.
Violent earthquakes shook entire cities to the ground. All that was left behind were piles and piles of rubble.
Volcanoes erupted, pumping billions of tonnes of ash into the air. Without the sunlight, the crops withered and died. Nothing could grow.
The kingdom was plunged into an ETERNAL WINTER.
It was the only world Alfred knew. He was already twelve years old, but had never, ever seen sunlight. Often, he dreamed how it must have been to feel the sun on your face, or run through a field of tall grass, or swim in a sunlit sea. But it was just that, a dream.
The boy had seen pictures of the sun in books and marvelled at it. A perfect circle of gold. Now the moon and stars had become invisible too. Alfred would spend hours and hours imagining how the night sky must have looked with a thousand little lights twinkling through the blackness.
He was one of those children who liked nothing more than being alone with his imagination. In truth, he had little choice, having been sickly his whole life. Soon after he was born, he became ill. As a baby, Alfred had not been expected to survive, but survive he did.
Just.
The child was as pale as snow and as thin as dust. He wore thick glasses to aid his poor eyesight. Often Alfred was so weak he had to stay in bed all day. Thank goodness all around his bed were piles and piles of books. Books, books and more books. Books about animals. Books about space. Books about trees. Books about dinosaurs. Books about books.
Books about history were his absolute favourite.
The trouble was that there was a strict curfew in the building where Alfred lived. Night was the most dangerous time. That was when there was most chance of an attack from the outside. Lights had to be out at eight o’clock sharp. By order of the King. Anyone caught with lights on would be severely punished. Punishments were brutal in the kingdom. Those in power had returned to medieval forms of torture.
Despite the strict rules, the boy loved his books so much that he would carry on reading by candlelight under his bedcovers…
The night our story begins, Alfred was doing just that. He was reading a weighty leather-bound book about the kings and queens of Britain through the ages. The first known one was Alfred the Great. He had become ruler an impossibly long time ago, in 871. The boy was named after that first king, but it was hard to believe anybody would ever describe this Alfred as “great”. He felt anything but.
As the boy was devouring the story of the beheading of King Charles I in 1649, a deafening sound rocked the room.
KABOOM!
Alfred dropped his book.
THUD!
And his candle. He very nearly set the covers alight.
WOOF!
Smothering the flames and blowing the candle out…
WHOOSH!
…he pulled off his bedcovers.
WHIP!
A huge explosion outside had illuminated the boy’s bedroom with glowing red, orange and yellow light.
Alfred slid out of bed and using all his strength limped over to his huge bay window. Just those few steps left him painfully out of breath.
“Huh! Huh! Huh!”
He leaned on the window frame to steady himself.
Alfred’s bedroom was high up on the top floor. From here, he could see far across London. A building was ablaze. But not just any building.
St Paul’s Cathedral.
This historic structure, perhaps one of the most famous in the world, had been destroyed.
Its huge white dome cracked as if it were nothing more than an egg. Huge plumes of black smoke billowed high into the air.
Oh no! thought Alfred. No! Not St Paul’s!
He had seen many London landmarks destroyed over the years. Nelson’s Column had been toppled to the ground.
CRUNCH!
The London Eye had plunged into the River Thames.
SPLASH!
The Royal Albert Hall roof had caved in after a bomb had blasted it to pieces.
BOOM!
However, none of these was as sacred as St Paul’s. This was a new low. The cathedral had been built after the Great Fire of London in 1666. The glorious structure had miraculously survived the Blitz, when Nazi bombs rained down on London during World War Two, but now it was burning to the ground.
Alfred’s next thought was, Revolutionaries.
This had all the hallmarks of one of their attacks.
The boy had never met anyone from this top-secret organisation, but the Lord Protector had taught him much about them. From what Alfred had been told, the revolutionaries hated the fact that power had returned to the King. They wanted to overthrow him, and behead him, just like the Roundheads had done to Charles I during the English Civil War.
These revolutionaries stood only for death and destruction. That is why the Lord Protector said they needed to be crushed at all costs.
RAT! TAT! TAT!
There was a burst of machine-gun fire.
“NOOO!”
The distant sound of shouts.
“ARGH!”
Was that a scream?
Alfred shivered. As much as he wanted to look away, he couldn’t. Every day there were attacks all over London, but explosions on this scale were rare. The boy pressed his hand up against the cold, thick glass and looked out at the devastation.
This was the kingdom Alfred would one day inherit.
Alfred was as far from an ordinary twelve-year-old boy as you could imagine. Inside he felt ordinary, but he’d been told time and time again by grown-ups that he was anything but.
Alfred was not just plain old “Alfred”.
He was “Prince Alfred”.
His father was the King.
One day he himself would be crowned King.
King Alfred II, ruler of Britain and all its people.
The strange thing was that he would become king of a kingdom he had never set foot in. Not once had he been outside Buckingham Palace.
The boy’s sad face could often be glimpsed at his bedroom window at the very top of the building. Just above his window, a flag flew on the roof of the palace. For hundreds of years it had been the Union Jack, the red, white and blue flag of the United Kingdom. Now a very different flag flew, one that the Lord Protector himself had instigated. It was a black flag, with a golden griffin at its centre. This was the symbol of the new order of things. Britain now had no government, so no prime minister or politicians representing the people. It also had no police force. Instead, the King’s personal army, the royal guards, enforced the rule of law.
Buckingham Palace had been home to the British royal family for centuries, since the time of George III. From his history books, Alfred had learned that it had become a royal residence way back in 1761.
The palace used to be a sanctuary.
Now it was a fortress.
Members of the royal guard were stationed all along the perimeter wall. The soldiers were instantly recognisable by their long flowing red robes, hoods and horrifying gold skull masks. On their arms they wore black bands, with the golden griffin at the centre, just like on the flag. Despite looking almost medieval, the royal guards were armed with laser guns. Just one zap was enough to blast someone into oblivion. These soldiers guarded those who lived inside Buckingham Palace.
The palace had seen better days. The carpets were worn and the wallpaper was peeling off the walls, but it was still a special place. The prince’s bedroom was furnished only with antiques. He slept on a four-poster bed in silk pyjamas, though the bed creaked and the pyjamas had holes in them.
The palace kitchen was stocked with every dish imaginable, as long as it came out of a tin. There were food stocks to last a hundred years or more.
Alfred was safe inside the palace. Or so he thought.
The boy pressed his face closer to the window as the domed roof of St Paul’s Cathedral caved in. Despite the horror, Alfred couldn’t look away. Then, in an instant, he became distracted. There was a commotion in the corridor. He could hear a struggle and shouts just beyond his bedroom door.
“TAKE YOUR FILTHY HANDS OFF ME! HOW DARE YOU! I AM YOUR QUEEN!”
It was his mother’s voice.
As fast as he could, which wasn’t very fast, Alfred limped across his bedroom, and opened the door. The Queen was being held roughly by two members of the royal guard. They were meant to protect the royal family, so why were they dragging her along as if she were a criminal?
These were strange times, but this was the strangest time of all.
“MAMA!” cried Alfred after her.
The Queen was wearing her long lace nightdress and one slipper. Even though she was being manhandled, she was trying to maintain some sense of dignity. This was a lady who prided herself on never having a hair out of place.
Alfred had not seen his mother without her hair perfectly lacquered in a “do” and her face painted with make-up. Right now, her do was unravelling fast. Instead of make-up her face was covered with thick night cream. She looked a sight. Alfred idolised his mother, and it was weird seeing her like this.
“ALFRED!” she shouted over her shoulder, struggling with the soldiers to make them stop.
Because their faces were hidden behind gold skull masks, it was impossible to guess what they were thinking. The royal guards remained silent throughout, which only added to the sense that this was a nightmare.
“Mama! Where are they taking you?” demanded Alfred.
“GET BACK INSIDE YOUR ROOM, ALFRED! AND LOCK THE DOOR!” she shouted back.
“But…!”
“NOW! AND PROMISE ME YOU’LL STAY THERE!”
The boy did not reply.
“Promise!” she pleaded.
“I promise!” he mumbled.