Read Online The Tower, The Zoo, and The Tortoise by Julia Stuart - Free Book Online

the chapel to the door. As he stepped out, the wind instantly rearranged his hair, and he headed home, the snowmen on his socks visible in the gap between the bottom of his cassock and the cobbles. He searched in his pocket for the key to his blue front door, which he had kept locked ever since the day he returned home to find two Spanish tourists in his sitting room, eating their sandwiches on the sofa. After locking the door behind him, he went into the kitchen that still smelt of the treacle cake he had baked using his mother’s faded recipe, and took down his solitary teapot for one.

    BALTHAZAR JONES ARRIVED at the gates of Buckingham Palace having spent the journey trying not to crush his ruffagainst the back of the seat each time the taxi driver hit the brakes. A police officer escorted him into the palace via a side door, then handed him into the care of a mute footman, whose polished buckled shoes were equally silent as the two men passed along a corridor of dense blue carpet. It was flanked with marble-topped gilt tables bearing billowing pink arrangements made that morning by a weeping Royal Household florist, whose husband had just asked her for a divorce. However, her tears were not those of sadness, but of relief, for she had never got used to the idea that her husband left for work each morning wearing what was irrefutably a skirt, tartan knee socks, and no underpants. Married to the Queen’s Piper for three disappointing years, she had found his talent for the bagpipes as insufferable as the Monarch did. His historic duty, dreamed up by Queen Victoria at the height of her Scottish mania, was to play every weekday under the Sovereign’s window. The commotion started at the absurd hour of nine o’clock in the morning and lasted for a full fifteen minutes, much to Elizabeth II’s annoyance. There was no escaping the man, as he would follow her to her other residences at Windsor, Holyrood, and Balmoral, where he continued the loathsome ritual with undiminished devotion.
    The mute footman opened the door to Oswin Fielding’s office and indicated a green seat upon which Balthazar Jones was to wait. Once the door was shut silently behind him, the Beefeater sat down and removed from his crimson left knee a piece of fluff that upon inspection he failed to recognise. Looking up, he surveyed the room. On the pale blue walls were hung several engravings of Buckingham Palace mounted in thin gold frames, which were part of the courtier’s privatecollection. As he leant forward to inspect the photographs on the formidable desk, a drop of sweat started its descent inside his thick crimson tunic, tickling the valley of his chest as it fell. He picked up the nearest silver frame and staring back at him was Oswin Fielding, almost unrecognisable with a profusion of hair, in hiking gear with his arm around a blond woman in a baseball cap. He surveyed the man’s legs, which he immediately concluded were not as good as his own, despite his advanced years.
    Suddenly the door opened and in strode the equerry accompanied by a waft of gentleman’s scent. “I must say you’re looking splendid,” announced the courtier, undoing the button on his discreet suit jacket. “Her Majesty has been delayed unfortunately, so I’m afraid it’s just the two of us after all. Still, always fun to put on the old crimson breeches, I’m sure!”
    The Beefeater slowly took off his black Tudor bonnet and rested it on his lap in silence.
    “What we both need is a cup of tea,” the courtier announced as he sat down behind his desk. After making the call, he sat back. “It must be fun living in the Tower,” he said. “When my children were younger they were always asking whether we could move there. Have you got any children? All I seem to know about your personal circumstances is your tortoise.”
    There was a pause.
    The Beefeater’s gaze fell to the desk. “A son,” he replied.
    “Is he still with you or has he gone off to join the