Breeches

The rehearsal room was on the second floor at the back, long and white with tall windows over the garden, and on its floor lay a bedsheet.

Six yards long. Sewn end to end from three ordinary single sheets, with a cord stitched round the edge, and a loop at the top end, which went round Frederick’s shoulders like a cape. A man from the Household, Mr Tilney, sixty, in a dark suit, had made it himself in 1973 and kept it in a drawer.

“It is the same weight as the velvet, sir, near enough,” said Mr Tilney. “And it does not mind being trodden on. The velvet minds a great deal.”

Four boys at the corners. Three of them from London.

Hugo, fifteen, whose father was a steward in the Palace and whose grandfather had been one; tall and fair and very polite, with a voice that had broken only recently and still went up at the end of sentences. Samir, sixteen, whose mother was an equerry’s secretary, with glasses and a habit of counting under his breath that Frederick recognised at once. And Charlie Pike, fourteen, the youngest, small and sharp-faced, whose father drove for the Mews and whose grandfather had been a page in 1973, the groom’s son Mr Hawes had measured, and had then driven the 119 in Croydon until 2009.

And Theo, at the back corner on the left, holding the end of a bedsheet with an expression of tremendous concentration.

---

“Walk, sir,” said Mr Tilney. “To the window.”

He walked. The sheet came after him across the floor with the four of them holding it, a yard off the boards, level.

“Stop.”

He stopped. The sheet stopped. Charlie Pike, at the front right, did not, quite, and the sheet bunched.

“Mr Pike,” said Mr Tilney.

“Sorry, sir.”

“Again.”

They did it eleven times. To the window, stop. Turn: which the King did not do, Mr Tilney said; the King stood and the four of them walked the train round him in a long arc, like the hand of a clock, until it was behind him the other way. Steps: Mr Tilney had put three wooden boxes on the floor to stand for the steps of the theatre, and the King went up them, and the four of them came up behind holding the sheet level, which meant the two at the back had to lift it high while the two at the front were already on the boxes.

“You do not look at the steps,” said Mr Tilney. “You look at the train. The steps will be where they are. They were there in 1066.”

On the fourth time Theo and Samir both looked at the steps.

“Mr Hartigan. Mr Rahman.”

“Sorry, sir.”

“Again.”

---

The backwards was the hard part.

After the crowning, Mr Tilney said, there was a moment on the theatre where the King turned and came down the west steps to go to the throne, and the train had to come down first, before him, and the pages had to go down the steps backwards holding it, without looking, because if they looked round they would let go.

“I have taught this to eleven boys,” said Mr Tilney. “Two of them fell. Neither on the day.” He put the boxes in a row. “You feel for the edge with your heel. You do not look. The heel knows.”

Theo went down the boxes backwards with the sheet in both hands and his heel feeling for the edge, slowly, his face very red, and did not fall.

“Good,” said Mr Tilney.

Theo looked at Frederick over the bedsheet with an expression that said, quite clearly, a job with stairs.

---

The livery came at three.

Scarlet coat, gold buttons. White waistcoat. White breeches to the knee, fastened with a buckle. White stockings. Black shoes with silver buckles on the front. Priyanka, who had come over with Mr Hawes on Tuesday, still had pins in her mouth.

The four of them went into the room next door to change and came out one at a time.

Hugo first, who had worn it before, at a rehearsal in September, and looked as though he had been born in it. Samir, who pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at his own knees with grave interest. Charlie Pike, whose breeches were a little long, so that Priyanka knelt and took a pin out of her mouth and did something to them.

Theo last.

He came out of the door and stood there in a scarlet coat and white breeches and white stockings and shoes with silver buckles, six feet tall, with his ears red and his hands at his sides, and looked straight ahead at nothing, the way he had looked at nothing at the foot of the steps of the Throne on Charter Hill.

Nobody said anything.

Kate was on a chair by the far wall beside her mother. She had been very quiet all afternoon. She had no camera. Dame M had taken it at the door of the Palace on Tuesday and was keeping it, she said, until Sunday, with her phone.

Kate looked at her brother. Her face did several things.

“Oh, Theo,” said Kate.

“Don’t.”

“I’m not.”

“You’re going to.”

“I’m going to nursing school,” said Kate, “and I’m going to tell every single person there about the stockings.”

---

The camera was not Kate’s.

It belonged to Charlie Pike’s mother, Mrs Pike, from Croydon, who had sat on the next chair along all afternoon with her coat on and a large handbag and a telephone in her lap. When the boys came out in the livery she held the telephone up and took a photograph of Charlie, who said Mum, and then of all four of them in a row, who said nothing, and Mr Tilney said nothing, and Priyanka said nothing round the pins.

Kate looked at the telephone.

“Are you allowed?” said Kate.

“Allowed?” said Mrs Pike. “Love, his grandad’s got one of himself in that coat on the mantelpiece. Seventy-three. Taken by his nan from the back of the Mews.” She looked at Kate. “Why wouldn’t I be allowed?”

“There’s a rule. Dame M’s rule. No cameras.”

“Is there?” Mrs Pike looked round the room. “Well, I don’t see her.”

“She’s in a meeting,” said Kate.

“Then she can tell me when she comes out,” said Mrs Pike comfortably, and held out the telephone. “Go on. Which is yours? The big one with the ears?”

“Mum,” said Charlie Pike.

Kate looked at Anneliese Hartigan.

Anneliese Hartigan looked at the ceiling.

Kate took the telephone.

Theo, on the other side of the room in white breeches, saw it happen, and went a darker red than Frederick had ever seen a person go, and stood very still, because Mr Tilney had told them all that a page in livery stood still, and because there was nothing in the world he could do.

Kate held it up.

Click.

She looked at it on the screen. Her face did the several things again. Then she handed it back to Mrs Pike.

“Can you send it to me?”

“Course I can, love. What’s your number?”

---

“She’s going to put it on the wall,” said Theo, at five, in his ordinary clothes again, on the stairs. “In the residence. Next to the lizard.”

“Probably.”

“Above her bed. With tape. Bethany’s going to see it. Professor’s going to see it.”

“Professor’s a rabbit.”

“He’s a member of the family,” said Theo darkly. “Bethany says.” He went down two steps. “I’m going to tell Dame M.”

“Dame M took the camera. She can’t do anything about Mrs Pike’s.”

“I know.” Theo stopped on the landing. “That’s what makes it so terrible. It’s not even against the rules. It’s just Croydon.”

He went on down the stairs.

“Theo.”

“What.”

“You looked fine.”

Theo stopped again.

“I looked like a painting,” said Theo. “You said. On Charter Hill. To me. About you.” He looked up the stairs at Frederick. “Now we’re even.”

---

At nine the car came from the airport.

He was in the long gallery on the first floor, at the window, because Dame M had said the German Emperor would be at the garden door at about nine and he had wanted to see the car come in. Rain on the glass. The courtyard lamps. Wet gravel.

A black car, a German one, with a small flag on its wing that was black and white with an eagle on it, and a second car behind it.

The door opened before anybody could get to it.

A boy got out into the rain. Fifteen. Dark-haired, slight, in a dark coat with the collar up, very straight. He stood on the wet gravel and looked up at the Palace, at all the windows, like a building he had been told about all his life, seen for the first time, and was determined not to be impressed by.

Then he looked up at the window of the long gallery, and saw Frederick there, and did not wave, and did not smile, and lifted one hand about two inches from his side, and put it down.

Behind him, out of the second car, unfolding himself into the rain, a taller boy with an untidy dark head and a rucksack over one shoulder, who looked round the courtyard, at the lamps, at the rain, at the Palace, and said something to Alexander that Frederick could not hear through the glass, and Alexander very nearly smiled.

Lukas.

Frederick went down the stairs two at a time, which a King did not do, and nobody stopped him.