Three faces stopped and turned to face me.
“When did you get so stuffy?” Gran said.
I eyeballed her. “Mother and Father are here.”
“We saw.”
“They can’t see you like this. I need you to stay up here until you’ve sobered up a bit.” I pointed at Bunny and Karma. “And you two help her out, please. Give her water. Help her walk it off or something.”
Karma was squinting at me through the smoke rising from the joint between her fingers.
“You seem very tense, Petey,” she said. “Your whole energy has changed.”
“Funny that.”
“So serious,” Bunny said. “Come and have a little toke, darling.”
I marched over, whipped the joint out of Karma’s hand, stubbed it out in the ashtray, and eyeballed the lot of them.
“Stay here and sober up, for Christ’s sake,” I said.
A mocking, sing-song “ooooo-oooooooooo” filled the room.
“This is a really important day for William. And for me. We need everyone to be on their game. We need your support.”
Bunny swallowed, her face turned serious. “Yes, darling. You’re quite right.”
“Thank you.”
“The re-enactment is at one o’clock. I’ll see you all then—and not a minute before. Sober. Are we clear?”
Three serious faces nodded. As I marched out into the hall, I heard them burst into laughter again.
“Men!”
“He’s going to make a brilliant duchess.”
I hadn’t even got to the bottom of the stairs when the three of them bounded past me, muslin trailing behind them.
“What did I just tell you?”
“Sorry, darling,” Bunny replied, “we’ve got the munchies.”
Derek appeared from a doorway holding up a piece of paper with a photograph on it.
“I don’t suppose you ladies have seen my duck anywhere, have you?”
The sound of clanking metal filled the corridor.
“Make way for the King’s Guard!” a man shouted. I turned to see a line of soldiers marching towards me. I stepped aside to let them pass, and the leader lifted his helmet. It was Andy from the village.
“Don’t suppose you could point us to the loos, could you?”
As I watched a trail of Tudor soldiers march up the stairs towards the servants’ quarters like something out ofBedknobsand Broomsticks, and looked back to see three stoned pagan witches trying to console a distraught man in search of his duck, and as I heard the bawdy revelry coming from the kitchen, inspiration struck. Here it was, the idea I’d been looking for all this time. It was fully formed, and it was brilliant.
Chapter 48
William
