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Michael chuckled. ‘A reminder to keep our feet on the ground.’
‘Hmm. He’s still very little and in training,’ said Her Majesty, far too polite to refer directly to what I was doing. ‘There’s no point trying to stop them midway through.’
‘Quite so, Your Majesty,’ agreed Michael.
Then he added after a pause, ‘He has yet to become an alchemist.’
The Queen looked puzzled. ‘A corgi? Turning base metal into gold?’
‘A metaphor for personal transformation. The true purpose of alchemy is about reining in our baser instincts,’ he nodded towards me, ‘and realising our highest potential.’
‘I never thought alchemy had anything to do with me or with corgis,’ she replied. ‘It seems I was mistaken.’
Michael nodded. ‘It’s another universal archetype. The idea actually comes from an ancient Egyptian word for the black earth of the Nile. It was only from such darkness that life, in all its richness, could spring forth. In the East there is a similar concept: no mud, no lotus. Only through suffering is transcendence possible.’
‘So we should all strive to be alchemists?’ confirmed the Queen.
‘Indeed.’
Outside, great banks of grey clouds suddenly lifted and, for the first time that morning, a shaft of sunlight broke through. ‘We can give purpose to our dissatisfaction when we find a way to use it, when it gives rise to a flowering of exquisite beauty.’
They seemed to have come full circle, back to Her Majesty’s feelings when Michael had first stepped into the room, except that now there were the stirrings of new possibilities.
‘Thank you, Michael, for your inspiration.’ The Queen smiled, rising from her chair. ‘You bring fresh hope.’
Opposite, Michael brought his palms to his heart and bowed briefly.
They turned to where I crouched, ashamed, beside my deposit. ‘I’d better summon help,’ said Her Majesty.
‘Quite so.’
As they walked to the door, I joined the two other corgis following them. Winston shot me a consoling glance, which made me feel only worse. Margaret ignored me completely.
‘Just one thing.’ The Queen paused for a moment in the reception room outside her office. ‘The transcendence you speak of, that’s public service, is it not?’
‘It may well take that form, Your Majesty. And you use your position to give comfort and inspiration to many. But it doesn’t have to be about the grand gesture or the trappings of state. It is my deep conviction . . .’ Michael seemed to be communicating with more than words alone, ‘. . . that doing small acts with great love is our most precious gift—and not only for those we are helping. It is a wonderful paradox that when we help others, we ourselves are the first to benefit.’
Michael then left and the Queen summoned a footman to remove all evidence of my wretched lack of toilet-training. We followed her to the office of her lady-in-waiting while this was happening.
If you are concerned, my fellow subject, that this chapter will provide an exhaustive listing of my every bowel movement as a puppy, allow me to put your mind at rest. In the weeks that followed our meeting with Michael, I continued to have accidents, oversights and mishaps. Eventually, however, I got the hang of it through a combination of self-control and learning what was, and was not, our den. Looking back, you might even say that the meeting with Michael was the lowest point in my palace training, were it not for the fact that it was only through my lack of self-control that we discovered the true meaning of the word ‘alchemy’ and how it signified one’s life purpose.
For my own part, I needed to control my impulses. To learn that there was a time and place, which did not include the polished, wooden hallway flooring or ancient Persian carpets that bedecked the various royal residences.
As for the Queen, her life was already the embodiment of so much of what Michael had said: the power of symbols; deeds, not words; transcendence through service to others. But I detected something new in the weeks that followed. Something that hearkened back to his wisdom about doing small acts with great love.
For several weeks each summer, while the royal family was elsewhere, parts of Buckingham Palace were opened to the public. Every day from late August through September, long queues would form from early in the morning, as people from all over the world eagerly awaited their chance to visit the most famous royal residence in the world. The tourists included groups of all kinds—the elderly, schools and a wide range of nationalities—whose passage through the palace was managed by a security and visitor team with well-practiced efficiency.
On one such day, the Queen had to cut short her stay at Sandringham to meet the Commonwealth secretary-general in London, where she would sign into effect a new trade agreement. The meeting, to be held at Buckingham Palace, was not expected to take more than twenty minutes, after which the Queen would travel on to Windsor.
Arrangements for the brief visit to Buckingham Palace by Her Majesty and the secretary-general caused the Queen’s head of security, Huchens, no end of concern. A large, muscular Highlander in his early forties, he was a former senior figure in the SAS and had received several decorations for gallantry from the Queen herself. Margaret had told me approvingly how he possessed what she termed ‘gunfighter nerves’ and had no startle reflex at all. The loudest explosion could happen right beside him, or he could be on the receiving end of the direst threat, and his expression would be completely unaltered. Only the best of the best could be entrusted to take care of Her Majesty’s security.
Allowing large numbers of unknown people close proximity to the monarch always presented a danger. The age-old protocol of flying the royal standard over the palace when Her Majesty was in residence was quickly dismissed. Working out how to get the Queen and her VIP visitor in and out of the building on a day when it was open to the public presented a logistical challenge that the burly Scot pondered from every angle.
On the day in question, Her Majesty, accompanied by all three royal corgis, was whisked into the palace and upstairs to the stateroom, where she was to meet the secretary-general. While waiting, she made her way to a glass door that overlooked the line of people about to be admitted to the palace. From behind a sheer curtain she watched as a group of a dozen or so teenage schoolboys in the blazers of St George’s Boys’ School restlessly pushed and shoved each other, despite the futile protests of their female teacher. Beside the Queen, we three corgis watched as a particularly large boy jumped on the shoes of a pale, bespectacled and much slighter fellow. Even from the upstairs window, the pain being inflicted by the brute was quite evident. Her Majesty shuddered.
There was little time to contemplate the horrors of schoolboy bullying, however, because within minutes the Queen’s guest was being announced. He and a small entourage swept into the room for a most cordial meeting, during which Her Majesty signed the new trade treaty into effect. It was one, declared the secretary-general, which would improve the economic prospects of literally millions of people. By abandoning trade tariffs and taxes, many more businesses would be encouraged to increase their trade, as well as the number of people they employed, leading to better conditions for many.
Within half an hour, the secretary-general was leaving and the Queen was standing by for a signal from Huchens, who was with her in the room, to advise that the coast was clear to return downstairs to her waiting car. Standing, handbag over her arm, Her Majesty looked out the one-way glass of an internal door, facing down a staircase to the hallway below, through which a steady stream of visitors passed. A decorative red rope looped across the bottom of the stairs, with a Private: No Entry sign.
