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There were the ascetic features, the receding fair hair and the playful expression in his eyes.
‘Ah, yes,’ nodded Winston in recognition.
Perhaps it was my feeling of warm contentment with a tummy full of food or the fact that I’d spent most of that afternoon curled up with Winston at Her Majesty’s feet, cocooned in a state of safe wellbeing? Whatever the reason, I felt the impulse to confess. ‘He was the one whose leg I jumped on,’ I told Winston. ‘Before being fixed.’
He regarded me closely.
‘I think it was what I did that led to me being, you know . . .’ I knew I was rambling, ‘sent to the vet.’
‘You’re serious?’ There was merriment in his aged eyes. He jerked his head towards the TV. ‘Justin?’
‘Who’s Justin?’
Winston never had to tell me, my fellow subject. I discovered for myself just seconds later when the scene changed to show Charles’ visitor inside a cathedral wearing very different attire—golden robes and a gold-coloured hat. He was carrying a staff with an elaborate gold handle. Organ music blasted triumphantly as the newsreader said, ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury announced last week . . .’
When I looked back at Winston his mouth was open in a broad smile. ‘That’s a first for a royal corgi,’ he told me, the amusement of it so great that he succumbed to a fit of snorting. ‘I think you have a great career ahead of you, dear boy,’ he told me, when he had fully recovered. ‘Just not in the Church of England!’
My embarrassing encounter with the Archbishop of Canterbury couldn’t have been further from my mind when, several weeks later, Her Majesty and the Prince of Wales made a private visit to a longstanding family friend at his farm in Gloucestershire. As a royal corgi schooled in discretion—a claim I realise may be hard to accept given the shameful admission of this chapter—I can’t reveal the identity of the friend, except to say that he is a peer of the realm with a great interest in pedigree cattle.
After tea that afternoon, the whole party set out to admire a prize-winning dairy bull, which the Lord had only recently acquired. The party included the Queen, Charles, the Lord and his lady, we three royal corgis and the Lord’s dog, Cara. A twelve-year-old golden retriever, Cara spent most of her days indoors and, when she moved, did so slowly on account of being almost completely blind. We had already exchanged warm wet nosed greetings before sniffing one another’s backsides, as canine etiquette dictates.
‘It’s amazing she doesn’t bump into things,’ Charles observed, as she followed us out of the house.
‘Familiarity,’ explained the Lord. ‘She’s been through each barn and paddock on the estate nearly every week for the past twelve years.’
While that was true, Cara’s almost complete lack of vision meant that when we all gathered next to a white palisade fence, unlike everyone else who stopped to observe the great, black bull grazing on the other side, Cara slipped under a cross bar and walked directly into the field, which was usually occupied only by placid heifers.
Cara’s creeping deafness meant that when her master called for her to return, she heard him only faintly. She paused momentarily, turning in our direction, before continuing across the field directly towards where the bull had stopped grazing, eyeing the unwelcome visitor with evident displeasure.
His Lordship shouted out for Cara at the very top of his voice, but this further unsettled the bull.
‘I’ll have to go in,’ he declared urgently, bending to squeeze between the bars of the fence.
‘Are you quite sure?’ Her Majesty asked, in a concerned voice.
‘I’ll try to distract him while we get Cara out.’
Tension mounted as His Lordship, now on the other side of the fence, walked across the field, preparing to take on the bull from a different direction. The bull wasn’t the slightest bit interested. It seemed that a distant human was of far less concern than the approaching dog.
The bull was bending its neck towards the ground, glowering at Cara.
‘Oh, goodness!’ cried Her Ladyship. ‘We know what that means!’
Clambering on the fence, she cried out to Cara w
ith all her might but to no avail. The bull raised its head high before bringing it heavily towards the ground again. A warning most dogs would have heeded. But Cara continued dawdling towards him.
Suddenly I felt a rush of those same herding instincts that had caused me round up the ducks in Buckingham Palace Gardens. In a trice, I was under the horizontal bar of the palisade fence and scampering towards Cara. A chorus of voices followed. The Queen sounded anxious; Charles imploring. I ignored them all, driven not only by instinct, but also remembering in that moment what the Archbishop had said about interdependence and being willing to help others. Was I not doing the right thing? I continued steadily towards Cara.
Seeing a second canine intrude into its paddock, the bull grew livid. It raised and lowered its head more vigorously than before. It raised its front, right hoof and began scuffing. As I caught up with Cara, it bellowed for the first time.
Hearing the bloodcurdling sound so unexpectedly close, Cara froze. Moments later I was next to her. She felt me touch her now trembling leg with my snout to quickly re-establish a connection.
For what felt like the longest time there was a tense stand-off, the bull regarding the two of us with frozen fury. His Lordship, having approached from another angle, halted in his tracks. I guided Cara with my nose back in the direction of the small group of people and corgis watching from the other side of the field.
I led the retreat slowly, quietly. Not wishing to provoke the bull with precipitous action, I nuzzled Cara at a deliberate pace away from the great beast. From the corner of my eye, I saw His Lordship do much the same thing, taking steady steps backwards.
As soon as we were at a safer distance, I picked up the pace. ‘Close call,’ I barked as we headed back to the white palisades.
