I should have been more cautious. I had established that the estate was lice free during August and September, but I had been unaccountably reckless in assuming that I would be alone on the Munroes with no one but my quarry and perhaps a few of the space station staff. With my tongue sandwich in one hand, my Hasselblad in the other I was admiring some elegant footprints on the shores of the tarn. They were long-toed and precise, the impressions were relatively shallow indicating a creature of reduced mass (my thoughts were always reverting to Louise for comparison) and a swift check in Louise's files came up with a surprising identification - Cercocebus galeritus chrysogaster, the Golden-bellied Managabey! Its normal habitat the tropical swamps of the Congo River! A mammal on the IUCN Red List. I was completely absorbed in the mental ingestion of this astonishing find, in its way as momentous as the longed-for unearthing of the secret stellar fleet, when I heard voices approaching from the west. By deploying a mechanical Arctic bumblebee I was able to obtain visuals on the intruders, as I thought of them in a very human reversal of our roles, and ascertained that they were a pair of heavily tweeded males carrying equipment and one female headscarfed like myself. Most likely staff, I thought, possibly guests or, less probably, obscure members of the royal family whose likelihood of succeeding to the throne depended on a severe structural failure of some ceremonial building or palatial assembly point for core royals from which they had been excluded. Nevertheless, their presence would be of interest provided I could escape their attention and regain the security of Louise. In this I was aided by the ebullient planting of the area round the lake, though I would not be able to return to the anonymity of the pod with the same alacrity with which I had descended and above all there was also the imperative need to evacuate both bowels and bladder with the added complication that I would have to take every precaution to conceal evidence of my presence. I felt quite naked without my trompe l'oeil, and my ignorance of the protocols that must hover round a monarch forced to answer a call of nature in the wild left me feeling exposed. Diarrhoea had been the undoing of at least one Roman emperor, was it now my turn to be caught unawares in an impossible position? Any unauthorised person on the estate would be assumed to have a contract with Hello Magazine at the very least, at the worst they would be instantly diagnosed as psychotic sensation seekers bent on raising instant fame. I could see how easily I could fall into both categories even without the association with Louise.
My tongue sandwich still unbitten I sought the safe screening of a clump of Lundy cabbage and began the unravelling process that would bring me relief, a process that was complicated by my Hasselblad and the need to hold my sandwich in the air. I was torn between eating it so as to get it out of the way or of placing it securely out of harm's way in the heart of a Killarney fern, classified as vulnerable according to Louise, and for several precious minutes I remained paralysed by indecision in a suddenly realised three body problem that might well have baffled Lagrange himself, reduced to immobility by the equal importance of evacuation, concealment and appetite. Too late, I could detect the voices in direct buccal aural link passing within a few feet of my coordinates. I crouched down in a most unmonarchical posture, thinking that total concealment was by far the best strategy in a situation where, deprived of my trompe l'oeil and inwardly writhing with abdominal pressures , I was unsure of whether my impersonation would be even minimally convincing. Monarchs are not like other people, whatever may have intervened since medieval times, they are semi divine beings spreading an aura or seal of acceptance from one garden party to another. The Living Goddess of Bouchmorale was not to be taken short.
"She's nothing better than a crossing sweeper !" came a voice which I identified as Male 1.
"Totally behind the times, who does she think she is? Are we expected to kowtow to her simply on the grounds of seniority? It's unbelievable!" this was Male 2 though the voice was very light, a contralto, rather pleasing, and I was aware that until I heard the female I could not be certain of the identification.
But the conversation had a very definite Hello Magazine appeal, they might well be talking of a recently elevated commoner, a figure whose mythic ascent of Mount Olympus had brought both admiration and disdain mixed with resentment and a whole host of emotions as complicated as Louise's diode controls. I held myself as still as a Hazel Dormouse, IUNC rating of Least Concern, in tortured suspense. Then the female voice, I had been correct in my identification, cut in, her tone sharp and concisive in the fast-delivered articulation of the an academic sure of her ground:
"Her interpretation of the pseudobedding is so absurd as to be risible, it's quite obvious to anyone, even an amateur, that the area was reglaciated several times. Sometimes I think she can't tell the difference between Dalridian successions and the Late Devensian!"
"Oh, I wouldn't go that far!" Male 2 replied with a kindly chuckle, "she is after all. . . ." but at this interesting point I lost the link as they continued to ascend, rather worryingly in the direction of Louise, but I retained a faint hope that they might perhaps have been discussing a regal amateur geologist, it was certainly within the tradition as Lyell's field trips with Albert, the Prince Consort, showed and I made a mental note that this might present an avenue for investigation. Any little crack in those feet of clay was welcome with the glossies.
My own trifling concerns surmounted, though not without incident - the tongue and mustard sandwich was missing, my hands were soiled with earth, and a Golden-bellied Mangabey had begun uttering alarm calls that were clearly intended to alert others to my presence. There could hardly be anything less discreet for an undercover investigator than to be mobbed by a troop of hysterical social Old World monkeys, and their unexpected presence on the heights of The Cairngorms where I had looked to encounter nothing more than Red Deer and capercaillies which, exciting though they are in their way cannot be seen as exotics, added an interesting piquancy to my quest. Very probably there was some truth to the space base rumours, anything now seemed possible, even the possibility of saurian life forms on the triple throne!
My ascent was less joyous than my irresponsible descent of only an hour earlier. I found myself labouring cautiously through the endangered trees and bushes without the anticipation of a sustaining sandwich, nervous about colliding with the little group of geologists who might be seated silently somewhere ahead of me consuming scrumptious venison pate sandwiches helped down with powerful shots of Lochnagar whisky. Ligetti had replaced Bach. And it was The Devil's Staircase!
The storm of screams accumulated behind me and I was fortunate to overhear from only a bush or two in front of me:
"What is that god-awful racket?" And then, and this caused me some alarm - "Good heavens! What a magnificent beast!" the very words I least wanted to hear. They had seen Louise, her whole too-big-to-see strategy was in jeopardy. I was separated from her by their presence and helpless, without my trompe l'oeil I was too big to be the Queen.
Louise had retained her crouch position which even to a layman would seem to be an unlikely posture for an elk or moose of any kind. Fortunately her lateral door was closed and her outward appearance was to all intents and purposes extremely realistic though her immobility might arouse suspicions. To obviate these I decided to activate her through the remote - posterior auricular (powderblue), anterior auricular (aquamarine) and I soon had her ears free of any stray Shrill carder-bees, but it was so difficult to distinguish the diodes accurately on the tiny screen of the remote, I was certain that a catastrophic slip up was impending. The next step was to get Louise on her feet and to send her on a diversionary canter that would take the party of scientists away from my position. My idea was to make her circle back to me while the heavily tweeded trio were drawn panting up the slopes. This should in theory have allowed me a leisurely interval in which to mount Louise and for the two of us to gallop past the soliflucted lake, causing some regrettable but inevitable destruction, into the typical landscape of linearly selective erosion that led towards Balmoral Castle.
4
