Spare

The men returned. Now they had Phil. They’d gone through his social media, studied him, and they began saying things about his family, his girlfriend, which scared him. It was astonishing how much they knew. How can perfect strangers know so much?

I smiled: Welcome to the party, pal.

I wasn’t taking this seriously enough. One of the men grabbed me, shoved me against a wall. He wore a black balaclava. He pressed his forearm into my neck, spitting every word from his mouth. He pressed my shoulders against the concrete. He ordered me to stand three feet from the wall, arms above my head, all ten fingertips against the wall.

Stress position.

Two minutes.

Ten minutes.

My shoulders started to seize.

I couldn’t breathe.

A woman entered. She was wearing a shemagh over her face. She went on and on about something, I didn’t understand. I couldn’t keep up.

Then I realized. Mummy. She was talking about my mother.

Your mother was pregnant when she died, eh? With your sibling? A Muslim baby!

I fought to turn my head, to look at her. I said nothing but I screamed at her with my eyes. You doing this for my benefit now—or yours? Is this the exercise? Or you getting a cheap thrill?

She stormed out. One of the captors spat in my face.

We heard the sound of gunshots.

And a helicopter.

We were dragged into a different room and someone called out, OK, that’s it. End exercise!

There was a debrief, during which one of the instructors offered a half-arsed apology about the stuff to do with my mother.

Hard for us to find something about you that you’d be shocked we knew.

I didn’t answer.

We felt you needed to be tested.

I didn’t answer.

But that took it a bit too far.

Fair enough.

Later I learned that two other soldiers in the exercise had gone mad.

46.

I’d barely recovered from Bodmin Moor when word came down from Granny. She wanted me to go to the Caribbean. A two-week tour to commemorate her sixtieth year on the throne, my first official royal tour representing her.

It was strange to be called away so suddenly, with a finger snap, from my Army duties, especially so close to deployment.

But then I realized it wasn’t strange at all.

She was, after all, my commander.

March 2012. I flew to Belize, drove from the airport to my first event along roads thronged with people, all waving signs and flags. At my first stop, and every stop thereafter, I drank toasts to Granny and my hosts with homemade alcohol, and performed many rounds of a local dance called the punta.

I also had my first taste of cow-foot soup, which had more of a kick than the homemade alcohol.

At one stop I told a crowd: Unu come, mek we goo paati. In Creole that means: Come on, let’s party. The crowd lost it.

People cheered my name, and shouted my name, but many shouted my mother’s name. At one stop a lady hugged me and cried: Diana’s baby! Then fainted.

I visited a lost city called Xunantunich. Thriving Mayan metropolis, centuries ago, a guide told me. I climbed a stone temple, El Castillo, which was intricately carved with hieroglyphs, friezes, faces. At the top someone said this was the highest point in the whole nation. The view was stunning, but I couldn’t help looking down at my feet. Below were the bones of untold numbers of dead Mayan royals. A Mayan Westminster Abbey.

In the Bahamas I met ministers, musicians, journalists, athletes, priests. I attended church services, street festivals, a state dinner, and drank more toasts. I rode out to Harbour Island in a speedboat that broke down and began to sink. As we took on water, along came the press boat. I wanted to say no thanks, never, but it was either join them or swim for it.

I met India Hicks, Pa’s goddaughter, one of Mummy’s bridesmaids. She took me along the Harbour Island beach. The sand was bright pink. Pink sand? It made me feel stoned. Not altogether unpleasant. She told me why the sand was pink, a scientific explanation, which I didn’t understand.

At some point I visited a stadium full of children. They lived in abject poverty, faced daily challenges, and yet they greeted me with jubilant cheers and laughter. We played, danced, did a little boxing. I’d always loved children, but I felt an even keener connection to this group because I’d just become a godfather—to Marko’s son Jasper. Deep honor. And an important signpost, I thought, I hoped, in my evolution as a man.

Towards the end of the visit the Bahamian children gathered around me and presented me with a gift. A gigantic silver crown and an enormous red cape.

One of them said: For Her Majesty.

I’ll see that she gets it.