Stone of Destiny (12 page)

Having agreed our strategy, we moved. I parked my car in the car park along Millbank from the Abbey, and carefully locked it and put the keys in my overcoat pocket. The detective had said there were thieves about, and I was prepared to believe him. I would need the car later. When I had secured it, I rejoined the others in the Anglia.

Old Palace Yard was deserted, so we did not need to make a dummy run. Alan swung the Anglia straight into the lane and, halfway up, switched out the lights. At the top he manoeuvred it round skilfully in the restricted space. The engine reverberated terrifyingly off the Abbey walls, as the Ford was a noisy little car, but when it was turned, with its bonnet pointing into the lane, it seemed
so small beside the soaring buttresses that we were certain it would not be seen. We got out and Kay slipped into the driving seat.

Ignoring the long way round through the mason’s yard, the three of us vaulted the high railings, crossed past the lamp post, and stood crucified by its light against the shining door. At least we should not work in darkness.

Gavin put his shoulder to the door. ‘The jemmy,’ he hissed.

I turned to Alan.

‘The jemmy!’

‘What?’ said Alan. ‘I thought you had it.’

Sheepishly, I returned to the Anglia and got it from under the seat where I had hidden it 10 minutes before.

At first we made little impression on the door. The two halves met closely, and were covered with a lath of wood, which ran all the way over the join from top to bottom. But I knew that this was the one door in the Abbey that was of pine, and not of oak as the others were. It should be forcible. We were desperately afraid of noise, and each creak sounded like a hammer blow. Inside the Abbey it must have resounded loudly enough to waken the British dead. You could hear them stirring and sitting up. We ignored the noise and worked on. First we prised off the covering lath of wood, and then with the sharp end of the jemmy we chewed away sufficient space to allow us to force the blade between the two sections of the door. Then the three of us put our weight on the end of the jemmy, and the door began to give a series of creaks, each of which sounded like the report of a shotgun. At each creak we expected a police car to sweep up the lane, summoned by the watchman. Let it come. We had already done more than most.

I could now put my fingers through and feel the hasp on the inside. It was slack. One side of the door was held by a bolt mating with a hole in the stone of the floor, and when we prised up this side of the door, the bolt came free. Our gap widened to three inches. We could see into the Abbey. There was no watchman there.

We put the blade of the jemmy close behind the padlock, and together we all wrenched mightily. With a crash the door flew open. In the car, Kay heard the noise and shuddered. But the way into the Abbey was open.

We swept into the dark of the bare stone transept. I returned and pulled the doors close behind me. I had rehearsed that part.

A light glowed dimly at the west end of the nave, but the rest was in black darkness. We went down the transept in silent hurry, and found that the gate in the metal grill was open. We crept through and round and up into the Confessor’s Chapel. We did not listen for the watchman, for we might have heard him coming. At least, at least, we would touch the Stone.

The chapel was in darkness. The glimmer from my torch showed the glass doors into the Sanctuary as black sheets, and I hastily turned it to the side, where it shone wanly on the green marble tomb of Edward I, whose dead bones Bruce had feared more than he feared any living Englishman.

The other two had already lifted aside the rail which kept the public back. The Stone was before us, breast high, in an aperture under the seat of the Coronation Chair. We prised at the bar of wood that ran along the front of the Chair as a retainer for the Stone. It was dry with age and it cracked and splintered. I shall strike no attitudes about being sorry to damage it. The Stone was behind it and it had to go.

The Stone should now theoretically have slipped out, but it was a very close fit and its weight made it unwieldy. I got to the back and pushed and it moved a little. The chains on the side kept catching on the carved sides of the Chair, and since the three of us were working in a sweating fever, not one of us had the patience to hold the light. At last we saw that brute strength and black darkness would not budge it, so we called a halt. Then, one man holding the torch, one prising at the sides with the jemmy, and one pushing at the back, we started afresh. It moved. It slid forward. The English chair would hold it no longer.

We were sweating and panting. It was coming. The plaque saying ‘
CORONATION CHAIR AND STONE
’ fell from the Chair. I caught it in mid-air and thrust it into my coat pocket. They would not need that now. It was almost free. One last heave. ‘Now,’ said Gavin. I pushed from the back. It slid forward, and they had it between them. I rushed forward to help them and we staggered a yard. We had to put it down. It was too heavy.

‘A coat,’ said Alan deep in his throat.

‘Mine is the strongest,’ I said. It was the strongest, but I wanted my coat to be the one that was used. I slipped the jemmy out of my pocket. We would come back for that later. I struggled out of my coat and laid it on the ground; one hasty heave and the Stone was on the coat.

I seized one of the iron rings and pulled strongly. It came easily – too easily for its weight. ‘Stop,’ I said and shone my torch. What I saw astonished me, and for a moment I could not think what had happened. There was not one Stone but two. I had pulled a whole neat corner away, and it lay separate from the rest of the Stone, a gigantic cube, about one-quarter of the whole.

Of course, I should have been appalled, but I wasn’t. What the penalties were for breaking the Crown’s Regalia I neither knew nor cared. As a unit the Stone was nearly unmanageable; as two, it made our job easier. These were my thoughts then and they still are, although I was later to conceal them with much pious humbug, pretending to have been shocked and awestruck, when I was only relieved. I picked up the small part, small but still an armful which made me stagger, and opened the door to the Sacrarium with my shoulder and passed through. The light still burned at the far end of the nave, but it only accentuated the soaring darkness of the building. Of the watchman there was no sign.

Although I must have been carrying 100 pounds in my arms, nearly three-quarters of my own weight, I ran light-footed with my burden. Adrenalin is a great drug. I came out into the light
outside the Poets’ Corner door, and plunged into the darkness of the mason’s yard, shouldering open the doors we had very wisely forced some hours before. Kay had seen me coming and had the car halfway down the lane. She opened the car door, and I rolled the piece of Stone onto the back seat.

‘We’ve broke it,’ I said, with unholy joy, lapsing into the language of my childhood. ‘Get back into cover.’ I don’t know what she thought, but by the time I was back into the Abbey the car was once more in position at the top of the lane.

The other two had made good progress. The steps leading down from the altar are wide and shallow, and they presented little difficulty to us. We grasped the coat between us, and swung it down step by step. Except for gasps for breath, and an occasional grunt of effort, we made little noise. Now and again there was a rending sound from the coat as the weight told on it, but my father sold only the best of cloth, and it stood up to the end.

We reached the foot of the steps and dragged it on across the nave. Sweat blinded us and we were breathless. As we turned into the transept there was a crunching noise. The plaque, which I had forgotten was still in the coat pocket, had fallen out, and the whole weight of the Stone had passed over it. Alan swiftly pocketed it. That simple action was later to give me a clue that saved the whole enterprise.

Suddenly and miraculously we were at Poets’ Corner door. We stopped for a breather because we were winded by the excitement as well as by our efforts. ‘One more pull,’ said Alan. ‘We’re not going to be beaten now.’

I opened the door to the lane, and as I did so I heard the car start up. It moved forward down the lane where it was clearly visible from the road. We still had to manhandle the Stone down the mason’s yard. It was too early to move forward yet. ‘The fool,’ I said, and dashed through the line of sheds to tell Kay to get back into cover.

The car was standing outside the door in the hoarding. I opened the nearside door. ‘Get the car back,’ I said. ‘We’re not ready yet.’

Kay looked at me coolly. ‘A policeman has seen me,’ she said. ‘He’s coming across the road.’

There are times in life when one leaps forward to meet whatever is coming with a joy beyond expression. It amounts to an acceptance of challenge with the certainty of success. Failure is not thought of, and each fractioned second is lived with distilled intensity. This was one of these times. We had surmounted so many difficulties that nothing could dismay us. We were caught, but we were still fighting. Part of the Stone was lying there on the back seat for anyone to see, and we had a policeman coming towards us, yet it did not occur to either of us that this was the end. This was only one more incident in a long chain of incidents. We would cope.

I got into the car and silently closed the door. I reached forward and switched on the sidelights. Then I took deep breaths to steady myself and wiped the Abbey dust off my hands onto Kay’s jacket. I put one hand over the back of the seat and draped Alan’s spare coat over the fragment of the Stone. Then I took her in my arms.

It was a strange situation in which we found ourselves, yet neither of us felt perturbed. Kay was as cool and calm as though we were on our way home from a dance. It was our third night without sleep and I think that our tiredness helped. Certainly my heart did not race with panic, and I don’t think Kay’s did either. We were getting immune to adrenalin, or else our bodies had none left to give. Kay set me an example in her relaxed remoteness.
She is a most remarkable woman. We cuddled one another and waited.

The policeman loomed in front of us. We could have predicted his first words.

‘What’s going on here?’ he asked.

What appeared to be going on was apparent to everyone. Kay and I did not fall apart until he had had plenty of opportunity to observe us.

‘It’s Christmas Eve, you know, officer,’ I explained.

‘Christmas Eve be damned!’ he thundered. ‘It’s five o’clock on Christmas morning.’

‘Ochone, ochone,’ said Kay, looking up at him with an assumed innocence that would have delighted anyone except a Wee Free minister. ‘Is it that time already?’

‘You’re on private property here,’ he told us severely. ‘And why did you move forward when you saw me coming?’

‘I know,’ I said humbly. ‘I knew we shouldn’t be here. We put on the lights to show you that we were quite willing to move on.’

‘But where can we go?’ asked Kay, voicing the eternal question of two youngsters caught in the sin of being alone together. ‘The streets are far too busy.’

‘You should be off home,’ he said severely, but beyond his sternness his voice was tender, as he looked down at her loveliness.

‘She’s my sister,’ I was about to say, eager to curry favour, and nearly blowing the whole ploy in three words. ‘We’re from Scotland,’ I said instead, and explained that we were on holiday and that we had arrived in London too late to get a bed. We had toured round instead, looking at the lights, and had ended up here to pass the night away. We sat and held hands shamelessly in front of him, and tried to give him the impression that we were a nice couple, too much in love to go to a hotel and be parted.

He began to warm to us. To my horror he took off his helmet
and laid it on the roof of the car. He lit a cigarette, and showed every sign of staying until he had smoked it.

‘There’s a car park just along the road,’ he said helpfully. We knew that car park. The other car was there.

‘Och well,’ said Kay, putting her head into the lion’s mouth. ‘If we’re not comfortable there we can always get you to run us in and give us a bed in the cells.’

‘No, no,’ said the policeman knowingly. ‘There’s not a policeman in London would arrest you tonight. None of us want to appear in court on Boxing Day to give evidence against you.’

Kay gave my hand a squeeze.

‘A good night for crime,’ I said, and we all laughed.

All this time I had been conscious of a scraping sound coming from behind the hoarding. Why on earth didn’t they lie low until the policeman had gone? It transpired afterwards that they had no idea that we were entertaining the police, and they were grunting away with the Stone, and calling my parentage into question for sitting in the car talking to Kay while they did all the work.

Kay heard the noise too, and we engaged the constable in furious conversation. He thought us excellent company. His slightest sally brought forth peals of laughter, and when he made a joke we nearly had convulsions. Surely they would hear our laughter and be warned. They had. They thought we had gone off our heads with the strain.