Just like a wing.
The pair proceeded across the barbican, she oohing and he arring, drawing fond but also wary looks from those they passed. The palace’s only resident children were well liked, not at all spoiled, and mannerly enough when their parents were nearby; but they were also light fingered and would pilfer whatever they fancied on their daily quests. One afternoon, a particular Italian gold leaf artisan had turned from the cherub he was coating to find his brush and tray of gold wafers missing. The gold turned up later, coating the wings of a week-dead seagull, which someone had tried to fly from the Wall battlements.
They crossed the bridge into the main keep, which housed the king’s residence, office, and meeting rooms. And this would generally be where the pair would have been met with a good-natured challenge from the sentry. But the king himself had just leaned out the window and sent the fellow running to catch the Wexford boat and put ten shillings on a horse he fancied in the Curracloe beach races. The palace had a telephone system, but there were no wires to the shore as yet, and the booking agents on the mainland refused to take bets over the semaphore.
For two minutes only, much to the princess and pirate’s delight, the main keep was unguarded. They strode in as though they owned the castle. “Of course, in real life, I do own the castle,” confided Isabella, never missing a chance to remind Conor of her exalted position.
“Arrrr,” said Conor, and meant it.
The spiral staircase ascended through three floors, all packed with cleaning staff, lawyers, scientists, and civil servants; but through a combination of infant cunning and luck, the pair managed to pass the lower floors to reach the king’s own entrance, impressive oak double doors with half of the Saltee flag and motto carved into each one. Vallo Parietis, read the legend. Defend the Wall. The flag was a crest bisected vertically into crimson and gold sections, with a white blocked tower stamped in the center.
The door was slightly ajar. “It’s open,” said Conor.
“It’s open, hostage princess,” Isabella reminded him.
“Sorry, hostage princess. Let’s see what treasure lies inside.”
“I’m not supposed to, Conor.”
“Pirate Captain Crow,” said Conor, slipping through the gap in the door. As usual, Nicholas’s apartment was littered with the remains of a dozen experiments. There was a cannibalized dynamo on the hearth rug, copper wiring strands protruding from its belly.
“That’s a sea creature and those are its guts,” said Conor with relish.
“Oh, you foul pirate,” said Isabella.
“Stop your smiling, then, if I’m a foul pirate. Hostages are supposed to weep and wail.”
In the fireplace itself were jars of mercury and experimental fuels. Nicholas refused to allow his staff to move them downstairs. Too volatile, he had explained. Anyway, a fire would only go up the chimney.
Conor pointed to the jars. “Bottles of poison. Squeezed from a dragon’s bum. One sniff and you vaporate.” This sounded very possible, and Isabella wasn’t sure whether to believe it or not.
On the chaise longue were buckets of fertilizer, a couple of them gently steaming. “Also from a dragon’s bum,” intoned Conor wisely. Isabella tried to keep her scream behind her lips, so it shot out of her nose instead.
“It’s fert’lizer,” said Conor, taking pity on her. “For making plants grow on the island.”
Isabella scowled at him. “You’re being hanged at sundown. That’s a princess’s promise.”
The apartment was a land of twinklings and shining for a couple of unsupervised children. A stars-and-stripes banner was draped around the shoulders of a stuffed black bear in the corner. A collection of prisms and lenses glinted from a wooden box closed with a cap at one end; and books old and new were piled high like the columns of a ruined temple.
Conor wandered between these columns of knowledge, almost touching everything but holding back, knowing somehow that man’s dreams should not be disturbed.
Suddenly, he froze. There was something he should do. The chance might never come again. “I must capture the flag,” he breathed. “That’s what a pirate captain is supposed to do. Go to the roof so I can capture the flag and gloat.”
“Capture the flag and goat?”
“Gloat.”
Isabella stood hands on hips. “It’s pronounced goooaaat, idiot.”
“You’re supposed to be a princess. Insulting your subjects is not very princessy.”