moment.
‘I’ll tell you if you promise to keep it a secret.’ He nodded, giving me a solemn bow, hand on heart. ‘Well, Mr Sheridan has hidden a treasure in the theatre and I’m looking after it for him.’
‘Where is it?’ he asked eagerly.
I then remembered what Pedro said about running away to France with the jewels from his turban and was therefore thankful to be able to deny all knowledge of its exact location.
‘I don’t know. But I’m to tell him if anyone comes sneaking around to look for it.’
He gave me a queer look, perhaps wondering if I meant him. ‘I’ll help you,’ he said. ‘It sounds exciting. Perhaps we’ll get a reward if we catch someone after it.’
I shrugged. ‘Maybe.’ I looked away to the auditorium and saw that it was almost full. ‘Hadn’t you better get changed? The performance is about to start.’
Pedro brushed the crumbs off his lap and bowed again.
‘Tonight I will play for you, Cat,’ he said gallantly as he left the box.
As I watched him go, I wondered about my new friend, for I supposed that was what he was after all we had been through today. Pedro was the most unusual boy I’d ever met and I wasn’t talking about his skin colour. I couldn’t forget the music that poured from his violin that morning: he seemed to be in touch with something much greater than anything I knew, something almost holy. That was it, I thought with a smile as I realised what image I was feeling my way towards: he was like a priest, a priest of music, superior to the rest of us who had never gone beyond the veil into the Holy of Holies. That was until you mentioned money to him . . . that brought him straight back to earth among the rest of us. I wouldn’t be encouraging him to think any more about the diamond . . . that had been a big mistake.
Mr Sheridan had not yet arrived, though Iexpected him to come for the first night of the balloon farce,
The Mogul’s Tale
, after the main play. This meant I had the delicious luxury of the box to myself. I sat in his chair and played with the opera glasses. I trained them on the Pit, picking out the men on the seats below as they chewed on handfuls of nuts and oranges. Jonas Miller, the clerk from across the road, a pinched-nose youth with straggly fair hair and a poor complexion, was here again, sitting at the end of the bench just under my box. He must spend all his wages on tickets. Jonas was a fanatic about the theatre and was famous for his devotion to Miss Stageldoir, sending her weekly offerings of nosegays and other tokens of his affection. She ignored him, of course, saying that he was only a clerk with ideas above his station. I could have added that he was a louse who never missed an opportunity to insult those below him. As I was somewhere near the bottom of life’s pile, that meant he treated me cruelly when our paths crossed, either directing some foul remark in my direction or pushing me roughly out of his way. Jonas was at present sittingnext to a dark-suited young man, both with eyes trained on a pamphlet in their laps. Deciding to have my revenge by abusing my position of power, I focused the glasses to spy on the paper they were looking at. It was only a caricature . . . some crude picture lampooning the government or the Royal Family. I bent closer to the edge of the box to listen to what they were saying.
‘Captain Sparkler’s been at it again,’ cried Jonas. ‘Look at what he’s done to the king. He looks like a sack of Norfolk potatoes. What’s this? He’s only gone and drawn him squatting on “the dung heap of history”. Ouch! That’s a bit bold, ain’t it?’
‘The French king doesn’t look very happy though,’ said the other. ‘I’m not sure French liberty is to his liking.’
‘I’m all for a bit of French revolutionary spirit here, aren’t you, Reuben? Shake up the old orders . . . give us young men a chance. After all,
we
are the future of this country, not that old German fart, the