‘Absolutely anyone. Not Papa, though, until after I see how sad he is.’

Absolutely anyone.

That’s something, thought Conor, swishing his wooden sword, thinking how it cut the air like a gull’s wing.

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 spoilt, and mannerly enough when their parents were nearby, but they were also light-fingered and would pilfer whatever they fancied on their daily quests.

A certain Italian gold-leaf artisan had recently turned from the cherub he was coating one afternoon to find his brush and tray of gold wafers missing. The gold turned up later coated on the wings of a week-dead seagull that 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 have been where the pair would be met with a good-natured challenge from the sentry. But the king himself had just leaned out of 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’s and the 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 passed three floors, all packed with cleaning staff, lawyers, scientists and civil servants, but through a combination of low infant cunning and luck the pair managed to pass the lower floors to 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 words. Defend the Wall. The flag was a crest bisected vertically into crimson and gold sections with a white blocked tower stamped in the centre.