BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS · torchlight, as he rode Moscow across the sleeping city, and nodded. ‘But the problem is, Samuel is a great aerial artiste,’ said Arkady. She smiled

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First published in Great Britain in 2019 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

Text copyright © Katherine Rundell, 2019Illustrations copyright © Matt Saunders, 2019

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Vita waited until the sun had fully set before she

scattered the bird seed on the inside window

sill. The day birds had all gone to roost, and no

pigeons came to peck at it.

She sat next to it and waited; and waited. She was

almost asleep when there was a flurry of wings and of

bright eyes, and a crow landed on her window sill and

began to devour the seed.

The bird had a tiny roll of paper tied to its foot.

Taking a letter off a bird’s foot is infin itely harder,

CHAPTER EIGHT


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Vita discovered, than it is made to sound in books. The

bird flapped round and round her room with Vita in

gently urgent pursuit, and it was not until she thought

to offer it the ginger snap she had been saving that it

stayed still long enough for her to unwind the three

wraps of string that held it in place.

The note read: ‘Come to the entrance of Carnegie

Hall at 11.20 p.m. Don’t be even a minute late. Eat

this note.’

Vita looked at the note, which had suffered some-

what from its prox im ity to the bird’s rear end, and

decided not to eat it. She flushed it down the lavat ory

instead.

Arkady was waiting behind one of the front doors of

the Hall, watch ing through a crack, and he pulled it

open before she could wonder whether to knock.

‘Come! A night guard patrols, but he only does the

ground floor. He’s just gone past. Quickly!’

He led Vita through the great hall, lit only by the

street lamps outside, and into the lift. ‘Second floor,’

he said. ‘The Chapter Hall.’


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‘The what?’

‘It’s like a tiny stage: just two hundred people. The

main hall takes nearly three thou sand. There’s a rig in

the Chapter.’

‘What kind of rig?’

‘Trapeze, obvi ously!’ He looked shocked at her

ignor ance. ‘The rig belongs to the Sabatini Sisters,

but they don’t mind Samuel using it. Or at least, they

wouldn’t mind if they knew. It has to be secret.’

‘What does?’

‘Samuel! He’s train ing to be an acrobat.’

‘Why does it have to be secret?’

‘Because he comes from a horse family.’ He shook

his head at her, as if this were obvious. ‘He has to

join his uncle’s act. It’s why he’s here – to learn

horse man ship.’

‘But couldn’t he just ask—’

‘No. Circus famil ies work like royalty – you do what

your parents did, by birth right. You get no more choice

about it than Tsar Alexander had about being Tsar.

Which is OK for me – I’ve always known I wanted to

work with animals: with dogs and horses and birds.’


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Vita thought of how his face had shone, bright as

torch light, as he rode Moscow across the sleep ing

city, and nodded.

‘But the problem is, Samuel is a great aerial artiste,’

said Arkady. She smiled at the word ‘artiste’, but his

face was utterly serious. ‘He taught himself, by

watch ing – like people teach them selves tunes on a

piano, you know? Except on his own body, and now

he can’t unlearn it. So.’

‘But that’s not fair!’ said Vita.

Arkady shrugged. ‘I know. But have you tried saying

that to an adult recently?’

‘That doesn’t mean you can’t change it. Nothing’s

unchange able!’

But Arkady was running ahead. ‘Come – here!’

The room was wooden- floored with wood panel-

ling and a high ceiling. Chairs were laid out along

three sides of the room, a single lamp was lit. The

room smelt of sweat and chalk.

In the middle of the room were what looked like

four rugby goal posts. Attached to the two posts at

either end were plat forms; from the middle two hung


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what looked like small iron swings. Beneath them was

a net. At the top of one plat form was a boy, stand ing on

one leg, the other held high above his head.

‘Samuel!’ called Arkady. ‘She’s here.’

The boy turned, and grinned, but went imme di-

ately back to his stretch ing; and Vita quietly reminded

herself to blink.

Samuel was beau ti ful; and his beauty was of the

kind that makes your lungs tempor ar ily forget their

func tion. He was clad entirely in black – black cotton

trousers, a black singlet, black bands at his wrist,

black ballet shoes. His hair was cropped close to his

head, and his cheekbones slanted across his face like

twin cliff- edges. He set both hands on the plat form

and kicked himself into a hand stand.

‘Talk now or later?’ asked Arkady.

‘Later,’ said Samuel, upside down. He barely

seemed to have registered Vita’s pres ence. ‘I’m trying

something new.’ His accent was New York, but with

something else: a length and depth to the vowels that

suggested a different mother tongue.

Samuel flipped upright, dipped his hands in chalk,


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picked up a long pole with a crook at the end of it,

and, leaning out over the edge of the plat form, used it

to draw the iron swing towards him. He caught hold

of it with one hand, leaning out over the net with just

his heels on the plat form.

He looked down at Arkady, and his face was rigid

with concen tra tion.

‘Call me in?’ he said.

Arkady shouted back, ‘Listo!’

‘Listo?’ whispered Vita.

‘Spanish for “ready”.’

Samuel shifted his weight. ‘Ready!’

‘Hep!’ called Arkady.

And Samuel cast himself off into the air, both

hands on the bar of the trapeze, flying. At the peak of

the swing, he let go, somer saul ted in the air above the

bar, and hooked back on to it with his knees. Vita’s

stomach lurched.

The boy spun upright, grasped the ropes on either

side of the swing, and stood up on the bar. He swayed

his body back and forth, and the swing soared, so

high that at its peak he was facing directly down wards


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and Vita caught a fleet ing glimpse of his face. Then,

without the slight est noise, he let go and dropped

forward, spin ning a full circle in the air, up and over

the swing with only his ankle hooked over the bar.

Vita gasped. It wasn’t just the way he dropped

through the air, as if gravity had granted him a special

dispens a tion; it wasn’t just his flight. It was the look

that had trans formed his face.

Samuel’s jaw was set, and he did not smile, but

there was some thing strange and prodi gious and fer -

o cious on his coun ten ance. It was the joy of someone

doing the thing they were born to do.

Vita did not know for how long Samuel swung, and

spun, and cast his body kaleido scope- wise. She only

knew that she didn’t want him to stop. Then, as the

swing rose higher and higher, he let go and spun in a

double somer sault, falling as the swing fell, reached

out to grab it, missed, and fell into the net.

He sat up, his eyes shining.

‘New trick?’ called Arkady.

‘Didn’t work,’ said Samuel, stand ing in the net and

brush ing off his hands. ‘Did you see what went wrong?’


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Up close he was slight and lean, but with large hands

and feet that said he would be tall, some day.

‘You were on the down swing,’ said Arkady. ‘I think

maybe two- thirds of a second too late,’ he said. ‘But I

don’t know if it’s possible to do a double somer sault.’

‘It is!’ Samuel shook his head. ‘But I could feel

I was off.’ He jumped down from the net, wiping his

fore head with his shirt. His flight had changed him;

his whole body was looser, less wary.

‘You’re Vita,’ he said. ‘Ark said you need

some thing.’

Vita felt for the red book in her pocket and gripped

it tight. She straightened her spine. ‘I need a team,’

she said. And as swiftly as she could, she explained:

about the Castle, and the emerald pendant, and the

need for money and armies of lawyers to bring

Sorrotore to his knees.

‘I need to get over a wall, maybe fifteen or twenty

feet.’

‘Why can’t you just take a ladder?’

‘Because the wall rises straight out of a lake.

A small one, but still a lake. It needs a rope.’


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‘A lake?’ said Samuel.

‘A real new trick!’ said Arkady. His enthu si asm

made his words pile up against one another. ‘We’re

going to be thieves!’

Samuel frowned.

‘No, I know what you’re think ing,’ said Arkady

hurriedly, ‘but it’s steal ing back what was already

stolen. Good thieves!’

‘Necessary thieves,’ said Vita.

‘And it’s out in the coun tryside,’ said Arkady, ‘way

out in nowhere, so we won’t get caught. Probably,

anyway.’

Samuel did not look convinced. ‘Why, though?

Why are you doing it?’

Vita looked up at the trapeze, which still swung

back and forth above their heads.

‘Because nobody else is going to do it,’ she said.

‘That’s not actu ally a reason,’ said Samuel. ‘You

could say that about almost anything.’

Vita bit her lip. ‘Mama says we have to be sens ible.

She wants to make my grand father come back

home to England with us, whether he wants to or


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not. And Grandpa goes blank if you try to ask

him about it. His whole face is like a door slam ming

shut.’

Vita closed her eyes, to hide from the thought –

and then opened them.

‘But if we just pack up and go home, Sorrotore will

have won. He’ll win, just like men like him always

win. So I don’t want to be sens ible.’

She looked down at her left shoe, at the twist

and arch of her foot, at the break able thin ness of

her left leg. She thought of all the well- meaning

adults, with their sit down, take care, not youdears.

She shook her head, and straightened every bone in

her body. ‘Just once, I don’t want to do what I’m told!

I want to fight. I’m going to fight.’

Samuel looked at her for a long, thickly laden

moment. ‘My father’s at home in Mashonaland, in

Africa,’ he said. ‘He gave everything he had to send

me out here, when I was a tiny kid, to tour with my

uncle: to join the act. If I don’t, I’m letting down

the whole family: cousins, aunts: everyone. But –

when I was three, I taught myself to backflip. I loved


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the way it felt when I landed back up on my feet: like

a magic trick. I can’t give it up.’ He stared at his hands,

which were covered in chalk. ‘So – I can understand

not wanting to do what you’re told.’

And then he smiled, and the smile rose up to his

ears and his discon cert ing beauty vanished in favour

of glee: the glee of the usually careful turned reck-

less. ‘Exactly how wide is the wall?’

‘I don’t know. Quite wide, I think.’

‘And exactly how tall?’

Vita shook her head. ‘About fifteen feet. Maybe

twenty. I don’t know.’

‘I need to know exactly. For the rope. Do you have

a blue print?’

‘A what?’ said Arkady. ‘I don’t know that word.’

‘It’s an archi tec tural plan of a house,’ said

Samuel.

‘I don’t have one,’ said Vita, ‘but I can find one.’ Her

voice, she noted with relief, sounded far more

confid ent than she felt.

‘If you find one,’ said Samuel, ‘then I’m in. I’ll join

your heist.’ And he wiped his chalky palms on his


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black trousers and stuck out his hand.

Arkady clapped his hands above his head and

whooped, but an unex pec ted surge of hot guilt rose

up in Vita’s chest. The two boys stood, shoulder to

shoulder, identical grins. They had never seen

Sorrotore, nor seen the ice in him. She had not told

them about the news pa per head line.

She pushed the guilt down, down where she

could not feel it. She laid her hand in Samuel’s and

shook it.

‘When do we go?’ asked Arkady. ‘Soon! Tomorrow!’

‘Soon,’ said Vita. ‘But not tomor row.’

‘But why not tomor row?’

‘There’s still a lot to do,’ said Vita. ‘Like Samuel

says – every heist needs a blue print.’


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BLOOMSBURY CHILDREN’S BOOKS · torchlight, as he rode Moscow across the sleeping city, and nodded. ‘But the problem is, Samuel is a great aerial artiste,’ said Arkady. She smiled