‘’Ave a care, Pedro,’ called Signor Angelini after us. ‘Stay with your friends. ’E may think to make snatch of you, willing or no.’
After the rehearsal Pedro and I retired to my home in the Sparrow’s Nest – the vast costume store that occupied the attic on one side of the theatre. It was dark up here: the costumes glimmered half-seen in the shadows, like a headless army waiting for the command to march downstairs and on to the stage. I lit a candle. Pedro wasn’t called for the performance tonight so he had an evening off duty.
‘What a day!’ I exclaimed, throwing myself on the old sofa that served as my bed. I saw with a groan that Mrs Reid had left a pile of mending for me with a note complaining about my prolonged absence from her side. Resigned to the inevitable, I picked up my needle and began to work. Pedro barely seemed to notice what I was doing, but stood at the window listening to the hubbub of the audience gathering below as it waited for the doors to open. He stared out over the smoking rooftops at the stars.
‘These are the same,’ he said, finally breaking the hush that had fallen between us.
I put aside a badly darned stocking and came to stand beside him. The night sky was untouched by the glitter of lights spilling out from the gin palaces and taverns on the streets below. Up here, at the top of one of the tallest buildings in town, Pedro and I occupied a strange borderland. Look down and you saw Drury Lane spreading her tricks out before you with all the flash showmanship of a pavement magician. London’s a city of false prophecies and illusions where the streets are only paved with gold on a wet night with the lamps lit. Look up and all that tawdriness is left behind, for above the rooftops is where the true-silver magic of the starlight takes over.
‘What’s the same?’ I asked softly, caught in the spell with him.
‘The stars. They’ve stayed with me, though everything else has changed. I remember them shining over my village. My father used to tell me stories about them.’
‘What stories?’
‘I can’t remember. I was too young.’ Pedro rarely spoke of his family. He’d lost so much: his home, his family – even his memories.
‘You miss them, don’t you? Your family, I mean.’
‘Every day. My mother’s smile. My sisters’ bickering – you would’ve liked them. My grandmother – she wasn’t taken – too old, they said. My father – proud and strong. Did I ever tell you he was a king among our people?’ I shook my head. ‘Funny that Syd’s gang call me “Prince” now, isn’t it?’
It was a very sad kind of funny, I thought.
‘I can also remember the stars at sea. When I got out of the hold of the ship they crammed us aboard, I can remember thinking that the stars were the most beautiful sight I’d ever seen – so high, so free.’
‘Was it so very bad in the ship?’ I ventured. Pedro had hinted as much before but the events of the day seemed to have unlocked a door to those memories.
‘I can’t tell you how bad it was, Cat. Not in my own words.’ He paused for a moment. ‘You know that bit in The Tempest where Prospero talks about Ariel being shut in a cloven pine by a witch?’ I nodded. ‘Every time I hear those words I think of the ship. That’s what it was like – a horrible spell. Bodies flung together with no hope of release except death or slavery. We were packed so tight, there was no room to move. The air stank. For months we suffered beyond anything I thought possible. Our people died in their chains, only to be chucked over the side like rubbish. Sometimes the slavers didn’t even wait until they were dead.’ He leaned his forehead against the glass, shaken by the memory.
I felt sick. ‘Pedro, I’m so sorry. It’s an outrage that this still happens! I thought we were supposed to be a Christian nation. How can people do this to others?’
Pedro picked up a rich-red velvet robe from the chest under the window and crushed it in his hands. ‘I’ve asked myself that so many times, Cat. I don’t have an answer. I thought white people were all like that until I met you.’ He looked at me briefly as if to reassure himself that I was still there. ‘Now all I can think is that those slave traders are a particularly savage tribe. They don’t think of us as human at all. It’s as if a skin colour blinds them to everything else.’ He turned back to the window. ‘You know something? I hope my family is dead.’
‘What!’
‘Better dead than with a master who can beat you within an inch of your life – demand your every moment be spent dancing attendance on him – kill you if the fancy takes him. Better dead than that.’
‘I suppose so.’ I had a trembling feeling inside; the depth of Pedro’s despair terrified me. I wanted to pull him out of it. ‘But perhaps your family escaped? Or perhaps they found a kind master who set them free?’
‘You really think so?’ Pedro asked in a hollow voice.
‘Well, you don’t know for sure, do you?’ I continued, despite suspecting that he thought me a fool. ‘But you have to imagine something so why not something good?’
‘Hah!’
‘That’s what I do.’
‘What you do?’
‘Yes. In my mind my mother was a beautiful lady and her husband handsome and rich.’ As I spoke, the words seemed to make the tale true. I warmed to my theme. ‘A wicked nurse stole me in a fit of jealousy and left me on the steps of the theatre, but my parents have never given up hope of finding me again.’ My imaginary mother and father hovered in my mind’s eye for a moment, smiling.
‘You think that, do you?’
‘Some of the time. I have other stories too.’
‘Do you have one where your mother was a beggar and your father could’ve been anyone?’
‘Pedro!’
‘For that’s the truth, isn’t it, Cat? Just as my family are probably dead or in chains. And the dead ones are the lucky ones.’