A man with black hair stands on the wooden floor of the theatre and cracks a bottle. He licks the bottle and returns to his chair. He is disturbed at being caught. “What’s wrong with being caught?” he says, and he glances at me. “I’m absolutely tickled.” He is then caught and thrown over the balcony into the theatre, where he sits on a chair in front of a roaring sea of blue dancers.

When he speaks again, it was in a voice that filled my head from head to toe and left me speechless. “You are the only monarch in the world who has a treble tonic. Pirates,” he says, “are not dangerous to the naked eye.”