Q1. What is your name?

Will made as if to follow me into my room but mother wouldn’t let him. ‘You can talk in the morning,’ she said. ‘Bess is tired out, and anyway the removal lorry will be here by seven o’clock. We’ve all got to be up early. Off to bed now.’ And Will obeyed, a bit too easily I thought. My room was not my room anymore. All my owls had been packed away. There were no curtains at the windows, no pictures on the walls. ‘Elephant’ was nowhere to be seen. There was a packing case where my chair had been, and screwed-up newspaper was scattered all over the floor. I shut the door and coughed. My friend Walter was sitting propped up against the pillows on my bed, his legs crossed at the ankles. He was smiling triumphantly. ‘He knew I was here,’ he said. ‘That cur of yours stiffed me from head to toe and I had nothing to offer him, except this.’ And he threw back his cloak. The golden orb lay on his lap shining and glittering in the light of my bedside lamp. I had guessed right, so it was no real surprise to me, but all the same I could not take my eyes of it. He held it out to me. ‘It is yours, chick. Come, take it. It will not bite you.’ It was a perfect globe of gold encircled with bands of pearls and diamonds and rubies and sapphire and emeralds and many more stones that I could not recognise. At the top of it was a small, jewel-encrusted cross. I was about to touch it when I pulled back. ’You stole it didn’t you?’ I said. ‘You stole it from the Tower. It was on the radio. They’re looking for it everywhere. You shouldn’t have.’ ‘I am no thief, cousin,’ Walter protested, his voice raising with indignation. ‘Is it stealing to take what is mine? Did I not tell you how I was robbed of everything that was rightly mine, my lands, my castles, my jewels?’ he held up the golden orb in one hand. ‘This bauble is but a trifle of what I am owed, what is due to your family, to you. You are of my blood and therefore it is yours by right. Take it. I have only taken back what is rightfully ours, and ours it shall remain. I tell you, cousin I had more jewels on one of my shoes than there is in this trinket. Take it, for with it you can restore your family’s fortune.’ ‘But it belongs to the Queen.’ ‘It belongs to you Bess,’ he said smiling, ‘and if you will not take it then you must catch it.’ And with that he tossed it to me.

Q3. ‘He was smiling triumphantly.’ What does the word ‘triumphantly’ suggest about how Walter was feeling? This means that Walter was feeling …

Q4. ‘his voice rising with indignation.’ What does the word ‘indignation’ suggest about the way Walter is speaking?

Q5. ‘…this bauble is but a trifle of what I am owed…’ What does the word ‘trifle’ suggest about what Walter is owed?

Q6. ‘And with that he tossed it to me.’ What does the word ‘tossed’ suggest about what Walter did with the orb?