The Magicians of Caprona (20 page)

“Oh my God! Mother of God!
Insects!
” It even drowned the noise of the military band that was marching past as Paolo opened the gate.

The man outside thrust a sheet of paper at Paolo and darted off to hammer on the next door. Paolo looked at it. He had a mad idea that he had just been handed the words to the
Angel
. After that, he went on staring, oblivious alike of Aunt Gina—who was now screaming what she was going to do to Lucia—and of the great gun that went rumbling past, pulled by four straining horses.

That was everyone! Paolo had not realized that even his father was a Final Reservist.

“Shut the gate, Paolo!” shrieked Aunt Maria.

Paolo was about to obey, when he remembered that he had not yet looked at the Angel. He dodged outside and stared up, while half a regiment of infantry marched past behind him. It looked as if, in the night, every pigeon in Caprona had chosen to sit on that one golden carving. It was plastered with bird droppings. They were particularly thick, not unnaturally, on the outstretched arm holding the scroll, and the scroll was a crusty white mass. Paolo shuddered. It seemed like an omen. He did not notice one of the marching soldiers detach himself from the column and come up behind him.

“I should close the gate, if I were you,” said Chrestomanci.

Paolo looked up at him and wondered why people looked so different in uniform. He pulled himself together and dragged the two halves of the gate shut. Chrestomanci helped him slot the big iron bars in to lock it. As he did, he said, “I was at the Casa Petrocchi around dawn, so there’s no great need for explanations. But I would like to know what’s the matter in the kitchen this time.”

Paolo looked. Eight baskets piled high with round tan-colored loaves stood outside the kitchen. There were agitated noises from inside it, and a curious long droning sound. “I think it’s Lucia’s spell again,”
he said.

He and Chrestomanci set off across the yard. Before they had gone three steps, the aunts burst out of the kitchen and rushed towards him. Antonio and the uncles hurried down from the gallery, and cousins arrived from everywhere else. Aunt Francesca surged out of the Saloon. She had spent the night there, and looked as if she had. Chrestomanci was soon in the middle of a crowd and holding several conversations at once.

“You were quite right to call me,” he said to Rosa, and to Aunt Francesca, “Old Niccolo is good for years yet, but you should rest.” To Elizabeth and Antonio, he said, “I know about Tonino,” and to Rinaldo, “This is my fourth uniform today. There’s heavy fighting in the hills and I had to get through somehow. What possessed the Duke,” he asked the uncles, “to declare war so soon? I could have got help from Rome if he’d waited.” None of them knew, and they all told him so at once. “I know,” said Chrestomanci. “I know. No war-spells. I think our enemy enchanter has made a mistake over Tonino and Angelica. If it does nothing else, it allows me a free hand.” Then, as the clamor showed no sign of abating, he said, “By the way, the Final Reserve has been called up,” and nodded to Paolo to give the paper to Antonio.

In the sober hush that this produced, Chrestomanci pushed his way to the kitchen and put his head inside. “My goodness me!” Paolo heard him murmur.

Paolo ducked under all the people crowding round Antonio and looked into the kitchen under Chrestomanci’s elbow. He looked into a wall of insects. The place was black with them, and glittering, and crawling, and dense with different humming. Flies of all kinds, mosquitoes, wasps and midges filled the airspace. Beetles, ants, moths and a hundred other crawling things occupied the floor and shelves and sink. Peering through the buzzing clouds, Paolo was almost sure he saw a
swarm of locusts on the cooking stove. It was even worse than he had imagined the Petrocchi kitchen when he was little.

Chrestomanci drew a deep breath. Paolo suspected he was trying not to laugh. They both looked around for Lucia, who was standing on one leg among the breadbaskets, wondering whether to run away. “I am sure,” Chrestomanci said to her—he
was
trying not to laugh; he had to start again. “I am sure people have talked to you about misusing spells. But—just out of interest—what did you use?”

“She used her own words to the
Angel of Caprona
!” Aunt Maria said, bursting angrily out of the crowd. “Gina’s nearly out of her mind!”

“All the children did it,” Lucia said defiantly. “It wasn’t only me.”

Chrestomanci looked at Paolo, and Paolo nodded. “A considerable tribute to the powers of the younger Montanas,” said Chrestomanci. He turned and snapped his fingers into the buzzing, crawling kitchen. Not much happened. The air cleared enough for Paolo to see that it was indeed locusts on the cooker, but that was all. Chrestomanci’s eyebrows went up a little. He tried again. This time nothing happened at all. He retreated from the buzzing, looking thoughtful.

“With all due respect,” he said to Paolo and Lucia, “to the
Angel of Caprona
, it should not be this powerful on its own. I’m afraid this spell will just have to wear itself out.” And he said to Aunt Maria, “No wonder the enemy enchanter is so much afraid of the Casa Montana. Does this mean there won’t be any breakfast?”

“No, no. We’ll make it in the dining room,” Aunt Maria said, looking very flustered.

“Good,” said Chrestomanci. “There’s something I have to say to everyone, when they’re all there.”

And when everyone was gathered around the tables to eat plain rolls and drink black coffee made over the dining room fire, Chrestomanci stood in front of the fire, holding a coffee cup, and said, “I know few of
you believe Tonino is not in the Casa Petrocchi, but I swear to you he is not, and that Angelica Petrocchi is also missing. I think you are quite right to stop making spells until they are found, but I want to say this: even if I found Tonino and Angelica this minute, all the spells of the Casa Montana and the Casa Petrocchi are not going to save Caprona now. There are three armies, and the fleet of Pisa, closing in on her. The
only thing
which is going to help you is the true words to the
Angel of Caprona
. Have you all understood?”

They all had. Everyone was silent. Nobody spoke for some time. Then Uncle Lorenzo began grumbling. Moths had got into his Reservist uniform. “Someone took the spell out,” he complained. “I shan’t be fit to be seen.”

“Does it matter?” asked Rinaldo. His face was very white and he was not having anything but coffee. “You’ll only be seen dead anyway.”

“But that’s just it!” said Uncle Lorenzo. “I don’t want to be seen dead in it!”

“Oh be quiet!” Domenico snapped at him. Uncle Lorenzo was so surprised that he stopped talking. Breakfast finished in gloomy murmurs.

Paolo got up and slid behind the bench where Chrestomanci was sitting. “Excuse me, sir. Do you know where Tonino is?”

“I wish I did,” said Chrestomanci. “This enchanter is good. So far, I have only two clues. Last night, when I was coming up through Siena, somebody worked two very strange spells somewhere ahead of me.”

“Tonino?” Paolo said eagerly.

Chrestomanci shook his head. “The first one was definitely Angelica. She has what you might call an individual style. But the other one baffled me. Do you think your brother is capable of working anything strong enough to get through an enchanter’s spells? Angelica did it through sheer weirdness. Could Tonino, do you think?”

“I shouldn’t think so,” said Paolo. “He doesn’t know many spells, but he always gets them right and they work—”

“Then it remains a mystery,” said Chrestomanci. He sighed. Paolo thought he looked tired.

“Thanks,” he said, and slipped off, carefully thinking careless thoughts about what would he do now school was closed. He did not want anyone to notice what he meant to do.

He slipped through the coach house, past the crumpled horses and coachman, past the coach, and opened the little door in the wall at the back. He was half through it, when Rosa said doubtfully, at the front of the coach house, “Paolo? Are you in there?”

No, I’m not, Paolo thought, and shut the little door after him as gently as he knew how. Then he ran.

By this time, there were hardly any soldiers in the streets, and hardly anyone else either. Paolo ran past yellow houses, heavily shuttered, in a quiet broken by the uneasy ringing of bells. From time to time, he thought he could hear a dull, distant noise—a sort of booming, with a clatter in its midst. Wherever the houses opened out and Paolo could see the hills, he saw soldiers—not as soldiers, but as crawling, twinkling lines, winding upwards—and some puffs of smoke. He knew Chrestomanci was right. The fighting was very near.

He was the only person about in the Via Cantello. The Casa Petrocchi was as shuttered and barred as the Casa Montana. And their Angel was covered with birdlime too. Like the Montanas, they had stopped making spells. Which showed, thought Paolo, that Chrestomanci was right about Angelica too. He was much encouraged by that as he hammered on the rough old gate.

There was no sound from inside, but, after a second or so, a white cat jumped to the top of the gate, and crouched in the gap under the archway, looking down with eyes even bluer than Paolo’s.

Those eyes reminded Paolo that his own eyes were likely to give him away. He did not think he dared disguise them with a spell, in case the Petrocchis noticed. So he swallowed, told himself that he had to find the one person who was likely to help him look for Tonino, and said to the cat, “Renata. Could I speak to Renata?”

The white cat stared. Maybe it made some remark. Then it jumped down inside the Casa, leaving Paolo with an uncomfortable feeling that it knew who he was. But he waited. Before he had quite decided to go away again, the peephole was unlatched. To his relief, it was Renata’s pointed face that looked through the bars at him.

“Whoops!” she said. “I see why Vittoria fetched
me
. What a relief you came!”

“Come and help find Tonino and Angelica,” said Paolo. “Nobody will listen.”

“Ung.” Renata pulled a strip of her red hair into her mouth and bit it. “We’re forbidden to go out. Think of an excuse.”

“Your teacher’s ill and scared of the war and wants us to sit with her,” said Paolo.

“That might do,” said Renata. “Come in while I ask.” Paolo heard the gate being unbarred. “Her name’s Mrs. Grimaldi,” Renata whispered, holding the gate open for him. “She lives in the Via Sant’ Angelo and she’s ever so ugly, in case they ask. Come in.”

Considerably to his amazement, Paolo entered the Casa Petrocchi, and was even more amazed not to be particularly frightened. He felt as if he was about to do an exam, keyed up, and knowing he was in for it, but that was all.

He saw a yard and a gallery so like his own that he could almost have believed he had been magically whisked back home. There were differences, of course. The gallery railings were fancy wrought-iron, with iron leopards in them at intervals. The cats that sat sunning
themselves on the waterbutts were mostly ginger or tabby—whereas in the Casa Montana, Benvenuto had left his mark, and the cats were either black or black and white. And there was a gush of smell from the kitchen—frying onions—the like of which Paolo had not smelled since Lucia cast her unlucky spell.

“Mother!” shouted Renata.

But the first person who appeared was Marco. Marco was galloping down the steps from the gallery with a pair of long shiny boots in one hand, and a crumpled red uniform over his arm. “Mother!” Marco bellowed, in the free and easy way people always bellow for their mothers. “Mother! There’s moth in my uniform! Who took the spell out of it?”

“Stupid!” Renata said to him. “We put every single spell away last night.” And she said to Paolo, “That’s my brother Marco.”

Marco turned indignantly to Renata. “But moths take months—!” And he saw Paolo. It was hard to tell which of them was more dismayed.

At that moment, a red-haired, worried-looking lady came across the yard, carrying a little boy. The baby had black hair and the same bulging forehead as Angelica. “I don’t know, Marco,” she said. “Get Rosa to mend it. What is it, Renata?”

Marco interrupted. “Rosa,” he said, looking fixedly at Paolo, “is with her
sister
. Who’s your friend, Renata?”

Paolo could not resist. “I’m Paolo Andretti,” he said wickedly. Marco rewarded him with a look which dared him to say another word.

Renata was relieved, because she now knew what to call Paolo. “Paolo wants me to come and help look after Mrs. Grimaldi. She’s ill in bed, Mother.”

Paolo could see by the way Marco’s eyes went first wide and then almost to slits, that Marco was extremely alarmed by this and determined to stop Renata. But Paolo could not see how Marco could do
anything. He could not give away that he knew who Paolo was without giving away himself and Rosa too. It made him want to laugh.

“Oh poor Mrs. Grimaldi!” said Mrs. Petrocchi. “But, Renata, I don’t think—”

“Doesn’t Mrs. Grimaldi realize there’s a war on?” Marco said. “Did Paolo tell you she was ill?”

“Yes,” Paolo said glibly. “My mother’s great friends with Mrs. Grimaldi. She’s sorry for her because she’s so ugly.”

“And of course she knows about the war,” Renata said. “I kept telling you, Marco, how she dives under her desk if she hears a bang. She’s scared stiff of guns.”

“And it’s all been too much for her, Mother says,” Paolo added artistically.

Marco tried another tack. “But why does Mrs. Grimaldi want
you
, Renata? Since when have you been teacher’s pet?”

Renata, who was obviously as quick as Paolo, said, “Oh, I’m not. She just wants me to amuse her with some spells—”

At this, Mrs. Petrocchi and Marco both said, “You’re not to use spells! Angelica—”