The Magicians of Caprona (21 page)

“—but of course I won’t,” Renata continued smoothly. “I’ll just sing songs. She likes me to sing. And Paolo’s going to read to her out of the Bible. Do say we can go, Mother. She’s lying in bed all on her own.”

“Well—” said Mrs. Petrocchi.

“The streets aren’t safe,” said Marco.

“There was no one about at all,” Paolo said, giving Marco a look to make him watch it. Two could play at that.

“Mother,” said Renata, “you are going to mend Marco’s uniform, aren’t you?”

“Yes, yes, of course,” said Mrs. Petrocchi.

Renata at once took this as permission to go with Paolo. “Come on,
Paolo,” she said, and raced under Marco’s nose to what was obviously the coach house. Paolo whizzed after her.

Marco, however, was not defeated. Before Renata’s hand was on the latch of the big door, an obvious uncle was leaning over the gallery. “Renata! Be a good girl and find me my tobacco.” An obvious aunt shot out of the kitchen. She looked like Aunt Gina with red hair, and she hooted in the same way. “Renata! Have you taken my good knife?” Two young cousins shot out of another door. “Renata, you said you’d play dressing up!” and Mrs. Petrocchi, looking anxious and undecided, was holding the baby boy out, saying, “Renata, you’ll have to mind Roberto while I’m sewing.”

“I can’t stop now!” Renata shouted back. “Poor Mrs. Grimaldi!” She wrenched open the big door and pushed Paolo inside. “What’s going on?” she whispered.

It was obvious to Paolo what was going on. It was so like the Casa Montana. Marco had broadcast—not an alarm, because he dared not—a sort of general uneasiness about Renata. “Marco’s trying to stop us,” he said.

“I know
that
,” Renata said, hurrying him past the sleek Petrocchi coach and—to Paolo’s interest—past four black cardboard horses as crumpled and muddy as the Casa Montana ones. “
Why
is he? How does he know?”

Behind them was a perfect clamor of Petrocchi voices, all wanting Renata. “He just does,” Paolo said. “Be quick!”

The small door to the street had a big stiff key. Renata took it in both hands and struggled to turn it. “Does he know
you
?” she said sharply.

Like an answer, Marco’s voice sounded from behind the coach. “Renata!” Then, much more softly, “Paolo—Paolo Montana, come here!”

The door came open. “Run, if you’re coming!” Paolo said. They shot out into the street, both running hard. Marco came to the door and shouted something, but he did not seem to be following. Nevertheless, Paolo kept on running, which forced Renata to run too. He did not want to talk. He wanted to absorb the shock of Marco. Marco Andretti was really Marco Petrocchi—he must be Guido’s eldest son! Rosa Montana and Marco Petrocchi. How did they do it? How ever did they
manage
it? he kept wondering. And also—more soberly—How ever will they get away with it?

“All right. That will do,” Renata panted. By this time they had crossed the Corso and were down beside the river, trotting along empty quaysides towards the New Bridge. Renata slowed down, and Paolo did too, quite breathless. “Now,” she said, “tell me how Marco knew you, or I won’t come a step farther.”

Paolo looked at her warily. He had already discovered that Renata was, as Aunt Gina would say, sharp enough to cut herself, and he did not like the way she was looking at him. “He saw me at the Palace of course,” Paolo said.

“No he didn’t,” said Renata. “He drove the coach. He knows your name
and
he knows why you came, doesn’t he? How?”

“I think he must have been standing behind us on the Art Gallery steps, and we didn’t see him in the fog,” said Paolo.

Renata’s shrewd eyes continued the look Paolo did not like. “Good try,” she said. Paolo tried to break off the look by turning and sauntering on along the quays. Renata followed him, saying, “And I was meant to get all embarrassed and not ask any more. You’re sharp enough to cut yourself, Mr. Montana. But what a pity. Marco wasn’t in the fight. They wanted him for the single combat, that’s how I know, and he wasn’t there, so Papa had to do it. And I can tell that you don’t want me to know how Marco knows you. And I can tell Marco doesn’t, or he’d
have stopped me going by saying who you were. So—”

“You’re the one who’s going to cut yourself,” Paolo said over his shoulder, “by being too clever. I don’t know how Marco knew me, but he was being kind not say—” He stopped. He sniffed. He was level with an alleyway, where a peeling blue house bulged out onto the jetty. Paolo felt the air around that alley with a sense he hardly knew he had, inborn over generations of spell-making. A spell had been set here—a strong spell, not long ago.

Renata came up behind. “You’re not going to wriggle out—” She stopped too. “Someone made a spell here!”

“Was it Angelica? Can you tell?” Paolo asked.

“Why?” said Renata.

Paolo told her what Chrestomanci had said. Her face went red, and she prodded with her toe at a mooring chain in the path. “Individual style!” she said. “Him and his jokes! It’s not Angelica’s fault. She was born that way. And it’s not everyone who can get a spell to work by doing everything wrong. I think she’s a sort of back-to-front genius, and I told the Duchess of Caprona so when she laughed, too!”

“But is the spell hers?” asked Paolo. He could hear gunfire, from somewhere down the river, mixed with the dull booming from the hills. It was a blunt, bonking
clomp, clomp
, like a giant chopping wood. His head went up to listen as he said, “I know it’s not Tonino. His feel careful.”

“No,” said Renata, and her head was up too. “It’s a bit stale, isn’t it? And it doesn’t feel very nice. The war sounds awfully close. I think we ought to get off the quays.”

She was probably right. Paolo hesitated. He was sure they were hot on the trail. The stale spell had a slight sick feeling to it, which reminded him of the message in the yard last night.

And while he hesitated, the war seemed suddenly right on top of
them. It was deafening, brazen, horrible. Paolo thought of someone hold-ing one end of an acre of sheet metal and flapping it, or of gigantic alarm clocks. But that did not do justice to the noise. Nor did it account for some huge metallic screeches. He and Renata ducked and put their hands to their ears, and enormous things whirled above them. They went on, whatever they were, out above the river. Paolo and Renata crouched on the quay, staring at them.

They flapped across in a group—there were at least eight of them—gonging and screeching. Paolo thought first of flying machines and then of the Montana winged horse. There seemed to be legs dangling beneath the great black bodies, and their metal wings were whirling furiously. Some of them were not flying so well. One lost height, despite madly clanging with its wings, and dropped into the river with a splash that threw water all over the New Bridge and spattered Renata and Paolo. Another one lost height and whirled its iron tail for balance. Paolo recognized it as one of the iron griffins from the Piazza Nuova, as it, too, fell into a spout of water.

Renata began to laugh. “Now that
is
Angelica!” she said. “I’d know her spells anywhere.”

They leaped up and raced for the long flight of stairs up to the Piazza Nuova. The din from the griffins was still drowning all but the nearest gunfire. Renata and Paolo ran up the steps, turning round at every landing to see what was happening to the rest of the griffins. Two more came down in the river. A further two plunged into the gardens of rich villas. But the last two were going well. When Paolo next looked, they seemed to be struggling to gain altitude in order to get over the hills beyond the Palace. The distant clanging was fast and furious, and the metal wings a blur.

Paolo and Renata turned and climbed again. “What is it? A call for help?” panted Paolo.

“Must be,” gasped Renata. “Angelica’s spells—always—mad kind of reasonableness.”

An echoing clang brought them whirling around. Another griffin was down, but they did not see where. Fascinated, they watched the efforts of the last one. It had now reached the marble front of the Duke’s Palace, and it was not high enough to clear it. The griffin seemed to know. It put out its claws and seemed to be clutching at the zig-zag marble battlements. But that did no good. They saw it, a distant black blot, go sliding down the colored marble facade—they could even hear the grinding—down and down, until it crashed onto the roof of the marble gateway, where it drooped and lay still. Above it, even from here, they could see two long lines of scratches, all down the front of the Palace.

“Wow!” said Paolo.

He and Renata climbed up into the strangely bare Piazza Nuova. It was now nothing but a big paved platform surrounded by a low wall. At intervals around the wall were the snapped-off stumps of the griffins’ pedestals, each with a broken green or crimson plaque lying beside it. In the middle, what had been a tangled griffin fountain was now a jet of water from a broken pipe.

“Just look at all these spells she’s broken!” exclaimed Renata. “I didn’t think she could do anything this strong!”

Paolo looked across at the scratched Palace, rather enviously. There were spells in the marble to stop that kind of thing. Angelica must have broken them all. The odd thing was that he could not feel the spell. The Piazza Nuova ought to have reeked of magic, but it just felt empty. He stared around, puzzled. And there, trotting slowly and wearily along the low wall, was a familiar brown shape with a trailing bush of a tail.

“Benvenuto!” he said.

For a moment, it looked as if Benvenuto was going to walk straight
past Paolo, as he so often did. But that must have been because he was tired. He stopped. He glared urgently at Paolo. Then he carefully opened his mouth and spat out a small folded scrap of paper. After that, he lay down and lost interest in the world. Paolo could see his brown sides heaving when he picked up the paper.

Renata looked over Paolo’s shoulder as Paolo—rather disgustedly, because it was wet—unfolded the paper. The writing was definitely Tonino’s, though it was far too small. And, though Paolo did not know it, not much of Tonino’s message had survived. He and Renata read:

ords to Angel on Angel over

It was small wonder that Paolo and Renata misunderstood. From the Piazza Nuova, now the griffins were gone, an Angel was clearly visible. It stood, golden and serene, guarding a Caprona which was already surrounded in the smoke from gunfire, on top of the great dome of the Cathedral.

“Do you think we can get up there?” said Paolo.

Renata’s face was white. “We’d better try. But I warn you, I’m no good at heights.”

They hurried down among the red roofs and golden walls, leaving Benvenuto asleep on the wall. After a while, Benvenuto picked himself up and trotted away, restored. It took more than a few ill-aimed rifles to finish Benvenuto.

When Paolo and Renata reached the cobbled square in front of the Cathedral, the great bell in the bell tower beside it was tolling. People were gathering into the church to pray for Caprona, and the Archbishop of Caprona himself was standing by the door blessing everyone who entered. Renata and Paolo joined the line. It seemed the easiest way to get in. They had nearly reached the door, when Marco dashed into the
square towing Rosa. Rosa saw Renata’s hair and pointed. She was too blown to speak. Marco grinned. “Your spell wins,” he said.

The warm pocket holding Tonino swayed and swooped as the Duke stood up. “Of course I smoked a cigar,” he said to the Duchess, injured. “Anyone would smoke a cigar if they found they’d declared war without knowing they had and knew they were bound to be beaten.” His voice came rumbling to Tonino’s ears through his body, more than from outside.

“I’ve told you it’s bad for your health,” said the Duchess. “Where are you going?”

“Me? Oh,” said the Duke. The pockets swooped, then swooped again, as he climbed the steps to the door. “Off to the kitchens. I feel peckish.”

“You could send for food,” said the Duchess, but she did not sound displeased. Tonino knew she had guessed they had been in the study all along and wanted the Duke out of it while she found them.

He heard the door shut. The pocket swung rhythmically as the Duke walked. It was not too bad once Tonino was used to it. It was a large pocket. There was almost room in it for Tonino, and the Duke’s lighter, and his handkerchief, and another cigar, and some string, and some money, and a rosary, and some dice. Tonino made himself comfortable with the handkerchief as a cushion and wished the Duke would not keep patting at him to see if he was there.

“Are you all right in there?” the Duke rumbled at last. “Nobody
about. You can stick your heads out. I thought of the kitchens because you didn’t seem to have had any breakfast.”

“You are kind,” Angelica’s voice came faintly. Tonino worked himself to his feet and put his head out under the flap of the pocket. He still could not see Angelica—the Duke’s generous middle was in the way—but he heard her say, “You keep rather a lot of things in your pockets, don’t you? Do you happen to know what I’ve got stuck to my foot?”

“Er—toffee, I suspect,” said the Duke. “Please oblige me by eating it.”

“Thanks,” Angelica said doubtfully.

“I say,” said Tonino. “Why didn’t the Duchess know we were in your pockets? She could smell us before.”

The Duke’s loud laugh rumbled through him. The gilded wall Tonino could see began to jolt upward, and upward, and upward. The Duke was walking downstairs. “Cigars, lad!” the Duke said. “Why do you think I smoke them? She can’t smell anything through them, and she hates that. She tried setting a spell on me to make me stop once, but I got so bad-tempered she had to take it off.”

“Excuse me, sir,” came Angelica’s voice from the other side of the Duke. “Won’t someone notice if you walk downstairs talking to yourself?”

The Duke laughed again. “Not a soul! I talk to myself all the time—and laugh, too, if something amuses me. They all think I’m potty anyway. Now, have you two thought of a way to get you out of here? The safest way would be to fetch your families here. Then I could hand you over in secret, and she’d be none the wiser.”