The Magicians of Caprona (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  Tonino slid cautiously down the piano-lid on to the keys again – ker-pling. Angelica was now standing at the end of the piano, pointing at the window. She was speechless with horror.

  Tonino looked – and for a moment he was as frightened as Angelica. There was a brown monster glaring at him through the glass, wide-faced, wide-eyed and shaggy. The thing had eyes like yellow lamps.

  Faintly, through the glass, came a slightly irritable request to pull himself together and open the window.

  “Benvenuto!” shouted Tonino.

  “Oh – it’s only a cat,” Angelica quavered. “How terrible it must feel to be a mouse!”

  “Just a cat!” Tonino said scornfully. “That’s Benvenuto.” He tried to explain to Benvenuto that it was not easy to open windows when you were nine inches high.

  Benvenuto’s impatient answer was to shove Tonino’s latest magic exercise book in front of Tonino’s mind’s eye, open at almost the first page.

  “Oh, thanks,” Tonino said, rather ashamed. There were three opening-spells on that page, and none of them had stuck in his head. He chose the easiest, shut his eyes so that he could read the imaginary page more clearly, and sang the spell.

  Gently and easily, the window swung open, letting in a gust of cold wind. And Benvenuto came in with the wind, almost as lightly. As Benvenuto trod gently up the scale towards him, Tonino had another moment when he knew how mice felt. Then he forgot it in the gladness of seeing Benvenuto. He stretched his arms wide to rub behind Benvenuto’s horny ears.

  Benvenuto put his sticky black nose to Tonino’s face, and they both stood, delighted, holding down a long humming discord on the piano.

  Benvenuto said that Paolo was not quick enough; he could not make him understand where Tonino was. Tonino must send Paolo a message. Could Tonino write this size?

  “There’s a pen on the desk here,” Angelica called. And Tonino remembered her saying she could understand cats.

  Rather anxiously, Benvenuto wanted to know if Tonino minded him talking to a Petrocchi.

  The question astonished Tonino for a moment. He had clean forgotten that he and Angelica were supposed to hate one another. It seemed a waste of time, when they were both in such trouble. “Not at all,” he said.

  “Do get off that piano, both of you,” said Angelica. “The humming’s horrible.”

  Benvenuto obliged, with one great flowing leap. Tonino struggled after him with his elbows hooked over the piano-lid, pushing himself along against the black notes. By the time he reached the desk, Benvenuto and Angelica had exchanged formal introductions, and Benvenuto was advising them not to try getting out of the window. The room was three floors up. The stonework was crumbling, and even a cat had some trouble keeping his feet. If they would wait, Benvenuto would fetch help.

  “But the Duchess—” said Tonino.

  “And the Duke,” said Angelica. “This is the Duke’s study.”

  Benvenuto considered the Duke harmless on his own. He thought they were in the safest place in the Palace. They were to stay hidden and write him a note small enough to carry in his mouth.

  “Wouldn’t it be better if we tied it round your neck?” Angelica asked.

  Benvenuto had never submitted to anything round his neck, and he was not going to start now. Anyway, someone in the Palace might see the message.

  So Tonino put one foot on the Report of Campaign and succeeded, by heaving with both hands, in tearing off a corner of it. Angelica passed him the huge pen, which he had to hold in both hands, with the end resting on his shoulder. Then she stood on the paper to keep it steady while Tonino wielded the pen. It was such hard work, that he kept the message as short as possible. In Duke’s Palace. Duchess enchantress. T.M. & A.P.

  “Tell them about the words to the Angel,” said Angelica. “Just in case.”

  Tonino turned the paper over and wrote Words to Angel on Angel over gate. T & A. Then, exhausted with heaving the pen up and down, he folded the piece of paper with that message inside and the first one outside, and trod it flat. Benvenuto opened his mouth. Angelica winced at that pink cavern with its arched wrinkly roof and its row of white fangs, and let Tonino place the message across Benvenuto’s prickly tongue. Benvenuto gave Tonino a loving glare and sprang away. He struck one ringing chord from the piano, around middle C, made the slightest thump on the windowsill, and vanished.

  Tonino and Angelica were staring after him and did not notice, until it was too late, that the Duke had come back.

  “Funny,” said the Duke. “There’s a new Punch now, as well as a new Judy.”

  Tonino and Angelica stood stiff as posts, one on each end of the blotter, in agonisingly uncomfortable attitudes.

  Fortunately, the Duke noticed the open window. “Blessed maids and their fresh air!” he grumbled, and went over to shut it. Tonino seized the opportunity to stand on both feet, Angelica to uncrick her neck. Then they both jumped. An unmistakable gunshot cracked out, from somewhere below. And another. The Duke bent out of the window and seemed to be watching something. “Poor pussy,” he said. He sounded sad and resigned. “Why couldn’t you keep away, puss? She hates cats. And they make such a din, too, shooting them.” Another shot cracked out, and then several more. The Duke stood up, shaking his head sadly. “Ah well,” he said, as he shut the window. “I suppose they do eat birds.”

  He came back across the study. Tonino and Angelica could not have moved if they tried. They were both too stricken.

  The Duke’s face folded into shiny wrinkles. He had noticed the corner torn from the Report. “I’ve been eating paper now!” he said. His sad, puzzled face turned towards Tonino and Angelica. “I think I do forget things,” he said. “I talk to myself. That’s a bad sign. But I really don’t remember you two at all. At least, I remember the new Judy, but,” he said to Tonino, “I don’t remember you at all. How did you get here?”

  Tonino was far too upset about Benvenuto to think. After all, the Duke really was speaking to him. “Please, sir,” he said, “I’ll explain—”

  “Shut up!” snapped Angelica. “I’ll say a spell!”

  “—only please tell me if they shot my cat,” said Tonino.

  “I think so,” said the Duke. “It looked as if they got it.” Here he took a deep breath and turned his eyes carefully to the ceiling, before he looked at Tonino and Angelica again. Neither of them moved. Angelica was glaring at Tonino, promising him spells unimaginable if he said another word. And Tonino knew he had been an utter idiot anyway. Benvenuto was dead and there was no point in moving – no point in anything.

  The Duke, meanwhile, slowly pulled a large handkerchief out of his pocket. A slightly crumpled cigar came out with it and flopped on the desk. The Duke picked it up and put it absent-mindedly between his glistening teeth. And then he had to take it out again to wipe his shiny face. “Both of you spoke,” he said, putting the handkerchief away and fetching out a gold lighter. “You know that?” he said, putting the cigar back into his mouth. He gave a furtive look round, clicked the lighter, and lit the cigar. “You are looking,” he said, “at a poor dotty Duke.” Smoke rolled out with his words, as much smoke as if the Duke had been a dragon.

  Angelica sneezed. Tonino thought he was going to sneeze. He drew a deep breath to stop himself and burst out coughing.

  “Ahah!” cried the Duke. “Got you!” His large wet hands pounced, and seized each of them round the legs. Holding them like that, firmly pinned to the blotter, he sat down in the chair and bent his triumphant shiny face until it was level with theirs. The cigar, cocked out of one side of his mouth, continued to roll smoke over them. They flailed their arms for balance and coughed and coughed. “Now what are you?” said the Duke. “Another of her fiendish devices for making me think I’m potty? Eh?”

  “No we’re not!” coughed Tonino, and Angelica coughed, “Oh, please stop that smoke!”

  The Duke laughed. “The old Chinese cigar-torture,” he said gleefully, “guaranteed to bring statues to life.�
� But his right hand moved Tonino, stumbling and swaying, across the blotter to Angelica, where his left hand gathered him in. His right hand took the cigar out of his mouth and laid it on the edge of the desk. “Now,” he said. “Let’s have a look at you.”

  They scrubbed their streaming eyes and looked fearfully up at his great grinning face. It was impossible to look at all of it at once. Angelica settled for his left eye, Tonino for his right eye. Both eyes bulged at them, round and innocent, like Old Niccolo’s.

  “Bless me!” said the Duke. “You’re the spell-makers’ children who were supposed to come to my pantomime! Why didn’t you come?”

  “We never got an invitation, Your Grace,” Angelica said. “Did you?” she asked Tonino.

  “No,” Tonino said mournfully.

  The Duke’s face sagged. “So that’s why it was. I wrote them myself too. That’s my life in a nutshell. None of the orders I give ever get carried out, and an awful lot of things get done that I never ordered at all.” He opened his hand slowly. The big warm fingers peeled damply off their legs. “You feel funny wriggling about in my hand,” he said. “There, if I let you go, will you tell me how you got here?”

  They told him, with one or two forced pauses when he took a puff at his cigar and set them coughing again. He listened wonderingly. It was not like explaining things to a huge grown-up Duke. Tonino felt as if he was telling a made-up story to his small cousins. From the way the Duke’s eyes popped, and the way he kept saying “Go on!” Tonino was sure the Duke was believing it no more than the little Montanas believed the story of Giovanni the Giant Killer.

  Yet, when they had finished, the Duke said, “That Punch and Judy show started at eight-thirty and went on till nine-fifteen. I know, because there was a clock just over you. They say I declared war at nine o’clock last night. Did either of you notice me declaring war?”

  “No,” they said. “Though,” Angelica added sourly, “I was being beaten to death at the time and I might not have noticed.”

  “My apologies,” said the Duke. “But did either of you hear gunfire? No. But firing started around eleven and went on all night. It’s still going on. You can see it, but not hear it, from the tower over this study. Which means another damn spell, I suppose. And I think I’m supposed to sit here and not notice Caprona being blown to pieces around me.” He put his chin in his hands and stared at them miserably. “I know I’m a fool,” he said, “but just because I love plays and puppet-theatres, I’m not an idiot. The question is, how do we get you two out of here without Lucrezia knowing?”

  Tonino and Angelica were almost too surprised and grateful to speak. And while they were still trying to say thank you, the Duke jumped upright, staring pop-eyed.

  “She’s coming! I’ve got an instinct. Quick! Get in my pockets!”

  He turned round sideways to the desk and held one pocket of his coat stretched against it, between two fingers. Angelica hastily lifted the pocket-flap and slid down between the two layers of cloth. The Duke stubbed out his cigar on the edge of the desk and popped it in after her. Then he turned round and held the other pocket open for Tonino. As Tonino crouched down in fuzzy darkness, he heard the door open and the voice of the Duchess.

  “My lord, you’ve been smoking cigars in here again.”

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Paolo woke up that morning knowing that he was going to have to look for Tonino himself. If his father, and Rinaldo, and then Rosa and Marco, all refused to try, then there was no use asking anyone else.

  He sat up and realised that the Casa was full of unusual noises. Below in the yard, the gate was open. He could hear the voices of Elizabeth, Aunt Anna, Aunt Maria and Cousin Claudia, who were bringing the day’s bread.

  “Just look at the Angel!” he heard his mother say. “Now what did that?”

  “It’s because we’ve stopped our spells,” said Cousin Claudia.

  Following that came a single note of song from Aunt Anna, cut off short with a squeak.

  Aunt Maria said angrily, “No spells, Anna! Think of Tonino!”

  This was intriguing, but what really interested Paolo were the noises behind the voices: marching feet, orders being shouted, a drum beating, horses’ hooves, heavy rumbling and some cursing. Paolo shot out of bed. It must be the army.

  “Hundreds of them,” he heard Aunt Anna say.

  “Most of them younger than my Domenico,” said Aunt Maria. “Claudia, take this basket while I shut the gate. All going to face three armies without a war-scrip between them. I could cry!”

  Paolo shot along the gallery, pulling on his jacket, and hurried down the steps into the cold yellow sunlight. He was too late. The gate was barred and the war-noises shut out. The ladies were crossing the yard with their baskets.

  “Where do you think you’re going?” Elizabeth called to him. “No one’s going out today. There’s going to be fighting. The schools are all closed.”

  They put down their baskets to open the kitchen door. Paolo saw them recoil, with cries of dismay.

  “Good Lord!” said Elizabeth.

  “Don’t anyone tell Gina!” said Aunt Maria.

  At the same moment, someone knocked heavily at the Casa gate.

  “See who that is, Paolo,” called Aunt Anna.

  Paolo went under the archway and undid the flap of the peephole. He was pleased to have this chance to see the army, and pleased that the schools were shut. He had not intended to go to school today anyway.

  There was a man in uniform outside, who shouted, “Open and receive this, in the name of the Duke!” Behind him, Paolo caught glimpses of shiny marching boots and more uniforms. He unbarred the gate.

  Meanwhile, it became plain that Aunt Gina was not to be kept away from the kitchen. Her feet clattered on the stairs. There was a stunned pause. Then the whole Casa filled with her voice.

  “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.

  State of Caprona, Paolo read, Form FR3 Call Up of Final Reservists. The following to report to the Arsenal for immediate duty at 03.00 hrs, January 14th, 1979: Antonio Montana, Lorenzo Montana, Piero Montana, Ricardo Montana, Arturo Montana (ne Notti), Carlo Montana, Luigi Montana, Angelo Montana, Luca Montana, Giovanni Montana, Piero Iacopo Montana, Rinaldo Montana, Domenico Montana, Francesco Montana.

  That was everyone! Paolo had not realised 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-coloured loaves stood outside the kitchen. There were agitated noises from insid
e 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 clamour 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 air-space. 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.