The Magicians of Caprona (UK)

by Diana Wynne Jones

  “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 round 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 round, 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.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  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.”

  “Can’t you just send for them?” Tonino suggested. “Say you need them to help in the war.”

  “She’d smell a rat,” said the Duke. “She says your war-charms are all washed-up anyway. Think of something that’s nothing to do with the war.”

  “Special effects for another pantomime,” Tonino suggested, rather hopelessly. But he could see that even the Duke was not likely to produce a play while Caprona was being invaded.

  “I know,” said Angelica. “I shall cast a spell.”

  “No!” said Tonino. “Anything might happen!”

  “That doesn’t matter,” said Angelica. “My family would know it’s me, and they’d come here like a shot.”

  “But you might turn the Duke green!” said Tonino.

  “I really wouldn’t mind,” the Duke put in mildly.

  He came to the bottom of the stairs and went with long, charging strides through rooms and corridors of the Palace. Angelica and Tonino each held on to an edge of their pockets and shouted arguments round him.

  “But you could help me,” said Angelica, “and your part would go right. Suppose we made it a calling-charm to fetch all the rats and mice in Caprona to the Palace. If you did the calling, we’d fetch something.”

  “Yes, but what would it be?” said Tonino.

  “We could make it in honour of Benvenuto,” shouted Angelica, hoping to please him.

  But Tonino thought of Benvenuto lying somewhere on a Palace roof and became more obstinate than ever. He shouted that he was not going to do anything so disrespectful.

  “Are you telling me you can’t do a calling-spell?” shrieked Angelica. “Even my baby brother—”

  They were shouting so loudly that the Duke had to tell them to shush twice. The military man hurrying up to the Duke stared slightly. “No need to stare, Major,” the Duke said to him. “I said Shush and I meant Shush. Your boots squeak. What is it?”

  “I’m afraid the forces of Caprona are in retreat in the south, Your Grace,” said the soldier. “And our coastal batteries have fallen to the Pisan fleet.”

  Both pockets drooped as the Duke’s shoulders slumped. “Thank you,” he said. “Report to me personally next time you have news.” The Major saluted and went, glancing at the Duke once or twice over his shoulder. The Duke sighed. “There goes another one who thinks I’m mad. Didn’t
you two say you were the only ones who knew where to find the words to the Angel?”

  Tonino and Angelica put their heads out of his pockets again. “Yes,” they said.

  “Then,” said the Duke, “will you please agree on a spell. You really must get out and get those words while there’s still some of Caprona left.”

  “All right,” said Tonino. “Let’s call mice.” He had not seen it was so urgent.

  So the Duke stood in a wide window-bay and lit the cigar stub from under Angelica with the lighter from under Tonino, to cover up the spell. Tonino leant out of his pocket and sang, slowly and carefully, the only calling-spell he knew.

  Angelica stood in the other pocket with her arms upraised and spoke, quickly, confidently and – quite certainly – wrong. Afterwards, she swore it was because she nearly laughed.

  Another man approached. Tonino thought it was one of the courtiers who had watched the puppet show, but he was never sure, because the Duke flipped his pocket-flaps down over their heads and began singing himself.

  “Merrily his music ringing,

  See an Angel cometh singing…”

  roared the Duke. Even Angelica did not sing so much out of tune. Tonino had the greatest difficulty in keeping up his own song. And it was certainly around then that the spell seemed to go wrong. Tonino had the sudden feeling that his words were pulling a great weight.

  The Duke broke off his abominable singing to say, “Ah, Pollio, there’s nothing like a good song while Caprona burns! Nero did it, and now me.”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” the man said feebly. They heard him scuttle away.

  “And he’s sure I’m mad,” said the Duke. “Finished?”

  Just then, Tonino’s words came loose, with a sort of jerk, and he knew the spell had worked in some way or another. “Yes,” he said.

  But nothing seemed to happen. The Duke said philosophically that it would take a mouse quite a while to run from the Corso to the Palace, and strode on to the kitchens. They thought he was mad there, too, Tonino could tell. The Duke asked for two bread rolls and two pats of butter and solemnly put one into each pocket. No doubt they thought he was madder still when he remarked to no one: “There’s a cigar cutter in my right pocket that spreads butter quite well.”

  “Indeed, Your Grace?” they heard someone say dubiously.

  Just then, someone rushed in screaming about the griffins from the Piazza Nuova. They were flying across the river, straight for the Palace. There was a general panic. Everyone screamed and yammered and said it was an omen of defeat. Then someone else rushed in yelling that one griffin had actually reached the Palace and was sliding down the marble front. There was more outcry. The next thing, everyone said, the great gold Angel from the Cathedral would fly away too.

  Tonino was taking advantage of the confusion to bash a piece off his roll with the Duke’s lighter, when the Duke bellowed, “Nonsense!” There was sudden quiet. Tonino dared not move, because everyone was certainly looking at the Duke.

  “Don’t you see?” said the Duke. “It’s just an enemy trick. But we in Caprona don’t frighten that easily, do we? Here – you – go and fetch the Montanas. And you go and get the Petrocchis. Tell them it’s urgent. Tell as many of them to come as possible. I shall be in the North gallery.” And he went striding off there, while Angelica and Tonino jigged against bread and tried not to tread in the butter.

  When he got to the gallery, the Duke sat down on a window-seat. Angelica and Tonino stood half out of his pockets and managed to eat their bread and butter. The Duke amiably handed the cigar-cutter from one to the other and, in between whiles, seemed lost in thought, staring at the white puffs of shells bursting on the hills behind Caprona.

  Angelica was inclined to be smug. “I told you,” she said to Tonino, “my spells always work.”

  “Iron griffins,” said Tonino, “aren’t mice.”

  “No, but I’ve never done anything as big as that before,” said Angelica. “I’m glad it didn’t knock the Palace down.”

  The Duke said gloomily, “The guns of Pisa are going to do that soon. I can see gunboats on the river, and I’m sure they aren’t ours. I wish your families would be quick.”

  But it was half an hour before a polite footman came up to the Duke, causing him to flip his pocket-flaps down and scatter buttery crumbs in all directions.

  “Your Grace, members of the Montana and Petrocchi families are awaiting you in the Large Reception Saloon.”

  “Good!” said the Duke. He leapt up and ran so fast that Tonino and Angelica had to brace their feet on the seams of his pockets and hang on hard to the edges. They lost their footing several times, even though the Duke tried to help them by holding his pockets as he ran. They felt him clatter to a stop. “Blast!” he said. “This is always happening!”

  “What?” asked Tonino breathlessly. He felt jerked out of shape.

  “They’ve told me the wrong room!” said the Duke and set off again on another swaying, jolting run. They felt him dive forward through a doorway. His pockets swung. Then they swung the other way as he slid and stopped. “Lucrezia, this is too bad! Is this why you always tell me the wrong room?”

  “My lord,” came the coldest voice of the Duchess from some way off, “I can’t answer for the slackness of the footmen. What is the matter?”

  “This,” said the Duke. “These—” They felt him shaking. “Those were the Montanas and the Petrocchis, weren’t they? Don’t fob me off, Lucrezia. I sent for them. I know.”

  “And what if they were?” said the Duchess, rather nearer. “Do you wish to join them, my lord?”

  They felt the Duke backing away. “No. No indeed! My dear, your will is always my pleasure. I – I just want to know why. They only came about some griffins.”

  The Duchess’s voice moved away again as she answered. “Because, if you must know, Antonio Montana recognised me.”

  “But – but—” said the Duke, laughing uneasily, “everyone knows you, my dear. You’re the Duchess of Caprona.”

  “I mean, he recognised me for what I am,” said the Duchess from the distance. The sound of a door shutting followed.

  “Look!” said the Duke in a shaky whisper. “Just look!” While he was still saying it, Angelica and Tonino were bracing their feet on the seams of his pockets and pushing their heads out from under the flaps.

  They saw the same polished room where they had once waited and eaten cakes, the same gilded chairs and angelic ceiling. But this time the polished floor was littered with puppets. Puppets lay all over it, limp grotesque things, scattered this way and that as people might lie if they had suddenly fallen. They were in two groups. Otherwise there was no way of telling which puppet was who. There were Punches, Judys, Hangmen, Sausage-men, Policemen, and an odd Devil or so, over and over again. From the numbers, it looked as if both families had realised that Tonino and Angelica were behind the mysterious griffins and had sent nearly every grown-up in the Casas.

  Tonino could not speak. Angelica said, “That hateful woman! Her mind seems to run on puppets.”

  “She sees people that way,” the Duke said miserably. “I’m sorry, both of you. She’s been too many for us. Terrible female! I can’t think why I married her – but I suppose that was a spell too.”

  “Do you think she suspects you’ve got us?” Tonino asked. “She must be wondering where we are.”

  “Maybe, maybe,” said the Duke. He marched up and down the room, while they leant out of his pockets and looked down at the crowd of strewn floppy puppets. “She doesn’t care now, of course,” he said. “She’s done for both families anyway. Oh, I am a fool!”

  “It’s not your fault,” said Angelica.

  “Oh, but it is,” said the Duke. “I never show the slightest resolution. I always take the easiest way—What is it?” Darkness descended as he flipped his pocket-flaps down.

  “Your Grace,” said the Major whose boots squeaked, “the Pisan fleet is landing men down beyond the New Quays. And our
troops to the south are being rolled back into the suburbs.”

  They felt the Duke droop. “Almost done, in fact,” he said. “Thanks—No, wait. Major! Could you be a good fellow and go to the stables and order out my coach? The lackeys have all run away, you know. Ask for it at the door in five minutes.”

  “But, Your Grace—” said the Major.

  “I intend to go down into the city and speak with the people,” said the Duke. “Give them what’s-it-called. Moral support.”

  “A very fine aim, sir,” said the Major, with a great deal more warmth. “In five minutes, sir.” His boots went squeaking swiftly off.

  “Did you hear that?” said the Duke. “He called me ‘sir’! Poor fellow. I told him a set of whoppers and he couldn’t take his eyes off all those puppets, but he called me ‘sir’, and he’ll get that coach and he won’t tell her. Cardboard box!”

  The hangings whipped by as the Duke charged through a doorway into another room. This one had a long table down the middle. “Ah!” said the Duke, and charged towards a stack of boxes by the wall. The boxes proved to have wine-glasses in them, which the Duke proceeded feverishly to unload on to the table.

  “I don’t understand,” Tonino said.

  “Box,” said the Duke. “We can’t leave your families behind, for her to revenge herself on. I’m going to be resolute for once. I’m going to get in the coach and go, and dare her to stop me.” So saying, he stormed back to the reception room with the empty box and knelt down to collect the puppets. Angelica was bounced on the floor as his coat swung. “Sorry,” said the Duke.

  “Pick them up gently,” said Tonino. “It hurts if you don’t.”