The Magicians of Caprona (12 page)

Antonio called Guido a very bad name, and threw the tomato he still had in his hand. The red fruit hit, and splashed, and ran down the iron side. Paolo was just wondering what use that was, when the tank was not there any more. Nor was Guido. In his place was a giant tomato. It was about the size of a pumpkin. And it simply sat in the road and did not move.

That was the winning stroke. Paolo could tell it was from the look on Antonio’s face as he walked up to the tomato. Disgusted and weary, Antonio bent down to pick up the tomato. There were scattered groans from the Petrocchis, and cheers, not quite certain and even more scattered, from the Montanas.

Then somebody cast yet another spell.

This time, it was a thick wet fog. No doubt, at the beginning, it would not have seemed so terrible, but, after all the rest, just when the fight was over, Paolo felt it was the last straw. All he could see, in front of his eyes, was thick whiteness. After he had taken a breath or so, he was coughing. He could hear coughing all around, and far off into the distance, which was the only thing which showed him he was not entirely alone. He turned his head from trying to see who else was coughing, and found he could not see Lucia. Nor could he find Bernardo, and he knew he had been holding Bernardo’s arm a second before. As soon as he realized that, he found he had lost his sense of direction too. He was all alone, coughing and shivering, in cold white emptiness.

“I am not going to lose my head,” Paolo told himself sternly. “My father didn’t, and so I shan’t. I shall find somewhere to shelter until this beastly spell is over. Then I shall go home. I don’t care if Tonino is still missing—” He stopped then, because a thought came to him, like an astonishing discovery. “We’re never going to find Tonino this way, anyway,” he said. And he knew it was true.

With his hands stretched out in front of him and his eyes spread very wide in hopes of seeing something—which was unlikely, since they were streaming from the fog, and so was his nose—Paolo coughed and sniffed and shuffled his way forward until his toes came up against stone. Paolo looked down, but he could not see what it was. He tried lifting one foot, with his toes scraping against the obstruction. And, after a few inches, the obstruction stopped and his foot shot forward. It was a ledge, then. Probably the curb. He had been near the edge of the road when he ran away from the elephant. He got both feet on the curb and shuffled forward six inches—then he fell upstairs over what seemed to be a body.

It gave Paolo such a shock that he dared not move at first. But he soon realized that the body beneath him was shivering, as he was, and
trying to cough and mutter at the same time. “Holy Mary—” Paolo heard, in a hoarse blurred voice. Very puzzled, Paolo put out a careful hand and felt the body. His fingers met cold metal buttons, uniform braid, and, a little above that, a warm face—which gave a croak as Paolo’s cold hand met its mouth—and a large furry moustache beneath the nose.

Angel of Caprona! Paolo thought. It’s the Chief of Police!

Paolo got himself to his knees on what must be the steps of the Art Gallery. There was no one around he could ask, but it did not seem fair to leave someone lying helpless in the fog. It was bad enough if you could move. So hoping he was doing the right thing, Paolo knelt and sang, very softly, the most general cancel-spell he could think of. It had no effect on the fog—that was evidently very strong magic—but he heard the Chief of Police roll over on his side and groan. Boots scraped as he tested his legs.
“Mamma mia!”
Paolo heard him moan.

He sounded as if he wanted to be alone. Paolo left him and crawled his way up the Gallery steps. He had no idea he had reached the top, until he hit his elbow on a pillar and drove his head into Lucia’s stomach at the same moment. Both of them said some extremely unpleasant things.

“When you’ve quite finished swearing,” Lucia said at length, “you can get between these pillars with me and keep me warm.” She coughed and shivered. “Isn’t this awful? Who did it?” She coughed again. The fog had made her hoarse.

“It wasn’t us,” said Paolo. “We’d have known. Ow, my elbow!” He took hold of her for a guide and wedged himself down beside her. He felt better like that.

“The pigs,” said Lucia. “I call this a mean trick. It’s funny—you spend your life being told what pigs they are, and thinking they
can’t
be, really. Then you meet them, and they’re worse than you were told.
Was it you singing just now?”

“I fell over the Chief of Police on the steps,” said Paolo.

Lucia laughed. “I fell over the other one. I sang a cancel-spell too. He was lying on all the corners of the stairs and it must have bruised him all over when I fell on him.”

“It’s bad enough when you can move,” Paolo agreed. “Like being blind.”

“Horrible,” said Lucia. “That blind beggar in the Via Sant’ Angelo—I shall give him some money tomorrow.”

“The one with white eyes?” said Paolo. “Yes, so shall I. And I never want to see another spell.”

“To tell you the truth,” said Lucia, “I was wishing I dared burn the Library and the Scriptorium down. It came to me like a blinding flash—just before I fell over that policeman—that no amount of spells are going to work on those beastly kidnappers.”

“That’s just what I thought!” exclaimed Paolo. “I know the only way to find Tonino—”

“Hang on,” said Lucia. “I think the fog’s getting thinner.”

She was right. When Paolo leaned forward, he could see two dark lumps below, where the Chief of Police and his lieutenant were sitting on the steps with their heads in their hands. He could see quite a stretch of the Corso beyond them—cobbles which were dark and wet-looking, but, to his surprise, neither muddy nor out of place.

“Someone’s put it all back!” said Lucia.

The fog thinned further. They could see the glimmering doors of the Arsenal now, and the entire foggy width of the Corso, with every cobblestone back where it should be. Somewhere about the middle of it, Antonio and Guido Petrocchi were standing facing one another.

“Oh, they’re not going to begin again, are they?” wailed Paolo.

But, almost at once, Antonio and Guido swung round and walked
away from one another.

“Thank goodness!” said Lucia. She and Paolo turned to one another, smiling with relief.

Except that it was not Lucia. Paolo found himself staring into a white pointed face, and eyes darker, larger and shrewder than Lucia’s. Sur rounding the face were draggled dark red curls. The smile died from the face and horror replaced it as Paolo stared. He felt his own face behaving the same way. He had been huddling up against a Petrocchi! He knew which one, too. It was the elder of the two who had been at the Palace. Renata, that was her name. And she knew him too.

“You’re that blue-eyed Montana boy!” she exclaimed. She made it sound quite disgusting.

Both of them got up. Renata backed into the pillars, as if she was trying to get inside the stone, and Paolo backed away along the steps.

“I thought you were my sister Lucia,” he said.

“I thought you were my cousin Claudio,” Renata retorted.

Somehow, they both made it sound as if it was the other one’s fault.

“It wasn’t my fault!” Paolo said angrily. “Blame the person who made the fog, not me. There’s an enemy enchanter.”

“I know. Chrestomanci said,” said Renata.

Paolo felt he hated Chrestomanci. He had no business to go and say the same things to the Petrocchis as he said to the Montanas. But he hated the enemy enchanter even more. He had been responsible for the most embarrassing thing which had ever happened to Paolo. Muttering with shame, Paolo turned to run away.

“No, stop!
Wait!
” Renata said. She said it so commandingly that Paolo stopped without thinking, and gave Renata time to snatch hold of his arm. Instead of pulling away, Paolo stood quite still and attempted to behave with the dignity becoming to a Montana. He looked at his arm, and at Renata’s hand holding it, as if both had become one composite
slimy toad. But Renata hung on. “Look all you like,” she said. “I don’t care. I’m not letting go until you tell me what your family has done with Angelica.”

“Nothing,” Paolo said contemptuously. “We wouldn’t touch one of you with a barge-pole. What have you lot done with Tonino?”

An odd little frown wrinkled Renata’s white fore head. “Is that your brother? Is he really missing?”

“He was sent a book with a calling-spell in it,” said Paolo.

“A book,” said Renata slowly, “got Angelica too. We only realized when it shriveled away.”

She let go of Paolo’s arm. They stared at one another in the blowing remains of the fog.

“It must be the enemy enchanter,” said Paolo.

“Trying to take our minds off the war,” said Renata. “Tell your family, won’t you?”

“If you tell yours,” said Paolo.

“Of course I will. What do you take me for?” said Renata.

In spite of everything, Paolo found himself laughing. “I think you’re a Petrocchi!” he said.

But when Renata began to laugh too, Paolo realized it was too much. He turned to run away, and found himself facing the Chief of Police. The Chief of Police had evidently recovered his dignity. “Now then, you children. Move along,” he said.

Renata fled, without more ado, red in the face with the shame of being caught talking to a Montana. Paolo hung on. It seemed to him that he ought to report that Tonino was missing.

“I said move along!” repeated the Chief of Police, and he pulled down his jacket with a most threatening jerk.

Paolo’s nerve broke. After all, an ordinary policeman was not going to be much help against an enchanter. He ran.

He ran all the way to the Casa Montana. The fog and the wetness did not extend beyond the Corso. As soon as he turned into a side road, Paolo found himself in the bleak shadows and low red sun of a winter evening. It was like being shot back into another world—a world where things happened as they should, where one’s father did not turn into a mad elephant, where, above all, one’s sister did not turn out to be a Petrocchi. Paolo’s face fired with shame as he ran. Of all the awful things to happen!

The Casa Montana came in sight, with the familiar Angel safely over the gate. Paolo shot in under it, and ran into his father. Antonio was standing under the archway, panting as if he too had run all the way home.

“Who—? Oh, Paolo,” said Antonio. “Stay where you are.”

“Why?” asked Paolo. He wanted to get in, where it was safe, and perhaps eat a large lump of bread and honey. He was surprised his father did not feel the same. Antonio looked tired out, and his clothes were torn and muddy rags. The arm he stretched out to keep Paolo in the gateway was half bare and covered with scratches. Paolo was going to protest, when he saw that something was in-deed wrong. Most of the cats were in the gateway too, crouching around with their ears flattened. Benvenuto was patrolling the entrance to the yard, like a lean brown ferret. Paolo could hear him growling.

Antonio’s scratched hand took Paolo by the shoulder and pulled him forward so that he could see into the yard. “Look.”

Paolo found himself blinking at foot-high letters, which seemed to hang in the air in the middle of the yard. In the fading light, they were glowing an unpleasant, sick yellow.

STOP ALL SPELLS OR YOUR CHILD SUFFERS. CASA PETROCCHI

The name was in sicker and brighter letters. They were meant to make no mistake about who had sent the message.

After what Renata had said, Paolo knew it was wrong. “It
wasn’t
the Petrocchis,” he said. “It’s that enchanter Chrestomanci told us about.”

“Yes, to be sure,” said Antonio.

Paolo looked up at him and saw that his father did not believe him—probably had not even attended to him. “But it’s true!” he said. “He wants us to stop making war-spells.”

Antonio sighed, and drew himself together to explain to Paolo. “Paolo,” he said, “nobody but Chrestomanci believes in this enchanter. In magic, as in everything else, the simplest explanation is always best. In other words, why invent an un known enchanter, when you have a known enemy with known reasons for hating you? Why shouldn’t it be the Petrocchis?”

Paolo wanted to protest, but he was still too embarrassed about Renata to say that Angelica Petrocchi was missing too. He was struggling to find something that he
could
say, which might convince his father, when a square of light sprang up in the gallery as a door there opened.

“Rosa!” shouted Antonio. His voice cracked with anxiety.

The shape of Rosa appeared in the light, carrying Cousin Claudia’s baby. The light itself was so orange and so right, beside the sick glow of the letters floating in the yard, that Paolo was flooded with relief. Behind Rosa, there was Marco, carrying another little one.

“Praised be!” said Antonio. He shouted, “Are you all right, Rosa? How did those words come here?”

“We don’t know,” Rosa called back. “They just appeared. We’ve been trying to get rid of them, but we can’t.”

Marco leaned over the rails and called, “It’s not true, Antonio. The
Petrocchis wouldn’t do a thing like this.”

Antonio called back, “Don’t go around saying that, Marco.” He said it so forbiddingly that Paolo knew nothing he said was going to be believed. If he had had a chance of convincing Antonio, he had now lost it.

When Tonino came to his senses—at, incidentally, the precise moment when the enchanted book began to shrivel away—he had, at first, a nightmare feeling that he was shut in a cardboard box. He rolled his head sideways on his arms. He seemed to be lying on his face on a hard but faintly furry floor. In the far distance, he could blurrily see someone else, leaning up against a wall like a doll, but he felt too queer to be very interested in that. He rolled his head around the other way and saw the panels of a wall quite near. That told him he was in a fairly long room. He rolled his head to stare down at the furry floor. It was patterned, in a pattern too big for his eyes to grasp, and he supposed it was a carpet of some kind. He shut his blurry eyes and tried to think what had happened.