The Magicians of Caprona (15 page)

Tonino thought he knew that voice. He sped towards the cardboard Dog Toby again, whirled the sausages away from its cardboard jaws and waited for his head and eyes to stop feeling so fuzzy. He was sure they would. The mean person wanted him conscious. “What a clever fellow!” he squawked. As he raced down the stage the other way, he snatched a look across his huge nose towards the lighted space, but it was a blur. So he snatched a look towards the other side.

He saw the wall of a golden villa there, with four long windows. Beside each window stood a little dark cypress tree. Now he knew why the strange room had seemed so shoddy. It was only meant as scenery. The door on the outside wall was painted on. Between the villa and the stage was a hole. The person who was working the puppets ought to have been down there, but Tonino could only see empty blackness. It was all being done by magic.

Just then he was distracted by a cardboard person diving upwards from the hole, squawking that Mr. Punch had stolen his sausages. Tonino was forced to stand still and squawk back. He was glad of a rest by then. Meanwhile, the cardboard dog seized the sausages and dived out of sight with them. The audience clapped and shouted, “Look at Dog Toby!” The cardboard person sped past Tonino squawking that he would fetch the police.

Once again, Tonino tried to look out at the audience. This time,
he could dimly see a brightly lit room and black bulky shapes sitting in chairs, but it was like trying to see something against the sun. His eyes watered. A tear ran down the pink beak on his face. And Tonino could feel that the mean person was delighted to see that. He thought Tonino was crying. Tonino was annoyed, but also rather pleased; it looked as if the person could be fooled by his own mean thoughts. He stared out, in spite of the dazzle, trying to see the mean person, but all he could clearly see was a carving up near the roof of the lighted room. It was the Angel of Caprona, one hand held out in blessing, the other holding the scroll.

Then he was jumped around to face Judy. On the other side of him, the wall had gone from the front of the villa. The scene was the room he knew only too well, with the chandelier artistically alight.

Judy was coming along the stage holding the white rolled-up shape of the baby. Judy wore a blue nightdress and a blue cap. Her face was mauve, with a nose in the middle of it nearly as large and red as Tonino’s. But the eyes on either side of it were Angelica’s, alternately blinking and wide with terror. She blinked beseechingly at Tonino as she squawked, “I have to go out, Mr. Punch. Mind you mind the baby!”

“Don’t want to mind the baby!” he squawked.

All through the long silly conversation, he could see Angelica’s eyes blinking at him, imploring him to think of a spell to stop this. But of course Tonino could not. He did not think Rinaldo, or even Antonio, could stop anything as powerful as this. Angel of Caprona! he thought. Help us! That made him feel better, although nothing stopped the spell. Angelica planted the baby in his arms and dived out of sight.

The baby started to cry. Tonino first squawked abuse at it, then took it by the end of its long white dress and beat its brains out on the platform. The baby was much more realistic than Dog Toby. It may have been only cardboard, but it wriggled and waved its arms and
cried most horribly. Tonino could almost have believed it was Cousin Claudia’s baby. It so horrified him that he found he was repeating the words of the
Angel of Caprona
as he swung the baby up and down. And those might not have been the right words, but he could feel they were doing something. When he finally flung the white bundle over the front of the stage, he could see the shiny floor the baby fell on, away below. And when he looked up at the clapping spectators, he could see them too, equally clearly.

The first person he saw was the Duke of Caprona. He was sitting on a gilded chair, in a glitter of buttons, laughing gigantically. Tonino wondered how he could laugh like that at something so horrible, until he remembered that he had stood himself, a score of times, and laughed himself sick, at just the same thing. But those had been only puppets. Then it dawned on Tonino that the Duke thought they
were
puppets. He was laughing at the skill of the showman.

“What a clever fellow!” squawked Tonino, and was made to dance about gleefully, without wanting to in the least. But as he danced, he looked sharply at the rest of the audience, to see who it was who knew he was not a puppet.

To his terror, a good half of them knew. Tonino met a knowing look on the faces of the three grave men surrounding the Duke, and the same on the elegantly made-up faces of the two ladies with the Duchess. And the Duchess—as soon as Tonino saw the amused arch of the Duchess’s eyebrows and the little, secret smile on her mouth, he knew she was the one doing it. He looked her in the eyes. Yes, she was an enchantress. That was what had so troubled him about her when he saw her before. And the Duchess saw him look, and smiled less secretly, because Tonino could do nothing about it.

That really frightened Tonino. But Angelica came swooping upwards again, with a large stick clutched in her arms, and he had no
time to think.

“What have you done with the baby?” squawked Angelica. And she belabored Tonino with the stick. It really hurt. It knocked him to his knees and went on bashing at him. Tonino could see Angelica’s lips moving. Though her silly squeaky voice kept say-ing, “I’ll teach you to kill the baby!” her mouth was forming the words of the
Angel of Caprona
. That was because she knew what came next.

Tonino said the words of the
Angel
too and tried to stay crouched on the floor. But it was no good. He was made to spring up, wrest the stick from Judy and beat Angelica with it. He could see the Duke laughing, and the courtiers smiling. The Duchess’s smile was very broad now, because, of course, Tonino was going to have to beat Angelica to death.

Tonino tried to hold the stick so that it would only hit Angelica lightly. She might be a Petrocchi and a thoroughly irritating girl, but she had not deserved this. But the stick leaped up and down of its own accord, and Tonino’s arms went with it. Angelica fell on her knees and then on her face. Her squawks redoubled, as Tonino smote away at her back, and then her voice stopped. She lay with her head hanging down from the front of the platform, looking just like a puppet. Tonino found himself having to kick her down the empty space between the false villa and the stage. He heard the distant
flop
as she fell. And then he was forced to skip and cackle with glee, while the Duchess threw back her head and laughed as heartily as the Duke.

Tonino hated her. He was so angry and so miserable that he did not mind at all when a cardboard policeman appeared and he chased him with the stick too. He laid into the policeman as if he was the Duchess and not a cardboard doll at all.

“Are you all right, Lucrezia?” he heard the Duke say.

Tonino looked sideways as he dealt another mighty swipe at the policeman’s cardboard helmet. He saw the Duchess wince as the stick
landed. He was not surprised when the policeman was immediately whisked away and he himself forced into a violent capering and even louder squawking. He let himself do it. He felt truly gleeful as he squawked, “What a clever fellow!” for what felt like the thousandth time. For he understood what had happened. The Duchess
was
the policeman, in a sort of way. She was putting some of herself into all the puppets to make them work. But he must not let her know he knew. Tonino capered and chortled, doing his best to seem terrified, and kept his eyes on that carving of the Angel, high up over the door of the room.

And now the hooded Hangman-puppet appeared, dragging a little wooden gibbet with a string noose dangling from it. Tonino capered cautiously. This was where the Duchess did for him unless he was very careful. On the other hand, if this Punch and Judy show went as it should, he might just do for the Duchess.

The silly scene began. Tonino had never worked so hard at anything in his life. He kept repeating the words of the
Angel
in his head, both as a kind of prayer and as a smoke screen, so that the Duchess would not understand what he was trying to do. At the same time, he thought, fiercely and vengefully, that the Hangman was not just a puppet—it was the Duchess herself. And, also at the same time, he attended to Mr. Punch’s conversation with all his might. This had to go right.

“Come along, Mr. Punch,” croaked the Hang man. “Just put your head in this noose.”

“How do I do that?” asked Mr. Punch and Tonino, both pretending hard to be stupid.

“You put your head in here,” croaked the Hangman, putting one hand through the noose.

Mr. Punch and Tonino, both of them quivering with cunning, put his head first one side of the noose, then the other. “Is this right? Is this?” Then, pretending even harder to be stupid, “I can’t see how to do
it. You’ll have to show me.”

Either the Duchess was wanting to play with Tonino’s feelings, or she was trying the same cunning. They went through this several times. Each time, the Hangman put his hand through the noose to show Mr. Punch what to do. Tonino did not dare look at the Duchess. He looked at the Hangman and kept thinking, That’s the Duchess, and reciting the
Angel
for all he was worth. At last, to his relief, the Duke became restive.

“Come on, Mr. Punch!” he shouted.

“You’ll have to put your head in and show me,” Mr. Punch and Tonino said, as persuasively as he knew how.

“Oh well,” croaked the Hangman. “Since you’re so stupid.” And he put his cardboard head through the noose.

Mr. Punch and Tonino promptly pulled the rope and hanged him. But Tonino thought, This is the
Duchess
! and went as limp and heavy as he could. For just a second, his full puppet’s weight swung on the end of the rope.

It only lasted that second. Tonino had a glimpse of the Duchess on her feet with her hands to her throat. He felt real triumph. Then he was thrown, flat on his face, across the stage, unable to move at all. There he was forced to lie. His head hung down from the front of the stage, so that he could see very little. But he gathered that the Duchess was being led tenderly away, with the Duke fussing around her.

I think I feel as pleased as Punch, he thought.

Paolo never wanted to remember that night afterwards. He was still staring at the sick yellow message in the yard, when the rest of the family arrived. He was crowded aside to let Old Niccolo and Aunt Francesca through, but Benvenuto spat at them like hot fat hitting fire and would not let them pass.

“Let be, old boy,” Old Niccolo said. “You’ve done your best.” He turned to Aunt Francesca. “I shall never forgive the Petrocchis,” he said. “Never.” Paolo was once again struck by how wretched and goblinlike his grandfather looked. He had thought Old Niccolo was helping vast, panting, muddy Aunt Francesca along, but he now wondered if it was not the other way around. “Well. Let’s get rid of this horrible message,” Old Niccolo said irritably to the rest of them.

He raised his arms to start the family on the spell and collapsed. His hands went to his chest. He slid to his knees, and his face was a strange color. Paolo thought he was dead until he saw him breathing, in uneven jerks. Elizabeth, Uncle Lorenzo and Aunt Maria rushed to him.

“Heart attack,” Uncle Lorenzo said, nodding over at Antonio. “Get that spell going. We’ve got to get him indoors.”

“Paolo, run for the doctor,” said Elizabeth.

As Paolo ran, he heard the burst of singing behind him. When he came back with the doctor, the message had vanished and Old Niccolo
had been carried up to bed. Aunt Francesca, still muddy, with her hair hanging down one side, was roving up and down the yard like a moving mountain, crying and wringing her hands.

“Spells are forbidden,” she called out to Paolo. “I’ve stopped everything.”

“And a good thing too!” the doctor said sourly. “A man of Niccolo Montana’s age has no business to be brawling in the streets. And make your great-aunt lie down,” he said to Paolo. “She’ll be in bed next.”

Aunt Francesca would only go to the Saloon, where she refused even to sit down. She raged up and down, wailing about Old Niccolo, weeping about Tonino, declaring that the virtue had gone from the Casa Montana for good, and uttering terrible threats against the Petrocchis. Nobody else was much better. The children cried with tiredness. Elizabeth and the aunts worried about Old Niccolo, and then about Aunt Francesca. In the Scriptorium, among all the abandoned spells, Antonio and the uncles sat rigid with worry, and the rest of the Casa was full of older cousins wandering about and cursing the Petrocchis.

Paolo found Rinaldo leaning moodily on the gallery rail, in spite of it being dark now and really quite cold. “Curse those Petrocchis,” he said gloomily to Paolo. “We can’t even earn a living now, let alone help if there’s a war.”

Paolo, in spite of his misery, was very flattered that Rinaldo seemed to think him old enough to talk family business to. He said, “Yes, it’s awful,” and tried to lean on the rail in the same elegant attitude as Rinaldo. It was not easy, since Paolo was not nearly tall enough, but he leaned and prepared the arguments he would use to per-suade Rinaldo that Tonino was in the hands of an enemy en chanter. That was not easy either. Paolo knew that Rinaldo would not listen to him if he dropped the least small hint that he had talked to a Petrocchi—and besides, he would have died rather than told his cousin. But he knew that, if he persuaded
Rinaldo, Rinaldo would rescue Tonino in five dashing minutes. Rinaldo was a true Montana.

While he thought, Rinaldo said angrily, “What possessed that stupid brat Tonino to read that blessed book? I shall give him something to think about when we get him back!”

Paolo shivered in the cold. “Tonino always reads books.” Then he shifted a bit—the elegant attitude was not at all comfortable—and asked timidly, “How shall we get him back?” This was not at all what he had planned to say. He was annoyed with himself.

“What’s the use?” Rinaldo said. “We know where he is—in the Casa Petrocchi. And if he’s uncomfortable there, it’s his own fault!”