The Magicians of Caprona

  Benvenuto gave a whisk of his tail and leaped for the gallery steps. He bounded up them, followed by the other cats; and Paolo and Rosa hurried up too, in a sort of shoal of leaping black and white bodies. Everyone converged on Antonio’s rooms. People poured out of the Scriptorium, Elizabeth raced around the gallery, and Aunt Maria and Aunt Gina clambered up the steps by the kitchen quicker than either had ever climbed in her life. The Casa filled with the sound of hollow running feet.

  The whole family jammed themselves after Rosa and Paolo into the room where Tonino was usually to be found reading. There was no Tonino, only the red book lying on the windowsill. It was no longer shiny. The pages were thick at the edges and the red cover was curling upwards, as if the book was wet.

  Benvenuto, with his jagged brown coat up in a ridge along his back and his tail fluffed like a fox’s brush, landed on the sill beside the book and rashly put his nose forward to sniff at it. He leaped back again, shaking his head, crouching, and growling like a dog. Smoke poured up from the book. People coughed and cats sneezed. The book curled and writhed on the sill, amid clouds of smoke, exactly as if it were on fire. But instead of turning black, it turned pale gray-blue where it smoked, and looked slimy. The room filled with a smell of rotting.

  “Ugh!” said everybody.

  Old Niccolo barged members of his family right and left to get near it. He stood over it and sang, in a strong tenor voice almost as good as Marco’s, three strange words. He sang them twice before he had to break off coughing. “Sing!” he croaked, with tears pouring down his face. “All of you.”

  All the Montanas obediently broke into song, three long notes in unison. And again. And again. After that, quite a number of them had to cough, though the smoke was distinctly less. Old Niccolo recovered and waved his arms, like the conductor of a choir. All who could, sang once more. It took ten repetitions to halt the decay of the book. By that time, it was a shriveled triangle, about half the size it had been. Gingerly, Antonio leaned over and opened the window beyond it, to let out the last of the smoke.

  “What was it?” he asked Old Niccolo. “Some one trying to suffocate us all?”

  “I thought it came from Umberto,” Elizabeth faltered. “I never would have—”

  Old Niccolo shook his head. “This thing never came from Umberto. And I don’t think it was meant to kill. Let’s see what kind of spell it is.” He snapped his fingers and held out a hand, rather like a surgeon performing an operation. Without needing to be told, Aunt Gina put her kitchen tongs into his hand. Carefully, gently, Old Niccolo used the tongs to open the cover of the book.

  “A good pair of tongs ruined,” Aunt Gina said.

  “Ssh!” said Old Niccolo. The shriveled pages of the book had stuck into a gummy block. He snapped his fingers and held out his hand again. This time, Rinaldo put the pen he was carrying in it.

  “And a good pen,” he said, with a grimace at Aunt Gina.

  With the pen as well as the tongs, Old Niccolo was able to pry the pages of the book apart without touching them and peel them over, one by one. Chins rested on both Paolo’s shoulders as everyone craned to see, and there were chins on the shoulders of those with the chins. There was no sound but the sound of breathing.

  On nearly every page, the printing had melted away, leaving a slimy, leathery surface quite unlike paper, with only a mark or so left in the middle. Old Niccolo looked closely at each mark and grunted. He grunted again at the first picture, which had faded like the print, but left a clearer mark. After that, though there was no print on any of the pages, the remaining mark was steadily clearer, up to the center of the book, when it began to become more faded again, until the mark was barely visible on the back page.

  Old Niccolo laid down the pen and the tongs in terrible silence. “Right through,” he said at length. People shifted and someone coughed, but nobody said anything. “I do not know,” said Old Niccolo, “the substance this object is made of, but I know a calling-charm when I see one. Tonino must have been like one hypnotized, if he had read all this.”

  “He was a bit strange at breakfast,” Paolo whispered.

  “I am sure he was,” said his grandfather. He looked reflectively at the shriveled stump of the book and then around at the crowded faces of his family. “Now who,” he asked softly, “would want to set a strong calling-charm on Tonino Montana? Who would be mean enough to pick on a child? Who would—?” He turned suddenly on Benvenuto, crouched beside the book, and Benvenuto cowered right down, quivering, with his ragged ears flat against his flat head. “Where were you last night, Benvenuto?” he asked, more softly still.

  No one understood the reply Benvenuto gave as he cowered, but everyone knew the answer. It was in Antonio and Elizabeth’s harrowed faces, in the set of Rinaldo’s chin, in Aunt Francesca’s narrowed eyes, narrowed almost out of existence, and in the way Aunt Maria looked at Uncle Lorenzo; but most of all, it was in the way Benvenuto threw himself down on his side, with his back to the room, the picture of a cat in despair.

  Old Niccolo looked up. “Now isn’t that odd?” he said gently. “Benvenuto spent last night chasing a white she-cat—over the roofs of the Casa Petrocchi.” He paused to let that sink in. “So Benvenuto,” he said, “who knows a bad spell when he sees one, was not around to warn Tonino.”

  “But why?” Elizabeth asked despairingly.

  Old Niccolo went, if possible, quieter still. “I can only conclude, my dear, that the Petrocchis are being paid by Florence, Siena, or Pisa.”

  There was another silence, thick and meaningful. Antonio broke it. “Well,” he said, in such a subdued, grim way that Paolo stared at him. “Well? Are we going?”

  “Of course,” said Old Niccolo. “Domenico, fetch me my small black spell-book.”

  Everyone left the room, so suddenly, quietly and purposefully that Paolo was left behind, not clear what was going on. He turned uncertainly to go to the door, and realized that Rosa had been left behind too. She was sitting on Tonino’s bed, with one hand to her head, white as Tonino’s sheets.

  “Paolo,” she said, “tell Claudia I’ll have the baby, if she wants to go. I’ll have all the little ones.”

  She looked up at Paolo as she said it, and she looked so strange that Paolo was suddenly frightened. He ran gladly out into the gallery. The family was gathering, still quiet and grim, in the yard. Paolo ran down there and gave his message. Protesting little ones were pushed up the steps to Rosa, but Paolo did not help. He found Elizabeth and Lucia and pushed close to them. Elizabeth put an arm around him and an arm around Lucia.

  “Keep close to me, loves,” she said. “I’ll keep you safe.” Paolo looked across her at Lucia and saw that Lucia was not frightened at all. She was excited. She winked at him. Paolo winked back and felt better.

  A minute later, Old Niccolo took his place at the head of the family and they all hurried to the gate. Paolo had just forced his way through, jostling his mother on one side and Domenico on the other, when a carriage drew up in the road, and Uncle Umberto scrambled out of it. He came up to Old Niccolo in that grim, quiet way everyone seemed to be moving.

  “Who is kidnapped? Bernardo? Domenico?”

  “Tonino,” replied Old Niccolo. “A book, with the University arms on the wrapping.”

  Uncle Umberto answered, “Luigi Petrocchi is also a member of the University.”

  “I bear that in mind,” said Old Niccolo.

  “I shall come with you to the Casa Petrocchi,” said Uncle Umberto. He waved at the cab-driver to tell him to go. The man was only too ready to. He nearly pulled his horses over on their sides, trying to turn them too quickly. The sight of the entire Casa Montana grimly streaming into the street seemed altogether too much for him.

  That pleased Paolo. He looked back and forth as they swung down the Via Magica, and pride grew in him. There were such a lot of them. And they were so single-minded. The same intent look was in every face. And though children pattered and young men strode, though the ladies clat
tered on the cobbles in elegant shoes, though Old Niccolo’s steps were short and bustling, and Antonio, because he could not wait to come at the Petrocchis, walked with long lunging steps, the common purpose gave the whole family a common rhythm. Paolo could almost believe they were marching in step.

  The concourse crowded down the Via Sant’ Angelo and swept around the corner into the Corso, with the Cathedral at their backs. People out shopping hastily gave them room. But Old Niccolo was too angry to use the pavement like a mere pedestrian. He led the family into the middle of the road and they marched there like a vengeful army, forcing cars and carriages to draw in to the curbs, with Old Niccolo stepping proudly at their head. It was hard to believe that a fat old man with a baby’s face could look so warlike.

  The Corso bends slightly beyond the Arch-bishop’s Palace. Then it runs straight again by the shops, past the columns of the Art Gallery on one side and the great gilded doors of the Arsenal on the other. They swung around that bend. There, approaching from the opposite direction, was another similar crowd, also walking in the road. The Petrocchis were on the march too.

  “Extraordinary!” muttered Uncle Umberto.

  “Perfect!” spat Old Niccolo.

  The two families advanced on one another. There was utter silence now, except for the cloppering of feet. Every ordinary citizen, as soon as they saw the entire Casa Montana advancing on the entire Casa Petrocchi, made haste to get off the street. People knocked on the doors of perfect strangers and were let in without question. The manager of Grossi’s, the biggest shop in Caprona, threw open his plateglass doors and sent his assistants out to fetch in everyone nearby. After which he clapped the doors shut and locked a steel grille down in front of them. From between the bars, white faces stared out at the oncoming spell-makers. And a troop of Reservists, newly called up and sloppily marching in crumpled new uniforms, were horrified to find themselves caught between the two parties. They broke and ran, as one crumpled Reservist, and sought frantic shelter in the Arsenal. The great gilt doors clanged shut on them just as Old Niccolo halted, face-to-face with Guido Petrocchi.

  “Well?” said Old Niccolo, his baby eyes glaring.

  “Well?” retorted Guido, his red beard jutting.

  “Was it,” asked Old Niccolo, “Florence or Pisa that paid you to kidnap my grandson Tonino?”

  Guido Petrocchi gave a bark of contemptuous laughter. “You mean,” he said, “was it Pisa or Siena who paid you to kidnap my daughter Angelica?”

  “Do you imagine,” said Old Niccolo, “that saying that makes it any less obvious that you are a baby-snatcher?”

  “Do you,” asked Guido, “accuse me of lying?”

  “Yes!” roared the Casa Montana. “Liar!”

  “And the same to you!” howled the Casa Petrocchi, crowding up behind Guido, lean and ferocious, many of them red-haired. “Filthy liars!”

  The fighting began while they were still shouting. There was no knowing who started it. The roars on either side were mixed with singing and muttering. Scrips fluttered in many hands. And the air was suddenly full of flying eggs. Paolo received one, a very greasy fried egg, right across the mouth, and it made him so angry that he began to shout egg-spells too, at the top of his voice. Eggs splattered down, fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, new-laid eggs, and eggs so horribly bad that they were like bombs when they burst. Everyone slithered on the eggy cobbles. Egg streamed off the ends of people’s hair and spattered everyone’s clothes.

  Then somebody varied it with a bad tomato or so. Immediately, all manner of unpleasant things were flying about the Corso: cold spaghetti and cowpats—though these may have been Rinaldo’s idea in the first place, they were very quickly coming from both sides—and cabbages; squirts of oil and showers of ice; dead rats and chicken livers. It was no wonder that the ordinary people kept out of the way. Egg and tomato ran down the grilles over Grossi’s windows and splashed the white columns of the Art Gallery. There were loud clangs as rotten cabbages hit the brass doors of the Arsenal.

  This was the first, disorganized phase of the battle, with everyone venting his fury separately. But, by the time everyone was filthy and sticky, their fury took shape a little. Both sides began on a more organized chant. It grew, and became two strong rhythmic choruses.

  The result was that the objects flying about the Corso rose up into the air and began to rain down as much more harmful things. Paolo looked up to see a cloud of transparent, glittering, frozen-looking pieces tumbling out of the sky at him. He thought it was snow at first, until a piece hit his arm and cut it.

  “Vicious beasts!” Lucia screamed beside him. “It’s broken glass!”

  Before the main body of the glass came down, Old Niccolo’s penetrating tenor voice soared above the yells and the chanting. “Testudo!”

  Antonio’s full bass backed him up: “Testudo!” and so did Uncle Lorenzo’s baritone. Feet tramped. Paolo knew this one. He bowed over, tramping regularly, and kept up the charm with them. The whole family did it. Tramp, tramp, tramp. “Testudo, testudo, testudo!” Over their bent heads, the glass splinters bounced and showered harmlessly off an invisible barrier. “Testudo.” From the middle of the bowed backs, Elizabeth’s voice rang up sweetly in yet another spell. She was joined by Aunt Anna, Aunt Maria and Corinna. It was like a soprano descant over a rhythmic tramping chorus.

  Paolo knew without being told that he must keep up the shield-charm while Elizabeth worked her spell. So did everyone else. It was extraordinary, exciting, amazing, he thought. Each Montana picked up the slightest hint and acted on it as if it were orders. He risked glancing up and saw that the descant spell was working. Every glass splinter, as it hit the unseen shield Paolo was helping to make, turned into an angry hornet and buzzed back at the Petrocchis. But the Petrocchis simply turned them into glass splinters again and hurled them back. At the same time, Paolo could tell from the rhythm of their singing that some of them were working to destroy the shield charm. Paolo sang and tramped harder than ever.

  Meanwhile, Rinaldo’s voice and his father’s were singing gently, deeply, at work on something yet again. More of the ladies joined in the hornet-song so that the Petrocchis would not guess. And all the while, the tramp, tramp of the shield charm was kept up by everyone else. It could have been the grandest chorus in the grandest opera ever, except that it all had a different purpose. The purpose came with a perfect roar of voices. The Petrocchis threw up their arms and staggered. The cobbles beneath them heaved and the solid Corso began to give way into a pit. Their instant reply was another huge sung chord, with discords innumerable. And the Montanas suddenly found themselves inside a wall of flame.

  There was total confusion. Paolo staggered for safety, with his hair singed, over cobbles that quaked and heaved under his shoes. “Voltava!” he sang frantically. “Voltava!” Behind him, the flames hissed. Clouds of steam blotted out even the tall Art Gallery as the river answered the charm and came swirling up the Corso. Water was knee-deep around Paolo, up to his waist, and still rising. There was too much water. Someone had sung out of tune, and Paolo rather thought it was him. He saw his cousin Lena almost up to her chin in water and grabbed her. Towing Lena, he staggered through the current, over the heaving road, trying to make for the Arsenal steps.

  Someone must have had the sense to work a cancel-spell. Everything suddenly cleared, steam, water and smoke together. Paolo found himself on the steps of the Art Gallery, not by the Arsenal at all. Behind him, the Corso was a mass of loose cobbles, shiny with mud and littered with cowpats, tomatoes and fried eggs. There could hardly have been more mess if Caprona had been invaded by the armies of Florence, Pisa and Siena.

  Paolo felt he had had enough. Lena was crying. She was too young. She should have been left with Rosa. He could see his mother picking Lucia out of the mud, and Rinaldo helping Aunt Gina up.

  “Let’s go home, Paolo,” whimpered Lena.

  But the battle was not really finished. Montanas and Petrocchis were up and d
own the Corso in little angry, muddy groups, shouting abuse at one another.

  “I’ll give you broken glass!”

  “You started it!”

  “You lying Petrocchi swine! Kidnapper!”

  “Swine yourself! Spell-bungler! Traitor!”

  Aunt Gina and Rinaldo slithered over to what looked like a muddy boulder in the street and heaved at it. The vast bulk of Aunt Francesca arose, covered with mud and angrier than Paolo had ever seen her.

  “You filthy Petrocchis! I demand single combat!” she screamed. Her voice scraped like a great saw-blade and filled the Corso.

  Chapter 7

  Aunt Francesca’s challenge seemed to rally both sides. A female Petrocchi voice screamed, “We agree!” and all the muddy groups hastened towards the middle of the Corso again.

  Paolo reached his family to hear Old Niccolo saying, “Don’t be a fool, Francesca!” He looked more like a muddy goblin than the head of a famous family. He was almost too breathless to speak.

  “They have insulted us and fought us!” said Aunt Francesca. “They deserve to be disgraced and drummed out of Caprona. And I shall do it! I’m more than a match for a Petrocchi!” She looked it, vast and muddy as she was, with her huge black dress in tatters and her gray hair half undone and streaming over one shoulder.

  But the other Montanas knew Aunt Francesca was an old woman. There was a chorus of protest. Uncle Lorenzo and Rinaldo both offered to take on the Petrocchi champion in her place.

  “No,” said Old Niccolo. “Rinaldo, you were wounded—”

  He was interrupted by catcalls from the Petrocchis. “Cowards! We want single combat!”

  Old Niccolo’s muddy face screwed up with anger. “Very well, they shall have their single combat,” he said. “Antonio, I appoint you. Step forward.”

  Paolo felt a gush of pride. So his father was, as he had always thought, the best spell-maker in the Casa Montana. But the pride became mixed with alarm, when Paolo saw the way his mother clutched Antonio’s arm, and the worried, reluctant look on his father’s mud-streaked face.