The Magicians of Caprona (UK) Read online

  “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 indeed 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 unknown 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 bright, 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 leant 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.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  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 round 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.

  He remembered going down near the New Bridge. He had been full of excitement. He had read a book which he thought was telling him how to save Caprona. He knew he had to find an alleyway with a peeling blue house at the end of it. It seemed a bit silly now. Tonino knew things never happened the way they did in books. Even then, he had been rather amazed to find that there was an alleyway with, really and truly, a peeling blue house at the end of it. And, to his huge excitement, there was a scrap of paper fluttering down at his feet. The book was coming true. Tonino had bent down and picked up the paper.

  And, after that, he had known nothing till this moment.

  That was really true. Tonino took himself through what had happened several times, but each time his memories stopped in exactly the same place – with himself picking up the scrap of paper. After that, it was all a vague sense of nightmare. By this time, he was fairly sure he had been the victim of a spell. He began to feel ashamed of himself. So he sat up.

  He saw at once why he had seemed to dream he was shut up in a cardboard box. The room he was in was long and low, almost exactly the shape of a shoebox. The walls and ceiling were painted cream-colour – a sort of whitish cardboard-colour, in fact – but they seemed to be wood, because there were carvings picked out in gold paint on them. There was a crystal chandelier hanging from the ceiling, although the light came from four long windows in one of the longer walls; a rich carpet on the floor, and a very elegant dining-table and chairs by the wall opposite the windows. There were two silver candlesticks on the table. Altogether the place was extremely elegant – and wrong, somehow.

  Tonino sat trying to puzzle out just what was wrong. The room was awfully bare. But that was not quite it. There was something strange about the daylight coming through the four long windows, as if the sun was somehow further away than it should be. But that was not quite it either. Tonino’s eyes went to the four bands of too-faded sunlight falling through the windows on to the carpet, and then travelled along the carpet. At the end, he came to the person leaning up against the wall. It was Angelica Petrocchi, who had been at the Palace. Her eyes were closed beneath her bulge of forehead, and she looked ill. So she had been caught too.

  Tonino looked back at the carpet. That was an odd thing. It was not really a carpet. It had been painted on the slightly furry substance of the floor. Tonino could see the brush-strokes in the sprawling pattern. And the reason he had thought the pattern was too big, was because it was too big. It was the wrong size for the rest of the room.

  More puzzled than ever, Tonino struggled to his feet. He felt a little wobbly, so he put a hand on the gilded panels of the wall to steady himself. That felt furry too, except where it was gold. The gold was flat, but not quite hard, like – Tonino thought, but no other likeness came to him – like paint. He ran his hand over the apparently carved panel. It was a total cheat. It was not even wood, and the carving was painted on, in lines of brown, blue and gold. Whoever had caught him was trying to seem richer than they were, but doing it very badly.

  There were movements at the other end of the room. Angelica Petrocchi was wavering to her feet, and she too was running her hand over the painted carving. Very anxiously and cautiously, she turned and looked at Tonino.

  “Will you let me go
now, please?” she said.

  There was a little wobble in her voice that showed Tonino she was very frightened. So was he, now he came to think of it. “I can’t let you go,” he said. “I didn’t catch you. Neither of us can go. There isn’t a door.”

  That was the wrong thing he had been trying not to notice. And as soon as he said it, he wished he had kept his mouth shut. Angelica screamed. And the sound sent Tonino into a panic too. There was no door! He was shut into a cardboard box with a Petrocchi child!

  Tonino may have screamed as well – he was not sure. When he caught up with himself, he had one of the elegant chairs in his hands and was battering at the nearest window with it. That was more frightening than ever. The glass did not break. It was made of some slightly rubbery stuff, and the chair bounced off. Beyond him, the Petrocchi girl was banging away at another window with one of the silver candlesticks, screaming all the time. Outside the window, Tonino could clearly see the smug spire-shape of a little cypress tree, lit by afternoon sun. So they were in one of those rich villas near the Palace, were they? Just let him get out! He lifted the chair and smashed it against the window with all his strength.

  He made no impression on the window, but the chair came to pieces. Two ill-glued legs fell off it, and the rest crumpled to splintery matchwood. Tonino thought it was disgustingly badly made. He threw it to the painted carpet and fetched another chair. This time, for variety, he attacked the wall beside the window. Pieces of that chair came away and flew about, and Tonino was left with its painted seat – painted to look like embroidery, just as the floor was painted to look like carpet. He drove it into the wall, again and again. It made large brown dents. Better still, the wall shook and leapt about, sounding muffled and hollow, as if it were made of something very cheap. Tonino beat at it and yelled. Angelica beat at the wall and the window impartially with her candlestick, and went on screaming.

  They were stopped by a terrible hammering. Someone seemed to be dealing hundreds of thunderous blows on the ceiling. The room was like the inside of a drum. It was too loud to bear. The Petrocchi girl dropped her candlestick and rolled on the floor. Tonino found himself crouching down, with his hands to his ears, looking up at the chandelier jiggling overhead. He thought his head would burst.

  The pounding stopped. There was no sound except a whimper, which Tonino rather thought came from him.

  A great huge voice spoke through the ceiling. “That’s better. Now be quiet, or you won’t get any food. And if you try any more tricks, you’ll be punished. Understand?”

  Tonino and Angelica both sat up. “Let us out!” they screamed.

  There was no answer, only a distant shuffling. The owner of the huge voice seemed to be going away.

  “A mean trick with an amplifying spell,” Angelica said. She picked up the candlestick and looked at it with disgust. The branched part was bent at right-angles to the base. “What is this place?” she said. “Everything’s so shoddy.”

  They got up and went to the windows again, in hopes of a clue. Several little spire-shaped trees were clearly to be seen, just outside, and a sort of terrace beyond that. But, peer as they might, all they could make out further off was queer blue distance, with one or two square-shaped mountains catching the sun on a glossy corner or so. There seemed to be no sky.

  “It’s a spell,” said Angelica. Her voice suggested she might be going to panic again. “A spell to stop us knowing where we are.”

  Tonino supposed it must be. There was no other way of accounting for the strange absence of view. “But I’m sure I know,” he said, “by those trees. We’re in one of those rich villas by the Palace.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Angelica. The panic had left her voice. “I shall never envy those people again. Their lives are all show.”

  They turned from the windows and discovered that the vast banging had dislodged one of the wall panels behind the dining-table. It hung open like a door. They shoved one another out of the way to reach it first. But there was only a cupboard-sized bathroom, without a window.

  “Good,” said Angelica. “I was wondering what we’d do. And at least we’ll have water.” She reached out to one of the taps over the small washbasin. It came away in her hand. Under it was a blob of glue on white china. It was clear the tap had never been meant to be used. Angelica stared at it with such a ridiculous look of bewilderment that Tonino laughed. She drew herself up at that. “Don’t you laugh at me, you beastly Montana!” She stalked out into the main room and threw the useless tap on to the table with a clump. Then she sat in one of the two remaining chairs and rested her elbows gloomily on the table.

  After a while, Tonino did the same. The chair creaked under him. So did the table. Though its surface was painted to look like smooth mahogany, close to, it was all blobs of varnish and huge splinters. “There’s nothing that’s not shoddy,” he said.

  “Including you, Whatyoumecall Montana!” Angelica said. She was still angry.

  “My name’s Tonino,” Tonino said.

  “It’s the last twist of the knife, being shut up with a Montana!” Angelica said. “Whatever your name is. I shall have to put up with all your filthy habits.”

  “Well, I’ve got to put up with yours,” Tonino said irritably. It suddenly struck him that he was all alone, far from the friendly bustle of the Casa Montana. Even when he was hidden in a corner of the Casa with a book, he knew the rest of the family was all round him. And Benvenuto would be purring and pricking him, to remind him he was not alone. Dear old Benvenuto. Tonino was afraid he was going to cry – in front of a Petrocchi too. “How did they catch you?” he said, to take his mind off it.

  “With a book.” A slight, woeful smile appeared on Angelica’s tight white face. “It was called The Girl Who Saved Her Country, and I thought it was from Great-Uncle Luigi. I still think it was a good story.” She looked defiantly at Tonino.

  Tonino was annoyed. It was not pleasant to think he had been caught by the same spell as a Petrocchi. “Me too,” he said gruffly.

  “And I haven’t got any filthy habits!” snapped Angelica.

  “Yes you have. All the Petrocchis have,” said Tonino. “But I expect you don’t realise because they’re normal to you.”

  “I like that!” Angelica picked up the broken tap, as if she had half a mind to throw it.

  “I don’t care about your habits,” said Tonino. Nor did he. All he wanted to do was find some way out of this nightmare room and go home. “How shall we get out of here?”

  “Through the ceiling,” Angelica said sarcastically.

  Tonino looked upwards. There was that chandelier. If they could give it a pull, it might well rip a hole in the shoddy ceiling.

  “Don’t be stupid,” said Angelica. “If there’s a spell out in front, there’s bound to be one up there to stop us getting out.”

  Tonino feared she was right, but it was worth a try. He climbed from his chair on to the table. He thought he could reach the chandelier from there if he stood up. There was a violent creaking. Before Tonino could begin to stand up, the table swayed away sideways, as if all four of its legs were loose.

  “Get down!” said Angelica.

  Tonino got down. It was clear the table would fall to pieces if he stayed on it. Gloomily he pushed the crooked legs straight again. “So that’s no good,” he said.

  “Unless,” said Angelica, suddenly bright and pert, “we steady it with a spell.”

  Tonino transferred his miserable look from the table legs to her sharp little face. He sighed. The subject had been bound to come up. “You’ll have to do the spell,” he said. Angelica stared at him. He could feel his face heating up. “I hardly know any spells,” he said. “I – I’m slow.”

  He had expected Angelica to laugh, and she did. But he thought she need not have laughed in such a mean, exultant way, nor keep saying, “Oh that’s good!” like that.

  “What’s so funny?” he said. “You can laugh! I know all about you turning your father gre
en. You’re no better than me!”

  “Want to bet?” said Angelica, still laughing.

  “No,” said Tonino. “Just make the spell.”

  “I can’t,” said Angelica. It was Tonino’s turn to stare, and Angelica’s turn to blush. A thin bright pink spread right up the bulge of her forehead, and she put her chin up defiantly. “I’m hopeless at spells,” she said. “I’ve never got a spell right in my life.” Seeing Tonino still staring, she said, “It’s a pity you didn’t bet. I’m much worse than you are.”

  Tonino could not credit it. “How?” he said. “Why? Can’t you learn spells either, then?”

  “Oh, I can learn them all right.” Angelica took up the broken tap again and scribbled angrily with it, great yellow scratches in the varnished top of the table. “I know hundreds of spells,” she said, “but I always get them wrong. For a start, I’m tone-deaf. I can’t sing a tune right to save my life. Like now.” Carefully, as if she was a craftsman doing a fine carving, she peeled up a long yellow curl of varnish from the table, using the tap as a gouge. “But it’s not only that,” she said angrily, following her work intently. “I get words wrong too – everything wrong. And my spells always work, that’s the worst of it. I’ve turned all my family all colours of the rainbow. I’ve turned the baby’s bath into wine, and the wine into gravy. I turned my own head back to front once. I’m much worse than you. I daren’t do spells. About all I’m good for is understanding cats. And I even turned my cat purple too.”

  Tonino watched her working away with the tap, with rather mixed feelings. If you looked at it practically, this was the worst possible news. Neither of them had a hope against the powerful spell-maker who had caught them. On the other hand, he had never met anyone who was worse at spells than he was. He thought, a little smugly, that at least he had never made a mistake in a spell, and that made him feel good. He wondered how the Casa Montana would feel if he kept turning them all colours of the rainbow. He imagined the stern Petrocchis must hate it. “Doesn’t your family mind?” he asked.