The Magicians of Caprona (23 page)

“Sentimental fool,” said the Duchess. She was not angry. It was what she thought the Duke was.

This made the Duke bluster. “I may not be a good ruler,” he said, “but this is what a good ruler should do. I shall—I shall pat the heads of children and join in the singing of the choir.”

The Duchess laughed. “And much good may it do you, particularly if you sing,” she said. “Very well. You can get killed down there instead of up here. Run along and pat heads.”

“Thank you, my dear,” the Duke said humbly. He surged forward again,
thump, thump, thump
, down marble steps. They heard the sound of hooves on gravel and felt the Duke shaking. “Let’s go, Carlo,” he said. “What is it? What are you pointing—? Oh yes. So it is a griffin. How remarkable. Drive on, can’t you.” He surged upwards. Coach-springs creaked and a door clapped shut. The Duke surged down. They heard him say “Oh good!” as he sat, and the rather-too-familiar sound of cardboard being hit, as he patted the box on the seat beside him. Then the coach started, with a shrilling of wheels on gravel and a battering of hooves. They felt the Duke sigh with relief. It made them bounce. “You can come out now,” said the Duke.

They climbed cautiously out onto his wide knees. The Duke kindly moved over to the window so that they could see out. And the first thing that met their eyes was an iron griffin, very crumpled and bent, lying in quite a large crater in the Palace yard.

“You know,” said the Duke, “if my Palace wasn’t going to be broken up anyway by Pisans, or Sienese, or Florentines, I’d get damages off you two. The other griffin has scraped two great ditches all down my facade.” He laughed and patted at his glossy face with his handkerchief.
He was still very nervous.

As the coach rolled out of the yard onto the road, they heard gunfire. Some of it sounded near, a rattle of shots from below by the river. Most of it was far and huge, a long grumble from the hills. The bangs were so close together that the sound was nearly continuous, but every so often, out of the grumble, came a very much nearer
clap-clap-clap
. It made all three of them jump each time.

“We
are
taking a pounding,” the Duke said unhappily.

The coach slowed down. They could hear the prim voice of the coachman among the other noise. “I fear the New Bridge is under fire, Your Grace. Where exactly are we bound?”

The Duke pushed down the window. The noise doubled. “The Cathedral. Go upriver and see if we can cross by the Old Bridge.” He pushed the window shut. “Phew! I don’t envy Carlo up there on the box!”

“Why are we going to the Cathedral?” Angelica asked anxiously. “We want to look at the Angels on our Casas.”

“No,” said the Duke. “She’ll have thought of those. That’s why I asked the Major. It seems to me that the one place where those words are always safe and always invisible
must
be on the Cathedral Angel. You think of it at once, but it’s up there and far away, so you forget it.”

“But it’s
miles
up!” said Angelica.

“It’s got a scroll, though,” said Tonino. “And the scroll looks to be more unrolled than the ones on our Angels.”

“I’m afraid it’s bound to be about the only place she might have forgotten,” said the Duke.

They rattled along briskly, except for one place, where there was a shell crater in the road. Some how, Carlo got them around it.

“Good man, Carlo,” said the Duke. “About the one good man she hasn’t got rid of.”

The noise diminished a little as the coach went down to the river and the Piazza Martia—at least, Angelica and Tonino guessed that was where it was; they found they were too small to see any great distance. They could tell they were on the Old Bridge, by the rumble under the wheels and the little shuttered houses on either side. The Duke several times craned around, whistled and shook his head, but they could not see why. They recognized the Cathedral, when the coach wheeled towards it across the cobbles, because it was so huge and snowy white. Its great bell was still tolling. A large crowd, mostly of women and children, was slowly moving towards its door. As the coach drew up, it was near enough for Tonino and Angelica to see the Arch bishop of Caprona in his spreading robes, standing at the door, sprinkling each person with holy water and murmuring a blessing.

“Now there’s a brave man,” said the Duke. “I wish I could do as well. Look, I’ll pop you two out of this door and then get out of the other one and keep everyone busy while you get up on the dome. Will that do?” He had the door nearest the Cathedral open as he spoke.

Tonino and Angelica felt lost and helpless. “But what shall we do?”

“Climb up there and read out those words,” said the Duke. He leaned down, encircled them with his warm wet hands, and planted them out on the cold cobbles. They stood shivering under the vast hoop of the coach wheel. “Be sensible,” he whispered down to them. “If I ask the Archbishop to put up ladders, she’ll guess.” That of course was quite true. They heard him surge to the other door and that door crash open.

“He always does everything so
hugely
,” Angelica said.

“People of Caprona!” shouted the Duke. “I’ve come here to be with you in your hour of sorrow. Believe me, I didn’t choose what has happened today—”

There was a mutter from the crowd, even a scatter of cheering. “He’s doing it quite well,” said Angelica.

“We’d better do our bit,” said Tonino. “There’s only us left now.”

Tonino and Angelica pattered over to the vast marble cliff of the Cathedral and doubtfully approached a long, sloping buttress. That was the only thing they could see which gave them some chance of climbing up. Once they were close to it, they saw it was not difficult at all. The marble looked smooth, but, to people as small as they were, it was rough enough to give a grip to their hands and feet.

They went up like monkeys, with the cold air reviving them. The truth was that, though they had had an eventful morning, it had also been a restful and stuffy one. They were full of energy and they weighed no more than a few ounces. They were scarcely panting as they scampered up the long cold slope of the lowest dome. But there the rest of the Cathedral rose before them, a complicated glacier of white and rose and green marble. They could not see the Angel at all.

Neither of them knew which way to climb next. They hung on to a golden cross and stared up. And there, brown-black hair and white fur hurtled up to them. Gold eyes glared and blue eyes gazed. A black nose and a pink nose dabbed at them.

“Benvenuto!” shouted Tonino. “Did you—?”

“Vittoria!” cried Angelica, and threw her arms round the neck of the white cat.

But the cats were hasty and very worried. Things tumbled into their heads, muddled, troubled things about Paolo and Renata, Marco
and Rosa. Would Tonino and Angelica please come on, and hurry!

They began an upward scamper which they would never have believed possible. With the cats to guide them, they raced up long lead groins, and over rainbow buttresses, like dizzy bridges, to higher domes. Always the cats implored them to hurry, and always they were there if the footing was difficult. With his hand on Benvenuto’s wiry back, Tonino went gaily up marble glacis and through tiny drain-holes hanging over huge drops, and raced up high curving surfaces, where the green marble ribs of a dome seemed as tall as a wall beside him. Even when they began the long toil up the slope of the great dome itself, neither of them was troubled. Once, Angelica stumbled and saved herself by catching hold of Vittoria’s silky tail; and once Benvenuto took Tonino’s red nightgown in his teeth and heaved him aside from a deep drain. But up here it was rounded and remote. Tonino felt as if he was on the surface of the moon, in spite of the pale winter sky overhead and the wind singing. The rumble of guns was almost beyond the scope of his small ears.

At last, they scrambled between fat marble pillars onto the platform at the very top of the dome. And there was the golden Angel above them. The Angel’s tremendous feet rested on a golden pedestal rather higher than Tonino’s normal height. There was a design around the pedestal, which Tonino absently took in, of golden leopards entwined with winged horses. But he was looking up beyond, to the Angel’s flowing robes, the enormous wings outspread to a width of twenty feet or more, the huge hand high above his head, raised in blessing, and the other hand flung out against the sky, further away still, holding the great unrolled scroll. Far above that again, shone the Angel’s vast and tranquil face, unheedingly beaming its blessing over Caprona.

“He’s enormous!” Angelica said. “We’ll never get up to that scroll, if we tried all day!”

The cats, however, were nudging and hustling at them, to come to a place farther around the platform. Wondering, they trotted around, almost under the Angel’s scroll. And there was Paolo’s head above the balustrade, with his hair blown back in a tuft and his face exceedingly pale. He had one arm clutched over the marble railing. The other stretched away downward. Tonino peered between the marble pillars to see why. And there was the miserable humped huddle of Renata hanging on to Paolo.

“But she’s terrified of heights!” said Angelica. “How
did
she get this high?”

Vittoria told Angelica she was to get Renata up at once.

Angelica stuck her upper half out between the pillars. Being small certainly had its advantages. Distances which were mercilessly huge to Renata and Paolo were too far away to worry Angelica. The dome was like a whole small world to her.

Paolo said, carefully patient, “I can’t hold on much longer. Do you think you can have an-other try?” The answer from Renata was a sobbing shudder.

“Renata!” shouted Angelica.

Renata’s scared face turned slowly up. “Some thing’s happened to my eyes now! You look tiny.”

“I am tiny!” yelled Angelica.

“Both of them are!” Paolo said, staring at Tonino’s head.

“Pull me up quick,” said Renata. The size of Angelica and Tonino so worried Renata and Paolo that both of them forgot they were hundreds of feet in the air. Paolo heaved on Renata and Renata shoved at Paolo, and they scrambled over the marble rail in a second. But there, Renata looked up at the immense golden Angel and had an instant relapse. “Oh—oh!” she wailed and sank down in a heap against the golden pedestal.

Tonino and Angelica huddled behind her. The warmth of climbing had worn off. They were feeling the wind keenly through their scanty nightshirts.

Benvenuto leaped across Renata to them. Some thing else had to be done, and done quickly.

Tonino went again and looked through the marble pillars, where the dome curved away and down like an ice field with ribs of green and gold. There, coming into view over the curve, was a bright red uniform, making Marco’s carroty hair look faded and sallow against it. The uniform went with Marco’s hair even less well than the crimson he had worn as a coachman. Tonino knew who Marco was in that instant. But that bothered him less than seeing Marco flattened to the surface and looking backwards, which Tonino was sure was a mistake. Beyond Marco’s boots, fair hair was wildly blowing. Rosa’s flushed face came into sight.

“I’m all
right
. Look after yourself,” Rosa said.

Benvenuto was beside Tonino. They were to come up quicker than that. It was important.

“Get Rosa and Marco up here quickly!” Tonino shrieked to Paolo. He did not know if he had caught the feeling from the cats or not, but he was sure Rosa and Marco were in danger.

Paolo went unwillingly to the railing and flinched at the height. “They’ve been following us and shouting the whole way,” he said. “Get up here quickly!” he shouted.

“Thank you very much!” Marco shouted back. “Whose fault is it we’re up here anyway?”

“Is Renata all right?” Rosa yelled.

Angelica and Tonino pushed themselves between the pillars. “Hurry up!” they screamed.

The sight of them worked on Rosa and Marco as it had done on
Renata and Paolo. They stared at the two tiny figures, and got to their feet as they stared. Then, stooping over, with their hands hanging, they came racing up the last of the curve for a closer look. Marco tumbled over the rail and said, as he was pulling Rosa over, “I couldn’t believe my eyes at first! We’d better do a growing-spell before—”

“Get down!” said Paolo. Benvenuto’s message was so urgent that he had caught it too. Both cats were crouching, stiff and low, and even Benvenuto’s flat ears were flattened. Rosa stooped down. Marco grudgingly went on one knee.

“Look here, Paolo—” he began.

A savage gale hit the dome. Freezing wind shrieked across the platform, howled in the spaces between the marble pillars, and scoured across the curve of the dome below. The Angel’s wings thrummed with it. It brought stabs of rain and needles of ice, hurling so hard that Tonino was thrown flat on his face. He could hear ice rattling on the Angel and spitting on the dome. Paolo snatched him into shelter behind himself. Renata feebly scrabbled about until she found Angelica and dragged her into shelter by one arm. Marco and Rosa bowed over. It was quite clear that anyone climbing the dome would have been blown off.

The wind passed, wailing like a wolf. They raised their heads into the sun.

The Duchess was standing on the platform in front of them. She had melting ice winking and trickling from her hair and from every fold of her marble-gray dress. The smile on her waxy face was not pleasant.

“Oh no,” she said. “The Angel is not going to help anyone this time. Did you think I’d for gotten?”

Marco and Rosa looked up at the Angel’s golden arm holding the great scroll above them. If they had not understood before, they knew now. From their suddenly thoughtful faces, Tonino knew they were
finding spells to use on the Duchess.

“Don’t!” squeaked Angelica. “She’s an enchantress!”

The Duchess’s lips pursed in another unpleasant little smile. “More than that,” she said. She pointed up at the Angel. “Let the words be removed from the scroll,” she said.

There was a click from the huge golden statue, followed by a grating sound, as if a spring had been released. The arm holding the scroll began to move, gently and steadily downwards, making the slightest grinding noise as it moved. They could hear it easily, in spite of a sudden clatter of gunfire from the houses beyond the river. Downwards and inwards, traveled the Angel’s arm, until it stopped with a small
clunk
. The scroll now hung, flashing in the sun, between them and the Duchess. There were large raised letters on it.
Angelus
, they saw.
Capronensi populo
. It was as if the Angel were holding it out for them to read.