Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [30]
“Lucia, you fool!” said Rinaldo. “That’s the strongest tune there is.”
“All right, all right. Stop going on at me. I’m sorry!” Lucia said angrily.
“So are the rest of us, unfortunately,” sighed Uncle Lorenzo.
If only I could be like Giorgio, Tonino thought, as he got up from the table. I suppose what I should have to do is to find the words to the Angel. He went to school without seeing anything on the way, wondering how he could manage to do that, when the rest of his family had failed. He was realistic enough to know that he was simply not good enough at spells to make up the words in the ordinary way. It made him sigh heavily.
“Cheer up,” said Paolo, as they went into school.
“I’m all right,” Tonino said. He was surprised Paolo should think he was miserable. He was not miserable at all. He was wrapped in delightful dreams. Maybe I can do it by accident, he thought.
He sat in class composing strings of gibberish to the tune of the Angel, in hopes that some of it might be right. But that did not seem satisfactory, somehow. Then, in a lesson that was probably History—for he did not hear a word of it—it struck him, like a blinding light, what he had to do. He had to find the words, of course. The First Duke must have had them written down somewhere and lost the paper. Tonino was the boy whose mission it was to discover that lost paper. No nonsense about making up words, just straight detective work. And Tonino was positive that the book had been a clue. He must find a peeling blue house, and the paper with the words on would be somewhere near.
“Tonino,” asked the teacher, for the fourth time, “where did Marco Polo journey to?”
Tonino did not hear the question, but he realized he was being asked something. “The Angel of Caprona,” he said.
Nobody at school got much sense out of Tonino that day. He was full of the wonder of his discovery. It did not occur to him that Uncle Umberto had looked in every piece of writing in the University Library, and not found the words to the Angel. Tonino knew.
After school, he avoided Paolo and his cousins. As soon as they were safely headed for the Casa Montana, Tonino set off in the opposite direction, towards the docks and quays by the New Bridge.
An hour later, Rosa said to Paolo, “What’s the matter with Benvenuto? Look at him.”
Paolo leaned over the gallery rail beside her. Benvenuto, looking surprisingly small and piteous, was running backwards and forwards just inside the gate, mewing frantically. Every so often, as if he was too distracted to know what he was doing, he sat down, shot out a hind leg, and licked it madly. Then he leaped up and ran about again.
Paolo had never seen Benvenuto behave like this. He called out, “Benvenuto, what’s the matter?”
Benvenuto swung around, crouching low on the ground, and stared urgently up at him. His eyes were like two yellow beacons of distress. He gave a string of mews, so penetrating and so demanding that Paolo felt his stomach turn uneasily.
“What is it, Benvenuto?” called Rosa.
Benvenuto’s tail flapped in exasperation. He gave a great leap and vanished somewhere out of sight. Rosa and Paolo hung by their midriffs over the rail and craned after him. Benvenuto was now standing on the waterbutt, with his tail slashing. As soon as he knew they could see him, he stared fixedly at them again and uttered a truly appalling noise.
Wong wong wong wong-wong-wong!
Paolo and Rosa, without more ado, swung towards the stairs and clattered down them. Benvenuto’s wails had already attracted all the other cats in the Casa. They were running across the yard and dropping from roofs before Paolo and Rosa were halfway down the stairs. They were forced to step carefully to the waterbutt among smooth furry bodies and staring, anxious green or yellow eyes.
“Mee-ow-ow!” Benvenuto said peremptorily, when they reached him.
He was thinner and browner than Paolo had ever seen him. There was a new rent in his left ear, and his coat was in ragged spikes.