Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [51]
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!”
“But he’s not!” Paolo protested. As far as he could see in the light from the yard lamp, Rinaldo turned and looked at him jeeringly. The discussion seemed to be getting further from the way he had planned it every second. “An enemy enchanter’s got him,” he said. “The one Chrestomanci talked about.”
Rinaldo laughed. “Load of old crab-apples, Paolo. Our friend had been talking to the Petrocchis. He invented his convenient enchanter because he wanted us all working for Caprona. Most of us saw through it at once.”
“Then who made that mist on the Corso?” Paolo said. “It wasn’t us, and it wasn’t them.”
But Rinaldo only said, “Who said it wasn’t them?”
As Paolo could not say it was Renata Petrocchi, he could not answer. Instead, he said rather desperately, “Come with me to the Casa Petrocchi. If you used a finding-spell, you could prove Tonino isn’t there.