Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [72]
Chapter 14
The warm pocket holding Tonino swayed and swooped as the Duke stood up. “Of course I smoked a cigar,” he said to the Duchess, injured. “Anyone would smoke a cigar if they found they’d declared war without knowing they had and knew they were bound to be beaten.” His voice came rumbling to Tonino’s ears through his body, more than from outside.
“I’ve told you it’s bad for your health,” said the Duchess. “Where are you going?”
“Me? Oh,” said the Duke. The pockets swooped, then swooped again, as he climbed the steps to the door. “Off to the kitchens. I feel peckish.”
“You could send for food,” said the Duchess, but she did not sound displeased. Tonino knew she had guessed they had been in the study all along and wanted the Duke out of it while she found them.
He heard the door shut. The pocket swung rhythmically as the Duke walked. It was not too bad once Tonino was used to it. It was a large pocket. There was almost room in it for Tonino, and the Duke’s lighter, and his handkerchief, and another cigar, and some string, and some money, and a rosary, and some dice. Tonino made himself comfortable with the handkerchief as a cushion and wished the Duke would not keep patting at him to see if he was there.
“Are you all right in there?” the Duke rumbled at last. “Nobody about. You can stick your heads out. I thought of the kitchens because you didn’t seem to have had any breakfast.”
“You are kind,” Angelica’s voice came faintly. Tonino worked himself to his feet and put his head out under the flap of the pocket. He still could not see Angelica—the Duke’s generous middle was in the way—but he heard her say, “You keep rather a lot of things in your pockets, don’t you? Do you happen to know what I’ve got stuck to my foot?”
“Er—toffee, I suspect,” said the Duke. “Please oblige me by eating it.”
“Thanks,” Angelica said doubtfully.
“I say,” said Tonino. “Why didn’t the Duchess know we were in your pockets? She could smell us before.”
The Duke’s loud laugh rumbled through him. The gilded wall Tonino could see began to jolt upward, and upward, and upward. The Duke was walking downstairs. “Cigars, lad!” the Duke said. “Why do you think I smoke them? She can’t smell anything through them, and she hates that. She tried setting a spell on me to make me stop once, but I got so bad-tempered she had to take it off.”
“Excuse me, sir,” came Angelica’s voice from the other side of the Duke. “Won’t someone notice if you walk downstairs talking to yourself?”
The Duke laughed again. “Not a soul! I talk to myself all the time—and laugh, too, if something amuses me. They all think I’m potty anyway. Now, have you two thought of a way to get you out of here? The safest way would be to fetch your families here. Then I could hand you over in secret, and she’d be none the wiser.”
“Can’t you just send for them?” Tonino suggested. “Say you need them to help in the war.”
“She’d smell a rat,” said the Duke. “She says your war-charms are all washed up anyway. Think of something that’s nothing to do with the war.”
“Special effects for another pantomime,” Tonino suggested, rather hopelessly. But he could see that even the Duke was not likely to produce a play while Caprona was being invaded.
“I know,” said Angelica. “I shall cast a spell.”
“No!” said Tonino. “Anything might happen!”
“That doesn’t matter,” said Angelica. “My family would know it’s me, and they’d come here like a shot.”
“But you might turn the Duke green!” said Tonino.
“I really wouldn’t mind,” the Duke put in mildly.
He came to the bottom of the stairs and went with long, charging strides through rooms and corridors of the Palace. Angelica and Tonino each held on to an edge of their pockets and shouted arguments around him.
“But you could help me,” said Angelica, “and your part would go right. Suppose we made it a calling-charm to fetch all the rats and mice in Caprona to the Palace. If you did the calling,