Magicians of Caprona - Diana Wynne Jones [74]
When he got to the gallery, the Duke sat down on a window seat. Angelica and Tonino stood half out of his pockets and managed to eat their bread and butter. The Duke amiably handed the cigar cutter from one to the other and, in between whiles, seemed lost in thought, staring at the white puffs of shells bursting on the hills behind Caprona.
Angelica was inclined to be smug. “I told you,” she said to Tonino, “my spells always work.”
“Iron griffins,” said Tonino, “aren’t mice.”
“No, but I’ve never done anything as big as that before,” said Angelica. “I’m glad it didn’t knock the Palace down.”
The Duke said gloomily, “The guns of Pisa are going to do that soon. I can see gunboats on the river, and I’m sure they aren’t ours. I wish your families would be quick.”
But it was half an hour before a polite footman came up to the Duke, causing him to flip his pocket flaps down and scatter buttery crumbs in all directions. “Your Grace, members of the Montana and Petrocchi families are awaiting you in the Large Reception Saloon.”
“Good!” said the Duke. He leaped up and ran so fast that Tonino and Angelica had to brace their feet on the seams of his pockets and hang on hard to the edges. They lost their footing several times, even though the Duke tried to help them by holding his pockets as he ran. They felt him clatter to a stop. “Blast!” he said. “This is always happening!”
“What?” asked Tonino breathlessly. He felt jerked out of shape.
“They’ve told me the wrong room!” said the Duke and set off again on another swaying, jolting run. They felt him dive forward through a doorway. His pockets swung. Then they swung the other way as he slid and stopped. “Lucrezia, this is too bad! Is this why you always tell me the wrong room?”
“My lord,” came the coldest voice of the Duchess from some way off, “I can’t answer for the slackness of the footmen. What is the matter?”
“This,” said the Duke. “These—” They felt him shaking. “Those were the Montanas and the Petrocchis, weren’t they? Don’t fob me off, Lucrezia. I sent for them. I know.”
“And what if they were?” said the Duchess, rather nearer. “Do you wish to join them, my lord?”
They felt the Duke backing away. “No. No indeed! My dear, your will is always my pleasure. I—I just want to know why. They only came about some griffins.”
The Duchess’s voice moved away again as she answered. “Because, if you must know, Antonio Montana recognized me.”
“But—but—” said the Duke, laughing un easily, “everyone knows you, my dear. You’re the Duchess of Caprona.”
“I mean, he recognized me for what I am,” said the Duchess from the distance. The sound of a door shutting followed.
“Look!” said the Duke in a shaky whisper. “Just look!” While he was still saying it, Angelica and Tonino were bracing their feet on the seams of his pockets and pushing their heads out from under the flaps.
They saw the same polished room where they had once waited and eaten cakes, the same gilded chairs and angelic ceiling. But this time the polished floor was littered with puppets. Puppets lay all over it, limp grotesque things, scattered this way and that as people might lie if they had suddenly fallen. They were in two groups. Otherwise there was no way of telling which puppet was who. There were Punches, Judys, Hangmen, Sausage-men, Policemen, and an odd Devil or so, over and over again. From the numbers, it looked as if both families had realized that Tonino and Angelica were behind the mysterious griffins and had sent nearly every grown-up in the Casas.
Tonino could not speak. Angelica said, “That hateful woman! Her mind seems to run on puppets.”
“She sees people that way,” the Duke said miserably. “I’m sorry, both of you. She’s been