• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 601 0

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