LITMIR.BIZ

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Tonino was. They had simply made sure he was shut up again.

      “Tonino,” whispered Angelica.

      Tonino whirled round. Half the room was full of a pile of lax puppet bodies. He scanned the cardboard head of the policeman, then his enemy the Hangman, and the white sausage of the baby, and came upon Angelica’s face halfway up the pile. It was her own face, though swollen and tearstained. Tonino clapped his hand to his nose. To his relief, the red beak was gone, though he still seemed to be wearing Mr Punch’s scarlet nightgown.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. His teeth seemed to be chattering. “I tried not to hurt you. Are your bones broken?”

      “No – o,” said Angelica. She did not sound too sure. “Tonino, what happened?”

      “I hanged the Duchess,” Tonino said, and he felt some vicious triumph as he said it. “I didn’t kill her though,” he added regretfully.

      Angelica laughed. She laughed until the heap of puppets was shaking and sliding about. But Tonino could not find it funny. He burst into tears, even though he was crying in front of a Petrocchi.

      “Oh dear,” said Angelica. “Tonino, stop it! Tonino – please!” She struggled out from among the puppets and hobbled looming through the room. Her head banged the chandelier and sent it tinkling and casting mad shadows over them as she knelt down beside Tonino. “Tonino, please stop. She’ll be furious as soon as she feels better.”

      Angelica was wearing Judy’s blue cap and Judy’s blue dress still. She took off the blue cap and held it out to Tonino. “Here. Blow on that. I used the baby’s dress. It made me feel better.” She tried to smile at him, but the smile went hopelessly crooked in her swollen face. Angelica’s large forehead must have hit the floor first. It was now enlarged by a huge red bump. Under it, the grin looked grotesque.

      Tonino understood it was meant for a smile and smiled back, as well as he could for his chattering teeth.

      “Here.” Angelica loomed back through the room to the pile of puppets and heaved at the Hangman. She returned with his black felt cape. “Put this on.”

      Tonino wrapped himself in the cape and blew his nose on the blue cap and felt better.

      Angelica heaved more puppets about. “I’m going to wear the policeman’s jacket,” she said. “Tonino – have you thought?”

      “Not really,” said Tonino. “I sort of know.”

      He had known from the moment he looked at the Duchess. She was the enchanter who was sapping the strength of Caprona and spoiling the spells of the Casa Montana. Tonino was not sure about the Duke – probably he was too stupid to count. But in spite of the Duchess’s enchantments, the spells of the Casa Montana – and the Casa Petrocchi – must still be strong enough to be a nuisance to her. So he and Angelica had been kidnapped to blackmail both houses into stopping making spells. And if they stopped, Caprona would be defeated. The frightening part was that Tonino and Angelica were the only two people who knew, and the Duchess did not care that they knew. It was not only that even someone as clever as Paolo would never think of looking in the Palace, inside a Punch and Judy show: it must mean that the two of them would be dead before anyone found them.

      “We absolutely have to get away,” said Angelica. “Before she’s better from being hanged.”

      “She’ll have thought of that,” said Tonino.

      “I’m not sure,” said Angelica. “I could tell everyone was startled to death. They let me see you being put through the floor, and I think we could get out that way. It will be easier now we’re bigger.”

      Tonino fastened the cape round him and struggled to his feet, though he felt almost too tired and bruised to bother. His head hit the chandelier too. Huge flickering shadows fled round the room, and made the heap of puppets look as if they were squirming about. “Where did they put me through?” he said.

      “Just where you’re standing,” said Angelica.

      Tonino backed against the windows and looked at the place. He would not have known there was any opening. But, now Angelica had told him, he could see, disguised by the painted swirls of the carpet and confused by the swinging light, the faintest black line. The outline made an oblong about the size of the shoddy dining-table. The tray of supper must have come through that way too.

      “Sing an opening spell,” Angelica commanded him.

      “I don’t know one,” Tonino was forced to confess.

      He could tell by the stiff way Angelica stood that she was trying not to say a number of nasty things. “Well, I don’t dare,” she said. “You saw what happened last time. If I do anything, they’ll catch us again and punish us by making us be puppets. And I couldn’t bear another time.”

      Tonino was not sure he could bear it either, even though, now he thought about it, he was not sure it had been a punishment. The Duchess had probably intended to make them perform anyway. She was quite mean enough. On the other hand, he was not sure he could stand another of Angelica’s botched spells, either. “Well, it’s only a trap-door,” he said. “It must be held up by one of those little hooks. Let’s try bashing at it with the candlesticks.”

      “And if there’s a spell on it?” said Angelica. “Oh, come on. Let’s try.”

      They seized a candlestick each and knelt beside the windows, knocking diligently at the scarcely-seen black line. The cardboard was tough and pulpy. The candlesticks shortly looked like metal weeping-willow trees. But they succeeded in making a crumbly hollow in the middle of one edge of the hidden door. Tonino thought he could see a glimmer of metal showing. He raised his bent candlestick high to deliver a mighty blow.

      “Stop!” hissed Angelica.

      There were large shuffling footsteps somewhere. Tonino lowered the candlestick by gentle fractions and scarcely dared breathe. A distant voice grumbled… “Mice then” … “Nothing here…” It was suddenly very much darker. Someone had switched off a light, leaving them only with the bluish glimmer of the little chandelier. The footsteps shuffled. A door bumped, and there was silence.

      Angelica laid her candlestick down and began trying to tear at the cardboard with her fingers. Tonino got up and wandered away. It was no good. Someone was going to hear them, whatever they did. The Palace was full of footmen and soldiers. Tonino would have given up then and waited for the Duchess to do her worst. Only now he was standing up, the cardboard room seemed so small. Half of it was filled with the puppets. There was hardly room to move. Tonino wanted to hurl himself at the walls and scream. He did make a movement, and knocked the table. Because he was so much bigger and heavier now, the table swayed and creaked.

      “I know!” he said. “Finish drawing the Angel.”

      The bump on Angelica’s forehead turned up to him. “I’m not in the mood for doodling.”

      “Not a doodle, a spell,” Tonino explained. “And then pull the table over us while we make a hole in the trap door.”

      Angelica did not need telling that the Angel was the most potent spell in Caprona. She threw the candlestick aside and scrambled up. “That might just work,” she said. “You know, for a Montana, you have very good ideas.” Her head hit the chandelier again. In the confusion of swinging shadows, they could not find the tap Angelica had been drawing with. Tonino had to jam his head and arm into the tiny bathroom and pull off the other useless tap.

      Even when the shadows stopped swinging, the Angel scratched on the table was hard to see. It now looked faint and small.

      “He needs his scroll,” said Angelica. “And I’d better put in a halo to make sure he’s holy.”

      Angelica was now so much bigger and stronger that she kept dropping the tap. The halo, when she had scratched it in, was too big, and the scroll would not go right. The table swayed this way and that, the tap ploughed and skidded, and there was a danger the Angel would end up a complete mess.

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