LITMIR.BIZ

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with both hands, in tearing off a corner of it. Angelica passed him the huge pen, which he had to hold in both hands, with the end resting on his shoulder. Then she stood on the paper to keep it steady while Tonino wielded the pen. It was such hard work, that he kept the message as short as possible. In Duke’s Palace. Duchess enchantress. T.M. & A.P.

      “Tell them about the words to the Angel,” said Angelica. “Just in case.”

      Tonino turned the paper over and wrote Words to Angel on Angel over gate. T & A. Then, exhausted with heaving the pen up and down, he folded the piece of paper with that message inside and the first one outside, and trod it flat. Benvenuto opened his mouth. Angelica winced at that pink cavern with its arched wrinkly roof and its row of white fangs, and let Tonino place the message across Benvenuto’s prickly tongue. Benvenuto gave Tonino a loving glare and sprang away. He struck one ringing chord from the piano, around middle C, made the slightest thump on the windowsill, and vanished.

      Tonino and Angelica were staring after him and did not notice, until it was too late, that the Duke had come back.

      “Funny,” said the Duke. “There’s a new Punch now, as well as a new Judy.”

      Tonino and Angelica stood stiff as posts, one on each end of the blotter, in agonisingly uncomfortable attitudes.

      Fortunately, the Duke noticed the open window. “Blessed maids and their fresh air!” he grumbled, and went over to shut it. Tonino seized the opportunity to stand on both feet, Angelica to uncrick her neck. Then they both jumped. An unmistakable gunshot cracked out, from somewhere below. And another. The Duke bent out of the window and seemed to be watching something. “Poor pussy,” he said. He sounded sad and resigned. “Why couldn’t you keep away, puss? She hates cats. And they make such a din, too, shooting them.” Another shot cracked out, and then several more. The Duke stood up, shaking his head sadly. “Ah well,” he said, as he shut the window. “I suppose they do eat birds.”

      He came back across the study. Tonino and Angelica could not have moved if they tried. They were both too stricken.

      The Duke’s face folded into shiny wrinkles. He had noticed the corner torn from the Report. “I’ve been eating paper now!” he said. His sad, puzzled face turned towards Tonino and Angelica. “I think I do forget things,” he said. “I talk to myself. That’s a bad sign. But I really don’t remember you two at all. At least, I remember the new Judy, but,” he said to Tonino, “I don’t remember you at all. How did you get here?”

      Tonino was far too upset about Benvenuto to think. After all, the Duke really was speaking to him. “Please, sir,” he said, “I’ll explain—”

      “Shut up!” snapped Angelica. “I’ll say a spell!”

      “—only please tell me if they shot my cat,” said Tonino.

      “I think so,” said the Duke. “It looked as if they got it.” Here he took a deep breath and turned his eyes carefully to the ceiling, before he looked at Tonino and Angelica again. Neither of them moved. Angelica was glaring at Tonino, promising him spells unimaginable if he said another word. And Tonino knew he had been an utter idiot anyway. Benvenuto was dead and there was no point in moving – no point in anything.

      The Duke, meanwhile, slowly pulled a large handkerchief out of his pocket. A slightly crumpled cigar came out with it and flopped on the desk. The Duke picked it up and put it absent-mindedly between his glistening teeth. And then he had to take it out again to wipe his shiny face. “Both of you spoke,” he said, putting the handkerchief away and fetching out a gold lighter. “You know that?” he said, putting the cigar back into his mouth. He gave a furtive look round, clicked the lighter, and lit the cigar. “You are looking,” he said, “at a poor dotty Duke.” Smoke rolled out with his words, as much smoke as if the Duke had been a dragon.

      Angelica sneezed. Tonino thought he was going to sneeze. He drew a deep breath to stop himself and burst out coughing.

      “Ahah!” cried the Duke. “Got you!” His large wet hands pounced, and seized each of them round the legs. Holding them like that, firmly pinned to the blotter, he sat down in the chair and bent his triumphant shiny face until it was level with theirs. The cigar, cocked out of one side of his mouth, continued to roll smoke over them. They flailed their arms for balance and coughed and coughed. “Now what are you?” said the Duke. “Another of her fiendish devices for making me think I’m potty? Eh?”

      “No we’re not!” coughed Tonino, and Angelica coughed, “Oh, please stop that smoke!”

      The Duke laughed. “The old Chinese cigar-torture,” he said gleefully, “guaranteed to bring statues to life.” But his right hand moved Tonino, stumbling and swaying, across the blotter to Angelica, where his left hand gathered him in. His right hand took the cigar out of his mouth and laid it on the edge of the desk. “Now,” he said. “Let’s have a look at you.”

      They scrubbed their streaming eyes and looked fearfully up at his great grinning face. It was impossible to look at all of it at once. Angelica settled for his left eye, Tonino for his right eye. Both eyes bulged at them, round and innocent, like Old Niccolo’s.

      “Bless me!” said the Duke. “You’re the spell-makers’ children who were supposed to come to my pantomime! Why didn’t you come?”

      “We never got an invitation, Your Grace,” Angelica said. “Did you?” she asked Tonino.

      “No,” Tonino said mournfully.

      The Duke’s face sagged. “So that’s why it was. I wrote them myself too. That’s my life in a nutshell. None of the orders I give ever get carried out, and an awful lot of things get done that I never ordered at all.” He opened his hand slowly. The big warm fingers peeled damply off their legs. “You feel funny wriggling about in my hand,” he said. “There, if I let you go, will you tell me how you got here?”

      They told him, with one or two forced pauses when he took a puff at his cigar and set them coughing again. He listened wonderingly. It was not like explaining things to a huge grown-up Duke. Tonino felt as if he was telling a made-up story to his small cousins. From the way the Duke’s eyes popped, and the way he kept saying “Go on!” Tonino was sure the Duke was believing it no more than the little Montanas believed the story of Giovanni the Giant Killer.

      Yet, when they had finished, the Duke said, “That Punch and Judy show started at eight-thirty and went on till nine-fifteen. I know, because there was a clock just over you. They say I declared war at nine o’clock last night. Did either of you notice me declaring war?”

      “No,” they said. “Though,” Angelica added sourly, “I was being beaten to death at the time and I might not have noticed.”

      “My apologies,” said the Duke. “But did either of you hear gunfire? No. But firing started around eleven and went on all night. It’s still going on. You can see it, but not hear it, from the tower over this study. Which means another damn spell, I suppose. And I think I’m supposed to sit here and not notice Caprona being blown to pieces around me.” He put his chin in his hands and stared at them miserably. “I know I’m a fool,” he said, “but just because I love plays and puppet-theatres, I’m not an idiot. The question is, how do we get you two out of here without Lucrezia knowing?”

      Tonino and Angelica were almost too surprised and grateful to speak. And while they were still trying to say thank you, the Duke jumped upright, staring pop-eyed.

      “She’s coming! I’ve got an instinct. Quick! Get in my pockets!”

      He turned round sideways to the desk and held one pocket of his coat stretched against it, between two fingers. Angelica hastily lifted the pocket-flap and slid down between the two layers of cloth. The Duke stubbed out his cigar on the edge of the desk and popped it in after her. Then he turned round and held the other pocket open for Tonino. As Tonino crouched down in fuzzy darkness, he heard the door open and the voice of the Duchess.

      “My lord, you’ve been smoking cigars in here

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