“Let’s get the Hangman’s rope,” said Angelica.
They edged along to the pile of puppets and disentangled the string from the little gibbet. Tonino tied it to the table leg.
“It’s a long way down,” he said dubiously.
“It’s only a few feet really,” Angelica said. “And we’re not heavy enough to hurt. I went all floppy when you kicked me off the stage and – well – I didn’t break anything anyway.”
Tonino let Angelica go first, swinging down into the dark space like an energetic blue monkey. Crunch went the shoddy table. Creeeak. And it swayed towards the leg where the rope was tied.
“Angel of Caprona!” Tonino whispered.
The table plunged, one corner first, down into the space. The cardboard room rattled. And, with a rending and creaking of wood, the table stuck, mostly in the hole, but with one corner out and wedged against the sides. There was a thump from below. Tonino was fairly sure he was stuck in the room for good now.
“I’m down,” Angelica whispered up. “You can pull the rope up. It nearly reaches the floor.”
Tonino leaned over and fumbled the string up from the table leg. He was sure there had been a miracle. That leg ought to have broken off, or the table ought to have gone down the hole. He whispered, “Angel of Caprona!” again as he slid down under the table into the dark.
The table creaked hideously, but it held together. The string burnt Tonino’s hands as he slid, and then it was suddenly not there. His feet hit the floor almost at once.
“Oof!” he went. His feet felt as if they had been knocked up through his legs.
Down there, they were standing on the shiny floor of a Palace room. The towering walls of the Punch and Judy show were on three sides of them. Instead of a back wall, there was a curtain, intended to hide the puppet-master, and very dim light was coming in round its edges. They pulled one end of the curtain aside. It felt coarse and heavy, like a sack. Behind it was the wall of the room. The puppet show had evidently been simply pushed away to one side. There was just space for Angelica and Tonino to squeeze past the ends of the show, into a large room lit by moonlight falling in strong silver blocks across its shiny floor.
It was the same room where the court had watched the Punch and Judy show. The puppet show had not been put away. Tonino thought of the time he and Angelica had tottered on the edge of the stage, looking into nothingness. They could have been killed. That seemed another miracle. Then, they must have been in some kind of storeroom. But, when the Duchess was so mysteriously taken ill, no one had bothered to put them back there.
The moonlight glittered on the polished face of the Angel, high up on the other side of the room, leaning out over some big double doors. There were other doors, but Tonino and Angelica set out, without hesitation, towards the Angel. Both of them took it for a guide.
“Oh bother!” said Angelica, before they reached the first block of moonlight. “We’re still small. I thought we’d be the right size as soon as we got out, didn’t you?”
Tonino’s one idea was to get out, whatever his size. “It’ll be easier to hide like this,” he said. “Someone in your Casa can easily turn you back.” He pulled the Hangman’s cloak round him and shivered. It was colder out in the big room. He could see the moon through the big windows, riding high and cold in a wintry dark blue sky. It was not going to be fun running through the streets in a red nightgown.
“But I hate being this small!” Angelica complained. “We’ll never be able to get down stairs.”
She was right to complain, as Tonino soon discovered. It seemed a mile across the polished floor. When they reached the double doors, they were tired out. High above them, the carved Angel dangled a scroll they could not possibly read, and no longer looked so friendly. But the doors were open a crack. They managed to push the crack wider by leaning their backs against the edge of both doors. It was maddening to think they could have opened them with one hand if only they had been the proper size.
Beyond was an even bigger room. This one was full of chairs and small tables. The only advantage of being doll-sized was that they could walk under every piece of furniture in a straight line to the far-too-distant door. It was like trudging through a golden moonlit forest, where every tree had an elegant swan-bend to its trunk. The floor seemed to be marble.
Before they reached the door, they were quarrelling again from sheer tiredness.
“It’s going to take all night to get out of here!” Angelica grumbled.
“Oh shut up!” said Tonino. “You make more fuss about things than my Aunt Gina!”
“Is your Aunt Gina bruised all over because you hit her?” Angelica demanded.
When they came to the half-open door at last, there was only another room, slightly smaller. This one had a carpet. Gilded sofas stood about like Dutch barns, and large frilly armchairs. Angelica gave a wail of despair.
Tonino stood on tiptoe. There seemed to be cushions on some of the seats. “Suppose we hid under a cushion for the night?” he suggested, trying to make peace.
Angelica turned on him furiously. “Stupid! No wonder you’re slow at spells! We may be small, but they’ll find us because of that. We must stink of magic. Even my baby brother could find us, and he may be a baby but he’s cleverer than you!”
Tonino was too angry to answer. He simply marched away into the carpet. At first it was a relief to his sore feet, but it soon became another trial. It was like walking through long, tufty grass – and anyone who has done that for a mile or so will know how tiring that can be. On top of that, they had to keep going round puffy armchairs that seemed as big as houses, frilly footstools and screens as big as hoardings. Some of these things would have made good hiding-places, but they were both too angry and frightened to suggest it.
Then, when they reached the door at last, it was shut. They threw themselves against the hard wood. It did not even shake.
“Now what?” said Tonino, leaning his back against it. The moon was going down by now. The carpet was in darkness. The bars of moonlight from the far-off windows only touched the tops of armchairs, or picked out the gold on the sofa backs, or the glitter from a shelf of coloured glass vases. It would be quite dark soon.
“There’s an Angel over there,” Angelica said wearily.
She was right. Tonino could just see it, as coloured flickers on wood, lit by moonlight reflected off the shelf of glass vases. There was another door under the Angel, or rather a dark space, because that door was wide open. Too tired even to speak, Tonino set off again, across another mile of tufty carpet, past beetling cliffs of furniture, to the other side of the room.
By the time they reached that open door, they were so tired that nothing seemed real any more. There were four steps down beyond the door. Very well. They went down them somehow. At the bottom was an even more brutally tufted carpet. It was quite dark.
Angelica sniffed the darkness. “Cigars.”
It could have been scillas for all Tonino cared. All he wanted was the next door. He set off, feeling round the walls for it, with Angelica stumbling after. They bumped into one huge piece of furniture, felt their way round it, and banged into another, which stuck even further into the room. And so they went, stumbling and banging, climbing across two rounded metal bars, wading in carpet, until they arrived at the four steps again. It was quite a small room – for the Palace – and it had only one door. Tonino felt for the first step, as high as his head, and did not think he had the strength to get up them again. The Angel had not been a guide after all.
“That part that stuck out,” said Angelica. “I don’t know what it was, but it was hollow, like a box. Shall we risk hiding in it?”
“Let’s find it,” said Tonino.
They found it, or something like it, by walking into it. It was a steep-sided box which came up to their armpits. There was a large piece of metal, like a very wide doorknocker, hung on the front of it. When they felt inside, they felt sheets of stiff leather, and crisper stuff
that was possibly paper.
“I think it’s an open drawer,” said Tonino.
Angelica did not answer. She simply climbed in. Tonino heard her flapping and crackling among the paper – if it was paper. Well! he thought. And it was Angelica who said they smelt of magic. But he was so tired that he climbed in too, and fell into a warm crumply nest where Angelica was already asleep. Tonino was almost too tired by now to care if they were found or not. But he had the sense to drag a piece of parchment over them both before he went to sleep too.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Tonino woke up feeling chilly and puzzled. The light was pale and yellow because his sheet seemed to be over his face. Tonino gazed up at it, thinking it was a surprisingly flat, stiff sheet. It had large black letters on it too. His eyes travelled along the letters. DECLARATION OF WAR (Duplicate Copy), he read.
Then he knew, with a jump, that he was nine inches high and lying in a drawer in the Palace. And it was light! Someone would find them. In fact, someone nearly had. That was what had woken him. He could hear someone moving about the room, making obscure thumps and shuffles, and occasionally whistling a snatch of the Angel of Caprona.
Whoever it was had reached the drawer now. Tonino could hear the floor creak under him and a dress rustling, loud and near. He moved his head, gently and stiffly, and found Angelica’s frightened face resting on crumpled paper an inch or so away. The rustling dress proved the person was a woman. It must be the Duchess looking for them.
“That Duke!” said the person, in a voice no Duchess would use. “There never was such an untidy man!” Her breathing came suddenly nearer. Before either Tonino or Angelica could think what to do, the drawer moved. Helplessly, they were shunted inwards, feet first into darkness, and the drawer shut with a bang behind their heads.
“Help!” whispered Angelica.
“Ssh!”
The maid was still in the room. They could hear her move something, and then a tinkle of notes as she dusted a piano. Then a bump. And finally nothing. When they were quite sure she was gone, Angelica whispered, “What do we do now?”
There was room to sit up in the drawer, but not much else. Above their heads was a slit of light where the drawer met the desk, or whatever it was, and no way of opening it. But they could see quite well. Light was coming in at the back, beyond their feet. They tried bracing their hands against the wood overhead and heaving, but the drawer was made of solid, spicy-smelling wood and they could not budge it.
“We keep being shut in places without doors!” Angelica cried out. And she went floundering through the papers to the back of the drawer, where the light came in. Tonino crawled after her.
As soon as they got there, they realised this was the way out. The end of the drawer was lower than the front, and it did not reach the back of the wooden desk it was part of. There was quite a big gap there. When they put their heads into the space, they could see the ends of the other drawers above theirs going up like a ladder, and a slit of daylight at the top.
They squeezed through into the gap and climbed, side by side. It was as easy as climbing a ladder. They were one drawer away from the slit of daylight – which was going to be a tight squeeze – when they heard someone else in the room.
“They came down here, madam,” said a lady’s voice.
“Then we’ve caught them,” replied the Duchess. “Look very carefully.”
Tonino and Angelica hung from the back of the drawers by their fingers and toes, not daring to move. Silk dresses rustled as the Duchess and her lady moved round the room. “There’s nothing this end at all, madam.”
“And I swear this window hasn’t been opened,” said the Duchess. “Open all the drawers in the desk.”
There was a sharp rumble above Tonino’s head. Dusty white light flooded down from the open top drawer. Papers were loudly tossed over. “Nothing,” said the lady. The top drawer slammed in again. Tonino and Angelica had been hanging on to the second drawer. They climbed down to the next as fast and quietly as they could. The second drawer rumbled open, and slammed shut, nearly deafening them. The drawer they were on jerked. Luckily, it was stiff. The lady tugged and rattled at it, and that gave Tonino and Angelica just time to climb frantically up to the second drawer again and cling there. And there they hung, in the dark narrow space, while the lady opened the third drawer, slammed it shut, and pulled out the bottom drawer. They craned over their arms and watched the white light flood in from below.
“Look at this!” cried the lady. “They’ve been here! It’s like a mouse-nest!”
Silks rustled as the Duchess hurried over. “Curse it!” she said. “Not long ago too! I can smell them even through the cigars. Quick! They can’t be far away. They must have got out before the room was cleaned.”
The drawer rumbled in, bringing dusty darkness with it. There was a flurry of silks as the two women hurried away up the steps to the room with the armchairs, and the quiet, firm clap of the door closing.
“Do you think it’s a trap?” Angelica whispered.
“No,” said Tonino. He was sure the Duchess had not guessed where they were. But they were shut in this room now, by the sound, and he had no idea how they would get the door open.
All the same, even a shut room was great open spaces compared with the narrow slit at the back of the drawers. Angelica and Tonino pushed and squeezed and forced themselves through the narrow daylight slit, and finally crawled out on the top of a writing-desk. Before their eyes had got used to the light, Tonino stubbed his toe on a vast pen like a telegraph pole and then tripped over a paper-knife like an ivory plank. Angelica bumped into a china ornament standing at the back of the desk. It swayed. She swayed. She flung her arms round it. When her eyes stopped watering, she found she was hugging a china Mr Punch, nose, red nightgown and all, about the same height as she was. There was a china Judy standing at the other end of the desk.
“We can’t get away from these things!” she said.
The desk was covered in smooth red leather, very easy on the feet, and held a huge white blotter, which was even more comfortable to walk on. A chair with a matching red seat stood in front of the desk. Tonino saw they could easily jump down on to it. Even more easily, they could climb down the handles of the drawers. On the other hand, the piano the maid had dusted stood right beside the desk, and the window was round the corner from the piano. To reach the window was only a long stride from the piano. Though the window was shut, it had quite an easy-looking catch, if only they could reach it.
“Look!” said Angelica, pointing disgustedly.
A whole row of Punch and Judys stood along the top of the piano. Two were puppets on stands, very old and valuable by the look of them; two more were actually made of gold; and two others were rather arty clay models, which made Punch look like a leering ordinary man and Judy uncomfortably like the Duchess. And the music which was open on the piano was headed Arnolfini – Punch and Judy Suite.
“I think this is the Duke’s study,” said Angelica. And both of them got the giggles.
Still giggling, Tonino stepped on to the piano and started to walk to the window. Do – ti – so – fa, went the piano.
“Come back!” Angelica laughed.
Tonino came back – fa – so – ti – do – nearly in hysterics.
The door of the room opened and someone hurried down the steps. Angelica and Tonino could think of nothing better to do than stand stiffly where they were, hoping to be taken for more Punch and Judys. And, luckily, the man who came in was busy and worried. He slapped a pile of papers on the desk, without so much as glancing at the two new puppets, and hurried out again, gently closing the door behind him.
“Phew!” said Angelica.
They walked round to the front of the papers and looked at them curiously. The top one said:
Report of Campaign at 08.00 hours. Summary:
Troops advancing on all fronts to repel invasion.
Heavy Artillery and Reservists moving up in support.
Pisan front reports heavy losses. Fleet sighted—
Pisan? – steaming for mouth of Voltava.
“We’re at war!” said Tonino. “Why?”
“Because the Duchess has got us, of course,” said Angelica. “And our families daren’t make war-spells. Tonino, we must get out. We must tell them where the words to the Angel are!”
“But why does the Duchess want Caprona beaten?” Tonino said.
“I don’t know,” said Angelica. “There’s something wrong about her, I know that. Aunt Bella said there was an awful fuss when the Duke decided to marry her. Nobody likes her.”
“Let’s see if we can open the window,” said Tonino. He set off along the piano again. Do-ti-so-fa-me-re—
“Quiet!” said Angelica.
Tonino discovered that, if he put each foot down very slowly, the notes did not sound. He was halfway along the keyboard, and Angelica had one foot stretched out to follow, when they heard someone opening the door again. There was no time to be careful. Angelica fled back to the desk. Tonino, with a terrible discord, scrambled across the black notes and squeezed behind the music on the stand.
He was only just in time. When he looked – he was standing with his feet and head sideways, like an Ancient Egyptian – the Duke of Caprona himself was standing in front of the desk. Tonino thought the Duke seemed both puzzled and sad. He was tapping the Report of Campaign against his teeth and did not seem to notice Angelica standing between the Punch and Judy on his desk, although Angelica’s eyes were blinking against the glitter from the Duke’s buttons.
“But I didn’t declare war!” the Duke said to himself. “I was watching that puppet-show. How could I—?” He sighed and bit the Report worriedly between two rows of big shiny teeth. “Is my mind going?” he asked. He seemed to be talking to Angelica. She had the sense not to answer.
“I must go and ask Lucrezia,” the Duke said. He flung the Report down at Angelica’s feet and hurried out of the study.
The Magicians of Caprona (UK) Page 14
