The Magicians of Caprona

Before Tonino could agree, they were swooped on lovingly by Aunt Maria, who was fatter than Aunt Gina, but not as fat as Aunt Anna. “Where have you been, my loves? I’ve been ready for your lessons for half an hour or more!”

Everyone in the Casa Montana worked very hard. Paolo and Tonino were already being taught the first rules for making spells. When Aunt Maria was busy, they were taught by their father, Antonio. Antonio was the eldest son of Old Niccolo, and would be head of the Casa Montana when Old Niccolo died. Paolo thought this weighed on his father. Antonio was a thin, worried person who laughed less often than the other Montanas. He was different. One of the differences was that, instead of letting Old Niccolo carefully choose a wife for him from a spell-house in Italy, Antonio had gone on a visit to England and come back married to Elizabeth. Elizabeth taught the boys music.

“If I’d been teaching that Angelica Petrocchi,” she was fond of saying, “she’d never have turned anything green.”

Old Niccolo said Elizabeth was the best musician in Caprona. And that, Lucia told the boys, was why Antonio got away with marrying her. But Rosa told them to take no notice. Rosa was proud of being half English.

Paolo and Tonino were probably prouder to be Montanas. It was a grand thing to know you were born into a family that was known world-wide as the greatest spell-house in Europe – if you did not count the Petrocchis. There were times when Paolo could hardly wait to grow up and be like his cousin, dashing Rinaldo. Everything came easily to Rinaldo. Girls fell in love with him, spells dripped from his pen. He had composed seven new charms before he left school. And these days, as Old Niccolo said, making a new spell was not easy. There were so many already. Paolo admired Rinaldo desperately. He told Tonino that Rinaldo was a true Montana.

Tonino agreed, because he was more than a year younger than Paolo and valued Paolo’s opinions, but it always seemed to him that it was Paolo who was the true Montana. Paolo was as quick as Rinaldo. He could learn without trying spells which took Tonino days to acquire. Tonino was slow. He could only remember things if he went over them again and again. It seemed to him that Paolo had been born with an instinct for magic which he just did not have himself.

Tonino was sometimes quite depressed about his slowness. Nobody else minded in the least. All his sisters, even the studious Corinna, spent hours helping him. Elizabeth assured him he never sang out of tune. His father scolded him for working too hard, and Paolo assured him that he would be streets ahead of the other children when he went to school. Paolo had just started school. He was as quick at ordinary lessons as he was at spells.

But when Tonino started school, he was just as slow there as he was at home. School bewildered him. He did not understand what the teachers wanted him to do. By the first Saturday he was so miserable that he had to slip away from the Casa and wander round Caprona in tears. He was missing for hours.

“I can’t help being quicker than he is!” Paolo said, almost in tears too.

Aunt Maria rushed at Paolo and hugged him. “Now, now, don’t you start too! You’re as clever as my Rinaldo, and we’re all proud of you.”

“Lucia, go and look for Tonino,” said Elizabeth. “Paolo, you mustn’t worry so. Tonino’s soaking up spells without knowing he is. I did the same when I came here. Should I tell Tonino?” she asked Antonio. Antonio had hurried in from the gallery. In the Casa Montana, if anyone was in distress, it always fetched the rest of the family.

Antonio rubbed his forehead. “Perhaps. Let’s go and ask Old Niccolo. Come on, Paolo.”

Paolo followed his thin, brisk father through the patterns of sunlight in the gallery and into the blue coolness of the Scriptorium. Here his other two sisters, Rinaldo and five other cousins, and two of his uncles, were all standing at tall desks copying spells out of big leather-bound books. Each book had a brass lock on it so that the family secrets could not be stolen. Antonio and Paolo tiptoed through. Rinaldo smiled at them without pausing in his copying. Where other pens scratched and paused, Rinaldo’s raced.

In the room beyond the Scriptorium, Uncle Lorenzo and Cousin Domenico were stamping winged horses on leaf-green envelopes. Uncle Lorenzo looked keenly at their faces as they passed and decided that the trouble was not too much for Old Niccolo alone. He winked at Paolo and threatened to stamp a winged horse on him.

Old Niccolo was in the warm mildewy library beyond, consulting over a book on a stand with Aunt Francesca. She was Old Niccolo’s sister, and therefore really a great-aunt. She was a barrel of a lady, twice as fat as Aunt Anna and even more passionate than Aunt Gina. She was saying passionately, “But the spells of the Casa Montana always have a certain elegance. This is graceless! This is—”

Both round old faces turned towards Antonio and Paolo. Old Niccolo’s face, and his eyes in it, were round and wondering as the latest baby’s. Aunt Francesca’s face was too small for her huge body, and her eyes were small and shrewd. “I was just coming,” said Old Niccolo. “I thought it was Tonino in trouble, but you bring me Paolo.”

“Paolo’s not in trouble,” said Aunt Francesca.

Old Niccolo’s round eyes blinked at Paolo. “Paolo,” he said, “what your brother feels is not your fault.”

“No,” said Paolo. “I think it’s school really.”

“We thought that perhaps Elizabeth could explain to Tonino that he can’t avoid learning spells in this Casa,” Antonio suggested.

“But Tonino has ambition!” cried Aunt Francesca.

“I don’t think he does,” said Paolo.

“No, but he is unhappy,” said his grandfather. “And we must think how best to comfort him. I know.” His baby face beamed. “Benvenuto.”

Though Old Niccolo did not say this loudly, someone in the gallery immediately shouted, “Old Niccolo wants Benvenuto!” There was running and calling down in the yard. Somebody beat on a water butt with a stick. “Benvenuto! Where’s that cat got to? Benvenuto!”

Naturally, Benvenuto took his time coming. He was boss cat at the Casa Montana. It was five minutes before Paolo heard his firm pads trotting along the tiles of the gallery roof. This was followed by a heavy thump as Benvenuto made the difficult leap down, across the gallery railing on to the floor of the gallery. Shortly, he appeared on the library windowsill.

“So there you are,” said Old Niccolo. “I was just going to get impatient.”

Benvenuto at once shot forward a shaggy black hind leg and settled down to wash it, as if that was what he had come there to do.

“Ah no, please,” said Old Niccolo. “I need your help.”

Benvenuto’s wide yellow eyes turned to Old Niccolo. He was not a handsome cat. His head was unusually wide and blunt, with grey gnarled patches on it left over from many, many fights. Those fights had pulled his ears down over his eyes, so that Benvenuto always looked as if he were wearing a ragged brown cap. A hundred bites had left those ears notched like holly leaves. Just over his nose, giving his face a leering, lop-sided look, were three white patches. Those had nothing to do with Benvenuto’s position as boss cat in a spell-house. They were the result of his partiality for steak. He had got under Aunt Gina’s feet when she was cooking, and Aunt Gina had spilt hot fat on his head. For this reason, Benvenuto and Aunt Gina always pointedly ignored one another.

“Tonino is unhappy,” said Old Niccolo.

Benvenuto seemed to feel this worthy of his attention. He withdrew his projecting leg, dropped to the library floor and arrived on top of the bookstand, all in one movement, without seeming to flex a muscle. There he stood, politely waving the one beautiful thing about him – his bushy black tail. The rest of his coat had worn to a ragged brown. Apart from the tail, the only thing which showed Benvenuto had once been a magnificent black Persian was the fluffy fur on his hind legs. And, as every other cat in Caprona knew to its cost, those fluffy breeches concealed muscles like a bulldog’s.

Paolo stared at his grandfather talking face to face with Benvenuto. He had always treated Benvenuto with respect himself, of course. It was well known that Benvenuto would not sit on your knee, and scratched you if you tried to pick him up. He knew all cats helped spells on wonderfully. But he had not realised before that cats understood so much. And he was sure Benvenuto was answering Old Niccolo, from the listening sort of pauses his grandfather made. Paolo looked at his father to see if this was true. Antonio was very ill at ease. And Paolo understood from his father’s worried face, that it was very important to be able to understand what cats said, and that Antonio never could. I shall have to start learning to understand Benvenuto, Paolo thought, very troubled.

“Which of you would you suggest?” asked Old Niccolo. Benvenuto raised his right front paw and gave it a casual lick. Old Niccolo’s face curved into his beaming baby’s smile. “Look at that!” he said. “He’ll do it himself!”

Benvenuto flicked the tip of his tail sideways. Then he was gone, leaping back to the window so fluidly and quickly that he might have been a paintbrush painting a dark line in the air. He left Aunt Francesca and Old Niccolo beaming, and Antonio still looking unhappy. “Tonino is taken care of,” Old Niccolo announced. “We shall not worry again unless he worries us.”

CHAPTER TWO (#u8bb0f7ee-043a-575e-b2b1-f412da8ddde9)

Tonino was already feeling soothed by the bustle in the golden streets of Caprona. In the narrower streets, he walked down the crack of sunlight in the middle, with washing flapping overhead, playing that it was sudden death to tread on the shadows. In fact, he died a number of times before he got as far as the Corso. A crowd of tourists pushed him off the sun once. So did two carts and a carriage. And once, a long, gleaming car came slowly growling along, hooting hard to clear the way.

When he was near the Corso, Tonino heard a tourist say in English, “Oh look! Punch and Judy!” Very smug at being able to understand, Tonino dived and pushed and tunnelled until he was at the front of the crowd and able to watch Punch beat Judy to death at the top of his little painted sentry-box. He clapped and cheered, and when someone puffed and panted into the crowd too, and pushed him aside, Tonino was as indignant as the rest. He had quite forgotten he was miserable. “Don’t shove!” he shouted.

“Have a heart!” protested the man. “I must see Mr Punch cheat the Hangman.”

“Then be quiet!” roared everyone, Tonino included.

“I only said—” began the man. He was a large damp-faced person, with an odd excitable manner.

“Shut up!” shouted everyone.

The man panted and grinned and watched with his mouth open Punch attack the policeman. He might have been the smallest boy there. Tonino looked irritably sideways at him and decided the man was probably an amiable lunatic. He let out such bellows of laughter at the smallest jokes, and he was so oddly dressed. He was wearing a shiny red silk suit with flashing gold buttons and glittering medals. Instead of the usual tie, he had white cloth folded at his neck, held in place by a brooch which winked like a tear-drop. There were glistening buckles on his shoes, and golden rosettes at his knees. What with his sweaty face and his white shiny teeth showing as he laughed, the man glistened all over.

Mr Punch noticed him too. “Oh what a clever fellow!” he crowed, bouncing about on his little wooden shelf. “I see gold buttons. Can it be the Pope?”

“Oh no it isn’t!” bellowed Mr Glister, highly delighted.

“Can it be the Duke?” cawed Mr Punch.

“Oh no it isn’t!” roared Mr Glister, and everyone else.

“Oh yes it is,” crowed Mr Punch.

While everyone was howling “Oh no it isn’t!” two worried-looking men pushed their way through the people to Mr Glister.

“Your Grace,” said one, “the Bishop reached the Cathedral half an hour ago.”

“Oh bother!” said Mr Glister. “Why are you lot always bullying me? Can’t I just – until this ends? I love Punch and Judy.”