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.
Tonino slid cautiously down the piano-lid on to the keys again – ker-pling. Angelica was now standing at the end of the piano, pointing at the window. She was speechless with horror.
Tonino looked – and for a moment he was as frightened as Angelica. There was a brown monster glaring at him through the glass, wide-faced, wide-eyed and shaggy. The thing had eyes like yellow lamps.
Faintly, through the glass, came a slightly irritable request to pull himself together and open the window.
“Benvenuto!” shouted Tonino.
“Oh – it’s only a cat,” Angelica quavered. “How terrible it must feel to be a mouse!”
“Just a cat!” Tonino said scornfully. “That’s Benvenuto.” He tried to explain to Benvenuto that it was not easy to open windows when you were nine inches high.
Benvenuto’s impatient answer was to shove Tonino’s latest magic exercise book in front of Tonino’s mind’s eye, open at almost the first page.
“Oh, thanks,” Tonino said, rather ashamed. There were three opening-spells on that page, and none of them had stuck in his head. He chose the easiest, shut his eyes so that he could read the imaginary page more clearly, and sang the spell.
Gently and easily, the window swung open, letting in a gust of cold wind. And Benvenuto came in with the wind, almost as lightly. As Benvenuto trod gently up the scale towards him, Tonino had another moment when he knew how mice felt. Then he forgot it in the gladness of seeing Benvenuto. He stretched his arms wide to rub behind Benvenuto’s horny ears.
Benvenuto put his sticky black nose to Tonino’s face, and they both stood, delighted, holding down a long humming discord on the piano.
Benvenuto said that Paolo was not quick enough; he could not make him understand where Tonino was. Tonino must send Paolo a message. Could Tonino write this size?
“There’s a pen on the desk here,” Angelica called. And Tonino remembered her saying she could understand cats.
Rather anxiously, Benvenuto wanted to know if Tonino minded him talking to a Petrocchi.
The question astonished Tonino for a moment. He had clean forgotten that he and Angelica were supposed to hate one another. It seemed a waste of time, when they were both in such trouble. “Not at all,” he said.
“Do get off that piano, both of you,” said Angelica. “The humming’s horrible.”
Benvenuto obliged, with one great flowing leap. Tonino struggled after him with his elbows hooked over the piano-lid, pushing himself along against the black notes. By the time he reached the desk, Benvenuto and Angelica had exchanged formal introductions, and Benvenuto was advising them not to try getting out of the window. The room was three floors up. The stonework was crumbling, and even a cat had some trouble keeping his feet. If they would wait, Benvenuto would fetch help.
“But the Duchess—” said Tonino.
“And the Duke,” said Angelica. “This is the Duke’s study.”
Benvenuto considered the Duke harmless on his own. He thought they were in the safest place in the Palace. They were to stay hidden and write him a note small enough to carry in his mouth.
“Wouldn’t it be better if we tied it round your neck?” Angelica asked.
Benvenuto had never submitted to anything round his neck, and he was not going to start now. Anyway, someone in the Palace might see the message.
So Tonino put one foot on the Report of Campaign and succeeded, by heaving 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
