The Chrestomanci Series: Entire Collection Books 1-7. Diana Wynne Jones

Duchess threw back her head and laughed as heartily as the Duke.

      Tonino hated her. He was so angry and so miserable that he did not mind at all when a cardboard policeman appeared and he chased him with the stick too. He laid into the policeman as if he was the Duchess and not a cardboard doll at all.

      “Are you all right, Lucrezia?” he heard the Duke say.

      Tonino looked sideways as he dealt another mighty swipe at the policeman’s cardboard helmet. He saw the Duchess wince as the stick landed. He was not surprised when the policeman was immediately whisked away and he himself forced into a violent capering and even louder squawking. He let himself do it. He felt truly gleeful as he squawked, “What a clever fellow!” for what felt like the thousandth time. For he understood what had happened. The Duchess was the policeman, in a sort of way. She was putting some of herself into all the puppets to make them work. But he must not let her know he knew. Tonino capered and chortled, doing his best to seem terrified, and kept his eyes on that carving of the Angel, high up over the door of the room.

      And now the hooded Hangman-puppet appeared, dragging a little wooden gibbet with a string noose dangling from it. Tonino capered cautiously. This was where the Duchess did for him unless he was very careful. On the other hand, if this Punch and Judy show went as it should, he might just do for the Duchess.

      The silly scene began. Tonino had never worked so hard at anything in his life. He kept repeating the words of the Angel in his head, both as a kind of prayer and as a smokescreen, so that the Duchess would not understand what he was trying to do. At the same time, he thought, fiercely and vengefully, that the Hangman was not just a puppet – it was the Duchess herself. And, also at the same time, he attended to Mr Punch’s conversation with all his might. This had to go right.

      “Come along, Mr Punch,” croaked the Hangman. “Just put your head in this noose.”

      “How do I do that?” asked Mr Punch and Tonino, both pretending hard to be stupid.

      “You put your head in here,” croaked the Hangman, putting one hand through the noose.

      Mr Punch and Tonino, both of them quivering with cunning, put his head first one side of the noose, then the other. “Is this right? Is this?” Then, pretending even harder to be stupid, “I can’t see how to do it. You’ll have to show me.”

      Either the Duchess was wanting to play with Tonino’s feelings, or she was trying the same cunning. They went through this several times. Each time, the Hangman put his hand through the noose to show Mr Punch what to do. Tonino did not dare look at the Duchess. He looked at the Hangman and kept thinking, That’s the Duchess, and reciting the Angel for all he was worth. At last, to his relief, the Duke became restive.

      “Come on, Mr Punch!” he shouted.

      “You’ll have to put your head in and show me,” Mr Punch and Tonino said, as persuasively as he knew how.

      “Oh well,” croaked the Hangman. “Since you’re so stupid.” And he put his cardboard head through the noose.

      Mr Punch and Tonino promptly pulled the rope and hanged him. But Tonino thought, This is the Duchess! and went as limp and heavy as he could. For just a second, his full puppet’s weight swung on the end of the rope.

      It only lasted that second. Tonino had a glimpse of the Duchess on her feet with her hands to her throat. He felt real triumph. Then he was thrown, flat on his face, across the stage, unable to move at all. There he was forced to lie. His head hung down from the front of the stage, so that he could see very little. But he gathered that the Duchess was being led tenderly away, with the Duke fussing round her.

      I think I feel as pleased as Punch, he thought.

      

      Paolo never wanted to remember that night afterwards. He was still staring at the sick yellow message in the yard, when the rest of the family arrived. He was crowded aside to let Old Niccolo and Aunt Francesca through, but Benvenuto spat at them like hot fat hitting fire and would not let them pass.

      “Let be, old boy,” Old Niccolo said. “You’ve done your best.” He turned to Aunt Francesca. “I shall never forgive the Petrocchis,” he said. “Never.”

      Paolo was once again struck by how wretched and goblin-like his grandfather looked. He had thought Old Niccolo was helping vast, panting, muddy Aunt Francesca along, but he now wondered if it was not the other way round.

      “Well. Let’s get rid of this horrible message,” Old Niccolo said irritably to the rest of them.

      He raised his arms to start the family on the spell and collapsed. His hands went to his chest. He slid to his knees, and his face was a strange colour. Paolo thought he was dead until he saw him breathing, in uneven jerks. Elizabeth, Uncle Lorenzo and Aunt Maria rushed to him.

      “Heart attack,” Uncle Lorenzo said, nodding over at Antonio. “Get that spell going. We’ve got to get him indoors.”

      “Paolo, run for the doctor,” said Elizabeth.

      As Paolo ran, he heard the burst of singing behind him. When he came back with the doctor, the message had vanished and Old Niccolo had been carried up to bed. Aunt Francesca, still muddy, with her hair hanging down one side, was roving up and down the yard like a moving mountain, crying and wringing her hands.

      “Spells are forbidden,” she called out to Paolo. “I’ve stopped everything.”

      “And a good thing too!” the doctor said sourly. “A man of Niccolo Montana’s age has no business to be brawling in the streets. And make your great-aunt lie down,” he said to Paolo. “She’ll be in bed next.”

      Aunt Francesca would only go to the Saloon, where she refused even to sit down. She raged up and down, wailing about Old Niccolo, weeping about Tonino, declaring that the virtue had gone from the Casa Montana for good, and uttering terrible threats against the Petrocchis. Nobody else was much better. The children cried with tiredness. Elizabeth and the aunts worried about Old Niccolo, and then about Aunt Francesca. In the Scriptorium, among all the abandoned spells, Antonio and the uncles sat rigid with worry, and the rest of the Casa was full of older cousins wandering about and cursing the Petrocchis.

      Paolo found Rinaldo leaning moodily on the gallery rail, in spite of it being dark now and really quite cold. “Curse those Petrocchis,” he said gloomily to Paolo. “We can’t even earn a living now, let alone help if there’s a war.”

      Paolo, in spite of his misery, was very flattered that Rinaldo seemed to think him old enough to talk family business to. He said, “Yes, it’s awful,” and tried to lean on the rail in the same elegant attitude as Rinaldo. It was not easy, since Paolo was not nearly tall enough, but he leant and prepared the arguments he would use to persuade Rinaldo that Tonino was in the hands of an enemy enchanter. That was not easy either. Paolo knew that Rinaldo would not listen to him if he dropped the least small hint that he had talked to a Petrocchi – and besides, he would have died rather than told his cousin. But he knew that, if he persuaded Rinaldo, Rinaldo would rescue Tonino in five dashing minutes. Rinaldo was a true Montana.

      While he thought, Rinaldo said angrily, “What possessed that stupid brat Tonino to read that blessed book? I shall give him something to think about when we get him back!”

      Paolo shivered in the cold. “Tonino always reads books.” Then he shifted a bit – the elegant attitude was not at all comfortable – and asked timidly, “How shall we get him back?”

      This was not at all what he had planned to say. He was annoyed with himself.

      “What’s the use?” Rinaldo said. “We know where he is – in the Casa Petrocchi. And if he’s uncomfortable there, it’s his own fault!”

      “But he’s