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

Some of the words show on our Angel.”

      Because he was quite right, Angelica lost her temper. “All right! Do it yourself, if you’re so clever, you horrible Montana!”

      She held the tap out to Tonino and he snatched it from her, quite as angry. “Here,” he said, ploughing up a long curl of varnish. “Here’s the hanging bit. And the words go sideways. You can see Carmen pa, Venit ang, Cap and a lot more, but there won’t be room for it.”

      “Our Angel,” said Angelica, “says cis saeculare, elus cantare and virtus data near the end.” Tonino scratched away and took no notice. It was hard enough shaping tiny letters with a thing like a tap, without listening to Angelica arguing. “Well it does!” said Angelica. “I’ve often wondered why it’s not the words we sing—”

      The same idea came to both of them. They stared at one another, nose to nose across the scratched varnish.

      “Finding the words means looking for them,” said Tonino.

      “And they were over our gates all the time! Oh how stupid!” exclaimed Angelica. “Come on. We must get out now!”

      Tonino left the scroll with Carmen scraped on it. There was really no room for any more. They dragged the creaking, swaying table across the hole they had made in the floor and set to work underneath it, hacking lumps out of the painted floor.

      Shortly, they could see a bar of silvery metal stretching from the trap door to the floor underneath them. Tonino forced the end of his candlestick down between the battered cardboard edges and heaved sideways at the metal.

      “There’s a spell on it,” he said.

      “Angel of Caprona,” Angelica said at the same moment.

      And the bar slipped sideways. A big oblong piece of the floor dropped away from in front of their knees and swung, leaving a very deep dark hole.

      “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