“would want to set a strong calling-charm on Tonino Montana? Who would be mean enough to pick on a child? Who would—?” He turned suddenly on Benvenuto, crouched beside the book, and Benvenuto cowered right down, quivering, with his ragged ears flat against his flat head. “Where were you last night, Benvenuto?” he asked, more softly still.
No one understood the reply Benvenuto gave as he cowered, but everyone knew the answer. It was in Antonio and Elizabeth’s harrowed faces, in the set of Rinaldo’s chin, in Aunt Francesca’s narrowed eyes, narrowed almost out of existence, and in the way Aunt Maria looked at Uncle Lorenzo; but most of all, it was in the way Benvenuto threw himself down on his side, with his back to the room, the picture of a cat in despair.
Old Niccolo looked up. “Now isn’t that odd?” he said gently. “Benvenuto spent last night chasing a white she-cat – over the roofs of the Casa Petrocchi.” He paused to let that sink in. “So Benvenuto,” he said, “who knows a bad spell when he sees one, was not around to warn Tonino.”
“But why?” Elizabeth asked despairingly.
Old Niccolo went, if possible, quieter still. “I can only conclude, my dear, that the Petrocchis are being paid by Florence, Siena, or Pisa.”
There was another silence, thick and meaningful. Antonio broke it. “Well,” he said, in such a subdued, grim way that Paolo stared at him. “Well? Are we going?”
“Of course,” said Old Niccolo. “Domenico, fetch me my small black spell-book.”
Everyone left the room, so suddenly, quietly and purposefully that Paolo was left behind, not clear what was going on. He turned uncertainly to go to the door, and realised that Rosa had been left behind too. She was sitting on Tonino’s bed, with one hand to her head, white as Tonino’s sheets.
“Paolo,” she said, “tell Claudia I’ll have the baby, if she wants to go. I’ll have all the little ones.”
She looked up at Paolo as she said it, and she looked so strange that Paolo was suddenly frightened. He ran gladly out into the gallery. The family was gathering, still quiet and grim, in the yard. Paolo ran down there and gave his message. Protesting little ones were pushed up the steps to Rosa, but Paolo did not help. He found Elizabeth and Lucia and pushed close to them. Elizabeth put an arm round him and an arm round Lucia.
“Keep close to me, loves,” she said. “I’ll keep you safe.” Paolo looked across her at Lucia and saw that Lucia was not frightened at all. She was excited. She winked at him. Paolo winked back and felt better.
A minute later, Old Niccolo took his place at the head of the family and they all hurried to the gate. Paolo had just forced his way through, jostling his mother on one side and Domenico on the other, when a carriage drew up in the road, and Uncle Umberto scrambled out of it. He came up to Old Niccolo in that grim, quiet way in which everyone seemed to be moving.
“Who is kidnapped? Bernardo? Domenico?”
“Tonino,” replied Old Niccolo. “A book, with the University arms on the wrapping.”
Uncle Umberto answered, “Luigi Petrocchi is also a member of the University.”
“I bear that in mind,” said Old Niccolo.
“I shall come with you to the Casa Petrocchi,” said Uncle Umberto. He waved at the cab driver to tell him to go. The man was only too ready to. He nearly pulled his horses over on their sides, trying to turn them too quickly. The sight of the entire Casa Montana grimly streaming into the street seemed altogether too much for him.
That pleased Paolo. He looked back and forth as they swung down the Via Magica, and pride grew in him. There were such a lot of them. And they were so single-minded. The same intent look was in every face. And though children pattered and young men strode, though the ladies clattered on the cobbles in elegant shoes, though Old Niccolo’s steps were short and bustling, and Antonio, because he could not wait to come at the Petrocchis, walked with long lunging steps, the common purpose gave the whole family a common rhythm. Paolo could almost believe they were marching in step.
The concourse crowded down the Via Sant’ Angelo and swept round the corner into the Corso, with the Cathedral at their backs. People out shopping hastily gave them room. But Old Niccolo was too angry to use the pavement like a mere pedestrian. He led the family into the middle of the road and they marched there like a vengeful army, forcing cars and carriages to draw into the kerbs, with Old Niccolo stepping proudly at their head. It was hard to believe that a fat old man with a baby’s face could look so warlike.
The Corso bends slightly beyond the Archbishop’s Palace. Then it runs straight again by the shops, past the columns of the Art Gallery on one side and the gilded doors of the Arsenal on the other. They swung round that bend. There, approaching from the opposite direction, was another similar crowd, also walking in the road. The Petrocchis were on the march too.
“Extraordinary!” muttered Uncle Umberto.
“Perfect!” spat Old Niccolo.
The two families advanced on one another. There was utter silence now, except for the cloppering of feet. Every ordinary citizen, as soon as they saw the entire Casa Montana advancing on the entire Casa Petrocchi, made haste to get off the street. People knocked on the doors of perfect strangers and were let in without question. The manager of Grossi’s, the biggest shop in Caprona, threw open his plate-glass doors and sent his assistants out to fetch in everyone nearby. After which he clapped the doors shut and locked a steel grille down in front of them. From between the bars, white faces stared out at the oncoming spell-makers. And a troop of Reservists, newly called up and sloppily marching in crumpled new uniforms, were horrified to find themselves caught between the two parties. They broke and ran, as one crumpled Reservist, and sought frantic shelter in the Arsenal. The great gilt doors clanged shut on them just as Old Niccolo halted, face to face with Guido Petrocchi.
“Well?” said Old Niccolo, his baby eyes glaring.
“Well?” retorted Guido, his red beard jutting.
“Was it,” asked Old Niccolo, “Florence or Pisa that paid you to kidnap my grandson Tonino?”
Guido Petrocchi gave a bark of contemptuous laughter. “You mean,” he said, “was it Pisa or Siena who paid you to kidnap my daughter Angelica?”
“Do you imagine,” said Old Niccolo, “that saying that makes it any less obvious that you are a baby snatcher?”
“Do you,” asked Guido, “accuse me of lying?”
“Yes!” roared the Casa Montana. “Liar!”
“And the same to you!” howled the Casa Petrocchi, crowding up behind Guido, lean and ferocious, many of them red-haired. “Filthy liars!”
The fighting began while they were still shouting. There was no knowing who started it. The roars on either side were mixed with singing and muttering. Scrips fluttered in many hands. And the air was suddenly full of flying eggs. Paolo received one, a very greasy fried egg, right across the mouth, and it made him so angry that he began to shout egg-spells too, at the top of his voice. Eggs splattered down, fried eggs, poached eggs, scrambled eggs, new-laid eggs, and eggs so horribly bad that they were like bombs when they burst. Everyone slithered on the eggy cobbles. Egg streamed off the ends of people’s hair and spattered everyone’s clothes.
Then somebody varied it with a bad tomato or so. Immediately, all manner of unpleasant things were flying about the Corso: cold spaghetti and cowpats – though these may have been Rinaldo’s idea in the first place, they were very quickly coming from both sides – and cabbages; squirts of oil and showers of ice; dead rats and chicken livers.
It was no wonder that the ordinary people kept out of the way. Egg and tomato ran down the grilles over Grossi’s windows and splashed the white columns of the Art Gallery. There were loud clangs as rotten cabbages hit the brass doors of the Arsenal.
This was the first, disorganised phase of the battle, with everyone venting