choruses.
The result was that the objects flying about the Corso rose up into the air and began to rain down as much more harmful things. Paolo looked up to see a cloud of transparent, glittering, frozen-looking pieces tumbling out of the sky at him. He thought it was snow at first, until a piece hit his arm and cut it.
“Vicious beasts!” Lucia screamed beside him. “It’s broken glass!”
Before the main body of the glass came down, Old Niccolo’s penetrating tenor voice soared above the yells and the chanting. “Testudo!”
Antonio’s full bass backed him up: “Testudo!” and so did Uncle Lorenzo’s baritone. Feet tramped. Paolo knew this one. He bowed over, tramping regularly, and kept up the charm with them. The whole family did it. Tramp, tramp, tramp. “Testudo, testudo, testudo!” Over their bent heads, the glass splinters bounced and showered harmlessly off an invisible barrier. “Testudo.” From the middle of the bowed backs, Elizabeth’s voice rang up sweetly in yet another spell. She was joined by Aunt Anna, Aunt Maria and Corinna. It was like a soprano descant over a rhythmic tramping chorus.
Paolo knew without being told that he must keep up the shield-charm while Elizabeth worked her spell. So did everyone else. It was extraordinary, exciting, amazing, he thought. Each Montana picked up the slightest hint and acted on it as if it were orders.
He risked glancing up and saw that the descant spell was working. Every glass splinter, as it hit the unseen shield Paolo was helping to make, turned into an angry hornet and buzzed back at the Petrocchis. But the Petrocchis simply turned them into glass splinters again and hurled them back. At the same time, Paolo could tell from the rhythm of their singing that some of them were working to destroy the shield-charm. Paolo sang and tramped harder than ever.
Meanwhile, Rinaldo’s voice and his father’s were singing gently, deeply, at work on something yet again. More of the ladies joined in the hornet-song so that the Petrocchis would not guess. And all the while, the tramp, tramp of the shield-charm was kept up by everyone else. It could have been the grandest chorus in the grandest opera ever, except that it all had a different purpose. The purpose came with a perfect roar of voices. The Petrocchis threw up their arms and staggered. The cobbles beneath them heaved and the solid Corso began to give way into a pit. Their instant reply was another huge sung chord, with discords innumerable. And the Montanas suddenly found themselves inside a wall of flame.
There was total confusion. Paolo staggered for safety, with his hair singed, over cobbles that quaked and heaved under his shoes. “Voltava!” he sang frantically. “Voltava!” Behind him, the flames hissed. Clouds of steam blotted out even the tall Art Gallery as the river answered the charm and came swirling up the Corso. Water was knee-deep round Paolo, up to his waist, and still rising. There was too much water. Someone had sung out of tune, and Paolo rather thought it was him. He saw his cousin Lena almost up to her chin in water and grabbed her. Towing Lena, he staggered through the current, over the heaving road, trying to make for the Arsenal steps.
Someone must have had the sense to work a cancel-spell. Everything suddenly cleared, steam, water and smoke together. Paolo found himself on the steps of the Art Gallery, not by the Arsenal at all. Behind him, the Corso was a mass of loose cobbles, shiny with mud and littered with cowpats, tomatoes and fried eggs. There could hardly have been more mess if Caprona had been invaded by the armies of Florence, Pisa and Siena.
Paolo felt he had had enough. Lena was crying. She was too young. She should have been left with Rosa. He could see his mother picking Lucia out of the mud, and Rinaldo helping Aunt Gina up.
“Let’s go home, Paolo,” whimpered Lena.
But the battle was not really finished. Montanas and Petrocchis were up and down the Corso in little angry, muddy groups, shouting abuse at one another.
“I’ll give you broken glass!”
“You started it!”
“You lying Petrocchi swine! Kidnapper!”
“Swine yourself! Spell-bungler! Traitor!”
Aunt Gina and Rinaldo slithered over to what looked like a muddy boulder in the street and heaved at it. The vast bulk of Aunt Francesca arose, covered with mud and angrier than Paolo had ever seen her.
“You filthy Petrocchis! I demand single combat!” she screamed. Her voice scraped like a great saw-blade and filled the Corso.
Aunt Francesca’s challenge seemed to rally both sides. A female Petrocchi voice screamed, “We agree!” and all the muddy groups hastened towards the middle of the Corso again.
Paolo reached his family to hear Old Niccolo saying, “Don’t be a fool, Francesca!” He looked more like a muddy goblin than the head of a famous family. He was almost too breathless to speak.
“They have insulted us and fought us!” said Aunt Francesca. “They deserve to be disgraced and drummed out of Caprona. And I shall do it! I’m more than a match for a Petrocchi!” She looked it, vast and muddy as she was, with her huge black dress in tatters and her grey hair half undone and streaming over one shoulder.
But the other Montanas knew Aunt Francesca was an old woman. There was a chorus of protest. Uncle Lorenzo and Rinaldo both offered to take on the Petrocchi champion in her place.
“No,” said Old Niccolo. “Rinaldo, you were wounded—”
He was interrupted by catcalls from the Petrocchis. “Cowards! We want single combat!”
Old Niccolo’s muddy face screwed up with anger. “Very well, they shall have their single combat,” he said. “Antonio, I appoint you. Step forward.”
Paolo felt a gush of pride. So his father was, as he had always thought, the best spell-maker in the Casa Montana. But the pride became mixed with alarm, when Paolo saw the way his mother clutched Antonio’s arm, and the worried, reluctant look on his father’s mud-streaked face.
“Go on!” Old Niccolo said crossly.
Slowly, Antonio advanced into the space between the two families, stumbling a little among the loose cobbles. “I’m ready,” he called to the Petrocchis. “Who’s your champion?”
It was clear that there was some indecision among the Petrocchis. A dismayed voice said, “It’s Antonio!” This was followed by a babble of talk. From the turning of heads and the uncertain heaving about, Paolo thought they were looking for a Petrocchi who was unaccountably missing. But the fuss died away, and Guido Petrocchi himself stepped forward. Paolo could see several Petrocchis looking as alarmed as Elizabeth.
“I’m ready too,” said Guido, baring his teeth angrily. Since his face was plastered with mud, it made him look quite savage. He was also large and sturdy. He made Antonio look small, gentle and fragile. “And I demand an unlimited contest!” snarled Guido. He seemed even angrier than Old Niccolo.
“Very well,” Antonio said. There could have been the least shake in his voice. “You’re aware that means a fight to the finish, are you?”
“Suits me perfectly,” said Guido. He was like a giant saying “Fee-fi-fo-fum”. Paolo was suddenly very frightened.
It was at this moment that the Ducal Police arrived. They had come in, quietly and cunningly, riding bicycles along the pavements. No one noticed them until the Chief of Police and his lieutenant were standing beside the two champions.
“Guido Petrocchi and Antonio Montana,” said the lieutenant, “I arrest you—”
Both champions jumped, and turned to find blue braided uniforms on either side of them.
“Oh go away,” said Old Niccolo, hastening forward. “What do