The Magicians of Caprona Read Free Page B

winged horse on the outside. He was fairly sure that was all he ever would do.
    He had a feeling somebody was calling him. Tonino looked round at the Piazza Nuova. No body. Despite the view, the Piazza was too far for the tourists to come. All Tonino could see were the mighty iron griffins which reared up at intervals all around the parapet, reaching iron paws to the sky. More griffins tangled into a fighting heap in the center of the square to make a fountain. And even here, Tonino could not get away from his family. A little metal plate was set into the stone beneath the huge iron claws of the nearest griffin. It was leaf-green. Tonino found he had burst into tears.
    Among his tears, he thought for a moment that one of the moredistant griffins had left its stone perch and come trotting round the parapet towards him. It had left its wings behind, or else had them tightly folded.
    He was told, a little smugly, that cats do not need wings. Benvenuto sat down on the parapet beside him, staring accusingly.
    Tonino had always been thoroughly in awe of Benvenuto. He stretched out a hand to him timidly. “Hallo, Benvenuto.”
    Benvenuto ignored the hand. It was covered with water from Tonino’s eyes, he said, and it made a cat wonder why Tonino was being so silly.
    “There are our spells everywhere,” Tonino explained. “And I’ll never be able—Do you think it’s because I’m half English?”
    Benvenuto was not sure quite what difference that made. All it meant, as far as he could see, was that Paolo had blue eyes like a Siamese and Rosa had white fur—
    “Fair hair,” said Tonino.
    —and Tonino himself had tabby hair, like the pale stripes in a tabby, Benvenuto continued, un perturbed. And those were all cats, weren’t they?
    “But I’m so stupid—” Tonino began.
    Benvenuto interrupted that he had heard Tonino chattering with those kittens yesterday, and he had thought Tonino was a good deal cleverer than they were. And before Tonino went and objected that those were only kittens, wasn’t Tonino only a kitten himself?
    At this, Tonino laughed and dried his hand on his trousers. When he held the hand out to Benvenuto again, Benvenuto rose up, very high on all four paws, and advanced to it, purring. Tonino ventured to stroke him. Benvenuto walked around and around, arched and purring, like the smallest and friendliest kitten in the Casa. Tonino found himself grinning with pride and pleasure. He could tell from the waving ofBenvenuto’s brush of a tail, in majestic, angry twitches, that Benvenuto did not altogether like being stroked—which made it all the more of an honor.
    That was better, Benvenuto said. He minced up to Tonino’s bare legs and installed himself across them, like a brown muscular mat. Tonino went on stroking him. Prickles came out of one end of the mat and treadled painfully at Tonino’s thighs. Benvenuto continued to purr. Would Tonino look at it this way, he wondered, that they were both, boy and cat, a part of the most famous Casa in Caprona, which in turn was part of the most special of all the Italian States?
    “I know that,” said Tonino. “It’s because I think it’s wonderful too that I—Are we really so special?”
    Of course, purred Benvenuto. And if Tonino were to lean out and look across at the Cathedral, he would see why.
    Obediently, Tonino leaned and looked. The huge marble bubbles of the Cathedral domes leaped up from among the houses at the end of the Corso. He knew there never was such a building as that. It floated, high and white and gold and green. And on the top of the highest dome the sun flashed on the great golden figure of the Angel, poised there with spread wings, holding in one hand a golden scroll. It seemed to bless all Caprona.
    That Angel, Benvenuto informed him, was there as a sign that Caprona would be safe as long as everyone sang the tune of the Angel of Caprona. The Angel had brought that song in a scroll straight from Heaven to the First Duke of