Benvenuto stood, his brush of tail waving slightly at the tip, his hind legs canted slightly apart under his fluffy drawers, staring gravely at the tall man. Tonino thought peevishly that, from behind, Benvenuto often looked pretty silly. The man looked almost as bad. He was wearing an exceedingly expensive coat with a fur collar and a tweed travelling cap with daft earflaps. And he bowed to Benvenuto.
“Good afternoon, Benvenuto,” he said, as grave as Benvenuto himself. “I’m glad to see you so well. Yes, I’m very well thank you.”
Benvenuto advanced to rub himself round the stranger’s legs.
“No,” said the man. “I beg you. Your hairs come off.”
And Benvenuto stopped, without abating an ounce of his uncommon politeness.
By this time, Tonino was extremely resentful. This was the first time for years that Benvenuto had behaved as if anyone mattered more than Tonino. He raised his eyes accusingly to the stranger’s. He met eyes even darker than his own, which seemed to spill brilliance over the rest of the man’s smooth dark face. They gave Tonino a jolt, worse than the time the horses turned back to cardboard. He knew, beyond a shadow of doubt, that he was looking at a powerful enchanter.
“How do you do?” said the man. “No, despite your accusing glare, young man, I have never been able to understand cats – or not more than in the most general way. I wonder if you would be kind enough to translate for me what Benvenuto is saying.”
Tonino listened to Benvenuto. “He says he’s very pleased to see you again and welcome to the Casa Montana, sir.” The sir was from Benvenuto, not Tonino. Tonino was not sure he cared for strange enchanters who walked into the Casa and took up Benvenuto’s attention.
“Thank you, Benvenuto,” said the enchanter. “I’m very pleased to be back. Though, frankly, I’ve seldom had such a difficult journey. Did you know your borders with Florence and Pisa were closed?” he asked Tonino. “I had to come in by sea from Genoa in the end.”
“Did you?” Tonino said, wondering if the man thought it was his fault. “Where did you come from then?”
“Oh, England,” said the man.
Tonino warmed to that. This then could not be the enchanter the Duke had talked about. Or could he? Tonino was not sure how far away enchanters could work from.
“Makes you feel better?” asked the man.
“Mother’s English,” Tonino admitted, feeling he was giving altogether too much away.
“Ah!” said the enchanter. “Now I know who you are. You’re Antonio the Younger, aren’t you? You were a baby when I saw you last, Tonino.”
Since there is no reply to that kind of remark, Tonino was glad to see Old Niccolo hastening across the yard, followed by Aunt Francesca and Uncle Lorenzo, with Antonio and several more of the family hurrying behind them. They closed round the enchanter, leaving Tonino and Benvenuto beyond, by the gate.
“Yes, I’ve just come from the Casa Petrocchi,” Tonino heard the stranger say. To his surprise, everyone accepted it, as if it were the most natural thing for the stranger to have done – as natural as the way he took off his ridiculous English hat to Aunt Francesca.
“But you’ll stay the night with us,” said Aunt Francesca.
“If it’s not too much trouble,” the stranger said.
In the distance, as if they already knew – as they unquestionably did in a place like the Casa Montana – Aunt Maria and Aunt Anna went clambering up the gallery steps to prepare the guest room above. Aunt Gina emerged from the kitchen, held her hands up to Heaven, and dashed indoors again. Thoughtfully, Tonino gathered up Benvenuto and asked exactly who this stranger was.
Chrestomanci, of course, he was told. The most powerful enchanter in the world.
“Is he the one who’s spoiling our spells?” Tonino asked suspiciously.
Chrestomanci, he was told – impatiently, because Benvenuto evidently thought Tonino was being very stupid – is always on our side.
Tonino looked at the stranger again – or rather, at his smooth dark head sticking out from among the shorter Montanas – and understood that Chrestomanci’s coming meant there was a crisis indeed.
The stranger must have said something about him. Tonino found them all looking at him, his family smiling lovingly. He smiled back shyly.
“Oh, he’s a good boy,” said Aunt Francesca.
Then they all surged, talking, across the yard. “What makes it particularly difficult,” Tonino heard Chrestomanci saying, “is that I am, first and foremost, an employee of the British Government. And Britain is keeping out of Italian affairs. But luckily I have a fairly wide brief.”
Almost at once, Aunt Gina shot out of the kitchen again. She had cancelled the ordinary supper and started on a new one in honour of Chrestomanci. Six people were sent out at once for cakes and fruit, and two more for lettuce and cheese. Paolo, Corinna and Lucia were caught as they came in chatting from school and told to go at once to the butcher’s. But, at this point, Rinaldo erupted furiously from the Scriptorium.
“What do you mean, sending all the kids off like this!” he bawled from the gallery. “We’re up to our ears in war-spells here. I need copiers!”
Aunt Gina put her hands on her hips and bawled back at him. “And I need steak! Don’t you stand up there cheeking me, Rinaldo Montana! English people always eat steak, so steak I must have!”
“Then cut pieces off the cats!” screamed Rinaldo. “I need Corinna and Lucia up here!”
“I tell you they are going to run after me for once!” yelled Aunt Gina.
“Dear me,” said Chrestomanci, wandering into the yard. “What a very Italian scene! Can I help in any way?” He nodded and smiled from Aunt Gina to Rinaldo. Both of them smiled back, Rinaldo at his most charming.
“You would agree I need copiers, sir, wouldn’t you?” he said.
“Bah!” said Aunt Gina. “Rinaldo turns on the charm and I get left to struggle alone! As usual! All right. Because it’s war-spells, Paolo and Tonino can go for the steak. But wait while I write you a note, or you’ll come back with something no one can chew.”
“So glad to be of service,” Chrestomanci murmured, and turned away to greet Elizabeth, who came racing down from the gallery waving a sheaf of music and fell into his arms. The heads of the five little cousins Elizabeth had been teaching stared wonderingly over the gallery rail. “Elizabeth!” said Chrestomanci. “Looking younger than ever!” Tonino stared as wonderingly as his cousins. His mother was laughing and crying at once. He could not follow the torrent of English speech. “Virtue,” he heard, and “war” and, before long, the inevitable “Angel of Caprona”. He was still staring when Aunt Gina stuck her note into his hand and told him to make haste.
As they hurried to the butcher’s, Tonino said to Paolo, “I didn’t know Mother knew anyone like Chrestomanci.”
“Neither did I,” Paolo confessed. He was only a year older than Tonino, after all, and it seemed that Chrestomanci had last been in Caprona a very long time ago. “Perhaps he’s come to find the words to the Angel,” Paolo suggested. “I hope so. I don’t want Rinaldo to have to go away and fight.”
“Or Marco,” Tonino agreed. “Or Carlo or Luigi or even Domenico.”
Because of Aunt Gina’s note, the butcher treated them with great respect. “Tell her this is the last good steak she’ll see, if war is declared,” he said, and he passed them each a heavy, squashy pink armload.
They arrived back with their armfuls just as a cab set down