Damiano's Lute (14 page)

Damiano's hands clenched over his knees. He made a rude noise. “If there is one sort of… of person, spirit or flesh, whom you can trust, it is an angel of God! And speaking of that, why did you call him Chief of Eagles? Raphael is his name.”

Very carefully, Saara crossed her feet on her lap. Her face showed no expression, yet the air in the old wagon was charged.

“I know his name as he knows mine. I call him Chief of Eagles because that is what we call him. After all, he is a white eagle in form, isn't he?”

“No,” replied Damiano, nonplussed. “Of course not. I used to see him quite clearly, and he is a man—a beautiful man with wings.”

“An eagle,” she contradicted. “With human face and hands.”

Damiano recoiled from the idea. “Monstrous! Why would he look like that when the angel form is higher and more beautiful, and he himself is by nature high and beautiful?”

She snickered. “Evidently you think the body of a man is more beautiful than that of an eagle. There are two ways of thinking about that. And as for being higher, well, you cannot dispute that an eagle is much higher than a man. Most of the time.”

His forehead creased with puzzlement as Saara continued. “And I say again you trust too easy, Damiano. Even if this Chief—this Raphael—is all you say, as true as the Creator (and with the way you defend this spirit, young one, it is too bad you cannot marry him), still you place your trust in other strange places.”

“In Gaspare? It is not so much I trust him as…”

She shook her head till the braids flew. “No, Dami. In me. Why should you trust Saara, after all? I hate—hated your father. You killed my lover. I killed your little dog. We have torn at each other worse than wolves. Yet you place your soul in my hands and go off, like leaving a baby at grandmother's.”

Damiano hung his head. “But there is no more to it than that, Saara. Also, we know each other as well as any brother and sister, for I have walked in your mind, and you in mine. You know I never hated you, and… I would like to think you have forgiven me.

“When I broke my staff and gave you my power, I thought it would be a useful servant to you.”

“It is a charge,” she amended. “A burden.”

“It has not made you stronger? When I held your power I was terribly strong, I felt, and could do almost anything I could think of.”

Then Saara stared out the open back of the wagon, and her face was cold, distant and unreadable. “Oh, I am strong now, all right. Damiano—remember how your father told you I was the greatest witch in all the Italies? Well now, holding your fire with my own, I am without doubt the greatest witch in all of Europe.

“And if I wanted, I could go home.” She made a small noise in her throat. “I could go home to the North, where all are witches, and make a tribe around me. My power would stand as a wall of protection against winter and all the lesser enemies. I would be great, and the men of the fens would fight each other for my notice. They would pile skins at my feet: milk-colored skins of the reindeer, soft as butter. They would chant a new kalevala to me.”

Her glance shifted back to Damiano. “The thought makes me sick.”

Damiano was so sun-darkened that when pity drew his face darker, he seemed to fade into the shadows. “I understand. Last year, my own strength made me so sick I had to be rid of it.”

Saara drew closer. “But it is not last year now, Dami. It is this year. Will you take it back, your power? Your broken soul?”

“No.”

His answer was abrupt, almost involuntary. Saara snapped her head back, and bit down on one knuckle in frustration.

“Let me explain, Saara. It is partly the lute, you see.”

“The lute?”

“Yes. When I was a witch, then being
that
came first. It had to. A witch must be true to his senses first, before anything else.

“But an artist—a musician especially—he must be
that
first, and there is not much left over.” Damiano spoke very earnestly, fearing it was impossible to communicate what he meant. “And music is far more important than magic.

“That, at least, is what I believe.”

“You are muddled, Damiano,” Saara answered him, but not with anger. “They are not two things, music and magic. Unless you want to say my small songs are not magical. Or not musical.” And she smiled at this last.

“Neither one, little nightingale.” And with these words the prickle and tension between them dissolved and was gone. In the dim and fusty warmth of the wagon they heard one another breathing. On impulse, Damiano took her hand.

She let her fingers rest on his. “So,” she whispered, “there is an old question unanswered. If you love me, Damiano, what are you going to do about it?”

It was not a large gap between them: two feet at most. Damiano reached across and placed both hands on either side of her waist. He pulled her to him, so that she sat between his knees, both of them facing the green world at the foot of the wagon. The blanket, which had fallen back as he stretched forward, he arranged once more, wrapping them both in.

He laid his chin on her shoulder. “Saara. I also said I had nothing to give.”

“Not even time, you said. Does that mean your practicing the lute leaves you no…”

“No.” He chuckled and softly kissed her at the nape of the neck. “I'm not such a madman. But I have struck a bargain with the Devil. Do your people know the Devil—the most evil spirit?”

She nodded, and her hair tickled his nose. Saara was very warm to hold, and Damiano grinned to think that had he been a little bolder, he might have given his blanket to Gaspare.

“Yes. We know many wicked ones, like the bringer of famine, and the ice-devil, and others whose tricks do harm. But the worst of the devils is the one called the Liar. Any man who deals with him we call a fool.”

Damiano's grin went hard-edged. “It is the same all over. Father of Lies. Yet I struck a bargain with him, and I am no liar and— usually—no fool.”

Saara twisted in an effort to see his face, but Damiano held her tightly. It was easier to say certain things while staring out at the grazing horse. “It was after we fought, you and I, and I felt full of ashes. I traded him my future for the sake of my city. It is to have peace for fifty years, and I may not return to it.

“And I am to die,” he said. “Very soon, now, for he said the situation could not permit my living more than two years more, and that was over a year ago.”

And now he could not hold the woman, who writhed snakelike around and fixed him a look of astonished accusation. “What? Are you about to walk up to his door and say, ‘Throw me in your caldrons of mud and sulfur?' “

He, in turn stared at her shoulder. “No, certainly not. He said it was not he who was going to… to kill me at all, but circumstance.”

“And you agreed to this?”

“Yes, of course. Saara—that was the smallest of my concerns. He also said Partestrada itself would shrivel and die unless fed on the blood of violence, as is Milan. I am an Italian, my lady, and my city means to me what a mother would mean to another man. That was why I came to you, rather than accept the evil one's judgment.”

“And I said to you ‘go away.' I sent a man to whip you away.” Beneath his hands, her shoulders hardened like steel.

“No matter, Saara. He did not succeed. Anyway, all my efforts turned bad; neither my city nor I am meant for greatness. We will be forgotten,” he said, but without bitterness, and he rested his head against hers. “But we will not be murderers: neither Partestrada nor myself anymore.”

Now he turned her face to his by force. “Saara, don't start crying. I was not trying to make you unhappy.”

But the witch was not precisely crying. She was tight and trembling under his hands, but full of rebellion, rather than sorrow. “What is it?” she asked herself aloud. “That every man that I touch…

even as much as touch…” Her gaze was wet and angry.

“Why couldn't I have met you thirty years ago?” Saara took Damiano in a hug that squeezed the wind out of him. “Thirty years ago, when I was as foolish as you are.”

“Thirty years ago I wasn't yet born,” he replied, hugging back. “And I'm heartily sorry for being so tardy. Hey, dry up now. Don't be a mozzarella, like me, crying for every little thing,” he chided, rubbing a large, square finger over her reddening eyes.

And Saara's leaking tears did cease, between one moment and the next. “You're a fool to give up, Damiano. The Liar does not keep faith with men, and does not expect any better in return.”

“I still want the bargain, Saara. It is a good bargain.” He scratched his head furiously, as his eyebrows beetled over a scowl. “It is just—just that this year and a half has been a very long coda for a very short song.”

The Fenwoman's face was stern, but filled with an odd fire, neither cold nor hot, but wild like the green lights of the north. “Damiano— witch—I say to you you are a fool, but you are not as easily killed as you think. Take yourself back to yourself. The Liar cannot hurt you.”

Damiano closed his eyes, bathing in her fierce radiance. “He cannot hurt
you,
my lady. That I'll grant!” His hands held her closer, and his knees pressed against her.

There was a moment's silence, and Saara leaned back her head. Their mouths were very close. “What if I were to say,” she whispered, “that all I want of you is to couple together, and let the future go hang?”

His reaction was something between a snort and a chuckle. “I would say, Saara Fenwoman, that you should learn a more elegant vocabulary. But if you thought I intended to let you go now…”

He was wearing only one piece of clothing. So was she. Soon the blanket covered them both.

“You feel so warm to me,” murmured Damiano in her ear. “That must mean I feel cold to you.”

“No, Damiano. Don't worry.” Her reply was even softer.

And then he giggled. “What if Gaspare returns now?”

Playfully she pinched his ear. “You sound like a young girl behind the shed!”

He ran his hands down the length of the woman's body. His mouth was dry, and his throat full of pounding. With her hot flesh against his, he seemed to be embracing the summer earth itself, lying prone upon it, dissolving into it.

And it seemed he was touching himself as well, for there was a familiar fire, the floating strength he remembered as a birthright. He heard the mole scrabbling in the earth beneath the wagon. All the planets, too, reached out and spoke to him, with the voice of a long, black flute.

And of course he
was
touching himself—touching that part of him he had exiled, and exiled with reason. Fire sprang through his hands into his head and heart, flame as blinding as the punishments of hell.

He snatched himself away. “Saara!” he screamed, still half-choked with passion. “What are you doing to me? You… you…”

Saara lay wide-eyed and panting on the blanket. Naked, she shone like a sword in the black cavern. No words came out of her, but only a grunt of animal surprise.

Damiano shrank from her to the wall of the wagon. He was shaking. He shook his head as though flies were buzzing, and his eyes were staring mad. “You knew what would happen. You tricked me.”

He hugged himself tightly until the shivering slowed. “It's gone again,” he whispered at last. “I have only just escaped.”

Saara was grabbing her dress. “So have I. Only just. Goodbye, Damiano.”

Gaspare came whistling back at noon. He found Damiano still in the wagon, blanket-wrapped. “Eh! Why didn't you put on the white shirt?”

“There is no warmth in it,” replied Damiano, and indeed, he seemed to need more than the warmth of wool, for he was shivering and blue. His eyes wandered hungrily in the dark.

“Where's Saara?” asked the boy, plumping himself down on the boards beside his friend. His jerkin pockets were hugely distended.

“Gone,” said Damiano shortly. “Flown away.” His eyes, seeking somewhere to rest, fixed on Gaspare's pocket, from which protruded a brown, dead hare's foot, its black claws spread like spokes of iron.

 

Chapter 5

It was the blackest time of the night, and it was raining. Gaspare lay huddled under every blanket of their mutual possession, listening to Damiano practice the lute. First the fellow spent a half-hour practicing every scale in common usage, taking it through various times and rhythms.

These ought to have been simple exercises, boring to the player and listener, but Damiano's playing tonight held such a brooding intensity that Gaspare listened in a sort of tranced horror, as though to a madman who whispered to himself while the rest of the world slept. Just as the boy began to fear for the lutenist's mind, ornament appeared in these repetitive exercises, as though squeezed by effort out of the structure. Finally, after almost two hours had passed and gray light was beginning to leak in through the cracks of the poor wagon wall, he exploded into melody.

Gaspare said nothing. Who was he to criticize the pursuit of excellence, especially in one whom he considered rather his own creation? So what if the sounds were not restful? Gaspare, too, was an artist and he understood.

Besides, he was a little afraid to talk to Damiano anymore. Especially when the musician had the lute in his lap.

He let the covers slip from his head, only to discover that the air outside was not cold. The lute player saw the movement. He stared at Gaspare with wide black eyes.

“Good morning,” the boy was emboldened to say.

A moment's silence followed, and Damiano sighed heavily. It seemed by his face and by the strain of his breathing that he was approaching Gaspare from a distance, laboring to get close enough to exchange words. Finally he said, “Today I want to try that castle we saw off to the east. They may be interested in entertainment, even though it is Lent. There is certain to be a village with inns nearby.”