Damiano's Lute (16 page)

Where was the troubador's tune? Had the fellow slid into a new piece without stopping? No, for there was the melody again, or a piece of it. But, great Saint Gabriele, what time was this? Three-time? Five?

It was five over three, and it went on and on, under the melody and over it, changing the love song of Bernard de Ventadorn into something lunging and bizarre. For a moment—one cowardly moment only—Gaspare considered sneaking out alone.

But the ancient tune did not die under this treatment; it lived and grew, thrown from treble to mid to bass as a juggler throws a ball.

The player's mouth was open, but no sound could be heard. His head nodded left and right with his music, and he baby-rocked the lute.

He has forgotten we are here, thought Gaspare. He has forgotten the comte.

He has forgotten me.

He is finally unmanageable, decided the boy. Mad beyond concealment. He looked around to see whether by unlucky circumstance any of these doltish noblemen were paying attention to the music.

No. Only the woman in yellow, who watched calm-faced, with eyes Gaspare did not trust.

And then between one moment and the next Gaspare did not care whether Damiano was mad beyond concealment. For the rhythm caught up with his fears and outpaced them, and one particular turn upon the melody took him by the throat.

He was standing; he didn't know how that had come to pass. He was standing between two folds of musty tapestry, gold-chased. He saw Damiano's head nod with the driving beat, moving up and down like that of a horse in the traces. The musician's lips were pulled back from his teeth.

What was he playing now? This was not Ventadorn, or anything Provençal. And it was not Italian, not with that bass, and the great arcing sixths of the melody. Christ! Had he ever complained that Delstrego did not have enough bass?

But what was it? Gaspare had never heard this piece, though tiny licks of melody (tiny, delicate, curled like cats' tongues) were familiar.

And then the boy realized he had heard the piece without knowing it, incomplete and embryonic, through the booming of rain in the darkness. It was Damiano's own music.

The redhead smiled a smile that made him seem old. “This,” hissed Gaspare to himself, “this is my reward for sitting up all the night while he makes noise. For keeping food in his belly, and keeping his pennies safe in his pocket.

“He was created to make this music,” continued Gaspare, speaking quite audibly to no one at all. “He was made to play, but it is I, I myself who nursed him to it. It is I who made this moment possible.”

And wind pulled the arras into billows and splashed the red torchlight over the floor. It turned Damiano's black brocade into embers, deep burning, and struck stars from his black hair. It blew a thick river of music over the dais of the high table and through the cold, dark hall where the bread was also dark. The servants lifted their heads to listen.

And even at the comte's table, conversation had died. The warrior in soiled white still leaned toward the woman in yellow, but his head was craned back and his flat gray eyes stared at the table.

And she stared at the musician directly now, as light played games with her yellow-brown eyes. Her small nostrils flared and two spots of color stood on her cheeks.

“So,” whispered Gaspare at her from twenty feet away, his motley making him invisible among the brilliant threads of the hanging, “so you think you understand, do you? You think perhaps this music is for you, pretty lady with red cheeks?”

Then he snorted. “Well, it is not for you. Nor for you, Plessis, who has finally condescended to stop chewing and listen. You have not the brain nor the training to understand Delstrego. Nor have you suffered enough to pay for the music you hear.

“No, nobles of Provence, or of Italy or China, for that matter. His music and this moment are mine.”

And silently Gaspare stepped out of the folds of the arras and stood beside Damiano, quiet as a young tree, and as straight from pride.

Damiano raged within his music, but could not escape. Sweet Mother of God, that the planets should arc above him and he not see them. That the mouse should squeak in the stone and he not hear. That a horse who served him should speak and be not understood. And that men—and women—should walk by and leave him as numb to them as a dead man.

He
had
died last year in Lombardy, breaking his staff on the stones of a grave. He had died and felt not the pain of it until now.

If only Saara had let him be, dead or alive, but free from pain.

I feel my blindness, he sang, using no words. I am deaf, I am numb. There is nothing in my life left.

Nothing but this, replied the lute.

The Comte de Plessis had a brow that might have been dug with a plow. His right hand was full of cake. Raisins dropped through his fingers. He brooded at Damiano. An ancient in gray doeskin addressed him; he shrugged the man away like a fly.

A peg had slipped. Damiano was tuning. The comte extended an arm as wide and hairy as the haunch of one of his own hounds. “You,” grunted the comte. “Where are you from? Where did you learn all that?”

Gaspare's stomach tightened like dry leather. Genius was a very fragile fire, as compared with feudal arrogance. Genius can be guttered by a stupid man's blow.

Damiano stood respectfully enough, despite his drunken eyes. “I am from the Piedmont, my lord,” he replied, with a three-point bow. “And the music… is from no one place.”

De Plessis settled back on his ebonpoint stool, which creaked beneath his weight. He cast his eyes over the assembly at the high table, which waited in silence for what he might say.

“Good,” is what finally came out of that misshapen mouth. “Good enough for Avignon. He ought to go to Avignon.”

“That is the tack we must take,” repeated Gaspare, bouncing ahead, his shoe heels not touching the ground. “No more playing for loutish dances. It is not the size of your audience but its quality that will make you famous.”

Damiano was leading Festilligambe by a handful of mane. The horse's ears were back; he had been very nervous for the last few days—since Saara left, to be exact. The lutenist leaned against the brute's black shoulder, for he was tired. “Ah,” he replied. “Is that so, Gaspare? Well, I have always thought it more pleasant to play before wealthy people than poor, and before the educated rather than the ignorant. But the problem has always been that there are so many of the poor and ignorant and so few of the educated and wealthy.”

The redhead dismissed this observation with a headshake, as together they passed through the jaws of the portcullis. The echo of hoof-falls rang in the dry ravine beneath the castle bridge. “Yes, but now we have the ruby. We can afford to wait.”

Behind Damiano's weary eyes a curtain was almost drawn away. Almost, but not quite. They flickered, and he put his hand to his leather pocket as he replied, “If it is a ruby.”

“It is genuine; the seneschal recognized that right away. It is your good luck—or, no, your rightful reward after what I heard tonight. We must sell it in Avignon and buy more suitable clothes.”

“Clothes?” Once again Damiano was clothed in his tunic of inappropriate blush pink. “A better lute is what I need. I have to keep hopping over those terrible frets in the middle.”

The boy raised an admonishing finger, which shone like a white worm as they passed a cottage window lit with oil light. “A lute will come, Damiano, but right now respectable clothes are more important. Listen to your manager.”

Amusement lightened the black eyes for a moment. “My manager? I thought you were my dancer.”

Gaspare snorted. “The music you are playing now can't be danced to, sheep-face.”

“Enough of that.” Damiano's whisper was metallic. The horse shied suddenly, almost pulling its mane from Damiano's clutching fingers. “My name is Damiano.”

The boy came to a shivering halt. It flashed upon him like lightning that having gotten the musician to Avignon, to the feet of power and acclaim, it might be felt he was no longer necessary. In fact, to one who silenced the high table of the castle of Plessis, and who sparked the massive Comte de Plessis himself to say “Good enough for Avignon” (much too good, if the hulk really knew it…) and who had in his pocket a gold-set ruby, what use was Gaspare at all?

The black tail of the horse swished ahead of him. Damiano's pale pink shirt was melting into the darkness. Gaspare folded his arms in front of him, hugging himself. They felt like steel bands around his ribs.

Damiano slowed the horse. He turned, his white teeth visible under starlight. “What are you waiting for… manager?” he inquired.

“I have it in writing. I asked him to give it to me in writing.” Gaspare tapped his bony breast. “It is here.”

Damiano sat at the back of the wagon, cleaning his teeth with a bit of chewed stick. Sometimes he didn't shave, or comb his hair for days on end, but about his teeth he was fastidious. “Who—the comte? You were crazy enough to ask the Comte de Plessis for a recommendation. In writing?”

Gaspare sprang from the earth onto the floor of the wagon, landing in a front roll. “I was. I did. Why not, after all, if he liked you? And he did.”

Damiano spat out flecks of wood. “I am rather surprised the man can write.”

Gaspare pulled a rather furtive smile. “He can't. He got his daughter to do it. Do you remember her? She wore daffdowndilly yellow.”

Damiano nodded. “I thought perhaps she understood a little of what I was doing. At least she paid attention.”

Gaspare peered studiously out into the night, where the only sound was that of equine jaws grinding. “She… has an interest. I was told to tell you she will probably be hawking tomorrow, with her ladies.”

Damiano stared. “Why should I know that? Do you mean she wants…” The question dissolved in a noise of contempt.

“We are going into Avignon tomorrow,” he said finally. “Easter is coming very fast. We don't have time for play.”

Gaspare delivered an oddly formal punch on the arm. “Delstrego,” he said. “Delstrego, you are going to be receiving a lot of attention: this kind and other kinds. Isn't that what you've wanted? Isn't it the game for which you've come to Provence?”

Somewhere out among the invisible leaves an owl hooted. Damiano cringed from the sound, and bit down savagely on the knuckle of his left thumb. “I want a game that is worth the price I've paid,” he muttered, but only to himself.

 

Chapter 6

They came within sight of the Rhone River, which had in times past carved out the sweet and fruitful valley through which they had driven half the length of Provence. Now the road bent toward the river, kissed it, and followed it into the white city of Avignon. Gaspare and Damiano passed beneath rusty gates and into a checkerboard of limed shops and limestone cobbled streets.

Under the vernal sun Avignon wore a smiling face.

Gaspare trotted tiptoe ahead. Festilligambe stepped heavily behind. Damiano walked in the middle, one hand upon a shoulder of each. Gaspare was more difficult to manage.

“Perhaps we'll find her right away,” yodeled the boy, skirting a public well and three men carrying an alabaster urn. “Just sitting on a corner, talking to some new gossip. Or cadging sweets; Evienne has no shame where sweets are concerned.”

Frantically Damiano prodded the black gelding out of the stonemasters' way. “I didn't know she had shame of any kind,” he mumbled, and then added in a louder voice, “Well, it's more likely we'll meet her on the streets than in the Papal Palace. But if I know Jan Karl at all, he will see us before we see him. He likes so much to be on top of things.”

Gaspare didn't hear him, for the boy's nervous feet had carried on ahead along the row of close-set stucco buildings.

The street was very narrow. Very narrow. A stream of pedestrians flowed about him and threatened constantly to clot about the horse. Avignon made a Piedmontese feel smothered.

And Damiano could not make the confused gelding hurry.

He could not see Gaspare anymore; he gave up trying. With a sigh, he put his weight against the high chalked wall of an enclosed garden. Festilligambe, in turn, tried to put his weight upon Damiano.

“Don't do that,” muttered Damiano, jabbing the beast with a thumbnail.

And then he said “Hush!” and raised his head.

Festilligambe, who had been making no noise at all, pricked his ears also.

They heard music, not loud but close enough to ring clear: a flow as complex as water broken on rocks. It shimmered from many strings together, like an entire concert of lutes—if lutes had been strung in metal.

For half a minute longer Damiano listened, motionless with the rigidity of a pointing dog. Finally, with a word to the gelding to stay, he leaped upward and boosted himself onto the wall.

It was a small garden, planted with tubs of rosemary and fennel. Three anemic olive trees fluttered their silver, sword-shaped leaves, while the cool smell of thyme warred with Avignon's odor of almonds and human feces.

In the far corner of the garden, under a vine-woven trellis, sat a man playing on a harp strung with brass. It was from him the broad splashing music had come. But even as Damiano spied him, the player paused to examine his left hand, which was clawed like the talon of a bird. With a fragment of pumice stone he buffed his middle finger, muttering.

“Hello,” called Damiano, letting himself slide onto a walkway of stones. The harper glanced up and his handsome fair face expressed his disturbance at finding a stranger where no stranger should be.

Damiano noticed, and he grimaced an apology. But though Damiano had manners better than the average, certain things were more important to him than manners. “I'm sorry, monsieur, but I had to come right over. It is because of your bass line.”

“Because of my what?” The harper was about fifty years old. His flaxen hair had been made frizzy by lime, and a line of stubble made clear that his high forehead had known the assistance of a razor. His eyebrows were black (whether by nature or art) and his eyes blue. He was impeccably groomed and clean shaven, and dressed in a house robe of full Provençal cut. But his gentlemanly appearance made his talonlike nails even more noticeable.