Damiano's Lute (24 page)

In a very human gesture, Raphael brought his right foot up along his left shin and held up the sole for inspection. It was dirty. At Damiano's air of apology his eyes flickered with amusement.

“Would you apologize for the entire world, Damiano? Did you create it, that you should feel responsible?” Raphael walked on.

There was something infinitely touching about the appearance of Raphael today, reflected Damiano. Of course this was the first time in a year and more he'd been able to see—to really
see
the angel. Perhaps memory had made him more intimidating than he really was.

But look now: save for his galleon-sail wings, he was no taller than a man. No taller than Damiano. And he seemed to be made of spider-silk, so delicate were his face and hands. Damiano felt obliged to step between the angel and a passing merchant sailor whose entertainments had known no Lent.

“You know, Raphael,” whispered Damiano, ducking under his left wing, “four years ago, when I was young, you frightened me a little. It seemed you were like a… great cloud in the sky, which could produce lightnings if I wasn't careful.”

The tip of that wing curled over Damiano's head like a great question mark. “And now I don't seem that way?”

Damiano shrugged and smiled. “No. I don't mean to offend you, but no, you do not seem so dangerous.”

Both wings touched together along their forward edges, from just above Raphael's head to their tips many feet in the air. (They barely cleared an overhanging third floor.) For a moment Raphael made a picture of formal symmetry, like one of the row of angels behind the altar of Saint Catherine's Church in Partestrada, far away.

“You certainly do not offend, Dami. I have never desired to frighten anyone. If I do no longer, then that alone has made it all worth it.”

Damiano stood stock-still, even after a woman with babe in arms slammed into him from behind, cursing.

“That alone has made it worth it.” It had been said in the same tone in which Saara had said, “Then it has been worth all the rats and mice.” Damiano felt uneasy. He cleared his throat.

“But, Seraph, this change has been in me, not in you.”

Raphael shook his head—a gesture Damiano had never seen from his teacher before. He replied, “No, Dami. I know it becomes hard to tell, when people, like boats moving across the water, have no reference point. But I know I am not what I was.”

“Then what are you?” blurted Damiano, regardless of the press of people on both sides of him, who were carefully not touching the madman. “Is it something I have done?”

For the sake of other pedestrians, Raphael nudged Damiano forward. For a minute he did not speak.

The angel's midnight-blue eyes roved from face to face with a probing interest, but he found none who looked back at him. He maneuvered his charge onto a less crowded street.

“What I am, my friend, is one of the Father's musicians. Or perhaps one of his pieces of music: it is not an easy distinction. And like any music—put into time—I go through change. It is not against my will.”

Damiano stood between disreputable housefronts, where wooden shutters still sealed the windows on this balmy and seductively breezy day. Before him an ancient grape twisted out of a hole in the cobbles. He was only a few feet from the spot where he had met Saara the owl.

But his thoughts were on Raphael, and he considered the angel's last statement. “Then, outside of time… you would not appear to change?”

The fine-etched golden brow drew down. “Damiano, you are not making sense,” the angel said, and raising both wings behind him he continued his careful parade.

Damiano did not feel like making sense today, but he did feel like talking. After the passage of a laundress, a red-tabarded member of the Guild of Sign Painters and two louts of undiscernible occupation, he began again.

“You were right, Seraph. I was not meant to be a saint.”

The angel turned in a baroque curl of feather. “I was right? I, Damiano? Did I ever say you were not meant to be a saint?”

The mortal thought back. “Well, almost. When I said that God loved dirty, sloppy-looking saints, you answered that you were not God and…”

Now the great wings pulled down and back, like those of a teased hawk, and Raphael's perfect nose grew a trifle sharp. “That I was not the Father. And that was all I said. I certainly didn't mean to put a limit upon your aspirations, Damiano.”

“Oh.” Damiano found himself staring at a misshapen alley corner which was decorated with plush blue mildew and yellow mold. He scratched the day's worth of beard on his chin. “Oh. Well, I don't even aspire to being a saint, Raphael. You see I plan… to…”

The wings lifted slowly, as though raised by ropes. “Yes. Yes. You plan to… what?”

“To… uh… marry Saara the Fenwoman.”

In truth, the word marriage had never occurred to Damiano until this moment. But what else could he tell an archangel: that he planned to copulate like a dog?

Besides, why shouldn't he marry Saara? She was lovely and amusing, and had talents which could do his own career no harm at all.

Because she had been his father's lover, replied a whisper within his own head. Wasn't that enough reason?

But Raphael was speaking. “That is a very important decision, Dami,” said the angel slowly. “But what has it to do with becoming a saint? Or with not becoming a saint?” As he spoke he very carefully preened his flight primaries with both hands.

Damiano watched the process. Surely Raphael's were not real, physical wings for their feathers to become disarranged. It must be that he needed something to do with his hands. The angel seemed to be nervous, in fact, for he shifted from foot to foot and his dark-sky eyes were wandering.

“Marriage,” Damiano began, “is the mediocre way, not the path of perfection. Very few saints have been married, I believe, although many were wicked and licentious until God showed them their error.”

It must have been that Raphael was not really listening, or else he would not have replied, “Well, why not begin by being wicked and licentious, then, Dami?”

The mortal grunted in disbelief which changed to confusion as Raphael turned as though oblivious of him and passed into the alleyway of mold and mildew.

Damiano followed, out of the sunshine and into damp, odorous shadow, and as the chill patted his face, there came a cough out of the alley: a cough rich, phlegmy and spineless.

Never before had he understood the expression “his blood ran cold,” but now the witch had to retreat for a last breath of sunny air before following the glimmer of samite into the murk.

The coughing continued, horrid as that of the dying farrier in the church of Petit Comtois, and Raphael was leaving him behind. Damiano bounded forward, fixing his eyes on the clean form once more before it rounded a corner.

Here was sun again, for they had come out on another street. The taint of decay vanished, to be replaced by an odor of wet ashes, as though some nearby housewife had scrubbed an entire winter's dirt out of the kitchen hearth.

Raphael stood talking to someone; his wings were spread sideways and Damiano could not see through them.

Wonderment, spiked with jealousy, bent Damiano around the cloudy wing. Who could the angel be talking to, when no one except Damiano (and Saara, of course, and assorted domestic beasts) could see him?

He was talking to his own image, which sat at a small round table, dressed in gray and scarlet, toying with a bowlful of grapes.

It took no time at all for Damiano to recognize Satan. The witch's first impulse was to duck back behind Raphael's sheltering wing. But that panic faded in a moment and a more belligerent reaction took its place. Damiano stood upright. He strode forward out of the shelter of the angel's wingspan and stood between Raphael and his brother.

And was ignored by both.

Satan had plucked a purplish orb from his bowl of dainties, and was rolling it from hand to hand. (Somehow Damiano's stomach was bothered to realize that the grapelike things in the bowl really were grapes.) He was saying:

“… really don't look very well, my dear brother. I might almost think your decisions had gone awry, except of course, for knowing that you do not
make
decisions, but rather float on the Divine Will.” The Devil's voice was urbane and well modulated, expressing just the right shade of sympathy touched by the diffidence due before an estranged member of one's family.

“I am rather pleased by the way I look,” answered Raphael, and Damiano felt a fierce pride in the fact that the angel's voice (though not overly subtle in modulation at the moment) was more beautiful than Satan's. “It was just today I heard pleasant things about my appearance.”

Satan let his deep-set blue eyes slide from Raphael to the young man at his side. Looking at Damiano, Satan very deliberately coughed. “If one travels widely enough,” observed the Devil, “one will eventually find someone to verify one's prejudices.

“But then, Raphael, you have always had an antic taste in companions.” Satan leaned back and peeled a grape with his thumbnail. “How is the fat bitch-dog? Have you tired of shepherding about that meaningless little shade?”

A lump grew in Damiano's throat, and nothing except the hand of Raphael on his shoulder kept him from assaulting the Devil barehanded. “She is well, Morning Star. Happier than you are.”

Satan's guarded face did not change expression, but Damiano heard the faint sound of ashes falling, light as snow. Then the Devil glanced toward Damiano. He shifted on his three-legged stool and propped one elegant boot insouciantly against the table. Satan had a small foot—almost too small—and the toe of his black suede boot curled up as though there were nothing within it.

“But you, Signor Delstrego. It has been a good long time since I have spoken with you.”

“A year and three months,” said the witch from behind clenched teeth.

“Ah? You keep a close record. But then, you are a careful worker in all things. I suppose then…” Satan let the worried pulp of the grape slide from his fingers to the dust beneath the table, “that you have kept your affairs in order. No debts outstanding, no good works undone, nothing to make your… passing an inconvenience to the people around you?”

A swarm of flies was circling Damiano. He heard them. And Satan and his repulsive bowl of grapes seemed to be retreating from him, down the length of a black tunnel.

How had I forgotten, he railed at himself. Here I am talking about marriage, when I am only going to die.

Were it not for Raphael behind him, surely he would fall on his face now. Perhaps he would be dead already.

And Satan was coughing again.

“Begone, miserable sufferer, and come not near this man!” It was Raphael's golden voice that Damiano heard. But gold, like any other metal, may be sharpened to an edge.

The angel had stepped forward, his pinions stretched taut in a great circle that brushed the wall of stucco. His face was lit from within by a white fire of anger. Yet he was only as tall as a man, and his wings were made of feathers, not fire. As Satan slouched to his feet, laughing, Damiano became painfully aware of these facts.

“Come not near him?” the Devil mimicked, his scraped-ashen voice no longer bothering to be subtle. “But my dear nest-mate, it is my right and privilege to come near him. You, on the other hand, are overstepping badly. One look at you and it becomes obvious.”

Damiano also looked at Raphael, and his empty heart filled again, this time with a protective fury. He crowded between Satan and the angel, and with a single, unsubtle, inelegant kick, he upended the little round table. Grapes bounced over the strangely empty street. “Worm!” he bellowed. “Twisted snake!” he roared. “I am finished with your lies. Finished for good!”

He spat dryly, like a cat, in Satan's direction. “If you have the power to kill me, then do it. Otherwise, get out of here. You smell bad!”

The Devil stood, letting the three-cornered stool fall behind him, and as he faced Damiano he swelled and quivered like the snake he had been named. His face turned wine-red and his eyes went white. “Piece of mud!” he hissed, with a mouth full of teeth like needles. “Ordure! Worm, you called me? Well, you are food for worms, you walking bladder of blood and scum: bizarre travesty of spirit, created for the amusement of a jaded God…”

All resemblance to Raphael was gone now, for hate had given Lucifer a goat's face. Damiano glanced from one to the other and was glad.

Though it was getting quite hot in this corner of Avignon. Satan had dropped his human form entirely for one red and boneless and loathsome. The leather of the little stool smoldered. The table burst into flame. The smell of ashes was overpowering, and joining it now came the reek of sulfur, like an alchemical experiment gone out of control.

He can do no more than kill me, whispered Damiano to himself. He cannot hurt me more than that. He can do no more than kill me.

And as the Devil threatened and Damiano defied, Raphael withdrew a step and stood motionless and intent, like a man watching the play of actors in a drama.

The witch sheathed himself in a close coat of blue flame as he spoke aloud. “I have fire of my own, Satanas. Not as hot as yours perhaps, but less offensive to the nose.”

The red flames licked out, touching the blue, spreading against it, attempting to envelop it. Where the fires touched, they created a purple glow which reflected in lights of pearl from Raphael's peacefully furled wings. And though the red was the larger and the noisier flame, where it touched Damiano's aura it grew quieter, and its color changed.

Damiano himself stood with eyes closed and hands over his face. He only looked up when the snap of withdrawing energy told him the contest—if it had been such—was over.

Satan had regained his composure in a marvelous fashion, and neither his tight jerkin nor his odd-shaped boots were soiled. “Delstrego,” he said conversationally, “are you aware you carried the plague in your pocket from the north?”