The Damiano Series (18 page)

Damiano's glance slid from the soiled small face to the road. “I have no gold rings, unfortunately. But I do have certain abilities. I can assay gold—with the proper equipment. And I can treat illness in men and animals—but again, not without medicines. I can clear the evil from bad wells and open locks that are stuck and find lost jewelry and cows”—Damiano's voice caught unexpectedly—”and cows.

“I can do many things, little friend. But I am used to having clients come to my house and request me to do them. I have never learned to… promote myself.”

He watched the scorn on the boy's face turn to outright disbelief. “I speak the truth, philosopher. Watch—I can make myself disappear.” Damiano nudged his left hand into the bedroll until his fingers touched the shoe of his staff. In a moment, he was not there.

In another moment, he was. “Stop! My friend and adviser! Don't go; I promise I won't do it again.” The boy froze two steps into his flight. “You
can
disappear! You're a witch!”

Mildly, Damiano admitted to it. “Yes, I am a witch, among other things. But I'm not a street-corner sorcerer. I lived in Partestrada in a decent tower my grandfather built. There was occupation there,

and it kept me comfortable. But Partestrada—or perhaps you have heard?”

The boy nodded and spat into the street. “Has changed hands. Thank Gabriele that his town is too small and too high in the hills to interest Pardo and his free company.”

Damiano peered bleakly down the street, with its babble and smell. “You can never be certain of that. But as I was saying, I don't brew love-charms, and I don't engage in cursing. What effects I can produce tend to terrify people, rather than amuse them. Yet this little lady and myself have a strong desire for hot pastries. What shall I do?”

Then Damiano's eyes narrowed. “Perhaps, with effort, I could float six zucchinis in the air and pretend to be juggling them, but that smacks of…”

“What's this?” the youngster interrupted casually, knocking one knuckle against the glossy rounded back of the lute. “Can you play it?”

“The lute,” said Damiano, stunned by the obvious. “Yes. I can play it. But I've never played for money. I don't know if I can.”

The boy shrugged again. “The people here aren't very critical. But then, neither are they very generous. You can only try.”

Damiano took the instrument onto his lap and tuned it. “Music for money,” he murmured. “If you knew my teacher, philosopher…”

The little
liuto
was true-toned and clear. The boy leaned forward at the first notes. “Maybe I do. I know all the musicians who come through. And the acrobats, too. What's his name?”

“Raphael,” answered Damiano shortly, for he was engaged in salting the melody with counterpoint, and he was not used to talking and playing together.

“Nope. Don't know him.”

 

Chapter 10

The fingerboard was cold and slick beneath his fingers as his hand spidered its way through the melodies. He was not so out of practice as he had thought, and the familiar patterns came to him like old friends greeted in a strange place.

The pale winter sun seemed warm to a man who had spent the last week trudging through snow. He stretched his legs in front of him, in the hope that his boots might dry. Marketers passed by, their feet smacking through patches of mud. A matron of middle years stepped over Damiano's legs; her skirts dragged against his knees.

“Pinch that thing!” cried the redhead of San Gabriele, with the authority of a musical expert. “Let the whole town hear it!”

Damiano was no performer, or he had not thought he was, but he was well taught. He pinched the little lute, and at least a reasonable portion of the town could hear. All the old tunes—the simple, conservative airs and dances that would not have offended even dirty Marco—he played them all and he played them again.

“Louder!” cried his single listener. Damiano smiled thinly.

“This is a lute, not a bagpipe,” he grumbled, but he obeyed. When he glanced up, the ragamuffin child was dancing a gavotte. No one had ever danced to his music before—not even Macchiata. His own booted toes were tapping together.

“Where's your hat?” A tall young woman loomed over him.

Red hair, a color not too rare in the more northern Italies, seemed to run in San Gabriele, for this one had hair like copper wire that hung in spiral curls down her back. Her green dress stretched tautly over her bosom, and the curve of her hips was emphasized by a belt of amber, ending in a tiny crucifix that swayed back and forth in front of Damiano's eyes. “How do you expect to make money without putting a hat out in front of you?”

Damiano stared at the crucifix, enthralled by its terribly inappropriate motions. “If I put out a hat, Signorina,” he said haltingly, “will you drop a coin in it?”

She giggled as though he had said something witty. “I'm a poor woman, Signore. By your appearance, you ought to be dropping your coins into my bowl instead!”

Damiano's face flushed, and even the palms of his hands turned pink. But though his fingers stumbled, he did not lose the beat. “Fortune is fickle, beautiful lady, and yesterday's velvet purse hangs empty. Fortune is also jealous of beauty, and she uses time as her claw.” He came down hard on the last downbeat of the dance and damped all the strings. His dark eyes flashed as he glanced up at the wanton. “Take care, Signorina.” She stepped back, swaying, for real wit was an article she was not used to, especially on so serious a subject. Yet she lifted her chin disdainfully.

“Seminarians do not usually play the lute on street corners, black eyes.”

Damiano shrugged. “I'm no more a seminarian than you are a nun, bold lady with eyes of green.” Those green eyes dragged a smile from him, almost against his will.

She smirked at the wall over his head. “Then you're very little of the seminarian indeed,” she said airily.

The urchin, who had stood unnoticed, following this conversation, now strode forward. “Enough! Enough, Evienne—you get in the way of paying customers. This man has a living to make, and he's not your sort of fellow at all. Go your way…” And he put one grubby hand unceremoniously against the small of her back and attempted to propel her along the street. With a scowl she slapped his hand away. “You touch me, Gaspare, and you will be floating in a well before morning!”

The youngster showed his teeth to her belligerence. “Yes? You'll stab me with your hairpin while I sleep, maybe? But that would do you no good, nor me either. And this gentleman would still not be your sort of fellow at all!”

Then he continued in more civilized tones. “Be reasonable, Evienne. Would you like me to get in between you and your work? To walk beside you when you are so beautifully displaying your wares, as though I were a jealous lover…”

“You, Gaspare? Everyone in this stinking village knows better than that!” With a toss of her head and a final wild swing of the crucifix, Evienne stalked away. Damiano watched her progress along the street and then stared with no great gratitude at the dirty face of his deliverer.

The boy made a flat, emphatic gesture of the hand. “That one's no good,” he stated. “No good at all. You'll get nothing from her.”

“I didn't want anything from her,” Damiano answered quietly, hoping it was the truth.

Gaspare's eyes narrowed. “I mean, she won't even sleep with you, she's that mercenary. She goes from town to town on market days, because San Gabriele's too small to support a full-time whore.”

Damiano's ears were prickling like sunburn. “Still, she was correct in what she said.” He leaned sideways and shoved one hand into a leather pack, where he rummaged blindly. “We need a hat. Or this…”

and he pulled out the wooden soup bowl that was both plate and cup for his travels. As he set it before him he stared down at his boots, for he was proud and had never before had to ask for money.

He played the old pieces through one more time, listening to young Gaspare spin and cavort before him, in the steps of the bransle and the lascivious saraband. Damiano's right hand was becoming looser minute by minute. The movement felt sure and practiced, and the sun above was yellow. Damiano swept into the French music— the music of contrasting lines.

The thump and patter of feet was stilled, but the musician didn't raise his head. He was lost in the intricacies of the many-parted music, and the rhythms were leading him as they never had before. As he played he mumbled and hissed to himself, wordless encouragement. But he was beyond the need for encouragement now, and if Gaspare called out to him, Damiano did not hear.

Raphael—Raphael should hear this one day, for it was the fruit of all his teaching. But no—placed before his angelic teacher, Damiano knew he would stammer and halt once more, whispering the strings as timidly as a young girl. The difference was that here no one knew him as Damiano, the good boy who was learning to play the lute. Nor as Delstrego, the witch who killed fifty men with terror. Here he was—he was whatever he showed the people he was.

Redheaded, dirty Gaspare was kneeling in front of him, slack jawed. “By Gabriele himself!” the boy exclaimed. “What game were you pulling on me, asking how you're to earn your bread? The new music!”

“Ah? You have heard contrapuntal music up here in San Gabriele? It doesn't offend men's ears?”

Gaspare flung over the market a look of ripe scorn. “Here? I haven't spent my whole life
here,
my friend. But how can ears that hear nothing sweeter than the bleating of goats be offended by what comes out of the lute? Play on!”

Damiano raised his hand to obey, when a gleam against the black wood of the bowl caught his eye. “Where did these come from,” he asked stupidly, nudging the two split pennies with his forefinger. “Did you put them in, Gaspare?”

The boy's green eye was coldly tolerant. “If I had money, would I be dancing my hams off on the street? That came during your last song. Leave it sit; maybe it will breed.”

The afternoon floated on rivers of tune. Intoxicated by his own success as a lutenist, Damiano began to sing. He had never before sung in public, or even for his teacher, yet Macchiata had been right in saying he had a good voice.

The bottom of the entertainer's bowl turned brick red, lined with coppers tarnished by long residence in sweaty, peasant hands. The glances he spared toward it were filled with an astonished pride, as though the poor handful was the price of a kingdom. Damiano discovered that he garnered more money by his singing than by his lute playing, though singing was by far the easier of the two. He sang till he was hoarse.

His throat burned. He broke a treble string. The sun was westerly, and Damiano rubbed his face in his hands.

“Enough,” he croaked.

“More than enough,” sighed Gaspare, and he leaned against the warm wall, elbowing Macchiata aside. The boy's face had been washed by sweat. “The market is done for the day. Let's divide up the wealth!”

With a sly grin Damiano picked out of the bowl four ruddy coins. “This should be enough,” he mumbled, and stood on legs stiff from disuse. “I'll be right back,” he said, and darted away.

To the young man's immense and endless disappointment, the pastry stall on the next corner, which had filled the surrounding air with temptation, was gone. Nothing remained but postholes and the prints of the town dogs that had scoured away the last crumbs.

“The baker quits early,” said Gaspare, coming up behind Damiano, “because he has to get up every morning in the middle of the night.”

“You knew that?” asked Damiano wearily. “But I told you I was trying to get money for…”

Gaspare slapped Damiano's shoulder in comradely fashion, a gesture that required him to stand on tiptoe. “I forgot. You get carried away, dancing. But never mind that, my friend. What we have here” —he jingled a worn but serviceable leather pouch—”will buy us both dinner at any house in the town.”

San Gabriele appeared tired and empty as the bright stalls were folded away and tied into bundles, and the unsold produce packed again to ride the ox wains home. Damiano led his new colleague back to the stable wall where Macchiata was guarding his gear. “I always marvel,” he commented, “at how quickly a market can disappear and become just an ordinary town again.” He lowered himself onto the imprint in the dust, shaped like an upside-down heart, that showed where he had spent the afternoon. The sun crawled sideways along the side street, so low that buildings blocked it. Soon the saw-blade of the mountains would cut it through. Damiano pulled free his mantle, intending to wear it, but he noticed Gaspare shivering in his sweat. He threw the fur over the boy's bony frame.

“Here,” grunted Damiano, offhand. “Save your money. I'll show you something that will surprise you.” He dug into his store of food and came up with half a romano, a loaf, a piece of salt-pork, and a leathery withered trout. The cheese he divided into three pieces and the pork into two. The hard bread he used as trenchers.

“We're not poor,” he admitted, waving to include the dog. “Merely penniless. And we wanted hot pastry, Macchiata and I. Well, so what? Here's to a full stomach, a full pocket, and a wonderful afternoon!” Damiano filled his mouth with rough red wine, after which he deposited the sloshing bag on Gaspare's lap, where it sat and wiggled like a puppy.

Gaspare asked no questions; he drank. And he ate Damiano's simple food with appetite. But when he was finished, or at least had slowed down, he spilled the coins in the dust of the street and divided the pile in two. He had a practiced eye for the value of liras, broken florins, francs, pfennigs, and weights of lead, and his division was eminently fair. “You owe me two,” he said when he was done. “You took four coppers out of the bowl for cakes and you still have them.”