The Damiano Series (20 page)

“They've shared my dangers with me, Herr Eulenspiegel. That's an arrow hole through the middle, which ought also to have pierced my chest.”

“This saved you?” murmured Karl, examining his little bundle with an intensity that was already half drunken.

“No, not exactly. It was a volume of Petrarch that saved me, for it was bound in wood. I owe that, too, to our convivial first meeting, for I found it in the sack of one of your friends when I woke the next morning. It was a bad morning, that….” Damiano finished the stake with an extra-hard thump of the stone.

“For me too,” admitted Karl, whom wine was making more garrulous. “I lost my fingers when the sun came up, because I lay down in the snow. They say you should never do that, no matter how tired you are.”

Damiano nodded. “Look on the bright side, Jan. At least we're still alive. Both of us. What about the other two?”

Karl's brow furrowed stupidly. “You know, I never saw them again. All I know is that I turned right at the crossroads.” He swigged once more. The wineskin, though very large, was beginning to appear flabby. Damiano looked with approval. With the night's work that was in store for him, he hoped the blond would pass out.

“They might have continued up to Aosta,” reflected Damiano. “But when I came there a day later, I didn't see them. And Macchiata's nose is good….”

“They probably went back west, the way we'd come,” suggested Karl. “To Provence. That makes most sense. This is a terrible country!”

While Damiano made a comfortable camp, Karl talked. He talked a lot. The volume of his monologue more than made up for his taciturnity on the night of their first acquaintance. He related to Damiano the story of his youth on the fishing boats at Amsterdam: he had been a poor boy but brimming with scholastic promise. He told how he had at length journeyed to Avignon, to study Church history where the pope sat. But knowledge did not come for free, nor did bread or the necessary roof. The Dutch lad had borne three years of privation and had reached no other heights than to be elected king of the pre-Lenten fete, when all went topsy-turvy for a week and the clerks ruled the roost. It was after that that he realized he had neither the right nationality nor the right friends to gain advancement in Innocent's church.

“Nor the right temperament,” Damiano added silently, looking critically at the figure wrapped in the rough blanket.

Karl didn't notice his host's sharp glance, as he explained how, in great bitterness and with very little money, he had set out east to try his fortunes in old Rome itself. In the pass he had met the youth Pierre Paris, whom he had known slightly at the university, and the Breton who claimed to love Petrarch. Paris had devised the story that the three of them were retracing the poet's journey to Milan, though it was a silly tale, and the reality was that both of the others were thieves.

Damiano's hands were full of tinder. He chuckled as he sparked the evening's fire. “Both of the others?” he echoed, and turned his head to Karl.

The blond Dutchman nodded solemnly, closed his eyes and fell into a peaceful, childlike sleep.

Leaving the dog to guard both camp and patient, Damiano returned to San Gabriele, where without meeting either Gaspare or Evienne, he filled the empty wine bag at the village well. As he trudged back down the hill he could feel the chill of the deeply-shadowed earth rising up through his boots, and his little campfire winked at him like the eye of a friend.

He was glad he had eaten before this necessity arose; he would not want to eat later. As he approached the light he smelled the alarming odor of burning hair. He dashed the last few yards into camp, the wine bag leaping in his arms like a live thing, only to find a picture of unbroken peace.

Macchiata lay spread-eagled over the remaining bedroll, two paws on either side, as though she were riding a log. Her dreamy gaze was fixed on her charge, Karl. The gelding quietly stood close by the fire, leaning into the warmth.

“Festilligambe,” cried Damiano indignantly. “Get away from there! You're burning your tail!” He dropped the bag on the ground by Macchiata and darted around the campfire to where the big animal was now examining its disfigured tail with calm wonder.

Damiano grabbed a handful of mane and pulled the black head around. Fixing an ear in each hand, he glared at it.

“You,” he pronounced, “are a most unhorselike horse.” The gelding swished a tail that was reduced to half its former splendor.

“If you catch on fire, what am I to do? There isn't enough water in the entire well to put out a horse!” In response—perhaps in apology —Festilligambe raised his muzzle and lipped Damiano on the nose. It wasn't pleasant to see the yellow, boxlike teeth so near to one's face; Damiano turned away.

He had brought nothing resembling a medicinal dressing in his pack, and early winter was not the season to gather herbs. Nonetheless, Karl's fingers would have to come off, and Damiano's father had been known to resort to hot packs and lye soap when nothing else was available. The young witch filled his only pot with water and set it into the fire. Into the water went one of his two linen undershirts, torn into strips. He pulled a bundle of folded cloth out from the bottom of his pack and carefully unwrapped a little knife.

It was not terribly strong or sharp, because it was intended more for witchcraft than surgery, and its blade was silver. The handle was crystal, and was cut with all the phases of the moon, the full moon sitting at the top, like a tiny sword's pommel.

For a few moments he did no more than to kneel on the blanket by Karl, the knife resting in his palm, while his mind settled. He had never done such an operation without an effective sleeping draught for the patient, without compresses, clean linen, and a few men to hold the sufferer still should the narcotic fail. He would have to be very sure.

With his right hand—the hand that never touched the knife—he reached out and yanked a tuft of dry grasses. These he sprinkled over Karl's emaciated limbs, while he whispered a spell of binding. The gray strands clung like so many fine ropes, but as they did so his vision blurred a bit and his feet fell asleep beneath him.

Binding was a very expensive spell.

Next he consecrated both the knife and his hands to the coming task. The silver blade briefly grew too hot to touch. He twisted the knife in his fingers till it had cooled.

He lifted Karl's gangrenous hand and secured it between his knees. The sleeper didn't move. With the bright blade, no longer than a beech leaf, Damiano pierced the living skin beneath the suppuration that had been Karl's little finger. He cut around the knuckle joint.

A little spell to staunch the bleeding. Another to stir the breeze (this job didn't smell too good). Pray God this poor sinner didn't wake. The tendon and cartilage broke with small popping sounds, like sticks crackling in a fire. The blade was speckled with crimson, and thick, unhealthy blood ran down the white arm and onto Damiano's knees. The finger bone pulled free and gleaming out of its socket.

The ring finger he took off at the big joint, but after a glance at the flesh exposed, Damiano shook his head and cut again, removing the whole of that finger as well.

When he was done, he regarded the raw wound gratefully. It was simple and clean and would be easy to wrap. He had left a fold of skin hanging on both the top and bottom of the hand, to wrap over the exposed bone and flesh. Later that skin would probably fall way, to be replaced by knotted scar tissue, but for now it would close the wound.

But before he closed it Damiano held Karl's hand out from the blanket and freed the blood to flow. The oozing became a fountain that spurted with Karl's heartbeat. He heard Macchiata whine from her perch on the bedroll; the smell of human blood upset her.

After allowing the hand to bleed for half a minute, Damiano pinched the wrist tightly and reapplied the spell.

The water by now was bubbling and hissing. With the blade of the knife Damiano fished into the pot and skewered a length of linen. When he offered the cloth to the night air, a phantom of white steam coiled up from it. “That's not what ghosts look like, either,” muttered the witch, and while the cloth was still hot enough to redden skin, he slapped it over Jan's bloody hand.

Then Damiano looked away from his surgery, away from the steaming rag and the three blackened stumps on the ground with the shaft of white bone protruding. He let his eyes rest in the fire for a moment, then raised them to the early stars.

The sky was a field of radiant indigo. The breeze, growing colder minute by minute, seemed to sweep directly down from that eternal, unchanging expanse. In actuality the air flowed down from the Alps, of course, but that was much the same. He let the night close his eyes.

“I would really rather not be involved in this,” he whispered aloud. “He may still die.

“And there are others I would rather share my campfire with than this sullen, craven Dutchman.” He longed suddenly for the presence of Raphael, so much like the night sky himself. It was on his lips to call out to the angel, to beg him not for a lesson but for a few minutes inconsequential chat by the fire. But he remembered the dying woman in Sous Pont Saint Martin. Raphael was not permitted to play a part in a mortal's trial or death, and here was poor, sly Jan Karl, his torn hand scalding under hot rags. He could wake at any moment, and it would be awkward, for he would wake screaming.

Besides, there was still the matter of his interview with the Devil. Could the archangel know what had passed between Damiano and Raphael's own, wicked brother? If so, he had not come by to ask for an explanation.

At least half the reason Damiano did not call Raphael was that he feared discovering the archangel would no longer come.

It was a weary night, for Damiano had to keep changing the hot packs. And it was a cold one, for Karl began to shiver uncontrollably and had to have both blankets. Before it got too late, Damiano rose, went into town and pounded on doors until he found a householder who would sell him more wine, at a terribly inflated price. He drank none of it himself, for he had to stay awake, but when, toward morning, Karl awoke (not screaming but weeping without pause), he forced it down the man's throat.

With sunrise, Karl became quiet. Damiano induced him to eat a piece of wine-soaked bread, and then another. He watched his patient with red and grainy eyes, thinking that it was odd to save a man's life and still not like him. “I can't stay with you, Jan,” he said dully. “I'm on an errand that's very urgent to me.”

Karl's face registered all the surprise his weakness allowed. “I didn't think you were going to. Why should you?”

Damiano sighed. He knew all the reasons he should remain: the wound was fresh, certain to bleed and apt to go sour, Karl was hungry and unable to work, even should any peasant take him on, and he, Damiano, had begun the job… But he set his jaw and peered over at the houses of the village, which were white and black with sunrise.

“I don't even know why you did this,” added the Dutchman, as he stared fascinated at wet pinkish cloth that had taken the place of two fingers on his hand.

“It was necessary,” said Damiano shortly, without looking around. “It's not the sort of thing I do for fun.”

“Necessary for me, maybe,” answered Karl with a sick little laugh. “But not for you. You didn't have to tend me, feed me, cover me…

Damiano pulled up his knees, covered them with his folded arms and rested his chin on top. He was a long time answering.

“It's difficult—to learn to do a thing that not many people can do, like amputating fingers, and then to see a need for it and not to do it. You see? And then it is difficult to spend the time and effort on a man and then let him die for want of something simple.

“But I can't afford any more—time, that is. The world is full of distractions, and I must get to Lombardy before the snows creep any lower. I'll leave you one of those blankets and some coppers I made in San Gabriele. Also the pot; if you neglect that wound, you'll certainly die after all.” Damiano's brow furrowed fiercely as an idea occurred to him. An idea he distrusted. “Something more, Jan. There is a boy in San Gabriele named Gaspare. He has red hair, and he comes about to my shoulder. He's just a street urchin, but he has a genius for making the best of things. He may be able to figure out something you can do to earn your bread while you recover and to help you on your way to Rome. He has a sister, though, that
…
”

Damiano glanced over at Karl's wary eyes and starved torso. He chuckled to himself. “Never mind the sister. But, my dear cleric, I promise you that if you mistreat this boy, or betray him in any way, you will know what a curse is.”

Karl was silent while Damiano rose and began to break camp. His watery blue eyes followed Damiano reflectively. Finally he spoke. “You're a very good man,” he said. “Like the Samaritan, in Luke.”

Damiano spun around with a face full of anger and hurt. “Don't say such a thing. I am nothing like a good man. I'm only… a mozzerella!”

Karl blinked in confusion. A short laugh burst out of his throat. “A mozzarella? That's a cheese?”

“That's an Italian expression. It means…” Damiano waved his hands in a gesture that explained nothing. “A good man follows the commandments. I, on the other hand, am merely softhearted. I cannot bear to eat cows and pigs.

“—But I killed fifty men with witchcraft,” he added, and he slipped his packs over Festilligambe's elegant back.

Karl made no answer.

 

Chapter 11

The road slipped east; it rolled up and down. Damiano rode through a silence of trees. In a birch-covered valley the sky above him was filigreed with bare branches. Dead leaves, sodden after the autumn's rains, padded the horse's hooves like cloth wrappings. The sun and the trees wove a pattern of warm lace over Damiano's head. He nodded sleepily with every step, as did Festilligambe. Macchiata had nothing to say; she spent the day in her nose.