The Damiano Series (24 page)

“I'll do what I must.
But it does not become you
To keep me suffering this woe.”

Saara whispered “Ah,” and Macchiata slunk away from the fire. The greatest witch in the Italies twisted her brown braid around and around one pink finger. “Very pretty, Dami-yano. Your music is like you: warm and dark and lonely. Only very young men are lonely in that way.”

There was silence while Damiano regarded her from across the campfire. Though her face was a blur at that distance, under the full moon he saw things with his witch's eyes and was abashed.

“I've come to tell you something, Dami—I'll call you that; it's easier. I've come to tell you why I won't help you fight a war.”

“I don't want…” he began, but she cut him off with a sharp gesture.

“In my home, which is Lappland in the far north, we were all sorcerers among the Haavala tribe: all Lapps are sorcerers—witches. We have power over the herds and the wild beasts and, most important of all, the weather. We keep the weather just bad enough to keep other peoples out.”

“Weather? You mean raising the wind and calling clouds or dispersing them? I can do that a little.”

She smiled. “I mean making a downpour in a drought, or a garden without winter.”

Damiano shrugged humbly and shook his head. “I cannot even imagine that much strength.”

Saara chuckled. “To control the elements, Dami, you must be willing to become one with them. That you refuse to do.

“But I want to tell you about me, and why I'm here.

“I was young, Dami. As young as you. I had a husband—Jekkinan—and two little girls with black hair, like their father's.

“Jekkinan was the head of our tribe. He was a strong man, and could cage a wolf with a song of three words. He was also proud and haughty, though he tempered his words with me.

“In the autumn was the gathering of the herds, when the men go out alone. There was a fight over the division, and a man was killed. I am told Jekkinan killed him, though I cannot believe…

“Whether or no, he came home and said nothing to me about a fight, but the next day I went out alone, and when I came home, Jekkinan was dead, and the—and the chil—children. Dead on the floor, pierced by spears. The open wounds were mouths that spoke the killer's name.”

An involuntary cry escaped Damiano. “Ah! Lady, I'm so sorry.” He leaned forward till his face was almost in the fire.

Saara glanced upward with dry, locked eyes. “That isn't why I won't help you, Dami-yano. The same night that I found my children dead I came to the house of the man who killed them.

“And I killed him with a song—him and his wife. His children were grown, or I might have killed them too. Then the tribe came together and decided—for shame—not to be a tribe anymore, and the herd was divided and they went apart, taking the names and the manners and the stitchwork of other tribes. I am the only one left wearing the two stars of the Haavala.

“That is why I won't help you, Dami. I have done what hate made me to do. For all my life.”

Damiano stepped through the fire and sat beside her. “We are more alike than you know, Saara,” he whispered. His sun-darkened hand rested on her own.

“Oh, I do know, Dami-yano,” she replied, her hand motionless but unyielding beneath his. “When I felt you in the breezes of the meadow, I knew you, both by your delight in my garden and by the pain that brought you to it. You drew me to you like a lodestone draws a nail, and even now I cannot help but…”

With these words she edged away from him and turned her face to the dark. Damiano did not release her hand.

“If you know me, lady, you know that I don't want vengeance, but peace for my people.”

Saara's rose pink lips tightened. “Let them find other towns to live in, as my people found other tribes.”

He sighed. “It's not the same, lady. A man without property— with only a wife and hungry children—he's not especially welcome anywhere. Exiles are so many beggars.

“A city is like a garden. Everything grows together, and the roses shade the violets. A man belongs in his own city. Can't you help me, Saara? If you have the power to cage a wolf, can't you cage a brigand, or at least scare him away?”

“Can't
you?”
she replied. “Men who have no power are easily cowed by it.”

Damiano smiled ruefully and scratched his head. His hand disappeared amid the tangle of black curls. “I can't think how,” he admitted. “The only ways I know to frighten an army are ways Pardo suggested to me himself, and so I doubt they'd work on him.

“But with rain and lightning, lady! I'll speak the spell myself, so if it is risky or demands heavy payment, it will come back on me…”

Saara shook her head emphatically. “You can't, black eyes. Not bound to this staff as you are, and even if you let it go, you would have to learn again like a child.

“I would have to do this thing for you, and I won't.” Her face was set. “In the morning you go back to Ludica.”

Damiano flinched. He squeezed her hand placatingly. “Please. I'd like to stay here a few days, in case you change your mind.”

Saara glared at Damiano. She pulled on one of her braids in frustration. “I told you you can't, boy. Ruggerio will go into a rage, once he knows you're here.”

Damiano picked up a pebble and threw it into the fire. His own quick fire was wakened. “Well then, he must be very easily enraged, Saara. For if the truth be known, I myself am as much a virgin as a day-old chick. If I tried to do you violence, lady, you would probably have to show me how!” And with his admission he turned away from her, rested one hand on his knee and his head on his other fist and stared unseeing across the meadow.

Saara smothered her laughter with both hands. “Oh, my dear, my sweet boy. I know. I knew that from the beginning. But Ruggerio— will either not believe or not care. He is proud and quick to anger. Like Jekkinan, I guess. And it's his boast that he keeps men out of the garden.”

“Proud and angry and not even a witch. What do you want with him, Saara?” growled Damiano, still with his back to the fire.

He missed the lift of her shoulders and her dimpled smile. “He's very faithful,” Saara offered.

“So's Macchiata—my dog,” he grunted in turn. He turned again to see the lady scratching her bare toes thoughtfully.

“Understand, Dami. When I came to this country I was very unhappy. Filled with grief and regret. When the southerners discovered who I was—a foreigner and a—a witch—they would not speak to me. The children ran away.

“A man came to me, then: a southman, but a man of our kind—

the first witch I ever saw who bound himself to a stick. (How that puzzled me!) He told me he had felt my presence in the wind of his own chimney, far off, and could not stay away.

“He was young, like you, and dark. I thought I loved him. I
did
love him; he was like Jekkinan, with both his power and his storms. One night he… he did something very bad; he crept into my mind. He moved to steal my strength from me, and so I discovered that he had never loved me at all but had desired my power.

“It was horrible to find I had been so wrong—to find I had lived as wife with a man and it had all been planned as a trick! He had the skill of lying with the heart itself—never had I heard of such a thing.

“But he had exposed himself too soon. I fought back, and I was the stronger. He went fleeing down the hill, and I've never seen or heard of him again.

“But I remember; I remember how I saw through a man, or thought I did, and was a fool. And I will not trust another like him! So I allow no one on the hill and rarely step out of my garden. And that was why I was surprised to find that people in the far Piedmont know my name.

“Ruggerio has no power,” she continued, in calmer tones. “And his temper is a trouble to me, Dami. But he loves me, and because he is only simple I know he is not hiding…” She stopped in mid-sentence, staring at Damiano's face, where anguish and shame and a dread certainty were growing. “What is it, boy? What have I said?”

He swallowed and croaked, “The witch who betrayed you. His name. What was it?”

Her brow drew forward painfully. “I… don't repeat it. What does it matter to you, Dami-yano?”

His hands clenched each other as Damiano, uncomfortably glanced everywhere but at Saara. “It… it couldn't have been Delstrego, could it? Guillermo Delstrego? Because if it is, I really am sorry.”

Saara's breath hissed out. She took Damiano's head between her hands and looked into his eyes, reading the truth she had missed before.

“I
am
sorry,” he said, thick voiced. “I wouldn't…”

“No!” she cried out. “I've done it again! Again! Great Winds, will I never be free?” And Saara vanished upward into the trees.

Damiano huddled against a blast of frozen air. “Dear Jesu,” he whispered, as the fire guttered out. A few minutes later he added, “Papa, you have so much to answer for.” Macchiata crawled out of the night and sat beside him.

 

Chapter 12

The cold faded soon, and Damiano was too depressed to restart the fire. He wrapped himself in his single blanket and hugged Macchiata close, both for warmth and comfort. Sleep came nowhere near.

Damiano almost called upon Raphael for comfort, since the angel, at least, knew he was not party to the wrongdoings of Delstrego, Senior. Yet that business of the interview with Lucifer stopped his mouth. Even if Raphael had no knowledge of what had passed, Damiano did, and he knew his face would proclaim his deed.

And what of Raphael's face? Now that Damiano had looked into the eyes of the Devil and recognized the angel, what would he see in the eyes of the Devil's brother? Not sin, certainly, but…

And on the other hand, how could he communicate to his spiritual friend his feelings for the lovely Saara, with such depths in her eye, and such sweet impudence in her mouth? Even the dog doubted the purity of his intent. Silently Damiano cursed the purity of his intent.

No, he did not want to see Raphael right now. He turned back to the comforter of whom he was sure.

“How can I be to blame, little dear? She looked into my soul so far as to see me as a child, in the days before you were born, playing with rabbits. If I was like my father, surely she would have seen it then.”

Macchiata laid her long nose on the blanket by her master's head. Her tongue flicked out in consolatory gesture, touching the tip of Damiano's nose. Licking faces was a thing Macchiata was not usually allowed to do, but tonight her master didn't chide her for it. “I think I know what it is with Saara, Master,” said the dog.

“Unph!” He rose up on one elbow. His dark hair snared the stars in its tangles. “What is it, Macchiata?”

The dog rolled over, presenting her unlovely belly to his scratching fingers. “It's like that with a cat. Something—anything—gets a cat upset and then there's no sense in her. No use to talk; you just have to go away and lick your nose.”

“Lick your nose?”

“The scratches. Saara is upset at your father, so she claws you instead.”

Damiano smiled at the image of Saara as a cat. With her little face and tilted eyes, she'd make a good cat. His sigh melded with a laugh and came out his throat and nose as a horse's whinny.

Doubtless Saara could become a cat in an instant, if she wanted to. A big cat. Damiano regarded the susurrous meadow grass with new caution. But no. Had the lady wanted to destroy him, she could have done it before, in the midst of his surprise and shame.

“Even a cat calms down, eventually, Macchiata,” he murmured, reclining again. “Calms down and curls by the fire, so one can pet her. In the morning I'll find Saara again and tell her she can look into my head all she wants, till she is sure I am true. Perhaps if I put down my staff, she'll believe me.”

Macchiata whined a protest and wiggled free from the blankets. “No, Master! Remember: you did that before and got hit on the head!”

Damiano grabbed at one of her feet. She evaded his hand. “Those were ordinary men, Macchiata. They were afraid of me.”

“So is Saara,” the dog reminded him.

Morning came, with strings of mist curling up from the waters. Damiano's blanket was damp; so was he. Breakfast was cold water and the last of the bread. Macchiata ate a dead frog and then wandered off in search of more.

Damiano had the lute in his hands, wondering where under heaven he'd be able to find a replacement for the broken string, when he became aware of a man in the pine wood. It was neither vision nor sound that informed him, but the instinct he had inherited from his father.

It was a slight pressure, like the light touch of a finger on the face, an irritation hardly noticed. Indeed, in the streets of Partestrada, Damiano suppressed this sense, as a distraction and hindrance. But here in solitude with the moon at its full, Damiano could feel the stranger's size and shape, and even, to some measure, his intent.

He put off his mantle and laid it on the rock seat. He smoothed his clothes and ran his fingers through his hair. Since he had no sword to don, he slung his lute across his back instead. Then, with unconscious dignity, he proceeded to the edge of the meadow, where the pines cast a barrier of shadow. When the man stepped out Damiano bowed to him in a manner neither proud nor servile, and he wished him good day.

The stranger was tall, and where Damiano was slim, this fellow was lean like a starved hound. His face was long and his eyes glinted black in the early sun. His nose was so high-bridged his face would have appeared arrogant asleep. As he stood there, peering down at Damiano, the expression upon that face was an insult.

Silence stretched long. The stranger shifted his weight onto his left hip with mincing grace. His left thumb was thrust negligently between the hilt and the scabbard of a sword that was neither new nor ornamental. The worn nap on his velvet tunic proclaimed the fact that this gentleman wore the sword at least as often as he wore the tunic.