The Damiano Series (31 page)

Raphael looked down at his friend like a man staring into a well. He said nothing.

“Did you know that already?” asked Damiano, looking back.

The angel nodded and touched Damiano's face lightly with the backs of his fingers. “That's why I'm here, my friend.”

“This will be it, for you and I—for our friendship—my dear teacher. For I am damned and am going to hell, where I doubt very much you will come visiting.”

Both wings exploded outwards, slapping the little shed walls. “Damned, Damiano? Damned? What are you saying?” For a few moments the angel was speechless. “Where did you get this idea? I never heard you speak such… such…”

Damiano had not believed the perfect face could assume such a blank, startled, almost silly expression. Nor had he imagined that the celestial wings could rutch so like a sparrow's.

“… such miserable folly!” Raphael concluded with effort.

Through his crushing misery Damiano almost laughed, but his face sobered with the effort of explanation.

“It was Satan himself who first told me…” he began.

The complex play of feeling on Raphael's face was replaced by simple anger. “He? He is the Father…”

“… of Lies. I know. I've heard that many times, especially recently, Raphael. But forget that. Not all he says is a lie, and I have my own evidence in the matter. I have touched the unquenchable fire, Seraph. I have traced it back to its source, and I know now that its source is within me.”

One wing went up, and the other went down, and Raphael's head tilted in balance to the wings. “Dami. If you are trying to tell me you have fire in you, save your breath, for I've known it long since.

“You are as warm as a hearth, young one, and like a hearth fire, open and giving. Till this moment, I would have said as… as confident as a hearth fire, too, for I have seen you go through pain and horror, and glow the brighter for them. Do you think it is out of a sense of duty that I love you, Dami? Or that it is your witchcraft that has compelled me to teach you music these three years?

“I have no duty toward mankind. None. I was created not for duty but to make music. Nor can the actions of mortals force me into time's stringent bondage.

“But you are such a silly one, Damiano Delstrego. Your hands are too big for you. Also your eyes. And your opinions. You try so hard, in a world whose pain I cannot bear to comprehend. And within you, you know what is best and love it despite all error. That's why I cannot understand how you could be so cozened as to believe…

“Ah, Dami, Dami!” And Raphael held the young man to him and rocked from side to side. “Do you know what it is to be damned? It has nothing to do with fire. To be damned is only not to love.”

“Not to love God, you mean, Raphael,” murmured Damiano, who lay with eyes closed, feeling his pain ebb away. “I've heard something like that from Father Antonio.”

Raphael paused, and his fair brow frowned in concentration. “All created things,” he said at last, “are the mirror of their creator. Can one love anything, with whole heart, and not love its source?

“Maybe a man can—men are a mystery to me—but I cannot And, Damiano, look at me.

“You are a sudden flash of light, child. A tune rising from nowhere. I am not flesh, and I cannot understand you, but I love you, and I know you are not damned!”

Damiano blinked up at the angel. Raphael's face blurred in his vision, and he blinked harder. “Is that so?” he asked. “Is that
really
so? Then I'm very glad to hear it,” he added, “because I didn't want to go to hell.”

Then he wept without shame against the spotless white robe.

Minutes passed, and then Damiano lifted his head. “You know what, Raphael?” he asked. “I'm sorry to say this, after all you have done for me, but… but… I find I still don't want to die, either. Isn't that petty of me, after all I've done to get myself in trouble?”

And then the angel pursed his beautiful lips and rocked Damiano back and forth. “We all get into trouble sometimes,” he whispered, “doing what we shouldn't. Sometimes we
should
do what we shouldn't. Don't worry about it, Dami.”

This statement was difficult. It was also dubious morality. But Damiano was past trying to make good sense out of Raphael, or good morality, either. Perhaps angels were not expected to be moral, but just to be angels. Were they even Christians, these pure spirits?

No matter. It was better just to listen and to trust Raphael. And it was wonderful, being rocked by him. It was music and it was rest. It was falling, falling weightlessly like snow, his face against the spotless white garment, falling through a room filled with the lights of pearl.

Pain was forgotten, and fear. And if tomorrow—today almost, for it was near dawn—if tomorrow the rope worked properly, and he did not strangle, then perhaps death would be no more than this.

He was not damned.

Damiano almost slept, curled on the angel's lap, his hands bound behind him. He would have slept, except for the irritating, familiar poke against his hands and the awkward voice calling “Master, Master, Master,” incessantly and too early in the morning.

Damiano opened his eyes. “Macchiata,” he whispered, and the heavy triangular head thrust before his face, and she licked his wet eyes. She was as solid as life, and almost as ugly as she had ever been.

“Oh, poor Master, poor Master,” she crooned. “All tied up. It's terrible to be tied up. I remember.”

Damiano slid to the floor and sat upright. “Little dear,” he said. “It's so good to see you. I… I… don't know what to say, except maybe we can be together again tomorrow.”

But she left him and struggled onto Raphael's lap. “We're together right now,” she said, and then turned her attention to the angel. “I got it,” she announced. “I dragged it all the way up and down the stairs of the big house and nobody saw me. But I can't get it through the door. Help me; I can't get Master's stick through the door.”

Raphael petted her from ear to tail with easy familiarity. Damiano had to smile.

“Don't ask him that,” Damiano chided the dog. “Raphael can't arrange a man's life. Or death. He can't interfere, being not of this world, Macchiata. I've told you that a dozen times.”

But the little white ghost with a single red spot ignored him. She trotted to the door on her bandy legs, then back to Raphael. “Open the door,” she insisted. “I can't do it, and it's late. Open it.”

The angel looked over at Damiano, until the young man hung his head. “Stop, Macchiata,” he whispered. “He can't do it.”

Then Raphael, still sitting, leaned over and opened the door of the shed. Starlight flooded in, and the iron padlock, still intact, swung back and forth against the wood.

Macchiata scuttled out and then in again, dragging the ornate length of ebony wood. She maneuvered it, with much thudding and thumping, till it touched the fingers of Damiano's bound hands.

He cried out as power flooded into him. “Raphael! What have you done? You have… have interfered!”

Raphael's smile was contained and inward-turning. “Yes, I have, Dami,” he said, and he laced fair fingers over one white samite knee. “It feels very interesting,” the angel added. “I wonder…”

Damiano could wait no longer. He spoke three words.

The massive door was flung back against the shed wall with such force the stones shook, and the one iron hinge burst in fragments. All through the ruins of San Gabriele rang the echoes of similar doors swinging open and parchment windows ripping open. The sword belts of the sentries writhed unbuckled and fell.

The laces of jerkins and tunics sprang free of their eyelets, and Damiano's bonds escaped him like frightened snakes, and at the gateless gateposts of the village, a noose of rope, prepared for the morning, spiraled free of the tree and lay limp as a worm on the trodden road.

Damiano crawled to his feet. With one numb, purple hand he scooped up the small ghost of a dog. He embraced Raphael and kissed him enthusiastically on both cheeks. Then he stepped out into the street, where night and morning were touching and the east was gray.

The sentries saw him emerge, splendid in his tunic of gold and his robe of scarlet, lined with stainless ermine. He was young and unwearied and fearless. He grinned at them as he passed, thumping his tall staff in time. And if they saw the archangel, or even the spectral dog, they gave no sign of it but stood frozen, holding their clothes up with both hands.

Before the square tower Damiano stopped and called out until a blue form appeared on the balcony. “Marquis?

“There is no need to hang me after all. I'm not damned; it was all a big misunderstanding.”

Ogier made no answer, so after a moment Damiano added, “I'm Monsieur Demon—remember? But maybe I'm not so hideous after all, in the morning light.”

“I see you,” said Ogier, and the marquis looked left and right along the streets. “You look much more comely this morning. Am I to understand that none of my men are willing to take arms against you? Yes, well, I quite understand their reservations.” For five seconds the marquis stared fixedly at Damiano, and Damiano beamed up at him.

“What are you going to do, Monsieur who is not a demon?” he asked finally. “Seeing we cannot prevent you, that is.”

Damiano shrugged loosely. “I'm going to leave, of course.

“But I thank you for your assistance last night. It saved much bloodshed.”

“Overjoyed to have been of service,” responded Ogier, with chilly, ironical politeness.

There was a drum of hooves, and the black gelding racketed into the village, passing between the gateposts and spurning the fallen rope. Damiano turned to the horse, which snorted delicately and bit its master's curly hair.

He pulled himself up. Raphael stood before him on the road, wings outspread and glorious. The little dog sat beside him, scratching impossible fleas. “Seraph,” he said, leaning left around the black gelding's neck, “I have one more debt to pay, and it's one that should not wait.”

“I know,” answered the angel quite calmly. “We'll come along, if we may.” The little dog chimed in, “Of course we'll come with you, Master. We haven't been here any time at all!”

He left San Gabriele with his scarlet cloak flying like a banner in the early light. Bright wings soared in the air above the galloping horse, for any to see who had eyes to see, and a small dog ran at his left hand, trotting easily over the ground and never falling behind.

 

Chapter 16

It was a ride like all rides through the Piedmont during this bleak season of the Nativity. Mud spattered the horse's cannons, and ice crusted its shaggy face, till it scraped its muzzle with its hooves like a dog. But the mud was rich, and the ice was glorious, and the snow that whipped Damiano's cheeks and caught in his hair—that was so much eiderdown. He rode singing, sometimes sweetly, sometimes voice-cracked and hoarse, sometimes in strange harmony to tunes whose burden no one heard but him.

And he laughed at nothing, wiggling on the patient gelding's back. At night Damiano nursed great bonfires and squatted by them, talking like a crazy man. Talking, talking, talking to the air.

Beside a cairn of rocks crouched Saara the Fenwoman, wrapped against the cold in a rough woolen blanket. Still she was cold, always cold. Being cold didn't interest her.

She brought a few rocks every day, and though sometimes wolves or dogs came and dug a few of them away, Ruggerio's grave was becoming more secure.

One dull brown braid flapped in the wind. She tucked it back into her blanket. She should go down to Ludica, she knew. This high hill was no place for her, alone and in the winter. The steam-burns on her arms and under her chin pulled in the cold and ached. She would go down to Ludica; when hardly mattered.

She could sweep floors. A woman could always sweep floors.

The wind sang over the flat, marshy field. It had done so day after day, singing a bleak, mindless, winter song. Though her ear was trained to the sounds of wind and water, she was rapidly learning not to hear this song of despair.

But now she had no choice but to hear, for the tone of the wind was changing. She cocked her small head to one side, and her tilted green eyes narrowed.

This was a south wind, and a very familiar one. As any weaver can recognize her cloth, even when it is cut out of shape and sewn, so Saara recognized her own soft south wind, woven to cover her garden.

She stood, and she saw Damiano step out from the pines, swinging his black staff and striding toward her. His raiment shone under the winter sun, and his hair was black and free as a horse's mane. His eyes were filled with the beauty of youth and with purpose, and in his face shone power.

Saara turned from him, anger warring with shame. She thought to run into the birch wood where all the leaves rattled. But anger won and she stayed, standing between the witch and the grave of the man he had slain.

Damiano looked down at the stones. “Lady, please let me by,” he said.

“Why?” she asked in turn, and her voice shook like paper, like a dead birch leaf. “What more harm would you do to him?”

His nostrils flared. “None. He is beyond harm, and I intend none.” Then his face softened. “Please, Saara. Let me by and you shall see why I'm here.”

His pleading was more painful to her than his presence, and she stiffened under it. “See what? Can you bring Ruggerio to life again, after weeks in the earth?”

“No,” replied Damiano, and with his staff he forced her aside. “All I can do is this.” And holding the staff by its heel, he raised it high over his head.

“Leave the grave be!” she shouted in rage, but the staff whistled through the air and smashed down.

There was a snap and a screech of wood and metal. The staff cracked. It split up the middle and broke into two pieces.