The Damiano Series (36 page)

“In fact”—and the angel's voice grew even softer, (softer, slower and indefinably droll)—”I ought to send you a note beforehand, each time I visit, so that you can be wearing your best behavior. And your best clothes.”

Damiano snorted, smiling wryly. “I
am
wearing my best clothes. They have become indistinguishable from my worst. Like my behavior.” There was something harsh in the laugh with which he followed this.

“I'm going to follow Gaspare down the road, Raphael. All the way to Avignon, if need be.” His smile grew tighter as he added, “And I'll even apologize to the little weasel, when I find him.

“That
is what I'm going to do about Gaspare. Does it make you happy, my teacher?”

Before Raphael could reply that that
did
make him happy, the conversation was interrupted by a huge crack and snap of wood, followed by a pained whinny, as the frustrated horse finally succeeded in turning around in place. The sting of the trace breaking at his right sent Festilligambe into a series of stiff-legged jumps which destroyed the last of the makeshift harness. Then, as Damiano bit his fingers in consternation, the gelding laid its long head on the footrest of the wagon and gazed up at the angel, moaning like a forge.

“There goes the wagon,” cried Damiano. “So much firewood!”

“I'm sorry,” said the angel (for the second time that day).

Damiano's gesture was magnanimous and very Italian. “Forget it! He's my horse. Besides—how can you be sorry about anything when you're a perfect spirit?” He swung down from the seat and marched forth to release the horse from its tangles.

“I'm not perfect,” replied the angel, almost hurt in tone. “That's very bad theology. Only the Father is perfect. I am only sinless. And it is because of me this lovely fellow has broken all his straps. Let me fix it.”

Damiano stopped with two handfuls of rope. The horse's gently swishing tail was flogging his kneecap. “Fix… the harness? But you are not to become involved in human affairs, remember?”

Raphael glided over the horse's head and hung in the air for a moment before alighting. Damiano looked down.

“True,” came the angel's voice from above, “but that is a complex matter, my friend. If I caused the accident, then am I not becoming more deeply involved if I neglect to repair the damage?” The angel's voice now issued from beside Damiano, who flinched his face away.

After a moment he asked, “Is it done yet, Raphael?”

Wings clapped together in what might have been consternation. “Done, Dami? I have scarcely begun. There are a lot of knots here, you know.”

The young man dared a peek at one of the broken lines, to find that the whole thing had been retied: the flax joined to the hemp rope with a neat series of square knots, while the leather (which had to slide) had been linked in with a bowline.

Damiano had to laugh. “I thought you were going to use magic.”

There was a pause before Raphael answered. “I'm not a witch, Damiano. I don't really possess much magic, but my… my fingers are clever enough.”

Damiano took this statement for what he thought it was worth and, grinning, he raised his hand to scratch his head.

“Ouch. Are they clever enough to get this mat out of my hair, Seraph?”

Smooth fingers felt around the elf-lock. “Well, I can certainly make some improvement, Dami. Have you got a knife?”

The last remnants of a former vanity caused Damiano to cringe. “You mean you'll have to cut after all?”

The angel chuckled. “Yes. The harness was one thing, but this kind of neglect is another. But I think I can do it without leaving too much of a hole.”

Damiano sat perched on the wagon seat, being bartered with his shaving razor. He kept his eyes closed. Raphael did not stop when he had removed the matted patch in the back, but took this opportunity to shape the whole head according to his personal taste.

“Phew,” spat the mortal. “Hair in my mouth. Gaspare won't know me, when I do find him. I haven't had my hair cut since last autumn.”

“Why not?” asked the angel, as black hairs floated through his stainless radiance.

“No money,” replied Damiano, but even as he spoke he knew it wasn't the truth. Gaspare badgered him weekly to let him cut his hair in the style in which he arranged his own orange locks. Damiano, who could not imagine himself looking like Gaspare, had steered clear.

“Or rather, Raphael, I am beyond caring what I look like.”

“Why so?” The angel's voice seemed preoccupied.

Damiano hesitated before answering. It was not a subject that made easy conversation. “Because, Seraph, I have been told not… to expect…” His head was gently pressed forward while attention was paid to the nape of his neck. “… to expect to live much longer.”

With absolutely no change of tone Raphael murmured, “One is told a great number of things by a great number of people. I'd be careful whom I believed.”

The razor swished near Damiano's left ear. “Besides, Dami. Even if your appearance doesn't matter to you, it matters to the girls. The pretty girls: they care what you look like.”

Damiano jerked around and almost looked at the angel. “What kind of thing is that for
you
to say? You—an angel of God!”

“Is there something wrong with girls, Dami? Why should you not want to please them, when I know they try so hard to look pleasing to you?”

Damiano shook a great dark cloud into the air. “Have you no… no regard for chastity, Archangel?”

The razor was placed carefully back in Damiano's left hand. “Chastity, yes. Ugliness, no.”

Damiano growled, “Saints are often quite ugly, and filthy besides, yet I am told that God holds them in high regard.” He began to pick hair from his tunic.

“I know that to be true,” replied the angel equably. “But I am not the Father. And you, Damiano…”

“I know. I know.” The razor was wrapped in rags and slipped into the back of the wagon. “I am no saint. But I do my best, Raphael.”

The wagon was moving again. Raphael said nothing for a while, and Damiano dared not look around, but he knew the angel to be there on the seat beside him. Finally Raphael said, “God be with you along this road, Damiano.” It sounded so like a farewell that Damiano replied with an
“Et cum spiritu tuo.”

But the angel remained: unseen but almost palpably present. A mile passed, then another. Dullness took Damiano, along with a drowse that the company of his bright friend made pleasant.

The gray shape on the far hill was indeed a village, and growing closer. It had a wall. Smoke fingered the sky. There was something in the road before the village: something brown and slowly moving, like a yoke of oxen.

Perhaps it was market day, and the road was deserted only because everybody was already in town. Damiano was peering ahead for any sign of Gaspare when the angel spoke in his ear. “Keep trying,” he said, and then he
was
gone.

Keep trying for what? To find Gaspare? To look at Raphael? To stay well groomed? Damiano could think of nothing else Raphael might have meant—except, of course, keep trying to stay awake.

The road was filled with fresh ruts, but no vehicles either passed or had been left beside the village's mud-plaster walls. In the distance someone was singing in an aggressive and undisciplined bass. Those were men in the road in front of the village gate; it was their coarse brown robes that caused them to resemble oxen. Over all hung a faint odor of the shambles.

The singing grew louder.

Surely this was market day, and in a good-sized village, besides. Damiano's hands twitched on the reins, as he began to pick out his program for the afternoon.

This place would welcome nothing delicate or too subtle, certainly, and besides, much fingerwork wouldn't be heard over the noise. Country dances were the thing, and part-songs the drunks could sing along to. Too bad he hadn't a longer background in the local music; the Provençal and French music he had learned in Italy was High Art stuff and wouldn't do at all.

Damn Gaspare for running off just when his capers would come in handy.

Now the gates were clearly visible: logs of split maple hung by great square nails. They hung open. Damiano sat up in surprise to discover that the robed men in the road were engaged in whipping three other fellows who knelt in stocks set right in the open gateway.

His first reaction was typical of his time and culture. He snickered aloud, wondering how much bran these bakers had put in their bread. Then the metal tips
of the
cats glittered in sunlight, and he saw the blood running.

Poor sinners, he said under his breath, while the frightened and excited horse first snorted and then jammed backward, jarring the wagon and causing it to yaw. Damiano slipped down from his seat and took the reins in one hand, beneath Festilligambe's head.

The floggers wore robes, but they were not tonsured. After each blow they paused to utter a penitential prayer. The victims were nearly naked, and they did not make a sound. The monk in the middle, whose long scourge cracked like a horsewhip with every stroke, was a huge fellow, full-faced yet grim, with odd pale-blue eyes. A froth of blood spattered with each stroke. His brown-haired victim might have been dead, for he lay in the stocks with no movement.

These were felons, not cheeseparing merchants, Damiano decided. Someday Gaspare would surely come to this, if he continued on his path. The lutenist hoped his errant dancer had encountered this sight, or was perhaps watching this minute from within the town. It would do him good.

But why had it fallen to the Third Order of Saint Francis to execute the punishment of miscreants? Dominicans, who were called the Hounds of Christ, would be quite at home in such a role, and Jesuits even more so. But both orders were relatively dapper, and most certainly tonsured. Franciscans were the only ones who sometimes went shabby. Damiano had always felt a strong affinity for Giovanni di Bernardone (called Francesco, or Francis), who had been a musician as well as a saint. He was very disappointed to find that the Franciscans whipped people.

Even more upsetting was the fact that this display effectively blocked his entry into the village. With difficulty he maneuvered the spooky horse off the road and on to the trampled green at the foot of the wall. He yanked his bag of clothes and cookpots through a hole in the wagon wall and dropped it on the ground. Carefully he lifted out his lute and set it atop them. He slipped the gelding's black head into a halter and untied its harness. The hulk of wagon he left behind, half hoping it would be stolen.

Leading the horse, he would be able to pass between the stocks and the village wall. He hoped his passage would not offend the clerics but, really, one must be able to get in and out of a town, especially on market day.

Here the coarse singing was very loud, and shared by more than one voice. Drunken, most likely. But the sound of a silver bell, rung by the middle monk, cut through all, and as Damiano passed directly behind the burly flagellator, the man leaned forward, threw open the stocks, and tenderly lifted out his victim. The others did likewise, and the poor sufferers staggered to their feet.

Then, with a booming cry, the huge man tore off his rude and filthy robe and flung himself into the stocks, which framework shook with the impact of his weight. The other flagellators, like shadows, followed. Despite their bloody and battered condition, the former victims each picked up an iron-tipped cat and set to work with a will. Even the middle one, whom Damiano had thought half dead.

Damiano had heard of the order of flagellants (if indeed there was any “order” about it), but this was his first sight of them, and it left him feeling queasy. Surely there was bravery in their actions, and they undoubtedly canceled out a great number of sins, but still it seemed to Damiano there was more to be gained from a well-sung mass. As he passed beneath the village gate, crude and heavy as a deadfall, he met the pale eyes of the former executer, now victim. They were bright, round and electric with pain. At first the man's face held his gaze by its power to raise pity. But that power faded as the musician saw in those eyes nothing pitiful, but rather a horrible sort of ecstasy, which lit the gray face from within like living coals under a bed of ash.

And then, between one moment and the next, the penitent's face underwent a subtle alteration without seeming to change at all. Damiano stared down through the man's flesh at another face that glowed from within: a face with perfect, elegant features which were molded out of malice and fire, and which stared burning malice up at him.

It was a face Damiano had known before—a face strangely like that of Raphael, were the angel seen in a wicked dream.

It made his heart shiver and jump within him, and his knees buckled. But for his hand on the horse's lead rope he would have fallen, and it was only the strength of the gelding (who only saw the Devil when leaves blew over the road) which led Damiano by.

This was not the first time that Damiano had seen Satan face to face, but it was the first time in a year and more, and never before had Satan appeared to him unsummoned. Fear coursed like cold water through his body.

Inside, he turned the horse and looked back, only to find a perfectly normal-looking fanatic being scourged by another of the same variety. He stood confused, listening to his heart regain its proper rhythm.

The streets and stoops were Uttered with people, yes. But despite that, this was no market, for there were no barrows to be seen. Also, the shops were closed, unswept, some of them boarded. Drunks and singing implied a festival, yet this looked like no festival Damiano had ever seen, unless it were the third hour of night after a long day's carouse.

Along the foul street lounged men in gay velvets, sitting in the dirt next to men in rags. Women, too, mixed with them in the gutters on terms of easy familiarity. One fat woman seemed to be wearing every bit of white linen she possessed, in onion-layers over a purple woolen gown. She squatted on the stoop of a decayed shop, while above her a cart-wheel-sized wooden olive swung on chains in the wind. The door of the shop was staved in, and a pungent Utter of broken olives lay scattered about the street. Her apron, too, was filled with olives.