The Damiano Series (44 page)

And now, in the spring of his twenty-fourth year, Damiano could imagine no greater happiness than to live an unexceptional life within four rooms by a duckpond, in the company of a woman—a rose-faced, fox-faced woman—who went barefoot through the cold.

Viciously he informed himself that he could not have that form of happiness, nor any other that came upon the earth, for along with his rights to Partestrada, he had bargained away all rights to the future.

Damiano was standing by the table when Saara came singing from the pantry.

Sunlight hit them like a blow; even Saara blinked against it. Damiano gave Gaspare the bag and took from Saara the rough sack she had slung over one shoulder. The witch trotted them up the road the goosegirl had taken.

Without warning, a dog—the forgotten sheepdog, the dog that was to be set on foxes—exploded from a ditch at their feet. It was a heavy creature, almost the size of one of its own wooly charges, headed like a mastiff and bobtailed. Gaspare shrieked but clutched his parcel to him.

Damiano leaped forth. He stood between the animal and Gaspare, raised one arm and shouted, “Go! Go home!” in his most commanding bass.

The beast slavered, crouched down and sprang for Damiano's throat.

It was a sharp stone the size of a man's fist, and it caught the dog exactly over its left eye. Its charge went crooked and it landed on its outsized jaw. It peered at Saara—author of the stone—with a single working eye which was the size of that of a pig. With its little tail tucked down against its rump, the sheepdog backed sullenly away.

Damiano was full of admiration. “Not a beat!” he exclaimed, hefting his sack once more. “You missed not a beat while you jumped sideways, bent down, found the stone and tossed it!”

Saara returned his glance without enthusiasm. Her face was slick with sweat. Yet still the sure line of melody passed her lips, endless as a Breton ballad. She led them back to the wagon.

Out of green brush and long grasses Damiano hacked a nest for Saara. He bathed her face with water from Gaspare's leather drinking bottle, and dried it on his single change of shirt.

“You must keep watch,” she said weakly. “I won't know if someone comes near. I'm too tired.”

“I know,” replied Damiano, as he sat beside her, his head resting on one propped knee, his hand smoothing her braid. “Who should know better than I, how weary song-spelling becomes? In fact, when
the girl came in, I half expected the spell would fray.”

Eyes closed, Saara shook her head. “No. But if I had been singing in Italian it might have. What inspired me to try that, I don't know. I do not much speak the tongue, let alone sing in it!”

She looked up at him. “I guess that was for you, Dami. So you could know how it is I work.”

“I know already.” Damiano smiled. “You sang all the snows of winter upon me, along with a very large pine tree.”

Then Saara looked away again. “Is Gaspare keeping watch?”

“He is keeping watch and eating,” came the reply from above her head. The redhead sat cross-legged upon a spit of rock, with a trencher of black bread on his lap, piled with lamb. “He is very alert, and can do both at once,” the boy added.

Saara's face shifted from Gaspare to Damiano. “You,” she said. “You should be eating, too.”

He shrugged. “I'll wait for you.”

Saara pulled a soft pouch on a string from around her neck, and from it came four perfect, white eggs. She caught Damiano's eye. “I bet you were wondering,” she whispered slyly.

She divided the remaining bread and lamb into two piles, giving the greater share to Damiano. He, in turn, piled the meat back onto her trencher. “I can't eat it,” he admitted, shamefaced. “Not since I was a cow once.”

Saara stared. “I have been a cow before. I have been a lamb, for that matter, and yet I have no trouble.”

Damiano looked past her, and past the clearing off the road where the horse was tethered, to the light of the westering sun. “Ah, but were you ever a cow that someone butchered, my lady?”

She shook her head forcefully. “No, my dear, I was not.” And she scooped the shredded lamb on her fingers. “How about eggs, Damiano?” And then she giggled. “Unless you have been an egg that someone has cracked….”

Damiano's heavy eyebrows rose. “You are sounding more and more like Gaspare, Saara. No. I can eat eggs, as long as they do not have slimy unborn ducklings inside.”

“Oh, no,” replied Saara. She held up an egg, pierced it with an experienced fingernail, and drained it raw. “These are fresh this morning.”

“Nobody can eat old eggs,” vouched Gaspare, rattling down from the spur of rock. “But even old sheep-face can eat fresh ones.” He took an egg, snipped it against the edge of one ragged tooth, and followed Saara's example.

Glowing green eyes looked into his pale ones. “Don't call him sheep-face too much,” she said to Gaspare.

 

Chapter 4

The sun was sinking and the travelers' fire lit the hummocked rock walls of their tiny dell. As always, Festilligambe's ardor for fire had to be restrained, lest the gelding burn off his mane and tail. Gaspare was almost as bad; having no warming fat upon his body, he huddled so close to the flames he would occasionally singe his nose and knees.

It had been surprisingly easy to fill up their bellies. Strange that a hunger built for months at a time should disappear within two meals. Damiano sat cross-legged, practicing left-hand changes upon his lute and wishing he could lean back against something. Satiation demanded rest, but he refused to he flat on his stomach like an infant with Saara watching.

At night it was bad enough—in the wagon with her gentle breathing on one side and Gaspare's adenoidal rasp on the other. And Gaspare so pointedly turned his head away. (Gaspare had explained that his instinct was to withdraw into the wood and leave Damiano alone with the lady with whom he seemed to share such a disturbing past, but that there were not sufficient blankets to spare, and on cold ground he would never last till morning. And Damiano had replied, of course, that it didn't matter at all where Gaspare slept.)

“Whose fief is this through which we're driving?” he asked casually, just to be saying something.

Gaspare grunted. “Dunno. There's nothing important between Lyons and Avignon. It may be the riots have swept the area already, and no one greater than a monsignore has a head on his shoulders….”

Damiano shook his head. “The riots were in the north, in France, and their year is ended, anyway. Gaspare, you are just trying to frighten the lady.”

“What is a riot?” asked Saara, sounding not at all frightened.

“It doesn't matter. They are all in the north of France,” replied Damiano, a touch too sharply.

And he chastised himself for it. It was bad enough to move like an old man in winter, and to know one looked like a beggar (save for the hair), but now he was becoming surly as well.

“Is it like the plague?” she pressed them.

Gaspare, making some connection in his brain evident only to himself, gave a nasty laugh. “Not at all,” replied Damiano.

But the witch wasn't ready to let the subject drop. “About the plague. You must be very careful, for if you should catch it, I cannot help you.”

Damiano glanced at her sidelong and sighed. “I know, my lady. My father read to me at least a dozen collected cures for the plague, and at the end of each one he said ‘That is very fine, except that it doesn't work.' I grew up knowing that there is no cure in grammerie for the pest.”

Saara reacted to this mention of Delstrego Senior by staring at the fire. “Yet a strong witch,” she qualified, “will not catch the plague.”

Heavy black eyebrows lifted. “That I didn't know. So you, Saara, are in no danger?”

“Neither would you be,” she added casually, “if you were undivided.”

Damiano dropped his eyes to the lute.

Those green eyes rose a vanity in him, and more than vanity, a desire to impress. He switched from exercises to a newly learned piece in the sharp, Spanish mode, only to find his fingers unexpectedly clumsy.

Resting the instrument on his lap, he flexed both hands together. “I'm tight all over,” he mumbled to the world at large. “I need a lesson.”

Saara was lying flat on her back, at a four-foot remove from the fire. She needed far less heat than the two Italians, and in the wagon at night used no more than a corner of Damiano's woolen blanket. As he spoke she was playing with a feather, a white down feather, which she was sailing right and left with puffs of air. Languorously she turned onto one hip.

“A lesson?”

“From his angel,” came a voice from the crackle of the fire, and Gaspare withdrew a red face beaded with sweat. “Damiano takes lute lessons from an angel whom one cannot see or hear.”

“One—meaning Gaspare of San Gabriele—cannot,” answered Damiano mildly. “And I will not inflict upon Gaspare Raphael's invisible presence.” Scissoring his legs, he rose in place, and with the lute in one hand, walked to the edge of the circle.

“My lady Saara,” he began, suddenly formal. Suddenly uncertain. “If you have any desire to meet my teacher… he is a wonderful person. An archangel he is, with great spreading wings—but very easy company.”

Saara's interest was quick. Amusement made her eyes slant further. She popped to her feet, stroking her chin with a bronze braid. She accompanied him out of the circle of light.

There was a lot of moon showing tonight. Perhaps it was full. Once, Damiano would have known the hour and minute of the moon's fullness. Once, it would have affected him. Perhaps it still affected him, but he was no longer aware of it.

He was thinking he should not have invited Saara. Introducing Raphael had never been a great success, since other people could not see him. (Or since nobody else could see him except Macchiata, who had been a dog and therefore did not count. And now the horse, who counted even less, being without speech.) Saara was a fine witch, certainly, but Damiano wasn't quite sure that being a witch was enough. And if she was able to see the angel, Damiano knew that he himself would wind up showing off in his lesson instead of working.

Here—on this bright dome of stone, with its glitter of glass in the granite rock. This would make a good setting for an angel, if the wind were not too high. Being in all things an artist, Damiano liked to set Raphael like a jewel against his surroundings.

He sat himself down, noting that moonlight hadn't warmed the rocks. Saara folded herself a few feet away from him. He cleared his throat.

“Seraph?” he called into the shining night. He spoke as another student might call “Professor?” down rows of musty bookshelves. “If you have the time…”

This was meaningless, as he knew. Raphael always had the time, if he chose to come. In fact, he probably had an assortment of times to choose from. But Damiano had never been able to reconcile angelic dimensionality with human courtesy, and he was, after all, human. So he called, “If you have the time…”

And Raphael appeared above them, descending light as milkweed. Damiano felt him and looked away.

He gazed instead at Saara, who had no difficulty with the angel's form. She stared at Raphael brightly and bird-wisely, but without reverence. Without, in fact, a great deal of courtesy. In an instant Damiano was regretting the introduction of two powers, neither of which he could control.

“Good evening,” he began politely, letting the angel's radiance leak into his closed eyes.

“Yes, isn't it?” replied Raphael, and his voice held such a rich and living equanimity that the mortal relaxed a bit. Surely the Archangel Raphael was too great to be offended at a certain lack of respect out of Saara. He had never demanded respect out of Macchiata, and in some ways a pagan was much like a dog.

“Very good. Air and earth are singing together,” continued the angel. “And if you are quiet you can hear them.”

Saara was smiling with that secret, superior amusement of hers.

“I was rather hoping for a lute lesson,” he replied to Raphael, wishing he could see whether
he
was watching Saara.

“That needn't break the peace,” was the answer, and then, unexpectedly, Raphael added, “God's blessing on you, Saara Saami.”

She showed the composure of a small, grinning pagan idol as she replied, “So you are what these Italians call an angel, Chief of Eagles. How curious.”

The dark musician glanced wonderingly at Saara. “You know him already?”

“Every Lappish child knows the eagle-spirits of the high air. There are four of them.”

“Once there were five,” added the archangel.

Damiano, in his confusion, made the mistake of glancing at Raphael directly.

When the dizziness passed, Saara was speaking, an edge of sharpness in her voice. “So why don't you take care of him, then?”

Raphael's answer was slow in coming. “I don't know how to do that, Saara. Do you?”

Damiano focused with effort on the witch's face, which was a little too faraway for his eye's comfort, especially when he was already woozy. What he saw gave no comfort, for Saara's fox-face was to the fore. Not only was she lacking reverence, she did not appear even friendly toward Raphael. “I have a certain earthy wit,” she was saying. “Mother wit. I know, for instance, that he cannot continue in the way he is.”

“Mortals by their nature cannot continue in the way they are. What matters, I am told, is the direction in which they change.” Raphael's words were slow and reflective; Damiano could barely hear them.

But they gained clarity as the angel added, “Be careful, Saara.”

To Damiano's pained astonishment, the witch laughed outright. “That advice I will take,” she crowed. “I will be very careful.” She leaped to her feet, shook dust from her heavy dress and padded off the moonlit dome.