The Damiano Series (53 page)

The dark eyes flickered with irritation and Damiano raised his hand. For a moment Gaspare believed he was going to hit him, but then from Damiano's outspread fingers five points of flame sprang up.

Gaspare staggered back.

“Not a Hand of Glory,” whispered Damiano. “But my own.” He laughed at the boy's goggle eyes and general air of amazement, but as he did so the tame, domestic fire in his hand leaped upward like the flame of a torch dipped in oil. He shook it out.

“Needs practice,” he muttered, slightly shamefaced, and then cleared his throat. “So you see, Gaspare…”

“Don't hurt me,” the redhead blurted, stepping still farther back.

As the flame had gone out from Damiano's hand, so now it went out from his face. With almost a look of suffering, the witch replied, “Hurt you, Gaspare? No. All of this is particularly to avoid you hurt. And I am only the same fellow you befriended in the market of San Gabriele, who knew how to disappear, but not how to make a broken florin. But enough time for talk after we find Evienne.” Without putting his hand upon the plainly frightened boy, he turned again and strode off down a side street, his lips parted, his face to the wind like that of a hound.

The city of Avignon existed because of the Rhone. Both the secular city and the city which was the Papal Palace crowded the water's edge, but while the stone and stucco of the ecclesiastical center sat on a prominence from which garbage was piped into a river that was not even seen, the burghers built their jumbled houses in intimate contact with the mud. Damiano saw parts of the city that night which he might never have seen otherwise: not though he had lived in Avignon for years. And had he been a simple man, he could not have seen what he saw at all.

The houses of Avignon were not jammed with residents, despite the way they crowded together on the occluded streets. Some of them had no more than a single sleeper breathing within. Yet it was not a city of the rich, to be sure. Poverty had its own odor, and it was stronger and less mistakable than any expensive perfume. Damiano smelled poverty and rotting fish on the mud flats of the city.

“There are three men sleeping under that boat,” he observed to Gaspare as they hurried by a small neighborhood wharf.

“Men?” repeated Gaspare. “Not Evienne.” He stopped to stare.

Damiano frowned. “Not Evienne. I just thought it worth mentioning. There are also people sleeping beneath the stilts of these waterside houses. What they do when the river runs high I don't know.”

Damiano tilted his face to the sky and stood silent for a moment, as though he were reading something. Then he looked behind him, to where Gaspare still wandered on the dried mud by the boat dock. The boy had his arms out stiffly before him. “Gaspare,” he called quietly, “what are you doing?”

Gaspare was startled, hearing his guide so far away. “Hen! Damiano. I can't find you. I can't find anything.”

The witch covered the ground between them in three strides. “What's the matter, Gaspare? The moon is full. Are you night-blind?”

The boy caught his arm and stared with goblin eyes. “Night-blind? I don't know. What does it matter? Lately I have taken to sleeping at night, you know.” The arm beneath his pulled him away from the river once more.

“Damiano, where are you taking us?”

“Everywhere.”

“It will be easier for me to find Jan Karl,” murmured Damiano, talking for Gaspare's sake. “I have this little knife in my belt, with which I cut off two of his fingers. Did he ever tell you about that?”

“Yes” was the short reply. Gaspare was stumbling and out of patience. Then he remembered more.

“He told a weird story. He said you got him drunk and then cut his fingers off in some kind of magic rite.”

“They were infected,” replied Damiano with some reproach in his words. “Gangrenous. Did he not tell you that?”

“No.”

Damiano sighed. “He was grateful at the time. I would not have done it for fun, I assure you, and especially would not have sacrificed all my supply of wine to play an ugly trick on a Dutchman. Didn't he ever mention his night in the snow?”

“Certainly. He was benighted in the Alps in November and nearly froze.”

Damiano smiled grimly. It was on his tongue to explain to Gaspare how Jan Karl's two roving companions had tried to kill Damiano, and but for the fierce (and loquacious) bitch Macchiata would have succeeded. It was Damiano's dog that had driven the thieves out into the Alpine winter and thereby frozen Jan's fingers.

It was a wonder the Dutchman hadn't found some way to turn that story on its head and present it to Gaspare as an example of Damiano's perfidy and his own innocence. Damiano was liking him less and less as time went on.

And for that reason he did not speak. Why impress upon the distracted boy that his sister was off with a lout of such repulsive character, now that it was too late for Gaspare to do anything but worry?

They ran on together: Gaspare through empty streets, Damiano buffeted by the presence of thousands. Fifty thousand had Avignon before the great pest. At least half had died. Now the city had begun to swell toward its former size.

Damiano fingered his little knife as he jogged along. He sang wordlessly under his breath, both his own tunes and those he was picking up daily from MacFhiodhbhuidhe. Meanwhile, through his mind was running a different sort of melody: a tune which, like the music of Raphael, could find no expression in the hands or voice of man. Just now he was not trying to express the music in his mind; it was expressing him.

Never grow weary. Nor sick. He felt like a scrap of paper in the draft of a chimney, flaming and floating, weightless.

But Gaspare was wheezing like a wind-broken horse. The boy had started at a disadvantage, under a debility of sorrow. Now, as they watched a lone man in white—a baker—trudge toward his work with lantern in hand, Gaspare was near spent.

He pulled down on his friend's arm. He sat in the street, miring his mantle further, and without words he shook his head.

Damiano put one hand on the boy's head, which was sweaty. He did not attempt persuasion. Instead he said, “You'll cool down fast. Take my overshirt.”

Gaspare peered up incredulously as Damiano yanked the red-and-gold tunic over his head. “You didn't like it when I took your shirt before,” he panted. “And why should I have both overshirt and mantle and leave you in your linen?” Yet he took the tunic from Damiano, who paced in circles, toying with the sliver of silver and crystal in his hand.

“Because you are going to be cold and I am not,” the witch replied. “Not tonight.” Damiano whined—again like a hound. “I keep thinking about that no-good. I feel we are close.”

“Don't call my sister a no-good,” growled Gaspare sullenly. He was not offended enough to get up.

Damiano smiled with all his teeth. “Why not? You call her much worse. But I was not referring to little Evienne, of course, but to Jan Karl. It is as though I can hear him talking in my mind. Or snoring, maybe.”

Gaspare peered around him. “Well, my dear old sheep—uh, Damiano, I don't know what you see or hear, and I myself can hardly see my hand before my face, but I have a funny feeling we're back where we started, having covered Avignon with a layer of shoe leather.”

Damiano glanced at the open mouth of the Pope's Door without surprise. “That's exactly what we have done, though to be sure we haven't covered but half the city. We've been by this spot four times, and do you know it is always here that I begin to simmer inside about the Dutchman. I think we'll find him on the other side of that wall.”

Gaspare glowered from Damiano to the gate and back again. Exhaustion gave birth to scorn. “Maybe Jan's been elected Pope, eh?”

Damiano was too intent to rise to the bait. “He started out as a cleric, Gaspare, right here in Avignon. Do not forget that. Though he may be a thief and a procurer in other lands, behind those walls he will be remembered as student and lector of the church.” Damiano sighed. “I've wasted time. We should have started looking in the Papal Palace.”

The boy scooted around on his behind until he also was peering through the darkness toward the looming white hill of the Pope. “Great,” he grunted. “We'll just walk up to the pikeman there and announce that we must enter in order to search for a prostitute and a pimp.” Then he turned on Damiano a glare that was hard with disappointment. “Shall I go first or would you like that honor?”

Damiano was chewing on his lip. “That method might have had a chance while the big blond was at the gate, although even then… Now, I think, we shall have to resort to skill.”

“Over the wall?” suggested Gaspare with a glimmer of professional interest.

Damiano chuckled in his throat, and there was behind that laugh a feral arrogance that Gaspare did not associate with the lutenist. “No, Gaspare. A different sort of skill.”

He crouched down next to the boy. “Don't you remember the ducks' eggs and the peasant's house south of Lyons? How Saara took us in and out unnoticed?”

“Saara isn't here,” said Gaspare unnecessarily.

Damiano pulled him to his feet. “We don't need the lady. Invisibility used to be a specialty of my own, remember, and I don't feel that I've lost any of my ability. Watch.”

And Damiano sorted himself out for the effort. Within his head, behind closed eyes, he allowed the world of stone and night air to penetrate, so that his body would be no obstruction: not to air, sound or moonlight. It was a pleasant discipline while in process, and only tended to weary him afterward.

Out of habit he reached for something—for his staff, which was a focus for his power and his intent. His hands touched only Gaspare.

He jerked back. God knows what would happen, either to the boy or to the spell, if he tried to use a human being like the wooden length of a staff. He had no staff and would simply have to do without.

The spell was familiar, and he certainly hadn't lost any of his ability. He felt the scattered moonlight, heavy as mist, penetrate the borders of his body. Shape fell away. And thought.

Very pleasant.

There was commotion and someone flailing about in the street.

Gaspare was shouting his name in a whisper. “Damiano! Damiano! Where have you gone?”

The boy crashed right into him and took him by the shoulders. “You stupid sheep-face! Where by the sufferings of hell have you been for a quarter-hour?”

Damiano cleared his throat. He could not rouse an anger to match Gaspare's. “Ho. Nowhere, I guess.” He scratched his head with both hands.

“You know, Gaspare, not to be—I mean, to be
not,
you know, is not bad at all. I don't mean not to be born, of course, but rather… Never mind.” Damiano shook his head forcefully to clear out the moonlight, and returned to the work at hand.

“Well. I'll have to make some changes in the way I do things, I see. I need a tool. If I can't use a staff, like a respectable magician, I'll do like Saara.”

Gaspare frowned dubiously. “Are you going to make up bad verse now?”

Damiano turned his head and struck a belligerent attitude toward the gleaming hill of the Pope. “I am,” he declared.

“We pass beneath the arched gate,
Unperceived. No blade will strike…
”

They were right under the door, with the black iron portcullis raised above their heads. Damiano stopped to stare and his concentration faltered. (Strike. What rhymes with strike? Dike, like, pike…)

“And leaning is the sentry's pike
Against the wall The hour is late.”

If they were challenged, thought Gaspare, they would simply plead innocence. For there they were parading openly through an open gate, with guards at either hand. It was not like being caught climbing a wall. If they were challenged…

They were not challenged.

“So quiet are the cobbled streets
Where the Holy Father sleeps,
Or his prayer vigil keeps
That…
”

Streets. What rhymes with streets? Sheets (terrible). Sweets. (Worse. Oh, God!) Beats?

“That one can hear his slow heartbeats.”

The doorway loomed deep in shadow. Damiano plunged in, dragging Gaspare behind him. Once concealed, he began to blow like a winded horse. “That,” he wheezed, “was awful. Hideous.”

Gaspare's hand made an equivocal gesture, unseen even by the witch in the dark of the overhang. “Oh, I don't know. I think it was much better than Saara's. The ABBA rhyme has more subtlety than…”

Damiano snorted. “I'm not working in a foreign language. But it was terrible, nonetheless. I thought I would be found standing there under the portcullis, mouth open, knees knocking, and all for lack of a rhyme. There's got to be another way to work it.”

This was what people meant all over Europe, when they spoke the word “Avignon.” It was a single building and an entire city as well: the Holy Father's city. Damiano and Gaspare passed sedately down its passages, expecting to be impressed.

First glance was a little disappointing, for the nearest hall was a rather musty library of no great size.

“I've seen better,” murmured Gaspare. Being illiterate, he wasted no time staring at the books.

“Oh? Where?” replied his friend absently. “In San Gabriele?” But even his interest faded when he discovered that the library specialized in canonical law.

The chambers beyond were plain but serviceable. Damiano fingered his little knife as he went. Jan Karl was not too near.

“I don't think, after all, that we entered by the main gate,” he remarked to Gaspare after a minute. “For these seem to be little-used offices. Perhaps it was we who missed the rendezvous.”

“Nope. I ran circles around the building,” grunted Gaspare. “She wasn't anywhere.”

Turning a corner, they came upon a region where the passages were broader and admitted more moonlight. “How straight the walls are,” murmured Damiano. “Look at them. It is hard to believe this whole enclosure is only one enormous building.”