The Damiano Series (6 page)

The Alps, clean and sharp as puppy teeth. Even Damiano's eyes could distinguish them.

“By John the Baptist and by John the Evangelist and by John the Best Beloved!—if they are indeed three different Johns—this is magnificent!” He clambered down the slope, showering snow. “A good night's sleep, a full stomach, and the road spreading before us like a Turkey carpet! Were it not for the plight of the citizens of Partestrada, I would have nothing else to desire.”

Macchiata peered up at Damiano, her brown eyes puzzled, a lump of snow on her muzzle. “But you could have slept in the cave anytime, Master. You didn't need to be thrown out of your house to do it.”

Damiano grinned from ear to ear and sprang over the little valley where the stream ran down from the hill. “You're right, little dear. And you know what? I think you are very wise.”

Macchiata's ears pricked up. It was not a compliment she had known before.

“We live our lives bound by our little tasks and possessions and never know how free we could be unless God sees fit to pry us away from them. You know who knew true happiness? I'll tell you—Giovanni di Bernardone, whom our Holy Father has sanctified under the name of Francis. He had nothing in the world, and the world had nothing in him, and he used to walk barefoot in the snow, singing.”

Damiano himself began to sing, though he was not barefoot but instead wore soft leather boots with woolen linings. He found it difficult to sing and climb at the same time.

“You have a lovely voice, Master,” said Macchiata, feeling that one good compliment deserved another.

“Eh? Thank you, Macchiata, but it is nothing special.

“Say, you know what I think I'll do?—after finding Carla, of course. If the soldiers have robbed her, I'll give her my money, and for those who catch the flux…

“Anyway, I think I'll cross over the Rhone to France, and maybe after that to Germany, for there is the heart and soul of alchemy, you know. Why not? I am young and strong.”

And he did feel strong—strong enough to bend down a young bull by the horns, as the burly peasants did to show off during the harvest fair.

“I have an intellect, too, and have studied hard.” Suddenly Damiano remembered that Carla Denezzi would not be in Germany but at home in Partestrada. “And then,” he concluded more soberly, “when I have a name and my words mean something to men of birth and education, I will use my power for Partestrada. I will return.”

Macchiata had been listening with some concern. “What about me, Master?” she whimpered.

Damiano glanced down in surprise. “Why you will be beside me, little dear. While we both live on this earth, we will not be parted!”

After this promise they walked some while in silence. Macchiata's robust little heart was filled with happiness and touched by the importance of her commitment to Damiano. He, at the same time, was busy with thoughts and plans. He would lead the people of Partestrada into the Valle d'Aosta, for Aosta was many times larger than Partestrada and also much closer to Chambéry and so to the Green Count of Savoy. There Pardo would not dare follow.

Then Damiano would go on to France, where he would write a poem about the Piedmont and Partestrada. It would be called “The Sorrows of Exile,” and it would burn men's souls. He could feel it within him now, stirring like a chick in the egg. It shouldn't be a poem only, but a work of music, like the ballades sung by the old trouvères, and Damiano would play his lute as Raphael had taught him—France was far more musically liberal than Italy—till hearts bled for Partestrada as Dante had made them do for Florence, with its confusing lot of Guelphs and Ghibellines. Was not art, after all, the greatest weapon of man?

Damiano considered, as his boot soles crunched down on snow. It was great, yes, but tardy, and Dante had never returned to Florence. Damiano sighed and shook his head, for the first energy of the morning was gone and so was the warmth of the wine. The snow was deepening as the road climbed; Macchiata cut into it with her breastbone as she trotted beside him, holding her head up like a nervous horse. The risen sun glinted in the corner of Damiano's right eye.

Perhaps Germany was a better goal. In Germany there was at least one emperor, and emperors can afford to be generous. But Damiano was not a fool; he knew what it meant to allow the ass's nose within the tent or to ask help of a foreigner in settling a local grievance. It would be no great sort of fame to be known as the man who invited the northern wolf over the Alps.

In Nuremberg there were said to be many scrolls written by Mary the Jewess, and students of the great Hermes Trismegistus himself, and in Nuremberg now dwelt the sage Nicolas, who was called the prophet. Though Damiano did not know what help the art of alchemy had to offer defeated Partestrada, he would like very much to visit Nuremberg.

“Master,” began Macchiata, as she leaned her shoulder against his calf.

“Uh. What? Macchiata, little dear, am I going too fast for you?”

“No,” she replied, with a dog's inability to recognize weariness until it has throttled her. “But I was thinking… If I am your little dear, and we'll never be parted until somebody dies, then why do you send me away all the time?”

“I don't!” cried Damiano, stung.

“Yes you do. Every spring and every fall, for two weeks.”

“Oh.” Damiano's eyebrows lifted and his tangled black hair fell over his eyes. “That is necessary. It is not something I want to do, but you are a… female dog, and such have their times when they must be alone.”

“But I don't want to be alone. Ever,” she said simply. “Nothing is different then, except that I feel… friendly, and then I hate most to be in a pen.”

Damiano stared stolidly up the road. The wind blew over his uncovered ears, which had gone very red. “It is the things you say,” he admitted. “During those times you are not yourself.”

Beside him Macchiata gave a whuffle and a bound to keep up. “What do I say? I don't remember a thing about it.”

“I know. God be praised for that!” He marched on in a businesslike manner and would discuss the subject no further.

Forest grew up around them. By midday they were in a dark hush of pines. Here the air was still and smelled somehow ecclesiastical. They had seen no one and passed no one.

This was not surprising, since even in times of peace, travel between Aosta and the south slowed to a trickle after snowfall. There was another road ahead, which creased the base of the high hills from west to east, and which would intersect the North Road some ten miles ahead. Less than a mile along the right-hand path of that road stood a village of a dozen huts. It was called Sous Pont Saint Martin, which was a French name and longer than the village itself. Damiano assumed that it was as deserted as Partestrada. But it would shelter him at least as well as a cave, and there might be food. If the sky was clear, however, he would walk through the night.

Contemplating an all-night journey made the young man's muscles ache with weariness. It was now as near midday as no matter. And weary legs on numb feet made the army of General Pardo seem a more serious problem than it had after breakfast. Certainly he couldn't trot off to Nuremberg or Avignon while Pardo ravaged the hills. Damiano gave a large, round sigh.

He had outdistanced all his solitary childhood rambles an hour ago and stood in a brilliant, wild landscape unknown to him. Damiano noticed a rock standing ten feet from the road, sparkling in the sunshine with mica or ice. He squatted against it, wondering how many travelers it had sheltered since the six days of creation. Its cracked face was the color of honey, and Damiano leaned his cheek against it, half-expecting it to be warm. The snow swam before his eyes, as though moles or tunneling rabbits were disturbing its surface. He rummaged for the wine bottle.

“I hope you de-tuned your lute,” said Raphael. Damiano realized that what he had taken for snow were the outstretched wings of the angel, who was sitting motionless on a rock not four feet away. Raphael's robe was whiter than the white ground and without ornament. His hair shone as colorless as sunlight.

Damiano's grin spread slowly, because the skin at the corners of his mouth was cracked. “Seraph! O spirit of fire! How do you like the snow?”

Macchiata ploughed over from whatever private business she had been on. “Raphael! You found us!”

“Yes! Yes, I found you!” replied Raphael, in tones of enthusiasm that he reserved for the dog alone. He rubbed the sides of her head till her ears snapped like leather whips. Damiano felt a slight pang of jealousy.

Raphael turned back to him. “I like the snow very much, and the mountains. I think they have a beautiful voice.”

Damiano gazed at Raphael until his eyes smarted. He was so glad to see him he could think of nothing to say, and his mind filled with inconsequentials.

Had Raphael skin beneath that lustrous garment, or was he no more than face and wings—an illusion worn so that Damiano could understand him? And why, since angels were immaterial and sexless, did Raphael seem to Damiano entirely male? All the painters gave their angels the faces of women.

Had Raphael seemed a woman, Damiano, easily swayed by such things, would not have been able to bear it. He would have made a fool of himself, for certain, and perhaps sinned in his heart. Perhaps, Damiano reflected, that was why Raphael did
not
appear so, since the good God did not offer a man temptations he could not possibly resist.

The chiseled face tilted sideways, almost like that of a curious bird, and the wings swept snow into the air: snow that broke the light like a thousand prisms. “Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Raphael.

Damiano swallowed; he realized his hand still clutched the neck of the wine bottle. “I had forgotten how amazing you are, Raphael. Seeing you under the sky, like this… is very beautiful.”

The angel's face remained unchanged, as though the compliment had gone through him. “The blue sky is very beautiful,” he agreed, tilting his head upwards. “But then so it is in the rain, and the snow.”

Damiano's cold and nervous hands fumbled under the folds of the mantle and found the pear-shape of the lute. He brought it out. “You see, Seraph. I loosened all the strings, knowing the cold might have snapped the neck.”

Raphael knelt in the snow and took the instrument in both his hands. One by one, he adjusted the eight strings.

“This is as loose as they need to be,” he remarked. “Unless you are going to the top of a mountain.”

Damiano sighed, thinking how much there was to explain. “Only as high as the summer pastures, where the people of Partestrada have fled. Then… I don't know, Raphael. Perhaps France, or Germany, but not until… tell me, what should I do for my city?”

Raphael gazed at Damiano until the young man felt he were standing alone beneath hosts of stars. Had he known how, he would have laid open his soul to the angel, with the history of his every thought, and let Raphael judge him and decide his path. No matter the pain, weariness, or worldly shame, Damiano believed, he would have done Raphael's bidding.

But he did not know how to bare his soul, and he was certain that Raphael was not about to tell him what to do with his life, so instead Damiano dropped his eyes to the cork and the green glass of the wine bottle. Consequently Raphael's words caught him by surprise.

“Pray, Damiano! Pray for the people of Partestrada, and pray for yourself; for guidance. It may be you will need it.” The angel spoke with a clear intensity, and Damiano flushed at his own omission.

“Of course, Seraph. Since yesterday… all has been topsyturvy, and I have forgotten. But aren't you my guidance?”

Raphael laughed and Damiano, too. It always worked that way. “No, Dami, I'm not here as a messenger of the Highest. It was your will that first called me and my own will that chose to come. I am not your guide but your friend.”

Damiano bowed his head to follow the angel's advice, but immediately he raised his eyes again and saw Raphael sitting before him, wings folded back. Macchiata lay curled on the angel's lap like a white piglet, slightly soiled. “Don't go,” begged Damiano. “I'm afraid when I look up again, you'll be gone, and you just got here.”

Raphael took Damiano's hand and held it.

The mortals ate while Raphael looked on. They didn't speak of Pardo or Partestrada or the horsemen who even now must be combing the uplands for the city's unfortunate people. In fact, later, when trudging the road that afternoon, Damiano looked back upon their conversation, and it seemed they had talked about nothing at all. Raphael had turned down Macchiata's invitation to walk along with them, saying he was not much of a walker.

The afternoon clouded up, and the snow that the sun had softened began to freeze. Black walls of evergreens now were not such an inspiring sight, for the travelers had seen nothing else since morning. The climb continued.

By the time the shadows covered the road it had become slick, and Damiano began to fear for his lute. If he fell on the little instrument, which was only the size of a toddler's potbelly, that would be the end of it.

He did fall, injuring his right hand but not the lute. As he was a witch, and therefore left-handed, he thanked God for small favors, but the fall let him know he could not go on through the night.

The sun had failed when Damiano saw a wink of yellow light at the top of the slope to the right of the road. In his state of weariness he stared dumbly at it. “What could that be?” he mumbled to the world in general.

“It's sausage,” answered Macchiata promptly. “And three people. Men. With an oil lamp. And wine.”

Damiano gaped in amazement. “You learned all that by smelling?”

Macchiata wagged her tail, but her nose pointed like a lodestone toward the glimmer of light. “My nose gets better when I'm hungry.

“Can we go say hello, Master?”