The Damiano Series (67 page)

“Where is Damiano?” she demanded, taut-voiced. “What has happened to him?”

Evienne took a possessive step nearer Jan Karl. She regarded Saara's delicate features with disfavor. “Who's this woman, Jan? Is she with you?”

“Where is Dami, you litter of fools?” cried Saara, and Gaspare, whom the events of the last few minutes had left speechless, rose from the floor.

“I… don't know, now,” he said, his goblin eyes searching the chamber. “He was here a bit ago. He cured my sister of plague and then I turned…”

“He
what?”
gasped Saara, and once more Evienne shuddered wildly and hid her head against her protector's spavined bosom.

“Get me out of here, Jan. I can't take it anymore.”

“He cured Evienne of the plague. He set her on fire, and I thought she would burn up, but instead she is better.”

Saara stood perfectly still in the middle of the chamber. “I cannot see him,” she said. “Nor hear him nor smell him nor feel him. Anywhere.”

Through the streets of Avignon walked Damiano Delstrego, with the plague gripping him around the throat. Beside him came an angel who kept his feet from stumbling.

Never had anything ached so badly, nor had he ever been so sick at heart. It was as though there were needles in every joint of his body and hot lead in his lungs. The cheerful sun mocked him with every step.

Prayer behooved him, certainly, but he could think of no appropriate words except “. . . remember us now and at the hour of our death.” This phrase repeated itself dreadfully and without comfort in his mind. O God, God, the sick man cried silently, will You remember Damiano, when Damiano has forgotten himself?

“Wouldn't you know,” he whispered aloud, “that I would adopt a plague that was already half done with its job? It should take a man a day at least to be feeling this badly.”

He walked on, blinking eyes which grew gummier all the time. “It is important,” he insisted to Raphael, “that Saara does not find me, for what I have done she could also do, and I am not about to trade my beautiful lady's life for my own—or for that of Gaspare's ridiculous sister.”

The archangel did not reply, but his wings contained Damiano in their own corona of light, and his hand rested on the mortal man's shoulder.

Soon they reached the South Gate of the city, which Damiano had never before seen. They passed beneath. “The gates should be locked,” commented Damiano. “To keep the disease from spreading. I myself,” he added, with a painful and obstructed sigh, “intend not to encounter anyone at all.”

Here, close to the muddy banks of the Rhone, the land was broken into small checkers of vine and green wheat soft as velvet. The road ambled down, keeping close to the water. Under an azure sky, even the weeds were all in bloom. “Oh, God, it hurts!” cried Damiano, meaning either the beauty before him or the lancing pain in his body. He broke into sudden violent tears.

Which stopped just as suddenly, and he blundered ahead. “Raphael, you must take care of Saara for me. She has had so little happiness in her life, and she is so kind—do you know that when we were at war and her storm killed Macchiata she took me all unawares, and she might have killed me then, as she thought I had killed her Roman lover, and…” He ran out of breath and reeled, but the angel's hand steadied his steps. “Whatever—she could have killed me. She had every chance to do it and she just stood there and watched. I know I said I would never ask another favor, but Saara is a very gentle creature, Raphael, and you must take care of her.”

The angel paused a moment before answering. “But she will not let me take care of her, Dami. She doesn't like me very much.”

Damiano nodded, and immediately put a hand to his swollen neck. The hand, he saw, was discolored with purplish blotches. He let it drop. “That's true. Well then, you must tell her I said for her to take care of you, Seraph. It will come to the same thing in the end. Will you do that for me?”

“I will.”

He found he was no longer walking on the roadway, but through the silky wheat grasses which rustled at the middle of his calf. They tempted him, these soft green mounds. It would be so much easier to he down here and stare at the afternoon sky—the afternoon sky of Easter Sunday, Damiano realized, marveling. It was only today he had awakened from a bed of grass, drowsy with lovemaking and very near to Saara….

“Oh, Mother of God!” he moaned, as for a moment the sunlight spun in circles through his head. “Saara! How I love her!

“And I don't know if she will ever understand.” He lifted eyes that had gathered pus like sand in the corners. “She will not understand why I chose to go with you in the end. She will think I did not care.”

“I will tell her,” whispered Raphael.

But it was doubtful Damiano heard. He was staggering now, and but for Raphael's help would have fallen with each step. “And what about my pretty lute? Who will get that—or will it wind up in someone's hearthfire?” He winced. “No, it is as His Holiness said. I was not the first, nor will I be the last. The lute will pass to Gaspare, I guess. He deserves it, since he has always cared more for the music than his own dancing.” The sick man fixed Raphael with an admonitory glare. “See that he knows what to do with it, heh? Maybe he will have a nephew or a niece to support, if I know the worth of a certain Dutchman.”

And then Damiano's head spun like mad planets, and only when the back of his head touched the earth did he realize he was falling. He lay on his back and gasped like a fish on the deck of a boat. “I guess… this is far enough. It will have to be.”

The sun moved silently and all the birds of springtime made their pleasant racket. Raphael folded his legs under him and sat with wings spread, looking (were there any to see) like a hawk of alabaster over its prey. Damiano lay almost as quiet as the sun, save for the sound of his breath, which came like wind through a tunnel. His eyes wandered.

All was bitter, and the pain bit into his body. But he was glad for the pain, for the moments when it abandoned him were worse yet.

The sun was low already when he turned his head to Raphael. “Water?” he asked. The angel went away and brought some back in his hands. Three times Damiano drank, tasting blood with the water from his cracked and bleeding mouth.

He tried to sit up. “Oh, Christ! Why did this have to be? Not the plague, Seraph….”He then paused, involved with the effort of breathing.

“I mean why did you ask me to live again? I was ready to die, only a month ago. Wasn't that enough? Hadn't I done enough, yet— worked enough, sinned enough, been sorry enough…?

“Saara, too, had to be hurt?”

Gravely Raphael shook his golden head. “I don't know why so much is asked of one and not another.”

“It was you!” Damiano cried feebly. “You—cut my hair. You told me not to be a saint….”

“I did not,” said Raphael, ruffling worriedly.

But Damiano finished the accusation. “You told me to live.”

He glanced down at his hands in the dying light. Their color was nothing he did not expect, but the deepening sky was better to look at. “I think I would have made a good old man,” he panted. “We might have had… children. Despite what Saara said, she doesn't know everything. Abraham's Rachel had a child. We might have had children.” It was dark when next he opened his mouth, and that was to cry out in a panic, “My music! Oh, God, my music! Already now there are two changes to songs working in my mind, and I will never have the chance to try them out. I had only begun!”

Raphael was very near. He bent to kiss the misshapen face beside him, for on this point he understood Damiano very well. But the fever was upon the man: a foreign fire he could not master, but that discolored all his senses. He cringed away from the angel's touch. “Don't. Go away. I stink,” Damiano growled savagely. “I can smell myself. Go away, you who are so fond of beautiful things. Go away.”

Raphael did not go away, and Damiano, in mad rage, hit him three weak blows on the breast, as he hissed, “What a fool's game this month has been, pretending I had a life to live, when everything the Devil said came true—even to this. Probably the ruby, too. Probably I carried my own death into Avignon.”

Raphael put his cool hand against Damiano's cheek. “Hush, Dami. Don't worry about my brother; even the truth becomes a lie in his mouth, and with my own eyes I saw you defeat him in the streets of the city.”

“Defeat him?” rasped the dying man, shaking with the anger of his feeling. “He fled laughing, if he fled at all. Satan has always toyed with me, cat-and-mouse. I think I have found a way to happiness and he closes the door in my face. Always.”

Then his red-rimmed eyes widened and his head dropped back against the flattened wheat. “Oh, Christ, to whom do I say this?”

“To me, Dami,” answered Raphael, uncertainly. “To me you may say whatever you wish, for I am your…”

But Damiano only shrank deeper away. “How you have played with me,” he hissed. “Pretending there were two brothers with the same face and different souls!”

“Dami!” Wings of pearl sprang stiffly upward. “What are you saying? Do not be confused between Lucifer and me! You know me, and if that isn't enough, you have seen my brother and me together. It is the fever….”

“Yes, I know you at last, after all these years.” Swollen lips drew back from Damiano's teeth, revealing a swollen tongue.

“And there is little to choose between you and your brother. Except that you have the greater hypocrisy. You used me, Seraph. Led me with your pretty tunes and your sermonizing—to be the butt of a joke! And what a joke.

“But for you I would not be here now. But for you I'd be a prosperous burgher-witch in Donnaz, or even back home, in Partestrada.

“But for you I'd not be lying here, perishing like a beast. Can you deny that, Raphael?”

The angel said nothing.

“What is it your brother called me, just this week? ‘Bladder of blood and scum. Food for worms.' Yes, very accurate, for my blood is rotting, and already I can feel the worms. Is it fun to play with such toys as me, Raphael?”

The sick man's grimace became a snarl of pain. “Aggh! To think I was such a clod, dolt, simpleton—O Christ—that I was glad for your attention.” His attempt to swallow sent trickles of blood down his chin.

“Well, now it's over, and I hope it was all to your satisfaction. May God curse you to the remotest stinking depths of hell!” With the strength of madness he raised himself head and shoulders off the ground, and his left hand flung wisps of torn wheat and bindweed at the perfect, agonized face of Raphael. “To hell! To hell! Damn you to hell!” cried Damiano, till his voice broke and he sank back into the green sea of wheat.

The angel cowered, as though these airy missiles had power to hurt. Then Raphael shrouded himself in his wings and covered his face with his two hands. His weeping, like his laughter, was like that of a man. He spoke one word: “Why?”

It was a question not addressed to Damiano.

Silence called him out, to find his friend looking up at him. “I am so very sorry, Seraph,” the mortal said weakly. “I must have been mad for a little while. I said such horrible things.”

Raphael gazed at the dying man and was not comforted. “But what you said was true, my friend. If I had not touched you your path would have been different.

“But please believe me, Dami. If I did you harm it was by mistake. A spirit does badly when he makes changes in the lives of men.”

Damiano closed his eyes for a moment, gathering strength. When he spoke it was clearly and after thought.

“If you had not touched me, Raphael, I would not now be Damiano—this Damiano—at all. And I'd rather be the Damiano you touched than anyone else.

“You must know that I love you, Raphael. You should never have let raving words hurt you like that. My teacher. My guide. For whatever you say about your role with mankind, you have always been the messenger of God to me, and by you I have tried to rule my life.

“In fact,” and the black, swollen mouth actually attempted a little smile, “I probably should have loved the Almighty more and his music less, but then… that's the way I was made.

“Not a saint.”

He tried to lift his left arm to touch the beautiful clean face so near his own, but his hand was tangled in the bindweed, and there was no strength left.

Carefully Raphael freed the long fingers with their broad, knobbed joints, and he lifted Damiano's hand and kissed it.

This time the smile was a success. “I don't hurt anymore,” Damiano said. Then he closed his eyes and turned his head to one side. With his free hand he scraped at his face, as though to ward
off
the tongue of an affectionate dog. “Not now, little dear,” he murmured, and gave a quiet sigh.

After that the breath did not rise again.

 

Coda

All through the radiant night an owl flew above the city of Avignon, blotting the dust of stars with its passage. It might have been hunting rats, so purposefully did it circle, and so low to the ground. But if it was hunting, then this was a bad night's hunt, for never once did the raptor fold its wings and plummet toward a kill.

But the rats of Avignon were not a wholesome food, anyway.

In the third black hour, her heavy talons clutched to one of the teeth of the spire of the Pope's Chapel. Its dry bird's body panted and quaked beneath its plumpness of feathers and its pinions hung down limp as tassels, for an owl is not an albatross, to take its rest in the air.

Saara, also, had not slept much the night before.

No sight, nor sound, nor smell nor touch of him….

She tried not to think, for it was difficult to think and be an owl at the same time. Besides, she had spent the hours before sunset thinking, and it had done her no good.