Damiano's Lute

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Plague. There must be some mistake. The plague had vanished sixteen years ago, after destroying almost half of Europe. Surely it was like Noah’s flood, and God would not send it again. This must be some other pestilence; typhus or cholera. Something that would do its little damage (great enough to the people who died of it, and to the families of those who died of it) and fade away. Man was heir to so many diseases.

  Slowly Damiano began to pace along the great central aisle, cradling his lute high against his chest, his breath half choked by the stench. He peered only down the rows to his right.

  This man was a farrier; Damiano could tell because he still wore his divided leather skirt. Touching his head were the bare feet of a tall woman in black lace. Her handsome face, not young, had gone green. (At first he thought it was the window light, but no, there was no green glass in any window. She was green.) Her breath whistled two notes at once. She stared stupidly at Damiano’s lute, and her lips moved.

  What could he do but shrug his shoulders, apologizing for his healthy presence: a lute-carrying mountebank at death’s grim door? In reply she spoke one word, which he could not hear.

  There was a man at Damiano’s elbow. One of the religious who had ported the body from the right side to the left. A brother of Saint Francis, the musician noted.

  “It was kind of you, my son, but I doubt many of them would notice.”

  It took Damiano a little time to understand. Then he shifted the lute from hand to hand. “Oh. Forgive me, Brother. I don’t mean to disturb.”

  He found himself repeating his words from the village gates. “I am a musician, and have come off the road seeking after a friend.”

  The Franciscan nodded. He lowered his eyes and replied, “Look, then. But for your own sake, do not touch.”

  This misunderstanding shocked Damiano. But as he opened his mouth to tell the friar that Gaspare could not possibly he here among the dying, having preceded Damiano down the road by only an hour, it occurred to him there was no use in it. Gaspare (if he had entered Petit Comtois at all) was subject to real danger.

  And so was Damiano. Between one moment and the next he remembered Satan’s words. “Soon. Perhaps a year or two. Perhaps tonight. “ And once more he touched the black bedrock of his existence, which was the fact that Satan had told him he was going to die.

  His hand trembled on the neck of the lute and he chided himself, asking himself why he should be frightened now at the sight and thought of death, when he had spent the last year and more preparing himself for that inevitability. After all, was that not the reason he had avoided involvement with women? And was it not at least part of the reason he had fallen into sleeping so much, sleep being death’s close kin?

  But no preparation could suffice; he was not at all ready to die. There were matters unsettled—matters such as Gaspare, who was angry with him. Such as that vision of green eyes and brown braids, and the singsong voice in his head which he could not quite understand.

  Saara. He wished he had said more to her.

  It came to Damiano all at once that his life was not a rounded whole; it had no progression or shape. As an artist, he couldn’t call complete a work which possessed neither structure nor moral—or, at least, no structure or moral evident to human eyes.

  And he felt a great dissatisfaction with this method of death, perishing in hopeless and frightful stink. A man wanted to die heroically, with someone standing by to take down his final words. To sicken and die of plague, in company of a hundred others, nameless and forgotten…

  “In a century you will be a man who might never have existed from a city with a forgotten name.”

  But it was Satan who had said that. The Father of Lies, and his one purpose had been to hurt. “I’d be careful whom I believed,” Raphael had said. Damiano did not believe this prophecy because Satan had given it, but rather because he himself had accepted it. As a bargain. Yet at the same time he did not believe it at all because the archangel had also advised Damiano that no created being—including Raphael’s brother Lucifer—knew the future of men. At any rate, believing or not believing, Damiano was not ready today to die.

  Ail this passed behind his black eyes in a moment. He found himself speaking to the Franciscan. “It is the plague, Brother? Not typhus, or…”

  The friar lifted his eyebrows so forcefully his scalp wrinkled above his tonsure. “Didn’t you know? My poor, innocent traveler. You have come along a very bad road.”

  “God be with you along this road.” Cursed angel. He could cut hair. He could fix harness, but he couldn’t say one little word about the plague lying ahead.

  Immediately Damiano reprimanded himself. He could not blame the archangel for keeping to the limits assigned him. Especially since he had broken those limits once already for Damiano, saving him from the hangman in the village of San Gabriele. Raphael was definitely not supposed to involve himself that way.

  (Yet the angel still called himself sinless. Not perfect but sinless.)

  Turning to go from that deadly church, Damiano thought of one more question. “Brother. Those monks I saw at the village gates. The flagellants. Are they Franciscan also?”

  The friar’s frown was lit crimson, blue and gold. It was formidable. “They are not monks of any sort. They are not true Christians. Pay them no attention, my brother. Fear and despair may drive men mad, and Satan enjoys our misery.”

  “Satan?” echoed Damiano, and he wished he knew a way to tell the friar what he had seen in the face of the flagellant at the gate. But no, the Franciscan would only think him mad. He turned to the white light of day that came through the entrance door. But he heard a call. “Lute player. Lute player.”

  It was the green woman in the black lace. “Play,” she said. “Play for me.”

  The Franciscan was not around.

  Damiano did not want to play, nor to remain in that house of plague for any reason, but he lowered himself gingerly onto the arm of the pew, by the feet of the unconscious farrier. Quickly he tuned.

  “What do you want to hear?” he whispered to her in conspiratorial fashion.

  “Play sweetly,” the sick woman replied. “Quietly. I don’t want to dance just now.”

  He played a sad Palistinelied by Walther, and then one of his own, written in midwinter, that he had called “The Horse’s Lullaby.”

  When he was done, she said no more, and only by her rough and bubbling breath did he know she was not dead.

  As Damiano paced toward the vestibule a man passed him: elderly, upright, dressed like a burgher. This composed old fellow proceeded slowly up the aisle, peering down every right-hand pew. Looking for someone, Damiano decided. But then the old man paused, discovering the opening left by the body recently carried off, and he sat down, crossed himself, and lay back.

  Damiano flung himself toward the light.

  The air of the street was pleasant, being sullied only by smoke. “Dami Delstrego, you must stop crying,” he growled to himself, blinking and blundering across the court. “You mozzarella! Someone will see you in a moment.”

  Was it fear or pity that clutched his windpipe? He could not tell. He had not felt so shaken since leaving the Piedmont. Since before that. Since…

  He remembered the crack of his staff breaking and the terrible sense of falling, falling. He remembered Saara’s glorious face, and all the rest of the world going gray.

  Damiano resolved to get out of this fearsome town, if he had to inch up the stuccoed wall.

  And speaking of getting out, where had he left Festilligambe?

  Though Petit Comtois lay not far from the High Pass, and was in construction similar to the stone towns of Piedmont that bore Damiano, it was French enough to be confusing to him. The streets were narrow, very narrow, and they wound like ivy. The buildings were not as high as the square towers of Italy, but they tended to spread out sideways, sometimes blocking the road. And though he could read langue d’oc passably, there were no signs to be seen.

  T
here had been an alley with a flight of stairs, where he had to leave the horse. Was this it? It was dark enough, and the burning houses were to his right, as they should be. He danced down three worn blocks of granite and on to something soft.

  Staggering back, Damiano almost dropped his lute. But it was not a dead man. It was a dead rat. He went more cautiously down to the next street.

  There—down at the far end of the street—that was a horse. Damiano sprinted under sunlit skies, and over a pale, packed-earth street. The beast came around the corner. It was attached to a wagon. That lumbering, round thing was not Festilligambe. It was gray, and its neck, thick as the Barbish gelding’s loin, arced in a half-circle. It regarded the panting human with kindly unsurprise.

  “Hah! Welcome again, Monsieur Delstrego,” said an unpleasantly familiar voice from atop the wagon. The villager, who was not now singing, held the slack reins in one hand. “Do you like my stallion? He is no racehorse, certainly, but he is of the ancient Comtois line. He will pull weight all day, and when he is done with his life’s work, there is no better eating!”

  Damiano flinched as though the man had suggested eating his own children. “My horse! What have you done with him? You haven’t…”

  The villager’s laughter was merry and unperturbed. He wiped his nose against his sleeve. “Oh, you Italians are excitable! Don’t worry, monsieur. There is no hunger in Pe’Comtois, that we should slaughter your little pony. He is well, probably better than he has been in a while, since he is eating oats and barley. We have fodder to spare.”

  At this news Damiano felt more alarm than gratitude. “Oats and barley! He hasn’t had anything like that since January. You will colic him. Take me to him at once!”

  The wagoner only snorted. “All in good time, monsieur. I have my little duties first. I must take a little drive outside the wall, and…”

  “The gate will open for you?”

  The answering grin was a shade contemptuous. “Oh, they will open for me all right. Come along, musician, and entertain me on my way.”

  Damiano was torn between his desire to flee the stricken town and his concern for the gelding, which if permitted would certainly eat itself to disaster. But the townsman knew where Festilligambe was, and Damiano did not. He waited for no second invitation.

  The wagon was so heavy it scarcely shifted under his weight. Damiano sat his lute on his lap and looked over his shoulder.

  A large oilcloth covered a load of many bumps and prominences, some of which were long, and some round as a ball. One lump was quite unmistakably an elbow.

  “I take my little trip from the church to the end of the common lands every day,” the driver was saying. “It frees the pews, and keeps things sort of fresh, you know? Lately, though, it’s been twice a day, which is unfair, since I’m paid only by the day, not by amount of work.”

  Damiano said nothing. The driver inhaled deeply. “Wonderful day, today. Good clean breeze. Give us a little tune, monsieur.” The townsman prodded his passenger. “It will help pass the time.”

  Damiano stared down at his hands, which seemed to have no feeling in them.

  Gaspare prowled outside the town wall as wary as a cat. His situation boded more unhappiness than Damiano’s, because, while a musician may play without a dancer to dance, people expect a dancer to have music. And he only had a word or two of this silly, spineless language. So he approached covertly, in case something useful (or unlocked) might come his way.

  He heard chanting, and saw that within the gate a small troupe of religious were setting up stocks. Not liking the looks of this, he slunk off.

  Attached to the plastered wall itself, on the far side of the town from the wooden gates, was another of those roofless, useless stone huts. He entered, stepping delicately over fresh ashes. He dusted a stone with his rag of handkerchief, sat on it and mulled things over.

  By his strenuous trot through the fields toward the village he had put off feeling sorry over biting the lutenist. Now he could put it off no longer, and regret seeped through him.

  Gaspare thought of Damiano, and he began to wiggle all over. Whenever the boy tried to think, he wiggled, because he was a dancer. As Evienne always said, his brain was in his feet.

  And he could not think of Damiano Delstrego without wiggling very strenuously, for in his cynical way Gaspare stood in awe of Damiano. From the first time he had heard the fellow play, sitting on the corner of San Gabriele on market day, he had known.

  Here was a new music. A music of unearthly complexity. A music that could shake kingdoms, and played all on a tiny liuto of four courses.

  And wonder of wonders, the man who created it let Gaspare himself come along, to be part of the source and the nourishment of that art. Gaspare had never really believed his luck. How could it be that no other cunning fellow had heard Damiano before Gaspare, and taken him in tow? He was such easy prey, full of fancy ideas and nearly blind as a bat. Soft, too, and agreeable. Easily bullied. It was as though all the musician’s passion was stored within the lute.

  The story the fellow had told—of learning to play his instrument from the Archangel Michael, or some such—that Gaspare had taken for artistic metaphor. Damiano also claimed to be a witch, and on that first day he had accomplished a good imitation of disappearing. Gaspare could never remember if that had taken place before or after they drank the skin of wine. He rather thought it was after.

  But of course Damiano never really did anything magical—except play the lute that way, of course. Gaspare had been with him now for a year, and if there were anything in the least bit sorcerous in Damiano’s makeup, the boy would know.

  Gaspare had been forced to realize that Damiano was a bit mad. Not dangerous, mind you—he was as gentle as a lamb, come what may—but just unbalanced.

  Or maybe not mad, but just sheep-simple, for God knew he needed watching like a guileless ewe lamb. He looked like one, too: a black lamb, with all that curly hair and soft black eyes. Girl-faced, yes, but the girls themselves didn’t seem to mind that. The lutenist wouldn’t look half bad, if he’d trouble to take care of himself.

  Gaspare had made it his business to take care of Damiano—at least to keep him from starving. Let the fellow believe it was his quick hand on the strings, and not Gaspare’s in the passing pocket, that put pennies into the bowl.

  When he had gotten them to Avignon, Gaspare intended to unveil his musician in the courts of the Pope, saying, “See what I have brought from the wilderness. I, only I have recognized greatness in its infancy.”

  But it was hard to travel with a madman. Him and his angel, when he spoke wide-eyed to the air. Also him and his Devil: he claimed to have spoken with Satan as well as Gabriele (or whoever), and hinted sometimes at dark dealings that made Gaspare nervous about the real source of his proficiency upon the lute. (Gaspare, like most people, found it much easier to believe in the Devil than in angels.)

  The most irritating thing about the musician was his silly preoccupation with chastity. Gaspare had directed one kind and easygoing girl after another at Damiano Delstrego, and carefully watched the results. Each time the player smiled, turned color and went into retreat. Chastity!

  Who cared?

  Delstrego should have been born a girl.

  And now it was all for nothing. Gaspare had taken a chunk out of the fellow’s arm, and no man could forgive that.

  No man with sense. A madman could, maybe. A simpleton, perhaps. A man as soft-natured as Damiano….

  Gaspare sighed, burying his sharp-nosed face in his hands. Why did he have to have such a temper? Evienne said it came with the red hair. He wished he could tell all of this to his sister, though she would only yell at him.

  With a single, fluid motion, Gaspare was out of the hut and balanced on the wall. He sneaked into Petit Comtois and beheld the plague.

  “You are a cat with one kitten, monsieur,” expostulated the Comtoisian. “Your little horse will come to no harm; I promise you. I will take you to him lat
er, when my passengers are taken care of—you see?”

  This was said as the dead wagon approached the gates of the town. Damiano was more certain every moment that Gaspare had had more sense than to enter a plague town. The boy was not really sensible, but he was very cunning.

  But if Damiano left now he would have to steel himself to go through the wooden gate again, because Festilligambe must be found.

  Preferably before grain colic killed him.

  Damiano slipped to the packed earth of the random, almost circular town square, where the crowd lounged in their unaccustomed leisure, wearing the clothes and eating the food of the dead.

  There were fewer now. Damiano counted only fourteen, as the cloddish hoof-falls faded away in the distance, along the eastern road. That was not because of plague, certainly, but the midday rest. (Even leisure must have its breaks.) Yes, there in the broken doorway of a goldsmith’s (the shop was picked dry) curled a plump young mother with her infant on her lap, both asleep. The little one’s mouth was open like a red rosebud. Its mother snored.

  They should go home, he thought to himself, but then there occurred to him possible reasons why they did not. Damiano shrugged.

  His scuffed, shapeless kit-sack lay on the earth, undisturbed. Why would anyone want to steal a wooden bowl and two raggy tunics, after all? Although his silver knife was fine, with its crystal and its phases of the moon. It was useless to him, now, as a tool of witchcraft, but still it was a fine knife. Damiano rummaged it out and stuck it into a slit in his leather belt. The rest of his gear he kicked carelessly into a corner.

  He would quarter the town, calling. Festilligambe would answer, if he were not too stuffed with oats.

  In truth, Damiano was a little disappointed that a mere bribe of food would tempt his horse away. He had struck a bargain with Festilligambe, once, back when his powers had given him something with which to bargain. But why should Festilligambe give him more than other horses gave their masters, when lately he’d been getting much less from Damiano? Much less food, that is.