“You have to understand,” repeated the Dutchman for the third time, “it has been a year. Things change in a year.”
“Things change in a day—in a minute,” replied Damiano. “Gaspare cannot forget it has been a year since you left with his sister.”
“Where is she?” One of Gaspare’s bony hands flexed painfully on Karl’s thigh, causing the cleric to wince. “In a single word, you can say it.”
Karl stared peevishly at the boy. “At Cardinal Rocault’s great house. There. I’ve given you five words. Are you any the wiser?”
“Explain,” suggested Damiano, and he dealt Karl a comradely blow upon the shoulder, using a hand from which fire only lightly flickered.
Jan turned on him between fear and anger. “Delstrego, you have it in you to be a real bully, do you know that?”
Damiano only smiled.
“This child’s poor sinful sister has had the spiritual elevation of finding a place in the household of a very important man, in the cardinal. I rejoice in her good fortune.”
Though Jan was speaking Italian, not French, it took Gaspare a few seconds to translate. “In the household of a cardinal? What is she doing for this cardinal—scrubbing pots?”
The Dutchman tried vainly to hide his smile. “I think her position is more delicate than that.” He smirked.
Damiano blinked at Karl as earnestly as a dog. “Cardinals are all very old men, are they not, Jan?”
The grin on the Dutchman’s wide mouth grew and grew, but it didn’t change his blue stone eyes. “Some are, some are not. Cardinal Rocault, for instance…”
“Yes. It is about him I ask.”
“He is not an old man at all. But very learned.” The Dutchman’s smile went out. “And powerful.”
Gaspare took some time digesting this information. “My sister,” he began at last, “has attained to high position?”
“High position?” Jan considered. “You could say so. A position under the cardinal, anyway.”
Once more, he cringed away from the witch’s licking flames.
“I have some authority,” he stated, his face expressionless, though his eyes sought back and forth to see what effect his words had. “I translate when necessary from the Dutch and German. I manage the Holy Father’s ordinary dinners occasionally. I have been able to find work for… friends.”
“My sister’s work,” grumbled Gaspare, feeling that the conversation was departing from its proper channels. “Did you find that for her?”
The Dutchman opened his cold-sea eyes very wide and innocent. “I did, though I did not know the trouble it would cause.”
Damiano broke in. “You mean, you did not know that the cardinal would become enamored of Evienne?”
Jan’s long face grew wry. “I didn’t know that the cardinal would become enamored of the Papacy. That is the problem between Evienne and myself. And—that is why I had to miss our appointment today.
“Yesterday, rather,” he corrected himself, gazing with obvious forbearance at the black heavens.
There was puzzled silence from his two listeners. Jan pulled the foot of Gaspare’s mantle over his knees and elaborated further. “Cardinal Rocault, you ought to know, expects the Holy Father to die at any time. He is an old man, and not very sound, and Rocault helped elect him, judging that Innocent would live just long enough for his own campaign to come to fruition.
“Well, how long has it been? Six years? Six years of Innocent VI, and the old fellow is in better health than when he started. All the world knows that Rocault is getting impatient.”
Damiano’s eyes were most earnestly doglike than before. “Are you saying, Jan, that Cardinal Rocault has designs upon the life of the Holy Father?”
Karl recoiled against a stone dolphin. “I did not say that, did I?”
“But it seemed to be your meaning.”
“Seeming and meaning are free, Delstrego,” pronounced the Dutchman. “Saying can cost you your head. If you are to live in Avignon, you must remember that.
“But to return to the subject. When first I returned to Avignon, the party of Rocault had not come into open confrontation with Innocent, and I used my position on the household staff to introduce Gaspare’s sister…”
“Your lover…” interjected Damiano, just to keep things clear.
“Evienne of San Gabriele,” countered the Dutchman, “to the cardinal’s steward. It was a happy circumstance, at least for a few months. But now there is a great deal of tension between the cardinal’s staff and those of us already here in the palace.
“I am watched,” Jan Karl announced. “Always watched.”
Damiano was not impressed. “So what does it matter, then, if you are seen with us? I, for one, am not of any Papal party. I am not even a thief.”
Because of his wide mouth and the length of his jaw, Jan Karl’s grin seemed to cut his face in half. “It is true, Delstrego, that your language does not give a bad impression, and your manner is haughty enough. But you and Gaspare are both so raw to Avignon that you may compromise me any time you open your mouths.”
The open earnestness died from Damiano’s face. “It is true,” he whispered. “I can think of very little truthfully to say which would not compromise you, Jan.”
Jan stood. “I can have you thrust out of here on the point of a pikestaff, Delstrego.”
“I can send you to hell at the point of a pitchfork,” answered the witch, as fire of three colors bloomed in his outstretched hand.
“Please,” hissed the boy Gaspare, whom both the others seemed to have forgotten. “Please do not argue with him, Damiano. He has yet to tell us how to find Evienne.”
But this exchange of unpleasantries had the contrary effect of cheering Jan Karl considerably. His lean shoulders wiggled under the wrap of bedding and he chuckled at the dark and glowering Italian. “I will tell you how to find her, Gaspare. The rest is your problem.
“But Damiano—I just remembered. Do you still play the lute a little, like you did last winter? If so, maybe I have a job for you. Private dinner, on Easter Saturday. For the Pope and the terrible cardinal together.”
Damiano felt the blood drain from his face. “To play? For the Holy Father?”
“And Cardinal Rocault. It is to be quite an occasion. Keep your eyes and ears open and you might learn something. Which you must relate to me, of course.”
Damiano said nothing. He was breathing hard.
“Are you afraid, Delstrego?”
Gaspare spoke up. “Of course he is not! He is merely planning what he should play.”
Chapter 9
Damiano woke because the lute was gouging his skin. He wormed his hand in between the neck of the instrument and his cheek to feel a rectangular gridmark of strings and frets. He felt alert and ready for the day, though he had slept only a few hours.
Last night (this morning really) he had known ten minutes’ panic that his change of state had destroyed his ability to play. But that had been only nerves, as well as a confusion of sensations to which his past year as a simple man had left him unaccustomed. And since the other occupants of the inn-chamber were already waking for the day, he had been able to practice until sleep took him.
Gaspare was still asleep. Of course—yesterday had been harder on him than on Damiano. Deliciously, Damiano stretched his feet out over the yellow straw and yawned, feeling more at home within himself than he had for long months. He could not think why he had allowed himself to remain immersed in melancholy all that time, when life was really quite enjoyable.
Tomorrow he was going to play before the Holy Father. That was enough to make one nervous. But it would quickly be over, and why should he think Innocent would be listening anyway, with Cardinal Rocault across the table from him?
More important to Damiano’s practical concerns, he had five days more at the Bishop’s Inn. Five days of playing in the corner of the high gallery, being alternately praised and ignored, while smiling respectfully at both Coutelan and Mac
Fhiodhbhuidhe, (who spent more time in the inn than the innkeeper). And on the last day maybe he would say to them, “Messieurs, your interests are very limited. I myself am going off into the countryside, to make my music with a lovely white dove.”
No. He would say nothing of the kind, for he would want to come back. Besides, he should be nice to the Irishman, for he intended to ask him to take over at the inn for him tomorrow.
And also, such proud words could prove false, for Saara might not come in the shape of a dove at all. She might be retaining the form of an owl.
Or she might be a woman. Most likely she would be a woman.
Suddenly Damiano was very nervous: more nervous about Saara than about the Pope. He threw back the blanket. It was quite warm out.
Had he crawled off among the vines with a wine-stained Alusto grape crusher at the age of fourteen, like other boys, his heart would not now be assaulting his lungs in this manner. Had he not panicked under the covers with Saara herself, a few days ago, he would have no more reason to be nervous.
Damiano pulled on his clothes, all the while telling himself that a man ought either to fornicate like a dog as soon as he was able or keep his chastity for life.
Half-measures just made a body awkward.
Yet he felt unshakably committed to the impending effort at sin, and even his attack of nerves could do no more than spice his expectation. He trotted down the corridor and stepped into the sun.
Along the white cobbled street strolled Damiano, accompanied by the Archangel Raphael. Early afternoon sunshine liquefied the air around them, and the cries of hawkers (for Avignon was a huge market that never closed) echoed against the limed stucco, meaningless and ornamental as birdsong.
The mortal felt very privileged that Raphael had decided to come along, for as once before the angel had said, he was no great walker. He could no more walk without moving his wings than a Latin— Damiano, for instance—could talk without moving his hands. The great shimmering sails arced up and out, or down, or rolled together behind or in front, or pointed like great fingers to the sky. And it seemed an effort of concentration for the angel to put his foot to earth and keep it there.
Yet his progress was not clumsy but terpsichoric, and Damiano regarded the seeming fragility of his companion with great fondness. Whenever there was no one else within hearing, he spoke. “Seraph, your feet are not really touching the ground, are they? I mean—you are barefoot, and these cobblestones are dirty.”
In a very human gesture, Raphael brought his right foot up along his left shin and held up the sole for inspection. It was dirty. At Damiano’s air of apology his eyes flickered with amusement.
“Would you apologize for the entire world, Damiano? Did you create it, that you should feel responsible?” Raphael walked on.
There was something infinitely touching about the appearance of Raphael today, reflected Damiano. Of course this was the first time in a year and more he’d been able to see—to really see the angel. Perhaps memory had made him more intimidating than he really was.
But look now: save for his galleon-sail wings, he was no taller than a man. No taller than Damiano. And he seemed to be made of spider-silk, so delicate were his face and hands. Damiano felt obliged to step between the angel and a passing merchant sailor whose entertainments had known no Lent.
“You know, Raphael,” whispered Damiano, ducking under his left wing, “four years ago, when I was young, you frightened me a little. It seemed you were like a… great cloud in the sky, which could produce lightnings if I wasn’t careful.”
The tip of that wing curled over Damiano’s head like a great question mark. “And now I don’t seem that way?”
Damiano shrugged and smiled. “No. I don’t mean to offend you, but no, you do not seem so dangerous.”
Both wings touched together along their forward edges, from just above Raphael’s head to their tips many feet in the air. (They barely cleared an overhanging third floor.) For a moment Raphael made a picture of formal symmetry, like one of the row of angels behind the altar of Saint Catherine’s Church in Partestrada, far away.
“You certainly do not offend, Dami. I have never desired to frighten anyone. If I do no longer, then that alone has made it all worth it.”
Damiano stood stock-still, even after a woman with babe in arms slammed into him from behind, cursing.
“That alone has made it worth it.” It had been said in the same tone in which Saara had said, “Then it has been worth all the rats and mice.” Damiano felt uneasy. He cleared his throat.
“But, Seraph, this change has been in me, not in you.”
Raphael shook his head—a gesture Damiano had never seen from his teacher before. He replied, “No, Dami. I know it becomes hard to tell, when people, like boats moving across the water, have no reference point. But I know I am not what I was.”
“Then what are you?” blurted Damiano, regardless of the press of people on both sides of him, who were carefully not touching the madman. “Is it something I have done?”
For the sake of other pedestrians, Raphael nudged Damiano forward. For a minute he did not speak.
The angel’s midnight-blue eyes roved from face to face with a probing interest, but he found none who looked back at him. He maneuvered his charge onto a less crowded street.
“What I am, my friend, is one of the Father’s musicians. Or perhaps one of his pieces of music: it is not an easy distinction. And like any music—put into time—I go through change. It is not against my will.”
Damiano stood between disreputable housefronts, where wooden shutters still sealed the windows on this balmy and seductively breezy day. Before him an ancient grape twisted out of a hole in the cobbles. He was only a few feet from the spot where he had met Saara the owl.
But his thoughts were on Raphael, and he considered the angel’s last statement. “Then, outside of time… you would not appear to change?”
The fine-etched golden brow drew down. “Damiano, you are not making sense,” the angel said, and raising both wings behind him he continued his careful parade.
Damiano did not feel like making sense today, but he did feel like talking. After the passage of a laundress, a red-tabarded member of the Guild of Sign Painters and two louts of undiscernible occupation, he began again.
“You were right, Seraph. I was not meant to be a saint.”
The angel turned in a baroque curl of feather. “I was right? I, Damiano? Did I ever say you were not meant to be a saint?”
The mortal thought back. “Well, almost. When I said that God loved dirty, sloppy-looking saints, you answered that you were not God and…”
Now the great wings pulled down and back, like those of a teased hawk, and Raphael’s perfect nose grew a trifle sharp. “That I was not the Father. And that was all I said. I certainly didn’t mean to put a limit upon your aspirations, Damiano.”
“Oh.” Damiano found himself staring at a misshapen alley corner which was decorated with plush blue mildew and yellow mold. He scratched the day’s worth of beard on his chin. “Oh. Well, I don’t even aspire to being a saint, Raphael. You see I plan… to…”
The wings lifted slowly, as though raised by ropes. “Yes. Yes. You plan to… what?”
“To… uh… marry Saara the Fenwoman.”
In truth, the word marriage had never occurred to Damiano until this moment. But what else could he tell an archangel: that he planned to copulate like a dog?
Besides, why shouldn’t he marry Saara? She was lovely and amusing, and had talents which could do his own career no harm at all.
Because she had been his father’s lover, replied a whisper within his own head. Wasn’t that enough reason?
But Raphael was speaking. “That is a very important decision, Dami,” said the angel slowly. “But what has it to do with becoming a saint? Or with not becoming a saint?” As he spoke he very carefully preened his flight primaries with both hands.
Damiano watched the process. Surely Rapha
el’s were not real, physical wings for their feathers to become disarranged. It must be that he needed something to do with his hands. The angel seemed to be nervous, in fact, for he shifted from foot to foot and his dark-sky eyes were wandering.
“Marriage,” Damiano began, “is the mediocre way, not the path of perfection. Very few saints have been married, I believe, although many were wicked and licentious until God showed them their error.”
It must have been that Raphael was not really listening, or else he would not have replied, “Well, why not begin by being wicked and licentious, then, Dami?”
The mortal grunted in disbelief which changed to confusion as Raphael turned as though oblivious of him and passed into the alleyway of mold and mildew.
Damiano followed, out of the sunshine and into damp, odorous shadow, and as the chill patted his face, there came a cough out of the alley: a cough rich, phlegmy and spineless.
Never before had he understood the expression “his blood ran cold,” but now the witch had to retreat for a last breath of sunny air before following the glimmer of samite into the murk.
The coughing continued, horrid as that of the dying farrier in the church of Petit Comtois, and Raphael was leaving him behind. Damiano bounded forward, fixing his eyes on the clean form once more before it rounded a corner.
Here was sun again, for they had come out on another street. The taint of decay vanished, to be replaced by an odor of wet ashes, as though some nearby housewife had scrubbed an entire winter’s dirt out of the kitchen hearth.
Raphael stood talking to someone; his wings were spread sideways and Damiano could not see through them.
Wonderment, spiked with jealousy, bent Damiano around the cloudy wing. Who could the angel be talking to, when no one except Damiano (and Saara, of course, and assorted domestic beasts) could see him?
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