Damiano's Lute

by R. A. MacAvoy

  But Damiano did not move. Wonderingly he watched himself not moving. His resolution was formed, but he seemed to lack the power to carry it through.

  Was it because Gaspare’s red-fingered grip on his wrist could not be broken? Was it because Evienne was kissing his hand?

  “I am not God!” Damiano shouted suddenly. “I… am not even one of his saints!”

  “Not a saint, no, but almost,” wheedled Gaspare. “You are such a good sort of person, Damiano. And you have an angel, and that means something. Send for your angel, Damiano, and tell him…” And the boy’s eyes changed as he spoke, from his characteristic hysteria to something unfamiliar to Damiano: something calm and lucid and cold. “And tell him to send Evienne’s plague into me.

  “Yes, into me,” Gaspare repeated. “Why not? I’m not anything worth saving. Not even much of a dancer, really. The only thing I do well is to judge other people’s music, and no one will pay me to do that.

  “But it’s all the same to the plague, isn’t it? Whether it takes a critic or the cardinal’s mistress? And it must be possible to trade one to the other, too, for Jesus sent a man’s devils into the pigs. Call your angel, Damiano, my good friend. Remind him of that gospel, if he does not remember. Please, Damiano. Do it.”

  Damiano called Raphael then, and the angel came.

  It may have been only Damiano’s imagination that said the sick chamber did not smell so bad with Raphael standing in it, stainless and glimmering. It was certain, though, that with the first sight of the angel, the witch’s misery became lighter, even though he knew how Raphael would answer his question.

  He asked it anyway. “Seraph. Can you cure the plague?”

  “Oh, no,” moaned Gaspare, who blinked about owlishly, as though he might discover the tiny form of an angel in some corner of the room. “Ask more gently, Damiano, or he will never agree to help.”

  Raphael gazed beyond Damiano to the figure of the terrified girl, who rocked back and forth with her brother’s arms wrapped around her and who did not seem to be listening. Then Raphael regarded the motionless form on the featherbed. “Damiano,” he said quietly. “If I had power over the plague, no man would have ever died so.”

  “I thought as much,” snapped the witch, and sorrow and frustration made him add, “For a spirit of great reputation, you can’t do much.”

  Blue-black eyes returned their gaze to him. “I’m sorry, Dami. I didn’t make my own reputation.”

  Gaspare only heard one side of this conversation, but it told him enough. “Don’t accept any excuses, musician. We have managed so many hard things already—over the mountains at the end of winter, and through Provence starving to death—how can we let my pretty little sister just lie down and die? There must be another way!”

  “There must be another way.” Oh, Christ! the very words Damiano had used with the Devil, and with Saara herself. And the Devil had nearly had him for his arrogance, and how badly he had hurt Saara, who had done him no wrong, searching for that “other way.”

  It had been his father’s obstinacy in him: that bullish Italian obstinacy which had led him along the odd paths of his life. Stealing witchcraft by force and giving it away in a single grand gesture that did no one any good at all. Making war with the flames of hell as a weapon, and using that weapon against Lucifer himself. Now he was a witch without a staff, singing his spells like a Lapplander—like an infant Lapplander, to be exact.

  And no help to his friends at all.

  Damiano’s lips pulled back painfully from his teeth and he looked away from Gaspare. Had he his staff, he thought bleakly, he would at least try. With his staff he had not been a child in the making of spells. He had known that length of black wood better than his lute, at one time. Though he might fail, with his staff he would at least know how to try.

  And then, between one moment and the next, he knew not only how to try, but how to succeed in helping Evienne. He remembered how, on the streets of Avignon, not far from the Papal Door, he had grabbed at Gaspare himself, as though to use the boy as a living focus for his magic, and then, sensing the danger involved, had drawn back. And he remembered how he had entered the earth and gathered the water from it, leaving only a song to mark his way home.

  But he could not claim he didn’t know what happened when power went from one person into another. Out of all the witches on the earth, he (and his lady) knew that best.

  A witch did not die of the plague, or so said Saara. Not unless he used himself too hard. When he had been simple, he had been in peril of the plague. Now he was not.

  Clear and accurate. But that statement was a knife that could cut both ways. And dear God, how it could cut! “What is he saying now?” whispered Gaspare excitedly, for in truth Damiano’s attitude was that of one who was very thoughtfully listening to something. Instead of answering, the dark witch glanced over at his friend, heavy-browed.

  Then he sank down on one knee beside Evienne. “Go away, Gaspare,” he said. “Don’t touch us.”

  Gaspare pulled back with alacrity. “Save her, Damiano. Please save her,” he begged, his voice cracking with tears.

  But the face which looked back at Gaspare’s was frozen, and oddly pale beneath its strong coloring. “Be quiet,” whispered the witch.

  He put his right arm around Evienne’s waist and she lifted her suffering head. But there was neither comfort nor gentleness in Damiano’s eyes as his left hand wrapped her hair and pulled the girl backward, only a great concentration. “Look at me,” he grunted at her. “Don’t talk.”

  The stool overbalanced and Evienne lay back in a tangle of skirts, supported only by Damiano, whose hands clenched and clenched, whose arms were trembling. In the girl’s eyes despair had been diluted with a strange admixture of terror and hope.

  When Damiano had stolen power from Saara, the staff had shown him how. It had felt very good, like wine and sunshine and victory, all together. When he broke the staff, releasing to her half his own soul—what then? What had it felt like, then?

  It was not a good memory; it made his head spin, and his stomach tied itself in a knot. Damiano did not want to be simple again, and he did not want to stand in Evienne’s position of helpless fear.

  Once he had been reconciled to that life of many blindnesses. Once he had been prepared to die. Now he was not reconciled to any loss or limitation on a life grown rich as the orchards of Provence.

  And Evienne was such an inconsequential person. Without either morals or aspirations, possessing only a little quick-fading beauty, she mattered to him less than his dog had mattered. Much less.

  But being inconsequential did not make it easier to die. And how much he cared for Evienne, or even for her anguished brother, had nothing to do with it. Damiano sought the memory of his defeat, and when he had it, he used it to make a song: a song of fire and of loss. Silently it rang in his head. His lips pulled back from his teeth.

  Evienne screamed, buffeted by a flaming wind. She arched her body and threw back her head. She cried for her brother to save her. Then she swooned.

  And the girl was drowned in fire—Damiano’s fire, a flame of brilliant, consuming color that covered her sweet body over until she looked like a soul in the pains of hell. Gaspare gasped and dived toward her, to free her from the witch’s awful embrace. Slack-jawed, gray-faced, Damiano slapped him across the room.

  He sang his fire into Evienne, feeling his strength enter all the wounded provinces of her body. He heard the dumb, smooth, insistent beat of her heart and he felt the ugliness of the damage plague had done to the veins of her body and in her lungs. Without thought his fire fed itself upon that evil. The wild bright flame grew hotter. It went white, then blue and sang with a pure and unwavering note.

  But Evienne was not a staff or a cup or a cloud. Not a vessel of any kind which could be filled with magic, containing it. She was a living being and simple besides. Damiano’s strength flowed into her and out again, running away over the carpet like a fire of oil on wate
r. Again and again he filled her, forcing magic into flesh and soul not created to take it, until, by the time the flame ran quiet within a body revivified, Damiano was empty. He lay half across Gaspare’s sister, voiceless, panting like a dog.

  Far away along the long corridor, a bearlike bellow sharpened into a wail, as Saara the Fenwoman sensed her lover’s magic flow out and be lost into the air.

  Damiano did not hear her crying, for his attention was turned within, to where his new emptiness had found already a thing to fill it, to where within his trembling shell something unwelcome was finding a home. It was a thing like a groping hand, but fine as mist It was mindless and determined and terribly hungry.

  Damiano knew its name, and he had been expecting it.

  For a moment he thought he would not be able to rise, and his hands scrabbled on the slates of the floor. But from nearby came a helping hand. “The devils into the swine,” mumbled Damiano to Gaspare. “Strangely, I have never before thought of myself as a pig.” He stood swaying for a moment and shook his head.

  But it was not Gaspare who had helped him to his feet. Gaspare sat hunched over his sister, who slept now peacefully, with only a slight flush of the skin to mark her short visit in the Inferno. It was the fair hand of Raphael who steadied Damiano, and a white wing wrapped around him like a mantle.

  He put an arm about the angel’s waist, just below where the huge wings sprouted. “One more favor I have to ask you, Seraph,” he whispered hoarsely, staring at the floor. “And I promise I will then request nothing else.”

  Raphael asked for no promises. He listened to Damiano, folded his wings around him, and led him away.

  Jan Karl burst into the room, bleeding from the shoulder, with his black cassock torn. “Evienne, you idiot, get off the floor. I have come to release you!”

  Evienne woke up confused. These days she always woke up confused, and usually a little sick to her stomach as well. But this time her stomach felt fine, at least. Indeed, she felt fine all over, and quite ready to endure a little confusion if it meant Jan had come to get her. She flung herself to her feet, only noticing Gaspare as she bowled him over.

  “Gaspare! How long have you…” Some part of her memory returned to her then. She turned to the bed where Herbert Cardinal Rocault lay unmoving. A brief glance told her he would never move again, and she jerked her hand back, shuddering. “Take me away now, Jan. Death frightens me so.”

  But at that moment Saara the Fenwoman entered the door, not with the form of a bear but in natural shape. “We have only a minute,” she announced. “One minute before they are after us.” Her eyes swept the room, resting only lightly on the girl before her, with her red hair and generous beauty.

  “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!”