Tears of the Salamander

by Peter Dickinson

  He stood for a moment, panting, staring, then gathered up the skirts of his robes and pelted on down the twisting route along which he had so often trotted, singing. Long before he reached it, forcing his way through the gathering crowds, he already knew what he was going to find. His home, his ovens, were the roaring heart of that furnace.

  They didn’t punish him for missing evensong. He wouldn’t have cared if they had—in fact he would barely have noticed. But the choirmaster, though strict, was a kindly man, and the boy’s whole family had perished in the blaze. Besides, he had plans now for Alfredo.

  “This is a terrible thing that has happened to you, my son,” he said. “I truly grieve for you, as do all your friends here. You have no other relatives?”

  “Only my uncle, Father. I don’t know where he lives. He came to my christening, but I don’t remember, of course. That’s the only time I’ve seen him.”

  The choirmaster nodded. It didn’t sound as if this uncaring relative would be much of a problem. Very likely he would be glad to have the boy taken off his hands.

  “You need not sing if you do not feel up to it.”

  “Oh, sir, please,” said Alfredo, weeping. “I must sing. It’s the only thing left.”

  “That’s a good boy,” said the choirmaster, remembering minor turbulences in his own life during which he had taken refuge in music, and believing he understood something of what Alfredo felt. “Soon you shall sing a solo for His Eminence.”

  Next day an official from the City Watch came to talk to Alfredo. He did not, of course, explain that there was no doubt that the fire had started in the bakehouse, and that if it could be shown to be the baker’s fault, then neighbors who had lost their houses as the flames spread would be able to claim against his estate, but if not the city would be liable for some kind of compensation.

  Reluctant even to think about the fire, let alone talk about it, Alfredo admitted that he had been home that evening, had prepared the ovens for restarting their cycle, and had again been into the bakehouse after the family meal, shortly before he left, and everything had been normal. His parents had been upstairs in their room—he had heard voices there. (Bakers keep strange hours, and the early meal had interrupted their siesta.) Giorgio had gone out but he must have come back. …

  “A young man was seen running into the house soon after the fire started,” said the official. “Brave, but foolish, I’m afraid. I believe your father built his own ovens. He did not employ a professional? And he let you see to their firing, a child?”

  Alfredo shook his head. How could he explain to this man that his father had known more about fire than anyone, and that there was no chance in the world that he could have made a mistake or not noticed if Alfredo had done so? Let alone how could he persuade him that there had been something wrong with the fire itself, its madness, its wildness, that it had somehow burst out of the fire pits like a wild beast bursting through the iron bars of its cage and going raging through the streets? And that Alfredo, sitting peacefully in the corner of the vestry, had felt the same thing happen to the hidden fire in his own heart, the fire that should have become music?

  The choirmaster, sitting in on the interview, was not displeased. The boy, innocently admitting to the fact that he had been left alone to prepare the ovens, had provided the City with sufficient reason to declare the fire to have been the baker’s fault, which made it even less likely that the missing uncle would appear to take the penniless orphan under his wing. It was already, thanks to the father’s intransigence, a little late for the operation, but there had been certain scandals in the past, with expensive litigation to defend charges of kidnapping and mutilation. It was prudent, therefore that the consent of all interested parties—only the boy himself now, though an at least perfunctory attempt must be made to find the missing uncle—should be witnessed and registered in front of a notary.

  Thus a fortnight later Alfredo found himself standing in front of the Precentor’s desk. To the right of the desk, behind a folding table spread with documents, sat a fat little snuffling black-robed man whom Alfredo didn’t know, but by his dress he was not a priest. Beyond him sat Father Brava. The choirmaster and another strange layman were on the other side of the desk. They all looked very solemn.

  “Well, Alfredo,” said the choirmaster, “the time has come for you to make an important choice. It is your decision you must make for yourself. It concerns your beautiful voice. The blessed Lord in his mercy and wisdom has decreed that at a certain age, which you will soon be reaching, the nature of the male body changes…”

  And so on, for some while. Alfredo barely listened. He knew about the operation. He didn’t care. All he wanted to do was sing. Nothing else mattered. When the choirmaster asked him if he had understood, he nodded. The choirmaster then introduced the stranger at the left of the line, who turned out to be the surgeon who would perform the operation. He told Alfredo about it, using long medical words that Alfredo certainly didn’t understand, but when asked he again nodded impassively.

  “So,” said the choirmaster. “The choice is yours, Alfredo. Will you have the operation or not?”

  “If it is your wish,” said Alfredo listlessly. “Provided I can go on singing.”

  They looked at the fat little man behind the desk, who put the tips of his fingers together, pursed his lips and made a humming noise in the back of his throat to show he was thinking deeply.

  “I think we may take that as willing consent,” he said at last. “Yes, indeed, I think so.”

  He dipped a quill into his ink pot and started to write. The tension in the room relaxed.

  There was a scratching at the door.

  “Who is it?” said the Precentor irritably.

  One of the vergers, Pietro, opened the door. Somebody was standing a pace behind him, a vague figure in the shadows.

  “Beg pardon, Your Reverence,” said Pietro. “This gentleman…

  But the gentleman in question had eased past him and was making a brief bow to the Precentor. He was a tall, elegant man, wigged, with a sword at his hip. He wore a brocade-trimmed gray dress coat, brown velvet breeches, white stockings and buckled shoes. His cravat was spotless white and he carried a tricorn hat under his left arm.

  “The Cavalier Giorgio di Lucari, at your service, Holy Fathers,” he said in a slow, hoarse voice, as if he found speaking difficult. “I bear a letter of introduction to His Eminence from my friend the Archbishop of Ravenna, but I gather His Eminence is not in town, and my mission is urgent. It concerns, I believe, this boy, my brother’s son Alfredo.”

  With an elegant movement he placed a wax-sealed envelope on the desk.

  After a moment of baffled silence the Precentor said, “Your brother’s son, you say, sir? But the boy’s patronymic is Benotti.”

  The gentleman sighed.

  “Alas,” he said. “My unfortunate brother, despite my most earnest pleading, chose to demean his ancient lineage by becoming a tradesman. But at least I prevailed upon him to spare the family honor so far as to change his name. I have no children, and the boy is my only heir. I have come posthaste, as soon as I heard of my brother’s tragic death, to take the boy under my protection and bring him up in a manner proper to his inheritance.”

  There was another silence. The Precentor looked to his right, but the fat little man refused to meet his eye. Beyond him, Father Brava shrugged. The choirmaster coughed.

  “The boy has just now chosen to become a full member of His Eminence’s choir…,” he began, but the gentleman interrupted him. There was the touch of contempt now in the harshness of his voice.

  “And this is the notary to engross the deed. And this, no doubt, is the surgeon to perform the operation. Fathers, I cannot permit it. The boy is the last of an ancient lineage. Would you snuff it out entirely, knowing that at the last day you shall stand before your maker and confess to such a deed?”

  Yet another silence.

  “In two days His Eminence will return�
�,” the Precentor suggested.

  “Alas, I cannot wait,” said the gentleman firmly. “I have affairs to conduct. If my poor brother did not appoint a guardian for the boy, then in law that task falls to me. My consent would be absolutely necessary for the operation, no matter what the boy himself has said. Is this not the case, sir?”

  The fat little man jumped as if he had been stung.

  “Yes…yes, I believe so,” he said, with an apologetic grimace toward the Precentor.

  “Well, I do not give it,” said the gentleman firmly, then added, in a quieter tone, “But, Fathers, I gladly recognize the kindness of your intentions, and the generosity with which you have educated and trained my nephew, and in settlement of all such debts I am happy to make a reasonable payment to the cathedral, to be spent for the benefit of the choir, as you think fit.”

  He took a folded document from his breast pocket, opened it and laid it on the desk beside the envelope. The Precentor picked it up. His eyebrows rose as he studied it.

  “That is indeed generous, sir,” he said.

  “My pleasure,” said the gentleman. “Now I must be gone. I deeply regret that I am unable to have the pleasure of meeting His Eminence. You will give him my respects? If you need me, you will find me at the hostelry of St. Barnabas-by-the-Gate. Come, Alfredo.”

  He bowed once more, turned and left. Alfredo followed him numbly. Never to sing again! Never again!

  There was a closed carriage waiting in the courtyard, of the sort that plied for hire around the city. The gentleman opened the door and climbed in, Alfredo followed, and the horses trotted away toward the Northern Gate but, as soon as they were out of sight of the cathedral, swung left toward the harbor. The gentleman sat for a while, massaging his throat, and then opened a valise, which he had evidently left in the coach when he had come.

  “Sit well back,” he said. “Take that thing off and put this on. It will be small for you, but most boys grow faster than their parents can afford to reclothe them.”

  Still too numb to wonder what all this meant, Alfredo took off his ankle-length chorister’s gown and worked his way into a coarse fustian overshirt, much like the one he used to wear at home. Meanwhile, the gentleman removed his wig, coat, stock, sword belt and shoes, pulled a pair of gray woollen stockings over his hose and replaced the other garments with ones much like those any prosperous shopkeeper or small merchant might have worn, going about his business. He folded his gentleman’s outfit neatly and packed it into the valise, unscrewing the hilt from his sword to fit it in.

  The coach stopped, they climbed out and the gentleman—gentleman now no longer—paid the coachman and led the way into the tangle of crowded streets above the harbor.

  THREE HOURS LATER THEY WERE ON THE DECK OF a small boat watching the coastline dwindle behind them. After a while Alfredo’s companion looked at his watch, drew a flask from an inner pocket and sipped slowly at it, throwing his head back to swallow, so that Alfredo saw the effort he found it to do so. All that time they had hardly exchanged a word, but now the man smiled a strange, bitter smile, without warmth or mirth.

  “Thank you for asking no questions,” he said in a grating whisper. “I have a constriction in my throat and must spare my voice, but the sea air is good for it, and my medicine helps for a while. Well, as you’ve probably guessed, I am not the Cavalier di Lucari, but I am your uncle Giorgio, and you may call me that. Aren’t you going to say anything? I have just saved you from a painful operation and a lifetime of regret and shame. At some risk to myself, what’s more. The penalty for forging a financial document is an extremely unpleasant death. You are not grateful?”

  Alfredo looked up at him. He could feel tears starting to come.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed to say. “But I really wanted to sing. It’s all I’ve got left.”

  “Poor boy,” said Uncle Giorgio. “But it isn’t all you have left. And you shall sing. Would you like to sing to me now? Not church music, I think. Do you know any songs of the sea?”

  Alfredo cast his mind back to the old days and remembered a silly song he had picked up in the harbor long ago while Father was haggling with one of the merchants about a consignment of fine flour from the south. It was about a sailor numbering off the girls he had in the ports along the coast, adding a fresh name and port to the list with each verse. It had a pretty, lively tune, very far from how he was now feeling, but almost as soon as he’d started the music took over and he sang for the joy of singing.

  Uncle Giorgio listened, smiling, and then reached out for Alfredo’s neck.

  “Don’t stop,” he said as his fingers felt beneath the collar, found the gold chain, pulled it free and gently lifted it over Alfredo’s head and clear.

  Alfredo’s voice faltered. Something was badly wrong. He had to concentrate hard even to stay on the note, but his training held and he recovered himself and sang on. But for that moment the music had been empty, meaningless, and still there seemed to be a sort of inner uncertainty, until Uncle Giorgio replaced the chain and slid the little golden salamander back under Alfredo’s shirt. The joy came back and Alfredo finished the song.

  Shocked at last out of his apathy, he stared at his uncle.

  “What…what happened?” he whispered.

  “Originally there was no music in our own blood, Alfredo. All we have is the gift of the salamanders. They are intensely musical creatures. And we have known them long, very, very long, so that by now that gift of music has, as it were, bred itself into our family. It is, so to speak, our birthright. But it does not always run true. In a few of us it is manifest from the first. In some, such as your poor brother, it is entirely lacking. Your father had it, but—”

  “But he couldn’t sing at all! He was awful!”

  Uncle Giorgio’s voice grew even harsher.

  “He chose not to, Alfredo. That was one of many bad choices.”

  “But…”

  “Since you loved him, we had best not talk about it. What was I saying?…Yes, for most of us the gift is there, but needs the power of the salamanders to unlock it. If I had given your brother the pendant he might have sung, but not as you do. For you the pendant was, as it were, a key to unlock the casket that held your gift.

  “And remember this. One thing I told those priests, at least, was true. We come of an extremely ancient lineage, you and I, older than that of any prince or cavalier you could name. And we two are the last of it. That is why I have risked my life to bring you away. I did not do it for your father’s sake. I owe him nothing, nothing at all. You are very precious to me, Alfredo.”

  He chuckled, shaking his head. The dry, effortful whisper had made it impossible to guess at his feelings, but twice, when he’d been speaking of Father, there’d been something—and then the final chuckle…and for the first time Alfredo saw that Uncle Giorgio might be his father’s brother. Must be. That was exactly how his father chuckled when he was pretending to make light of something that in fact really mattered to him…as on Alfredo’s name-day almost four years ago. …

  Yes, the brothers must have quarreled, and about something that had really mattered. “…has no children, as far as I know…” (that must have been Uncle Giorgio) “…renounced my own birthright—I can’t do that for him …make up his own mind…” (and that must have been Alfredo himself).

  But there’d been something that mattered even more, something that must have its Master. And because of that it was better for Alfredo to wear the salamander chain than not to. And Father had invited Uncle Giorgio to the christenings of both his sons.

  And the neighbors had been right about Father’s singing so badly. He’d been doing it on purpose.

  “So we must make things up between us, as best we can,” Uncle Giorgio went on. “It is proper that you should have loved your father, and I will not hold that against you. But now you have me in his place, and henceforth you will bear your true name, which is Alfredo di Sala. Are you content with that?”

  Not kno
wing what to say, Alfredo nodded and waited to be told more, but Uncle Giorgio was massaging his throat in the way that he had in the coach, so Alfredo guessed it must be hurting because he had talked too much. Before long Uncle Giorgio went down to the cabin to rest, leaving Alfredo to sing softly, under his breath, hour after hour, while he watched the unchanging sea.

  Next day they docked in a small harbor. Uncle Giorgio was evidently expected at the only inn, where another valise was waiting for him, and there was a mule in the stable ready to carry it and the rest of the baggage. They set out almost at once, up a steep track, but when they were well clear of the town Uncle Giorgio led the way to one side, halted as soon as they were hidden, opened the second valise and took out fresh clothes for the pair of them—a peasant’s jacket and breeches for himself and a plain country smock for Alfredo, with wide-brimmed straw hats for both of them. They plodded on for the rest of afternoon along narrow tracks, rising and falling, supped and slept in a deserted hut far up a hillside and journeyed on next day, coming late that afternoon to a final crest above a different harbor town. They neared its walls a little before sunset, but before they reached it, turned aside once more. In a tumbledown shack Uncle Giorgio changed back into his merchant’s dress.

  “Wait here,” he croaked. “Bell rings before gates close. Go through when others go. Harbor. Largest boat at quay—Bonaventura—go below. Cabin. Wait for me.”

  He took the mule’s bridle and strode on toward the town.

  Alfredo was not worried to be left alone. By now he understood what was happening. His uncle had pretended to be a rich gentleman in order to impress the priests, and then had effectively bought Alfredo from them with what seemed to be a generous donation to the choir, though no doubt they planned to keep most of it for themselves. Without that they might have argued, made difficulties until the Prince-Cardinal returned. If he wished to keep Alfredo in the choir, it barely mattered what the law said. But the donation was of course worthless, the letter of introduction probably a blank sheet of paper. The Prince-Cardinal would be outraged, and if Uncle Giorgio was caught he would face a horrible death. So he was covering their tracks, pretending to be still at the hostelry of St. Barnabas when he had already left the city, changing their clothes, taking this roundabout but already prepared route home and now, at this new harbor, concealing Alfredo’s existence in the hope of smuggling him out to sea unnoticed.