Damiano felt the sun touch his lips. It made him yawn. “We’ll stop here,” he said to Macchiata. “Maybe all day. We can eat lunch on the south side of that biggest rock.”
Macchiata agreed to the proposal, and the two of them walked through the sea of soft grass toward the furthermost standing stone, which looked like a seat with a huge, scallop-shell back and velvety moss over the cushions.
At the foot of the red stone grew a thicket of rosemary, dotted now with blue flowers and droning with bees. “It’s Dami, golden people,” announced the witch as he climbed. “Out of the way so I don’t crush you and so you don’t sting me.” Obediently the insects circled wide of him.
This was a chair for a giant. Damiano could he full length on the cushions of moss and still have room for his baggage and a restless dog. They ate stale bread and cheese and a carrot Damiano had stolen from the inn kitchen. Then he filled his wooden bowl from a child-sized pond where a rubble of rocks had dammed the stream. Tiny silver fish darted around his hands, each not much bigger than a fingernail. He hoped none had gotten into his drinking water.
A few inches from his eyes, as he knelt there, was a patch of blooming crocuses. He broke off three blossoms and carried them back to the rock, where he lay down on his stomach on the moss and peered down the flowers’ throats.
They were shining white but veined with purple at the bottom of the petals. Within each little cup proudly stood the stamen covered with saffron, which left a film of gold on the young man’s finger.
At this distance, too, the moss was radiant with color: gold, green, russet, sooty black. Damiano laid the crocuses on the moss and closed his eyes. Macchiata lay down beside him. “I wish…” she said, and then was silent.
“You wish what, little dear?” murmured Damiano. There was silence. He turned to the little dog, who licked her lips nervously.
“I… it would be fun to play with Raphael now,” she blurted at last. “It’s been a long time since you called him.”
Damiano’s eyes closed again. “Yes, it has. But I don’t imagine he’s drumming his fingers, waiting. He is a blessed angel, Macchiata, and we are… creatures of the earth. He has all eternity, while we have the hours between lunch and dinner, as it were.
“And he cannot understand the affairs of men.” Damiano yawned again, and since his chin was resting on the mossy stone, the effort raised his whole head. Then he frowned.
“Actually, little dear, I don’t understand the affairs of men either.
I appreciate the affairs of… bees, let’s say… much better. But I am a man, so it is up to me to act the part.”
Damiano squirmed onto his back and placed the white cup of a crocus over each of his eyes. “I can see the sun through them,” he commented. “Tinted white and pink and purple.” When he took the flowers away, his lashes were dusted with gold. “These crocuses look sort of like Raphael to me: all white and gold and radiant. Though the white is his robe, of course.”
Damiano yawned once more, screwed his eyes shut, and rubbed the gold all over his face. “Then again, since what we are seeing when we see Raphael is only an image for our mortality’s sake, perhaps he is the robe, and there is nothing under it. What man would dare lift it to see?”
“I know what Raphael looks like under the robe. I looked,” said Macchiata. Damiano opened his eyes very suddenly.
“You what?”
“I looked. I stuck my head under and looked, Master. A long time ago. I was curious.”
Now it was Damiano’s turn to lick his lips. He tasted saffron. “And what… No, little dear. Never mind. I don’t think it’s for me to know.” He sighed, turned his face to the sun, and composed himself for a nap.
He did miss the angel. In the three years since he had first had the temerity to speak the summoning words (that was after his father died, when many things in Damiano’s life had got easier), he had never gone as long as a week without a lesson. Indeed, the lute, though important, was only a bridge by which to reach Raphael, who was Damiano’s closest friend.
Second closest friend, he amended to himself, feeling a slimy nose against his palm. That made two friends in all, unless he could count Carla, whom he would never see again.
Lying there on the moss in the sun, the young witch thought of the Devil’s words and did not feel in the shghtest bit damned. But for the plight of his city, now so far away, he would be the happiest fellow on earth. And the sleepiest.
What instrument did Raphael play, by choice? The lute had been Damiano’s idea, since he happened to have a lute, and the angel had never demurred. He played the lute masterfully, but it was hardly likely it was his only instrument.
Gabriele (whom Damiano had never met) played the trumpet. Of course. But there was no reason for all archangels to be alike. If they played together, it would be more reasonable to have both winds and strings. That is, if the winds could be taught not to overpower the sound of the string players. Among angels, there would surely be more consideration than among Italians.
Paintings often showed angels playing harps, but that was because harps were so common; when your imagination fails, you could always paint a musician with a harp. They were easy to paint, too, having three angles and only two curves.
But Raphael showed such a delight in shuffling between modes, and in flatting his seventh…. Damiano could more easily see him at a lute or chitarre. Or perhaps a large vielle—a hurdy-gurdy—with chromatic keys.
Then it occurred to Damiano that since Raphael was a spirit, he had no need for a material instrument; the trees could make his music, or the bones of the earth. So what did the archangel mean when he said, “I have my own instrument?” Next time Damiano saw him, he would ask straight out, “Raphael, what do you play?”
With this decision off his mind, Damiano fell asleep.
The bees were crawling over him: thick, droning, coating him with gold. They had a thousand voices, warm and nasal like the vielle itself. They were the voices of friends. Damiano strained to hear them, to pull out one voice and recognize it. To know a single name. “Solitary,” they whispered, all together. “Solitary boy.”
The weight of the bees was on him, soft and heavy. He could feel it on his arms, his body, his lips. The golden drone echoed in his chest. Damiano struggled upward from sleep and knew he was under a spell.
A hand was upon him, invisible, gentle—as the hand of a girl might cover a baby rabbit. It was at once caressing and imprisoning. He heard Macchiata whine. He heard a song.
“Boy, boy, solitary boy. I see you in the garden, Alone in the garden, Sleeping in the sun.”
It was a woman’s voice, throaty and deep, rich as a multitude of bees. “Boy,” it chanted. “Solitary boy.” Damiano turned his head toward it, pushing slowly against the invisible hand. He cracked his eyes open and peered out from under the concealment of his thick lashes.
Her hair was sunny brown and wound in peasant braids. Her cheeks were blushed rose and dimpled, for she was smiling. Her eyes were green and brown and golden, all together, in a pattern that swam and made his head swim. She wore a blue dress embroidered with stars of red and yellow and Damiano found her utterly charming.
It was not a strong spell that held him; he could have broken it with a word. But it was the most intimate touch he had known from any woman, so Damiano lay still and did not speak.
“Young one, I can see you,
I can peel you like an onion,
I see backward, through your days.
I unfold you like the petals of a rose.
Book-friend, rabbit-friend, your playmates are the beasts in the stall. What do you study, boy, that makes you so alone?”
Her touch into his mind was like a feather under the chin. It tickled and made him smile. Then the feather withdrew in surprise.
“Dark boy, do you know who you are?
There is power in you, young one, like floods under stone.”
The hazel eyes widened, and she drew back. The spell shattered, tinkling,
as Damiano heaved up on one shoulder. He opened his eyes. “Don’t go,” he whispered. “And I’m not as young as all that.”
The woman stopped where she stood, eyes wide and wary. Neither did Damiano move, and though she did not try to enter his mind once more, (he would not have obstructed her, having nothing to hide), slowly her smile grew again.
“You’re a witch,” she said, amusement and surprise in her words. Even when not singing, her voice had a lilt to it that was nothing like the Italian of Lombardy. “You’re most certainly a witch, and you know it, too. But those black eyes are worse than witchcraft, boy. Don’t turn them on me like that.”
Damiano blushed to the roots of his hair. “You’re making fun of me,” he said. “What have I done to deserve it?” But the truth was he liked her teasing and was liking everything about the woman more and more. This was Saara. It had to be.
She had the round face of a country girl of seventeen and the knowing air of a belle dame of Provence and the lightness of movement of one of the wood sprites, whom even Damiano could only see out of the corner of his eye. Best of all, she was not a country girl or a great lady or a pagan sprite but one of his own kind, a human witch.
She didn’t answer his question. Instead she put her hands on her hips. Damiano sat up, noticing she neither carried a staff nor seemed to need one. “Who are you, boy?” she asked. “For boy you are, to me. I am much older than I look, I warn you. And you are in my garden.”
Suddenly Damiano remembered the southerner the landlord at Ludica had described to him: the man with the sharp sword and sharp tongue who had vanished in Saara’s garden. But looking at Saara herself, he was not afraid.
“My name is Dami,” he said, “Damiano. We have traveled here from the Piedmont, my dog and I, to talk to you.”
Saara spared a glance at Macchiata, who still lay under the spell, flattened like a white pill-bug on the cushions of moss. With a giggle and a wave of the hand she released the dog, who scuttled (like a white pill-bug) out of sight behind the rock.
“I would like to talk to you too, Dami. It is rare to find another in Lombardy who is tuned to the powers. Rarer still to find one who is friendly. But if I allow you to come much closer to me, you will make an enemy you don’t want to have. He might remove your curly head from your shoulders!” She sat down cross-legged on the green and silver grass, too far away for Damiano’s close vision.
Damiano dismissed this possibility with a shrug and a wave, and he slid down from the rock into the rosemary bush. Saara sang a line in a tongue that seemed to be composed mostly of k sounds and long vowels, and which was to Damiano no more than birdsong. Instantly limber fingers of rosemary whipped out and hugged his knees and calves, bruising themselves with the strength of their grip and filling the air with herby sweetness.
“All right,” said Damiano, and he sat down obediently in the thorny patch. Casually, with one hand, he reached up behind him and found his staff, which he laid carefully across his lap.
Saara sat straight as an abbess, her feet crossed over her knees. She pointed at the ebony stick. “Those,” she said. “I have seen you southern witches use them. You lock yourselves into them, like men who trade their legs for crutches. Why? Any leg at all is better than the most beautiful crutch.”
Damiano frowned uncertainly. “The staff is a focus, lady—like a lens. Do you know what a lens is? It’s like a drop of water, which makes sunlight into a bright point. The staff is the focus through which my craft touches the world. It makes my spells more… the same, from day to day. I have used this staff for years; all my powers are tuned to it, and without it I’d have nothing.”
“That’s dangerous, boy. It makes you too vulnerable, needing an outside object like that. My… lens… or drop of bright sunlight, is my song. My song cannot be taken from me.”
Damiano lifted his eyebrows. “Music? Lovely lady. What a pretty thought. I play music too, but not for magic. To do that seems, somehow, to sully the tune.”
Saara’s little pink nostrils flared, and woody rosemary crawled over Damiano’s hands. “Sully the tune? No! For both magic and music are sacred!”
“Sacred?” Damiano sighed. “Music, yes, but witchcraft… I don’t know, lady. I have seen too much done with witchcraft that had nothing to do with God’s will. I release my own powers into the staff because running free through me they can… make me drunk. Then who knows what deed I might do.”
He raised his eyes to the pretty woman in her bright, childish dress. “Because I am, after all, a man, lady. And men at times are slaves to their passions.”
Saara made as though to laugh at him but changed her mind. “You must learn to know the powers,” she said seriously. “The good from the wicked. The pure from the twisted. When you are possessed by a spirit of wisdom, you can do nothing bad.”
Damiano shook his head, dissatisfied.
“Perhaps for you, lady, that is true, but for me… I don’t trust so much. If I allow a spirit to command my actions and then kill a child or burn down a house, who will it be who comes before the throne of the Almighty for judgment: the nameless spirit or Damiano?”
He shuffled amid the fragrant, prickling branches, trying to win some comfort. “Besides, even if the spirit is pure, I am not. At this moment, my lady Saara, I look at you and am filled with a sweet longing that is not pure at all.” Immediately he lowered his eyes to the grass, overcome by his own gallantry.
The witch Saara put one braid-end to her mouth and giggled like a little girl. “We have different ideas of purity, Dami-yano. But I tell you, as long as you keep your power as a thing apart from yourself, you will not come to your full strength.”
He shrugged, as though to say “so what”? but his smile apologized for the gesture even as he made it. “It is your power that has led me all this way in the snow, Saara. I need your help.”
She let the braid drop. Her greenish eyes went wary. “You mean you didn’t climb here just to speak words of hopeless love to me?” Her words were lighter than her guarded expression.
Before answering, Damiano paused, running his fingers lightly over the jewels of his staff. “Beautiful lady, I think I could speak words of love to you—and more than speak—forever. If they are hopeless, then I am desolate, but since I have only just met you this hour, I may recover.
“But I have lived in Partestrada all my life, and she is in great trouble. It is for that reason I have disturbed your peace: because I am told you are the most powerful witch in the Italies.” He glanced up to see whether his words had offended Saara. She looked merely concerned.
“Who told you that I was the most powerful witch in the Italies, boy? No one in the Italies knows me.” But rather than waiting for his answer, she continued “Great trouble, Dami. That would mean —plague?”
Both his eyebrows shot up. “Mother of God! No! Not that! Not again. I meant war. And tyranny.”
“Ah.” The syllable expressed dying interest. She turned her head away from Damiano and toward the fluttering, yellow birch leaves. “War. Well, there’s nothing I can do about that.”
“No?” For one moment he faced the possibility that his search had been useless, that there was no hope for Partestrada or for any small, industrious, unarmed peoples. Perhaps neither logic nor magic could hold the gates, for plague and Pardo were Fate and God’s will. Just for a moment he stared at this possibility, and then he turned firmly away from it.
At a single word from Damiano, the tendrils of rosemary sprang away and hung as coils in the air around him. “I don’t believe you. You say there’s nothing you can do, but I read in your face that it’s just not worth the bother.” He stood, and Saara stood. The air spat tiny sparks that smelled like hot metal. “Well it is worth one person’s bother, and much more, and in the service of my city I have been beaten and frozen, gone hungry and sleepless and done deeds… that I shouldn’t have done,” he concluded less forcefully. “In fact, I’ve done what no man should do. I’ve tried to strike a
bargain with the Father of Lies, to deliver my city from bloodshed and poverty. Even he refused me. You are my last hope, Saara. I cannot believe the greatest witch in all Europe doesn’t know of a way to free a town from the power of one Roman brigand.
“I’ll do whatever need be done, lady. I’ll fight Pardo’s men alone on foot, if need be. I’ll swell the Evançon to wash them from the streets. I’ll go to any amount of work, and through any peril.
“I only need you to tell me how.” The faith in his eyes was as unreasonable as a child’s, and his jaw clenched again and again.
Saara tried to break the link that locked her green, slightly tilted eyes to Damiano’s. She failed, for the power that held her was as old as sorcery and far stronger. “I’m not the greatest witch in Europe, Dami-yano. In my home we are all witches, and there are some much stronger than I, and wilder. That is why…
“But, boy, you are free of that place, and of General Pardo. The world is yours—although not this hill, I must remind you. General Pardo cannot follow you everywhere.”
Damiano squinted painfully and shook his head. “He has my city, lady. My home. There is a great difference between a traveler and an exile. Ask Dante. Ask Petrarch.”
Saara cocked her head at the unfamiliar names, and then she laughed. “I need no one else’s opinion. A city is a collection of stone walls. My people need no cities; they follow the reindeer and are free.”
“Reindeer?”
Saara grinned at his puzzlement. “Shaggy deer with great antlers and big feet that can stand on the snow. We ride them and milk them and also eat them, though not the same ones we ride.”
Looking at the impish set of Saara’s smile, Damiano was not sure he was supposed to believe her. He decided, sighing deeply, that he should let the matter pass.
“We Piedmontese—all Italians—do need cities. We invest our hearts into them. A city is like a mother, lovely lady. She gives us our food and our friends and our amusements. She sets an indelible stamp upon us. Yet a city—she can’t defend herself. Who will take care of her if not her children, eh?”
The Damiano Series Page 17