“You are as warm as a hearth, young one, and like a hearth fire, open and giving. Till this moment, I would have said as… as confident as a hearth fire, too, for I have seen you go through pain and horror, and glow the brighter for them. Do you think it is out of a sense of duty that I love you, Dami? Or that it is your witchcraft that has compelled me to teach you music these three years?
“I have no duty toward mankind. None. I was created not for duty but to make music. Nor can the actions of mortals force me into time’s stringent bondage.
“But you are such a silly one, Damiano Delstrego. Your hands are too big for you. Also your eyes. And your opinions. You try so hard, in a world whose pain I cannot bear to comprehend. And within you, you know what is best and love it despite all error. That’s why I cannot understand how you could be so cozened as to believe…
“Ah, Dami, Dami!” And Raphael held the young man to him and rocked from side to side. “Do you know what it is to be damned? It has nothing to do with fire. To be damned is only not to love.”
“Not to love God, you mean, Raphael,” murmured Damiano, who lay with eyes closed, feeling his pain ebb away. “I’ve heard something like that from Father Antonio.”
Raphael paused, and his fair brow frowned in concentration. “All created things,” he said at last, “are the mirror of their creator. Can one love anything, with whole heart, and not love its source?
“Maybe a man can—men are a mystery to me—but I cannot And, Damiano, look at me.
“You are a sudden flash of light, child. A tune rising from nowhere. I am not flesh, and I cannot understand you, but I love you, and I know you are not damned!”
Damiano blinked up at the angel. Raphael’s face blurred in his vision, and he blinked harder. “Is that so?” he asked. “Is that really so? Then I’m very glad to hear it,” he added, “because I didn’t want to go to hell.”
Then he wept without shame against the spotless white robe.
Minutes passed, and then Damiano lifted his head. “You know what, Raphael?” he asked. “I’m sorry to say this, after all you have done for me, but… but… I find I still don’t want to die, either. Isn’t that petty of me, after all I’ve done to get myself in trouble?”
And then the angel pursed his beautiful lips and rocked Damiano back and forth. “We all get into trouble sometimes,” he whispered, “doing what we shouldn’t. Sometimes we should do what we shouldn’t. Don’t worry about it, Dami.”
This statement was difficult. It was also dubious morality. But Damiano was past trying to make good sense out of Raphael, or good morality, either. Perhaps angels were not expected to be moral, but just to be angels. Were they even Christians, these pure spirits?
No matter. It was better just to listen and to trust Raphael. And it was wonderful, being rocked by him. It was music and it was rest. It was falling, falling weightlessly like snow, his face against the spotless white garment, falling through a room filled with the lights of pearl.
Pain was forgotten, and fear. And if tomorrow—today almost, for it was near dawn—if tomorrow the rope worked properly, and he did not strangle, then perhaps death would be no more than this.
He was not damned.
Damiano almost slept, curled on the angel’s lap, his hands bound behind him. He would have slept, except for the irritating, familiar poke against his hands and the awkward voice calling “Master, Master, Master,” incessantly and too early in the morning.
Damiano opened his eyes. “Macchiata,” he whispered, and the heavy triangular head thrust before his face, and she licked his wet eyes. She was as solid as life, and almost as ugly as she had ever been.
“Oh, poor Master, poor Master,” she crooned. “All tied up. It’s terrible to be tied up. I remember.”
Damiano slid to the floor and sat upright. “Little dear,” he said. “It’s so good to see you. I… I… don’t know what to say, except maybe we can be together again tomorrow.”
But she left him and struggled onto Raphael’s lap. “We’re together right now,” she said, and then turned her attention to the angel. “I got it,” she announced. “I dragged it all the way up and down the stairs of the big house and nobody saw me. But I can’t get it through the door. Help me; I can’t get Master’s stick through the door.”
Raphael petted her from ear to tail with easy familiarity. Damiano had to smile.
“Don’t ask him that,” Damiano chided the dog. “Raphael can’t arrange a man’s life. Or death. He can’t interfere, being not of this world, Macchiata. I’ve told you that a dozen times.”
But the little white ghost with a single red spot ignored him. She trotted to the door on her bandy legs, then back to Raphael. “Open the door,” she insisted. “I can’t do it, and it’s late. Open it.”
The angel looked over at Damiano, until the young man hung his head. “Stop, Macchiata,” he whispered. “He can’t do it.”
Then Raphael, still sitting, leaned over and opened the door of the shed. Starlight flooded in, and the iron padlock, still intact, swung back and forth against the wood.
Macchiata scuttled out and then in again, dragging the ornate length of ebony wood. She maneuvered it, with much thudding and thumping, till it touched the fingers of Damiano’s bound hands.
He cried out as power flooded into him. “Raphael! What have you done? You have… have interfered!”
Raphael’s smile was contained and inward-turning. “Yes, I have, Dami,” he said, and he laced fair fingers over one white samite knee. “It feels very interesting,” the angel added. “I wonder…”
Damiano could wait no longer. He spoke three words.
The massive door was flung back against the shed wall with such force the stones shook, and the one iron hinge burst in fragments. All through the ruins of San Gabriele rang the echoes of similar doors swinging open and parchment windows ripping open. The sword belts of the sentries writhed unbuckled and fell.
The laces of jerkins and tunics sprang free of their eyelets, and Damiano’s bonds escaped him like frightened snakes, and at the gateless gateposts of the village, a noose of rope, prepared for the morning, spiraled free of the tree and lay limp as a worm on the trodden road.
Damiano crawled to his feet. With one numb, purple hand he scooped up the small ghost of a dog. He embraced Raphael and kissed him enthusiastically on both cheeks. Then he stepped out into the street, where night and morning were touching and the east was gray.
The sentries saw him emerge, splendid in his tunic of gold and his robe of scarlet, lined with stainless ermine. He was young and unwearied and fearless. He grinned at them as he passed, thumping his tall staff in time. And if they saw the archangel, or even the spectral dog, they gave no sign of it but stood frozen, holding their clothes up with both hands.
Before the square tower Damiano stopped and called out until a blue form appeared on the balcony. “Marquis?
“There is no need to hang me after all. I’m not damned; it was all a big misunderstanding.”
Ogier made no answer, so after a moment Damiano added, “I’m Monsieur Demon—remember? But maybe I’m not so hideous after all, in the morning light.”
“I see you,” said Ogier, and the marquis looked left and right along the streets. “You look much more comely this morning. Am I to understand that none of my men are willing to take arms against you? Yes, well, I quite understand their reservations.” For five seconds the marquis stared fixedly at Damiano, and Damiano beamed up at him.
“What are you going to do, Monsieur who is not a demon?” he asked finally. “Seeing we cannot prevent you, that is.”
Damiano shrugged loosely. “I’m going to leave, of course.
“But I thank you for your assistance last night. It saved much bloodshed.”
“Overjoyed to have been of service,” responded Ogier, with chilly, ironical politeness.
There was a drum of hooves, and the black gelding racketed into the village, passing between the gateposts and spurni
ng the fallen rope. Damiano turned to the horse, which snorted delicately and bit its master’s curly hair.
He pulled himself up. Raphael stood before him on the road, wings outspread and glorious. The little dog sat beside him, scratching impossible fleas. “Seraph,” he said, leaning left around the black gelding’s neck, “I have one more debt to pay, and it’s one that should not wait.”
“I know,” answered the angel quite calmly. “We’ll come along, if we may.” The little dog chimed in, “Of course we’ll come with you, Master. We haven’t been here any time at all!”
He left San Gabriele with his scarlet cloak flying like a banner in the early light. Bright wings soared in the air above the galloping horse, for any to see who had eyes to see, and a small dog ran at his left hand, trotting easily over the ground and never falling behind.
Chapter 16
It was a ride like all rides through the Piedmont during this bleak season of the Nativity. Mud spattered the horse’s cannons, and ice crusted its shaggy face, till it scraped its muzzle with its hooves like a dog. But the mud was rich, and the ice was glorious, and the snow that whipped Damiano’s cheeks and caught in his hair—that was so much eiderdown. He rode singing, sometimes sweetly, sometimes voice-cracked and hoarse, sometimes in strange harmony to tunes whose burden no one heard but him.
And he laughed at nothing, wiggling on the patient gelding’s back. At night Damiano nursed great bonfires and squatted by them, talking like a crazy man. Talking, talking, talking to the air.
Beside a cairn of rocks crouched Saara the Fenwoman, wrapped against the cold in a rough woolen blanket. Still she was cold, always cold. Being cold didn’t interest her.
She brought a few rocks every day, and though sometimes wolves or dogs came and dug a few of them away, Ruggerio’s grave was becoming more secure.
One dull brown braid flapped in the wind. She tucked it back into her blanket. She should go down to Ludica, she knew. This high hill was no place for her, alone and in the winter. The steam-burns on her arms and under her chin pulled in the cold and ached. She would go down to Ludica; when hardly mattered.
She could sweep floors. A woman could always sweep floors.
The wind sang over the flat, marshy field. It had done so day after day, singing a bleak, mindless, winter song. Though her ear was trained to the sounds of wind and water, she was rapidly learning not to hear this song of despair.
But now she had no choice but to hear, for the tone of the wind was changing. She cocked her small head to one side, and her tilted green eyes narrowed.
This was a south wind, and a very familiar one. As any weaver can recognize her cloth, even when it is cut out of shape and sewn, so Saara recognized her own soft south wind, woven to cover her garden.
She stood, and she saw Damiano step out from the pines, swinging his black staff and striding toward her. His raiment shone under the winter sun, and his hair was black and free as a horse’s mane. His eyes were filled with the beauty of youth and with purpose, and in his face shone power.
Saara turned from him, anger warring with shame. She thought to run into the birch wood where all the leaves rattled. But anger won and she stayed, standing between the witch and the grave of the man he had slain.
Damiano looked down at the stones. “Lady, please let me by,” he said.
“Why?” she asked in turn, and her voice shook like paper, like a dead birch leaf. “What more harm would you do to him?”
His nostrils flared. “None. He is beyond harm, and I intend none.” Then his face softened. “Please, Saara. Let me by and you shall see why I’m here.”
His pleading was more painful to her than his presence, and she stiffened under it. “See what? Can you bring Ruggerio to life again, after weeks in the earth?”
“No,” replied Damiano, and with his staff he forced her aside. “All I can do is this.” And holding the staff by its heel, he raised it high over his head.
“Leave the grave be!” she shouted in rage, but the staff whistled through the air and smashed down.
There was a snap and a screech of wood and metal. The staff cracked. It split up the middle and broke into two pieces.
There was no flash of light, nor booming of thunder. The air did not smell burned. Yet Saara staggered as all that was her own came back to her, and more, and more. She shook her head against memories she had never known before: books unread, unfamiliar flowers and faces.
A girl’s face, with yellow hair. The face of an air spirit, awesome and mild. The face of a dog.
Then she saw the face of Guillermo Delstrego through other eyes.
Daily lessons in the great stone workroom with the wood fire hissing. Daily dinners, crude but filling, cooked on the same enormous hearth. Whippings—both the deserved and the undeserved. A gift of apples. The gift of a staff.
And finally the screams from above, and, oh, pray for my father,
he is dead, my father is dead. Saara cried in anger but could not resist, violated to the depths by the pity she was compelled to feel for Guillermo Delstrego.
After minutes or hours she sighed, putting the images away.
The young man—the boy—stood unmoving, staring stupidly down at the piled stones and the shards of wood and silver. The heel of the staff dangled limply from his hands. His mouth was open. Finally he dropped the stick and rubbed his face in both hands. He cleared his throat.
“It’s what he wanted, Saara. Ruggerio, I mean. He had a chance to kill me, but he chose instead to try to break the staff. Well, no one but I myself could do that, while I am alive.” He turned to her, squinting as though the light was too bright.
“My lady Saara, you are so beautiful! A beautiful witch and a beautiful woman. It’s not just the witch power. When I came up the meadow, you were beautiful then, too, but you didn’t give me a chance to mention it.”
Saara took a deep breath, sorting the chaos within her. “I don’t want all this,” she said to him. “Only what was mine. Take back what is yours.”
He shrugged and dropped his eyes. “I can’t. Besides, I don’t want it anymore. Your song, my lady, was never meant to be bound in wood—it wasn’t happy with me—and as for mine, well I give it freely, so it won’t make any fuss. Please accept it; it’s like a homeless dog. It can’t survive alone.”
Saara stepped forward, letting the blanket slip from her shoulders. Her embroidered dress shone gaily under a sun that was growing warmer. Rags fell, leaving her feet pink and bare. She touched Damiano.
“This is too much to understand,” she said, and he nodded.
“I find it so myself. But, lady, I trust you with power more than I trust myself. I told you so once before.
“Besides—what is all power but fire? And I have had too much of fire, lately.” He stepped away, then glanced again at her, one hand scratching the side of his head.
“Please forgive me,” he said, “for all I’ve done to you. It was never the way I wanted it.” And he walked away.
“Wait,” Saara called. She opened her mouth to sing his feet still, but shame stopped her. Instead she ran after Damiano, her bare feet splashing over the wet ground. “Where are you going, like this?” she demanded. “You’re helpless as a baby.” He turned to her in surprise.
“I’m going west,” he said. “I thought to Provence, or as far as I get. And, my lady, don’t worry. I’m no more helpless than any other man.”
“Go home instead, if you can,” she countered. “Or if that general will not let you, then stay in Ludica.
“You’ll learn what it is to be alone, now, Dami. Cold and alone. Believe me: a witch without power…”
He scratched his tangled head again, and he grinned at her. “Don’t worry, I said. I know what cold is like already. I’ve had a lot of practice.
“And alone? Saara, pikku Saara! Our closest friends are sometimes those we cannot see.”
He leaped one coil of the broad, choked stream that cut the meadow into islands. Landing, he slip
ped and fell on one knee, then stood again, laughing at himself. He met the Fenwoman’s gaze, he squinting with the distance between them. “What a body this is; nothing seems to work right.” Then his grin softened. “Look at me, Saara. I’m happy. Haven’t you eyes to see?”
Then he turned on his heel and darted across the meadow. Saara watched him until, slapping a low branch with his hand, he faded into the dark trees. When he had vanished, she lifted her head to the high, singing brilliance that went with Damiano, shining above the pine wood.
She had the eyes to see.
Damiano’s Lute
Book Two of the Damiano Series
R.A. MacAvoy
Contents
Dedication
Epigraph
Prelude
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Coda
To my mother
Has he tempered the viol’s wood
To enforce both the grave and the acute?
Has he curved us the bowl of the lute?
Ezra Pound
The Pisan Cantos
Prelude
Saara’s song could make a garden out of a barren mountainside, or cover a hill of flowers with snow. When she sang, it was with a power that killed men as well as healed them. She could sing the winter and the summer, weeping and dancing and sleep. She could sing the clouds in their traces and the water in the bog.
She sang (this particular morning) a mighty song, replete with clouds and boglands, barren hills and lush, summer and winter, weeping, dancing and every other sort of earthly event. She sang from dim matins to high prime. At the end of this singing her voice was ragged; she was blue in the face and she saw spots before her eyes. But Saara’s power of song had for once failed her, for she had not been able to sing one doe goat into a good mood.
The Damiano Series Page 24