The Damiano Series

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Perhaps it was market day, and the road was deserted only because everybody was already in town. Damiano was peering ahead for any sign of Gaspare when the angel spoke in his ear. “Keep trying,” he said, and then he was gone.

  Keep trying for what? To find Gaspare? To look at Raphael? To stay well groomed? Damiano could think of nothing else Raphael might have meant—except, of course, keep trying to stay awake.

  The road was filled with fresh ruts, but no vehicles either passed or had been left beside the village’s mud-plaster walls. In the distance someone was singing in an aggressive and undisciplined bass. Those were men in the road in front of the village gate; it was their coarse brown robes that caused them to resemble oxen. Over all hung a faint odor of the shambles.

  The singing grew louder.

  Surely this was market day, and in a good-sized village, besides. Damiano’s hands twitched on the reins, as he began to pick out his program for the afternoon.

  This place would welcome nothing delicate or too subtle, certainly, and besides, much fingerwork wouldn’t be heard over the noise. Country dances were the thing, and part-songs the drunks could sing along to. Too bad he hadn’t a longer background in the local music; the Provençal and French music he had learned in Italy was High Art stuff and wouldn’t do at all.

  Damn Gaspare for running off just when his capers would come in handy.

  Now the gates were clearly visible: logs of split maple hung by great square nails. They hung open. Damiano sat up in surprise to discover that the robed men in the road were engaged in whipping three other fellows who knelt in stocks set right in the open gateway.

  His first reaction was typical of his time and culture. He snickered aloud, wondering how much bran these bakers had put in their bread. Then the metal tips of the cats glittered in sunlight, and he saw the blood running.

  Poor sinners, he said under his breath, while the frightened and excited horse first snorted and then jammed backward, jarring the wagon and causing it to yaw. Damiano slipped down from his seat and took the reins in one hand, beneath Festilligambe’s head.

  The floggers wore robes, but they were not tonsured. After each blow they paused to utter a penitential prayer. The victims were nearly naked, and they did not make a sound. The monk in the middle, whose long scourge cracked like a horsewhip with every stroke, was a huge fellow, full-faced yet grim, with odd pale-blue eyes. A froth of blood spattered with each stroke. His brown-haired victim might have been dead, for he lay in the stocks with no movement.

  These were felons, not cheeseparing merchants, Damiano decided. Someday Gaspare would surely come to this, if he continued on his path. The lutenist hoped his errant dancer had encountered this sight, or was perhaps watching this minute from within the town. It would do him good.

  But why had it fallen to the Third Order of Saint Francis to execute the punishment of miscreants? Dominicans, who were called the Hounds of Christ, would be quite at home in such a role, and Jesuits even more so. But both orders were relatively dapper, and most certainly tonsured. Franciscans were the only ones who sometimes went shabby. Damiano had always felt a strong affinity for Giovanni di Bernardone (called Francesco, or Francis), who had been a musician as well as a saint. He was very disappointed to find that the Franciscans whipped people.

  Even more upsetting was the fact that this display effectively blocked his entry into the village. With difficulty he maneuvered the spooky horse off the road and on to the trampled green at the foot of the wall. He yanked his bag of clothes and cookpots through a hole in the wagon wall and dropped it on the ground. Carefully he lifted out his lute and set it atop them. He slipped the gelding’s black head into a halter and untied its harness. The hulk of wagon he left behind, half hoping it would be stolen.

  Leading the horse, he would be able to pass between the stocks and the village wall. He hoped his passage would not offend the clerics but, really, one must be able to get in and out of a town, especially on market day.

  Here the coarse singing was very loud, and shared by more than one voice. Drunken, most likely. But the sound of a silver bell, rung by the middle monk, cut through all, and as Damiano passed directly behind the burly flagellator, the man leaned forward, threw open the stocks, and tenderly lifted out his victim. The others did likewise, and the poor sufferers staggered to their feet.

  Then, with a booming cry, the huge man tore off his rude and filthy robe and flung himself into the stocks, which framework shook with the impact of his weight. The other flagellators, like shadows, followed. Despite their bloody and battered condition, the former victims each picked up an iron-tipped cat and set to work with a will. Even the middle one, whom Damiano had thought half dead.

  Damiano had heard of the order of flagellants (if indeed there was any “order” about it), but this was his first sight of them, and it left him feeling queasy. Surely there was bravery in their actions, and they undoubtedly canceled out a great number of sins, but still it seemed to Damiano there was more to be gained from a well-sung mass. As he passed beneath the village gate, crude and heavy as a deadfall, he met the pale eyes of the former executer, now victim. They were bright, round and electric with pain. At first the man’s face held his gaze by its power to raise pity. But that power faded as the musician saw in those eyes nothing pitiful, but rather a horrible sort of ecstasy, which lit the gray face from within like living coals under a bed of ash.

  And then, between one moment and the next, the penitent’s face underwent a subtle alteration without seeming to change at all. Damiano stared down through the man’s flesh at another face that glowed from within: a face with perfect, elegant features which were molded out of malice and fire, and which stared burning malice up at him.

  It was a face Damiano had known before—a face strangely like that of Raphael, were the angel seen in a wicked dream.

  It made his heart shiver and jump within him, and his knees buckled. But for his hand on the horse’s lead rope he would have fallen, and it was only the strength of the gelding (who only saw the Devil when leaves blew over the road) which led Damiano by.

  This was not the first time that Damiano had seen Satan face to face, but it was the first time in a year and more, and never before had Satan appeared to him unsummoned. Fear coursed like cold water through his body.

  Inside, he turned the horse and looked back, only to find a perfectly normal-looking fanatic being scourged by another of the same variety. He stood confused, listening to his heart regain its proper rhythm.

  The streets and stoops were Uttered with people, yes. But despite that, this was no market, for there were no barrows to be seen. Also, the shops were closed, unswept, some of them boarded. Drunks and singing implied a festival, yet this looked like no festival Damiano had ever seen, unless it were the third hour of night after a long day’s carouse.

  Along the foul street lounged men in gay velvets, sitting in the dirt next to men in rags. Women, too, mixed with them in the gutters on terms of easy familiarity. One fat woman seemed to be wearing every bit of white linen she possessed, in onion-layers over a purple woolen gown. She squatted on the stoop of a decayed shop, while above her a cart-wheel-sized wooden olive swung on chains in the wind. The door of the shop was staved in, and a pungent Utter of broken olives lay scattered about the street. Her apron, too, was filled with olives.

  Beside her, not touching, removed as if by time and distance, sat the undisciplined bass, singing “gaudeamus” as he juggled olives in his oily hands. He was not smiling, this reveler, nor was the well- (or at least much-) dressed woman. Nor was anyone on the street or in the square beyond. The dry smell of wine warred with that of olives, while above both rose a reek of excrement.

  And this whole assemblage of unsmiling maniacs gazed directly at Damiano. Festilligambe froze, shaking all over.

  And though he had no longer any witch’s staff to warn him, and would not have been able to use it if he had, Damiano sensed wrongness before him as strongly as a bli
nd man may sense the noonday sun. He thought to back out the way he came, but the white-eyed horse stood rooted, while behind him rose the terrifying soft prayers and sharp strokes of the flagellants.

  The bass voice was climbing to his feet. He approached Damiano. Indeed, the whole somber riot of them was drawing near, staring with puzzled intensity at one dark-skinned, thinnish traveler with a horse.

  The singer bowed from the waist. “Welcome. Welcome to Petit Comtois, my brave one. Forgive our deshabille: we were not expecting visitors. And yet we are delighted to see you.” At the end of this announcement, the fellow forgot to close his mouth.

  Damiano dropped his bag of clothes and pots. His head was swimming unpleasantly, and he didn’t know whether the scene before him was as bizarre as it appeared, or whether it only seemed so to eyes which had just endured the sight of the Devil. He cleared his throat. Once, twice, three times he tried to answer. The fat woman hove up beside the first villager. She stared at the horse, and then at Damiano. She touched the mane of each.

  “Hasn’t he nice hair,” she observed to the world in general. Her mouth was a rosebud and her eyes were glazed like candy. Damiano stuttered harder as her fingers played through his new-trimmed locks.

  At last he was able to say, “My name is Delstrego, good villagers. I am a musician, and I have come seeking after a friend.”

  The bass singer nodded sagely. “Good Monsieur Delstrego, welcome again. No one could please us more than a musician seeking after a friend. In Pe’Comtois you will find many friends. In Pe’Comtois we are all friends. Friends unto death.” And he smiled a wise, lunatic smile.

  Damiano backed away, and the horse backed with him, trampling the bag of pots. He felt a stiff, foolish smile stamp itself upon his face. He could not tear it off. Then the silver bell of the flagellants tinkled once more and Festilligambe bolted forward, dragging his master beside him. But the heavy villager grabbed the gelding’s cheekstraps, and the beast went rigid with terror.

  Behind them, wooden gates swung shut. The horse moaned helplessly.

  At this Damiano’s courage awoke. “I’ll take the horse,” he snapped. “He doesn’t like strangers.” And he pulled the villager’s fingers, one by one, from the rope halter. Then he turned foursquare and confronted the town.

  “What is wrong, here?” he challenged. “I can’t tell whether you are all in mourning or on holiday. You are all dressed up and yet it looks like the village has been looted. Is there war? Sickness?”

  He pointed over the first row of houses to where black smoke still increased. “What is burning?”

  The fat woman turned to the odd-dozen villagers behind her. “He asks whether there is war,” she announced. “He asks whether there is sickness. He asks what is burning in Pe’Comtois.” She giggled. “He has such a sweet Italian accent.”

  Damiano, being only human, reacted to this with a certain amount of cold hauteur. But the male villager put up a restraining hand. “Peace, Monsieur Italian. I will show you what you want to know. I will show you what is burning. I will show you the very soul of Pe’Comtois. Follow me.”

  Damiano followed, between two dry stone buildings and across another desolate street. The bizarre audience faded behind, lacking either energy or interest. At the next narrow intersection Festilhgambe balked, and rather than suffer the villager’s unsettling aid, Damiano left the lead rope hanging over a post, knowing no one could walk off with the animal. The truth about Festilligambe was that although he would not always obey Damiano, he would never, under any circumstances, obey anyone else.

  Here the smell of dung was stronger, but it was overwhelmed by burning wood. It was houses that were burning, the white stone walls containing flame like cupped hands, while fire-tongues licked through the windows. Around the perimeter of the blazing area stood men with pails and pokers, watching the flames with proprietary interest.

  “It is… on purpose?” asked Damiano, shifting his lute from hand to hand. “You are burning your houses on purpose?”

  “In Pe’Comtois,” stated the villager, “we are very rich. When we are tired of a house, then—pfft! Up she goes. There are always plenty to go around.

  “Enough houses, gowns, linens, foodstuffs, wines—no, not enough wines, forgive me. But enough of everything else.” He led the other across a court, where stood an enormous church, high-spired, windowed with glass. It was a church far too big for the village that contained it. It was a Provençal church. Together they passed in.

  “And how are you so lucky, in Petit Comtois?” mumbled Damiano, his words echoing in dim stone.

  With every step he grew more distrustful. Sacred ground or no, this place stank. And his ears told him it was not empty. The nave door swung open.

  There, under high tiered windows of scarlet and gold, upon carved pews of oak, were strewn bodies: the dead and dying, piled neatly head to toe.

  “Because there is no one left to eat, to wear clothes, to live in houses…” announced the singing villager, sweeping the chamber with a gesture.

  “We are all dead, you see. Plague.”

  Chapter 2

  From the right came sounds: the weak rebellion of the dying, and their terrible, whistling breath. From the left came only the echoes of the sounds, for all who reclined on the pews on that side of the church were already dead. Even as Damiano’s eyes adjusted to the dim jeweled light from the stained windows, two cowled men lifted one of the passive shapes and promoted it to the left side of the aisle. No word was spoken.

  “This cannot be,” Damiano whispered tentatively. Then hearing his own words in his ears, he fell silent.

  Festilligambe stood in the beneficent spring sun, shifting from one pair of legs to the other. It seemed to him that if he wasn’t going, he ought to be eating. Or at least rolling. He tested the length of his rope. Not quite long enough. Too bad. Of course he could always pull the rope away; it was not attached to the thin wooden post in any way. But that he was not supposed to do.

  For a few minutes he amused himself scratching against the painted stone wall, leaving mats of black winter coat caught on every roughness. Then he scraped his halter methodically against the windowsill. He bit off a chunk of painted plaster, and then spat it out with disgust. Festilligambe didn’t know he was elegantly lean, but he knew he was hungry.

  Someone was coming. The gelding pricked his fox-tiny ears and snorted. He wasn’t very fond of people, except of course for Damiano. Not that anyone had ever done him any real hurt, but he was a Barb, and there it was.

  It was a horse approaching. A big horse. The gelding’s ears went back, because he really wasn’t very fond of other horses, either. He especially disliked bigger horses, who might tend to think too much of themselves.

  As it turned out, this horse wasn’t really too big. He was shorter then Festilligambe although far heavier built. He had a human with him. That was good; it meant there would probably be no fight, and fights were not amusing unless the other horse was much smaller. One look in the gray stallion’s placid ram-face and Festilligambe knew this horse would offer no difficulty. He crested his black neck and hissed at the draft horse, for though Festilligambe was a gelding, he knew what pride was.

  Now the human was lifting his halter rope from the post where Damiano had left it. Wouldn’t he be surprised to find that Festilligambe could not move from the place he had been told to stay?

  He never had moved, not since he had made that agreement with Damiano in San Gabriele over a year ago, when Damiano had promised never to spellbind him if the horse would stay where put. He never had moved, and he never would. Never, never, never. The elegant black set his every muscle for the balk.

  The human, however, did not try to pull. Instead he tied the halter rope into the gray horse’s harness straps. Holding the gray’s cheekstrap loosely in one hand, he clucked to the massive animal.

  The rope tightened. Festilligambe dug in with his hooves. In two seconds he found himself flipped in the air and landing
on his left shoulder and hindquarters, his legs still straight out before him. As he was dragged gently along the dry road, his face was a mask of equine bewilderment.

  Plague. There must be some mistake. The plague had vanished sixteen years ago, after destroying almost half of Europe. Surely it was like Noah’s flood, and God would not send it again. This must be some other pestilence; typhus or cholera. Something that would do its little damage (great enough to the people who died of it, and to the families of those who died of it) and fade away. Man was heir to so many diseases.

  Slowly Damiano began to pace along the great central aisle, cradling his lute high against his chest, his breath half choked by the stench. He peered only down the rows to his right.

  This man was a farrier; Damiano could tell because he still wore his divided leather skirt. Touching his head were the bare feet of a tall woman in black lace. Her handsome face, not young, had gone green. (At first he thought it was the window light, but no, there was no green glass in any window. She was green.) Her breath whistled two notes at once. She stared stupidly at Damiano’s lute, and her lips moved.

  What could he do but shrug his shoulders, apologizing for his healthy presence: a lute-carrying mountebank at death’s grim door? In reply she spoke one word, which he could not hear.

  There was a man at Damiano’s elbow. One of the religious who had ported the body from the right side to the left. A brother of Saint Francis, the musician noted.

  “It was kind of you, my son, but I doubt many of them would notice.”

  It took Damiano a little time to understand. Then he shifted the lute from hand to hand. “Oh. Forgive me, Brother. I don’t mean to disturb.”

  He found himself repeating his words from the village gates. “I am a musician, and have come off the road seeking after a friend.”