The Damiano Series (2 page)

Damiano craned his head left and peered along the main street of Partestrada. From this particular window, if he twisted with a good will, he was able to spy around one corner to the front of Carla Denezzi's house, where in good weather she sat on the balcony, doing her complicated needlework. Damiano was practiced at making this particular neck twist. What it told him often decided whether he'd bide his time at home or venture out.

Today the balcony was empty; and its wooden shutters, drawn. The street below, too, was empty, totally empty. Not a man or a woman, not an ox wagon or a wandering ass to be seen. The town didn't even smell right, he thought as he inhaled deeply through his nose. It didn't stink of urine, peppers, pigs, sheep, men's or horses' sweat—none of the comfortable smells that meant home to him. The streets smelled burnt, like the air surrounding a forge. He lifted his eyes to the distant fields and forests beyond the town wall, which faded from brown to gray to blue in the November air. Damiano squinted—his far vision was not the best. Out of habit he reached back along the wall, his hand scrambling over the slick tiles till he grasped his staff.

It was not the traditional witch's stick, not being brown, branchy, or picturesquely gnarled. Damiano's staff was ebony and lathe-straight, ringed in three places with silver. Knobbing the top was a silver crest set with five topazes and a rather small ruby (red and gold being the Destrego colors). It had been given to Damiano by his father when the boy was twelve—he then stood only as high as the second silver band. Now, nine years later, the staff was still a bit taller than he was, for Damiano had not grown to Delstrego's expectation.

The staff was as important to Damiano as crutches were to a lame man, though young Damiano had two limber and useful legs. It was his spelling-instrument, and upon its black length he worked with more facility than he did on the lute. Also, although he had never worked a spell toward the purpose, Damiano believed he could see better holding the staff. He held it now.

“The wall belongs to a man named Francesco Alusto,” answered the angel, his quiet voice cutting easily through the stone wall to Damiano's ears. Damiano weaseled back into the room, his cheeks flushed, his eyes bright with worry.

“Alusto? He owns the vineyards, such as they are. But why? What will they do when they get in? Isn't it enough that they control the town?”

There was an indefinable reproach in the angel's eyes. “Why? Because Alusto became a wealthy man under Savoy patronage. Although his being a wealthy man might be enough. What will they do? Damiano! They will rape and kill, take what they can carry or haul, and then march away. Perhaps they will burn the place as they go.

“But I am not here to instruct you in the customs of war—that would be a bad education, I think, and more easily gotten elsewhere.” He spoke without heat, yet Damiano dropped his eyes to the pattern of the floor. Against his better judgment, almost against his will he found himself saying, “Don't you care, Seraph? Don't you hear the cries of men dying? The weeping? It rang in my ears all of last week when they fought beside the city wall. The good God knows that since the Plague there are few enough men left in all the world.”

The angel's expression might have been called ironical, if irony were a thing that could be built on a foundation of pity. “I know you hear them, Dami. I almost wish you did not, for when the ears are open, the rest of the soul must follow, to its own pain. But I hear men suffering. I too. The difference between us is that you hear them when they cry out, whereas I hear them always.”

Damiano's startled glance flew upward to his teacher's face. He saw the pity, not directed only toward suffering humanity but also toward Damiano himself. He stood confused, not knowing why Raphael should waste his pity on Damiano the alchemist, who was young and wealthy, and in good spirits besides.

“What would you have me do?” the angel continued. His wing feathers gathered up like those of a bird in the cold. “I can't change the heart of man or the history he's making for himself. I am not”— and here he spread his hands out before him and his wings out behind him in a sweeping gesture that took in the entire arc of the compass—”in truth a part of this world. I have no calling here.”

Damiano swallowed hard. “Except that I called you, Raphael. Don't—give me up. Please. If I speak offensively in your ears, remember I'm only a mortal man. Tell me my fault. I would take a vow of silence rather than have my words offend you.” He reached out and slapped the angel's knee, awkwardly and with rather too much emphasis.

“A vow of silence? That's a rigorous promise, Dami, and there are few people I have met less suited to it.” Raphael leaned forward, and yellow hair fell gently curling around his face. “I will not give you up, my friend. Compared to mankind, I am very patient. I have the time, you see. And I am not as easily offended as you might think. But you must not ask me for answers that are not revealed to men.” The golden eyebrow rose further, and one wing scraped the flat ceiling “—It may be that they are not revealed to me, either.”

The wing descended, obscuring the window light like a filter of snow. “Besides, Damiano, the important questions involve not the intent of God toward us but the soul's own duty, and you know that clearly, don't you?”

Damiano did
not
know it—not on certain issues, anyway. Behind Damiano's teeth, white and only slightly uneven, trembled the question that had waited in silence for three years, ripening—the terrible question about the necessity of virginity. Surely now was the time to broach it. Raphael had practically asked for such a question—it was not something unrevealed to men, after all, but only knotty. Such an opportunity would not knock again.

He heard a scrabble and panting on the stairs, and his dog tore into the hall, calling, “Master, Master, there's a soldier at the door. With a spear!”

She was a small dog, knee-high, very heavy in the head and shoulders, and bandy-legged. Ugly. Her color was white, except for a saddle mark over her shoulders, and so she was called Macchiata, which is to say, Spot.

“With a spear?” echoed Damiano, feeling the moment for his question dart off like some animal that, once frightened, will forever be harder to approach. He stood, indecisive, between the angel and Macchiata.

“Pax tecum”
whispered Raphael. His wings rose and glittered, and he was gone.

Macchiata blinked at the disturbance in the air. She shifted from leg to crooked leg, and her ruddy hackles stood out like the quills of a hedgehog. “Did I scare him away, Master? I'm sorry. I wouldn't scare Raphael on purpose.

“—But there's a soldier…”

“With a spear,” added Damiano disconsolately, and he slouched down the stairs after Macchiata.

 

Chapter 2

The second floor of the house was broken up into smaller rooms. Damiano passed through the vestibule with its florid tiles and heavy, glinting hangings, where the hearth sat smoldering through the short autumn day. The door was made of oak panels layered with the grain in different directions and studded with iron. It stood ajar, as always, for the convenience of Macchiata.

The sergeant watched Damiano advance through the dimness. It was a boy, the sergeant thought—a servant. Beasts with human tongues were bad enough—more than bad enough. That bitch made his honest, though thinning, hair stand on end. He would not now be pushed off on a servant. Not though Delstrego could give a man boils with his stare, as the townsfolk said. Pardo could do worse to the man who did not follow his instructions.

Then Damiano stood in the light.

Not a boy, quite. But spindly as a rail. Girl-faced too.

Damiano blinked against the sudden brilliance.

“I want your master, boy,” growled the soldier. He spoke surly, being afraid.

“You will find him in the earth and above the sky,” answered Damiano, smiling. The sergeant was surprised at the depth of the voice issuing from that reedy body, and though he did not trust the words, he involuntarily glanced upward.

But Damiano continued,
“Dominus Deus, Rex Caelestis:
He is my master and none other.”

The sergeant flushed beneath his bristle and tan. “I seek Delstrego. God I can find on my own.”

Insouciantly, Damiano bowed. “Delstrego you have found,” he announced. “What can he do for you?”

The sergeant's left hand crawled upward unnoticed, prying between the leather plates of his cuirass after a flea. “I meant Delstrego the witch. The one who owns this house.”

Damiano's unruly brows drew together into a line as straight as nimbus clouds. “I am Delstrego the alchemist: the only Delstrego dwelling in Partestrada at this time. This house is mine.”

Snagging the flea, the sergeant glanced down a moment and noticed a patch of white. That hideous dog again, standing between the fellow's legs and half concealed by the robe. Her teeth shone white as the Alps in January, and her lips were pulled back, displaying them all. Perhaps she would open her mouth in a minute and curse him. Perhaps she would bite. Surely this Delstrego was the witch, whatever he looked like or called himself.

“Then it is to you I am sent, from General Pardo. He tenders his compliments and invites you to come and speak with him at his headquarters.” This was a prearranged speech. Had the sergeant chosen the words himself, they would have been different.

But Damiano understood. “Now? He wants to see me now?”

“Certainly now!” barked the soldier, his small store of politeness used up. “Right now. Down the street in the town hall. Go.”

Damiano felt Macchiata's rage vibrating against his shins. He restrained her by dropping the heavy skirt of his robe over her head. “All right,” he answered mildly. I'm on my way.” He stepped out onto the little, railless porch beside the sergeant. A twiglike, white tail protruding from the back of his robe pointed stiffly upward.

The sergeant noted the gold and scarlet velvet of the robe and its foppish sleeves. Inwardly he sneered. He further noted the black wand, man-high, ornamented like a king's scepter. “Not with that,” he said.

Damiano smiled crookedly at the soldier's distrust. “Oh, yes, with this especially. Pardo will want to see this.” He spoke with great confidence, as though he, and not the sergeant, had just left the general's presence. Glowering but unsure, the sergeant let him pass.

“Aren't you coming along?” inquired Damiano, turning in some surprise halfway down the stair. The sergeant had stood his place at the open doorway, his ruddy bare knees now at Damiano's eye level. “—To see that I don't play truant by darting over the city wall or turning into a hawk and escaping into the air?”

“I am to guard the house,” answered the soldier stolidly.

Damiano stared for a moment, his mind buzzing with surmises, then he continued down the stairs.

Under the arch of the stairway, beside the empty stables, stood another of Pardo's soldiery: a tall man with a scar running the length of one leg. He too watched Damiano pass and kept his place.

The street was not so bare as it had appeared earlier. It was scattered with swart-garbed soldiers, who stood out against the dust and stucco like black pepper on boiled frumenty. Damiano had never been able to abide boiled frumenty. No more did he like to see the streets of Partestrada dead like this. He was quite fond of his city.

Damiano could feel, using a little witch-sense—which was nothing like sight or sound, but rather like the touch of a feather against the face or, better, against the back of the palate—that there was no one at home in any of the square plaster houses around him. He gripped his staff tighter and strode forth, immediately stumbling over Macchiata.

“Get out of there,” he grumbled, lifting his skirts and giving the dog a shove with his foot. “Walk before, behind or beside, but not under.”

Macchiata laid back her ears, thin, white, and folded like writing paper. “You put me there, and I couldn't see.”

Damiano started forward again, hoping no one on the street had noticed. “That was to keep you away from the soldier. He might have spitted at you in a moment, and there's nothing I could have done about it. Then where would you be?”

The dog did not respond. She did not know the answer.

Someone
had
noticed. It was old Marco; even war and occupation of the city by the enemy could not keep him from his place beside the well, squatting on his haunches with a bottle of Alusto's poorest wine. Damiano, at this distance, could not make out his face, but he knew it was Marco by his position and by the filthy red wool jacket he wore. Damiano would have to pass right by the old man, and he would have to speak to him, since Marco had been one of Guillermo Delstrego's closest friends. Perhaps his only friend.

Marco was, however, insufferable, and as Damiano passed he only bowed in the general direction of the well and called, “Blessing on you, Marco,” hoping the old sot had passed out already. Quite possibly he had, since it was already the middle of the afternoon.

“Hraaghh?” Marco had not passed out. He jackknifed to his feet and strode over to Damiano, holding the wine bottle aggressively in one sallow hand. Macchiata yawned a shrill canine yawn and drooped her tail, knowing what was coming. Damiano felt about the same.

“Dami Delstrego? I thought you had flown to the hills three days ago, just ahead of the Green Count's army.”

Damiano braced his staff diagonally in front of him and leaned on it. “Flown? Fled, you mean? No, Marco. You haven't seen me for three days because I've been tending a pot. You know how it is in November; people want my father's phlegm-cutting tonic for the winter, and when I say I'm not a doctor, they don't hear me.

“Why did you think I'd run away?”

Marco waved his bottle expansively, but very little of the contents splashed out. “Because they all have. Every man with any money in the village…”