Damiano's Lute (27 page)

Avignon was no city of gardens, but with the immense thrift of Gallic peoples everywhere, foodstuffs were grown there wherever a square foot of soil stood undisturbed, against any white wall that caught the sun. The mansion of Cardinal Rocault rose high and proudly enough, but pots of kitchen herbs dangled out the first-story windows, and from the small enclosure came a sleepy quarrel of chickens. Damiano also smelled rabbits through the sweetness of the blooming trees.

“It's no Papal Palace,” pronounced Gaspare, with the easy criticism of the man who has nothing. “I can see why the good cardinal is envious of the Pope.”

Damiano crept up to the wall which fronted the river road. Seven little peach trees, no taller than the second-story windows, had been pruned and trained into shapes as flat as heraldry. The sight and smell of them made him drunk; he rubbed his face against pink-white blossoms. “I myself,” he whispered, “have a certain envy of Cardinal Rocault, for I would sooner own this pretty house than inhabit the Pope's warrens.”

But a snort and sniff from within silenced him. Damiano held up a warning hand to Gaspare and began one of his oldest magics: one learned neither from Saara nor Guillermo Delstrego, but particular to Damiano himself. With images of hearthrugs and bowls of hot porridge he seduced the cardinal's bandog. With a bodiless scratch in places no dog could reach, he turned the creature from its duty.

Even Gaspare, who was watching his friend curiously, not understanding, heard the scrape of heavy dog claws at the other side of the wall. He hissed and bounced back into the road. “It's the watchdog, Damiano.”

Damiano had begun to sing. “Shut up, Gaspare,” he crooned melodiously, “or I'll throw you to him.”

The studded gate was locked by a mechanism more complex than any the intruders had seen before, but it opened itself at the witch's cheery adjuration.

They entered, and Damiano was almost knocked flat by a gigantic course-hound which dropped its front feet onto the witch's shoulders and demanded the promised caress. Standing head to head with Damiano, the beast was only halfway upright.

Gaspare cursed weakly as Damiano produced the tickles and scratches. “What
is
it?”

“A war-dog,” caroled Damiano, catching his balance and placing the huge feet on the ground. “From the islands. Scotian or Caledonian. Described by Cambrensis. I have seen pictures of such as this.”

Gaspare understood none of this, not knowing that Scotia was Ireland or Caledonia, Scotland. And never having read Giraldus Cambrensis, being unable to read. But he saw his old friend take liberty after liberty with the gray and shaggy pony-sized creature.

“Not much of a warrior, for a war-dog, is it?” said the boy critically, as the dog bowed its forequarters till its muzzle touched earth, then set off in a lolloping gallop around them.

“We won't get into that,” replied Damiano, and he led Gaspare (and the affectionate dog) past the coops and the hutches, through the truck garden and into the back door. “He probably has another face to show to strangers.”

Damiano was enjoying himself again. One of the unhappiest aspects of being a simple man had been his loss of special understanding with the animals around him, dogs especially. The memory of the sheepdog's attack at the farm south of Petit Comtois rankled no end, for he had been used to believing that the beasts saw in him something wonderful: something the narrow eyes of men could not. That day he had to come to grips with the truth that it was no moral excellence that gentled the predatory canine, but mere witchly trickery.

Now, once more he could forget that humbling verity, and others of like nature.

Never be weary or sick…

Inside the back door a fat man was sleeping, for all the world like another watchdog. Damiano had to croon with great concentration to wedge the door open without awakening the sleeper. The witch and his two companions then crept by, the great hound wagging furiously at finding himself in the house.

“Watch his tail,” whispered Damiano, too late, for Gaspare winced and grabbed at his stinging thigh. They found themselves in a looming, sooty kitchen, lit by the orange embers of a fire so large that no single night of inattention could kill it. It smelled still of the evening's roast veal.

Gaspare grimaced, still rubbing his smarting leg. The hound's tail had the lash of a bullwhip. It occurred to Gaspare as he hopped by the fireside, that between the Holy Father and Evienne, Damiano's dinner (and his own) had been forgotten.

Damiano, meanwhile, had scooted himself onto the great plank table which filled the center of the kitchen. There he sat, his hands laced around one knee, casually humming to himself. His eyes were closed.

Gaspare prodded his musician with a gentle finger, but pulled back in alarm when the war hound put back its rough ears and growled.

“Uh, Damiano. No time for daydreaming. Don't fall asleep.”

Black eyes flashed open, filled with firelight. The lullaby was cut off. “I am not likely to fall asleep in the middle of events, Gaspare. The Damiano who did that sort of thing is gone, and I don't think he'll return. But I am having difficulty finding Evienne.”

“Oh, no! She is taken. She is dead.” The great dog lifted his head from an intensive search for scraps on the floor, and Damiano darted a glance out the hallway, where the round-bellied sculleryman slept.

“No fear, Gaspare. It is only that there are many sleepers within here, and it has been a long time since I have seen your sister. I never knew her very well.”

“You alone out of all the world,” grumbled Gaspare. Then he whispered, “She is taller than me, being five years older. She is bigger in the hips than in the bosom, though plenty big in both. She has a lot of temper, and of course, red hair like mine.”

The witch's face lit “Red hair! Now there is something real on which to focus. Gaspare, come here.”

Gaspare approached, strangely unwilling. “Why? What is it you…”

Damiano grabbed the boy's carefully curled hairdo in both hands. Gaspare smothered a squeal of protest, and the bandog put its long head between them to see what was going on.

“Aha.” Damiano chuckled. “No more difficulty.” Releasing Gaspare's rumpled head, he swung his legs off the table. “Follow your general, troops.”

Evienne of San Gabriele put her small nose to the linen sachet and whuffled. The trouble with all sachets and pomanders was that after a while you didn't smell them anymore, and then you didn't know whether the fragrance was gone, or whether your nose simply had grown used to it. Then you added some rose oil or orris root, and someone would come in—someone like Herbert, in a bad temper— and shout that the sweetness was making him gag.

But that was his own fault, for if she were allowed a promenade every day, or even to do her own shopping, then she would be able to tell when the room smelled too sweet.

Better than smelling like a pisspot, anyway.

Evienne turned on her back (it was more comfortable for her to sleep on her back) and sighed. Herbert was so difficult: not letting her wear red, even if it matched her hair, and keeping her indoors nine days out of ten, without even a girl companion.

What good were baubles and silk, if you didn't have another girl to show them off to?

And he made her the butt of jokes—funny dry jokes in private, when there was no one to laugh. Just because she was not educated, not a real lady. In that way he was like Jan, but of course with Jan you always knew where you were. Jan needed her. (Had needed her? No. Still.) The cardinal was a different matter.

She wrapped her arms around her body, over her ample and growing abdomen.
This
might give her a certain hold on Herbert. Maybe.

Of course men could be so cruel. And what if the baby had yellow hair? No one of the cardinal's family (she had ascertained) had yellow hair.

But because Evienne had a naturally sanguine temperament as well as blood-colored hair, this worry could not depress her for long. She still had three months during which the cardinal would surely not boot her out.

But Jan—if she started thinking about Jan, then she'd be crying all night. For Jan had not come to see her in two months, and the last time was only to steal away certain of the jewelry she'd been given by Herbert. He was going to copy it in glass, in case Herbert wanted it back someday. He'd never even come back with the copies.

Had he been torn apart by Couchicou, the dog? The hound had almost gotten him once before, he'd said. But surely she would have heard about that. Had he taken ill, then? There was no one she could ask.

Or was that stinking tomcat already back in Italy, accompanied by another, younger, less pregnant woman?

Evienne's fists balled into the pillow. Her jagged nail caught a thread. Herbert was telling her all the time to stop biting her nails.

She sobbed. Why was she doing this—caged in a chamber of goosedown and brocade, if not for Jan's sake?

Evienne thought she heard singing. Because the sound was more pleasant than her thoughts, she listened. It was a lullaby, soft and sweetly sung. Not a woman's voice.

Who in the cardinal's house could be singing a lullaby in black night? The closer she listened, holding her breath, the more she thought she could recognize the voice. Now it was a trifle louder.

Without warning, Evienne fell asleep.

At the very top of the winding stair Damiano stopped. His lips were parted and he sniffed the air pensively, adding a staccato character to his melody. He turned right down a low-ceilinged narrow hall, dragging the night-blind Gaspare behind him. “Close,” he murmured.

Suddenly the witch stiffened. His song died in his throat and he seemed to convulse under Gaspare's grip. “My God, Damiano,” the boy whispered almost without sound. “What…?”

“I… I…” Damiano said no more, but grabbed a double handful of his shirt and buried his face in it. Three times he sneezed,

each time more convulsively than the last, until Gaspare felt the sweat break out on his friend's forearm.

Then Damiano lifted his head, taking a slow, deep breath. “Orris rood,” he pronounced phlegmily. “Terribly strog. It has cofused my sedses.”

Gaspare himself sniffed, and then nodded. “Evienne. My sister all the way. Now
you
follow
me.”

The young thief led Damiano along the black and dismal hall, his less sensitive nose working stertorously. Damiano wiped his eyes (and nose) on the hem of his overshirt.

The source of the floral bouquet was a small wooden door with a simple lock on it. Damiano did not need his nose to encourage the mechanism to work itself.

He shoved behind Gaspare into a room in which sweet smells had taken on a fetid aspect.

It was small, hardly wider than the height of an average man, and scarcely longer than it was wide. Its single window was inadequate and firmly shuttered. A rug carpeted the floor, while other hangings of similar nature lined the walls till it was all as furry and as stiflingly close as a cocoon. Save for a closet of white oak huddled in one corner between folds of heavy wool, the place was occupied solely by bed: a soft and formless bag of white linen stuffed with feathers (Damiano's nose was tingling again) lying on the floor like a very fat dog.

And on that bed, half unblanketed, with her left shoulder and left breast wholly exposed to the night air, lay Evienne of San Gabriele, Gaspare's sister.

Gaspare had not moved. After a moment Damiano remembered that his friend was simple and could not see in the night. The witch lit a dim blue fire-pet in his right hand and stroked it with his left.

“Evienne!” hissed Gaspare, and he stalked closer. The boy's first action, motivated either by shame or by a strange sort of fraternal caring, was to adjust Evienne's blanket under her chin.

Damiano stepped backward and sideways as far as he was able, which is to say, two steps. He felt woolly fibers against the back of his neck and had to stifle a sneeze, crushing his domestic flame in the process. He lit another and watched the scene before him.

He had forgotten how pretty a girl Evienne was, with her heavy auburn hair, pink cheeks and infant-round limbs. Had she always possessed such a delicate complexion, and such amplitude? Damiano regarded Evienne intently while Gaspare did the same at close range.

The young woman had stirred after the moment of Damiano's sneeze, but as he began his song again (this time almost without sound, like a man who hums while adding a column of figures) her slumbers grew quiet once more.

“Shall I let her wake, Gaspare?”

The boy nodded. “Her, but not everybody else in the house, hey?”

“You ask a lot,” replied the witch tunefully, but stepping over to the bed he placed his nonfiery hand upon Evienne's.

Gaspare had his hand ready to muffle his sister if she should wake up screaming, but it was not necessary. Evienne was not the sort of girl to react in that way to the presence of a man in her bedchamber.

“Herb…?” she moaned, then opened her eyes and looked Wearily at Damiano, who seemed to be cupping a votive candle in his hands, and so possessed the only spot of light in the room. “Who?”

Damiano simply pointed at Gaspare.

Recognition came slowly, but the subsequent embrace was bone-cracking. The boy escaped his sister's arms long enough to deliver a savage tweak to her pretty pink cheek.

“Hah!” he growled, with what seemed perfectly unmixed fury. “Here you are, wrapped in perfume thick as a cloud of summer dust, lolling on goosedown, speckled—positively speckled—with priceless gems, with no thought of your poor brother walking every street in Avignon, thinking you were dead.”

Evienne opened her eyes very wide and sat up straighter, thoughtless of the effect this action had upon her modesty. “That isn't fair, Gaspare! For one thing, I'm not wearing a single gem, and for another…”

Her angrily suppressed voice trailed off then, and Evienne's green eyes wandered from Gaspare to the linen sachet on the pillow by her head. She inhaled in a great, unladylike snort. “Does it really smell strong in here?”