The Damiano Series (15 page)

“To be dissolved into another! That is the antithesis of freedom.”

It was God he was talking about, Damiano realized.

“In fact, Damiano, though I am the lord of the earth I am also the one apostle of freedom upon the earth, and those who serve me know the gifts of liberty, for there is nothing I will deny a man. I will not even deny him the intellectual pleasure derived from bowing at the altar of the Beginning, if that is his desire, though that Other does not extend such courtesy to me.

“In fact I have many who worship me in such part-time fashion, some of them worthy men in cardinal red. I…”

Damiano had lost the thread of Satan's conversation, for he was still trying to understand how freedom could be both natural and a gift. Perhaps his lack of attention was written in his face, for the Devil stopped in midsentence.

“But here now. You didn't come all this way to discuss histories, or to tell me that that fluttering limpid brother of mine knows his place. What do you want of me, Damiano Delstrego? What is your desire, my dear brother witch?”

Damiano filled his lungs with dry air, more deadly than fumes of sulfur. “A bargain,” he announced.

“Of course. A bargain,” echoed the red angel, and his smile held a languorous ennui. “Everyone wants a bargain from me. You'd think I were a tradesman, instead of only the inventor of trade.” He dandled Damiano gently between his fingers, knocking him to his knees.

“All men lust after my bargains, little friend, though some pursue them harder. It seems to run in families, for you are not the first Delstrego with whom I have spoken…”

Damiano made no reply, though the blood in his heart congealed. Still he knew better than to trust the Devil concerning his father. Raphael had said to have hope, so he cast his eyes down at the immaculate ruddy palm.

“Bargains…” Satan ruminated, and he sat back in his gilded throne, which was the only chair in the room. “I am sempiternally bored with striking bargains with mortals. They never have anything interesting to ask, or anything worthwhile to give.” He sighed like a gale in a cave.

“I think you want what I have to give,” began Damiano, grimacing as he spoke, but the Devil cut him off.

“That comes second, little witch. First is the matter of what
you
want.”

This was simple to say and not frightening. “I want peace,” stated Damiano.

After a moment's pause, Satan grunted. “There are many avenues toward that goal, Damiano. I could build you a castle in a green valley where no man has ever set foot. Obedient demons would do your will and never say no to you. Succubi, too. Unrest is a product of your interaction with other mortals, believe me. With no human company, you would be sure to have peace.

“Alternately, I could provide you with one hundred years on the oil of the eastern poppy, with never a bad dream. That is peace, and poetry, too. I recommend it over my first proposal.

“Then I could make you my vassal over all Europe, of course. That is a popular request, since many men have come to the realization that power is freedom and freedom is happiness.” Cold gray eyes regarded Damiano, eyes much larger than platters. “And what is happiness, but peace in action?

“You would make a comical emperor, Damiano Delstrego. You have a kind heart.”

Damiano frowned and sat back on his heels. He struck the shoe of his staff against the devil's palm. “No. No, Satanas, I want peace, not for me, but for all the Piedmont. One hundred years without war.”

Satan peered closely at the tiny thing in his hand. “With you as duke, of course?” he drawled.

Damiano shook his head. “I can't… I mean I thank you for your confidence in me, but my talents don't lie in that direction. Only once have I been able to unite and fire men's minds, and that time I… No, I don't want to pay that again. I am a man of the arts: an alchemist, a musician, maybe a poet, too, though I have not much experience in that, as yet.”

At a thought his tongue thickened and he grew visibly paler. “Or at least these were the things I had planned to be.” Then he flipped his sleeves and hair back and began afresh.

“With any suitable man as duke. Or without a duke, as one grand republic with Partestrada as capital. Or eight little, quiet republics, with Partestrada as the largest.”

“That is imp…” The Devil cleared his throat, and Damiano seemed to see a cloud of ash spread from his well-molded lips into the room. “Your love for your city does you credit, Damiano, but let's talk concretely. I can give you General Pardo's head on a pike.”

Damiano had expected this offer. “That's no good. Pardo alone isn't the problem, for there will always be another wolf to raven the fold. I want a respite from wolves. I want peace and prosperity for the Piedmont.”

“Before you said only peace, Damiano. That was bad enough, but now you've added prosperity.”

Damiano squinted at the looming face. “I mean peace, but not the peace of devastation and pestilence, when all the people are dead. I mean a thriving peace.”

“The head of Pardo plus the head of Paolo Denezzi.” Damiano swallowed, abashed at how intimately the Devil had read his worst desires.

“No,” he replied weakly.

“… And I will burn down the convent of La Dolerosa at Bard before the month is out,” concluded Satan. “That will change many things, my eager young lover, and you may return to your own tower with a beautiful bride.”

Damiano's eyes stung, and his cheeks flushed, though nowhere so red as those on the elegant face of the Devil.

“No.” He was scarcely audible. “Do nothing to touch her.”

The angry trembling of the great hand ran through Damiano and made his teeth vibrate.

“I find your bargaining to be rather of the take-it-or-leave-it variety, little witch,” Satan rasped, and he laid his hand down on the table. Damiano stared, fascinated, at the pond-sized shallow bowl that he had thought to be filled with grapes. “You ask more from me than any man in a handful of centuries,” snapped the beautiful red mouth. “What on earth or in hell do you have to give in return?”

Damiano blinked three times and then was certain that the objects in the bowl were fresh human heads. This knowledge, rather than frightening him, gave him a certain hopeless courage. “Myself,” he said. “My life. My soul. You can have it now without waiting.”

The next instant found him tumbling across the polished wooden surface of the table, his staff tangling with his legs.

“Your soul? Damiano, why don't you try selling me this throne, or my own left hand?” As Satan leaned over the table Damiano felt the wood creak complaint and the air grow very hot. “Boy, don't you know what it means to be born a witch?”

Damiano lay flat on his back with his eyes closed. Panic brushed his face. “I know no man is born damned,” he hissed. “Father Antonio has said it, and my heart tells me it is true!”

The deadly ire subsided into irony. “To be what they call damned is only to be free and to declare you are free, shaking your fist at brute authority. I will give a lot to free a man, Damiano, but you're right; I can't do it alone. Each man chooses his own ‘damnation.' And you”—the fiery face turned away—”chose the black path to my door.”

Damiano waited for flames to take him, but after ten seconds passed uneventfully, he opened his eyes.

He lay under the rim of the pottery bowl, which was the color of dried blood. One of the heads brimming over the edge stared down at him. The slack features were those of the captain of cavalry whom he had seen brained by the butcher's hammer not one day ago. That spotted thing behind it: was that a cow's head? Damiano closed his eyes again. He became aware the Devil was speaking.

“You are a fool, and you have wasted my time, boy. But as you are a witch and a freethinker and so have some call on me, I will be very generous. I propose a bargain that will almost exactly suit your needs.

“I will arrange what you call peace for Partestrada. Not the entire Piedmont, mind you, and not for one hundred years, but just for the lives of the present inhabitants. You will be the mayor—simply because you are the only man who will be able to understand your perverse motivations in this matter. Partestrada will happen to he outside every path of conquest from Italy, France, and the north. Harvests will be adequate. Not ample, perhaps, but adequate. No plague will touch the city. Is that not a good approximation of peace?”

Damiano gazed up fixedly, as though engaged in colloquy with the head of the dead captain. “Possibly. What do you want for it, if my soul is of no value?”

Satan chewed his lower Up and peered out his southern window at endless sand. “I?” He spoke slowly, dreaming. “I, like you, am an altruist. I ask nothing for myself. But the situation imposes its own restraints.

“You are right, little witch, in supposing that the town of Partestrada contains the seeds of greatness. Its location on the Dora Baltea, three quarters of the way between Turin and Aosta… its salubrious climate, nurturing grapes yet in the shadows of the Alps…

“But I tell you that fifty years of unexceptional peace will kill Partestrada. She will fade and mummify, and her young men depart for Milan and Turin, violent cities of more promise.”

Damiano sat up. “That isn't the way it has to be.”

The Devil raised one eyebrow in the familiar gesture of Raphael.

“Let me finish, please. Not only will Partestrada fade and be forgotten, Damiano, but you yourself. All you have done and dreamed. The alchemical discoveries you are destined to make, the music that even now your unfulfilled love is awakening in your bosom, all your wisdom, your easy gift of friendship, your very name and your family name and your house and the place where your house once stood and your face…

“All will be lost and forgotten. In a century you will be a man who might never have existed from a city with a forgotten name.”

Damiano put his head between his knees. “No!” he said, and repeated it stubbornly, his voice shaking in his throat. “No. That's not the only way to get peace for my city.”

The Devil seemed to shrug. “It's what I offer,” he replied. “I can see no other way. Greatness, in man or nation, is incompatible with that emptiness that you call peace.”

Damiano rose slowly to his feet, using the edge of the bowl of heads for support. “You can
see
no other way? Raphael can't see into the future. He says no created being can…”

Harsh laughter boomed out, along with the odor of a wet fire. “Raphael? My little brother has a long history of confusing dare not with cannot!

“Believe me or doubt me, boy, but you came here to bargain. This is my offer, and if you were the… the saint you seem to be, you would snap it up. Even Raphael couldn't fault such a bargain; it reeks of yielding resignation.
And
humility. What do you say, little witch? Will you take it?”

“No,” answered Damiano. “The more I talk to you the more I believe in Partestrada. Decay is not the only way to peace!”

The Devil snorted in jovial contempt. “Fine words! But you are a hypocrite, after all,” he said. He smiled as though he had just won a hand at cards. “Or a coward. Either way, you're no better than I thought!”

Then the bitter wind took Damiano again and flung him at the wall.

 

Chapter 9

Damiano spent the next morning lying motionless on a pallet on the floor of the cabinetmaker's house, Macchiata curled beside him. When he woke, his interview with the Devil might have been a dream, except that his knees were bruised from falling on that stony red hand and his nostrils were caked with ash.

At intervals during the morning, the dog left Damiano, only to return and find her master as dull as before. At last she inserted her damp nose between Damiano's stubbly chin and his neck.

“Master,” she began, her voice muffled by the contact, “Master, are you sick?”

“No, little dear,” he answered slowly. “I just want to stop the sun for a while.” Then, remembering Macchiata's literal mind, he amended his statement. “I needed time to think.”

The dog sat placidly beside him, her brown eyes a few inches from his. As he watched, a flea crawled out from behind her ear and disappeared among the white hairs of Macchiata's muzzle. “And did you think?” she asked. “I mean, are you done thinking? What
did
you think?”

Wrestling with the heavy felt blanket, Damiano turned onto his back. “I think… there's got to be another way. For both my city and myself.”

“I'm sure there is,” said Macchiata staunchly, “if you think so.” And she scratched the side of her face with the stubby nails of her back foot.

It didn't bother Damiano that the dog should express her agreement with him without knowing the subject matter of that agreement; he was as used to Macchiata's loyal ignorance as he was to Raphael's smile.

“I need help,” he continued, thoughtfully glowering at the black beams of the ceiling. “I need advice.”

“Certainly.” She sat, ears pricked, and waited.

Damiano bent his head toward her, and a snort of laughter escaped him. “I meant—and I hope you will not be offended, Macchiata—from someone wiser than I.”

The dog grinned lazily, and her tongue slid out the side. “Not at all, Master. I know I am only four years old, whereas you are one and twenty. But where are you to find one greater than you are— that I don't know.”

Damiano's grin matched hers. The dog's ludicrous flattery never failed to amuse him, because he knew it was sincere. He sat up, throwing the weight of covers aside. Beneath the blankets he was wearing his ermine mantle and nothing else at all. Limberly he twisted right and left over the floorboards, fishing for his tunic and trousers among the tangles of cloth.

“Unless it's Raphael, Master. He must be very wise, because he never gets upset. Perhaps he is even wiser than you.”