The Damiano Series (30 page)

With a snort and a sigh of weariness, Pardo sat back down on the glittering cushion. “That again.” He looked up at Damiano with his dark eyes steady and fearless.

“It is idiocy that has damned you, Delstrego, and ideas wildly mistaken. A city is not a woman, and its affections are purely… commercial.”

There was a titter from behind Damiano, probably from one of the Piedmontese, since the Savoyard soldiers generally spoke French. “It is true,” admitted Damiano, thoughtfully, “that Partestrada never really loved me, but she was a kind enough mother for all that, and it is for her sake I have worked toward your fall.”

Pardo glanced meaningfully from the apparition to the blue coat of Savoy. “And this one,” he said. “Will he be any better?”

Ogier put his hand on the pommel of the plain infantry sword he was now wearing. He smiled dryly. “That should be of no interest to you, pope's man,” he said.

“I have it on authority that he will be,” said Damiano. “He or his brother, or his brother's son. For the next fifty years at least.” Ogier's eyes widened.

“Kill him!” bellowed Denezzi in Damiano's ear. The witch jumped at the sound, for he had begun to think of the big man as a mere brute. “You've talked enough. Kill the southerner already and be done!”

There was a murmur of support for this idea and Denezzi stalked forward. Pardo, in his chair, froze, his fingers clutching the carving of the arms.

Damiano felt a sudden sweat break out on his face. This was not what should happen, though he was not at all sure what the alternatives were. But not Denezzi—it should not be the brute Denezzi.

The witch waited for Ogier to say something, to call the man back. But the Savoyard stood there, his blond hair gleaming in the torchlight, and he said nothing.

There was a sound of clashing swords as the three Roman guardsmen sprang out of hiding and made for their chief. Paolo Denezzi paused, uncertainly, his head lifted toward the sound.

Pardo struck so fast only Damiano saw him move, and he could only blink and watch as Denezzi was tripped and grabbed from behind. Then Pardo had the big man bent backward and a dainty dagger prodding at Denezzi's short, trunklike neck.

The three guards making for their master's side were met by a dozen swords of Savoy.

Denezzi shouted in rage, and he kicked, helpless as a bull locked in the shackles. Damiano raised his staff.

“I can kill him very quickly, Signor Delstrego,” shouted Pardo in warning. “See the position of the knife? It's at the big vein; I can feel the pulse up through the blade. Though you strike me into a toad or sear me to ash, this one'll be dead with me. He's your townsman, isn't he? Perhaps you would have reason to miss him.”

And it seemed to Damiano that he had stepped out of the path of time, and this cellar in San Gabriele was as flat as the tapestry on a wall: a picture of men locked in combat and men lying dead and men watching. In the wild torchlight the picture wavered, like a tapestry in the wind.

And he, in the center of the composition, had all the time in the world to make a decision.

Reason to miss Denezzi? How ironic. Of all the people in the world Damiano could do without, Paolo Denezzi… He looked again at the big man with singed chin and eyes rolling like an angry bull's. But for Denezzi, he might have had Carla.

Better he didn't, seeing what he now knew about himself. But Denezzi was everything the young witch disliked: boorish, bullying, crude, self-important… He had made life difficult for Damiano in every way he could, for years beyond remembering.

And Pardo was dangerous; Damiano had not suspected how dangerous until that lightning grab for Denezzi's throat. With his men alive, though scattered, Pardo was deadly. He had to be eliminated, for the sake of peace in the Piedmont.

As all these reasons lined up in Damiano's mind he knew absolutely he could not allow Denezzi to die. He let the heel of his staff thump in the dirt. Pardo smiled.

But other parties had made decisions as well.
“Coupe sa tête!”
drawled Ogier in a bored voice. A hundred men surged forth.

Denezzi bellowed like a bull, like a cow in the shambles, as Pardo's little knife opened his throat. His frantic, unavailing kicks scratched the dirt. Martin, Ogier's second, scrambled past Damiano and raised his blade over Pardo's head.

“No!” cried Damiano with almost no voice, and then again,
“No!”
His staff slipped in his sweating palm, and at that moment Denezzi's dying spasms kicked the object out of the witch's grasp.

Pardo's head bounced and rolled on the ground unheeded, for almost every eye in the company was locked in fascination on the slim, motionless figure with tangled black curls and black eyes that peered back at theirs, uncertainly.

Ogier leaped forward and kicked the staff out of Damiano's reach. It rolled over the hard floor like the stick of wood it was, and it disappeared into the shadows.

“Take him,” said the Savoyard commander, and a dozen soldiers bore Damiano to the ground. It was a deed quickly done, for Damiano hadn't the slightest idea how a man ought to fight.

Ogier paused and examined the field. He rubbed the fair stubble on his jaw. “An excellent engagement,” he remarked to Martin. “I don't think we lost a man, except this poor lout here. And we will give thanks for it by sending this creature back to his rightful home.

“Tomorrow, though. Not during the darkness it has made hideous. If the oak at the village gates is still standing, hang a rope from it.”

 

Chapter 15

Half the night passed over the village of San Gabriele, while dead fires and crawling fog wove a net of tangles in the air. The last of Pardo's soldiers slunk out of the cellars in which they were hiding and vanished over the stubbly fields. Before the week was out many of these would be recruited by the polyglot Savoyard army, but tonight memories were too green, so they departed quietly.

Most of the natives of San Gabriele were gone as well, save for those who, having nothing, had lost nothing. These roamed like dogs around the broken houses, avoiding Ogier's soldiers and sorting hopefully through the rubble of the streets.

Damiano lay in the cold on the wine-soaked floor of the very stone shed where he had found Gaspare, Jan, and Evienne. His wrists were bound behind him.

Where his three disreputable friends had fled to, and whether they were still free, still alive at all, he had no way of knowing, for without his staff Damiano was like a man struck blind and deaf. Nor had he much time to care, for the stars heaved slowly to the west, pulling the sun behind them, and with the first light he would die.

They had thrown his mantle over him, lest he freeze during the night and cheat them of their revenge. Soldiers outside guarded the corners of the shed; their slow passage blocked the moonlight that seeped in between the stones. Their presence and the dry, choking fear that filled his throat kept Damiano from weeping.

Instead he shook uncontrollably, until his shivers caused the fur mantle to slip off, and between the pain of his wrenched shoulders and swollen hands, he could not crawl back under it.

The earthen floor smelled strongly of wine and mice, and as he twisted to free his nose of the caking dust, the wad of moss in his ear fell out and cold lanced in. No voices, just cold.

Why would the marquis do this to him? Couldn't the man see that Damiano had given him better than any commander could hope for? Victory with no loss, all in an evening. And if a man was damned, then that was his misfortune, and nowhere was it written that he should be murdered on top of it. To kill a damned man must be a crime worse than to kill a saint, for a damned man had no good except that found in this life—forever.

Damiano's eyes stung in self-pity, which he forced back, lest he lose control and begin to howl. He had only a few hours, and then, according to Satan's promise, he would remember nothing good, nothing of beauty, nothing he had loved.

Yet he didn't regret his bargain with the Devil, for it was not his bargain that was sending him to hell. The bargain was only to die, and all men must die sooner or later. “Later!” cried a voice within him—not a voice of power, but a small, insistent voice like that of Macchiata, like that of Dami the boy. Later would be better. Much better!

What had he answered Satan, when the Enemy had told him he would not remember, nothing except what Satan desired? “I know it now,” he had said. “That will have to be enough.”

So. He was still alive, these few hours. He would remember: what was good and beautiful, what he…

Damiano swallowed the pungent odor of mice. He curled his knees to his chest and closed his eyes. Then he heard another small voice, not in his head, but from outside.

“Hein!
Festilligambe,” it hissed. “Or Delstrego—whatever you call yourself. Are you awake?”

Damiano's eyes sprang open. “Gaspare!” he hissed. “What are you doing there?” There was a vague dark blotch behind the fieldstones. It shifted and the boy replied.

“One of the soldiers went to take a leak. Only a moment. What can I do? To… Wait…” Starlight appeared where the blotch had been.

Damiano waited as still as a man carved of stone, his eyes wide in the darkness. Then the shape of the sentry passed by again and despair crept back. There was a lock of iron on the door anyway, and Ogier de Savoy had the key.

Gaspare was a good fellow. That was something to remember, as long as it did not make him weep. It
was
making him weep. Ah well, he could do that quietly.

“Hsst!” came the voice again, from the front wall this time. Damiano lurched over, and when his weight fell on his pinioned arms, he whimpered in pain. “I'm here now. Evienne is… distracting the guards. What can we do for you?”

He swallowed twice before he could reply. “Nothing, Gaspare. You can't help me, except that you have, a bit, by… Run off, now, for if they catch you, they'll hang you too.”

Gaspare's inaudible reply was probably a curse. Then he hissed “Become invisible, Festilligambe. I'll say I saw you run down the street, and they'll open the shed to see.”

Damiano had to smile at the plan. “I can't,” he replied. “They took my staff. I can't become invisible. I can't do anything.

“Go away, Gaspare. This is something that was decided before. I can't escape it, and I'm not Christ, that a couple of thieves should hang beside me. Go away.”

He had to repeat it three more times before the shadow faded off.

What day was it, anyway, or
would
it be with the first morning's light? One ought to know what day of the week one was dying on. He figured in his head, counting the days since the full moon. It was coming Sunday, the twelfth of December.

O Christ! It was a terrible thing to die cold.

Suddenly Damiano's weary, strained body stopped shivering. His mind was flooded with the pictures of a spring he would never see, and he smelled not mouse droppings but the breathing earth and the scent of lilacs. He grunted and sagged down against the floor, regardless of the pain.

To see the spring again, and to lie in the grass. To be investigated by silly lambs, newborn, all knees and nose, with their placid mothers bleating. To see silk dresses on the street again, when the girls' faces and necks were pink with the sharp morning air, and they were determined to wear their dresses anyway, for the calendar said spring. To go out into the fields and search for blooming herbs, arrowroot, angelica. Spending all the day and having little to show for it, because the fields were bouncing with new rabbits, like the children's little leather-sewn balls.

To endure the last fasting week of Lent, while every oven in town was baking for Easter, and then the great gold and white mass on Easter Sunday morning, and all the townsfolk singing together in their terrible, wonderful, untutored Latin “Alleluia, Alleluia, He is risen, He is not here.”

Last year, on the day before Easter, he had spent all day in the hills and come home with two armfuls of flowers and a burnt nose. The best of these: the pink early rose and the lily of the marsh, he had put in vases and left them for Carla to find, stealing onto her balcony at night while Macchiata had kept watch. (He had never told Carla.) The rest of them—the yellow lily and bright mustard, and the tiny nodding snowdrops on their stems—he had put into a bag and had dumped the lot on Raphael, like a shower bath. Though Damiano couldn't remember the expression on the angel's face, he remembered one fluffy brush of gold mustard dangling at the end of a fluttering wing, and the white robe gilded with pollen.

The act had been neither very respectful, nor very manly, but no matter. Raphael had taken it well. And now… now Damiano sank into memory. His mouth softened.

To die in the spring would be easier, for one would die drunk.

The winter was beautiful, too, or had been beautiful when he was warm, climbing up the road to Aosta. And of course, the gleaming high Alps were lovely, despite what Macchiata had said.

Macchiata had been beautiful, too, the most beautiful thing of all, in some ways. But her he could not bear to think about.

“Dominus Deus,”
he whispered, his lips brushing the dirt, “you made a pretty world.” It was not meant to be a prayer.

Cold air on his injured ear was making him dizzy again, for he could not feel the ground, and the room was swimming with lights of pearl, lights of sunstruck clouds. Damiano's head was gently lifted. He looked up into the eyes of Raphael.

Great wings curled in, hiding the walls of stone. The archangel took Damiano onto his lap, and the young man felt no cold at all.

“That's right,” whispered Damiano. “You said we should meet once more.”

Raphael did not smile. He stroked the young man's hair back from his face. “I said
at least
once more, Dami. And I said we would talk.”

Damiano raised his head for a moment and let his eyes rest on the figure of quiet beauty. Then he let it fall back. “Once is all I have time for, Seraph. And there's not a lot to say. They're going to hang me at dawn.”