The Damiano Series (50 page)

“If you are all planning to hit me together, I don't think there is much I can do about it, messieurs. However, I would like you to know that I have no idea what I have done to offend you.” And then he kept playing.

One man, a tall, narrow-chested fellow wearing a dagged jerkin of red, hefted his thorn stick. The others followed. “Mother of God,” whispered Damiano, “this is terrible.” He felt Gaspare behind him, shaking like an angry dog.

Then a blond head swam out of the red torchlight into Damiano's shortsighted vision. It belonged to the harper of the impossible name whom Damiano had accosted the day before. The Irishman put out a hand on each side and the ruffians froze.

And so Damiano played on. He played thinking that this might be the end for him—that he might never play another song—and so he played to please himself. He freed the base line. He feathered the strings (let the harper glare). He sang to his lute like a mother with a sleepless baby.

And he finished the piece without being knocked on the head.

There was silence. The ruffians had gone; the harper stood alone. Damiano rested his lute on his boots as the harper approached, stepping with great dignity in his Provençal robe.

“So that is what you meant,” he began, with his odd, shushing, boneless Irish accent, “by all that babble about bass lines and polyphony and my right hand.”

The younger man nodded, half smiling. “Yes. That is what I meant. Does it seem… terrible to you? An offense against the nature of the lute, perhaps?”

The blond man pulled up a chair. “No. It does not. But then I am not particularly sensitive to offenses against the nature of the lute, especially when they seem to flatter the harp.” He shot Damiano a sharply pointed magnificent glare. “Oh, my philosophy is unchanged, young man. It is always better to treat an instrument as what it is. But I cannot criticize your music. Because it works. It obviously works. And when music works, philosophies cannot touch it.

“Now I am going to get a honey and walnut roll from these people, along with a glass of something, and then I shall come back to listen once more.”

Damiano was so caught between confusion and gratitude than that his face grew hot. But as MacFhiodhbhuidhe rose again, the harper
paused to say, “Oh, by the way, monsieur, you cannot play the lute in Avignon without belonging to the guild.”

“Eh? Is that why the… gentlemen were upset with me? Well, I didn't know it was an obligation, and now I most certainly shall join.”

Two black eyebrows arched up and the harper's smile was wry. “It isn't so easy. Men have waited ten years to be accepted into the Guild of Avignon. And unless you have a sponsor, it is very expensive.”

Damiano heard a cry and a stamp of disappointment from Gaspare behind him. He himself stared down at the parquet floor, wondering, “What next? What next?”

“But I wouldn't worry about it tonight,” continued MacFhiodhbhuidhe, as his eyes roved the hall, seeking the attention of a maid. “I myself happen to be the Mayor of the Guild of Musicians at Avignon.”

One more surprise would leave him numb, thought Damiano. “And… you… would consider sponsoring me, Monsieur MacFhoid… MacFhioda…”

With a contemptuous wave of his taloned hand the harper swept away both Damiano's incipient gratitude and the problem of his name. “I said don't think about it tonight.” The maid appeared then, with a wooden tray upon which were piled seven varieties of heart's delight.

As Damiano tuned, preparatory to playing again, the harper downed the last of his honey walnut roll in a long draft of wine infused with violets. He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. (Like a cat, the harper kept his hand soft and round, the claws hidden within.) “You know, Monsieur Delstrego,” he said conversationally, “it is part of the duties of the Mayor of the Guild to lead the disciplinary companies.”

It took a moment for Damiano to digest this. “You mean…”

“Yes. To beat the pulp out of any intruder who dares to play an instrument for money within the limits of Avignon.” And MacFhiodhbhuidhe chuckled mildly to himself, took out his block of pumice, and began to file his nails. Damiano and Gaspare grinned uncomfortably at each other.

 

Chapter 7

Last summer, during the excited farewells spoken by Gaspare and Evienne and the more composed ones of Damiano and Jan Karl, Gaspare had arranged to meet his sister again at the door to the Papal Palace in Avignon on Palm Sunday. Jan had said there was such an edifice as the Pope's Door, and the rest had believed. From that ten months' distance it had seemed that to slice through time with an accuracy of one day was feat enough.

Now Damiano wished heartily that they had stipulated the meeting more exactly, both in time and space. The Pope's Door probably meant the main door into the Papal enclosure, but one could not be sure.

Gaspare and his friend had set down stools, courtesy of their employer, near the station of the right-hand pikeman at the gate. This pikeman was a tow-headed northerner, very tall and quite amiable. He was glad for their company because Damiano had brought his lute.

Of course they had come at dawn, because dawn was part of Palm Sunday. Damiano had left this station of waiting long enough to attend mass, but otherwise the two of them sat like toads on a log, as hour followed hour.

It was not hard on Damiano, for this day was mild, and coincided with one of his periodic spells of lethargy, brought on perhaps by daily performance and practice. And it was quite gratifying to find how many out of the Sunday crowd already knew or recognized him, stopping for conversation and compliments.

“Already you're making a name for yourself,” whispered his youthful manager. “Not seven days into Avignon and people of the better sort recognize you.”

Damiano grunted sheepishly as the most recent well-wisher departed: a fellow whose embroidered tabard signified that he served a cardinal. “I was born with a name, just like everybody else. And by what criteria do you judge that these are people of the better sort, other than by the fact that they recognize me?”

Gaspare did not answer. His repartee was not at its best, today. He was not happy: torn between an expectation too strong for comfort and a fear that fed upon that expectation. His face was sweaty and his hair (despite much attention) lank. He could not sit still—not for a moment—but neither would he let himself stir from his post of waiting. The result was an itching agony.

Damiano did not wonder at the boy's distress. If he had had family of any sort (he thought) he would cling to them like glue. Had Damiano a sister, he would have used any means, whether force of persuasion or force of arms, to prevent her fluttering off to a foreign country with a scapegrace conniver like Jan Karl.

Had Damiano a sister, of course, she would never have had to start selling herself on street corners. His fingers ceased to move on the strings as he became lost in reverie on the subject of his nonexistent sister.

Life would have been different, certainly. This sister (without doubt she would have been younger than he. He could not imagine an older sister, bullying him and calling him a dirty boy…) would have been the natural playmate of Carla Denezzi. Damiano would have then had far more occasions to meet with the lovely Carla, for whom he still had a sweet and somewhat painful regard. Perhaps he would have proposed marriage to Carla in better times. Perhaps she would have accepted.

How strange that would have been! He would by now be a different person entirely. Certainly a man with a wife could not have left the Piedmont for Lombardy, seeking the greatest witch in the Italies, nor subsequently wandered down into Avignon and sat in the sun by the Pope's Door, to pass the time of day politely with a cardinal's functionary.

Would he have ever met Raphael, had he had a sister?

Damiano was beginning to regret the existence of this imaginary sibling. She would be a girl of problems. If she had proven a witch, as was likely, she would have had a difficult time finding suitors. No simple man wanted to marry a witch, and even the sighted were just as happy with a simple wife. (And it was not too much easier for the male witches, for no father wanted to give his daughter to a man who might, in fit of irritation, turn her into a snake. Guillermo Delstrego had had to search all the way to France to find a suitable helpmate.

Of course Delstrego Senior had had problems of visage and temperament as well as livelihood. Damiano was always grateful that he had taken after his mother in all ways but one.)

By the crowded calendar of saints, what if Damiano's sister had looked like her father? Oh, it was much, much better that the girl had never been born.

Reverie and sunlight together filled his head with sweet, amber adhesive honey. He could not think anymore. There was no need to think anymore. His right hand nestled into the strings over the soundhole. His left hand fell away from the lute's neck.

Damiano had no idea how long he had been asleep when either the shadow on his face or the rough voice woke him up. He opened his eyes and started in terror, for it was the tall, narrow-chested guildsman who had come so near to assaulting him (“beating the pulp out” of him, to quote) on his first day at work.

This time the fellow had no club, but he looked angrier than ever. His langue d'oc was far too rapid for Damiano to follow, so the Italian made the universal I-do-not-understand-you gesture with both hands. The response to this was a grimace of disgust, and then the fellow began again, more slowly.

“It is bad enough that you crash into the city of Avignon, and I am forced to watch you receive what better men than you have waited years to have. This is shameful, and if we had a Provençal for the Mayor of our Guild, as we should, this would not happen.

“But you are not content with one of the most honorable and lucrative positions in the city; you must also ruin the livelihoods of poor men by playing them off the street. I must assume, monsieur— and your misshapen nose confirms me—that you are some Jew whose lust is for money, and who strides through Avignon with the idea that the protection of the King, the Pope and the Mayor is everything…”

Since it is not pleasant to have someone yelling abuse six inches from one's face, Damiano squirmed in his seat, and turned his head to the side. There were so many recriminations in the man's tirade that he could not keep track of them, let alone answer.

And this last, accusing him of being Jewish, was only confusing. In Partestrada there had been no Jews dwelling, but only old Jacob benJacob, who was Swiss as well as Jewish, and who came through once every three-month, selling, among other things, thread. It was from him that Damiano had purchased his first little lute. No one had suggested to him that Jacob was rich.

In Torino there was a Jewish quarter, certainly, and it was also from a Jew that he had purchased the gold-embossed volume of Aquinas which he had given to Carla. This had struck him as odd at the time, since if the man was Jewish he by definition could not be a Christian, and so what was he doing with a book of theology?

But for the most part, Damiano had never thought about the Jews for good or evil.

But his nose, now. He
had
thought about his nose, having at least the average share of vanity. And he had just been congratulating himself at having escaped the physiognomy of Guillermo Delstrego. This was disheartening.

Gazing resolutely across the avenue which was never for a moment empty, and where the Sunday garb of the strollers gave only the slightest nod toward Lenten repentance, he spoke. “Monsieur Guildsmember, you do me wrong. I am not trying to steal the brass sous of the street musicians (although I must say I would not regret them, being not as well paid as you think). I am only practicing, for I must play this evening. You notice no bowl?”

The fellow did not look down, except to spit. “Worse. Who is going to pay for music, if you give it to them for free?”

Damiano's fingers drummed on the spruce face of the lute. He was losing his patience. And where was Gaspare, anyway? Wasn't it a manager's job to keep him from this kind of disturbance?

He searched the street as he replied in his slow, careful langue d'oc, “Monsieur, I do believe it is you who are the mercenary one, for I was sitting here quite content to play for myself, in quiet practice to which no one, as far as I can tell, was listening. And in further answer to you, no, I am not Jewish, though it was necessary for me to learn to read Hebrew as a child, along with a small nibbling of Greek. But in fact, I have just come from mass, and with the communion in mind I hesitate to trade insults on…”

The words froze on Damiano's tongue and his tongue itself clove to the roof of his mouth. For as he stared across the busy street where butchers and bishops came and went, one passerby stopped to stare back at him with the face and hair of Raphael.

Damiano's expression flashed through stages of confusion, welcome and again confusion. The pedestrian stood stock-still. He was dressed in an elegance of gray and scarlet. If only he were closer.

Damiano stood, squinting, and shoved past the belligerent musician. “I… I… I mean, that is…”

And the ruddy, arrogant face came into focus. Satan smiled at Damiano, flourished and bowed, and then disappeared behind a wicker cage on poles filled with chickens and carried by two boys. This utensil swayed by as ponderously as the sedan chair of some dowager, and when the squawking affair had passed, so had the apparition.

Damiano swallowed. “That was… someone I know,” he whispered, feeling both frightened and foolish. The guildsman then grabbed Damiano by the arm and spun him around. The lute banged alarmingly against the wall.

“You will not ignore me, you black-faced peasant!” the fellow bellowed, and swung his bony fist at Damiano's face.

He ducked, but even before the fist passed above his head the gleaming length of a sharpened halberd sliced the air between them. The guildsman blinked at it, his arm still cocked for the blow. Damiano followed the wood and iron length back to its wielder, the gate guard both musicians had forgotten was there.