The Damiano Series (57 page)

Damiano snarled a finger and returned his attention perforce to his playing.

There was a sound of thunder above their heads; the good weather was at an end. Raphael leaned—no, slouched—against the chair back, one elbow propped on the finial of cherubs carved from oak. With his calm, interested visage and generally passive attitude, he might have been any intelligent listener at the Bishop's Inn, with a seed cake and a cup of violet wine on the table before him.

There was a piece Damiano had written only the previous week, which reminded him of Raphael. (It fell short, the lutenist thought, but then of course it would.) Though it was not part of his professional repertoire, he played it now for the angel.

“There is everyday truth, and then there is a metatruth, Your Holiness. And while in actual fact the plague may not be due to the Jews poisoning the water supplies, the higher truth is that all our misery upon the earth is due to the wickedness that murdered our Saviour…”

“I thought,” murmured Innocent, seemingly inattentive to the cardinal's words, “that our misery was due to the sin of Adam, expressed anew in every man, and that the sufferings of our Lord were our happy redemption.” The Pope cleared his throat, laid down his knife and gestured for his chair to be moved to the other side of the table, closer to the music.

“After all, Rocault, it
is
Eastertide, you know, and we generally try to adopt an attitude of thankfulness.”

When the old man finally spoke to him, Damiano had gone so far from attention to the conversation that a lackey had to nudge him on the shoulder.

“Lutenist.” Innocent stood immediately in front of him. Damiano rose hurriedly.

But the Pope sat, knowing a chair would appear to receive him, and he gestured the same for Damiano. “You sound like an entire consort of lutes, here in your corner. Along with a harp or two, and at least one tambour.”

Damiano mumbled his thanks, and then, to his astonishment, Innocent VI reached out, asking if he might see the lute.

The Holy Father played a few quiet scales. He smiled. Back by the dinner table, Cardinal Rocault was not smiling.

“It sounds very different when I try to play,” observed the old man.

“I did not know, Your Holiness,” began Damiano (and his voice humiliated him by cracking on the word “Holiness”), “that you played the lute.”

“A little. When I have time. I play enough to wonder why you, who get such a variety of sounds out of your instrument, don't play more at the far end of the neck.”

“The lute is not true up there,” replied Damiano.

Innocent chuckled to himself. “Not true. Nor metatrue?” And his glance at the young man sharpened and held a covert amusement. “Are you Jewish, young man? You could be, by the look of you. Sitting here and listening to all this talk, it would be very frightening for you if you were Jewish. You would not easily forget, nor keep secret what you heard, if you were Jewish.”

“I am not,” said Damiano in turn. “I am Piedmontese, and this nose I got from my Italian father. It is very frightening to hear anyway, but I don't understand enough to repeat it. Nor do I know many people in Avignon to whom I could repeat anything.”

The Pope smiled sweetly at him and smothered a yawn. “No matter, my son. I am not about to issue proclamations this season, and the whole world is permitted to know that.” His Holiness stood, and his chair was toted back to the table.

As the old man turned to follow it, Raphael rose from his place and stood beside him. His fair face was only inches from the Pope's ear. “Claude,” called Raphael softly. “Claude Rabier!” And then he whispered in the Pope's ear.

Innocent grimaced and blinked, rubbing one age-stained hand over his eyes, but he did not pause.

The angel watched him go. White wings drooped down to the carpet.

“He couldn't hear you?” whispered Damiano.

“I don't know if he heard me or not,” replied the angel.

“. . . you forget the usuric taxes, Rocault. Your cardinal's vestments were purchased out of Jewish…”

Damiano felt easier at heart. Not that he was about to confuse the astute Innocent with Saint Francesco, but now he had a certain faith in the man as well as the office. The old Pope was not about to be ground under heel by Cardinal Rocault.

Damiano was more and more certain that he did not like Rocault, who was making life more difficult for everybody, from the Holy Father to Gaspare.

And therefore for Damiano.

The food was cleared away. Was the music supposed to be cleared away as well? Damiano looked about for some sort of signal from one of the lackeys. Discovering none, he continued playing.

Rocault had a plan which he insisted on describing to His Holiness. It involved the disestablishment of all lending institutions except those beneficiary associations belonging to the guilds and (of course) the church itself.

Innocent listened with what appeared to be little attention, occasionally murmuring phrases on the order of “killing the goose which lays the golden eggs.”

From strain and general weariness, Damiano had created a small headache. When the lackey who had handled the Pope's chair returned with a bundle in his arms, his eyes could not at first make out what the thing was. When by its shape it proved to be a lute, he was filled with mixed feelings.

Did the Holy Father want to play for him? Or with him? That could be interesting. Or dangerous for Damiano, since it was a direct insult to the cardinal, who plainly wanted to talk. It could also prove embarrassing, since the Pope was the successor to Saint Pietro, but music was still music, and about it Damiano could not he.

He kept his head down toward his strings but out of the corner of his eye Damiano watched Innocent open a case of gilded leather and pull out an instrument.

Mother of God, what an instrument. As Innocent carried it from the dining table over to Damiano's corner, the lutenist could no longer pretend to be uninterested.

The lute was larger than Damiano's, but by the way the old man hefted it, very light. Its back was of many woods and its soundboard bleached white. The neck of it was black ebony, inlaid with gold wire, and the pierced cover of the soundhole was a parchment lace as fine as cheesecloth. The tuning head of the lute bent sharply back from the neck, the better for the musician to play in ensemble.

Damiano was stricken with base jealousy: that a man who played “when he found the time” should have such an instrument, when Damiano, who ate and breathed the lute, was forced to carry a box poorly joined and false at the top of the neck…

But he shoved himself roughly back into line. How could he object to the most important man on earth owning a pretty lute? Besides, it was probably made for show and possessed a voice like a crow's.

Innocent sat himself down between Damiano and the angel, who was also regarding the lute with interest. Perhaps the lutenist's conflict of feeling had not passed entirely unnoticed, for the first thing the Pope said was “People give me things.” And he shrugged.

“Lutes, among the rest.” With a touch of a quill to each string, the Holy Father checked his tuning. He seemed to know what he was doing. Then he took Damiano's lute by the neck and made an exchange.

“I want to hear that piece with the bass like a harp again. On this.”

Damiano said nothing. When he touched the top course with his fingernail, the lute thrilled weightlessly on his lap. He played an aeolian scale, to get used to the spacing, and then a myxlodean. He found he was holding his breath.

The instrument had a soul. Before five measures of the song had passed Damiano had forgiven it its excessive prettiness, and with the final sprinkle of notes he forgave it for not being his. He extended it to its owner.

Innocent VI shook his head. “I like this one better,” he stated. “It is such a poor lute, and when I look at it I can remember to what heights you took an instrument which showed so little promise. When I consider my own soul, I would like to remember that. And besides, I, who am a halting musician, can play this instrument without feeling unworthy of it.”

“But neither am I worthy of this,” blurted Damiano. And he believed it, without for a moment discounting his own abilities. For it seemed to him that the only sort of musician who ought to have such a lute was an old man who had played all his life, on the good instruments and the bad, and who had surmounted his obstacles and learned all that life was going to teach him.

Damiano saw himself, on the other hand, as a beginner. A beginner who was already better at his art than most masters, but a beginner nonetheless. He tried to give the lute back.

Innocent would not take it, and neither did the old man smile as he said, “That's not for you to say, lad. But it wouldn't matter anyway. An instrument like this—one cares for it for a while and then passes it on. As I do, to you. I was not its first owner, and perhaps you will not be its last. Something told me it was time to pass it on.” Innocent shrugged. “If you meet a man who is more worthy, or who has the greater need…”

The old man fixed Damiano with a fierce hazel eye. “Is it a trade, musician?”

“You… Your Holiness,” stuttered Damiano, and he tipped his chair over as he rose to bow.

“Gabriele!” exploded Gaspare, as soon as they were out of the private quarters. “What a present! And from the Pope himself! You should have gotten him to sign it.”

Damiano glanced up from the case of gilded leather. “Sign it? Don't be an ass, Gaspare. Sign it where? The signature of God himself is on this lute; it is perfect.”

He looked over his shoulder. “What do you think of it, Raphael? Isn't it perfect?”

Gaspare giggled at the sight of Damiano conversing with empty air.

Raphael was smiling. He marched with wings straight out behind him, for the passageway was low and narrow. Because of this posture, he resembled a man fighting gale winds. “It's a lovely lute, and as soon as you let me play it I'll tell you more,” he answered. “But I doubt I'll have much to criticize.

“I'm glad he thought to give it to you,” added the angel, with more than a hint of complacency.

They descended to the clean cobbled streets and the guard watched them walk away. Damiano sang in the rain all the way back to the inn.

“Do I look so old to you that I can't carry my clàrseach by myself?” bristled MacFhiodhbhuidhe, stooping to place one hand beneath the base of the soundbox, while the other hand rested on the serpent-curve of the string arm. Grunting, he hefted the weight of black wood.

The harper's instrument was garnished with a great deal of silver and crystal. It was splendid, certainly, but to Damiano's Italian eye it lacked grace. It looked heavy—not like MacFhiodhbhuide's music, which was almost frivolously light.

“It's lighter than you would think,” the harper said, almost as though he had read Damiano's thoughts. “It's carved out of willow. The box is hollowed from a single piece of wood: like an old log boat!” MacFhiodhbhuidhe chuckled.

“But here, boy. You can carry my stool,” he added grandly, handing the item to Gaspare, who had not been the one to volunteer his help.

The big Irishman, like Damiano himself, was in a glorious mood. “I haven't enjoyed myself this much in years. And it has been years since I played like this, in public, for whoever wanted to stop and listen. For the most part, I have my patrons.”

He stood at the door of the inn, peering out on to the wet pavement, scowling against the chance it might still be sprinkling. Finally he decided to chance it, and strode out to the street. Damiano and Gaspare tagged behind.

“Your patrons, Monsieur Harper?” piped Gaspare (when he should have kept his mouth shut). “Is the Holy Father one of your patrons? Have
you
played for the Pope, like Damiano?”

Nothing in Damiano's witchcraft had ever taught him how to drop through solid stone, or else he might have vanished from view then and there, out of sheer embarrassment. He gave the boy a shake and a barely suppressed hiss. But MacFhiodhbhuidhe only stopped in the middle of the road and peered down at Gaspare. A chase of cloud and moon flashed his image larger than life, and his long, carefully frizzed yellow hair bushed out like a halo. “Many times, child, have I played for His Holiness. Every good musician in Avignon has been heard by the Pope, whose interest in music is active.

“Of course,” continued the harper, “not every good musician has been given an instrument by the Pope. Your friend has a right to be proud.”

“I'm not proud,” mumbled Damiano, following MacFhiodhbhuidhe through the gate of his pretty little garden and into his pretty little house. “I'm only astounded. And besides, he said he did it because of a song that sounded like a harp.”

The Irishman's elderly serving woman came with a candle in each hand, and lit them in.

In the middle of the harper's front room stood a cabinet, lined with woolens, floored with absorbent sand. In this cabinet the clarseach lived. As MacFhiodhbhuidhe placed it upright in its stand, he sighed. “Everyone is attracted to novelty. But I'm sure His Holiness had more reason than that.

“But the clàrseach, you know: it is different from all the other instruments.” The burly man gave a tolerant glance over his shoulder, knowing he would not be understood. “Looking at that great, weighty thing of wood and brass and silver, would you believe that there is nothing holding it together but its strings?

“That is the case, however. A clàrseach is three pieces of wood, fitted with pegs and holes. The box is female, the bow male, and the arm, half and half.” His bushy black brows drew together in good humor.

“We Irish are very fond of threes. We pretend to have invented the Trinity.”

Damiano, though he enjoyed the occasional intellectual exposition, was more interested in the instrument than the philosophy behind it. He bent around the wider man, examining the harp's joints. “Do you ever take it apart?”