Damiano

by R. A. MacAvoy

  Contemplating an all-night journey made the young man’s muscles ache with weariness. It was now as near midday as no matter. And weary legs on numb feet made the army of General Pardo seem a more serious problem than it had after breakfast. Certainly he couldn’t trot off to Nuremberg or Avignon while Pardo ravaged the hills. Damiano gave a large, round sigh.

  He had outdistanced all his solitary childhood rambles an hour ago and stood in a brilliant, wild landscape unknown to him. Damiano noticed a rock standing ten feet from the road, sparkling in the sunshine with mica or ice. He squatted against it, wondering how many travelers it had sheltered since the six days of creation. Its cracked face was the color of honey, and Damiano leaned his cheek against it, half-expecting it to be warm. The snow swam before his eyes, as though moles or tunneling rabbits were disturbing its surface. He rummaged for the wine bottle.

  “I hope you de-tuned your lute,” said Raphael. Damiano realized that what he had taken for snow were the outstretched wings of the angel, who was sitting motionless on a rock not four feet away. Raphael’s robe was whiter than the white ground and without ornament. His hair shone as colorless as sunlight.

  Damiano’s grin spread slowly, because the skin at the corners of his mouth was cracked. “Seraph! O spirit of fire! How do you like the snow?”

  Macchiata ploughed over from whatever private business she had been on. “Raphael! You found us!”

  “Yes! Yes, I found you!” replied Raphael, in tones of enthusiasm that he reserved for the dog alone. He rubbed the sides of her head till her ears snapped like leather whips. Damiano felt a slight pang of jealousy.

  Raphael turned back to him. “I like the snow very much, and the mountains. I think they have a beautiful voice.”

  Damiano gazed at Raphael until his eyes smarted. He was so glad to see him he could think of nothing to say, and his mind filled with inconsequentials.

  Had Raphael skin beneath that lustrous garment, or was he no more than face and wings—an illusion worn so that Damiano could understand him? And why, since angels were immaterial and sexless, did Raphael seem to Damiano entirely male? All the painters gave their angels the faces of women.

  Had Raphael seemed a woman, Damiano, easily swayed by such things, would not have been able to bear it. He would have made a fool of himself, for certain, and perhaps sinned in his heart. Perhaps, Damiano reflected, that was why Raphael did not appear so, since the good God did not offer a man temptations he could not possibly resist.

  The chiseled face tilted sideways, almost like that of a curious bird, and the wings swept snow into the air: snow that broke the light like a thousand prisms. “Why are you looking at me like that?” asked Raphael.

  Damiano swallowed; he realized his hand still clutched the neck of the wine bottle. “I had forgotten how amazing you are, Raphael. Seeing you under the sky, like this... is very beautiful.”

  The angel’s face remained unchanged, as though the compliment had gone through him. “The blue sky is very beautiful,” he agreed, tilting his head upwards. “But then so it is in the rain, and the snow.”

  Damiano’s cold and nervous hands fumbled under the folds of the mantle and found the pear-shape of the lute. He brought it out. “You see, Seraph. I loosened all the strings, knowing the cold might have snapped the neck.”

  Raphael knelt in the snow and took the instrument in both his hands. One by one, he adjusted the eight strings.

  “This is as loose as they need to be,” he remarked. “Unless you are going to the top of a mountain.”

  Damiano sighed, thinking how much there was to explain. “Only as high as the summer pastures, where the people of Partestrada have fled. Then... I don’t know, Raphael. Perhaps France, or Germany, but not until... tell me, what should I do for my city?”

  Raphael gazed at Damiano until the young man felt he were standing alone beneath hosts of stars. Had he known how, he would have laid open his soul to the angel, with the history of his every thought, and let Raphael judge him and decide his path. No matter the pain, weariness, or worldly shame, Damiano believed, he would have done Raphael’s bidding.

  But he did not know how to bare his soul, and he was certain that Raphael was not about to tell him what to do with his life, so instead Damiano dropped his eyes to the cork and the green glass of the wine bottle. Consequently Raphael’s words caught him by surprise.

  “Pray, Damiano! Pray for the people of Partestrada, and pray for yourself; for guidance. It may be you will need it.” The angel spoke with a clear intensity, and Damiano flushed at his own omission.

  “Of course, Seraph. Since yesterday... all has been topsyturvy, and I have forgotten. But aren’t you my guidance?”

  Raphael laughed and Damiano, too. It always worked that way. “No, Dami, I’m not here as a messenger of the Highest. It was your will that first called me and my own will that chose to come. I am not your guide but your friend.”

  Damiano bowed his head to follow the angel’s advice, but immediately he raised his eyes again and saw Raphael sitting before him, wings folded back. Macchiata lay curled on the angel’s lap like a white piglet, slightly soiled. “Don’t go,” begged Damiano. “I’m afraid when I look up again, you’ll be gone, and you just got here.”

  Raphael took Damiano’s hand and held it.

  The mortals ate while Raphael looked on. They didn’t speak of Pardo or Partestrada or the horsemen who even now must be combing the uplands for the city’s unfortunate people. In fact, later, when trudging the road that afternoon, Damiano looked back upon their conversation, and it seemed they had talked about nothing at all. Raphael had turned down Macchiata’s invitation to walk along with them, saying he was not much of a walker.

  The afternoon clouded up, and the snow that the sun had softened began to freeze. Black walls of evergreens now were not such an inspiring sight, for the travelers had seen nothing else since morning. The climb continued.

  By the time the shadows covered the road it had become slick, and Damiano began to fear for his lute. If he fell on the little instrument, which was only the size of a toddler’s potbelly, that would be the end of it.

  He did fall, injuring his right hand but not the lute. As he was a witch, and therefore left-handed, he thanked God for small favors, but the fall let him know he could not go on through the night.

  The sun had failed when Damiano saw a wink of yellow light at the top of the slope to the right of the road. In his state of weariness he stared dumbly at it. “What could that be?” he mumbled to the world in general.

  “It’s sausage,” answered Macchiata promptly. “And three people. Men. With an oil lamp. And wine.”

  Damiano gaped in amazement. “You learned all that by smelling?”

  Macchiata wagged her tail, but her nose pointed like a lodestone toward the glimmer of light. “My nose gets better when I’m hungry.

  “Can we go say hello, Master?”

  Damiano chuckled at her greedy eagerness, but he didn’t feel so different himself. It was the thought of fire, however, that drew him. He found himself shivering under his wool and fur. “They may be Pardo’s soldiers,” he said uncertainly, but he stepped toward the light as he spoke.

  “No. Not soldiers,” answered Macchiata with authority. “They don’t smell like soldiers.”

  Damiano didn’t question her statement. He followed the dog up the slope, climbing with his toes and one bruised hand, while his left hand dug the staff in behind him.

  He came close enough to recognize the stone hut that marked the meeting of the North Road and the west, and which had held a guard in his great-grandfather’s day, before the house of Savoy had made the land safe. Then it had become a traveler’s shelter. Now, perhaps the new ruler of the Piedmont would open the guardhouse again, at least until Amadeus VI drove him away.

  Damiano stepped closer, brushing snow from his trousers as quietly as he could.

  There were two windows overlooking the North Road. One was dark, being stuffed a
gainst the cold with rags and scraps of firewood, along with a single, soleless leather boot. The other window was smaller and had panes of cow’s horn. It was through this window that light was pouring.

  In the amber glow Damiano stood, gripping his staff in both hands. “Mirabile! Videāmus,” he whispered. “Let us see.”

  And he saw three men, as Macchiata had said. All of them were his age, or thereabouts. They were not soldiers; they wore clothes of fashion, though these were time-stained and not of the best. From their belts hung the jeweled, effete daggers of the young bravo, yet all three had taken the clerical tonsure. Damiano smiled, hearing French laced with Latin: the speech of students. Damiano spoke a passable French.

  The staff throbbed in his hand—a reminder from his instincts to himself to be careful. These were not three Poverelli of Francesco, to be sure, whatever their clerical bent. Since the Holy Father had moved to Avignon, it seemed all of Provence had adopted the styles of the Church, saints and sinners alike. And these fellows had been drinking.

  But still, they were students, and what else was Damiano? The brotherhood of students was as close as that which existed in any cloister, and more entertaining besides. Damiano knocked his damaged knuckles against the wooden door, while Macchiata whined in her most placatory manner.

  What had been boisterous conversation became silence. “Qui?” called a voice, and then in broken Italian, “Who there?”

  “Naught but a traveling student,” answered Damiano in Latin. “And his dog.”

  More silence followed, and then a scraping. The door opened, revealing the scene Damiano’s craft had shown him before. Three men, a smoky hearth, and a tin lamp set on a table strewn with food. Damiano blinked against the beauty of the sight.

  “Enter then and be welcome,” said the fellow who had opened the door. He was moonfaced, plump, and balding, despite his youth. The two others regarded Damiano from their places at table. One was dark and square, the other towheaded with a long face. This last mentioned student held a greasy spiced sausage in his lap in a manner most proprietary.

  “My name is Damiano Delstrego,” Damiano said, bowing. “This lady is my dog Macchiata. We thank you for your courtesy on this icy evening.”

  The dark youth rose, smiling slightly. The bow of the fellow at the door was a marvel involving three separate movements of the foot. “Signor Dottore Delstrego. Let me present our small company. This one standing, with the shoulders of Hercules—he is Paul Breton, and he is a poet. The blond without manners is called Till Eulenspiegel. We are golliards, the impossible children of Pierre Abelard himself.”

  “Till Eulenspiegel!” Damiano burst out, involuntarily.

  Slyly the blond looked up. “What’s wrong with that?” He spoke an egregious Italian.

  The first student stepped between them. “You see, Dottore, we believe that a name chosen oneself or by those who know one is more meaningful than the one chosen at birth. It is the custom of golliards to forego allegiance to country, town, and family for the highest fidelity to learning itself. Therefore Jan Karl is Till Eulenspiegel, and world watch out.

  “I myself,” he concluded, “have the honor to carry the name of Pierre Paris, because that is the place I like best.”

  A chair was sought for Damiano, to no avail. He who called himself Pierre Paris offered his own, but Damiano chose to sit on the table. From his pack he took the remainder of his bread and cheese, pulled off portions of both for Macchiata, and put the rest on the table. The dog wolfed what she was given and retired to the space beneath Eulenspiegel’s chair, where she lay consuming the aroma of sausage.

  “Delstrego,” drawled the Dutchman. “Doesn’t that mean ‘of the witch’?”

  “Yes it does,” admitted Damiano. He had become impatient waiting for someone to invite him to eat and so had begun unasked.

  “Is it also”—the blond ran out of Italian and switched to French —”a title self-chosen?”

  Damiano shook his head forcefully. “Definitely not. It was my father’s name and his father’s before him for I don’t know how long.” He continued in Latin, for he was quite at home in it, having the advantage of being Italian. “If I took a name to myself it would be Damiano Alchemicus.”

  “Not Damiano Musicus?” asked Pierre Paris, as with lightning speed he whipped the long sausage from Eulenspiegel’s grasp and cut a section for their guest. The blade of his dagger he wiped on the hem of his black overshirt. “I was hoping we would hear that lute you have cradled so carefully in the corner.”

  Damiano followed his glance to where the lute rested, wrapped in the white fur of his mantle. “Perhaps later, Signor Clericale, once it’s warm. But I’m not very good.” Half the thick slice of sausage disappeared into a wet mouth waiting under the table. The other half Damiano held between his fingers, nibbling.

  “Good students,” he said, “for such I see you are—though I had thought that war and pestilence had ended the golliard’s jolly times —I am a student also, both of science and spirit. Why do you travel weaponless through a land devastated by war?”

  Paris stared owlishly at Breton, who in turn looked toward Eulenspiegel, who kept his eyes fixed on Damiano. “Who would devastate the barren mountains, and how would one be able to tell they had been devastated?” inquired Paris, who in all matters seemed to be the spokesman of the three.

  Damiano felt a variety of envy for them, whose lives had not yet been touched by the present troubles. He assumed that because his troubles were not theirs, they had no troubles. This supposition on his part was a human error, certainly, but it could have been dyed a much deeper hue had Damiano felt contempt and alienation from the three because of their fortune.

  Instead he wanted to help keep them safe and carefree, and to that end he said, “Believe me, Signori Clericale: we are little more than a day’s travel from what was a thriving city and is now abandoned to General Pardo’s soldiery.”

  “Pardo?” spoke up Eulenspiegel, who seemed to have a quick ear, though a slow tongue. “The condottiere in the service of the pope? He was at Avignon a few years ago.”

  Damiano peered stricken at the blond at the other side of the table. He was just at the limit of Damiano’s close sight, and Damiano could not be sure Eulenspiegel was joking. “You mean... It could not be that the Holy Father is sacking the towns of the Piedmont?”

  Paris broke in smoothly. “It could be, but I think it isn’t. The condottieri serve contracts, not men, and I remember hearing when I was at the papal court last that Pardo’s time was lapsed, and either he or the Holy Father did not renew.

  “And, my dear brothers, what is a condottiere without lands or employer, but a brigand?”

  “They’re all robbers, anyway,” sneered Eulenspiegel, glaring dourly into the distance. Damiano reconsidered his conception of this man; there was doubtless sorrow in his past.

  “Nonetheless, I beg you to beware, Signori. Do not follow the road down from the hills or you may find you have walked into trouble. And if you hear the sounds of many horses on the road, then leave it quickly and hide where you may.”

  “Would in any case,” growled Eulenspiegel, while the poet just sighed.

  “Ah! I thank you, friend Delstrego,” said Paris, placing both the basket-covered wine jug and a husk of bread in front of Damiano. “I drink to your health, for you have cared for ours.” He picked up Damiano’s green bottle and did as he had promised. “Now you must drink too, or the toast will be invalid.”

  Smiling sheepishly, Damiano drank their wine. To his surprise, it was as good as his own. He complimented them upon it.

  “Should be good,” said Eulenspiegel, showing his teeth.

  Paris cleared his throat. “I appreciate your advice, Signor Dottore Delstrego, and believe we are all grateful. Yet our path was decided for us before we left France, and to veer from it would destroy the meaning of our journey.

  “Let me tell you, friend in the wilderness, that we three are retracing the steps of t
he great Petrarch from Avignon to Milan, seeing every inch of the countryside about which he wrote.”

  “Ah, the verse!” cried out Breton, the poet. “Immortal verses, wild as the god Pan!”

  Damiano started. It was as though a dog had talked—another dog, not Macchiata.

  “I saw him, in Milan,” ventured Damiano. “He was very gracious, and let me copy four of his poems into a book. I dared not ask for more, for I was sitting in his office where the window looked out onto il Duomo, and he sat across from me, asking which parts I liked. It was a great moment for me. Yet I don’t believe Petrarch rode from Avignon in the beginning of winter, did he?”

  The poet opened his brown eyes very round. “He has spoken with you? The laureate himself. You sat in his house?”

  Damiano shrugged in self-deprecating manner. “Only for an hour. I doubt he would remember my name.”

  “Delstrego would be hard to forget,” remarked the blond. “I’ve been looking at that,” he added, pointing at the staff, which rested like a baby in the crook of Damiano’s left arm. “You use it just to walk?”

  Under the combined stares of four pairs of eyes the black wood hummed. Damiano stroked it, embarrassed, as he was at any mention of his witchhood.

  “No, although it is very useful and sturdy in that way. I use it as a focus for my concentration, because otherwise the—power—roams free in the body and clouds the mind.”

  “You’re a witch?” breathed Paris, and the room froze.

  “A wizard,” contradicted Damiano, immediately wondering why on earth he had said that. The three students huddled like birds before the eyes of a snake, and Damiano blushed harder.