The Damiano Series

by R. A. MacAvoy

  “Damiano!” hissed Carla, who either wore no lacings or did not care about them. “I prayed I would see you again, but I had little hope. How did you get through? I think the Devil himself has flown over us. Could you feel him?”

  “Eh?” Damiano turned his face away. Though a bare two minutes ago he had stood between life and death, indifferent, Carla’s presence had revealed his own face to him again. The Devil himself? He was ashamed, not knowing quite why.

  Meanwhile, murder was running like a flame all over the snowy mountain road. Damiano didn’t want to look upon that, either, so he regarded the rough wooden boards.

  “The children,” he stuttered. “All the rest of the women and the old men. What happened to them? Father Antonio… Did they…”

  “Everyone of them is in Aosta,” spat Signora Anuzzi, who had always felt herself to be a class above any mere artisans like the Delstregos. “They went under a guard of soldiers, all very proper. As though the poor scum were royalty! Only those of us who are worth something have been tied up like pigs to market!”

  “The soldiers… offered no violence?” Damiano blinked stupidly from one face to another.

  Signora Anuzzi snorted. “We haven’t been raped, if that’s what you mean, you young gutter rat!”

  He scratched his head in simple puzzlement. “But…” He glanced again at Carla Denezzi. “They’re all being killed,” he said, and then fell silent as though awaiting confirmation of his words. She regarded him soberly and silently, her hand resting lightly upon his. “The soldiers are all being killed, for revenge of their crimes against you. And it is I who have made that possible,” he concluded.

  “God be praised!” grunted the old signora of the vineyards.

  Carla felt Damiano start. She caught his stricken glance and held it. It was only her perfect understanding at this moment that kept Damiano from being swept away, blown into tears or madness.

  The wagon tilted. Paolo Denezzi was climbing aboard. “It is done,” he announced, and he saw Damiano and Carla.

  “You don’t touch my sister!” he roared, throwing half the women back into quaking hysteria. “She is a pure dove! And you… you, Delstrego, are a monster!”

  “Paolo!” shouted Carla, in anger and indignation. But Damiano very slowly drew his hand back. He said nothing and slunk out of the wagon. He picked his way amid the graceless figures on the road, which lay so still they might never have known life at all.

  Chapter 7

  Aosta was a larger and more prosperous town than Partestrada, since it lay at the most pleasant dip in the only road entering the Piedmont from the north. Damiano had often thought this an unfair advantage for a city that did not have much else to recommend it. It shared with Partestrada a rushing river, which was named in the mountains the Evançon, though at the feet of the hills it changed its name along with its tempestuous personality and was called the Dora Baltea.

  Much of the gold Damiano had brought out of the Delstrego tower had gone to buy shelter for the poorer refugees, and even so these would have to find work quickly or move on. Had the burghers of Aosta known that this ill-timed influx of business had left fifty soldiers and eight horses buried in the snow of the passes, their welcome would have been short indeed. The Valle d’Aosta, feeling some protection from its mountains but not much, had no desire to involve itself in battles that ought to have been fought by Amadeus himself.

  As it was, there was no need for the Aostans to know. General Pardo himself would be slow in finding out, for not a man would return to him.

  Still, find out he would. Now that the matter of the citizens had been cleared up (or at least Damiano felt no further responsibility for them), he had time to reflect.

  It was strange to realize that he had no more virtue than Pardo, no more than the soldiers who put a tiny hamlet to the sword because one peasant showed fight. Damiano had killed fifty—he did not allow the knives and hammers of Partestrada credit for the blood—in revenge for that six. Or perhaps it was a revenge for the soldiers’ crimes against the women of Partestrada—a meaningless revenge for crimes that had never been committed.

  Whatever—Damiano had not felt wicked in action. He doubted General Pardo did, either. “Man is born in sin, and his nature is evil.” Father Antonio had announced that from the pulpit, though it was not a subject upon which the good priest had dwelt in his leisure time. Never till now had Damiano thought about it.

  Were the peasant woman’s curses now satisfied? Would she rest peacefully, now that her murderers were all dead?

  And while he was asking questions, where was Father Antonio, anyway? Damiano needed direction (the sort of direction Raphael would never consent to give). And he needed it immediately.

  The dank common room of the inn where Damiano sat, though warm and crowded with his companions, was sullen and quiet. Damiano rose from the crude table of wooden slats, leaving behind him crumbs of bread, the wax rind of a cheese, and an untouched length of sausage. A whine beneath the table prompted him to throw the meat to Macchiata.

  Carla was unreachable, in the house of friends and guarded by her villainous brother, but Damiano could at least go looking for his friend the priest.

  The basilica of San Sebastiano at Aosta was really just a small round church. Damiano stood at the door, certain he would find the priest nearby, but feeling a stiff, unreasoning reluctance to enter. As he stood undecided, Carla Denezzi stepped out.

  “Damiano!” she gasped, and caught him by the hand. “Step in here, quick.” He let himself be dragged into shadows smelling of wood smoke and incense.

  Left of the door was a baptismal, separated from the vestibule by a lacework of wood. As though this offered concealment, she sat him down.

  She was wearing a cream-colored shawl. Her face was clean and rosy, and the sight of it brought the past once more to life for him: warm, filtered sun threading through the pales of the loggia, and bright threads lying on a basket, neatly sorted, and ideas neatly sorted, and laughter. Damiano wanted to tell her how glad he was to see her, and how he had missed her, and sought her, and thought of her as he lay curled in a black cave in the hills under snow, but the very cleanness and rosiness of her face stopped him. It made Damiano shy.

  “I shouldn’t have my staff here,” he murmured. “It isn’t right.”

  She had reached out her small hand, meaning to lay the stick aside, when she remembered and drew back. “Ah! I forgot one mustn’t touch it.”

  Smiling with an odd sadness, Damiano took her hand and touched it to the ebony wood. “Signorina,” he whispered, “nothing of mine will ever hurt you. I promise that. You could put your hand on my beating heart, and it would do you no harm.”

  She chuckled at this fervid gallantry, wondering how such a deed could hurt anyone but Damiano himself, but with a reawakened memory her hand went to the breast of his tunic—to the hole. “Your beating heart,” she echoed. “How is it—by what miracle, Damiano…

  “The miracle of a book.” He laughed in return and slipped out the volume to show her. “The miracle of Petrarch’s poetry.”

  With a small cry of wonder, Carla took the book. She gave his hand a tiny squeeze. “Oh, Damiano, I thank God for that. When I saw the man raise his bow I screamed aloud, for I knew by your colors it was you across the gap. I prayed that he had not hit you, but I feared every moment we would pass your body in the snow.”

  “It must be that I owe my life to your prayers,” he said sincerely. There was a moment’s happy silence.

  Then Carla sighed. “Your soul and mine comprehend one another, dear Damiano. I wish you were my brother instead of Paolo.”

  This, although it denoted affection, was not the sentiment Damiano wished to hear from Carla. He caught his tongue for a moment, rehearsing words. Of course he would tell her how he loved her, but how and to what end?

  Should he say, “Carla, beloved, I am going to Provence where my music in your honor will make you famous. Wait for me”? Or was it to be, “
Carla, best beloved, I am going to Nuremberg, where my alchemies in your honor will bring you glory. Wait for me”? It was certain he could not say, “Carla, little dear, friend of my childhood, come with me to Provence or Germany and starve.”

  But it was Carla who spoke. “My brother is not pleased with me, old friend. You alone in the world, Damiano, have the soul to understand why I have applied to the convent La Dolerosa at Bard.”

  Damiano gazed blankly at the pink marble christening bowl, lily-shaped and smoother than flower petals in the faded light. “Why you what? Say again.”

  Carla leaned forward. Her hands folded together on her lap. “I have applied—and been accepted—at the cloister of Our Sorrowful Mother at Bard. I will enter on my birthday, next month. Paolo would stop me if he could, having plans to marry me to a cousin in Donnaz, but by law he cannot stand between me and the vows.”

  His ears rang. The font, the lecturn, the marble leaping fish, all stood out in impossible relief. “Carla? You are going into the cloister? You will become a nun?”

  She nodded, slowly and fervently. “I will become one of the sisters of Saint Clare. I will dedicate my works and prayers to the poor and the suffering.” Something in Damiano’s expression daunted her. “You… aren’t happy for me, Dami?”

  “I will never see you again!” cried the youth, his voice rising to a wail. Carla put one finger very near his mouth, darting a glance left and right.

  “Hush, Damiano! My brother rarely sets foot in a church, but… If he found us, he would come at you like a bear—he is so furious.”

  Unable to restrain himself, he took her hand and kissed it. “Carla, cara, my dear, my Beatrice. Don’t leave me and hide yourself behind stone walls forever, or I will die!”

  Her little chin dropped in surprise. “What are you saying, Damiano? Am I going mad?”

  “Please!” he implored. “When the soldiers marched into the city, all I thought about was you, and when I knew that you were gone, I feared for you. I marched through the cold and snow and was assaulted by thieves. I spent a night of death alive in the torn carcass of a dead cow, and then I sinned, killing men to save you…

  “Mother of God, Carla, don’t leave me! Let me serve you instead. All I have. All I am. All the days of my life…. I will not touch you, if it is your will that I do not. Though I hope fervently that is not your will! Please, it must be the will of God that I want you, for I could never want anything so much by myself!” His words broke off in a sob.

  Carla sat still. Damiano, suddenly abashed, released her hand. Slowly she began to shake her head.

  “Damiano. Where did this speech come from? In all the time I have known you, our conversation has been of God and of the sciences. You introduced me to the philosophers of the Church, whom I might never have known. You read to me interminably—I mean at length—from blessed Hermes, whose name I could never find on the lists of saints, and taught me the elementals and how they combine, and the orders of the angels….

  “But you never spoke to me of love—worldly love. I had thought you would scorn such a feeling!” Her eyes wandered hidden in the darkness.

  “Eh? God. Study. Love. Is there a difference among them?” he blurted. Damiano no longer knew quite what he was saying. He shrugged spasmodically. “I love you, Carla. I swear to God that I love you.”

  “I didn’t know that,” she said simply, shifting on the stone seat.

  “Perhaps because I didn’t either. Please, Carla, believe it now. Pretend you have always believed. Let it make a difference to your decision. Can’t you?

  “Can’t you?” He stroked the air above her knee, not daring to touch her.

  Her slow denial was inevitable and crushing. “No, my dear Damiano. I can’t.

  “This is a world of much bitterness; you have seen that as I have. Life is wracked with pain and cut short by war and pestilence. The weak suffer under the strong, and the strong, like my poor, fearsome Paolo, suffer under their own passions. Seeking after happiness itself leads to sin and greater suffering. We were not put here to be happy.”

  “That’s good then,” Damiano said, putting his elbows on his knees and his head in his hands. “… because I certainly am not… happy.”

  Reluctantly, knowing she shouldn’t, Carla stroked Damiano’s black hair. “We who are allowed to see this, my brother, my dear brother, brother of my soul… we are not given the choice of whom to love—for we must act love toward all, even the most repellent—nor whom first to serve. It is God himself whom we must serve. But for the rest, it is as you say—it must be with all we possess, and with all we are.

  “And I am called by Him to prayer.” Her smooth brow frowned momentarily. “I believed that you were, also, Damiano. It is from you I have learned my lessons, and I brought with me to Aosta the big book of Thomas Aquinas you gave me, and also the poems of Brother Francis that we read aloud together and were so beautiful. Can’t you also feel your vocation?”

  He lifted his head with a brief, choking laugh. “Me? A bastard, you know, cannot become a priest, but even a bastard is more welcome than I. A witch is barred from religious life: even from lay orders. They think we are not quite right, you know. Some say we are even damned.”

  Damiano’s shoulders twitched, but he immediately straightened and wiped his tunic sleeve on his face. “Forgive me, Signorina. I am weary and… not pleased with myself. I will offer you nothing more to sour your resolution. I do understand it, though it…”

  He took a deep breath and started again. “Believe me, Carla, if you wish to be a sister to me, I will be a brother to you. If you disappear behind the stone walls of La Dolerosa, and I never see you again, then I will still love you and be glad to love you, for it is better to love than not.”

  She stood beside Damiano, her blond hair escaping the confines of her shawl. He turned stiffly, lest motion should make him cry once more (which would be too many times in too few days). He strode out of the baptismal and through the vestibule. At the arched doorway Damiano winced and turned his face from the cold light of the sun.

  Night fell early in the valley now, at the end of November. Aosta sat in shadow, in the cupped hands of the hills. The air was filled with wood smoke.

  Damiano had paid a townsman to take him in that night—him and Macchiata. If he went within now, there would be a fire and hot soup, no doubt. (To stretch one’s dinner to feed a stranger, one always made soup.) But instead Damiano sat on a log in the meadow, where the banks of a frozen stream hid him from the wind. He had wound his ermine mantle close around him, and his booted feet were buried beneath the mass of a warm dog.

  The sky had faded, like violets pressed in the pages of a book. The ice of the stream was gray.

  “With all we possess. With all we are.” She had thrown his words back at him, and they scalded. What Damiano had, money and property, had been quickly dispersed. What he was, seemed nothing worth the gift.

  He shivered, and Macchiata shifted on his boots.

  Still, anything could be turned to use some way. A chair that could not be sat on could be thrown on the fire. A man whom no one needed, whose actions turned to harm, could serve a similar purpose. Damiano had a sudden, dreadful idea that fit his mood. He rose and started back toward the street.

  An hour had passed. Macchiata had been put to bed at the landlord’s hearth. She had not objected. “Raphael,” he called, sinking once more onto the lonely log.

  “Raphael. Seraph. If you can spare a minute…”

  The archangel sat himself gracefully on the frozen water.

  “I can spare eternity,” said Raphael. His smile was filled with that potent sweetness that man can appreciate only from far away. It gave Damiano unexpected pain, that smile, though he had seen it so often before.

  “I would like…” He stopped, not knowing what to say. “Raphael, sit with me awhile, because I may never see you again.”

  The angel fluffed his feathers, and his eyebrows rose in a gesture as simple and dign
ified as that of an owl.

  “Don’t say ‘never’ to me, Dami!” Then Raphael’s smile returned. “It’s a word I cannot understand.” Reflectively the angel added, “—though I understand ‘forever’ quite well. The two words are very different in quality, I think.”

  Damiano did not reply but clutched his knees to his chest. Slowly Raphael reached out a hand, and then a wing, taking the young man into his circle of light.

  “Shall I play for you, Damiano?” he asked, as minutes passed.

  “The lute is in the cabinetmaker’s house, with Macchiata.” Damiano’s voice was phlegmy. He cleared his throat.

  “I have my own instrument,” said the angel, diffidently.

  Damiano’s eyes flickered briefly with curiosity, but that brightness failed.

  “Thank you, Seraph, but I can’t afford the peace such music would bring to me. There’s something I have to do, and I must remain strong for it.

  “Please sit beside me, Raphael, and don’t ask me to talk.”

  To huddle in the compass of the angel’s wings was like sitting on the disk of the full moon, except that the moon was both more gaudy and more tarnished. Damiano was no longer cold. “You must continue to believe, Raphael, even if it becomes difficult… you must believe that I love you.”

  Raphael’s black-blue gaze was beyond surprise or judgment.

  Young Carla Denezzi walked the dark streets from the basilica to the inn, chaperoned by the Signora Anuzzi. They had passed the evening praying for the souls of the dead. The old signora’s prayers had been specifically for her nephew Georgio Anuzzi, the owner of the vineyards, who had refused to abandon his holdings before the influx of soldiers and was now presumably among the departed. Any spiritual benefit that overshot this target would presumably go toward the souls of the two Partestradan men slain in the battle of the road.

  Carla’s prayers had been less exclusive. She had prayed for the souls of all who lay dead in the mountain snow. In fact, she had disbursed her prayers among some who were not dead at all, but only unhappy.