The weather in and around the Alps is unpredictable, and it tends toward small pockets of virulence. In the middle of the night the sky assaulted the travelers with hail that spat in the fire and drove the gelding whinnying out of sleep.
“Dominus Deus!”
grumbled the witch. “One thing after another!” He hadn't the heart to resist as the horse bent its legs and hunkered into the lean-to, though neither horse nor shelter had been constructed with such an end in mind.
Soon the hail turned to sleet, and the fire died of the insult.
The
framework of branches and cloth lost its mooring and fell on the horse's back, which Damiano didn't mind as long as the beast didn't move, but the corner of Damiano's mantle was soaked.
“After last night we must be very good friends, eh Festilligambe?” Damiano said to the horse, fixing it with soft brown eyes much like its own.
(Festilligambe
means
sticklegs
in Italian.) “I think I felt every one of those big feet of yours against my back. And with the grass you've been grabbing by the road, your digestion is none too good! So you get us to the vales of Lombardy the quickest way you know.” The gelding nodded as though it were about to speak.
And given enough time alone with Damiano, it might have. But Lombardy could not be far away, for the travelers were entering more populous country, leaving the realm of white winter behind.
That swath of broken soil to the left, for instance, lying on the slope of a hill like a tossed blanket. It had known recent tillage. And unless Damiano's eyes were failing him (a distinct possibility), ahead of them, at a hump of the winding road, was a house.
It was a house, but it was the merest hovel, with a thatched roof rotted black in places and walls built of mud as much as stone. Two toddling children peeped out the door at the passage of the magnificent stranger and his dog. They were scantily clad for the weather, and one was barefoot. Damiano brought Festilligambe to a halt and regarded them with the attention he reserved for small wild things. There was a stir in the darkness of the hut, and a girl appeared behind the children. Tawny-haired and plump she was, with a face as round and innocent as a dirty flower. Her dress was patched gray wool, and it was pulled off one shoulder. In her arms she held an infant that she was nursing from one bare, ample breast.
Though women had to nurse their children and did it how and as they might, still Damiano sat abashed before so much revealed femininity. This girl had hair like Carla's. And these blue eyes that stared shyly into his were the eyes of a May bunny: the eyes of a child. She was much younger than he.
Before the silence had time to become unbearable, Damiano heard Macchiata growl. Startled, he glanced around to see a lean figure running full tilt across the bare field toward him. The girl noticed at the same time and took a single step back into the hut. The children scampered right and left and were gone.
The peasant was only as tall as Damiano but much wider. He wore nothing but his long woolen shirt and the rags on his feet. He, too, was very young, but he wore at his belt a knife with a blade as long as a man's forearm. He placed himself between the black horse and the door and, still panting from exertion, looked Damiano up and down.
“The Monsignore desires?” he asked, in a patois so thick even Damiano had trouble understanding.
“Eh? Well,” replied the witch from horseback, “We request of the other Monsignore to tell us if we will find a town up ahead.”
“We are not an hour from San Gabriele,” answered the peasant reluctantly. Then, as Damiano moved to go, he added, “The Monsignore does not wear a sword?”
Damiano turned and glowered at the man. “No. I have no need for one. My pure heart protects me.” He clucked the horse to a canter, thinking with some satisfaction that his virginity must not be perceptible to the casual observer.
San Gabriele. That was a good sign. Though Gabriel was not Raphael, he was still an angel.
“I didn't know that,” said Macchiata, huffing along at his left side. “âThat you don't need a sword because your pure heart protects you. I thought you didn't carry one because it got in the way of your staff.”
The rider sighed. “That was a joke, Macchiata. The real reason I don't wear a sword is that if I wore one, I would eventually have to use it. That is the way, with weapons. Besides, my big flute, here,” he said, patting the stick of black wood, “is a hundred times more useful.”
The surly peasant hadn't lied; they were approaching habitation. More sheds and hovels sprang up among the rough and borderless fields. On their left they passed the rickety structure of an irrigation pump, an affair of spokes and buckets abandoned for the winter. Next they overtook a goat cart, drawn by a rotund nanny and filled with baskets of squawking geese. Damiano gave the gawky lad who led the goat a pleasant salute.
Macchiata snorted and snuffled in pleasant anticipation, and soon Damiano's nose, which was more acute than that of an ordinary man (though not of canine quality), picked up the odors of dung and garlic.
The town of San Gabriele had been built in a dry scoop in the hills, forty feet above the highway. The rutted road that led into town was Uttered with wains, carts, and barrows; the oxen that had pulled the wains wandered hobbled in the ploughed fields at either side of the road, still keeping to their pairs. With an outsize thrill Damiano realized that it was market day in San Gabriele. He dismounted and led Festilligambe up the incline, one hand holding to the gelding's glossy mane.
The village boasted two strong gateposts of stone, but these supported no gates, nor were they flanked by walls of any sort. Indeed, to the left of the lefthand post grew an oak of enormous width and therefore age. This seemed to indicate that the walls of San Gabriele had fallen centuries before, if they had ever been built. Damiano passed beneath the bare, gnarled arms of the tree.
Here was life again. Stalls flanked the street far beyond the confines of the town proper, displaying woolens and wickerwork and brilliant dried peppers. The first man he saw wore homespun, and the second a robe of otter. Seven bleating ewes were driven down the main street, dodging past a man in motley who balanced a wine bottle on his nose.
Damiano hadn't known that he was starving for the sight of bright-dyed bolts of cloth and piled winter marrows, for the chatter of well-to-do peasants and the howls of the beggars. Macchiata, too, whined with an indefinable longing and thumped her tail against her master's leg.
“Wait a bit, little dear,” whispered the young man, and he led the horse off the path and over the stubble of the field. “I know the air is intoxicating, but we can't have noble Festilligambe here eating the apples off some fellow's cart.”
The hoed field was bordered with a paling of poplar trees. Damiano marched toward them, the horse stepping carefully behind. Beside the gray trunks he stopped and delved into his pack.
“Here,” he said, dropping his still-folded oilcloth to the ground. On the square he spilled a quantity of oats. “Can I trust you to stay here and not get into trouble until I return?”
The eyes, ears, nose, and tail of the beast replied in unison that he could not. Damiano sighed.
“Then, as I have nothing for a tether, it's a binding spell,” he announced. “And that will probably frighten you into hysterics. As well as tiring me unnecessarily.”
The tall horse conceded. It lipped Damiano's hair. “Good then. Trust is best. And, Macchiataâwill you guard this gear until I return from the fair?”
Macchiata stared at him stricken. Her head sank and her wormy tail crawled between her legs. “Oh, well,” Damiano said. “All right, then. I'll carry it.”
Piece by piece he flung over his back the saddlebags, the wineskin, the sack of food, and the lute. Under each arm he stuffed a roll of blankets, out from one of which poked the silver head of his staff. Thus encumbered, Damiano staggered back across the field and into the town of San Gabriele.
A market is no fun for a penniless man. Damiano discovered this with surprise, for he was unused to being penniless.
There was blown glassware, both clear and in colors, some of it flawless and rounded perfect for alchemical use. Damiano was considering buying a lovely open tube, long as one's arm and thin as a soap bubble, when he realized he could not pay for it, could not transport it, and had no home in which to keep it. And there was a hat of golden marten that nearly matched the Delstrego colors. As Damiano hadn't a hat, he felt he rather deserved this one.
But worst of all were the pastries, dyed gold with saffron, blue with heliotrope, purple with amaranth, or green with parsley. There were little ones in the shapes of fish, and large ones square like castles. Some were filled with honey and some with quails. The odor of butter bubbling through wheat nearly drove Damiano to his bruised knees. Macchiata, whom he had controlled by prisoning her between his legs, whimpered with an agonized longing. He shooed her away.
“I'm sorry, little dear, but we have no money.”
She licked her hairy lips. “Maybe the man will give us some anyway, because we're hungry.”
Damiano snorted. “Not likely. Besides we're not really hungry. We ate not four hours agoâcheese and bread. We just want what “smells good.” The dog whimpered agreement.
They passed a juggler, who had a chair teetering upon his cap of bells, and six zucchinis describing a complex orbit between the poles of his hands. Damiano regarded the man with respect, especially when he noticed the wooden bowl in front of the performer, half-filled with copper.
Damiano leaned against the white, warm wall of a stable. “We don't belong here,” he whispered to the dog. “We can't eat, drink, or sleep at the inn, presuming there is one in this little place. We should just be on our way.”
“Oh, no, Master,” Macchiata crooned. “I'm tired, and Festilligambe is tired, and in all this crowd someone will surely drop something.
“I'll share it all with you, no matter how big or little,” she concluded. Smiling ruefully, Damiano slung off his burdens and rested them against the wall.
“And Damiano's tired, too,” he admitted. “Though he shouldn't be, with a long journey yet to go.” He slid down the white stucco, squatting on his heels. “Still, I'd be willing to scrabble with you for the tail of one of those little wheaten fishes, even if it had dropped on the ground.”
A shadow fell upon Damiano, and he found himself peering up at an urchin of indeterminate age and with the fair coloring of most of Northern Italy, topped by fox-colored hair. Damiano greeted him with a friendly flash of teeth.
The boy hesitated in response. Possibly he was deciding whether to use the familiar or the polite on this well-dressed stranger who was hunkering against the wall.
“Did that dog talk?” the boy inquired suspiciously.
Damiano nodded. “But she rarely talks to strangers.”
The child was wearing a grown man's woolen shirt, which hung so long over his legs he was covered as closely as a woman. He sat down two feet from Macchiata and subjected her to scrutiny. The ugly white dog returned the favor, and her neck hairs bristled.
“'T'sokay, dog,” said the boy, scowling fiercely. “I like you.”
Macchiata's anger subsided into confusion. She licked her already-wet nose.
“What'r you doing here, mister? You don't live in San Gabriele, and you aren't selling or buying anything.”
Damiano regarded the ragged boy more closely. “How do you know I'm not selling or buying?”
The youngster produced a true Italian shrug: one that used the eyebrows as much as the shoulders. “I been watching you. I know you don't buy anything, and you don't have anything anybody'd want to buy. So I guess you're just sitting there wishing you had two sous to scrape together.”
His amusement at the boy's perception sparked both Damiano's smile and his confidence. “You are quite right, my young observer. Actually, I am of a sanguine temperament, so I was trying to think of a scheme by which I could make two sous to scrape together, or more exactly, to buy a buttered wheaten fish.”
The child thumped his wiry buttocks on the ground next to Damiano. “I've been there,” he said, nodding sagely. “I've been there. Why not have the dog talk? She don't have to quote Dante, or anything. Just to have her answer would bring in real silver.”
Macchiata wilted visibly. She hid her nose behind her master's heel. He stroked her side.
“Macchiata is many things,” he stated. “She is a ratter, an alchemist's assistant, a great traveler, and the friend of angels. You might not believe it to look at her, but she saved my life not a week ago, vanquishing three brigands who were bent on murder! But whatever she is, she is not a public performer.”
The boy listened to this paean with his head cocked, as though to say whether he believed or not was his own business. “But you, mister, are a man of quality, by your clothes and also by the way you talk. Surely you have something the people wantâif not a golden ring, then at least a rare skill or two.”
Damiano's glance slid from the soiled small face to the road. “I have no gold rings, unfortunately. But I do have certain abilities. I can assay goldâwith the proper equipment. And I can treat illness in men and animalsâbut again, not without medicines. I can clear the evil from bad wells and open locks that are stuck and find lost jewelry and cows”âDamiano's voice caught unexpectedlyâ”and cows.
“I can do many things, little friend. But I am used to having clients come to my house and request me to do them. I have never learned to... promote myself.”
He watched the scorn on the boy's face turn to outright disbelief. “I speak the truth, philosopher. WatchâI can make myself disappear.” Damiano nudged his left hand into the bedroll until his fingers touched the shoe of his staff. In a moment, he was not there.