She had come out of the far north country, the Fenland, in his father's youth, flying from war into exile. Of the war, Damiano knew nothing. The exact place of her exile he also did not know, though Guillermo Delstrego had described it as a green hill, round as an egg, set among the lakes of Lombardy. It was also Delstrego who had told his son that Saara the Fenwoman was the most powerful witch in all the Italies, perhaps in all Europe. That was not an admission he would have made easily.
In fact, Saara the Fenwoman (or Finn) was just about the only other practicing witch whose name Guillermo Delstrego let pass his lips: probably because she dwelt too far away to be competition. He had painted his son quite a colorful sketch of Saara, with her braids and sing-song magic, and the birds all doing her bidding. Being sentimental as he was, Damiano had added his own pigments to the picture, believing the Fenwoman to be beautiful as well as wise, and merry and virtuous besidesâor sometimes only merry.
Damiano let the gelding amble on while he sat on its broad back and idly plucked his lute. For a week they had traveled east: the young man in his ermine and tangled hair, the elegant black horse, the ugly white dog. Work and time had hardened the muscles of the horse's back, but they had equally hardened the rider.
Damiano had always been lean, though, and lean and lazy or lean and tough, he looked much the same. On Macchiata the difference was striking. She looked every inch the fighter now, or the ratter at least, and the bunched muscles of her thighs rippled beneath her short hair. The fat she had lost made her triangular head appear larger and heavier than ever. She spoke less, following her master's lead, but she was in trim to follow the horse all day.
Damiano's fingers spattered notes up the lute's neck. The treble string squealed like a pig. The little daisy-petal ears of the horse reversed, and it shook its head.
“Eh, Festilligambe: You've become the critic?” mumbled Damiano. “Well, let me tell you, horse. You are no authority on music; you can't keep time. And if I could warm my hands up well, you would really hear something.”
He raised his head and looked about him with a sigh. It was cold here, even south of the mountains. The forest of ash and oak was bare. But it was not drear to him, for he had the eyes of his father, and the moon was near the full. In the corner of his eye, beside the road, he saw a stir of the earth that meant a mouse was burrowing, and a gray gleam marked the winter nest of a rock dove. That splash of orange beneath a fallen log was neither leaves nor lichens but a fox. Damiano did not tell Macchiata.
The trees were sleeping, and their limbs creaked like the snoring of old men. Damiano imitated the sound, drumming his bass course with two fingers of his left hand, on the neck.
“If I had my way,” he mused, “I'd travel like this from town to town on market daysâto perdition with the higher knowledge. I'd rather make music than be wise.”
Macchiata snorted, and a powder of dry leaves shot into the air. “I'd rather chase rabbits than be wise,” she said.
“But you never catch them,” countered her master. “Doesn't that frustrate you, little dear?”
Macchiata whuffled, sat down, and scratched the matter over. “Because I don't catch
this
rabbit,” she said, “or
that
rabbit, doesn't mean I will never catch
any
rabbit.”
Damiano had no answer for this. He returned to his own subject. “I really would like to find another market. Porto was a disappointment: all day playing for only a tankard of beer. And our supplies are getting lighter. I notice that every time I pick up the saddlebags. We must find Saara soon.”
The dog turned to Damiano with a glance full of anxiety. “Supplies, Master? You mean food?” Damiano nodded.
“How soon, Master? How many days is soon?”
Damiano frowned. “Just... soon,” he replied.
Ludica was not holding a market, but it seemed to be a much larger town than Porto or San Gabriel. Perhaps it was larger than Partestrada. Leading Festilligambe down a cobbled street between buildings of stone, Damiano was impressed.
Ludica supported not one but two inns and a stable. Damiano left the gelding there, to enjoy for one night its fill of grain and mash. If he could not pay the keep by morning, he could surely redeem his horse with a linen undershirt.
The first inn was dim and empty. An old woman in the doorway regarded him with no great welcome. Damiano did not go in.
The second inn was called The Jolly Pilgrim. Its common room smelled like the cork of a wine bottle. The innkeeper was fat, and his black brows were the only hair on his head. He spoke staccato, with a sharp lilt, and by this Damiano knew he was in Lombardy at last. Damiano offered to play and sing in exchange for dinner and a bed, but after two minutes of bargaining he found he had promised also to cut wood for the fire and instead of a bed would get only the left side of the hearth.
Still, it was good to sit in a room, for a change, and to be warm, front and back. When the room filled upâwith drinkers, travelers, and smokeâit felt even better to play the bransle and the saraband so that the men stamped their feet. Had he drunk all the wine that was bought for him, he would not have been able to see the strings, let alone pluck them, and one jolly pilgrim, a wool merchant who loved the vintage so much his cheeks had turned purple, gave Damiano a broken silver florin.
Best of all was to eat someone else's cookingâcabbage and carrots and fresh pork in gravy, over a slice of black bread as thick as a man's wrist. And though Damiano couldn't eat the pork Macchiata was willing, and there was plenty of food for both.
The wool merchant called him Frenchie and laughed at the way Damiano slurred his words. Since the best of the new music was French, Damiano did not take offense or correct the man. Besides, it was not good sense for a Piedmontese to strut himself in Lombardy, where they who cannot swim are as proud of their lakes as the man of Turin is proud of the mountains he cannot even see.
In the morning he sought out the landlord and asked what that worthy knew of a woman named Saara.
The black eyebrows in the pink face gave the man's skepticism an eloquent frame. He stared and he sighed and he beckoned Damiano to follow him.
The yard of The Jolly Pilgrim was dusted with snow, and dry flakes like talc wavered through the air. Winter had followed Damiano into Lombardy. The bald landlord threw the hood of his tunic over his head. The steam of his breath obscured his features as he pointed up and beyond the town to where six hills stood clustered together, as if for warmth.
“See the Sisters?” asked the Lombard. His voice was sharp and harsh in Damiano's ears. “Which of them is different?”
Damiano squinted and peered, leaning on his staff. “Two of them are taller,” he said. “Almost mountains. One of them is round topped and has no snow on the south side. What difference do you mean?”
The landlord stuck his hands up his sleeves. “Doesn't it seem the least bit strange to you, boy, that one hill among many, has no snow on it? And it never does. That's the hill of Saara, and she's a witch. The man is ill-advised who makes that climb.”
Damiano didn't take his eyes from the high hills, where many hawks were flying circles in the gray air. He smiled at his fortune. For here he was in Lombardy, not knowing when he had left the Piedmont, and chance or aid had dropped his desire into his lap. “I don't know if that's the result of witchcraft, benefactor. Notice that the green hill is protected from the north wind by both the taller hills. It would be the warmest, and the last to collect snow.”
The fat Lombard took one step away from Damiano. He rumbled his throat and spat into the white powder. “Believe what you want, young Frenchman, but we who live here know what's what in our own backyards. Witchcraft is real under the sun or moon, no matter what you write in Latin in your books.”
Damiano's eyes widened, for the man's misunderstanding of him was so complete he didn't know where to begin to correct it. But the landlord wasn't done.
“There was enother fellow like you who stopped here and asked for Saara, lutenist. He was a southerner with a sharp tongue and a sharp sword, and he disappeared into the witch's gardenâthat's what we call that slope of the hillâand was never seen again.”
Damiano blinked and regarded that far patch of greenery with intense interest. “I have no sword,” he murmured, as much to himself as to the landlord. “And, as for my tongue, I hope it is more honeyed than sharp, because I have to convince that lady to help me.
The Lombard laughed, and coughed, and spat. He left the one who he thought was a young French dandy, leaning on his prettified walking stick, his face a study in concentration, his curled black hair turning white with snow.
Damiano left the horse and the florin in the care of the stable keeper, and he and Macchiata started around the small lake that stood in between Ludica and the Sisters. It had been a while since he had done any amount of walking; his knees ached.
“I am still bruised,” he said ruefully to the dog. “Purple-and-black a week later. I wonder if that is Satan's little joke, to remind me that I went down on my knees before him. Though it was not my idea to do so.”
This was not the sort of conversation to interest Macchiata. She trotted ahead along the path by the water, her ears a-prick, her twiggy tail wagging stiffly behind her. Damiano trudged behind, burdened with packs, staff, and the lute, which he ought to have left back at the inn. The snowfall was halfhearted and soon died completely. By noon the sky was sudsy with white clouds, and the travelers had come to the feet of the hills.
On two of them the bare bones of rock were exposed; these were the tall ones. Most of the rest were weathered grassy domes, pale now with snow. The middle hill, however, was clothed in timber, and the south slope of it shone green. Through the gorse and heather, a little pathâno more than a goat trackâled toward it.
“This isn't difficult,” Damiano mumbled, pushing his way forward against the clinging brush. “There must be somebody who visits here and keeps the way passable.”
Macchiata disappeared into the undergrowth; not even her tail was visible. But Damiano could follow her snuffling progress with his ears. “You know... little... dear,” he panted, as he fought through a waist-high bramble. “If Saara is in truth an exile from her home, our task may be easy. How could she not sympathize with Partestrada?”
A black nose appeared, and then a white muzzle hanging with burrs. “An exile is someone who was chased out of home, Master? If this one got chased away from her home, then how can she chase the soldiers out of yours? I mean, she may not be fierce enough.”
Damiano stopped dead, his bags swaying at his sides. âThat's a thought, Macchiata. But we don't really know the truth about Saara's home, only that my father said she was the most powerful witch in the Italies. And besides, here there will be two of us, she and I. And though I am not the most powerful witch in the Italiesâand may not even be among the most powerful (how am I to know?)âI do know a few things.”
“Of course you do, Master,” attested the dog. She waggled over and placed one dirty white foot against Damiano's knee. He played with her ears while he examined the path ahead. It vanished under an arch of pines, dark as the door of a tomb. Damiano straightened and peered, then leaned on his staff and stared intently.
“There. Ahead is the gate to Saara's garden. Not welcoming, is it?
“But I smell magic,” Damiano added, and strode forward.
Though it was dark within, it was also warmer, and Damiano could see well enough in the dim. The air was thick with the evergreen frankincense; like a church, it almost made one sneeze. The path wound steeply upward. Perhaps it was a goat path after all and had never been trod by man. But if it was a goat path, then there was something ahead besides pine forest, because a goat does not subsist on pine needles alone.
“It's a good thing we left Festilligambe behind,” whispered Damiano. “He wouldn't do well on this road.” The dog growled her own opinion.
There was light ahead, atop a rocky outcrop that reduced Damiano to climbing on hands and knees, with his staff wedged into his armpit. He winced each time the lute slapped down against his back, not for the pain of it, but for the instrument's sake. When he reached the crest, sunlight blinded him a moment. Then he saw his hands, scratched red and coated with a honey-dust of crushed sandstone. He sat up and allowed the dog to lick his hands clean.
“Look, Macchiata,” he cried. “The witch's garden. I wish it were my own!”
As a garden, it was very wild, for the grass grew knee-high and bobbed its wheaty tails in the breeze, and black logs and branches choked the little stream that wandered left and right over the meadow, cutting it into room-sized islands. Wind-carved rocks lay scattered about, not by chance, but as though tossed by a carefully artless hand. Above rose a stand of birch, still holding its yellow leaves, which rattled together like flags of paper.
But as a wilderness, it was sweet and comfortable, for the sun shone softly over grass that still held a touch of green, and flowers dotted the meadow: late asters and early crocuses, bronze and white. The standing stones themselves looked inviting. They were colored a deep bricklike red and pitted and hollowed all over, so that they carried an assortment of tiny gardens on their backs, each harboring three stalks of grass, perhaps, or a cornflower.
Damiano felt the sun touch his lips. It made him yawn. “We'll stop here,” he said to Macchiata. “Maybe all day. We can eat lunch on the south side of that biggest rock.”
Macchiata agreed to the proposal, and the two of them walked through the sea of soft grass toward the furthermost standing stone, which looked like a seat with a huge, scallop-shell back and velvety moss over the cushions.