Damiano's Lute (7 page)

The villager's laughter was merry and unperturbed. He wiped his nose against his sleeve. “Oh, you Italians are excitable! Don't worry, monsieur. There is no hunger in Pe'Comtois, that we should slaughter your little pony. He is well, probably better than he has been in a while, since he is eating oats and barley. We have fodder to spare.”

At this news Damiano felt more alarm than gratitude. “Oats and barley! He hasn't had anything like that since January. You will colic him. Take me to him at once!”

The wagoner only snorted. “All in good time, monsieur. I have my little duties first. I must take a little drive outside the wall, and…”

“The gate will open for you?”

The answering grin was a shade contemptuous. “Oh, they will open for me all right. Come along, musician, and entertain me on my way.”

Damiano was torn between his desire to flee the stricken town and his concern for the gelding, which if permitted would certainly eat itself to disaster. But the townsman knew where Festilligambe was, and Damiano did not. He waited for no second invitation.

The wagon was so heavy it scarcely shifted under his weight. Damiano sat his lute on his lap and looked over his shoulder.

A large oilcloth covered a load of many bumps and prominences, some of which were long, and some round as a ball. One lump was quite unmistakably an elbow.

“I take my little trip from the church to the end of the common lands every day,” the driver was saying. “It frees the pews, and keeps things sort of fresh, you know? Lately, though, it's been twice a day, which is unfair, since I'm paid only by the day, not by amount of work.”

Damiano said nothing. The driver inhaled deeply. “Wonderful day, today. Good clean breeze. Give us a little tune, monsieur.” The townsman prodded his passenger. “It will help pass the time.”

Damiano stared down at his hands, which seemed to have no feeling in them.

Gaspare prowled outside the town wall as wary as a cat. His situation boded more unhappiness than Damiano's, because, while a musician may play without a dancer to dance, people expect a dancer to have music. And he only had a word or two of this silly, spineless language. So he approached covertly, in case something useful (or unlocked) might come his way.

He heard chanting, and saw that within the gate a small troupe of religious were setting up stocks. Not liking the looks of this, he slunk off.

Attached to the plastered wall itself, on the far side of the town from the wooden gates, was another of those roofless, useless stone huts. He entered, stepping delicately over fresh ashes. He dusted a stone with his rag of handkerchief, sat on it and mulled things over.

By his strenuous trot through the fields toward the village he had put off feeling sorry over biting the lutenist. Now he could put it off no longer, and regret seeped through him.

Gaspare thought of Damiano, and he began to wiggle all over. Whenever the boy tried to think, he wiggled, because he was a dancer. As Evienne always said, his brain was in his feet.

And he could not think of Damiano Delstrego without wiggling very strenuously, for in his cynical way Gaspare stood in awe of Damiano. From the first time he had heard the fellow play, sitting on the corner of San Gabriele on market day, he had known.

Here was a new music. A music of unearthly complexity. A music that could shake kingdoms, and played all on a tiny
liuto
of four courses.

And wonder of wonders, the man who created it let Gaspare himself come along, to be part of the source and the nourishment of that art. Gaspare had never really believed his luck. How could it be that no other cunning fellow had heard Damiano before Gaspare, and taken him in tow? He was such easy prey, full of fancy ideas and nearly blind as a bat. Soft, too, and agreeable. Easily bullied. It was as though all the musician's passion was stored within the lute.

The story the fellow had told—of learning to play his instrument from the Archangel Michael, or some such—that Gaspare had taken for artistic metaphor. Damiano also claimed to be a witch, and on that first day he had accomplished a good imitation of disappearing. Gaspare could never remember if that had taken place before or after they drank the skin of wine. He rather thought it was after.

But of course Damiano never really did anything magical—except play the lute that way, of course. Gaspare had been with him now for a year, and if there were anything in the least bit sorcerous in Damiano's makeup, the boy would know.

Gaspare had been forced to realize that Damiano was a bit mad. Not dangerous, mind you—he was as gentle as a lamb, come what may—but just unbalanced.

Or maybe not mad, but just sheep-simple, for God knew he needed watching like a guileless ewe lamb. He looked like one, too: a black lamb, with all that curly hair and soft black eyes. Girl-faced, yes, but the girls themselves didn't seem to mind that. The lutenist wouldn't look half bad, if he'd trouble to take care of himself.

Gaspare had made it his business to take care of Damiano—at least to keep him from starving. Let the fellow believe it was his quick hand on the strings, and not Gaspare's in the passing pocket, that put pennies into the bowl.

When he had gotten them to Avignon, Gaspare intended to unveil his musician in the courts of the Pope, saying, “See what I have brought from the wilderness. I, only I have recognized greatness in its infancy.”

But it was hard to travel with a madman. Him and his angel, when he spoke wide-eyed to the air. Also him and his Devil: he claimed to have spoken with Satan as well as Gabriele (or whoever), and hinted sometimes at dark dealings that made Gaspare nervous about the real source of his proficiency upon the lute. (Gaspare, like most people, found it much easier to believe in the Devil than in angels.)

The most irritating thing about the musician was his silly preoccupation with chastity. Gaspare had directed one kind and easygoing girl after another at Damiano Delstrego, and carefully watched the results. Each time the player smiled, turned color and went into retreat. Chastity!

Who cared?

Delstrego should have been born a girl.

And now it was all for nothing. Gaspare had taken a chunk out of the fellow's arm, and no man could forgive that.

No man with sense. A madman could, maybe. A simpleton, perhaps. A man as soft-natured as Damiano….

Gaspare sighed, burying his sharp-nosed face in his hands. Why did he have to have such a temper? Evienne said it came with the red hair. He wished he could tell all of this to his sister, though she would only yell at him.

With a single, fluid motion, Gaspare was out of the hut and balanced on the wall. He sneaked into Petit Comtois and beheld the
plague.

“You are a cat with one kitten, monsieur,” expostulated the Comtoisian. “Your little horse will come to no harm; I promise you. I will take you to him later, when my passengers are taken care of—you see?”

This was said as the dead wagon approached the gates of the town. Damiano was more certain every moment that Gaspare had had more sense than to enter a plague town. The boy was not really sensible, but he was very cunning.

But if Damiano left now he would have to steel himself to go through the wooden gate again, because Festilligambe must be found.

Preferably before grain colic killed him.

Damiano slipped to the packed earth of the random, almost circular town square, where the crowd lounged in their unaccustomed leisure, wearing the clothes and eating the food of the dead.

There were fewer now. Damiano counted only fourteen, as the cloddish hoof-falls faded away in the distance, along the eastern road. That was not because of plague, certainly, but the midday rest. (Even leisure must have its breaks.) Yes, there in the broken doorway of a goldsmith's (the shop was picked dry) curled a plump young mother with her infant on her lap, both asleep. The little one's mouth was open like a red rosebud. Its mother snored.

They should go home, he thought to himself, but then there occurred to him possible reasons why they did not. Damiano shrugged.

His scuffed, shapeless kit-sack lay on the earth, undisturbed. Why would anyone want to steal a wooden bowl and two
raggy tunics, after all? Although his silver knife was fine, with its crystal and its phases of the moon. It was useless to him, now, as a tool of witchcraft, but still it was a fine knife. Damiano rummaged it out and stuck it into a slit in his leather belt. The rest of his gear he kicked carelessly into a corner.

He would quarter the town, calling. Festilligambe would answer, if he were not too stuffed with oats.

In truth, Damiano was a little disappointed that a mere bribe of food would tempt his horse away. He had struck a bargain with Festilligambe, once, back when his powers had given him something with which to bargain. But why should Festilligambe give him more than other horses gave their masters, when lately he'd been getting much less from Damiano? Much less food, that is.

He took a stride forward and opened his mouth to call. The next instant saw him leap stiff-legged off the ground, swallowing his words, for two plump pink arms had embraced him from behind, while a thick voice in his ear wheedled, “Aww, Monsieur Trouvere! Give us a little song.”

“Madam!” he croaked, or rather squeaked, swelling his shoulders to release himself and spinning in place.

“Madam. I think, perhaps, with the troubles this town is suffering…”

Here he paused to breathe, to gather his wits and to step away from the woman of many layers. “I think perhaps it is not the time for song.”

She giggled and made a little moue. “Not if one has the plague, of course. But we are the ones the plague has passed over, and for us entertainment is very necessary.”

She really was not bad to look at. Her eyes were bright blue, and tilted in a manner which reminded Damiano of someone or other. Her hair, escaping from the underside of her wimple, was barley-fair. And Damiano had nothing at all against plumpness.

Yet he found this woman appalling. “Is it over, then?” he mumbled, looking around at the sunny square. “Is the plague at an end?” Under this blue heaven he could be easily convinced the plague was over, purified by spring weather alone.

She shrugged, and the many layers of linen (the top layer was real lace) puffed with air before settling once more around her. It occurred to Damiano that these Provençal people did not shrug like Italians, forthrightly. They had sly shrugs. “It has killed most all those it is going to kill,” she replied, as the baby in the doorway gave a tiny, sleeping cough.

He looked into her face, and then Damiano smelled olives. His long-nursed, familiar hunger awoke like a lion, nearly driving him to his knees, while at the same instant he felt he would much rather die than eat anything he found in Petit Comtois.

“Must go,” he mumbled, and he took two smart strides down the main street. Then the woman had a grasp on his left leg, and was dragging him to his knees.

“Music,” she cried out. “We must have music.”

An instant later a half-dozen villagers, mostly female, had added their soft, unyielding pressure to hers. Damiano sat down on the street, cursing, holding his lute away from their curious, bejeweled fingers.

Yet he was not entirely proof against this rough sort of flattery, and when someone dropped a great gold pendant with a red stone around his neck, he was not proof against that, either. With a broad, forthright and very Italian gesture, he yielded.

It was too bad Gaspare wasn't here. These mad souls would have loved Gaspare. (Like calls to like.) Yet he wouldn't wish this place on the redhead, nor on anyone. He took the pendant off and stuffed it in his belt-pouch lest it scratch the finish of the instrument, and began to play.

These people didn't need a professional dancer after all. The way that fat woman was capering was an education to watch. And the butcher jigging on one foot next to her. For a moment Damiano thought the man in the bloodstained apron was the same he had seen in the church, lying still and awaiting promotion to the left-hand side. But no. The sentence of the plague was never commuted; the only similarity between the two men was in the leather apron.

He gave them the rondel and the crude estampie, and when they were warmed up—indeed, hot was the more accurate word—he played that sarabande of Gaspare's which he had so much reason to dislike. In his single year of playing for bread, Damiano had learned to judge an audience correctly, so he wasted none of the difficult polyphonics, and nothing Raphael had taught him at all.

And if his fingers pinched the strings with a hint of contempt, and if he damped a bit harshly, well, that was all to the better, considering that Damiano's natural touch was too delicate for everyday tastes.

He lifted his eyes to see a huddle of drab brown at the edge of this graceless circle. Even the flagellants were drawn to the sound of festival, it seemed. In a moment they would be dancing.

“Mother of God,” whispered Damiano to himself. “Is one fury interchangeable for another?”

Then the sound of bone against flesh broke through the music. A year ago this would have caused the young man to stop, or at least to drop a beat. But now his fingers continued their course while he glanced up to see the man in the apron laid low by the biggest of the flagellants. With a noise of childish outrage the woman of layers bounded across the dust of the square and kicked the flagellant in the middle of his horsehair and ashes.

This was not the first time Damiano had played for a dance which became a melee. His policy was to continue playing, while backing away from the ring of trouble. In this situation he found it most advisable to scrape along the row of ruined shops on the left of the main street. Following this course, he would eventually put the flagellants between him and the merry madmen (who were certain they were not going to get the plague) and seek Festilligambe in peace.

He was fingering a spirited
bransle
(what else do you play when the audience is brawling?) when a round, soft, little noise behind him caused him to turn his head.