Damiano's Lute (28 page)

“Nearly choked him,” attested Gaspare, pointing with his thumb in the direction of Damiano.

Evienne saw a dark young man, looking impossibly tall and slim in the light of the strange bright candle in his hands. His hair cast black river-shadows against the ceiling. Damiano looked back at the half-naked woman, hoping his expression displayed a suitable insouciance.

Evienne thought he looked a bit cruel. “Who… who is he?” she mumbled to her brother.

Gaspare glanced from one to the other in surprise. “That's Damiano, my lutenist, Evienne. You remember him.” Once more he tended her blanket.

It was hopeless, for Evienne sat completely forward, peering closely at Damiano. “Oh, yes. I do remember. Funny you two should still be together. Jan always said he didn't see why.”

Damiano had tried hard to keep his eyes on Evienne's face, but with her last comment he relaxed the effort.

She was a very pretty girl, only a trifle big in the belly. Just a trifle.

“There are a lot of things,” he whispered, still keeping the tune of his lullaby, “that Dutchman cannot see, I think.”

Her loyalty to Jan Karl did not extend to the point of defending him against slights of so vague a character. Especially now, when she was feeling his absence as a slight against her.

At the sound of Damiano's voice she lifted her head and remembered. “The singing I heard tonight. That was you!”

He nodded. “Damiano's a witch,” said Gaspare, as though that explained something.

The girl paid no attention. “And… and you still look like that,” she added, decisively. “Who'd have thought it?”

Damiano could think of nothing to say in reply to this. He wanted to believe it had been a compliment but was not at all sure.

Gaspare shook his sister by her peach-blossom shoulder. “Enough of what he looks like. I want to know why you missed our rendezvous.”

Evienne gave him a disparaging glance. “Because there is a lock on the door, of course. I can't go anywhere anymore. Herbert gets so jealous.” She was momentarily startled as a monstrous gray head thrust itself under her hand. “Couchicou. You're not supposed to be in the house at night.”

“He followed us in,” explained Damiano.

“Not much of a watchdog,” grunted Gaspare, as he watched the animal fawn over Evienne.

Who giggled weakly. “Couchicou almost tore Jan to pieces that last time he came to visit. Didn't Jan warn you about Couchicou when he met you?”

At this mention of Evienne's lover, Damiano reacted automatically. He reached out and gave the bandog a hearty, approving slap. “Jan did not show up at the Pope's Door either, Evienne.”

She caught her breath in unfeigned alarm. “He is dead, then. It is as I feared.”

The witch shook his head. “How you are like your brother! No,

the Dutchman is not dead; he only decided that it was not politic to fulfill his promise to us.”

Evienne's concern hardened into resentment. She snatched a gorgeous emerald robe from its lodging under the covers at the foot of her bed. It was very wrinkled. She thrust her arms through the holes and struggled out of the bed with a certain lack of grace. “Politics, again. Jan never shuts up about politics. What does ‘politics' have to do with him and you—or with him and me, for that matter?”

“Wasn't it politics that got you this, nice little cubby “with the cardinal?” asked her brother. Gaspare was not disillusioned on the subject of Jan Karl; like all cynical people, he trusted implicitly anyone who acted even more cynically. He turned from a hands-on examination of the contents of her dresser table to finger the padded Oriental silks of her garment.

Evienne gazed around her at the crowded little chamber. For a moment it appeared she was going to cry, but instead she raised her arms a few inches and flapped them at her sides, penguinlike. Then she raised her eyes to Damiano, who had withdrawn to the corner of the room and sat sprawled on the rolled bottom of a tapestry which was much too long for the wall on which it hung. His black curly head was bent forward as he examined the bright thing in his hands. Softly, sweetly, he was singing to himself.

Evienne shuffled forward till her hair shone like sunset. “What…? What have you got there? Is it a candle? You'll burn yourself if you're not careful.”

“No, he won't,” replied her brother in a voice of authority. “I told you Damiano's a witch now. He's got the rest of the house sleeping with that song of his, and that's why no one's come banging on the door to see what the noise is.” As Evienne continued to stare at Damiano's hands (warmly translucent, lit from within), Gaspare took the opportunity to drop into his jerkin pocket one green glass flacon, stained with dried perfume, and a pair of silver earrings.

The girl knelt rather cumbersomely beside Damiano and attempted to pry his hands apart.

He shook his head and pulled away from her. “No, Evienne. It
will
burn. Just sit still and watch.” And he opened his hands together, palms up.

It was a little blue hedgehog with flickering, yellow-tipped spines. It ran from his hand heel to his fingertips and then back again, before dissolving.

He shook his head. “It's too difficult to do two magics at once,” he sang aloud. “If I'm putting the house to sleep, that's about all I can handle.”

Evienne's green eyes were wide as an eight-week kitten's. “How pretty!” she giggled, without any hint of fear.

“Come with us,” Damiano said on impulse. “Rocault is no lord, that he can keep you prisoned this way. Neither are you bound to this house like a peasant to his patch of ground.”

Evienne sat back heavily and hugged herself. “Come with you? Where?”

Gaspare had turned and was staring at Damiano with as much confusion as Evienne.

“To the Bishop's Inn, for now. Later—when the baby is closer— then we can find you a little house somewhere. We're not so poor as we once were.”

Gaspare mouthed the word “baby.” Then he exploded. “Baby! Baby. By Saint Gabriele, woman, don't tell me you are pregnant!” The boy gave such a perfect imitation of a brother whose honor is outraged that both Damiano and his sister sat silent for the next few moments.

“Hush,” hissed the witch, pointing meaningfully toward the door. “There are limits, Gaspare, to what a spell can do for you.”

“Yes,” answered Evienne sullenly. “I am pregnant, Gaspare. Is that any of your business, I'd like to know?”

“How'd it happen?” demanded Gaspare, in unreflecting rage.

Damiano beheld his friend's behavior with rising irritation. The only creature more volatile and irrational than Gaspare of San Gabriele was Gaspare when in the presence of his sister.

“Are you going to challenge the Cardinal Rocault to a duel, perhaps?” The question slid away from song and ended in a tone of disgust.

Evienne decided to ignore her brother. “It is because of the baby I must stay. If it's Herbert's, you see—well, I know him enough to say that he'll take care of it very well. And take care of me also.”

“And if it's not?” growled Gaspare, as his limber fingers snaked a choker of blue beads into his pocket, to he beside the earrings.

She shrugged. “Then it's Jan's.”

Gaspare mock-spat into the corner. “Tell me how you were such a fool as to get pregnant. You never did before.”

“I didn't have any girlfriends in Avignon,” she said simply. “What was I to do? Besides, Gaspare, I want this baby. If it is the cardinal's, then it will be my fortune. If it is Jan's…” Her face softened, till Evienne appeared about five years old. “I really love Jan. Even when he does awful things, like not coming to see me for seven weeks together. I feel sorry for him, I think. He can be so bad.”

Into Damiano's mind came the words of Raphael. “Perhaps the purpose of man is to forgive the Devil.” He smiled sadly at the pretty, pregnant girl.

When had he stopped singing? He couldn't even remember. But he was very tired. It had been such a day. And the cloying, close air. And the muffling drapes of woolen. Damiano yawned. He ceased to follow what Gaspare and his sister were saying. He gave his fire to an oil lamp on the dresser.

It was Gaspare who first heard the footsteps.
“Hisht!
Damiano!”
the
boy whispered sibilantly. “Someone's coming.”

Damiano came bolt upright out of a dream in which Saara the Fenwoman had red hair and dog's feet. His heart lurched.

Gaspare was gesturing like a mad consort conductor. “Sing. Sing!” In another moment the boy had given up on his friend, and seemed to fling himself out of the third-story window. Evienne was standing with both hands on her mouth, her green eyes circled by white. Couchicou, on the other hand, sat with his nose pressed expectantly against the door, his whip-tail banging.

Damiano could not remember the lullaby he had used to quiet the house before. He could not remember any lullaby. Any song. His hands lusted vainly for a staff.

“It's Herbert,” the girl said, in a teeny-tiny voice.

Damiano, too, went out the window.

“Evienne—what's that dog doing in here?” demanded a voice which Damiano, who was hanging by his fingers from the window ledge, recognized as Rocault's.

“He has been here ever since I got back from dinner,” Evienne replied. She lied with professional skill. “I have been too afraid to have him removed. He might get angry and bite me!”

Male laughter, half contemptuous, half amused, and the sound of a door opening and shutting again.

“What the hell happened to you?” snapped Gaspare in Damiano's ear. The two hung side by side, like banners—or pots of kitchen herbs—from the window.

“I fell asleep,” whispered Damiano in reply. His hands were slowly slipping from the angled wooden sill. He regripped with his right, causing his left to lose what it had gained.

He was developing a bad case of splinters in his fingers, and that worried him almost as much as the fact that there was thirty feet of air between himself and the ground. Of course the peach trees were immediately below. They would break his fall before bouncing him out to the pavement of the river road. Perhaps he would survive the fall. It was unlikely, but not impossible that both of them would survive.

He stared down into the illusory softness of the blossoming trees. From here he could smell them again. And out of nothing swam the memory of a sprawling rosemary bush that at the Fenwoman's command had snarled his feet in its twining embrace. He heard again the drone of bees and Saara's clear voice singing words he couldn't understand.

Then, he hadn't been able to understand. Now—

Well, why not? Though Damiano's special skills were with animals, and his sympathies did not extend to the vegetable kingdom (he ate carrots with gusto), still he would make the effort.

“I'm going to drop,” announced Gaspare, “into the peach trees. I'll try to grab the branches to break my fall.”

“No.” Damiano fixed him with a desperate glance. “Wait just another minute.” Then his face went blank with his interior effort.

“Wait for what,” hissed Gaspare. “Sunrise? My hands are slipping now!”

But even as he did lose his grip, something hard touched the sole of Gaspare's foot. He fell no more than two feet and then crashed forward, bumping his long nose against the wall itself. Slowly Gaspare rose again, his legs tangled in a wildly expanding growth of blooming peach.

Damiano let the green wood embrace him. He sighed. He blinked unhappily at his wounded hands. “Damn!” he whispered. “Right in the tip of the first fretting finger.” He stuck the damaged digit into his mouth.

Meanwhile, Gaspare was kissing the peach boughs with great passion with a face to which the sweat of fear had stuck bruised petals. He swung to the ground, nimble as a monkey.

Damiano followed, favoring his left hand.

Once on the pavement (still shiny with rain) he turned back to his handiwork, scratching his head with his right hand. He had no idea how to properly terminate such a spell.

But Damiano was nothing if not mannerly. “Thank you, peach trees,” he called out to the growth. And within five seconds the trees had sucked back into themselves their unnatural extension. Gaspare swore in awe.

“Everyone is taken care of,” sighed Damiano, slumping against Gaspare's shoulder. “Gaspare, Evienne, Jan, the Holy Father, the Devil: everyone.

“Now it's Dami's turn. He's going to bed.” And he leaned on Gaspare all the way home.

 

Chapter 11

It was an awkward and lumpy bundle of blankets, clothing, cheese, dried pears and bread. Inside it, like the golden yolk within an egg, was hidden an exquisite lute. Wine went in a separate bag; that also for the lute's sake. “It will hold, anyway,” grunted Damiano. “With all that rope, it will hold.”

The constraining rope went from end to end of the bundle. Damiano slung it bandolier-style, groaned, took it off, padded the rope with a rag and tried it again.

“Better. And then, of course, the horse will carry it easier than I.”

He had decided to meet Saara in the open, out of the city. The Fenwoman, after all, didn't like cities, and among the trees and grass there would be more of what his euphemistic mind liked to think of as opportunities. He had no doubt that Saara would be able to find him.

“You look like a fool,” stated Gaspare, although the boy had not turned from his position in front of the window, staring at the dark street below. “It does your reputation no good to be seen like that.”

Damiano glared. He foresaw this night's mood being ruined by another of Gaspare's seizures of temperament. “Well, if that's all that's worrying you, the moon is half-past full and I doubt anyone will be able to see me at all.”

“Another reason to wait until morning.”

“Why? I can see well enough by half a moon. Saara can see excellently at all times. We are witches, remember.”