Damiano's Lute (33 page)

These two men who faced one another without friendship were built in quite similar fashion: tall, lean and not too broad of shoulder. It is hard to explain, then, why the Dutchman, Jan Karl, gave the impression of having been stepped on by something large at some time in the past, and of expecting to be imminently stepped on again, while Damiano gave a very different impression. The dark Italian slouched by the window, imperturbable, with eyes of black stone, looking (had he only known it) like the Roman General Pardo, when he interviewed young Damiano himself in Partestrada.

“But it is not only that, of course,” continued Jan, as he poured more sand over his parchment. “It is also the discovery of Rocault's plots.”

Damiano watched the Dutchman empty his sandpot. The effort seemed less directed toward drying the ink than concealing the substance of his writing. Damiano considered telling Jan not to bother: that he could never read script across the width of a table, but Jan's last sentence stopped him.

“Discovery? Of Cardinal Rocault?”

“Inevitable,” replied the blond with a superior shrug. “Considering how the man was overstepping himself. It was in the kitchen, you know. That is how the post of officer of the refectory has so suddenly become open.

“Oh, there are many new opportunities in the hierarchy now, Delstrego.” Jan gave a little giggle. “It is so good to be in the right place at the right time for once.”

Damiano rubbed his left hand over two days' growth of beard, making a noise like a pumice stone at work. “Hmmph! I see. The kitchen, was it?” Then he was silent.

Jan, too, had run out of things to say, and stared at Damiano, whom he suddenly seemed to remember was not exactly his friend.

“I, too, once wanted to become a priest,” mumbled Damiano, giving the impression of a man deep in thought. “Of course I discovered that a born witch cannot be ordained, no more than a man who is missing his thumb or first two fingers.” He scraped his stubble again and peered vaguely at Jan from under a thicket of black curls. He yawned. “And anyway it's just as well, considering what I've been and what I've done.”

Then his head was raised an inch and once again the eyes were made of slate. “It's too bad Evienne couldn't also be in the right place at the right time, isn't it?”

“E-Evienne?” Jan Karl stuttered as though the very sound of the name were strange to him. “What has she to do with my ordination?”

“With your ordination? Nothing, I imagine. But with the discovery of Cardinal Rocault's plot…”

Jan snorted. “She had nothing to do with that. She hasn't the brain for politics.”

Damiano nodded assent. “I agree completely. She has nothing to do with any plot against the Holy Father. So why has she vanished, my dear Jan? Who has stolen her, and where did they take her? Her brother, you see, would like to know.”

Karl rose to his feet. There was no expression on his face. “Gone?

Did you go to see her at the cardinal's, then? That was dangerous. Too dangerous for me, anyway.”

“He went to see her twice. She was locked in her little kennel, like a bitch who is carrying a litter of great value. But now she is missing, and all her furniture is gone with her.”

The blond's lips moved soundlessly. Then he said, “If Rocault had got her locked up, then she probably ran away.”

“With her featherbed under her arm? No, Jan. She refused to run away, although I offered to help her do so. She was staying where you put her, like a good girl, and her only fear was that you had been killed by the wolfhound, who by the by is waiting for me outside your door this minute, or that you had forgotten her and would not return with the glass copies of her jewelry you had promised to deliver.”

While Damiano spoke Jan Karl had turned away and was staring blankly out the single, viewless window. The Italian prodded him with a boot. “Heh? Did you make copies of her jewelry, at least? Mother of God, Jan! That sweet, stupid little girl loves you!”

Jan Karl shuddered fastidiously. “You exaggerate, Delstrego. How like an Italian you are.” He paced across his square box of a room, his hands folded at the front of his long black robe. Jan Karl, with his pale skin and dry face, looked quite spectral in black. “We were friends once, certainly. But she is the sort of woman who does not remember things for long. Her senses are earthy and her feelings very low. I am confident that she no more expects me to… to visit her in her confinement than I… than I expect…”

“Than you expect what, Jan?” inquired Damiano, who was feeling a slow heat of anger spread from his chest out toward his hands and head.

Suddenly the Dutchman turned at bay, his hands pressed upon the edge of the writing table. “I expect nothing from her. I am being ordained, Delstrego. The affairs of the flesh I have put behind me.”

Damiano said, “How noble of you. What a sacrifice.” He sighed, willing his anger into control. “I didn't really come here to talk about all that, Jan. I think Evienne is better off without you, myself.

“I need you only to tell me where she is gone. Is it likely Rocault himself took her out of the city before his discovery, to keep her from the plague?”

There was a noise in the distance, along the hall, of someone weeping: a man, giving way to deep, hopeless sobs. The cleric was distracted for a moment, and his brow creased. He sank back into his chair.

Damiano also listened, and his lips pulled back from his teeth. “Perhaps you may expect another promotion today,” he said with a touch of bitterness.

Jan Karl ignored him. He sat biting his Up. “It was Friday midday that Father Lemaître, the officer of the refectory, confessed that he had agreed to offer poison to Innocent in the Easter dinner. He may have been the very first in Avignon to die. He thought the disease was a judgment upon him.”

“Indeed? And for what is the rest of the city being judged?” asked Damiano in a low murmur.

“Within an hour the cardinal had been brought into the palace, and no more has been heard of him since. So I don't think it would have been he who gave the order to remove Evienne.”

“Then it must have been the Pope himself who took the girl away,” whispered Damiano, only half believing his own words.

Jan Karl cleared his throat. “More likely Commander Sforza, if anyone. But I think, rather, she ran away by herself, Delstrego, once she got wind of what had happened.”

Damiano shook his head. “No, for then she would have come to you. She has not tried to see you, has she?”

Karl shook his head.

“I thought not. Tell me, where would the Holy Father have taken her—assuming he took her anywhere?”

The Dutchman raised his hands in complete mystification. “He has thousands of troops in hundreds of barracks and dozens of secret cells beneath them.”

Damiano slapped his thigh like a man making a decision. “I will ask him,” he announced. “That is the only course.”

“You will
what?”
yelped Jan Karl, rising once more. “You will ask… the Pope himself… what he has done with his enemy's mistress?”

Damiano stood also. “Yes. After all, I have met him, and he seemed very approachable. I will tell him Evienne's complete story, and I'm sure…”

“You cannot!” Jan Karl's wail echoed through the room, competing with the cries of the unknown sufferer in the distant reaches of the building. “You can't tell him without revealing my part in…” He grabbed at Damiano's gold-chased sleeve. “You mustn't reveal my name!”

Damiano pulled away. “One can't go about telling half-truths to the Holy Father,” he said.

Jan Karl put his two remaining left-hand fingers in his mouth and bit down on them. “Wait. Wait, Delstrego, before you try anything as desperate as that. I think I know where they might have taken her.”

For some minutes after the witch had left, Jan Karl sat beside his writing table, pouring sand from one hand to the other, his fear and his ambition warring with the memory of Evienne's red hair. His eyes gazed unseeingly at the parchment he had been filling, which began: “I have reason to believe that the following men have been involved in the recent and disgraceful attempt…”At last he put that sheet aside in favor of one of those which had come to him that morning, took his fingernail and began to worry at a beribboned blob of wax.

 

Chapter 13

It was a strange little procession that wound its way through the rabbit-warren of halls and chambers which was the Papal Palace at Avignon. It was led by Damiano (for only he had been told the way), elegantly dressed in scarlet and gold, his black boots striking the tiles soundly. Saara followed: a sweet-faced and barefoot peasant in a dress bright as some child's painting. Her steps made no noise. After her came Gaspare in finery grown quickly shabby with ill-use. His soft city shoes scuffed a nervous and uncertain rhythm, and his shoulders had crawled up his neck. Gaspare wished they would hurry.

In front and in back, stitching the group together, came Couchicou, the cardinal's wolfhound, who did not know where they were going, but had come along for the company.

The oddest part about this small assembly was the sound emanating from it, for Damiano and Saara together sang a song. They were throwing it about between them, from one throat to the other, as one ran out of inspiration or the other desired to speak. It was not, of course, the same song for Damiano as it was for the Fenwoman, as Saara had her traditions, whereas Damiano tended toward vers libre. But the two interpretations fit nicely, and the main theme of it was to the effect that no one should see them marching toward the palace infirmary, down corridors by torchlight, and through enormous halls whose windows overlooked the Rhone.

Damiano took a breath and let his mistress take over the burden of melody. To encourage her effort, he put his arm around her shoulders. “Jan says that people who show cause to be detained—people of a certain status, that is, such as the cardinal, or cause of a delicate nature, such as that of Evienne—are often put into a suite of chambers behind the infirmary. It is a comfortable situation, he tells me, except for the lock on the door.”

Gaspare looked left and spat right. “I wouldn't want to be locked in any rooms, however comfortable, near sick people today.”

Damiano's face, which had displayed all the complacent happiness of his amatory good fortune, as well as a good share of the drowsiness which often accompanies such good fortune, grew on the instant grave. He stopped in mid-stride, pulling Saara to a halt with him. “It is as I said before, Gaspare. You should not be here. It is dangerous for you.”

“If you catch the plague, child,” added Saara, “we cannot help you.”

Gaspare balled fists at his sides and advanced upon Damiano. “Stop trying to get rid of me.”

The wolfhound, sensing tension in his little pack, weaseled in between the two humans and, with a wiggle and lean, knocked Gaspare against the wall. The boy cursed but did not dare a kick at Couchicou's slablike side.

Damiano turned away. “To get rid of you? I have given that up, Gaspare,” he muttered to himself. “Two nations, endless mountains and a plague town were not sufficient for the purpose.”

They needed neither directions nor second sight to tell them when they approached the palace infirmary. The stench of sickness informed them of their approach, along with the sight of piles of straw along both sides of the corridor wall, on which the afflicted were placed in long rows.

Damiano had seen plague victims before, and told himself that he ought to be hardened to the sight. Saying that did no good, however, for on the green faces before him, and in their suppurating lesions, pain had been translated into pure ugliness, and death into an unconquerable despair.

“And these are all men dedicated to Christ's service,” he whispered, dropping his arm from Saara's shoulders. “It does not seem… allowable.”

Glassy gray eyes met his, shining from a face made hideous by swelling. They asked no questions, these eyes.

“He can see me,” whispered Damiano. “Despite the spell, he can see me. Is that because he is dying?”

Saara took her lover gently by the arm. “Come, Dami.”

Gaspare stared straight ahead. His pinched face had gone slick with fear-sweat. Couchicou, too, walked stiffly, pressing his side against that of the boy, and his rough fur bristled along his back.

Moving quietly among the dying were women in white, whose eyes were weary beyond expression, and whose lips moved constantly, without sound. Benedictines, these were. Damiano watched the nuns and wondered, remembering a girl with flaxen hair who once sat in a high loggia, doing needlework under the white north light of the Alps. Carla Denezzi, postulant of the order of Saint Clare: if fortune did not take him again to the high mountains of his birth, he would never see her again.

It might be she was dead now.

Soon they passed the infirmary hall itself, where the stench was overpowering, and the dead lay in stacks covered by sheets. They came to a turn in the corridor where there were no more piles of hay and no more gentle Benedictines, but far off along a tunnellike corridor could be escried a pair of Papal guards, complete with sword and halberd, like those that stood by the main gate of the enclosure. But these pikes did not point to heaven in parallel. They swayed through the torchlight like fir trees in the wind, for the guards were talking animatedly to another, less impressive figure that pointed repeatedly into the darkness along the corridor.

“What?” whispered Gaspare in Damiano's ear. “What's that happening ahead?”

The witch's ears rather than his eyes gave him that information. For a moment his face went blank with surprise and he grabbed each of his companions by the arm. “By all saints: it's the Dutchman. How did he get here before us?”

Saara said nothing. In the midst of her spell-song, it is doubtful she even understood what Damiano was saying, nor why he pulled them to a rough stop in the middle of an empty corridor. Couchicou prodded them all with his nose, impatient to be going, and then he scented a person he had encountered before now in dubious circumstances. A person of no importance, a person he did not like. The war-dog rumbled like a disturbance of the earth.