Damiano - Raphael Part 7

She laughed a trifle scornfully. "No one can live so long! Most of the world is hot, to me, and most everywhere but among the Saami are men kept on chains! No, Damiano. You must tell me how to find Satan's Hall, where someone of greater information may be made to talk."

"That would not be the act of a friend," he said, staring away from her down the wooded hill.

There was a cras.h.i.+ng among the trees below, like a deer leaping among the hazel, but Saara was too roused to attend to noises. She pointed a chiding finger at the ghost as she cried, "Was it the act of a friend to help a man die in his own way, when there was another who might have saved his life? Raphael said it was the act of a friend. Do you agree?"

Damiano's eyes were pulled to hers, and breathless spirit though he was, he sighed. "Will you throw me by my own words, Saara? Yes, that was the act of a friend.

"And it is your decision how you will live or die, and your vows are your own to keep. But the pure truth is that I no longer know the way to the Chamber of Four Windows, if I ever did.

"For Damiano is dead, you know." The shadows of his hand touched his own breast. "This is only memory, lent shape by love." As he spoke, his face was growing paler and less defined with the setting of the moon, but the look he gave Saara was an obvious mixture of sweetness and amus.e.m.e.nt. He raised his hand and pointed beyond her.

"But THERE is one I think might know the way to Satan's palace," Damiano said.

Saara spun in place as the hulking black shadow barged among the birch trees. Above it was a thinner shadow that was cursing continually in a very familiar voice.

"Gaspare!" the witch cried out in recognition.

The horse s.h.i.+ed at the sound and Gaspare came nearly off, hanging over the gelding's back by onecrooked knee and a handful of black mane. He cursed fluently, sliding down to his feet.

The gangling youth strode closer, staggering and flailing his arms as though blind. He encountered a few birch boles before coming close enough to spy Saara, sitting solid as a point of stone at the crest of the hill.

"Lady Saara!" he began. "I have had the Devil's own trouble finding you. And it's dark here as the inside of a witch's..."

Gaspare had a pack on his back and the neck of the lute stuck out of it sideways like an insect's leg.

His lank hair hung around his shoulders. Somewhere he had found another s.h.i.+rt.

Saara watched his approach in wonder and consternation. It had been scarcely a week since she had flapped home-a very weary dove-and in that time she had forgotten about the clownish Gaspare. She was not too happy to have him interrupting her ghostly tryst, painful though the meeting had to be. "As the inside of a witch's what, Gaspare?"

The only answer was a mumble and a clearing of the throat, as the youth realized what he had said.

Saara turned her attention back to the waiting spirit, who glimmered like ice in the last rays of the moon.

Gaspare, too, noticed Damiano. The young man hissed, drawing himself back, and he made the peculiar Italian magical sign of protection which has been used from time immemorial by men who don't understand the least about magic.

"Again!" he cried in wrath made slightly hysterical by the touch of fear. He scooped a birch branch, complete with withering leaves, from the soil. "Again you try your tricks, Satan! Villainous wibbert, orwyvart... wyrven..." Giving up on the ungainly word heard only once, he lashed the branch at the apparition, which sat and watched him, wings pulsing slightly.

"Worm!" bellowed Gaspare, slas.h.i.+ng his weapon left and right through the translucent form. The colors of Damiano trickled over the thras.h.i.+ng branches like dappled sunlight, while he ghost himself sat placidly waiting.

As soon as Gaspare stopped, panting, to survey his destruction, Damiano spoke again. "h.e.l.lo, old friend, and G.o.d keep you."

Gaspare, leaning on his branch, stared uncertainly. After a few moments, he whined.

"I see you have that pretty lute on your back," continued the spirit, grinning at Gaspare's discomfiture.

"I remember it somewhat, though I owned it less than a week. I have heard you play with great enjoyment, Gaspare."

"You? Have heard me play? With..." The redhead struggled with the idea that the Devil might like his music. It was almost as difficult for him to believe the alternate explanation. At last he let his leafy weapon fall. "Could it be you are really Delstrego?"

"Damiano Delstrego. Or I was. And I have no one anymore to call me 'sheep-face,' Gaspare. What a shame."

Gaspare blinked away a sudden brightness in his eyes. He turned to Saara, to find that the witch, like the ghost, was grinning. "Lady Saara," he said decisively, "I think you have made a mistake. I don't think this is Satan at all. I think this is really Damiano."

"Of course it is Damiano," stated Saara.

Gaspare sank to his knees. He yanked the pack from his back and began to pull it apart, until the pearl inlay of the lute belly shone under the moon like the spirit's wings.

"Play for me," he demanded, thrusting the beautiful instrument at the ghost. "Play for me this minute, before you turn to moonlight or I wake up and it will be too late. For my worst fear, old partner, is that I will forget what you sounded like, who were-who are-the finest musician in Damiano shook his head, and the gray wings gathered closer. "There is no time left for that, Gaspare.

I AM moonlight; I came with the moon and will fade with it. Besides- the lute and the playing of it is yours. But I will tell you one very important thing-old partner..."

Gaspare leaned close to the dimly s.h.i.+ning spirit, trying to quiet his ragged breath. Damiano's serious face grew clear, and more intent, even as the rest of him darkened."Gaspare. In music, as in everything else, 'best' is an empty word. Don't strive to be best, or you will wake up one day and know yourself no good at all."

Saaras voice rapped out. "Enough! The moon is almost gone! What did you mean, Darni? That he might know the way to Satan's Hall?"

The ghost's smile returned again, ruefully. A ghostly hand laid itself very lightly on Gaspares bosom.

"There." The words came faintly. "He knows it there, for pride calls to pride." Gaspare gasped and shrank away, but the spirit consoled him.

"I am not saying you are wicked, Gaspare, nor that you belong to the Devil's own. Don't be a fool like I was, to let him make you believe that! But you... like me... may have an understanding of Satan.

Raphael wonders if that is what men are for, did you know? To understand the misery of wickedness, as angels cannot. To feel pity for it."

The hand, almost invisible now, rose to touch Gaspares still unbristly chin. "I'll help you as I can, old friend. I haven't forgotten that you were a very good manager to me."

Gaspare swallowed hard. He wanted to believe he felt the touch of that hand. "And I, sheep-...

Damiano. I pray for your peace each night-when I think to pray, of course."

"I know," whispered Damiano, and then Gaspare's eyes could no longer see anything.

Saara rose to her feet, her trembling hand raised before her. "Farewell, love," she called to the air.

"Love," came back the reply, or else an echo.

The moon was gone.

"What did he mean?" demanded Gaspare, as the whites of his eyes glinted at Saara.

The Lapp woman subjected Gaspare to an uncomfortable scrutiny. "He meant," she said at last, "that you can tell me how to find and enter Satan's stronghold."

"He meant that?" Both Gaspare's hands clapped to the sides of his head. "I know, Satan's stronghold?" His stiff fingers stood up like antlers. "If he knows I know that, then he knows a lot more about me than I do about myself!"

Saara yawned, glancing up at the starlit sky. "That is the first wise thing I have ever heard from your mouth, Gaspare." She walked over to him, somewhat stiff from her hours on the chill earth. She laid her hand on his rather pointed red head and rumpled his hair. "Come now: It's time to sleep. In the morning we can worry at the spirit-puzzles."

4.

The night was more confusing than the daytime. During some hours Raphael slept, forgetting pain, abandonment, and the unpleasant feeling of being cold. But these interludes were interrupted by wakefulness, which, like a prod ding finger, reminded him he was lost. And toward morning he was visited by an experience as miserable as wakefulness but different: his first nightmare.

It was the sparrow again, gripping a bare twig with claws more brittle than the wood, its dusty feathers rutched against a light fall of snow.

It had no song. This vision brought with it a sense of desolation unalloyed by hope.

There was something here he was supposed to understand-he knew that much, at least-and with undemanding patience Raphael was prepared to let the dream unfold until he did understand. But with the first light the slave women began to stir in their chains, and very soon Perfecto (who had also spent a very bad night) was awake and kicking everybody else except Hakiim into rising. His kick to Raphael wasperfunctory, for, truth to tell, Perfecto felt an inexplicable distrust of this gift almost amounting to terror.

The new slave did not respond to the urging, because he was not yet finished with his dream. But with the increasing noise and bustle of the camp, the dream finished with him; it flew off, offended.

Still Raphael did not move. He had an idea that if he kept his eyes closed long enough-if he denied the activity around him long enough-they would all pack up and go away. And that seemed very desirable this morning.

He listened to the chatter of the women and the bray of the mules. His throat tightened with unconscious imitation of the noises both made. Stop it, he told himself. Rest again. Make it go away.

Perfecto came back, and the kick he delivered was harder. "Get up, idiot!" the Spaniard snarled.

"We're traveling today if we have to drag you by a mule's tail."

The blow hurt, but it certainly didn't induce Raphael to obey. Instead he screwed his eyes tighter.

Make it go away.

And Perfecto did go away.

Raphael was immensely heartened. He curled into a more comfortable ball and waited for sleep to take him again. Hakiim, the Moor, was whispering to someone close by. It was easy to ignore the sound.

The pointy little foot caught him between the ribs and its big toe jabbed and wiggled. "Get up, Pinkie!

You get up right now or I'll stuff dirt up your nose!"

It was not the threat but Djoura's tone of voice that smote him. Guilt and remorse splashed through Raphael, all the worse for the fact that he'd no experience with either feeling. He clambered up, tripped in his voluminous gown, rose again, and stood tottering beside her, looking down at the top of her jingling headdress.

The Berber possessed no veil to her headdress. Her excellent teeth shone whiter against a skin as opaque as lampblack as she gave Raphael a wolfish smile. "I knew you just needed encouragement," she said.

Then she walked around him. He gave a yelp of pain as his dress was pulled free of the scabbing wounds on his back. Djoura patted him as one would a horse. "There, there. Its over now. Better quick, I always think."

Again the Berber stood before him. "Well, sieve-head, how are we this cold morning?"

"We are unhappy,' he replied carefully in her own tongue. Djoura's eyes opened wide.

"Don't!" she hissed at him, peering left and right from under the folds of cloth. "If you want to keep your... don't seem too able, you see? Don't let them know!"

Raphael did not see. He had difficulty following elliptical statements. In fact, his confusion at this point was so great it did not allow him to ask questions.

Djoura, after ascertaining that no one in the little caravan was paying attention to them, continued.

"You must hide two things, Pinkie, if you wish to come to a better situation. Your brain is the first, and your b.o.l.l.o.c.ks are the second. No one must see evidence of either one but your friend Djoura-do you understand?"

"No," he answered readily, glad to have a question within his ability.

The Berber snorted and s.h.i.+fted from foot to foot. In this manner she resembled a tall, thin tent swaying in the breeze. "I will say it in different words.

"I say to you, Pinkie: Do not show anyone your manhood. And do not speak to anyone but Djoura, and then only when no one else can hear. She alone is your friend. Will you do that?"

"I will do that."

Djoura heaved a great sigh and rolled her eyes to heaven, which she could not see for the row of copper coins which shaded her forehead. "Excellent." Then she brushed her hands together, removing invisible dust.

Hakiim was pa.s.sing near. Out of habit he put out a hand to slap the Berber woman on her hip. Habit germinated the gesture, but prudence and Djoura's warning stare aborted it. "Now, Pinkie." She spoke ina loud voice. "Last night we practiced p.i.s.sing. This morning I think we should do some work on eating, don't you think?"

Raphael considered this with furrowed brow. He remembered to wait until Hakiim had pa.s.sed down the line (to another woman with a more approachable anatomy) before he replied, "I think I would like to practice p.i.s.sing again."

Watching the eunuch eat was a good joke; it almost served to quell Hakiim's new mistrust of his partner. First there was a problem getting the poor stick to open his mouth. After harsh words and some manual probing on the part of his nurse, Djoura, it was discovered that he had been sucking on a stone.

When the black attempted to throw the pebble away, he clawed it from her and locked it in his right hand, from whence none of the woman's strength could release it.

After this he got his face stuffed with cereal.

The slave merchants sat beside their chain of human wares, eating their own breakfast. They had only bulgur in oil and vinegar, the same as everyone else; their condition elevated them by no more than the two squares of silk carpeting on which they rested. Except, of course, that one tended to feel much more elevated without chains upon the neck or wrist.

"Look at him!" cried the Moor in glee. "Such emotion- pathos and ecstasy! Our new boy wears his heart upon his sleeve!"

Hakiim hardly exaggerated, for Raphael's first taste of food brought tears to his large blue eyes. One taste and it was to him as though all the world's jangle and whine were being brought into harmony. Once Djoura put the cool, oily ma.s.s on his tongue his mouth took over and transferred custody to his throat, which effortlessly took it down, and after that he was not aware of the bulgur at all, except as a spreading contentment.

He took some in his own hand. (His left hand. Disgusting.) And he repeated the process.

Perfecto watched with an eye which was physically as well as morally jaundiced. "Hugghh! Perhaps the idiot will work out after all."

Djoura's own eyes, very black and very white, flickered from the Spaniard to her charge. She leaned un.o.btrusively forward. The next time Raphael scooped from the red clay pot and filled his mouth, the little toe of his left foot was violently wrenched.

He choked. Cereal spattered from his mouth and nose. The Berber came forward with her bit of rag.

"Hah! See what happens when you play the pig?" she said loudly. Then, in a whisper, she added, "Don't be so cursed independent."

"I wouldn't get my hopes up," replied Hakiim to Perfecto.

The mules of Andalusia were justly famous, being bred from the giant a.s.ses found in that country.

Hakiim and Perfecto rode two sleek gray animals the size of large horses. Four other mules ambled behind, laden with gear. Beside the mule train, like an attendant serpent, paced the line of female slaves.

As the morning was still cool, they were chattering among themselves.

For it had been found impossible to keep seven women (most of whom must not be disfigured in any way) from talking, and the quietest, most orderly solution had been to attach them in linguistic groups.

The Saqalibah spoke in a patois of their own Central European language and Arabic. The two Andalusians behind them spoke Spanish and ignored the poor mongrel creature at the tail of the line.