Free Damiano by R. A. MacAvoy Page A

script that was not quite German. Out of the final bag dropped a squarish parcel wrapped in linen and tied with twine. Damiano undid the tiny knot with a tiny loosing spell.
    â€œDomine Deus!” he breathed, as a book in vellum, bound in both wood and leather, flapped onto the table. “So they weren’t totally false!”
    It was a volume of the poetry of Petrarch, copied in painful, schoolboy script. The premier letter of each verse was illuminated in the old manner, with awkward care and much gold paint.
    These items were heavy, and he did not really want to be reminded of their former possessors. Yet books were like children; they could not be abandoned to the snow. And he did appreciate Petrarch.
    In the end Damiano decided to take all but the clothing as spoils of war.
    Their fire, too, was his by right. And their food. He felt almost well enough to care about that. His eyes scanned the table.
    â€œWhat became of the sausage, little dear? Did our friend the German carry it with him out into the snow?”
    Macchiata’s tail and ears stood up. She dashed to the corner and nuzzled under Damiano’s lute, backing out with something black and dirt-covered in her mouth.
    â€œNo, he dropped it,” she mumbled, placing an irregularly shaped piece of greasy meat in his hand. “I saved half for you.”
    In the first light Damiano woke once more and spent a few minutes playing his lute. He had a headache and a spot of numbness on his scalp. Further, his eyes refused to focus on the strings. Raphael did not appear, but then the angel would scarcely have fit in the hut, and besides, Damiano had no time to spare. He took a swig of the wine in the basket-jug, and for luck, another of his father’s tonic. Then he stepped into the cold.
    After a half-mile’s march the headache had grown to fill the world, and the light of the new sun on the snow pierced his eyes. Tears ran along his cheeks, and even the dog had nothing cheerful to say. Damiano was not too far from wishing he were dead, but the alternative of every person in the winter wilderness—curling up in the snow and sleeping—had no attraction.
    â€œWe shall be there today, and early,” he muttered. “Except for the weather, we might have reached the pastures by yesterday nightfall.” He watched for the cluster of huts that housed the shepherds of the mountains and a small number of hunters whose livelihoods kept them in the heights all winter. The nearest real village was Pont Saint Martin, on the North Road two miles from the spot where Damiano had turned, which was the reason this poor assembly was known as Sous Pont Saint Martin. Damiano had been there only once, in July, when his father had been called to treat the sheep for a bad flux.
    The road had been swept by wind and the abrasive, frozen snow of the night before. In rare spots the wind had come again and shaved the earth bare, leaving only the strange, reversed prints of men and horses, made of pressed snow and glistening white against the black earth. Who knew how old these were?
    The slopes dropped away on either side of the road, and the travelers came to a river: the Lys. It ran wide and violent, though ice crusted each bank like sheets of shattered glass. Across the river a stone bridge led. It was wide and smooth, with waist-high guardwalls on either side. It was the sort of craftsmanship the country people dismissed as Roman work, heavy, useful, built to last. There was no evidence it was old Roman, except in the fact that no Piedmontese was likely to take such trouble on a mountain bridge. Roman work was like the hills themselves: whether or not men could make such things today, they were there for free and so not to be admired too much.
    As he crossed over the span the wind hit him and turned his head to the left, from whence the river flowed.
    His left foot trod on his right, and then Damiano stopped stock still. “Mother of God! Can it