Raphael (24 page)

The fortress of Lucifer gave way. Rock shuddered, deep in the earth. The thin air was loud with broken deceits and the cries of demons with their leashes snapped. The yellow light shining around the corner went out.

A fungoid silvery growth appeared on the black coils of the dragon, as Lucifer dragged himself frantically from the flesh of his victims. His shape solidified, grew hair, was dressed in white velvet.

He hurled himself through the air toward the gate of his palace, at the small figure standing by the shards of delicate stone.

It was not bulbous, not colored like a raspberry. It was a man, or the shade of a man: short, wiry, but not uncomely, with very strong arms and hands. His face was bearded and his eyes round and blue.

“No more, my Master,” said the shade, and the voice came to Lucifer from far away. The spirit pointed to its eyes, its body, and to its mouth. “No one is made so badly as you would have them believe,” it whispered, and the bearded mouth smiled. Slowly the large, sail-white wings spread behind it and tested the air.

Smiling, the shade raised its strong arms and square, workman's hands. It rose and faded into a sky awash with the stars.

Flaming with curses, Lucifer fled away to recapture his scattered devils.

As a half-moon rose from behind the rock-tooth, the yellow eyes of the dragon answered its light. The bladed tail twitched.

And Gaspare, in the pergola of the dragon's upturned hand, held Saara until she was warm again, and her eyes opened.

Chapter 9

Though the glassy night was the most comfortable time in late-summer Granada, the servants in their barracks were too tired to stay awake for it and Rashiid and his wives were too well-fed. Only Raphael sat up, crouched half-naked beside the fish pond, and the fish circled at his feet. He was talking with Damiano.

“You look much better, I think,” the spirit was saying. “Except for your nose.”

“My nose,” repeated Raphael. He touched that member for identification and winced at the result. “It hurts. And it whistles when I breathe through it.”

Moonlight had bleached the gold from his hair and reduced the glorious color of his black eye to mere shadows. He glimmered as insubstantially as his friend the ghost.

Damiano's cloudy suggestion of a face drew closer and darkened in sympathy. He said, “I can hear it. A very musical sound, as befits a teacher of music. But I know a cure for the problem.”

“Tell me!” Though weeks of humanity had taught Raphael some sophistication, his face still reflected his every feeling, and now his perfect blue eyes (one of them rimmed in purple and green) pleaded with Damiano.

“It takes bravery.”

Raphael nodded soberly.

The spirit's umbrous wings folded back. He added, “It is not a magical but a musical cure.”

This did not seem to surprise Raphael at all.

“Take your hands,” began Damiano, “and clap them in your lap.” The blond did so, but quietly, so as not to wake the slaves in the barracks.

“Now keep the rhythm and follow me, clapping whenever I clap.” The ghost went clap, clap, clap in his lap, making hardly a sound, and then raised his arms above his head and struck his ectoplasmic hands together. Raphael accompanied him in (of course) perfect time.

Three claps more above the knees and three in front at arm's length and three more in the lap and then in front of the face, one, two, and…

Perhaps Damiano gave a nudge, or perhaps Raphael, in the heat of the performance, wasn't thinking quite what he was doing, but the third clap came hard and symmetrically down on his injured nose.

He gasped and rose half to his feet. “I hit myself!” he cried aloud, and then, as greater understanding came to him, he added, “You MADE me to hit myself!”

The spectral form wavered, perhaps through shame. “But your nose: How is it now?”

Raphael gave a careful sniff. “I smell blood,” he said, with a hint of petulance. “But I think… I think…”

Again Damiano leaned close. “I don't hear anything.”

Raphael, too, listened. “No. Nothing. The whistle is gone.”

“And your nose is straight again. You'll be as handsome as ever.”

The blond's fine hands were locked protectively around the middle of his face, but his eyes turned to Damiano with sudden interest. “Am I handsome? I never thought about it.”

Sadly Damiano smiled. “You've never been a mortal before. Now you'll think about things like that: Are my teeth good? Is that a wrinkle or a spot forming by my eyebrow? Is that fellow a bigger, stronger, better man than I? It's the mortal condition; we don't seem to be able to help it.

“And another part of being mortal, Seraph. Hating. Do you hate your master yet?”

Raphael squatted down again. He lifted his eyes to the stars while the warm wind stirred his hair.

“My master? I feel bad that he hit me. He had never told me I was not supposed to mention that Djoura was a Berber in front of other Berbers. And how was I to know that Djoura's father had been sworn to Qa'id Hasiim years ago?

“And though I know Rashiid had reason to be angry—he felt compelled to give a great gift of money to the Berbers in the Alhambra, as well as losing what he'd paid for Djoura—still, I'd rather not have to see him anymore. Somehow I don't like looking at him or hearing his voice.”

“Understandable.”

“Is it?” Raphael's left eyebrow shot up in a movement familiar to his student. “I don't understand it. After all, Rashiid will be Rashiid whether in my sight and hearing or not.

“But that is nothing like hate, I know, for I have felt hate. One doesn't have to be a mortal… There is one I hate and have hated for a very long time.” Then Raphael took a deep breath through his newly repaired nostrils.

“And anyway, this blunder of mine led to Djoura being freed, and freedom was what she most wanted, so I'm glad of it.”

“Freedom is what we all most want,” murmured the thoughtful spirit, and for a moment he faded into moonlight. When he raised his face to his friend again, there was a hint of fire in his dark eyes.

“Raphael, you must remember who you are!”

The man looked only weary. He turned his head away. “I remember, my friend. My confusion is nearly gone.

“I remember every voice in the choir. And the song, in all its parts —how could I forget that? But my memories are only memories, and don't move me.”

The voice of a single frog hidden in the weeds of the pond silenced Raphael for a few moments. Then he said, “More real to me than heavenly music is the fact that my nose hurts, and is dripping blood, and that I know I must dig at the latrines tomorrow, as well as play the ud.”

Damiano nodded. He dipped one vague hand into the black pool water, passing it through several little perch in the process. Neither hand nor fish were the worse for it. “You don't talk about God— your Father—anymore.”

Raphael's eyes slipped down, from his friend's face to the undisturbed surface of the water. “You mean Allah. Here He is Allah, and the people of Granada use His name in every third sentence. And they all seem to know just what His will is on every issue. All but me, of course.

“Allah and I have not been introduced.”

“You are bitter,” whispered the ghost.

Raphael smiled and his battered face was transformed. “I'm not,

really.” He put his hand into the waistband of his trousers and pulled out a little pouch. “I have a pebble, Dami: the one you gave me. I take care of it.”

The moon had rolled away and only Jupiter and the Dog Star made light enough to outshine the approach of dawn. In that season and latitude Sirius never set.

Raphael was sleeping like a dog, however, curled against the cold with a protective hand on either side of his nose. Even as he slumbered, the little perch of the pond did not relax their honor guard, and the carp at the bottom hugged the bottom and sides of the tank as though to push their way through soil to the transformed angel.

Soon the dozen men in the barracks would be expected to wake up and be useful. They slept all the harder now in expectation.

But in the main house little Ama was awake; she had had to wake up to vomit, which was her recent custom. As always, concluding this task left her fresh and airy, ready for the day's experience. And now she tiptoed out the white doorway, sure of her path despite the lack of light.

Ama was wearing white. She came sans veil and her hair was undone. She looked more like Rashiid's little daughter than Rashiid's young wife. She found Raphael on the bench beside the fish pond. Finger-length perch darted in every direction.

“Ho, slugabed! Wake up. Wake up and do my hair.”

Raphael opened both eyes. He yawned, winced, and touched his upper Up. He chafed his unclad arms.

“Since because of you I don't have Djoura anymore, you must be my body servant,” Ama persisted. Then she giggled. “You're much nicer, after all, though you're the wrong color.”

She leaned over him and peered closely at his face. “Wrong colors, I should say. How shocking!” Ignoring his incoherent reply, Ama pushed his knees off the bench and sat herself down facing away from him, presenting her abundant hair.

“My husband is a brute; I have always known so. He would hit me, I'm sure, if my family were not so important. I'm glad they are. My uncle is a
nakib;
he has the fealty of two hundred men. But not so much money.

“Why do you sleep outside, Raphael? It gets cold in the morning. It's cold now.

“You know how Djoura used to sleep? Fully dressed, in all those dusty black gowns of hers. Looked like a hill of mud, she did, with her veil over her black face. But she was warm, I bet.

“What did you say?”

Raphael had been about to tell Ama why he slept on the bench by the fish pond: a story which involved his first and only night in the barracks (fully dressed, like Djoura), when because of his humming and his muted conversation with an unseen visitor he had earned eviction. But as he rose from his hard cot he thought of something else to say.

“I don't know how to do your hair, mistress,” the slave admitted. “I have never done a lady's hair before.”

Ama shrugged and set her small mouth. “You know how to make braids, don't you? Braid it.”

Raphael set to work. His hands were good, and he was, of course, an artist. He worked neatly but without great speed, and Ama wiggled. After a few minutes, she wiggled backward into his lap.

“Rashiid is angry with me too. Isn't that absurd? All because I'm the one who wanted the black. How was I to know she was of an important clan? It's Rashiid's own business to know those things; I'm just his wife, after all.”

She darted an avian glance back at the blond. “I wish I weren't his wife. I wish I was YOUR wife instead!” Then Ama giggled at her own conceit. “The wife of a eunuch! Wouldn't that be an easy job?”

Suddenly the girl spun about on Raphael's knees, pulling her black tresses from his fingers. Her face was inches from his. With her fingers she combed his yellow hair over his eyes and began to twist it about. “Your turn, Pinkie… I mean Raphael.

“You'd make such a pretty girl yourself, except that you're too big, of course, and too skinny. But I like your eyes, and your mouth is so sweet.” She kissed his not-quite-awake face.

Color had descended from the sky: the green of the pond, the blue in Raphael's eyes, the hidden russet in Ama's hair. “Shall I marry you, Raphael? Shall I forget about Rashiid and marry you? You can be my little wife!”

Ama forced her treble voice down to a masculine growl as she repeated again and again the phrase “my little wife.” She had quite a talent for imitating Rashiid, both in word and gesture; Raphael found himself being possessively pawed all over. It was rather pleasant.

“I have only seen one eunuch before,” whispered Ama, breaking out of her husbandly character for a moment. “He was the little boy of my uncle's household in Algiers, and he had two red scars in this shape.” She laid one finger crosswise over another. “He would cry if we tried to touch them.

“Here, Pinkie. While no one else is watching. Take your trousers off and show me.”

Raphael's fair forehead drew down and he prisoned Ama's exploratory hands in his own. “I'm not supposed to do that,” he said.

With a force of outrage she yanked free of his grasp. “Not supposed to… Who said you're not supposed to? I'm your mistress and I say…” Ama grabbed the waistband of Raphael's cotton trousers and pulled until the cord broke. The baggy garment slipped onto the bare wood of the bench.

Little Ama looked first surprised and then quite confused. She was speechless. Under the intensity of her stare Raphael grew nervous. He also felt quite warm, somehow, though the sun had not yet crested the wall. He attempted to gather the cloth again at his hips, but Ama forestalled him.

“Either a eunuch looks just like a man, once he grows up, or…” Her small round eyes rose to his. “Are you a whole man after all, Raphael?”

“Yes,” he replied. “But no one is supposed to know that.”

Ama rolled her eyes. She edged away from the slave along the bench and folded her hands on her lap. Her feet swung to and fro, not touching the ground. “By the light of Allah!” she whispered, and then, “Rashiid is going to be sooo angry!”

Raphael found he was more nervous than ever, though not nearly so warm. “I did not ever tell him I was a eunuch,” he ventured to say to the girl, but she only muttered and shook her head.

Then with her typical unpredictability, Ama squeezed Raphael teasingly in a place he did not expect. “I won't tell,” she promised, grinning sidelong. “Not if you're nice to me.” Then she turned and darted, perchlike, past the fish pond and away.

In the harbor of Adra, the big-bellied ships bobbed and wallowed in the swell. The longshoremen sang in Spanish and the wind tasted of salt.