Raphael (8 page)

He lay with his cheek on bare earth, all his muscles tightened as though to ward off a blow. His eyes closed against a vision of hatred, borne on a face which might have been his own. Why he was so hated he could not recall, nor did he remember how that hate had led to… to this. He shivered, despite the sultriness of the night, for he didn't want to remember.

He wanted to remember something good: something which would provide a comfort to him in his misery. He searched in his memory for His Father.

And found to his horror that without His Father's presence in his heart, he could not begin to imagine Him. He couldn't even call up a picture of His face, for all that came to him, unbidden and insistent,

was the image of a sparrow on a bare branch, its drab feathers fluffed and its black eyes closed against the wind.

Whenever he moved the iron collar chafed his neck. He also found his eyes were leaking. That was uncomfortable, for it made the ground muddy. He laced his hands under his cheekbone, to keep his face out of the mud.

But the damp earth released a dark, consoling sort of smell, and he was glad for it. He turned his attention to the little noises of the camp, where the women were whispering lazily before falling asleep.

The rule of midday had been reversed now; the chain which had spaced the slaves out at maximum distance to one another now tinkled in little heaps as six bodies huddled companionably under five blankets.

Raphael and his nursemaid had been removed from the communal length of chain and put onto a special little chain of their own. He didn't have a blanket, and didn't know he ought to have had one. The Berber had a blanket, but she also had a lot of clothing on her body, so she threw the blanket to Raphael.

It was a magnanimous gesture, but as he didn't know what to do with the blanket he let it lie in a heap, till she crawled back and reclaimed it.

He heard one of the slaves stagger out of the cluster to make water, squatting on the dirt with her skirts lifted. That was also how Djoura had taught him to do it, that evening. It seemed to him, even in his newborn clumsiness, that there might be easier ways to go about it.

But all his memories had been turned upside down. It seemed this human head could not contain them properly—not the important or meaningful memories. He could recall scattered images of his visits upon the earth: a black horse, a white dog. A young man with black hair and a white face.

He remembered singing.

Always Raphael had been fond of mortals. He thought them beautiful, even when only in the way a baby bird is beautiful—through its awesome ugliness. Some mortals, of course, were more beautiful than others.

Finally he had something to cling to. To build on. Raphael made a song about the baby-bird beauty of mortals. Turning on his side he began to sing into the night.

This was better—much better. Here there was consonance and harmony, and even the beginnings of understanding, though he had to work his mouth and lungs to get it. When singing, it was impossible for Raphael to be confused or alone, or to be anything else but singing.

Behind him came a rustling. Djoura rose from her place, stepped across the ten feet dividing her from Raphael, and stood above him, listening. He raised his eyes gladly to her.

Then she kicked him. “Don't make noise,” she hissed, and shuffled away the length of the chain.

In all his existence, no one had ever, EVER disapproved of Raphael's music. He had no experience with this sort of criticism at all. He curled into a ball of hurt and his eyes leaked harder.

He thought about all the music he had ever made and he found himself doubting it was any good. That foot had been so decisive. He wondered, despairing, if his own creation had been some sort of divine mistake: a piece badly conceived and played.

But if Raphael lost faith in his own music, he did not lose faith in music in general. He had never been too proud to sing the music created by others, so he sought in his memory for a song that might make him feel better: one that had warm edges to it, and that was somehow connected with… he couldn't remember.

He sang this song so quietly no sound left the shelter of his huddled knees. It was a very simple song (compared to his own) but it reached out to the things he no longer understood and it gave him strength.

He remembered one little word. “Dami,” he whispered, liking the sound. “Damiano.”

There was a brush of cloudy warmth over him, lighter than a fall of leaves. Raphael squeezed his eyes to clear the water out and looked up.

Wings as soft as woolen blankets: dark but with a light within like a lamp under smoked glass. A shadow of rough hair framing dark eyes which also had a smolder of light behind them. The face of a friend.

Raphael closed his eyes in rapture and he could still see that face. He crawled onto his friend's lap.

“You should have called me before you started to feel this bad,” chided Damiano. “I'm no angel, to be shuttling at will between earth and heaven, and I had no idea where you were.”

“I don't know where I am, either,” replied Raphael, grateful to be able to talk again without using the slow, awkward body. “And I didn't know you would hear if I called.

“Damiano!” cried Raphael, stricken. “God is gone!”

The dusky spirit started, and its immaterial wings gathered round Raphael's damaged form. “Hush, hush, Raphael, my friend, my teacher… Can you hear yourself saying that?

“How could He be gone and I be here, holding you, eh? For what am I, outside of Him?” Damiano took Raphael's head between his hands and forced the frightened eyes into quiet. “Now do you feel better?”

Raphael felt something. He felt the presence of his friend, and for the moment he could imagine nothing finer. But his scourged back picked that moment to communicate a huge throb of pain.

“He's gone,” he repeated childishly. “I can't find my Father anywhere.”

The sad, sweet face above him (a mere suggestion of a face really, dark on darkness) filled with compassion, and he embraced Raphael gently, as though the poor pale body would break at a touch. “That's what it's like,” he whispered. “Yes, that's exactly what it's like.”

He brushed the long hair out of Raphael's face. “Don't worry, Master. He is there, and so am I.”

“What did you call me?”

The ghost laughed. “Master. You never liked that word. But it's what you are to me. My music master. You must remember you are the Archangel Raphael, and a great person all around!”

Raphael took one cloudy hand between his clumsy ones. “My memory… isn't working properly. I think of people and I see baby birds. I think of the Father and I see another bird—hungry—in the middle of winter.

“What does this mean, Damiano?”

“Birds?” The ghostly voice was quizzical. “Well, don't birds sing?” Damiano shrugged heavy wings and gazed intently at nothing.

“It means, Seraph, that God is not missing at all, believe me.”

“I will believe you,” answered Raphael. “But I have no other reason to believe except that it is you who say it.” His shivering had stopped, and without knowing it, he was sinking into sleep. But as the gray shape about him began to fade, he woke with a start.

“Don't go!” he cried out, and even his body's mouth made a little noise. “Don't you leave me too!”

Damiano patted his hand. “But you are a living man now, and must not spend your time talking with ghosts. It isn't good for you,

and besides—they will think you are mad as a hare. But I will be with you, you know, anytime you think of me.

“Here—if you think you might forget.” The spectral arm reached out and plucked a nondescript pebble from the ground. “I give this to you. If you begin to doubt I am there, take it out of your pocket and look at it.”

“I don't have a pocket,” whined Raphael, as that fact loomed into an insuperable problem.

The ghost's smile broadened, showing white teeth. “Then knot it into the hem of your gown. Or in your hair. Or keep it in your mouth. Just remember.”

Raphael took it into a sweating palm. “But you'll come back like this again, won't you? So I can talk with you. So I can see you?”

“Raphael,” Damiano whispered, grinning. “My dear teacher. I am always at your command.”

Gaspare was still standing by the door of the wineshop, mumbling and scratching his head, when Saara fell out of the sky.

He knew it was Saara, though he had never seen her naked before, and her hair was hanging in tatters. He winced at the thump she made, hitting the ground.

With his lute in one hand, he slid to his knees at her side. “Lady Saara,” he gasped. “Was it really YOU who pecked Damiano in the eye a few minutes ago?”

She lay on her back, but her eyes were closed. Still, she was breathing: breathing rather hard, and her chest rose up and down. He gazed down at it, fascinated.

Gaspare shot a furtive glance around him, to see whether anyone on the street had noticed. But of course there wasn't anyone on the sun-whitened street, and by fortune Saara's return had happened out of the line of sight from within the wineshop.

“Oh, what am I to do?” he mumbled to himself, shifting his lute from hand to hand as though that would help. Finally he stuffed the neck of the instrument down the front of his shirt, bent down, and picked up the limp woman in his arms.

Thus burdened he shuffled through the dry grass down the windowless abandoned lane. There he encountered Festilligambe, the horse, chewing furiously at the grass in an effort to recover from his earlier panic.

“Uh. There you are,” grunted Gaspare. “You can carry her easier than I.”

Groaning with effort, he lifted the woman high. The gelding stepped neatly away. Gaspare almost dropped Saara onto the grass.

“Dammit, you bag of bones. This is the Lady Saara. She is supposed to be a friend of yours!”

Festilligambe cocked an ear and his large nostrils twitched. While not disputing Saara's character as a friend, he seemed to deny that it implied such a heavy responsibility. But after a moment's reflection, the horse allowed her to be laid gently across him like a sack of meal.

“Now,” muttered the redhead, “let's avoid prying eyes, shall we, horse? I know I have a reputation for being a rake, but the picture we present here is not charming.” On sudden thought he removed his shirt and lay it over the naked woman. It didn't cover much.

At the end of the alley was a pile of rubble. Gaspare, leading the horse by the mane, turned left and walked through a gap in a wall and found himself abruptly out of the village of San Gabriele.

Down the grassy hill and into an open pine wood. Not five hundred feet along there was a stream and a clearing beside it where a crude thatch of branches was upheld by rough wooden poles.

This was Gaspare's retreat, where he had lived since the spring made it possible: a mansion perfectly suited to one who liked his privacy and also hadn't two pieces of copper to rub together.

He laid Saara down upon his crackling, piney mattress and regarded her long. When he was done regarding her he dropped the shirt once more over her middle.

Festilligambe, too, peered at Saara, whom he had never before thought of as the sort of creature that rides on a horse. He whuffed her singed hair.

The horse sneezed and Saara woke up.

Her eyes snapped open like shutters caught in a wind. She woke up with jaw clenched and nostrils flaring. Color splashed her cheeks as she sat bolt upright on the bed of branches. Gaspare's shirt fell. She said one word.

“No.”

She said it quietly, almost absently, and she said nothing else. But the horse, who had been leaning with herbivorous curiosity over her vegetative couch, leaped stiff-legged into the air and came down running. Gaspare heard his receding hoofbeats but paid them scant attention, for he was lying flat on his back where the blow had knocked him, both hands wrapped protectively around his own throat.

As she sat there rigidly, amid no sound except that of Gaspare gasping and choking on the ground, the red in her cheeks faded to white. The rage which burned behind her tilted eyes faded, so once more they shone like the gold-green of a river in sunlight. She sighed and rubbed her face with both hands.

Gaspare took a long, shuddering, welcome breath. “Sweet Gesu, woman: what did you do to me?” he cried shakily, struggling up from the earth.

Saara became aware of the youth. “There you are, Gaspare.” Her regard became awkwardly intense. “What a terrible trouble you have gotten me into!”

His long jaw opened and closed rhythmically. He made fish mouths. “I? Got YOU into trouble? My lady, you nearly killed me just now; I couldn't breathe!”

She waved aside this discursion.

“Do you know who that spirit was, who came up the path in the shape of Damiano?”

He frowned heavily and shrugged. “I guessed myself that it wasn't —wasn't Damiano, I mean. When it turned into a dragon…”

“A wyvern. It had only two legs.”

“… when it turned into a scaly monster. Damiano, in all the time I knew him, never showed any signs of doing such a thing. Who was it, then?”

“It was the Liar,” and she hid her eyes behind her hands once more.

“Ah!” Gaspare nodded sapiently. “That's better. I had half a notion it might have been Satan himself. After me for my sins.”

Hazel eyes popped open again. “But it was. It was the one you call Satan, and he had come for you. For your sins.”

Gaspare collapsed again to the earth, and he stuck all eight of his fingers into his terrified mouth. He gave one high, thin wail.

Saara glowered at this lack of discipline. “Don't worry. You're safe. I went instead of you.”

“You did what?” He pulled himself toward the cot of branches, a look of dazed gratitude illuminating his ill-assorted features. “You took my sins upon yourself? You went to hell? Suffered for me?”