Part 9 (1/2)
The bees were already awake, but then the bees had retired earlier than Saara. She stepped from her hut into the light to find Gaspare stretched on the ground, waiting for her. His orange hair and red face shone like two clas.h.i.+ng flames against the green of the bee balm. The young man leaped to his feet.
”I can do it for you, my lady,” he stated, biting off his words with force. ”Give me two silver florins and seven days and I can do it.” His frosty green eyes bore into hers, while his long mouth fairly trembled with intensity.
Saara, who had not slept well, was beset with a desire to turn around and go back indoors, pulling the door behind her. Instead she yawned, combed her hair with her fingers, and replied, ”Do what, Gaspare?” ”Go to the Devil,” he replied.
Saara lowered herself onto the gray rock which stood beside her door. This rock had a shape rather like that of some quadrupedal animal with very round sides and stubby legs. She called this rock her housedog, although the rock had come first, with the house being built behind it.
She considered the possibility that Gaspare were joking with her. He did not appear to be joking, and certainly the boy had had enough stupid ideas in the past, but one could have stupid ideas and still make jokes. Finally Saara said, ”I have known men to go to the Devil before without needing two silver florins.”
His lips pulled away from his teeth as he answered, ”Ah, but without money it takes longer.”
Now Saara was certain he was joking. Almost certain. She sighed, wondering once again why Italians had to be like that. ”The problem is, young one, that we want to find the Liar, not be found by him.”
Gaspare smiled and sat himself down at her feet. His face pulled into a taut smile as he looked across at her.
Not up at her, but across. And there was something in his thoughtful expression that prefigured the man that was to be, once all of Gaspare's tempers and gangling limbs had come to terms at last.
Saara felt something like a blow over the heart as she remembered the starved boy Gaspare in ragged clothes who grabbed her about the knees, spouting gallant rubbish, on the road to Avignon, and the same fourteen-year-old who stood white-faced and silent beside the body of his friend. So she had seen one more boy grow out of childhood, and once again she hadn't noticed it happening.
This cannot go on forever, she said to herself Everyone growing and growing old and dying except Saara. I do not want it to go on forever.
Gaspare was watching her face attentively. ”Don't despair, my lady,” he comforted her. ”If Delstrego believes I can find old Scratch for you, then it must be that I can.”
She shook her head. ”It is too great a risk for you, Gaspare. Not only a risk of the body, but...”
He flushed to deep burgundy. ”What? That again? By San Gabriele, woman, haven't you learned by now that I am Gaspare the lutenist, not some postulant of a cloistered order, to be saved from thecontagion of the world!
”Why, Delstrego himself told you you needed my help. Would you throw away the word of the greatest musician of all Italy and Provence-and a blessed spirit besides?” His narrow form swelled with pa.s.sion and he waved fingers all through the air.
”Delstrego himself,” repeated Saara silently. Had Darni become history already, or a legend? What kind of legend died of the plague at the age of twenty-three?
A legend with one believer.
Or two.
But she understood the anger behind Gaspare's words. ”No, Gaspare. You are right, and I of all people know better than to protect a person against his own will. If you want to help me find the way to Satan's Hall, I will accept your help thankfully.”
Gaspare, who had been building up his emotions in case tantrums were necessary, felt his fury leak away. ”Hah? Good, then, my lady.”
But his voice still held an edge as he added, ”You must remember that Raphael is my teacher. And my friend.”
Saara stared at him coolly. ”He makes a lot of friends, that one,” she stated, and began braiding her damaged hair.
At the crown of the hill stood Gaspare, turning left and right in place. The sun of early morning sent shadows of birch over the ground like tangled lace, while the looming shadow of the larger sister peak to the northeast lapped up through the pines. The morning was impossibly sweet and beautiful, predicting a scorching day.
”Once,” the young man p.r.o.nounced, drawing his brow and scowling fiercely, ”when Delstrego wanted to locate a man he didn't particularly like, he walked back and forth through a city, noting when he felt most bothered and irritated. In that manner he drew nearer and nearer, until he could feel the fellow's presence directly.”
”It sounds like a good method,” replied Saara, who sat with her back against the bole of the tree, chewing a stem of sourgra.s.s. ”Of course, HE was a witch.”
Gaspare's overlarge pale eyes pulled away from the horizon to focus on Saara's small face. ”Could it be that I am too, my lady, and never have known it? Perhaps that was what he meant when...”
”No,” Saara cut in evenly. ”But I wouldn't let that worry you. Being a witch has its drawbacks.
”Do you feel more bothered and irritated-or perhaps more proud, since it was supposed to be your pride which connected you to Satan-in one direction more than another?”
Once again Gaspare revolved, this time with his eyes closed and hands out, while his cheeks brightened to a cheery red. ”I just feel immensely ridiculous,” he replied. The northerner nibbled her tattered leaf thoughtfully. She stared at her bare toes. ”Is there any direction in which you feel more ridiculous than another?” she asked reasonably.
”Yes. To the north, where I can feel you watching me spin like a top.”
Saara shot Gaspare a quick glance. ”But I'm not. Not until now. I haven't looked at you once.” Very quietly she rose and stepped past him.
The redhead dropped his hands to his hips, but his eyes remained sealed. ”Well, how am I to know if you are or not?” He had a habit of forgetting to call Saara ”my lady” when the least bit excited. Saara never noticed. ”I still feel ridiculous when I am facing you.” ”Facing me or facing north?” came her voice from behind him. Gaspare jumped and swivelled. He blinked at her confusedly.
”Facing... north.” His words were almost a whisper.
Saara's smile was slow and drawn. It aged her face. ”Good, then. Tell me, Gaspare, if you had to guess, and Damiano had never said a word about pride calling to pride, in which direction would you expect to find the Li-the Devil?”
Gaspare folded himself on the turf beside her, mindful of his skintight hose. ”As a child, of course, Ibelieved the Devil lived under the Alps, in the heart of winter. All the babies in San Gabriele are taught that.
”Now, being a man of some experience,” (he did not see or chose to ignore the flicker behind his companion's eyes) ”I know he is more to be found in the cities of the south, doing his work among men.”
Saara lifted her eyes to the green-black southern slopes, out of which the third sister peak rose like a rock from the sea. In the distance the haze was golden.
Then she turned her head (and like an owl, Saara could turn it very far) to inspect the looming, purple north.
”I think we should not be in too much hurry to grow up,” she commented.
”What would we do with him?” Saara exclaimed, for the third time. ”He is no goat, to bounce over the raw rock...”
Gaspare clutched his handful of black horse mane obstinately. ”This is the very animal that Delstrego rode through the mountains in the month of November, from Partestrada to San Gabriele and beyond.”
Saara ground her teeth together and thought that she would shortly have heard enough about ”Delstrego.” ”That was on a road, I think. If I am right, we will have little enough to do with roads on this journey. And when we reach the Devil's window in the rock (if we ever do), then what is the horse to do: grow wings and fly in?”
Gaspare glared from the restive gelding to Saara. ”Then he will walk home alone. It is no new thing for Fes-tilligambe. He's more than half savage as it is.”
Saara, too, peered into the animal's aristocratic face. ”Why don't we let him decide. If he is to take the risk...”
Gaspare snorted sullenly. His rapprochement with the black gelding was too hard-won for him to want to walk when he could ride. And he wasn't sure he trusted the witch, who could pretend to ask and then tell him the horse had said whatever she wished it to say.
But the justice of her proposal could not be denied. ”Ask then.”
Saara put one little hand beneath the horse's round chin, where spiky guard hairs grew untouched by knife or razor. ”Festigi-Festilli-Festie-oh, horse! Tell me, do you want to accompany us north into the Alps, toward that presence we saw together by the wine-shop door in San Gabriele? And will you help us to fight him?”
The geldings head snapped up into the air. He did an oversized double take, and then, rearing, he spun around and vanished down the hillside.
”Don't feel bad,” said Saara gently to Gaspare. ”Horses are not meant to be brave.”
But Gaspare did feel bad. He felt utterly desolate, and unworthy besides, for he remembered this same cowardly gelding standing foursquare over his injured master, holding off eight men and four whips.
In three years he-Gaspare of San Gabriele-had not won the animal's heart. Doubtless he never would.