Damiano's Lute Read Online Free PDF Page A

and play as hard as he had done for the past year. It required concentration, which was the hardest of works, as well as the best.
    But no. Damiano might be a madman about his instrument, but he was not so deluded as all that. One could not pass off a bourrée as an act of friendship, any more than one could disguise as human warmth what was mere good manners and a dislike of conflict.
    And what had he taken from Gaspare in exchange for that counterfeit friendship? Rough loyalty, praise, energy, enthusiasm….
    Once Damiano had had his own enthusiasm. Enthusiasm and a dog. The dog died, and then the enthusiasm, and he had had only Gaspare.
    Eyes gone blind to the spirit, ears gone deaf to the natural world: it seemed to Damiano he had given as much as a man ought to be asked to give, for the sake of right. He ought to be allowed some peace now, for as long as he had left.
    But how could he say that to Gaspare, who had never possessed what Damiano had now lost?
    Suddenly it occurred to him to wonder which way the boy had gone. Surely he would continue to Avignon, to Evienne. Damiano raised his eyes.
    A minute later and Gaspare would have been out of sight, or at least out of the lutenist’s poor sight. But he was visible in the far distance ahead, a bobbing splotch of motley, jogging along faster than the horse’s amble. Frowning, Damiano tossed his hair from his face. Gaspare’s physical endurance inspired awe. Doubtless he would make it to the city alone, and probably he would go quicker and plumper than he would have in the lutenist’s company.
    Then truth stung Damiano’s black eyes. Beloved or no, Gaspare was necessary to him. In a manner totally removed from the question of like or dislike, Damiano Delstrego needed Gaspare because the boy believed in him—as a lutenist, as a composer.
    As a man of possibilities.
    Damiano did not believe he was the best lutenist in the Italies, any more than he had believed himself to have been the most powerful witch in the Italies—when he had been a witch. After all, he had only been playing (obsessively) for a handful of years. But Gaspare did believe that, and more. Gaspare was the first and only person in Damiano’s life who was convinced of Damiano’s greatness.
    It had been at first embarrassing, and then intoxicating, to have someone so convinced.
    It had become necessary.
    The world was filled with strangers. Gaspare, with all his prickliness and his ignorance (ignorant as a dog. Unreliable as a dog in heat), had become necessary to the musician.
    Damiano asked the horse for more speed, snapping the whip against the singletree. Festilligambe bounded forward, honking more like a goose than a horse. Harness snapped. The wagon boomed alarmingly.
    This was no good. Two miles of this speed and the mismatched wheels would come off.
    Damiano cursed the wagon. He’d rather be riding. But if he was to travel with Gaspare again, he’d need the ramshackle vehicle. Perhaps he ought to catch Gaspare on horseback, and then return to the wagon.
    But what had become of the boy? Damiano rose up in the seat, bracing one large-boned hand against the backboard and one ragged boot against the footrest. He jounced, clothes flapping on his starved torso like sheets on a line. His black screws of hair bounced in time with the wheels’ squeal, except for one patch in the back which sleeping on branches had left matted with pinesap. He squinted in great concentration.
    The road opened straight before him, swooping south and west, losing elevation as it went. Grass gave way to ill-tended fruit trees and bare stands of alder, and the wet ground was hummocked with briar and swamp maple, which twined like ivy. Less inviting countryside, was this, certainly. The clouds had returned and were multiplying, or at least swelling. In the distance appeared what might have been a village. (Or it might have been rock scree. Damiano was always tentative about things