"R. A. MacAvoy - Damiano's Lute" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacAvoy R A)

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Damiano's Lute
The razor was placed carefiilly back in Damiano's left hand. "Chastity, yes.
Ugliness, no."
Daxniano growled, "Saints are often quite ugly, and filthy besides, yet I am
told that God holds them in high regard." He began to pick hair from his
tunic.
"I know that to be true," replied the angel equably. "But I am not the Father.
And you, Damiano..."
"I know. I know." The razor was wrapped in rags and slipped into the back of
the wagon. "I am no saint. But I do my best, Raphael."
The wagon was moving again. Raphael said nothing for a while, and Damiano
dared not look around, but he knew the angel to be there on the seat beside
him. Finally Raphael said, "God be with you along this road, Damiano." It
sounded so like a farewell that Damiano replied with an "Et cum spiritu tuo,"
But the angel remained: unseen but almost palpably present. A mile passed,
then another. Dullness took Damiano, along with a drowse that the company of
his bright friend made pleasant.
The gray shape on the far hill was indeed a village, and growing closer. It
had a wall. Smoke fingered the sky. There was something in the road before the
village: something brown and slowly moving, like a yoke of oxen.
Perhaps it was market day, and the road was deserted only because everybody
was already in town. Damiano was peering ahead for any sign of Gaspare when
the angel spoke in his ear. "Keep trying," he said, and then he was gone. "
Keep trying for what? To find Gaspare? To look at Raphael? To stay well
groomed? Damiano could think of nothing else Raphael might have meant—except,
of course, keep trying to stay awake.
The road was filled with fresh ruts, but no vehicles either passed or had been
left beside the village's mud-plaster walls. In the distance someone was
singing in an aggressive and undisciplined bass. Those were men in the road in
front of the village gate; it was their coarse brown robes that caused them to
resemble oxen. G*ver all hung a faint odor of the shambles.
The singing grew louder.
Surely this was market day, and in a good-sized
Damiano's Lute
29
village, besides. Damiano's hands twitched on the reins, as he began to pick
out his program for the afternoon.
This place would welcome nothing delicate or too subtle, certainly, and
besides, much fingerwork wouldn't be heard over die noise. Country dances were
the thing, and part-songs the drunks could sing along to. Too bad he hadn t a
longer background in the local music; the Provencal and French music he had
learned in Italy was High Art stuff and wouldn't do at all.
Damn Gaspare for running off just when his capers would come in handy.
Now the gates were clearly visible: logs of split maple hung by great square
nails. They hung open. Damiano sat up in surprise to discover that die robed
men in the road were engaged in whipping three other fellows who knelt in
stocks set right in the open gateway.
His first reaction was typical of his time and culture. He snickered aloud,
wondering how much bran these bakers had put in their bread. Then the metal