Damiano's Lute by R. A. MacAvoy

made that agreement with Damiano in San Gabriele over a year ago, when Damiano had promised never to spellbind him if the horse would stay where put. He never had moved, and he never would. Never, never, never. The elegant black set his every muscle for the balk.
    The human, however, did not try to pull. Instead he tied the halter rope into the gray horse’s harness straps. Holding the gray’s cheekstrap loosely in one hand, he clucked to the massive animal.
    The rope tightened. Festilligambe dug in with his hooves. In two seconds he found himself flipped in the air and landing on his left shoulder and hindquarters, his legs still straight out before him. As he was dragged gently along the dry road, his face was a mask of equine bewilderment.
    Plague. There must be some mistake. The plague had vanished sixteen years ago, after destroying almost half of Europe. Surely it was like Noah’s flood, and God would not send it again. This must be some other pestilence; typhus or cholera. Something that would do its little damage (great enough to the people who died of it, and to the families of those who died of it) and fade away. Man was heir to so many diseases.
    Slowly Damiano began to pace along the great central aisle, cradling his lute high against his chest, his breath half choked by the stench. He peered only down the rows to his right.
    This man was a farrier; Damiano could tell because he still wore his divided leather skirt. Touching his head were the bare feet of a tall woman in black lace. Her handsome face, not young, had gone green. (At first he thought it was the window light, but no, there was no green glass in any window. She was green.) Her breath whistled two notes at once. She stared stupidly at Damiano’s lute, and her lips moved.
    What could he do but shrug his shoulders, apologizing for his healthy presence: a lute-carrying mountebank at death’s grim door? In reply she spoke one word, which he could not hear.
    There was a man at Damiano’s elbow. One of the religious who had ported the body from the right side to the left. A brother of Saint Francis, the musician noted.
    â€œIt was kind of you, my son, but I doubt many of them would notice.”
    It took Damiano a little time to understand. Then he shifted the lute from hand to hand. “Oh. Forgive me, Brother. I don’t mean to disturb.”
    He found himself repeating his words from the village gates. “I am a musician, and have come off the road seeking after a friend.”
    The Franciscan nodded. He lowered his eyes and replied, “Look, then. But for your own sake, do not touch.”
    This misunderstanding shocked Damiano. But as he opened his mouth to tell the friar that Gaspare could not possibly he here among the dying, having preceded Damiano down the road by only an hour, it occurred to him there was no use in it. Gaspare (if he had entered Petit Comtois at all) was subject to real danger.
    And so was Damiano. Between one moment and the next he remembered Satan’s words. “Soon. Perhaps a year or two. Perhaps tonight. “ And once more he touched the black bedrock of his existence, which was the fact that Satan had told him he was going to die.
    His hand trembled on the neck of the lute and he chided himself, asking himself why he should be frightened now at the sight and thought of death, when he had spent the last year and more preparing himself for that inevitability. After all, was that not the reason he had avoided involvement with women? And was it not at least part of the reason he had fallen into sleeping so much, sleep being death’s close kin?
    But no preparation could suffice; he was not at all ready to die. There were matters unsettled—matters such as Gaspare, who was angry with him. Such as that vision of green eyes and brown braids, and the singsong voice in his head which he could not quite understand.
    Saara. He wished he had said more to her.
    It came to Damiano all at