Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) Read online

  Cristiano thought the apple in the fire perished very slowly. It had not yet burned away. He said, “Is that all the story?”

  “She lived as a slave. And died as one. She reputedly bore several children. They said she was docile and biddable, but for all that, a sorceress.”

  “Why?”

  “She could bring fire.”

  “Yes, I guessed that would be it.”

  “According to Suetonius, they called her Cucua, the nearest they could get to her name. She told them her knack of lighting the fire and lamps had been given her from a mountain, which she visited in her childhood. A red mountain, which was the home of spirits.”

  “Did her gift pass on?”

  “Well, Cristiano. Perhaps it did.”

  “But it was long ago. And do they say where she died?”

  “Gaius Suetonius names the place. I can’t discover it. In Italy, for sure.”

  “She might by now have many descendants.”

  “Blood dilutes. As water does.”

  Danielus slowly drew off his cross and put it down. It seemed heavy to him, as he handled it. “Maybe all of it is only my fancy. Or a Roman fancy. Or an ancient lie. But the fire, Cristiano, that’s quite real. Go and sleep now. Yes, go on. Throw yourself off into the abyss of slumber. Perhaps the answer is there for you, waiting.”

  Cristiano straightened.

  Danielus looked at him, thinking of the boy of fifteen long ago—the girl’s age now, probably. And, strangely, her eyes also, here clouded only by another color, by masculinity, and by intellect.

  It was in this one he had seen her gaze. And this one who held also her power of fire, but frozen cold as ice and trapped for ever inside.

  Cristiano approached and dropped to his knee.

  The Magister extended the emerald for him to kiss.

  Presently, in the chamber outside, Cristiano’s step was firm, then sluggish. The pallet groaned. Then silence.

  But even after the candles had been dowsed, the inner room smelled on and on of burning apples.

  Beatifica lay curled on her right side, one palm under her cheek.

  She was dreaming, and did not know it.

  Most likely she would not recall her dream on waking, only that she had been, as always, a great distance from the earth.

  It was not Alter Mundi—God’s Other World—which now she traveled. Instead, against soft dimness she neither heard nor saw, she beheld an angel.

  He was tall and spare, and behind him the great wings had opened, like the wings of a swan she had seen carved in the altar rail of the Little Cappella. They were darkly white, and touched with a watery glow, shifting, elusive. In one hand he grasped a drawn sword. Again, perhaps, like an image she had been shown, this time among the Primo’s Golden Rooms, Micaeli, the warrior angel of the Bellatae. And, like the Angel Micaeli, this angel too wore a maculum of glistening mail.

  The girl was spellbound, not awed. She was entranced.

  She observed him until he faded in the depths of her sleep. She had not seen his face. Perhaps he had not had one. But within his diadem of flame, the hair hung long, a pale gold almost white.

  BOOK TWO

  Mundus Imperfectus

  PART ONE

  And there went out another horse that was red: and power was given to him that sat thereon to take peace from the earth, and that they should kill one another: and there was given unto him a great sword.

  REVELATION OF JOHN THE DIVINE

  The Bible

  I

  APPARENTLY HE COULD NOT VISIT. She had guessed he might not, despite an earlier letter. She would keep the Festival for the household, any way. It was the Feast of Sweets, after which came the forty days fasting and penance of the Quadraginta, to mark Christ’s sojourn in the wilderness.

  Veronichi combed her long black hair with the sandalwood comb. A vanity from the East. Crusades had first brought such trifles into Ve Nera. What irony: going out to enforce God among the infidel, they had returned meshed in and trailing infidel pleasures, unguents and perfumes, curious foods and scented baths. Also things it was not wise to talk of—aphrodisiacs, sodomy, the theology of another God passing as the true one.

  But her hair was very black; she thought so, almost amused, hiding it now inside her linen cap. The hair of a Jewess

  Danielus had rescued her from that. That is, from living as the Jews of Venus were supposed to do.

  To her last day she would never forget the morning that life ended.

  The house had stood against the ghetto wall—of course, on its inside. Plaster had crumbled from the house, exposing wounds of raw red. It was the same with all the houses of the ghetto. Besides, mostly the ghetto comprised huts. Filth was everywhere. She had thought nothing of it, then, nor the stench of poverty. (She could not bear dirtiness or bad smells now. When the lagoon brought her the summer stinks of Venus, Veronichi’s household on Eel Island choked instead on roomfuls of fresh roses and smoking gums.)

  She was the niece of a rabbi. He, living alone, had taken her in during her infancy. Her parents were gone, and she learned, then, nothing of them, and never much. Later she would wonder if her mother had been stoned for adultery. For Veronichi—then called Yaelit—was the child of a Christian, a prince of the outer City. And by the death-bed confession he had made, Yaelit gained her escape. For the prince confessed to one of his legitimate sons, Danielus, by then a priest high in the sacerdocracy of the Primo. The confession was not greatly original. On a drunken sortie through the Jewish quarter, the prince had seen the woman who was to be Yaelit’s mother. He felt himself enamored, had her abducted, stored a few months in some place he used for such sport, and made love to her until love ended. Then he sent her back to her Jewish husband, and the ghetto. Yaelit was the result.

  Following the demise of her actual father, the prince, Yaelit was in turn taken from the slum within the wall.

  That scene, never to be forgotten. Her uncle, the rabbi, pulling her back into the room. Threatening he would cut her throat rather than allow her to be defiled, (the inevitable fate) or worse, made into an apostate—a Christian. Already he had been planning to wed Yaelit to a scholar of the quarter, a man even older than himself. She was by then seventeen, and had been kept single so long only in order to tend her uncle’s house—his unpaid servant. With marriage, she would have much the same position, but now maintaining two houses. She would cook and clean from the scraps of existence, revere her husband and bow to him in all things, as she did her uncle. But also she would have to lie down under the ancient scholar and conceive for him a son. Worse than all this, though, was the knowledge she must cut off her hair, and put on instead the traditional dry horsehair wig of a Hebrew wife. This proposed robbery frightened Yaelit. Had not the hero Samson lost his strength and spirit when shorn? Her uncle slapped her: what did that matter; she was no hero, but a woman.

  The Christian men sent by Danielus came through the ghetto gates, however, armed with staves and knives, and in the end the rabbi, hideously cursing them and spitting foam, let Yaelit go.

  How tall the ghetto walls had seemed, and looking back, she saw men and women in black, wailing and gnashing their teeth at her destiny—as if she had been cast out of paradise. Then, the Christian guards outside the gates, jeering and laughing. But then she was through, and she saw sunlight, which seemed now different, and the glitter of the canals, which were that day filled by rippling chains of jewels rather than water.

  Her uncle had been right. She had become a Christian, naturally.

  Veronichi, no longer Yaelit, pressed home the linen cap. But all her hair lay under it. Her hair remained for her. Whenever she wished, she might let it down. She smiled. She would presently write to the Magister Major.

  ‘Dearest and most respected brother, pray do not leave your promised visit too long. You know I am always anxious at my management of your house, here. And I have not been well …’

  On the Island of the Rivoalto, the palace and ground
s of the Ducem vividly fluttered with pitch brands, candles, hanging Eastern lamps. Joffri had declared the Feast of Sweets must be a “Sunny Night.”

  As Joffri strolled through the gardens with two pretty women, and with three ivory hounds trotting behind them, he and his ladies tossing candies covered by goldleaf into fountains, dogs, and the jaws of small children, a messenger waited in the shadows of an adjacent court.

  He could hear the laughter and the outbursts of fun, the music of harps, bells and trumpets. Distant small topaz explosions denoted runners with torches. But nobody came for him. He sat there, kicking his heels.

  It was not particularly warm.

  His mind uneasily announced to him that, from what he had been hearing, it had been warm enough elsewhere. Where did those stories start? He had met them at once, coming into the City. Some farms out on the plain, claiming they had seen a naked virgin, clothed modestly in fiery hair, riding a pale horse through the fields at dawn. And from the bare furrows, a flock of birds flew up, all on fire, but not burned, not harmed. And later, someone saw a flock of burning geese, rushing down like the sun falling out of the sky. Their wings were full of flames, which gradually went out as they settled to feed. There had been talk of a Plague Virgin half a century before. This was a Fire Virgin. An omen of war? Did it mean God would help Ve Nera—or destroy it?

  The dispatches and letters the messenger carried came from Candisi. Later they would be shown at the Primo.

  Although not informed of the contents of his satchel, the messenger had some ideas about it. Probably such news was unsuitable for the Feast of Sweets. For this reason, the advisors of the Ducem were making the dispatches wait.

  One thousand and ten ships were now, it seemed, assembling at Jurneia. With the first fullness of spring they would set sail. Ve Nera might expect them by the Crab Month—or before, if God did not deter the winds.

  The messenger reached into his tunic and touched the old lucky coin, bronze, with the figure of Neptune, the sea god, cut on it. He had already sent his family packing to the hills. A panicked exodus later might have impeded them.

  It was said the City had, standing, or building at the shipyards of Torchara, four hundred ships. But more likely that was less.

  An enemy could only come at her properly from the sea, and then her channels were too narrow to let them in. But the sand bars of the lagoons would be nothing to them. They would haul their ships over by means of slaves, on logs if necessary. Besides, the tides could flood quite high even in summer. And the sea walls were not very much. The lagoons would fill with ships as well as water … Jurneia had cannon. On every vessel?

  Screams of merriment burst up from Joffri’s gardens.

  After this feast came Quadraginta. The wilderness.

  An official was approaching.

  The messenger rose.

  Not an official, a priest. More, one of the Council of the Lamb—all in black, stooping slightly, with fish-pale, worm-thin eyes.

  The messenger knelt.

  “Holy brother.”

  “Yes. That’s well enough. Take yourself to the kitchens, and eat. You may leave your bag with me.”

  Again, uneasy, the messenger held the satchel, still.

  “My lord the Ducem—”

  “The Ducem shall have it.”

  The documents, in the hands of skillful scribes, would only take an hour or so to copy.

  Reluctant yet distracted, the messenger gave Brother Sarco his dispatches. He went to the kitchens, where he fell asleep over his food.

  “When your heart is mine

  “You may do as you will to—”

  That song had come back. It was a disgusting and lewd song. The goddess Venus, married to Vulcanus, engaged in lechery with the war god, Mars. Give me your heart, she said. You will be the freer without it. But, she warned, if you cause me to love you, I shall make you give up the world for me.

  Careless of her admonition, Mars stretched her on her back, smoothed her nacre breasts, parted the sea waves of her hair and thighs, and drowned in her. But his spasms, while drowning, rendered her such delight, she loved him, and he was lost.

  It had been a chant to God. The soul, loving God, was made free. But if God should choose to love that soul above other souls, by which it was meant, select that soul for some duty to Heaven, then the world must be renounced, and all things, but the service.

  They knew this, the four priests, (Eyes and Ears) as they stood by the door. Behind them on the night canal, the Styx boat waited like a crocodilius from some fearsome bestiary.

  Fists slammed on the door.

  Within, the noise rose riotous, subsided abruptly.

  They had to knock again.

  A little boy came, in an apron—a slave—he was pushed aside.

  From the drunken inner room, the master of the house came out, hot-faced with fear.

  “Brothers—what can you want here? It’s a Christian household—we celebrate the fore-penitence feast—”

  “You’re Jacmo Leatherer?”

  “Yes, brothers, yes, but—”

  “Look at your own sins, flaunted there on your body.”

  In horror, the leather-maker gaped at his own corpulence, his tunic of good wool trimmed by embroidery—for the feast. The leather belt his own shop had made, studded with silver.

  “I paid my tax on it, brothers—yes, even though I and my son worked it.”

  “You’re too gaudy always, Jacmo. And too loud. Come. You must tell us more. We will listen.”

  Dragged in the boat, and rowed away, Jacmo weeping now. Once leaning over to puke from terror in the lagoon.

  Other boats were stealing on. In each, beside the priests, a man or two, or three or four, with sagging faces of dismay. One boat with five whores in it. Bony from malnutrition, or fat with it, fat on stodges that gave no life. But, “You eat too much. Gluttony. Gluttony and lust.” “I never like my work, brother. I give.” “You give? For coin? You sold the flesh the Almighty leant you.”

  Rowed over water, these lamenting souls. Styx boats, yes. Towards the pearl-domed Primo, which now, by night, was like the gateway to the Underworld.

  And in the under-rooms of it, a light like Hell from the braziers, in which weird tools were heating up.

  “No—holy brothers spare my hands—I need my fingers for my work—”

  “For delving in the dish? For tickling in concupiscence?”

  “My trade—my trade—”

  “Then repent, my son.”

  “For what? For what? I’ve done nothing. It’s my money you want—for the ships—very well—yes—take it—”

  “No, my son. It’s your soul we wish to cleanse.”

  Cries. Such cries.

  Prayers. Confessions which were invented to stay the pincers and the iron burning white.

  Rumor said the underlings of the Council threw the corpses off a bridge some way over the Laguna Fulvia. Not too close to the Primo.

  “Is he alive?”

  “I think not … No. He’s gone. Prayers must be said.”

  On the long stone stair, a man was standing, watching, as the latest corpse—the leatherer’s—was shifted. In the hood, the watcher’s face was swarthy. When he spoke, his voice was rough, as if from coughing.

  “Remember too, you scour Ve Nera clean. The enemy sails towards us, the Children of Satanus. If we’re found wanting, what destruction may not befall us?” They heeded, looking up, their eyes glinting in the brazier light—black rats. “These foul sins of theirs must be cauterized, and the body of the City healed. Or He will blast us all. Remember those other cities of the plain.”

  One of the Eyes and Ears replied.

  “It’s true, Brother of the Lamb. Who hasn’t heard the story of the creature, formed like a girl, who burns down the houses of wrong-doers?”

  The priest on the stair said nothing. Then he said, “This is only some make-believe.”

  (On the floor now, the dead man lay as if listening too. Make-
believe had not saved him.)

  “But many saw it. She walked in fire—and since then several have seen the thing. A being wrapped in hair which burns—”

  “They thought her a witch,” said another. “But she vanished. It was even thought we took a witch and questioned her, but that witch was only a simpleton. We lashed her and let her go—”

  And another said, “Brother of the Lamb, God may already have sent down an avenging angel. It might take any form, to test us.”

  “A female—” rasped the man on the stair.

  From across the black room, yet one more black rat cheeped up. His hands had blood on them. He said, piously, “The Immaculate Maria was at first only a girl. And the luminous Santa Caterina, who chastely wedded Christ.”

  The corpse was being quickly borne out now. There were others to see to. How many more would perish tonight, to fund and clean the City?

  The swarthy priest glanced at dead Jacmo.

  “Did he confess?”

  “Yes, Brother of the Lamb. He said, beyond his vainglory and noisiness, he had copulated, twice, with his neighbor’s dog. A bitch. It might have been worse. Here’s the paper. He signed it. That is, we assisted him to sign … his hand—Seven hundred silver duccas, and his house, to come to the Council. The fine is just.”

  “Was he long in his dying?”

  “No, gracious brother. And he died in the end in a state of grace, may Christ be blessed.”

  The corpse was gone now. The underlings would be in charge of it. Off to the bridge … deep water could hold so much.

  Jacmo, who copulated with dogs. Renzo, who had eaten meat on a fish day, challenging and cursing the Trinity. A whore known as Happy, who had worshipped the devil and boasted she had that month served as many men as Jurneia sent ships.