Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) Read online

  The Soldier of God flexed. Marvelous, glorious, the wine red—

  The red wine became himself. He stretched now to fill the world, and heard himself bellow far away. Head touching sky. Heart and lungs of sounding brass. The ecstasy sharp as any other sharpest joy, the battle-wrath.

  The sides of the two ships bumped, then ground together.

  Cannon barked. Another missile tore by above and this time clipped Virgo Maria’s topmost mast. A section of wood crashed behind Cristiano as he leaped, oblivious, over the bows.

  God—I am Your slave—Nothing save You.

  Sword was arm, arm sword. Body unbreachable shield.

  He hacked and lunged. No one could come at him. A grinning man of metal, teeth bared—the machine of Heaven.

  His voice thundering, Ve Nera of God!

  God’s holy war. They would win. They were unstoppable.

  He smashed a man’s jaw, treading over him, and cut two others free of life.

  On all sides, the holy army, the slick of steel, blood bursting like a poppy.

  Ve Nera of God—

  (The third ship he had leapt to? The tenth?)

  Miles below the stink of gall and offal, blood and excrement, the tinder smell of the ballistas and their iron cooking.

  Jumping now across another rail. Ocean irrelevantly glimpsed and gone. Sword and arm, hack and lunge. Roil of brass and red.

  A face—quite young—a handsome boy with honey skin and fawn’s eyes black as jet, yet with a silver rim—sometimes these momentary images caught in the red net—then vanished—dead of Cristiano’s war sword, and that other man-beast, knifed under the chin, both trampled underfoot.

  This ship too was going down. (The fifth he had leapt from? The seventh?)

  Aretzo punching at Cristiano, dragging him—”Come this way. Jump. She’ll pull us under as she goes—”

  “He, Aretzo.” Lucid a moment, inappropriately lucid for Aretzo, who did not understand.

  A scramble, up over the side—help forthcoming—which ship this one? Oh, a Christian vessel—blood-red darkness, heavy, and settling.

  Cristiano shuddered.

  “Drink this.”

  He drank the water mixed with wine. It tasted of soot.

  This ship lacked any cannon. One mast was gone, chopped like a tree. The sails like wrung-washing on the deck. Men lying weeping, holding in their guts … He was coming up from the redness. Movement. Rowers working at the oars.

  “What?” he said.

  The ship’s master, a third of his face a mask of blood: “We’re standing off, Bellatoro.”

  “Yes,” he said. Then, “We have won.”

  The master of the ship that was not the Virgo Maria, spat. “No, Bellatoro. Look, can’t you see?”

  “He’s battle-crazed yet,” said Aretzo. He sounded sulky. Cristiano saw abruptly that Aretzo had somehow mislaid his left arm. Which was bizarre—it could not have occurred.

  Aretzo, losing consciousness, sank back against the washing-sails, coloring them.

  Cristiano looked out from the ship.

  A bank of cannon was belching once more, from somewhere. The missiles arced and dropped, flaming and smoking, into a wreckage of smoke and flame.

  Like a ruined pile of brushwood, trodden on, the mess of ships. Those white sails, the painted crosses and Madonna-Venuses, brave flags, crests, burning, burning, on a water poison green and streaked with oil and fire. Loose spars and oars and planking rammed each other, and floating corpses. And men were swimming everywhere or going under. Heads that bobbed like strange fish, called in mortal voices.

  Beyond, towards Ciojha across an interval of sea, the fleet of Jurneia, still clean and whole, grouped in a gracious cluster. Surely one thousand ships still. It was impossible. He—they—had killed Jurneia. But like the Hydra, she had grown these other heads.

  The wounded ships of Ve Nera straggled away, picking up survivors, sometimes, where they could.

  And now it seemed, Jurneia let them go.

  “Ship’s master, turn back. I order it.”

  The master, a head shorter than Cristiano, buckled into leather for the fight, his face divided, squared up to the Knight of God pugnaciously. “I will not. Scan about. Any vessel we have left is making off. If you’re so razor-keen for death, signore, there’s your way.”

  Aretzo, surfacing, let out a silly laugh.

  “He would, but he doesn’t swim.”

  From the ships of Jurneia a kind of ululation was going up. Mockery—triumph—who knew. They did not follow the retreat.

  Not yet.

  “Ve Nera requires we return and fight,” said Cristiano.

  The master spat again, at the feet of this steel-clad fiend. Then turned and left to go about the business of escape.

  Cristiano lowered himself beside Aretzo. He bound the gouting stump that had been Aretzo’s arm. They must cauterize soon.

  Aretzo did not speak again.

  The sky beyond the smoke, like the sea, was weirdly green. In it they saw the moon, as clearly as if by night.

  7

  When he came from the Chapel of Micaeli, by the Primo’s South Door, Fra Danielus met Brother Isaacus among the pillars there.

  They were like the trees of a wood, the pillars, gray carven trees, with gilded branches. You might expect to meet some creature lurking in a wood, after sunfall.

  “Good evening, brother.”

  “Stay still. I’ll speak to you.”

  “If you wish.”

  “You keep a woman in the Primo, Danielus. Not a holy sister, a nun. A woman. In this sacred place.”

  Danielus waited.

  Isaacus snarled in his half-voice, foul breathed as any bear or wild dog, “You don’t speak. Can’t. You transgress, Fra.”

  “Then I must answer, must I not.”

  “You cannot.”

  “The woman kept here under my protection, is not a woman.”

  “Oh, a conundrum, Fra, is it? She is a woman. That bitch you paraded before the Ducem, like her whoresman.”

  Danielus said nothing.

  Isaacus swelled like a toad. “If you were not what you are—I’d have our men come to you, our Eyes and Ears of God.”

  Danielus did speak. “They’re welcome, brother. Meanwhile, there is other news than the Maiden Beatifica.”

  “What news? What?”

  “Has no one come to you, Brother Isaacus? This grieves me.”

  “Ah—the ships. God favored the righteous. There was a victory. The acts of the Council were not in vain, and saved this contaminate City.”

  “No.”

  Isaacus drew back. His face in its hood quavered, then slammed itself shut.

  “You say no.”

  “Most of the Veneran ships went to the bottom. A handful are limping home. They sent a messenger, one of the doves they carried for the purpose. Jurneia had the victory. We’ve only to wait for her.”

  Isaacus clamped tight his lips. Then rasped some incomprehensible sound.

  “Your throat seems worse, brother.”

  Isaacus turned and went away, leaving only the ghosts of his odors, and the memory of his venom.

  She had had her supper, a herbal gruel, and was in her room. Before lying down on the floor, with the blanket and cushion, Beatifica was praying to her pink-veiled Madonna.

  Finishing three Latin prayers suitable for the Virgin, Beatifica crossed herself and rose.

  Then she felt dissatisfied, kneeled down again, and began another prayer.

  Her enjoyment of religion was very great, and had been noticed by very many. “She loves to be at prayer,” they said. She attended every one of the services, including Prima Vigile, in a small chapel adjacent to the Golden Rooms. Here her tutor, the young priest, accompanied her for Prima Pegno and sometimes the Solus. Other higher priests came there on their own account, and sometimes Bellatae of the Upper Echelon.

  Although clad always as a male, Beatifica’s garments at these times were the soft gr
ay of a nun’s habit. She had no ornament and carried her little plain cross in her hand.

  She should have covered her head, of course, as a woman. She did not.

  Some of the priests evidently sought the chapel only to squint and frown at her. These she seemed not to see. (Even now, she expected nothing generous from people. While they did not lay harsh hands on her, she accepted and forgot them)

  Jian too was frequently present, for the Venusium, or Luna Vigile. Before the ships had sailed, some hundred or so others of the Upper Echelon crowded by relays into the tiny, elegant chapel, for one office or another.

  It was suspected they were her guard of honor, although she scarcely glanced at them, nor did they look at her more than once or twice. They were gazing at her instead clandestinely, with the eyes of the soul.

  “It is unwise for these young men, sworn to a celibate life, to hang about so round a female. Especially a female dressed so shamelessly.”

  Jian had responded, not realizing the Magister Major had somehow laid such concepts in his mind, “To us, holy-brother, she isn’t a woman. She is the vessel of God.”

  “Take care. You’re perilously close to the sin of blasphemy.”

  “Revered brother, I mean, in the same sense as a window may let in the light. She is so clear and open. One sees through her, to the Power beyond.”

  Besides Danielus, her patron, was himself a power. He had, in all his twenty-eight years with the Church, and by dint of his noble birth, made sure of that. Arguments were suspended.

  And the Bellatae remained irreproachable. And the girl—she seemed properly aware, it was true, only of God.

  Yes, she enjoyed all the matters of religion. She loved—although she did not fully know it—her hours of talk with the gray-haired priest Fra Danielus sent her as confessor. (She relished talking, and to be asked questions with such interest, to know so much—but what?—depended on her answers.) And the kind ancient confessor was swift to say to one and all, “I can tell you, there’s no seal of secrecy to break with the Maiden. She is devoid of any crime or failing. I give her penances sometimes because, once informed of their purpose, she asks them of me. She loves to pray. She thinks only of Christ, the Virgin and God.” And now and then he had been led to add, “Woman is a weak straw, prone to error. At certain times, God causes to be born a woman who may come to serve as an example, both to women and to men, that even for these faulty ones, grace is possible.”

  Danielus had always chosen well.

  After the ships sailed, for four days, only Jian, with two other Bellatae, had come to every office in the chapel.

  But two days before setting out, nearly four hundred of the Upper Echelon had come, in changing groups. And when Beatifica left the chapel, they had stared, for the first, intensely at her.

  She felt their eyes, but she had felt eyes searing on her before. She did not look. They did not harm her. Even the few flickering touches of their fingers on her cloak’s edge or sleeve, were not the prologue to abuse.

  She had got used to them in a way. Perhaps, in a way, she was moved by them, just a little. (Their faces, fierce looks, the young male scent of them, the maculums of mail, their strength, the yearning that sang and trembled when they spoke their orisons.) One more interesting thing. Something else which was pleasant to do.

  In the chapel, on the night before the fleet sailed, after the Auroria, one of the Soldiers of God—one only—cried out to her.

  “Beatifica—Maiden—before this great battle, give us your blessing.”

  The disapproving priests froze, scandalized.

  The girl turned, and said quietly, “No one has taught me how to bless. But the priests know how.”

  One or two of the scandalized were caught by this.

  They nodded. She spoke the truth, and was modest.

  Of course, she had only been speaking a fact.

  But the Bellator left his place and went to her, and before she could become unnerved—he was tall and vigorous—he kneeled at her feet.

  Beatifica thought. She had an inspiration.

  “I’ll ask the Virgin to bless you.”

  And she said one of the prayers to Maria, which began although Beatifica did not completely know it, O most rare Mother, we entreat you, comfort your earthly sons, and beg from God, who will not refuse you, pardon and deliverance.

  “She dares to intercede—is she a priest then?” one of the still-scandalized exclaimed.

  But another one said, “This is a prayer a mother would use. She makes herself their mother, and sister.”

  And Beatifica’s tutor, who had come to the early mass, said quickly, though blushing, “This prayer is allowed to women, brothers. I myself taught it her.”

  Now, before the Virgin icon, Beatifica at last finished her general praying. She might lie down. Although she slept less well than she had in Ghaio’s house, where exhaustion had always felled her.

  She went to the window and looked into the night garden below. All blossom had left the peach, its leaves were dark. Thin light fell from another high narrow window, and colored a single red rose.

  After all, in an hour she could get up again for the Luna Vigile.

  Just then the door was knocked.

  This always alarmed her. Not the summons, the recent courtesy.

  “Yes, I’m here,” said Beatifica.

  A servant of the Golden Rooms was outside.

  “Maiden, will you come, the Magister Major is waiting.”

  Beatifica smiled. She was happy: something to do.

  She followed the servant at once.

  As she entered, Danielus regarded Beatifica closely. A nicer life, coinciding with the ripening of womanhood, had been kind to her. She had not gained any weight, but a soft bloom was added to her skin, and great luminosity to her eyes, and the remarkable hair. She must be almost sixteen.

  “Are you well, Maiden?”

  She accepted the name. She had always accepted the names given her, and the titles, whether benign or crude.

  “I’m well.”

  No thanks, obviously. Her presumed superiors she would never think to thank, or to inquire after.

  “Were you told of the sea-fight?”

  “Yes. My tutor told me.”

  “You know it was lost.”

  “Yes, Magister.”

  “This City also lost a great many men. And of the Bellatae Christi, our Soldiers of God, five hundred went out, and less than one hundred and sixty return to us.”

  No response. No one was real to her. But wait—her eyes stole up, fixed on his, stared straight through him. What did she look for, in that unseen area—which others took for some divine, visionary place, or Hell, perhaps. Which he himself assumed was a kind of vacancy she studied when unsure, to see what might appear to her. Or was she really so uncomplex? Very likely. Light poured through the clearest vessel. Genius and intellect cloudily impaired the way. Most saints were simple. The Apostles had been, mostly, peasants.

  She said, contradicting everything, “The Bellator Cristiano?”

  Cruelly—was it being cruel ?—he delayed.

  Her eyes had focused on him. Nothing to be read from her. Not self-control—more, surely, the inability to demonstrate her emotion.

  “Cristiano,” Danielus said, “survived the fight.”

  She looked away again. She said, “Yes. What else.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “God wouldn’t let him die.”

  “Why not?” He spoke slowly. “Beatifica, answer me. Why not?” And for a second, a breathlessness was in him, not unlike the pressure he had felt, waiting as the first ship back to the outer quays sent in its messages of survivors.

  “God,” said Beatifica, “loves Cristiano.”

  “He loves us all, Beatifica. Yet sometimes, through the evil and unwisdom of men, He must let us perish. Cristiano is subject to this law.”

  She astounded him. She moved, shaking her head. He noticed a wildness in her, as he had th
ought he had, long ago. “No, no.” But her voice was not raised.

  Danielus was torn between a strange delight, and a foreboding. That she might love Cristiano tickled him in a hundred ways, both spiritual and profane. Partly, surely, he had wanted it—these two extraordinary beings. Beyond that, she must never be caught out in it by another.

  “Beatifica, you can have no favorites. Do you understand? That would be dangerous. I warn you now.”

  She said, flatly, “No, Magister. But he is my angel.”

  “In the name of God—what makes you say such a thing?”

  “You say God shows me things.”

  “Yes, I have said so.”

  “The serpent and the angels and the red mountain. And my mother, who taught me to make the fire.”

  “Yes.”

  “God showed me my angel. I didn’t remember at first. Then I did. It was as I was praying. The image of the Angel Micaeli in his armor, in the chapel here. It reminded me. But my angel was Cristiano.”

  If she was in love, she was cool. No alteration in her color. Her breathing slow and even. Only insistence had made her wriggle in her seat and shake her hair at him.

  Danielus got up. He lifted her to her feet.

  “Look at me, Beatifica. Listen to me. Never speak of this to anyone else. Do you grasp what I’ve said?”

  “Yes, Magister.”

  She learnt quickly. He must trust in that. He was sorry, though, her eyes drooped away, losing for a moment their luster.

  “You’re our hope, Beatifica.” Did that mean anything to her? He thought it did not. “Jealousy is everywhere. Treat all equally in deed and word.”

  “Yes.”

  And now, at this crisis point, he must take her to do the other thing, so vital and so risky. But all of it was risk. She had been put into his waiting hand, this slender fiery sword of God.

  “Seven ships have returned from the sea-fight, Beatifica. And another five may come. Boats are rowing in the wounded and the dead, over the lagoon. Your white clothes have been brought. They’re in the closet there, where you can put them on. Then come out with me. I want you to walk among the survivors and the dead. Beatifica, will you do that?”

  She glanced. “Yes, Magister.”