Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) Read online

  “Yes, Knight. And in turn, I shall speak to you.”

  “Have I offended?”

  The pride, almost insolence, with which Cristiano had responded, amused Danielus slightly. He masked his amusement. He always did. Amusement, rancor, any vivid emotion. Even natural beauty he could regard unsmiling.

  “No, my son. This is something our order must soon hear of. You and your brothers first of all.”

  They walked through a second court, from which led the castra of the Bellatae, and their chapel, in which Cristiano had kept his Vigil. A wide marble stair took them up into the Primo’s flank. From here, an indoor stair of stone ascended to the Golden Rooms.

  The majesty of these apartments was lost, in a way, on Cristiano. As he expected everything of God, (seemingly this was mutual) so the magnificence of the Primo Suvio was inevitable. Not a marvel, merely a law obeyed.

  “Sit, if you will.”

  Cristiano took a chair in the book-chamber.

  Indirect sunlight from a window, paned in glass, burned his hand.

  Danielus sat down at his desk, and rested, as he often did, one hand on a polished human skull of abnormal size.

  To either side of him, on the wall at his back, were two panels, painted a century before by an artist unnamed, for the glory of God. In one panel the Biblical Danielo faced the lions in the pit. In the second, a single lion, now become the Primo’s symbol, was subdued once more by the Christ Child riding on its back.

  “I will speak first, if you permit,” said the courteous Danielus.

  “Naturally, Magister.”

  “It will be a war.”

  Cristiano thought, and nodded. “You’ve had a letter from the Ducem?”

  “That’s so. Ve Nera’s ambassadors have failed in the Eastern city of Jurneia. Failed so profoundly as to have had their heads put up on spikes in that place.”

  “The Jurneians are savages,” said Cristiano.

  “So we hear. And infidels, such as we fought in the Crusades. They haven’t forgiven us that, the spoiling of their city and capture of their wealth, nor the saving of so many of their kind from damnation by conversion to the one true Faith. Three hundred years and more have passed; they don’t forget.”

  Cristiano said, flatly, “I thought, Magister, it was a war about the price of silk.”

  Although he seldom smiled, Danielus had a way of conveying a sort of smile, by something in his eyes and brows. This happened now. “So it is. Mankind tends to that, don’t you find, Cristiano—the use of new excuses for an ancient grudge?”

  “Then it’s both a war of trade and holy war.”

  “As you say. The armies of the Ducem will be called for the first. The Soldiers of God for the second. In tandem, obviously.”

  “And the fighting ground, Magister?”

  “There’s some debate. Jurneia is readying her fleet it seems, and building more ships besides. So Ve Nera is to equip hers. But it may take a year for the enemy to be ready.”

  “Then we go to meet them?”

  “As yet, the Ducem makes no decision.”

  “But that will come?”

  “The decision, of course. What it will be is with God.”

  Both men left off speaking a moment. It was well known the Ducem of Ve Nera, unlike his predecessor, was a weak and idle man, and his advisors supposedly corrupt. Where the Church could over-master the sins and failures of lesser men, the highest-born could, for the most part, only be regarded.

  Danielus said, after a while, “There is the letter. Read it, if you so wish.”

  Cristiano took the letter. It was written clearly in Latin and black ink, on fine parchment.

  It was very polite, exact and vague at once. But, without any doubt, it smelled of war.

  “You see, Cristiano.”

  “Yes, Magister.”

  “There will be a lot to do. I think the Primo herself will need to buy in commodities to safeguard the people of this City, and ensure our interests in the markets of the outer world, to the same end.”

  Cristiano’s eyes, fearsomely clear and steady. “Trade again, Magister?”

  “You don’t see it, I think. What the delay may mean, if Jurneia is as powerful as she may be, and the Ducem slow, or his decision on the matter—ill-advised.” Cristiano blinked. “And now you do.”

  “Unthinkable—”

  “If their ships reach us, those who refuse or are unable to fly, will be besieged here.”

  “By the Christ—”

  “Of course, you don’t swear. It’s a prayer you uttered.”

  “Pardon me, Magister—yes, a prayer for Ve Nera under siege—”

  “The Jurneian ships are narrow, and oared, reportedly by slaves, although all sources do not agree on this.

  The rigging is heavy for the vessels’ shape. They have the new weapon, unperfected here, cannon. The men wrap their heads in cloth and worship their mistaken notion of God, facing towards the dawn. A strangely spiritual image … Other than siege, they may wipe this City from the face of the earth.”

  Cristiano rose. His hair burned white in the glow of the costly window. A halo.

  Danielus said, mildly, “Please sit, Knight. And tell me your own news.”

  Cristiano stared at him.

  “It’s nothing to this. Some witch by the Silvian Marshes. But she isn’t. The products of ignorance and malice hitched to one cart.”

  Danielus stroked the smooth pate of the giant skull on his table. A pious man kept always before him a Memento Mori. There was no life save through God.

  He had come across Cristiano when, at fifteen, the boy entered the novitiate of the Bellatae Christi. Even so young, Cristiano was striking, and despite his start among the slums, intelligent and strong. It would be easier to doubt one’s faith perhaps, than Cristiano’s sincerity, his absolute steely belief.

  A Magister Major had no favorites. Of course.

  “Do I assume, Cristiano, that you intervened.”

  “Yes, Magister.”

  “It had caught your eye. I don’t mean the witch, evidently. The situation.”

  “This happened by my sister’s inn. The story’s a fantastic one. If they put such imagination to the service of God, they’d do better.”

  “Let me hear the story, then.”

  Sometimes, she thought that she was in Ghaio’s house. But the big room was larger and had many tables. The kitchen was attached to the house, though entered by a separate door. There was a garden, she had seen it. It reminded her somewhat of the farm, or estate, from which she had come. She did not see many people. The blonde woman who was now, presumably, her owner, kept Volpa mainly in the kitchen. Here she did much as she had done in the house of Ghaio, cleaning pots, sweeping the floor, carrying nastier substances outside to tip into an open drain leading to a canal.

  Sometimes people stared at Volpa.

  No one spoke to her aside from her new owner.

  But who had ever spoken to her, much? Even her mother fell silent. Only in the dreams following her mother’s death had there been conversations. And all those words, now, she had forgotten.

  She had forgotten a great deal.

  Volpa did not know why or when Ghaio had sold her, and did not recall the process at all. She had one half formed memory, of fierce light, and of being very cold. And someone had helped her pick up her shift, and put it on, and then led her outside into the yard. Who had that been? She had seemed just woken from sleep at the time, and still not fully aware. Was this helper the blonde woman? The helper had been gentle, yet firm. The blonde woman was neither. She pushed Volpa aside or into place as though not liking to touch her. And she vacillated in her orders: Go and do that—no, do this instead. Leave this and go there—no, come back, stay put.

  Once she slapped Volpa. “Didn’t I say don’t let them see you?” And then the woman snatched at her own hand. “Oh—I never meant to strike you, poor thing!” While Volpa, used to blows, waited, puzzled.

  The woman was ca
lled Luchita. She was the wife of the innkeeper. This was an inn. The patrons did not like to see Volpa, so she must be kept from their sight. The persons in the kitchen did not like her either. There was a lean piebald cat kept for the mice and rats. Nor did he like Volpa, and sometimes, without reason, approached and bit her. Seeing this, some girl had cried out—“Now the cat’s poisoned!”

  Volpa remembered a red mountain in a dream—or had she and her mother really wandered there? (Had the mountains been scarlet above the Veneran Plain?) Once they had been on a hill, and looked up, and in the green sky angels passed. Volpa remembered that well. And a snake in a tree.

  Luchita rose from her knees. She had been praying to the Virgin, but only in the upper room, while her husband, laved in wine, snored an accompaniment. She had heard the Prima Vigile sound from Santa La’La—two hours after midnight. Useless to pray here. God heard only those who went into a church.

  There was never time to make the journey. She was so tired. Too tired to sleep beside the jolting snores. She struck the tinder and lit the candle-stub. She went down the narrow stair and into the corridor.

  It was summer, yet still not warm at such an hour.

  She suspected none of the three inn servants slept now in the kitchen. It was a cause of resentment, her letting the girl come in, letting her sleep there. But what else was there to do? Cristiano had insisted the girl have some care. He would speak with his superiors, he said, find a convent where she might be taken in. That was always his answer. Everything was only to be found in God. Long ago, he had told Luchita herself she might be happier out of the world—she, a nun! Damn him, his loins were made of ice and his heart of stone.

  No, no. Not so, not so. She loved him, he was good.

  He gave her money after the sot drank it away. He was beautiful—oh, to be chaste when equipped with such an armament. For certain, he was a godly man.

  Luchita cried tears. Wiped them off. Went out of the door and three steps over the yard and into the kitchen which was built against the house.

  Yes, as she thought. No one was there, only the mad girl lying by the hearth. Which was out, black and cold as a grave.

  Luchita felt angry. Her moods were easily upset after the still birth.

  She shouted.

  “Wake up, you slut! Don’t you know to keep the fire going?”

  As the form stirred—slender and fluid as a serpent—Luchita glared about to find the tinder. The kitchen was untidy, greasy, and smelled stale. The tinder was nowhere to be seen. She must use the candle then, make the fire, put on some herbs and water in a pan for comfort and perhaps sleep.

  At, least the fool was setting sticks on the hearth now.

  “That will do. Where did they stow the flint for the fire? You don’t know. Curse you, you wretch. Your brain’s turned like milk. No, I know you’re dumb. You can’t speak.”

  (Volpa gazed up, thinking, trying to remember if she could.)

  But Luchita was crouching by the hearth, thrusting in the candle. As it met too hurriedly, the sticks, the wick was quenched. The flame went out.

  Luchita laughed with fury. She sat back.

  “There. That’s how this world is.”

  The tears returned. She let them drop. Who was to see but this idiot.

  Through the high window a faint light stole. The moon sailed above Venus, changing every canal, every channel of the marsh, both of the great lagoons to opal.

  A soft, crackling was in the air. It had a sound of burning. Luchita looked, and saw the mad girl running her hand through and through her dirty, sticky hair. Yet how brilliant the hair was, after all. Its redness shone out, merely from the moon.

  She had pulled some of the hair loose. It fluttered in her fingers. She let it pour, liquidly, on to the twigs—“Jesus our Lord—”

  Volpa seemed diffident and barely awake. Her voice, unused for almost two months, was hoarse. “My mother showed me how.”

  Flames sprang briskly along the sticks, from the fire Volpa had made in her hair. The hearth burned with a cheerful domestic light.

  3

  Down all the winding corridors, the nun glided precisely three paces ahead of him. Either she, or he, maintained the distance, despite his Soldier’s stride.

  It was a bare place, blank stone, cut here and there with the harsh shape of a crucifix, or a window looking on an empty court.

  Then a gallery, steps, a wooden door.

  Cristiano entered the narrow room. The door shut. His sister sat at the table, her hands on a small cross the nuns must have given her. Her face was scrubbed and her hair plaited and put in under a long white cap.

  She looked older, and younger, both at once. Her eyes were dark and flat.

  “You see. Here I am. Where you told me to go.”

  “Luchita, I never said you must.”

  “No. Someone has.”

  “Who—has he thrown you out? I’ll speak to him.”

  “My husband?” She looked momentarily incredulous. “Him, that sop? I left his house. I’m to serve here, and then I’m to be taken in among the lay sisters. After a year I can begin my novitiate.”

  “It’s unusual. You’re not a widow.”

  “I told them who my brother was.”

  “I see.”

  “You’re not happy. I thought you’d rejoice.”

  “Luchita, you yourself admit you’re not a woman for such a life—”

  “Now, I am. The rest—was burned out of me.”

  Cristiano went to the window. He looked down at the empty court. There was nothing in it, no well, no shrub. Only the high walls at its sides.

  “You lost a child, Luchita. This—may have been a fancy.”

  “No.”

  “She has yet to be questioned. Suppose you were mistaken.”

  “I never was. She created fire. I saw it.”

  “Then suppose, Luchita, Berbo was correct and her gift comes from the Devil?” He spoke almost mockingly. He had never, she thought, credited contemporary miracles, only the stupendous wonders of an earlier world.

  “If it was from God or the Devil, what do I care? It proved to me, Cristiano, it proved to me—what I have never believed.”

  “Which is?”

  “Life other than this one. Omnipotent power other than the power of men. God exists.” In her face he saw, and did not recognize it, his own adamantine certainty.

  “You won’t shift me. Recollect, you never could. God Himself has done so.”

  This, she knew, was not the house of Ghaio Wood-Seller. She had been brought here in a black boat, over a vast sheet of water she thought to be the sea. It had been night, when she entered some equally vast building.

  The room was small and dark, windowless and lit by candles even now, at noon. Yet there was a sweet smell. Volpa sat on the stool they had given her, which was uncomfortable, but she never noticed this, being used to discomfort.

  Three priests sat at the table, on chairs. Two looked at her, and one wrote down apparently their questions, what she answered. She recalled such priests from the byways and market-place. Everyone feared them, but Volpa did not. It was not courage on her part—she had never been brave. Was there a word for what she had been? It was that she knew that she, a slave, and perhaps insane—as others said of her, she had heard it—was of no importance.

  Secure in abasement, she felt no specific awe, and showed none.

  The priests for their part had noted as much. Yet neither was the girl rude in her manners. Her eyes were kept down, save now and then. She sat modestly. A humble and demure creature, who answered with a seeming honesty.

  Any wrong-doer, blasphemer, murderer, witch—would deny the practice, until the full questioning began. Then all was brought out. But they had not been permitted to speak of torture, not even to show her the instruments. Was she then only mad? She did not seem to be. She knew her name, her position. When asked if she knew of God, she had said that she did, and crossed herself. Only in the matter of her former mas
ter was she somewhat vague. Witnesses had been found to identify her as the slave of the wood-seller on the Canal of Seven Keys. She acknowledged this. But when the priests demanded to be told what had become of him, and his house, (and three other houses besides) she affected not to know.

  “The house burned, did it not?”

  “Did it burn?”

  “I said that it did. And you, girl, burnt it.”

  Her eyes were raised then, strange eyes the color of the wine of pale grapes. “When I lived there, it didn’t burn.”

  She had told them, in response to their interrogation—apparently not frightened by their voices and louring, used to such things, glad only not to be hit—that since about five years old, she had lived in Ghaio’s house as a slave. But one morning, she woke up in an alley and did not know where she had got to. Then, wandering about, she had, she acquiesced, seen some houses that were burned. She did not recognize them. Also, sometimes women gave her a crust or some clean water to drink and she came across an inn, where they gave her food, usually in the evening.

  Why had she woken in the street?

  She thought Ghaio had sold her. In fact, she had thought he sold her to the inn-woman with blonde hair, because subsequently Volpa had been in the kitchen there, and performed duties. But later she remembered that before this, she had been homeless in the alleys. Did she remember too making the fire come to the hearth at the kitchen of the inn?

  Volpa here seemed to hesitate.

  The priests’ large white faces swelled. Even the clerk glared up at her.

  Volpa said, “Mistress wanted the fire. So I made it.”

  “How was it made?”

  “How mumma showed me.”

  “The mother was also a witch,” snapped one of the priests. Volpa heard him say this, but, it made no sense.

  Her mother had been a slave. “How did she show you? What did she show you?”

  “In a dream. After she died.”

  The priests recoiled. As snakes do sometimes, before they strike.

  “A ghost? A demon? Where did she appear to you?”

  “In a beautiful place. With a fiery mountain.”