Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) (25 page)

“She never did.”

“Aretzo died in the hospital, days after Ciojha. It could have been like that.”

“No.”

“The Fra spoke to you? Why to you and not to me?”

“He didn’t speak to me. She’s alive. Sleeping, I suppose.”

“Perhaps it burnt out her mind or soul. Perhaps she’s only a shell, the kind the crab-fish leaves.”

Cristiano said shortly,
“She’s no fish.”

“You know where she is.”

“I don’t.”

“
Tell
me.”

“Jian, take your hand from the sword. I won’t stop you again. Do you think you can match me?”

“Can’t I match you?”

“
Jian
. No more. In God’s name.”

“I’d die for her.”

“I know it.”

“But you—”

Ah
, said Cristiano,
she has killed me already
. He did not speak aloud.

Jian turned away.

“Pray for her, Jian,” Cristiano said. “There’s no greater loving token.”

“You talk to me as if—I were her
lover
.”

But when Jian turned yet once more, to confront Cristiano, the capella was again empty, save for Jian himself.

In its black, lit room, the Council sat in silence.

Jesolo repeated. “It’s very strange.”

Sarco said, “Our dungeons are bursting, nevertheless.”

“Perhaps they are.”

“Remember, brother,” said Sarco, “our task is to recruit for God all those men we may. These infidel may be converted, and their souls salvaged.”

Jesolo answered bleakly, “Faced with the prospect, several have already taken their own lives.”

“We’ve seen this before. Not all are so violent, or sinful.”

Isaacus’ crunching voice stirred in the dark.

“
They should be cinders
.”

“The quick immersion saved
them.”

“Cinders—ash. Did you not see the fire, brothers? It burned.”

Sarco spoke peaceably. “The fleet burned and is no longer a threat. Some of the Jurneians, evidently, drowned. Or died in other ways. And some are burned—”

“Scorches. Singes.”

Another of the Council spoke ominously. “Brother Isaacus, what is the pith of these reflections?”

“This devil-witch called her fire. It burnt up the ships and made a show. But the men, these idolators, these infidel, these children of Satanus—these she
spared
. In such a conflagration, how could any survive? Yet many did. Beyond a few slight wounds, they have no mark of it.”

Jesolo said, “It’s so. It’s strange.”

“And yet,” said another, “the City is rife with tales of men this Maiden is said to have burnt alive.”

“
Christian
men,” declared Isaacus.

“What are you saying?”

“What do you suppose I say? She incinerates true believers. The friends of Lucefero she spares.”

Sarco said loudly, quickly, “Why then destroy their ships and save Ve Nera?”

“Are you a fool, brother?” Isaacus asked. “A fool, or in someone’s hand?” Sarco said nothing. Isaacus said, “To gain power over us. Why do men ever turn to the Devil? They sell their immortal souls for help and comfort in this world. She has
helped
us. Saved us. Does she now receive our soul for her master in Hell?”

Danielus sat in his book-chamber, and watched the prisoner they had just brought him.

He was a tall man, dark skinned
like most of the Jurneians, although the tones varied through amber and wood to a somber shade like bronze. Curiously, he had green eyes.

“Please sit.”

“I will stand.”

“Tell me at least where you learned the Italian tongue?”

“In trade. Where else. But you speak my tongue, so my countrymen told me. When they could not speak your own.”

“I’ve studied some of the languages of the East.”

Suley-Masroor, his turbaned head unbowed, said, “Oh, a pastime.”

Outside, not very far away, came a soft rolling roar, then a sharp crack. The ship’s Master started. Danielus said, “They’re clearing the rubble of a house.”

Suley said, fiercely, “Where we struck your city?”

“Just so. Be reassured. You’ve left us scars.” He added winningly, “Please, do sit. It will make me more comfortable in your presence.”

The Jurneian blinked. Then slowly he grinned. He sat down in the carved chair with its golden scrolls. “Are you a priest? You dress like a priest.”

“Yes, I am a priest.”

“That is astounding to me. You’re couth, and quick. Unlike your religious brethren.”

“I’m very sorry you were ill-treated. I have tried to alleviate the situation where I can. But we have another authority here, you’ll have heard it mentioned. The Council. At this time, there’s not a great deal I can do.”

“How was it managed?” Suley asked. He no longer looked amused or collected. “The fire that filled the ships. It seemed—”

“What did it
seem?”

“Like a magician’s trick in the bazaar.”

“But apparently it was real.”

The Jurneian lowered his eyes. Danielus pushed towards him the crystal cup of water.

Reluctantly, Suley took the cup. He drained it angrily. Then, turning it in his fingers, remarked, “From Candisi?”

“Our own making.”

“I thought so. Your glass-makers are inferior.”

“Of course. But we will learn.”

Suley said, “My fellows say you question them about the nature of the fire. How it took hold. Its swiftness. How we escaped burning.”

“They tell me the same things, on every occasion.”

“I have nothing to add.”

“Did the fire touch you, Suley-Masroor?”

“Yes. Here on my chest, and down this arm. I saw my left leg burning as I went over into the sea-lagoon.”

“How did the fire feel to you?”

“Very cold.”

“So your fellow Jurneians described it to me.”

Suley said, “That’s usual, or may be so. At Khibris, when we fought your people years ago, my elder brother was burned across the back. He said it felt like ice and snow from the mountains. And afterwards he lay shivering.”

“I’m sorry your brother was burned.”

“No, don’t lie, lord priest. He was an
infidel
, was he not?”

“But
we
are the infidel,” said Danielus, “I believe.”

“Yes. You follow the teachings of a great and holy man, but believing he is God. There is no God but only God.”

Danielus poured more water
into the (inferior) crystal cup. Suley-Masroor drank it. He said, grudgingly, “This water is good.”

“The wells are pure, here. I see you have few wounds.”

“The burns dried and sloughed from me inside a night. This sore here isn’t fire, but from my irons in your prison. And this, from a generous Christian lashing.”

“I shall see they are looked at. Forgive my harping on the fire—you suffered little, yet your ship was destroyed.”

“How was it done?” the Jurneian asked again. “Through God.”

“Yours or mine?” demanded Suley, his eyes abruptly vivid and dangerous.

“As you pointed out, there is only one God. We merely award him different names, just as I might call Khibris, for example, Cyprus.”

The green eyes flattened out, becoming almost opaque.

The Jurneian murmured, “I had a premonition of the fire. I dreamed of it three times. I have an amulet, from the City of the Dawn. When I addressed this talisman, it gave no answer.”

Danielus said nothing. Then, almost idly, “Since you speak so excellently the language of this City, I shall keep you here, in the Primo. You’ll be treated as a guest. Obviously, you’ll be useful to me.”

“To betray my brothers?”

“How can you betray them? What’s left to betray?”

“What
use
then?”

“To salve my conscience. It will save you the prison and the ranting of men wishing to convert you. I’ve no interest in that. I will make it appear otherwise, of course.
Are there any more from Jurneia you can recommend to me?”

“All. All.”

“How I regret, Suley-Masroor, I haven’t that much power. But ten or so, perhaps twenty. Write the names here. And I’ll do what’s possible to me.”

“I write only in the script of Candisi.”

“Of course. That will do. I can read it quite well.”

When the Jurneian captain had gone, Danielus rose and walked about the chamber. He looked at it, at its ornaments, at the panels of Danielo and the lions. Some of the books he touched. Then drew out five of them, pondered, replaced one and drew out another. Had the Jurneian’s choice of twenty men been as hard, or harder than this?

Carrying the books in his arms, he went from the chamber and walked through the glowing corridors of the Golden Rooms, where the servants of the Primo bowed, and the Primo’s guards unlocked all doors.

Outside, the City was, day and night, loud with festival. Even the stern laws of the Council were being openly flouted. If Ve Nera were damned she would not have been saved. This notion gave them courage to outwit the Brothers of the Lamb.

On the Laguna Fulvia, countless little boats sculled about the glittering water, seeking, normally without luck, yet more relics of the miracle.

But it was noticeable, from the lagoon, that the Primo’s nacreous dome had been besmirched by smoke. The smoke of a fire that burned selectively.

Festivals end. Trophies run out. Fear becomes remembered.

Entering Beatifica’s room, Danielus set the books down on a chest. The
books were not for Beatifica.

She had been laid on the floor, as she preferred for sleep, only her head on the cushion.

Among the priesthood, most were certain the Maiden had been removed from the Primo. Even the Bellatae thought this, it seemed. There had, too, been certain decoys, and misleading maneuvers.

In Ve Nera however, the citizens were convinced their kind angel was precisely here. Where else? Ignorance fathomed where cunning over-reached.

The young woman who sat watching Beatifica, dressed as a nun, had been one, once. Later she was in Veronichi’s household, on the Isle of Eels. Danielus had lain with this girl, who was merry in the carnal act, and achieved bliss uttering mouse-like squeaks, which had enchanted him. Later, he had supplied her dowry and seen her wed where she desired.

About Ve Nera there were many with cause to be grateful to him.

That might, finally, have been enough, to see done what he wished.

But then, the torch was put into his hand. Who could resist it, that bright and wondrous thing?

This was not God’s cruel and unfair test. God did not perpetrate such deeds on men. They made their own pits, and duly fell in them.

Danielus considered briefly, if he had fallen. For had he, like the other cunning ones, over-reached?

“Has she woken, Milla?”

“No, Fra. Not since that last time.”

Milla had told him, just after Solus, the Maiden stirred, and turning, opened her eyes. Looking at Milla, but seeming not to see her, Beatifica had laughed, almost a giggle, like a child’s. Then lapsed back into her trance.

“I’ll watch her until your
sister comes.”

“Thank you, Fra.”

Knowing him, in several ways, Ermilla knew also this man would do the sleeping girl no disservice. Of how many priests could one say that? To her last day Ermilla would recall the monster, her strict and elderly confessor, who had fondled her when he should have given consolation for her sins, and later denounced her as a strumpet when she refused to go near him.

Danielus sat quietly in the chair.

Just outside some bees had risen up from the garden, smelling the sweet herbs in the room. Perhaps scenting the nectar of a saint.

Beatifica slept.

On her side now. The redness had come back to her hair. She looked thriving and at ease. Ordinary.

“Beatifica,” he said softly. “How I’ve needed you to wake up. Now was the hour when I might have worked a miracle—almost as great as your own. But I asked too much of you. Or worse, expected it. Sleep, little girl. Only return unimpaired. When you will.”

Beatifica dreamed a dream which—like the dreams of the serpent and the red mountain, and eventually, the angel—she would recall accurately.

In the dream she forgot the fire. (As had happened the first time, she would have little or no recollection of what she had done when awake.)

An old woman was leading her up a steep white stair. As she often had in the City, Beatifica marveled at the stair—through her early life there had been mostly ladders.

The old woman was black. Who was she? Beatifica thought she might be her mother, grown very old—in the dream the memory had
persisted of how mumma turned slowly black after her cremation—but then she had also grown young. Perhaps time passed differently here.

The woman was naked, and though old and thin, was firm, despite her embroidery of lines. Even her breasts, which had lost their flesh and hung down, had a gracefulness and symmetry nothing to do with sexual beauty.

At the stair-top was a terrace.

Below stretched a wide lagoon of silvery water. Beatifica looked instinctively for the red mountain. It was not to be seen.

Instead, along the terrace, near the water’s edge, many of the priesthood of Ve Nera were walking about.

In that moment, Beatifica realized that she too was naked.

Something in the idea of being naked before men filled her with alarm and distress. Master had hurt her because of it, or had meant to, some new and awful hurt.

“They can’t see,” said the old black woman, in a smiling voice. She motioned with her hand that was like an artifact of carved ebony. “You so white and me so black. They think us a marble pillar and its shadow.”

Beatifica believed the old woman at once. She relaxed her body, and watched the priests moving about.

Some were in the white or dark robes of the Primo, and others in the magentas of higher orders. Some wore black—the Council of the Lamb?

She did not recognize them, however. She could see no one she knew.

“Is Fra Danielus with them?”

“Oh no,” said the old woman.

“
Oh
no.” She gave a laugh, like a stick rattling on a rock.

Something parted the water now.
Beatifica thought it might be a drowned ship coming up, for somehow she knew ships had sunk in the lagoons of the City. But instead it was an enormous lizard, plated in a gray-green maculum. Its head was all snapping teeth. It pulled itself aboard the terrace, shiny, puddling. And only then did Beatifica see it too was clad in a purple robe.