Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) (30 page)

“She—she—this
wench
—this
woman
—Satanus may take any shape. Who says she’s innocent? What has she said of her visions—she rants of snakes and flying things.

The Serpent
is
the Devil. Her angels may be
of
the Devil—did some not fall in the Pit with him? And her mountain is red, the very color of Hell fire.”

“So,” said Danielus sharply, “is the robe of the Pro-Sequitor.” A true gasp went up like steam. He added, delicately, “But who among us would think to associate him with the Fiend?”

Isaacus moved about the bench. He came out into the open space. Like some incomprehensible beast from the shadow.

The foaming rabid lethal dog had died at Danielus’ feet, killed by Cristiano, long ago.

Isaacus would not crumple. He had survived a day of rope. God was his. He
knew
God. The world must suffer as he had. All pleasure, since foul pleasures had nourished
him
, was foul.

“She speaks,” said Isaacus, “of all her sights sent to her by God. But the Church is God’s. His beloved and chaste wife. Where
does she see the Church in this? Has she never been shown the Church in her visions, and told to heed us?”

“Perhaps,” said Danielus.

But the Interlocutor had sprung up. He boomed out, like a bell, “Maiden, tell us then, has God never shown you, in your visions, his holy priesthood?”

She, a bride. Upon her wedding day. Her love. Her happiness. Aspergation in the golden void.

If she had had the sophistry to evade, even if she had, could she have side stepped at this instant? And they had insisted, she must always answer.

“Yes,” said Beatifica.

More than silence, a sort of
deafness
which
heard
, this spread from her like ripples in the air.

The Shepherds leant forward. Eager or unnerved?

(Forgotten on their chairs, the sparkling princes goggled like sad fish.)

Danielus stayed on his feet.

She had not told him anything of this. What had she seen or dreamed? And yet, taken aback and unprepared, somehow it was quite expected to him. He knew it, as the spot of blood may be known. It foretold death.

But to gag her would damn her. The same, to let her have her say? She was naive. She spoke her mind.

But might this not be only one more charming, spiritually disarming thing … Why did he
know
that it was not?

The Interlocutor again opened his mouth. Danielus interposed very quietly.

“One moment, holy brothers.”

“What? What is it?” The Interlocutor, scoring on his target better than the Pro-Sequitor was loath to give over. “She must answer.”

“That I understand. First, let me ascertain only this. If she
has had a vision of the priesthood, when was it?”

They waited ominously. He turned to the girl. “When, Beatifica?”

“When I slept, after the night of the ships.”

Danielus said, generally, “Her visions have been various. This may have come, waking or sleeping. But be aware of this, she lay unconscious five days and the nights between, after she burnt the ships. We thought her dead. You will be familiar, I think, with the notions of delirium, of a fever dream, and a nightmare. Her vision may not be of that order. Can we be sure? Or she?”

Isaacus let out another awful vocal noise. He was shouting, and none of them made sense of it. Jesolo and another of the Council rose and went to him, and Isaacus thrust them off. They allowed it. He had become, incomprehensibly, disgustingly, a power.

Isaacus breathed, then spoke. “Look at him there, this Magister, with his army at his back. His
Soldiers of God—are
they God’s? Or do they serve Danielus? His
mercenaries
—”

Danielus heard the shift and rustle of mail behind him, as the Bellatae, despite their discipline, moved. He raised his hand, and they were granite.

But Isaacus said, in his voice of broken bricks, “
See
it there. They hear no man but one. Send them out. Send them out, I say.”

Danielus said, “Brothers, the law itself, quoted by you, allows for seven Bellatae in such a court. In fact recommends it.”

The Shepherd who spoke the most, answered, stern and cold, “In such a court indeed. But who judges here? Who presides? Sit down, Magister. You’re not here to debate. Sit down.” Without protest, seeming unruffled and amenable, Danielus sat. “The accused here, before
such a court
, needs her chance to utter, without your
interruptions.
In such a court
, she has God Himself to defend her, if she deserves it. You’re redundant. Now, be still.”

The Shepherd beside him added, “Nevertheless, the words of Brother Isaacus are very grave.”

“So they are,” said Isaacus.

The third of the Shepherds said, “Let us come back to this. Let us get on. Maiden, if God has shown you his priesthood, tell us now what he revealed.”

Beatifica told them her last remembered dream.

They listened.

Of course, she had never considered tact. Others were almighty, impervious. That which is impervious to everything will be impervious to ridicule. Only when Prince Ulisse let out a snort of laughter, then turned his head, (yellow with fear at his lapse) did she half falter.

She spoke of the crocodilius in purple, wallowing up from the lagoon the priests who changed to beasts. Their noises. How they fought and floundered. Toppled each other down.

Cristiano, hearing her, his heart changing to a piece of ice, thought,
If ever God gave her a true vision, here it is. Just so they are. The Church herself made into a monster, and toppled by their antics
.

She looked about. The lower priests were stunned by horror. The representatives of the people—picked carefully for their loyalty, their self-serving which the Council aided—were outraged. The judges had faces of white murder. The Pro-Sequitor—a grimace on him almost like terror—The Council blank as stone tablets unwritten on. Even Isaacus.

Beatifica did not speak for very long. The dream had made her,
while dreaming, laugh, but now seemed nothing to her. She had been careless with misery. She was only careless, now.

She was not a fool. Nor mad. But what had she ever met or learned to teach her another course? At first beaten almost for breathing, then protected in a shell of glass, and encouraged always to speak

If Danielus had known, he would have curbed her, and obedient, she would have kept this hidden.

In her despair—she had not thought to tell him. Caught too in her despair, he had not thought to ask.

After her voice, hubbub.

The judges, the Council, waited it out, until it ended in a bloated, rocking nothingness.

Then, the speaking Shepherd rotated himself in his chair. He fixed his eyes on Danielus.

Danielus spoke, not getting up. “Will you give me leave to tender some explanation?”

“No.
No
, Magister. What can you say?”

“She is unlessoned. To her—”

Jesolo said loudly, “Be quiet, as you were warned. The Devil pulls her under. Do you want to
go
with her?”

“The Fra is her patron,” said Isaacus. “He is with her, never doubt.”

Beatifica’s light was gently dying in her face. She had been lost. Did she know?

All the Council of the Lamb was on its feet.

Jesolo spoke to them, and then one or two others spoke. A medley of low mutterings.

“End this session of the court, revered Shepherds,”

Jesolo said then. “Our scribes need time to put down all these terrible words. And you, Magister, take your Bellatae and go up.

“Yes,” said the speaking Shepherd. “Leave this court,
Magister. Fra Matteo shall come in, instead. We have no need of you.”

Danielus rose. “There are things I should say to you.”

“Not yet,” said the Shepherd. He said, almost bitterly, “But your hour will come. Be ready, Magister, for that hour.”

Everywhere, as far as the eye could see, the crowds were roiling, moving together and apart and together, like waves. From the upper windows, they did not seem to matter so much, despite their spasmodic motions, and the whirring, rolling noise they made, now and then split by some higher, vaster cry. And they did not, in a way, matter much, truly. Just as they seemed to be, they had been swayed, and were altering. It was facile, to move them. Avowals and gossip, drinks bought or angers kindled. Not one single man at its back, this campaign, no not even Isaacus. Some almost unhuman force, streaming from the entity of the Church itself, driving the chariot. Powers behind powers behind powers. None quite aware, perhaps, what in turn moved
them
. Sensing only familiar mortal things, a wise rage, an essential piety, the need to survive, the wish not to crack the surface of a colossal code.

It would have been like this, Cristiano thought, in Gerusalemme, when the crosses jutted on the hill. In Rome, when San Pietro had been nailed up like a dead crow. And when a hundred saints were disposed of.

Trouble comes in the guise of goodness—or great and perfect good in the guise of an enemy. Kill it then. Be rid of it.

No one had told Ve Nera that the City would have done better to suffer and bleed in order to be healed.

Only that it had been spelled and misled by a witch, who performed
one rescuing deed, in order to beguile and thrust Ve Nera down to Hell—

Legends surfaced like sea serpents from the ocean of the crowd. Had the woman not burned more than twenty fine Christian men? If they let her go on, what might she not do, with that talent of hers for burning things?

Yet, if she were possessed of fire—how could she be stayed?

There was now no need to fear her. The Church, alerted, had hold of her at last. It was possible to damage her, it had been done, it seemed. Before the Name of the Most High, she was brittle as a straw. God would drive the evil from her. God might, through his priests, do anything; all would be well.

“No, Jian,” Danielus said.

“Magister—three hundred men, and more, will rush—”

“
No
. The Bellatae Militia won’t turn their swords against their own City. No, not even against the Council. I have never taken a life, and will never do so, even to keep my own. Nor shall you, by my consent, do anything so injurious to yourselves.”

“
Magister—
”

“Jian. I’ve things to do and little time.”

“We must get you away. It can be done.”

“There are other things to do. I’ve said.”

“How can the Council bring you down?” Jian stammered. He was hushed with fury and disbelief.

“Simply, now.”

“God’s will?”

“Did I say that? No. The will of men.”

Cristiano stayed silent. Danielus offered him nothing, let alone anything for the girl. They had already spoken, before the trial began. What need for more?

When the two Bellatae were out,
Danielus went by another way across the Golden Rooms. He noticed, as he passed, their man-made beauty—frescoes, draperies, metal-work and jewels. Beatifica had been indifferent to these things. In a manner unlike her own, so was Danielus, now.

They had passed their days in the small rooms about the little courtyard. Sun came into the court, and by the sun they were able to judge the times of prayer. No one hindered them in this. Nor were they offered any forbidden or obnoxious foods.

Aside from the young male servants, Suley-Masroor and his twenty companions saw no one. But the high priest Daniel had previously described this solitude, assuring Suley he would not leave them to it for longer than he must.

Among Suley’s twenty chosen men, were his three cousins, and the three brothers of his wife, four of his crew that Daniel’s spies had been able to locate in the prisons of Venarh, and others Suley had named, knowing them to be virtuous and courageous.

These things too, perhaps, Daniel—though an infidel—might be. To Suley he was an enigma.

“Trust none of those benighted dogs,” insisted the eldest brother of Suley’s wife. And one of the oldest men from the wrecked ship
Quarter-Moon
, announced, “They are not even properly human.”

“God has never told us that,” Suley had answered.

“This man took us from captivity. And their flies of conversion haven’t bothered us since.”

“Magicians, then. We saw it. They’re in league with the Evil One.”

Now, sitting under the shade tree in the sunny court, Suley looked up
and saw the high priest coming in through the gate in the wall.

All about him, Suley’s men muttered. Only the three brothers and cousins, and Reem from the ship, came up and stood with Suley, to receive the priest who had been their saviour.

Daniel seemed older. The skin of his face, untouched by sun, looked thin. But the eyes were as Suley recalled. And he had told all these men to look at the eyes of Daniel, and then say again he was a dog, or a sorcerer.

Danielus greeted them all by name, politely, and with sound pronunciation, as if welcoming guests. Then begging their pardon, in the Jurneian tongue, he took Suley-Masroor to one side, and the men also moved off, glancing at them.

“We have been treated well, lord priest. You have kept all your promises. But one.”

“To send you to your home? I will keep it, if I can. But for now you must go elsewhere.”

Suley frowned. “Where?”

“To a farm I have, on the plain.”

“That’s some way to journey.”

“You will be given permits, which I regret, as foreigners to Ve Nera, is necessary. My servants will then guide you. I request that you treat them well. From the farm, a method can be found to take you on, by some roundabout means. Others will assist you to the coast, or overland otherwise. As you say, a long journey. But it will eventually bring you where you wish to be. My plans, you see, weren’t complete. Hence this unfortunate randomness.”

“Then we will wait on you.”

“I regret not. I think you must be gone.”

Suley said, “There is some dissent
over us, and what you’ve done.”

“Not yet. Very few know. Those that do, agree with it, or else have been paid to find it very appealing.”