Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) (31 page)

“Then the bowman aims only at you.”

“A nice expression. Yes, Suley-Masroor. You are acute.”

Suley leaned back on the air, folding his arms.

“You should have left us to be fettered and scourged and made converts to your blasphemous religion, and so destroyed.”

“Would you have converted?”

“To a strong cord, or a knife’s edge. Am I to lose Paradise to make such dirty priestlings glad?”

“Suley, God is great. This you know. He gave you life to live. Did He ever say to you that to lie is worse than to deny?”

“A riddle.”

“No. But there’s no time for us to talk. Wait for my servant, and be ready, all of you. If any accost you, I fear you must after all pretend to our blasphemous religion.”

“Some won’t, lord priest.”

“Then let them pretend to having been struck dumb.” Over the face of Danielus there passed a swift dark cloud. Suley saw, oddly, how he had been when very young, hotter and more rash than now. But Danielus only said, “Arrogance is a sin, Suley. God knows everything. He knows a man’s heart.”

“So He does.”

“How He must suffer then, Suley, at our idiocy and stubbornness. You will be given an unguent to lighten your skins and so perhaps save you from notice in the City. Think of your lies about conversion in the same vein. Both may be washed off.”

“I will tell any who ask
I worship your prophet, Yesu. And the others must keep quiet.”

“Think of God, made happy by your freedom.”

“He will also know to thank you, Daniel. And yes, my God too is capable of graciousness.”

The priest smiled, solely with his eyebrows, but the Jurneian noted it. Danielus only said, “There’ll also be money, and City clothing. I know you must cover your heads, but use the hoods to cover that covering. Your guide will be an educated man, who also speaks your tongue. He will appear to be nothing of the kind. His name is Sarco.”

“Yes. Will we meet again?”

“I think—” Danielus halted. “No, Suley.”

“What is this arrow that points at you?”

Danielus said, “That arrow which points at all men.”

“Death.”

“Death, Suley.”

“From your priesthood here?”

“Enough now, Suley. Forgive me, but I have so much to do.”

“Before the arrow strikes.”

Danielus clasped Suley’s hand, and the other men looked on. “Farewell. Go with God, Suley-Masroor.”

“Can nothing save you?”

“A miracle.”

Suley stood watching as the priest walked from the courtyard. Then, turning about, Suley crossed to these men that, in war, he had given orders. And his face too was the face he had for war, just the same.

The husband of Ermilla, the stone-mason, came from the Magister’s book-chamber. Well and plainly dressed, head bowed respectfully, he received no challenge. He had
been this way besides, often before. There were, now and then, things to do for the Magister.

But this would be fast work, even with the foundations laid.

How many men would he need for it?

A score, to be certain.

The stone-mason crossed the great courtyard with the lion fountain. From here, the noise of the crowds outside was hideously loud, though it would be worse on the Primo’s other side, where the square stood over the Chamber of God’s Justice.

A house the mason had built had fallen to Jurneian shot just beyond. He had obtained a right to take back some of the blocks. They might be useful as counterweights.

Of course, it was chancy, all this. But all life was chancy. And long ago, Fra Danielus had saved this man from penury. From near death. As he had also saved Ermilla.

The crowd boiled under the Angel Tower, from which one last dead rotting thing—that was once a woman—hung in its cage. Ignored.

They were howling now, a gust of howling under the cage and its unspeakable stink of decay. Demanding, jolly with viciousness, to burn a witch.

Changeable as the sea, and not as constant as the sea. She had been a saint not long ago. Though all kinds of provocation, untruth, slander and inducement had been used, to swing Ve Nera about, what scum they were, the race of Man.

Would I have shouted too? Saying that girl loved Lucefero, mocked God and lured us to the brink? Am I such a fool?

But the stone-mason recalled how he had been in youth, acts he had committed, thoughts he still had.

If you never see the light of day, how can
you know there is a sun? And some were born blind.

She had liked to talk, and to answer questions. The sudden interest of others in herself, enjoyed. But now, so many questions. So much talk—hers, and theirs. And this fume of their emotion, like the slightly unwashed smell of scorching.

Additionally, many questions were repeated.

Sometimes prefaced by, Now can this be a fact? Or, Will you assure us that your meaning is such and such?

They had taken her out. She had been allowed water to drink, and was glad of it for the dark torchlit room was very hot.

When she was taken back, the room was hotter, or seemed so. The priests, even the Shepherds and Council, and the princes in their silks, were sweating. At last, one of the princes, Ulisse, begged the leniency—groveling—of the Council, and went staggering out on the arms of two servants of the court. He did not return.

Nor did the Magister return. Another man sat now where Danielus had. He was old and dry, with sad, accommodating eyes. Behind him, seven Primo guard.

Not the Bellatae. Not Cristiano.

Her angel was alive. She knew this. But—where had he gone?

The powers of the court, though overtly threatening to Beatifica, were not fully understood by her. And she had missed many parts of her own trial. Waking dreams had obscured it. The image of Cristiano, thoughts of a cool place, of her accustomed habitual prayers which, now and then even here, she murmured.

(To this, once, the man with the
loud crushed voice, had taken exception. He cried out that she recited a spell. But when the judges asked her what she had been saying, Beatifica repeated it at once. Her flawless Latin was received unfavorably. One of them said she masked her actual words. Or, she thought to impress them with her piety.
Deo volente
—God’s will be done.)

She was exhausted, took no notice of that—for a slave, it could mean nothing.

But having been brought back to life, she was by now afraid.

She knew herself among extremely harsh masters, and no one to stand between herself and them. As in the beginning.

Beatifica was afraid. And yet, she had learned, inadvertently, to sit there as if collected and proud, to speak clearly when her own heart and breath choked her. But, if ever she had begun to
cease
to be a slave, that was gone.

She
was
a slave. Without rights, without redress. No one to help her. But for God, perhaps, for whom she had no real name or true realization. (God, Invisible. Why else send down His heralds, saints and angels.)

“Why then did you dress as a man?”

“I was given the clothes to wear.”

“By whom?”

“A servant.”

“This woman plays with words—”

“Do you mean the servant of the Magister Major, Fra Danielus?”

Beatifica, unsure.

“Write down: it may be supposed so.”

“Beatifica, was a reason given you for this immoral dress?”

“No.”

The Interlocutor: “It seems, from other things she
says, and that I have learned, that the Magister thought she would be discounted if she appeared as a woman, since women are naturally counted less. For a similar reason, he chose that she should be seen often, mounted and riding on a horse, as horses are not common in the City. The Soldiers, it has been said, took note of her in this way, for they themselves go mounted in war, outside Ve Nera.”

The Pro-Sequitor: “That excuses nothing, makes it worse! He must know better than us all. An arch-manipulator,”

“Beatifica, when you danced about the trees, did anything appear to you? Any imp or creature?”

“Once I thought so.”

“Describe it.”

“I thought it was my mother. But then I thought it was a beast that lives in a fig tree and eats men. But it was only a scrap of rubbish.”

“What thing is this you speak of? That lives in a tree—?”

She did not know. It seemed she had been told of it.

“Instructed in demons.”

“Beatifica, what purpose do you have when you bring the fire?”

“No purpose.”

“Come, come.
Why
do you do it?”

“Because I am asked.”

“Why then have you killed some—and spared some?”

“I remember neither.”

“You have said, you were shown God’s priesthood changed to animals and birds?”

She
knew
this they were angry at. (Unreasonably. Why should it
concern them?) But she tried now to evade. “I was only dreaming.”

“And in the dream, were shown it?”

“Yes.”

She had never learnt tact, or to lie. If she had learned either, at the very first might she not tactfully have lied to Ghaio Wood-Seller, words, flesh, allowing him to rape her?

She knew not to ask for Cristiano, or the Magister.

Finally, they demanded, the white judges, if she would confess her fire came not from God, but from the Devil.

Stupidly, truthfully, she told them, “It comes from my hair. So others have said.”

Then the one called Isaacus drew close, crouching, creeping, just—as she abruptly saw—like the sort of beast she had seen in her vision. He leaned over her and she smelled his physical uncleanness, the stench of his ruined throat, and of his ruined heart.

“You bring fire, but you too can burn. Do you remember how I burnt you with my candle blessed of God?”

And she perceived then, bending too close, a sort of second Ghaio, almost seeming to be about to glue his rancid mouth on hers. If she had been able, if the fire still waited in her, she would have brought it down. The whole chamber would have gone up, and every man in it. But her fire had left her. She was hot with cold. And with her fire, all else—all love, all possibility.

Instead, some part of her which had borne too much from the day she first began to live, broke in fragments.

She gave her fox’s barking scream.

And they crossed themselves, jumping up. As if to scream was a sin. Perhaps it was. Isaacus screamed: “She fears it! She fears the flame of
God! Burn the harlot—a rope’s too good for her. Oh you strumpet of Hell! Burn to wax, burn to ashes, burn to glass—
burn—burn—burn
—”

Like a tattered flag that voice went with her. It put out all other voices. She had had nothing. She was Volpa, and all that there was—was this.

She was again taken through long corridors.

In a room—where?—cooler, a window—it was night—they bound her hands.

No priest came to her now.

She was an apostate. Could hope for nothing.

(Nothing but this, all there was.)

Beatifica—Volpa—grasped they were about to kill her. She had no concept for death. (Only for pain.)

Cristiano’s death she had seen in that way—his agony, and hers in loss. What else did death mean? Conversely, her mother had existed after death. The Afterlife, then, opened from the world like one room from another.

This she
knew
. But it made no difference.

When she was brought up on to the square, before the Primo, Beatifica found—but without finding—she was a single particle of a great procession.

Surrounded on all sides by soldiers—not Bellatae, but the Primo guard. Distantly, the priesthood, in black, and there a huge, gold, glinting cross held high. And beyond, everywhere, a wall of people, shouting and shrieking in a kind of merriment which, to Beatifica—to Volpa—was only like a hundred glimpses she had had before of human things.

Darkness, brightness. More torches flaring in this great black room of night. And above, the liquid black of terrifying sky, where no lights showed. And now black water, not liquid as the sky, but chopped and ragged with motion.

They led her, firmly, not gratuitously so,
into a barge.

All about, the Styx boats jostling on the lagoon, torch-prowed, and the black priests, staring all one way, the dough-pale faces, and black holes of eyes.

This boat, sidling under her.

Guards either side.
Their
faces like wooden platters, not turned to her at all.

Alone in the world.

Volpa, the Vixen, alone, among these multitudes gathered only to see her.

The fleet of black boats set off, to cross Fulvia, and go in among the channels of the Silvian Marsh.

Bells tolling.

Everywhere the sound of praying and strange outcry.

Water lap-lapping. Oars.

It would be a long route, the choked canals—but had time stopped?

The torches red in ink water, reminded her of something she had seen. But, whatever it had been, she did not know, now.

She knew not one thing, now.

And as before, if any had spoken to her, she could not have used her voice.

She was all eyes. She felt that also. Two erroneous lenses in a flimsy frame. She looked, and saw the buildings of Ve Nera, called Venus, pass. The wooden posts, the overhanging chests of upper stories. From windows railed in iron, people craned and leaned. Pointed her out. “
The witch—the witch
—” “
May she roast
.”

A boy threw a stone at her. It hit instead one of the guards, who cursed, then renounced his curse.

Shades fell, and candlelight, over the prolonged traffic of the boats.

Mumma
, she thought. Or a voice said
it, in her spirit. What had the world ever been that she could make any sense of it? Harmed and abused, told always what to do, and the pretty prayers she could not translate. And joy and love, only the prelude to this.

Cristiano.

Cristiano—

I will lift up my eyes to the mountains
.

Over Venus, Beatifica began to see the scarlet rock of her dreamworld, floating. Flaming red. A hearth or a sunset. On that black, starless sky. (“Mumma, what are the stars?” “Yesterday. Tomorrow.” Neither, here.) And the fluted shadows chiseled in the mountain sides. Veins like living fire. All raised on a rosy blazing cloud.