Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) (4 page)

On the land, between herself and
the mountain, that in this second vision was darker, more of a maroon color, though glowing like a lamp, a haze of heat trembled. And out of this came walking a figure, slowly.

It was Volpa’s mother.

Volpa felt at once very glad to see her. There was no memory that the mother had died. Only a joy which might have indicated some previous parting.

Then, as the woman moved nearer and nearer through the wavering pink air, Volpa saw she was almost naked, and though recognizably still the woman Volpa had known, younger—and darker of skin.

Volpa did nothing, only waited. When the woman reached her she touched Volpa’s mouth with her palm. The mother smelled of hot things, stones and cinders.

Volpa thought, vaguely,
Oh, it’s that she was burned, on the Isle.
There was no terror in that. Here her mother stood, compact and alive.

When her mother spoke to Volpa, Volpa realized it was in another language. Even so, Volpa understood it, and was able, in turn, to utter it.

After this, they walked away over the land.

Waking, the girl never knew what they had said to each other, beyond a phrase of two. Her mother seemed to be teaching her things. In Volpa’s infancy, the mother had done this as a matter of course, and necessity. It was simple to resume the manner of it. In the later years, Volpa had perhaps missed her mother’s conversation, her advice, her stories. Now the dreams themselves were the stories, and the advice was inherent in them.

After the second dream, came others.

When Volpa woke in the cold spring dawns, to skim frost from the cistern, to cook as best she could Ghaio’s porridges and rice, and bake his bread, the dreams did not fade.
They sank back a little, as if replaced neatly into the revealed book from which they had fallen to her mind. They were also, the dreams, very similar, for the most part.

Always the mountain was at the center of them, curved, striated, and a rich red. Sometimes the land had tufts of grass, boulders, even groups of blond trees with tasseled foliage on the boughs. The time of day was always late, near sunfall probably. Things cheeped from the low thickets. Birds of wild dyes flew over, or settled in the trees like topazes, jacinths.

In every dream, however, Volpa’s mother darkened.

Her hair grew black and her skin like brown ebony. She seemed comfortable with this, changing her skin. Her teeth were very white, and often she raised her arms, lifting by the gesture her heavy naked breasts. She laughed. Every thing which she taught to Volpa—which consistently, as with the conversations, Volpa did not recall on waking—seemed nevertheless good. That is, benign. It made the girl happy, and made the mother happy to dispense it, like nourishing food or the kiss of love.

One of the few phrases of speech Volpa retained was this: that she said to her mother, “Why do you teach me all this now you’ve gone away?” And the mother had replied, “How could I teach it to you, when I was with you?” In the dream that had seemed, quite reasonably, to explain everything.

Sometimes, other people crossed their path, literally appearing to move on other specific but—to Volpa—invisible roads. They were invariably a little way off or greatly distant. All were black. Sometimes they raised their hands in greeting.

Volpa and her mother wandered. Now and then, the mother would lean and snatch something from the grass or the sand, or out of a tree. These things
were often live animals, but curious in form. Either Volpa or her mother then carried them on. The animals did not struggle. When Volpa grew hungry, she and her mother would sit down, and the mother would make a fire. She did this by rubbing her hand along a piece of stick. Volpa watched, fascinated, seeing first a thin smoke, and then a tongue of flame lick up.

When the fire was ready, the mother would shake it off on to the earth, and here it would burn. Then she would place in the fire the animals they had collected.

There was nothing horrible or bizarre in this. The animal would vanish at once, and reappear
almost
at once, on the ground a few strides away. There it would run or preen a few moments, before darting off. After that, Volpa would have the sense of having eaten something delicious. She was no longer hungry, but satisfied, as she had rarely been when fed on the scraps of Ghaio’s house.

In rather a similar, equally peculiar way, as they wandered, once or twice Volpa saw one of the animals prey on another. There would be a chase or a struggle, but when it was done, the prey animal would only get up and go off, or, on one occasion, it lay down companionably by the creature which had stalked it, and together they sunned themselves under the metallic sky.

The dreams came, if Volpa could have counted, for twenty-one nights. They were very alike in all but slight details. She and her mother, though circling the red mountain and sometimes even seeming to approach it, never reached the place.

Yet the last dream had one great alteration. In this dream, night had come. As Volpa stepped forward into it, the sand was gray under her feet, and ahead of her stood the mountain, as ever, but now it was the blackest of all things, the fount of the night itself.

“Come, make up the fire,” said Volpa’s mother. So they
sat down, and Volpa took the stick, which always came at once, from nowhere, and she rubbed her hand along it as she had seen her mother do. Her hand felt warm, then cold.

Through the dark, the flame birthed clear and yellow. She set it on the sand. The mother said, “Now always you can make fire.”

Then they looked up to the sky, which was quite light, far lighter than the earth or the mountain. And it was scaled with brilliant stars. Over the sky too went a shimmering ribboning path, which seemed to rise out of the smoke of their fire.

Winds blew across the plain, that sang almost in human voices. Somewhere things chorused like bubbles opening on the surface of water.

Did mother and daughter speak? What did the mother say to her child? Volpa thought her mother told her a story. That years ago Volpa had come to her as the woman walked, but this was before Volpa had been born.

“Let me in,” said Volpa. “Who are you?” said the mother. But Volpa had only flown into the body of the woman like a tiny white moth.

“What are the stars?” Volpa asked in the last dream.

“Yesterday,” said the woman, now black as the night mountain. “Tomorrow.”

When Volpa woke, she began to cry. Worse than at her mother’s death, she felt bereft. The mortal City dawn was coming up through the yard. The dreaming was over.

It was sunset when Ghaio returned to his house. The bells of the Venusium, the service of the evening star, were ringing across the City. The bell of Santa La’Lacrima sounded hoarse from over the lagoon, as it sometimes did in the spring.

Ghaio was disgruntled. The
two debtors had both paid up all their debt, triumphant rather than squirming. Coins appealed to him less than power, although he was not aware of this, and blamed his mood on other things—the bells, the tedious mass he had attended, the bad cooking of the stupid slave girl who now kept his home.

Red dimmed above the canal. Ghaio’s walls darkened, and the alley further along seemed black and ominous, as if robbers might lurk there.

Ghaio scrambled from the hired boat, and in at his door. He locked it thoroughly and let down the great bar. Safe now.

“What’s this muck?” he demanded as the bowl was set before him.

“Fish stew.”

“That old fool. He can buy nothing any more. Can’t see. Can’t hear useless. Call this fish? You’ll have to do it. Market for the food. And improve your kitchen skills.”

The candles beamed as Ghaio thrust a lump of bread into the stew and brought it to his snout. The bread was burned, as often now, and Ghaio, having champed and swallowed, turned and cuffed the girl. The touch of her resilient flesh, springing at the blow, reminded him. He grunted, and drank some wine.

“Tonight, “said Ghaio. “Upstairs.” Then, a strange caution overcame him. He added, “I want you to help me count my money.”

And the naive girl said, “I can’t add up, signore.”

“I’ll learn you, then.” This made him chuckle. “Yes, I’ll learn you, Foxy. Climb up the ladder as soon as you hear the Moon Bell from Santa La’La.”

* * *

When her chores were done, Volpa
drew water and warmed it, and washed her hair. She had no idea why she did this, for hygiene was irregular among the slaves.

The nights were cold still, yet the hearth had some fire left there, and here she dried the mass of tresses, seeing the flames shine through as she rag-rubbed and combed them with her mother’s broken comb.

Already the old man slave slept in his corner, but Volpa did not dare lie down. She was afraid she would sleep through the Luna Vigile—the Moon Bell, which called the priesthood again to pray, about two hours before midnight.

Her mother had frequently had to be up late to serve Ghaio. Her mother had never specified what these late duties entailed, beyond the carrying of food and drink.

Had she too helped Ghaio count his cash?

Volpa, despite her care, dozed. She wakened with a start to hear the bell, eerie and far away in the vastness of night.

Her hair was dry, the fire was out. In the yard, as she hurried across it, she smelled the aroma of the stacked wood. And, for the first time, she saw the fig tree showed no buds. She realized with a pang of sadness, almost fear, that the tree had died that winter, even as her mother had died. Ghaio would cut it down to increase his stock. And then only the dead would be there, in bundles in the barren yard.

Climbing the ladder, the girl was glad Master was not sitting below, watching her legs—for that had made her uncomfortable. This way, he saw her head first, the hair all crushed in again under its cloth. And she saw him as she never had in her life, sitting on his mattress, which was ancient and stuffed
with straw, and contributed greatly to the room’s foul odor. He wore a loose robe, rather short, so under it his bony, veined and hairy legs stuck out. If she had been a child, she might have wanted to laugh at this, but now it only faintly repulsed her.

Far, far away, the bell ebbed to silence.

She was afraid for a moment that he would reprimand her for being late.

No such thing. He seemed quite jolly. And his color was high.

“Here you are,” he said.

She could hardly fail to be struck—not by his hand this time—but by his changed demeanor.

Volpa did not know Ghaio had decided he might take her even into his bed. She was a virgin after all, and could prove awkward at this first exercise. They were better on their backs for that.

Besides, she was young, and smooth. He did not in the end dislike the notion of her by him, in the night, perhaps convenient for a second game. And this too tickled him, the thought that he might utterly surprise her.

“Now, Volpa. If you’re to help with the cash, you must take off your clothes.”

She stared at him. Which amused him.

“You see, you might thieve a coin otherwise. I daren’t risk it. If you’re bare, you can’t stow anything away.” Even at the word
bare
, (pleasing him) his tool rose under the robe. Oh, he was man enough.

“Come now, come on,” he said, pretending impatience, “are you daft? Do as you’re told.”

She was a slave. Molded in obedience. With a shrinking that—for Volpa—had no real reason, she pulled off her slave’s tunic, and then, in a kind of frenzy of shame, her shift.

Ghaio lay back, and dropping his
hand in his lap, fondled himself.

Now this was not so bad. Despite her ineptitude with the food, he had an article of value here. It would not last, of course. A year or so, and she would be dross.

Feed well then, while he might.

“And that scarf. Take it off. Not a stitch. Or I can’t trust you.”

In one wild movement she ripped the rag from her hair.

Five or six candles were burning in the chamber.

Ghaio had wanted a proper look.

Now, for a second, he was startled.

His possession was, as he knew, very young, and very slender—but not after all skin and skeleton. Over the fragile bones, the creamy flesh had covered her, well made and perfectly fitted, like a lord’s glove. Yet she was so pale, even the round little beads on her breasts barely the shade of watered wine—a match to her mouth. And her eyes, which never before had he noticed, were also pale, a sort of amber color; now he thought of it—just like the eyes of the fox he had seen once, in a picture. In her groin, however, these pallors deepened and flushed alive. She was
red
-amber, there. But that had not prepared him for her hair, nor its evocation.

Had he not once thought her hair like fire? Yes, for so it was. It blew out from her head, framing the whiteness of her body. In length, it fell below her knees. It could be worth cutting, this hair, and selling. But he might let her keep it … It gave him quite a thrill, the sight of it, that red mantle round her white.

Indeed, she was
like
a flame. The blanched center, the carmine rim.

“Come over here,” he thickly said.

He could scent her, this vixen, this flame. Her
rufus tang, the youth of her body. Sweet—

When Ghaio caught hold of her and spun her down on the stinking bed, Volpa thought she had again enraged him, and prepared at once for cuffs and slaps or worse.

Instead, perhaps only slightly less brutal, his hands clenched, one on her right breast and the other on her sex.

Ghaio laughed in her face.

“Now we come to it, eh, Volpa?”

Before, when he had grabbed hold of her, (on the evening of her mother’s death) she had not questioned it, though it had filled her with panic. That sexual affront had seemed only one more lashing out. (Another more ferocious extension of the assaults in the market.) Now, a recollection surfaced. She saw again the cart in the rain, and her own mother under the awning and under Ghaio, her body wracked and shaken by his use of it.

This use Volpa had never understood. Nor did she now. Simply, she was afraid. Yet it was a dread beyond anything she had ever known.