Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series)

by Tanith Lee

  Into the water.

  And for these falsehoods, whispered, shrieked, to save what might be left of a whole skin, these admissions to crimes which, in fantasy or nightmare only they had committed, that place was coming to be named. The Bridge of Lies.

  2

  It was Quadraginta. The time of fasting and sorrow. The forty days of payment for past faults. But, spring was forward, and took no notice.

  On a chair by the high window, Beatifica sat quietly. She was dressed as normally now, like a young man, a lesser prince. Her clothes were white, or gray, and she had learned how to save them from getting dirty, moving carefully about, eating and drinking in the fine way she had been taught. As she generally did when alone, she had spent some time saying over prayers and passages from the Bible, to enjoy their sounds. Now every day a priest came, who was teaching her both Testaments, chapter by chapter, and in Latin.

  This priest, young and gentle, blushed on and off and on with confused indecision when he was with her. Even so, he would tell her always the meaning of each passage he was to help her learn.

  In this manner, although still not understanding the majority of the individual words, Beatifica was coming to grasp the narrative behind each section she recited. Also the names of Patriarchs, heroes, villains and celestial beings. As others had found before her, the richness of the Bible as a story book was virtually limitless, while the poetry and symmetry of the wonderful, unknown words, consistently pleased her. However, the appalling threats and unearthly inspirations jointly passed her by.

  “She speaks so flawlessly, one would swear she knew every sentence, every letter she utters,” this, from her flushed teacher. Then, urgently, “Truly, Magister Major, I think she does, by some supernal intervention, know them all.”

  Fra Danielus had nodded. It had been his hope that most would come to believe this of her. Her ignoramus’s power of learning by rote was worth much more than mere understanding.

  Beyond her window, which was high up in the Primo’s side, Beatifica could see down between high roofs, into a small garden, where lay brothers were gathering herbs, the only form of seasoning, with a little salt, permitted for the Forty Days. Tiny flowers covered the lawn like gems and coins. On a peach tree, blossom massed like the white sea-foam from which the goddess Venus had been fashioned.

  Beatifica had re-entered the Primo with Fra Danielus and some of his people, scribes and servants. She had been dressed then as one of the lay brothers, in a loose brown habit. No one noticed her. Outside, (unknown to the girl) her fame of fire had spread. But in most of the tales she stayed an uncanny phenomenon, manifesting without human agency, vanishing in thin air.

  Into the garden suddenly walked a Soldier of God. He wore the shining maculum, and was girded by the sword belt. The shoulder badge of the Child astride the Lion, from this distance, was just a smudge of sunlight. His hair was dark.

  The priests drew back. The Bellator talked to them, shortly. Beatifica heard the voices, but not what was said.

  She knew the Bellator, however. He was the one they had called Jian, at the farm on the plain. He had ridden beside the uncomfortable jouncing litter which brought her back to the City. On the journey, three times every day, he had asked her if she required anything. She consistently said No. What could he give her? As always, she expected nothing, and to ask of her her wishes had remained, in her view, at best an irrelevance.

  Now the priests left the garden, their baskets laid with green.

  Jian, Bellator Christi, stood, foursquare below her. Far down, and made small.

  The sun on his hair altered it to silver.

  Something moved through Beatifica. This was like a low tide, passing from her heart to her brain, and away again. She did not recognize it. But she leaned out a little way.

  And Jian, turning all at once, tipped back his head and looked directly up at her.

  Her hair fell round her face and shoulders, over the window’s edge, drifting. She wore it unbound and unconcealed now, as a boy or a man would. Sunlight caught her, too.

  Jian crossed himself. Then he went down on one knee on the velvet lawn, crushing the little flowers.

  Beatifica watched him, puzzled, unsettled as so often by the actions of others, and yet, as usually too, indifferent.

  He was worshipping her.

  She did not know it. Nor did he.

  With a strange sensation of disappointment, (not knowing either what disappointment was) the girl withdrew inside her room.

  She went over to the icon of Maria that stood on the chest. It was a small statue, of alabaster, only the veil colored rose, and painted with gold stars, which also appeared, one each, on the dainty feet.

  Beatifica now crossed herself as Jian had done. She said a prayer to the Virgin, one of the prayers whose meaning no one had told her. She said it melodiously. She had been taught how to worship, its forms. And this too, for her, had become a valued pastime.

  Outside, Jian was still kneeling. Still committing his own act of devotion.

  Then the midday Solus sounded from the Angel Tower. Getting to his feet, Jian strode away.

  The nun Purita knelt also in the Midday Mass. Here, this fell some minutes later, since the bell of Santa Lallo Lacrima, (lullaby of tears) invariably rang after that of the Primo.

  Like all the women of her order, Sister Purita wore gray, her wimple only being white. Against it, her skin looked sallow. Under it, her blonde hair was cropped short—but she had seen, as it fell, some gray also in the strands. At the inn, she would soon have had to cover her hair completely, anyway, or to bleach it with the not-always-obtainable urine of a donkey or horse.

  Luchita—Sister Purita—prayed.

  Her back ached, but now she had the balm for that, and the herbal drink which helped her to sleep. There was the dispensation too, which allowed her, if unwell, to miss the Prima Vigile two hours after midnight. As a rule though, Purita had one of the novices wake her in time.

  He had been so very kind to her. Possibly, it was for the first that anyone had. Even her father had beaten her, and her mother too, as they had all the children, excepting Cristiano. The local priest had taken an interest in the boy from infancy, instructed him in reading and Latin, and entered him for the priesthood. Their parents had been proud. Cristiano, she had always thought, (and sometimes enviously, belligerently) had escaped. Now, so had she.

  Last summer, when she had knelt differently, weeping slightly from tiredness and soreness, on the stone floors of the nun-house, a man had come for her, a priest. She was taken through the marshes, to the big church of Santa La’La, whose late bell she had so often heard from the inn, and never heeded. She thought she had failed at the nunnery, all her remorse and punishing work gone for nothing. She would be castigated and thrown out. Then what?

  When she was taken into the room, and saw the priest sitting there, she had trembled with shock. It was a Magister of the Basilica—more, a Magister Major. She knew him in another moment, from the description Cristiano had once given her.

  He had the ascetic face of a saint, pale, and lean, like body and hands. His eyes were black, large and calm, and from his thick dark hair the tonsure seemed carved, like a disc in the fur of a dark cat. There was gray there, too. Like herself, he was no longer young.

  He told her she should sit down.

  When she had done so, he said, “You must find this road very hard, my sister.”

  “It is. But I don’t mind.” She did. She could see no other way.

  “How long have they told you you must wait for the novitiate?”

  “Until next spring. Then, if well judged, I can begin.”

  “Tell me, please,” he said, “why you came to this? Was your husband harsh? Your children ungrateful?”

  “Oh—my children are all far off. One way and another. The boys went for soldiers. Two died in the last war with Candis.”

  “That is sad.”

  “Yes.” She corrected herself quickly, “You�
��re very good to say so, Magister.”

  “What of the others?”

  “Trade took them away.”

  “Even the girl.”

  She hesitated, then said, “My daughter became a whore, I’m sorry to say it. I never see her. My husband—he wouldn’t have her in the house. I don’t know what became of her.”

  “Maria Magdelena was also a harlot, Luchita. Nothing is irredeemable. But I perceive why the life of a nun may eventually have appealed to you. Your last child died, I think.”

  “You’ll know from my brother,” she said.

  Danielus nodded. He had thought she might not be a fool, nor was she. In her scourged and emptied face, he could detect a trace of Cristiano. When young perhaps, she had been fair.

  She said, “Magister, he must have told you I didn’t seek this because of that. But because of the girl.”

  “Tell me of that, then.”

  She told him. Her words were halting, not from uncertainty, only through trying to find the proper ones, those which would summon back the event both for herself and another.

  When she finished, Danielus said quietly, “And you have no doubt of what you saw?”

  “None.”

  “Someone will have mooted the chance that Lucefero worked in this, not God.”

  “Many times. How can I know? But I never thought so.”

  “Why?”

  She lifted her eyes and looked directly into his. “It hurt me when she did it. I felt a sort of splitting pain—it was—forgive me, Magister—like a birth pang. And most of my self fell from me. I was left only with my inner self. Not much, you’ll agree, I’m sure. Yet no longer—bowed down, laden—free. It was as if I needn’t cling anymore to the life I’d had. Nor to anything. I could begin again. Do you see? Surely Satanus doesn’t give us anything like that? He’d weight us down the more, even if it was with luxuries and charms. It would be heavy—not lighter than the air.”

  Danielus got up. So did she.

  “Do you know the symbol which is in this ring I wear?”

  She stared at the emerald. “The emblem of your authority, Father.”

  “It is the stone blessed by the Christ, and from which his final drinking cup was made. Also, it was the stone of the goddess Venus, patron in ancient times of our City.” He extended his hand. Unbelievingly, she realized he was allowing her to press her lips to the mystical jewel. She did so. (The emerald felt coolly warm, and smooth as water.)

  Danielus said, “You’ve served your novitiate, Luchita. Now you need only learn your duties as a nun. Do you still wish it?”

  Bemused, she nodded. “But I—”

  “Nothing is random,” he said, “that comes from God. He chose you, Luchita, never forget this. To be the witness and to throw off your earthly chains. Don’t cry. You shall serve here in the sister-house of this church. You’ve paid your dues already in the world. I shall make it my business to see you’re well-treated here. The Domina is old and charitable.”

  Luchita now, kneeling in Santa La’La, raised her eyes to the soft light of the glazed window. She prayed for the charitable Domina, and for the Magister, Fra Danielus. Let God bless him, as Christ blessed the green stone in his ring.

  O God, sang the nuns, I render you all my heart and am free. You demand of me everything, and I forget the world.

  3

  The room was very large, and had required to be. It was crowded. The walls were covered by long tapestries, and painted panels that told stories, both colored like jewels, and gilded. Silver lamps hung down twice the height of a tall man, yet well clear of the throng below. The candles were uncountable, and all starred with light. Instantly slaves removed and replaced those which had burned out. Music played. The servants stalked to and fro, kitted in plum silk, the color of the Ducal house. At the long tables draped in white, and set with silver platters and spice-cellars of gold six mid-finger lengths high, (in the shape of towers) guests of the Ducem were eating and drinking. The Forty Days were over. Christ had died and risen from the dead. And here, the taxes and the dangerous opprobrium which hung over Ve Nera’s apparel and food, went unconsidered.

  Men in stiffened tunics, or long gowns, edged by bear fur and the tails of weasels, velvet hats stabbed by flowers of ruby and beryl. Women with bared lily shoulders pushed up from tightly buttoned over-gowns, which sprouted patterned waterfalls of sleeves, and headgear that was a heart, or padded hoop wound by gilt cord, netted in transparent veils from Inde, and spattered by pearls.

  Even so, no joints or poultry were served on this meatless night. Crab flesh and eels had been brought instead, and wide-fish in honey, the scorpion crab in its coral shell, and stew of oysters in the Roman manner. Now, however, a trumpet blew. The salt-swans were coming in. Birds it was true, but, from their greenish tint and fishy taste, allowable.

  Each rested on a bronze charger rimmed by gold. Each was re-clothed in its feathers, beaks covered by silver-leaf and with diamonds, no less, set in the eyes. Down the room they sailed, long necks curved, proud on their lakes of vegetables.

  Twelve in all. The room applauded. Knives were sharpened. The slender dogs, in collars of gold, lifted their muzzles.

  As the feasters tore the swans apart, neatly hacking a way in past the quaint feathery illusion of life, Cristiano watched, expressionless.

  “You grasp now the Council’s need for curbing the appetite of men?” said Jian softly.

  “Yes. I have always grasped that.”

  Water green feathers littered the floor, among the strewn camomile and asphodel.

  Further up the high table, from his place beside the Ducem, Fra Danielus courteously declined the swan. But inclined his head to the two seated Bellatae.

  “He says we may.”

  “You eat it. It isn’t to my liking.”

  “Cristiano, you needn’t mask your virtue with a falsehood.”

  Cristiano grinned suddenly. It was as startling as the rare times the Magister Major smiled. Jian, englamoured despite himself, laughed.

  “No, I hate swan-meat. Turbot with feathers.”

  As the salver came, the riven swan, leaning now, Jian carved off a modest portion. The servant craned near, offering other vegetables, sauce, pickled oranges.

  Cristiano had lapsed back into his impenetrable and somber gaze.

  He was thinking of the girl, due to be brought in soon, like the swans. Similarly to be hacked and cut up, as by the jeweled personal knives of these rich princes and their women?

  On the other side of the Ducem sat two men from the Council of the Lamb. As a Bellator went abroad in his mail, so the Council Brothers did in their night-black, and hooded. One of them was that evil-looking creature, Sarco. And beside him, the man who was coarsely-spoken. He had some ailment of the throat, it seemed. The Magister had called him only ‘brother’.

  At first Joffri had seemed rather cramped between these two arms of the Church. But as the wine flowed, this lessened. His young wife, Arianna, arrived late. Now she sat along the board in her white gown, neck crystallized by olivines. It was just possible, from the profile of her body, to surmise she might be with child. Joffri looked at her now and then, absently, affectionately, without any passion. She had a sad little face under the extravagant headdress.

  A male Jew, Cristiano had heard, thanked God every day for not making him a woman.

  And outside, with her guard, for so they must be considered, of seven Bellatae Christi from the Upper Echelon, she waited.

  A woman, but not solely a woman.

  Beatifica.

  Since Christ’ Mass tide, he had kept the vigil, as he always did every month. But God did not grant Cristiano his vision of Heaven. The ecstasy. Perhaps never again would that rapture be his.

  Only at that time she brought down the fire.

  Only then.

  What did it mean?

  He had eaten sparingly. Had not wanted much. These feasts he found distasteful, pointless and dull. Nothing in the world could compar
e with God.

  Where God was, there waited all purpose and exhilaration. Was God—with her?

  Cristiano dipped his fingers in the water bowl, where petals floated, and wiped his hands on the napkin. He closed off his Cup—it was silver—to the servant with the pitcher.

  Tonight, here at the City’s temporal hub, was to be recreated that miniature night at the farm on the plain. Joffri had heard the rumors. Of course he had. Now and then, he cast a puzzled glance at the Magister. A puzzled glance lit with a sort of childish wish for surprises. The opposite of the looks he gave his wife and two mistresses.

  What do I feel?

  Cristiano did not want it to happen here. For it would. She would come in and there would be the sense of startlement, then scandal, and a score of women would giggle at her affrontery, and some of the jaded men, fancying this hermaphrodite thing, a boy-woman clad as a lord, would eye her lasciviously. Then she would call the fire. She could. She would.

  He was armored now. He had put a maculum of steel upon his mind and soul.

  But they, this ignorant petty crowd, attractive as all the similar scenes of banquets upon the walls, would respond with hysteria. Screams, prayers, women swooning, men falling to their knees.

  The smell of smoke.

  It was a show-piece, such as could provisionally be faked on any actor’s cart, to please the rabble.

  Yet it was real.

  Had not Christ healed lepers and the blind before a crowd? Had he not, at a festival, changed water into wine? Died before a multitude.

  Must even the sublime be cheapened to make good the truth?

  But—she was only a girl.

  The swans lay in ruins. (Twelve—one for every calendar month.) The odor of roast and grease and burning wax grew heavy, mixed with the squashed flowers, and the Eastern perfumes. Perfumes even from Jurneia, no doubt.

  Jian had drunk too much, Cristiano noted. He would stay couth but then need to confess it and do penance. He was not thinking of that. His eyes were bright, thinking of Beatifica.

  One saw it among all the Upper Echelon of the Bellatae, for all were in the know. A raising of heads at the mention of the girl. Like the Ducem’s dogs just now.