Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series)

by Tanith Lee

  “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 dr
eam 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.

  When they saw it, all the priests began to make a great noise. This noise was not human.

  There were squawks and trills, roars and grunts, and long foolish braying sounds.

  Beatifica understood the lizard, now upright on its tail, was a crocodilius, for she had been shown one in a book. As for the others, two or three bent over, and then several more, and as they bent, she saw ears stand up on their heads. Cowls and tonsures vanished away. The priests jerked about, hopping heavy-bodied round the crocodilius—they were the huge hopping hares she had seen in previous dreams. And there went others on four little feet, and spines stuck up through their purple. Several had become birds, more gaudy than their garments, with crests, and pink wattles. They fought for perches where there were none. Another, like a pig with fur, rolled grumbling on the terrace, to get free of his priestly gown. A colossal toad sat burping.

  Beatifica began to laugh. It pleased her, the silliness of it all. She was yet so young. An adolescent and a mage. She had never been a woman, even in her dreams.

  But the black crone, again, was laughing too.

  Then she said, “Go back now, girl. They call you.”

  Beatifica looked over her shoulder. There was a dim doorway behind the terrace, where the stair had been. She stopped laughing.

  “Is Cristiano safe?”

  “Yes, yes.”

  “I knew he would be. He can’t come to harm. But then the Magister said he might—since, like Christ, he took on mortal shape …”

  “Even the Magister lies.”

  Beatifica, troubled.

  The beasts on the terrace had all begun to fight. They tore at each other and scratched and bit, snorting, defecating. No longer funny.

  The old woman took Beatifica to the doorway.

  “Where’s mumma?”

  “There,” said the old woman. Her teeth were long and clean. She put her hand on Beatifica’s forehead. Her skin was so richly black, would the fingers leave a mark? Like a flower, maybe, or a star.

  “There’s mumma. You, girl. Me and mumma, and all. You. Listen now, listen now.”

  But then she only shook her head.

  The dim door enclosed Beatifica.

  The last she saw before she woke, completely and at once, was the purple-robed crocodilius being tumbled back into the lagoon.

  And after that, a woman’s face, but quite young, and pale.

  “God’s mercy—you’re wakened. Lie still, take care. I’ll call to Milla. And the Fra only minutes gone—”

  The girl lay down again. She felt dizzy and weak. She had none of the sense of strength and elation that had been with her in the dream.

  There was a faint rumbling sound beyond the Primo. Thunder, perhaps.

  Had she done what was asked?

  What had it been?

  Oh, as always. To call fire.

  Because she must safeguard her angel.

  The room was dark and closed by shadows. In her fluster, the running woman had put out the candle with the breeze of her skirt.

  Beatifica took the candle up. She waited to feel the essence, so familiar now, rise in her. When she did not feel it, still she stroked her hair. Stroked as mumma had shown her. For the fire.

  It did not come.

  Her hand was empty, and warm with cold.

  So the women found her, Ermilla and her sister, Ve Nera’s saint, sitting forlorn on her blanket, the unlighted candle beside her, in darkness.

  3

  In a raucous voice, the boatman sang, rowing through into the Silvian Marshes. Sometimes he broke off and glanced at Danielus uneasily. “Be sure you don’t mind it, holy Father?” Danielus said he did not. He did not add he wished the man could sing better. “It’s relief, and proper thankfulness. Praise God.”

  “Yes,” said Danielus. “Sing if you want.”

  Ve Nera had sung, and was singing. In the dusk, she was lit up extravagantly by an excess of candles and brands, and faces beaming in windows, at turnings between the walls. Here and there, where Jurneian missiles had struck, they were clearing rubble. The worst hits were about Fulvia. From those places rose businesslike noises, as if in a stone-yard.

  On the narrow canals that led through from the marsh, they were out too, trying to gather the rubbish up they had dumped, to choke them off from small craft of the enemy fleet. In some areas the waterways were impassable. Probably they would not flow freely now till the winter tides, and the smell was viler than usual.

  A woman pointed in the water, lamenting. “He flung in our bed—our bed we had from my uncle’s house. We won’t need a bed if the Jurneians come. That’s what he said. Now he says, let’s couple on the floor, but I say No, no, husband. Buy me another bed first.” Seeing a priest rowed by, she made a motion of fake shame. “Forgive me, holy signore.” He raised his hand gently.

  He was glad for them, glad they were enjoying this respite from fear and worry. Indulging in petty events. It would not last. What could, in such a world?

  They went by long outer ways, to avoid the closed canals.

  Set in twilight, where the marsh broadened and liquefied to great lakes, Danielus glimpsed a ruin on its hill, the amphitheater of the ancient Romans. It was a smaller replica, a bastard babe perhaps, of their Colosso in Rome. Here, as there, they had watched men fight to the death, and criminals fed to beasts of prey. Through cunning drains and traps in the arena floor, they had sometimes flooded the theater from the sea, and staged mock battles in tiny ships, mock battles where gladiators and slaves died by scores.

  Over it the gulls wheeled, crying mournfully. Nothing had improved for the gulls. Worsened, doubtless: ancient Rome and modern Jurneia would both hav
e provided them with corpses to pick.

  Santa La’La, also on its hill above the marsh, let him in.

  He climbed up the stairs, preceded by two chattering nuns, a servant now carrying the books he had brought, seventeen in all.

  Her rooms were not too unpleasant, but she had not been able to soften them much, which, where she could, she had skill in doing. Here, Veronichi stayed circumspect. However, when the servants and nuns were out and the door locked, she lit more candles, and pulled off the ugly cap to let her hair fall, newly washed, blue-black.

  “Have you seen your Domina yet?”

  “Not yet. After the Luna Vigile I will.”

  “She was anxious, I think. She’s afraid she won’t have satisfied you.”

  “She’s only had the post a short while, and in time of war.”

  “I’ve seen nothing bad in her. She has a temper, but curbs it. She wept when the old woman was buried.”

  “Purita has a curious heart. Are you jealous?” Veronichi smiled. “How well you know me. A little.”

  “Though never of my lovers.”

  “No. Never of those.”

  They ate the meal, which was sparse but well cooked.

  “On the island,” said Veronichi, “we would have chickens stuffed with pigeons and apples, and sit crowned by chaplets of lilies and peonies.”

  “And other, better things.”

  “Do you want—the door’s fast—”

  “No, dearest. Not here.”

  The wine, which he himself sent to the cellars of his churches, was very good. They ate and drank in silence. One by one, the candles burned down.

  Danielus and his sister rinsed their hands, and sat side by side on a bench before the window of the second room. They leaned close, became disturbed by it, and in mutual consent, drew apart. Their bodies were used to love making, but must be denied. (Beyond, night hung low, its stars obscured.)

  “Why have you brought so many books?”

  “You also know me well.”

  “What else, my Daniel, when I’ve studied you all these years?”

  “Your island’s safe. Soon I hope you may go back to it. In which case, I’d like it best if you would store these books in the secret place.”