Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series)

by Tanith Lee

  He had noticed that Demetrio and Lauro had given each other a couple of almost puzzled looks. No doubt each thought he had seen the other somewhere before.

  Witnesses more impartial would be aware that there was a resemblance between them. More than that both were blond, handsome, well-made. Yet, where Lauro had grown more gentlemanly, Demetrio had not become a peasant out here in the hills. One had learned, he still practiced at his former trade, keeping as fine an edge in play as in earnest. He spoke the Grace, too, in the old way. The story was he had been a soldier, a captain at Ciojha, who gave up war for the land, and his wife.

  Ermilla also spoke a prayer after the food. Nothing omitted there, either.

  “And where is Suley?” Danielus asked, when the fruit and cheeses had come in. “I saw him last when he brought your letters down.”

  “With the horses,” Demetrio said. “Of course he never will eat with us.”

  “Of course.”

  “When he’s prayed, he’ll be in. He loves to discuss God with you, as you know, Magister.”

  Danielus acquiesced. The comforts of old men, to sit debating late into the night, the chessboard between them, the candles burning red and low. Suley had reminded Danielus, in Ve Nera this spring, “The others went home to Jurneia by your generosity, Daniel. But I mean to stay rather longer. If I can, I will win you for the true God. I should hate it, my priest, to see you fall down among the lost.” “But Suley, our Gods are one God.”

  “No, Daniel, this you will never convince me of. I know your soul cries out for my God, who is God. One day you will let me feed you the sweetmeat of enlightenment.”

  And Danielus had ceased to argue. Just as always, he allowed Suley-Masroor to speak to him of that one God who was God. And to quote from the sacred and exquisite Book which had proceeded from the depth of this God.

  Who knows, one day I may even become a convert to the God of Suley. He will be the God I have always known. Is this not what Suley says to me? But we mean different things. Even so, we are fond of each other. We have each saved the other from likely death. This can make brothers of the basest men. And he is not base in any way. While I am not base in any way which would preclude or offend our friendship. Outside conversion.

  Suley had affection, even, for Ermilla. She was shameless, he admitted, like most Christian women, but that was not her fault, she knew no better. She was a child, and a nice child.

  He had never known her. Never thought to set together the two halves of Demetrio’s wife, to make the whole woman. After all, he had only seen her once before, from quite some distance, and in an unnatural light.

  Danielus did not burden Suley with the facts. Few were privy to them. That was usually best.

  Beatifica was dead.

  Ermilla sat blithely at the table, eating the red grapes which, in this candleshine, matched her hair. She had put on an azure gown, and on her breast gleamed the little cross her husband gave her on their wedding day, set with one stormy sapphire. He had got the cross in some battle. Why he had kept it he did not seem to know. Perhaps he had meant to present it to the Church, and then forgotten even he had it. He could never have thought of it as a bridal gift.

  Demetrio and Danielus and Lauro talked about the harvest. That was reasonable enough. Later, Danielus would have some talk with Demetrio alone, and then they might refer to other things. Danielus thought that doubtless, as years went by, those other things—religion, war, the past—would be touched on less. Or with less care.

  He was glad they were happy. You saw they were.

  Happy as most were not. Surely it could not be many more months before she had garnered his seed? Perhaps even now it had happened, not visible yet, and Demetrio, embarrassed even would tell him later.

  Master of himself, perhaps always, Danielus did not drowse. He did not want to waste the precious time.

  How often could he visit here? Twice a year at most.

  When Suley came in suddenly, winged by night, and with Reem beside him, Danielus caught that tiny flicker of something all about. A Magister did not have favorites. Yet the favorites were jealous. All the ones he loved, in whatever way he loved them, in some slight way of their own, subtly vied with each other. Before, Demetrio had had no rival. He had known it, without comprehending.

  If he had been sent to the stake, could I have stayed aloof?

  Could I have planned as well as I did? I never loved the girl. I used her. I was sorry. And between us, I and God—or Fate—

  Danielus went out for a turn around Ermilla’s savage garden, with Suley.

  “You’re tired.”

  “Saddle-tired. It’s nothing.”

  “There is a better horse here for you. Demetrio wants to give it to you. Don’t refuse him, he has been perfecting the beast all summer.”

  Yes, they vied with each other, but also were protective. Siblings. “Then I will not refuse. You’re wise to warn me. And you?”

  “Look,” said Suley. They looked up at the night. “I miss my wife. I make poems to her, which compare her to these stars of Venarh. And she is only a little plain round woman, with a skin like honey.”

  “Suley-Masroor, you must go home.”

  “Have no fear. None of Venarh’s women tempt me.

  While I can stay chaste, I can remain.”

  “I should convert at once, and free you.”

  “I would know at once you lied.”

  “No. Your God is mine already.”

  “So you say. Listen, Daniel. One day you will die.

  On that day, you need only cry out to God, He who is God, and beg him to forgive and receive you. He will do it. If you do not lie.”

  “If I swear I will do that, will you go home to your wife?”

  “A little longer. I shall stay a little longer. Besides, Reem’s wife died in Jurneia. He feels more at liberty to enjoy a Christian girl. He has one. He’s taught her how to pray. I think she may go with him, to the East. Never fear, for now, they hide it.”

  Surprised, Danielus gazed at Suley. Suley-Masroor raised his brows into his head-cloth. “Do you forget, Daniel, we also can deceive.”

  Danielus had been sitting that night in his book-chamber, when the Primo guard came for him. There were twenty of them and one priest. Perhaps not so amazing.

  The Council might have thought he would yet rally the Bellatae.

  He got up at the summons and went with them.

  He left everything, even the glossily polished giant’s skull that sat on his desk. In the end, one must leave all. Others would take interest in those things. Or they too would perish.

  He desired that his enemies would not destroy any of his books, or smash the skull as an abomination. But even if they did, all things were always lost at last—and perhaps, nothing was lost. Men had souls, beasts too, he suspected. Why not a book, or an object. One saw, they would recur in other forms, yet the same. All lay in the limitless hand of God.

  Noise had drained from Fulvia, away to the marshes, and the amphitheater. He too had considered going there. But he did not want the conceivably ultimate sight he had of the actual world—to be a girl burning alive. He was selfish in that. And immovable.

  There were still things to do, anyway. He had made all the provision he could, until the last moment. His final agent indeed had gone down the corridors only a few minutes before he heard the tread of the guards.

  If there were any chance, then Danielus had shored it up as firmly as he could. And now that too must be left.

  In prison he would never know. Dead—bodily dead—he would. Surely, he would.

  It was possible, of course, that he was wrong.

  Although God surrounded everything, might Danielus himself not be strong enough to swim or leap the gulf beyond life?

  He pondered this as they marched him across the courts below. It was the simple, the uncomplex who found it easy to enter Heaven. Thought was a wall, a tower. The needle’s eye.

  Then, leave also thought behind.<
br />
  Danielus was conducted down into the the under-rooms of the Primo. Above, the silent-seeming City of Ve Nera. And here a silence that sounded in a roar.

  He was promised no trial, though doubtless he must suffer one. Neither torture, nor death. Nor life.

  Tonight, at the farm, would they again go over it, he, and Demetrio?

  Who again would say, “Why did you never tell me?”

  “I couldn’t trust you. Oh, if it had been your life in a battle, then I would. But not with hers.”

  “I would have had some hope—”

  “And if it failed?” Would Danielus then call Demetrio, not by mistake but through recapture of the past, by his former name? “Cristiano, your love for Beatifica was of an extraordinary sort. That’s why you were prepared hopelessly to fight to the death for me—I am mortal. But in her you saw the light of her soul, you knew she could only go to God, and to God you gave her up. With hope, God alone knows what you might have done. Think. For all I knew, although my men had sighted and seen to the pyre and the platform, rigged up the trap below that led into the tunnel, still they must wait for the flames to take hold, to hide her. By the time it would be safe to bring her down, she might already be dead—or burned so terribly it would be a kindness to let her die.”

  Cristiano, last year, when this had been firstly discussed, standing there in his black, stripped of everything. No longer a Soldier of God, no longer anyone known. Cristiano, in honesty, might be said to have been expunged already. And Demetrio had yet to evolve and remake him.

  And to this displaced being, Danielus outlined the plot and scenes of Beatifica’s escape.

  How certain men had made sure of the position of the pyre, and others assisted in its construction, supplying it too with the evidential corpse of a dog. The trap below had not been difficult to locate. Beneath lay a cistern and a tunnel. Through here, the Romans had pumped in the sea to fill the arena for their water-shows.

  The trap was oiled, counter-weighted. The core of the platform was moveable and the core of the pyre loose, and fashioned to give way at once on the removal of certain props. Danielus’ men must only wait and keep their nerve. Until able to precipitate the structure downwards as the trap gaped wide. Masked by fire and smoke, the girl would be plunged to a bed of mattresses and straw, and the trap heaved back above. Then water, to put out the flames.

  If she lived—in any reasonable sense—they would take her, Ermilla’s husband and his gang, through the tunnel, to the open sea. There was a boat in readiness.

  Along the coast, others were ready, for when the boat would come back to land.

  Cristiano had listened. At first antagonistic, next excitable—then dulling down. Until he said, in a cold voice, “So. She lives?”

  “She lives.”

  “But burned.”

  “There’s no mark on her. Even her garments never took the fire. Or her hair.”

  “Then—”

  “I don’t know how, Cristiano. Perhaps judgment was unflawed and the men just swift enough. Alive and unscathed. Believe me. At the quay here is another boat to take you to her.”

  Danielus received no answer. And soon Cristiano, walking like a somnambulist, went away. Danielus sent a man with him, to be sure he reached the boat.

  Some days after, on the coast northward of Ve Nera, Danielus married a woman and a man who were no longer Beatifica and Cristiano.

  The chapel was a Roman one, but had been sanctified for God. It was a scanty wedding. In its manner also a Christening, for each had been renamed in Christ.

  Demetrio—the name of a saint chosen, perhaps, at random by the recipient. Since Beatifica did not seem to know her mother’s name, nor properly any others for her sex, Danielus gave her that of the stone-mason’s wife. Although this would be kept a secret always, the original Ermilla, he guessed, would take a rich satisfaction in it. Beatifica had been a saint.

  Saint, and warrior … vanished. They were, for sure, two different people Danielus had joined. A bridegroom not stunned, yet very silent. A bride as silent, lucent, and in a gown. Much more than that. Much more. The service which created them one flesh—superfluous.

  Without festivity, and at once, the couple went inland and turned back to the Veneran hills. The farm Danielus rendered them was far away, the mountains close. If ever they must, they could cross them, and be done with the City forever.

  But that they might never need to do.

  He had never dreamed of any of that, in the windowless cell beneath the Primo, which was always night, and which always soundlessly roared. There Danielus had stayed, (dreamless.) Waiting.

  Eventually, as expected, guards came. Only ten of them. They marched him up to the surface. He had not expected that. Or, not yet.

  Despite himself, he was rather disorientated. It was daylight, besides. Once he could see, he saw the blue sky.

  Which seemed unending, reducing all this below, to mere stupidity.

  There were crowds on the Primo Square.

  They were not spent and half-ashamed, as he had assumed they would be, having burned their victim—nor boisterous and seeking new carnage, which he had encountered too, in such mobs.

  Most were still sooty from her fire. They spoke in mouthings. And seeing him, went mute.

  Then Danielus saw the Council. Twelve men, as ever, for the number of the Apostles. Sheathed in black, and more like avengers from the classical abyss. The Council of the Lamb, which he had wanted, and intended, to be rid of.

  It was Jesolo who stepped forward. And then Danielus saw the Bellatae Christi, perhaps all of them that were left, hardly any of them in a maculum, but with swords, knives, burnished in their belts.

  Had they risen, done what he forebade? They too did not have that look.

  Jesolo reached Danielus. He looked deeply at the Magister from pouchy eyes. Jesolo said, “Isaacus died. At the foot of her pyre. The people are saying he was struck down by the Most High. For his sin.”

  One of the Bellatae moved forward too. It was Jian.

  He seemed unsteady, dizzy, or drunk. He said loudly, “She was the saint of God.”

  The crowd, murmuring, murmured more vibrantly.

  Danielus tried not to search the Bellatae, the crowd, for Cristiano, whom he loved. Danielus, Magister Major, succeeded.

  Jesolo said, “Some men are here. The men you had charge of. Once our adversaries.”

  Danielus looked, and saw the twenty Jurneians, and Suley-Masroor. He had not seen them because none of them wore their turbans. Their hair, wealths of it, and blacker than ravens, tumbled about them. They had shaved their faces. Both these things, for them, were fearful crimes.

  In the name of God—what had these Christian clods done to them—Danielus felt a whirling fury. He could not quite control it, it was so long since he had needed to take control of such vast rage.

  Then Suley-Masroor walked forward.

  He called out, in his strongest voice, which seemed to quake the square, “Here is our savior, the Magister Danielus, who brought us to the light.”

  The sun beat down. God had made the sun. Or caused the sun to be. Or was the sun … And Danielus knew, from his reading of the Greeks, that the Psalm which spoke of this had been in the form of a song composed in Egypt, by a Pharaoh, praising the deity of the sun …

  The guard was falling back from Danielus.

  His eyes, stung by the sun’s light, blurred.

  He saw the Jurneians kneeling. Abominably, they were kissing a cross a priest was offering them, and the crowd murmured, murmured.

  Danielus wanted to snatch the cross away and wipe their lips. For them—such sacrilege. As if they smeared themselves with dung—and worshipped that.

  He had wept that day they had remade his sister, the Jewess Yaelit, as the Christian Veronichi. Even though he knew it did not matter. God was God. There was no God—but God.

  But the skin of Danielus was ill-made glass, and all the light shone through and changed his blood to
dust.

  He heard Suley cry out, in a lion’s voice: “It is he, this great priest there, who has brought us to the one true God. And only he could do it.”

  And then Jesolo stepped back, and Cristiano stood in front of him. He was white as a new skull. His eyes were black. He put his arm about Danielus, and, helpless, Danielus leaned on him.

  “They say you made them Christians, Magister, by your preaching. After the fire—after that thing Isaacus died—the mob was turning. Then these men came up.

  Sarco brought them. See, he’s there, in the Council, the twelfth man, to replace Isaacus. You converted twenty-one intransigent Jurneian infidel to the truth of Christ.”

  Jesolo, a little further off, said, “It’s saved you, Fra Danielus. How can we doubt you? Thank God, and Amen.”

  Then Danielus was kneeling. He did not know why.

  His legs giving way, no doubt. Cristiano, who had lost his one great love, kneeled by him, holding him up.

  Cristiano, who was almost dead.

  Everyone in the square was kneeling now, and praying. Including the twenty one Jurneians.

  They think they damn themselves. And they do it for me. Oh God, how can I bear this sacrifice?

  Danielus thought, as he had done before, of Christ’s rejection of the Cup of Agony, the cross, before he put away his human terror, and godlike, drank from it.

  But had it been the agony He dreaded or the colossal power, the godhead itself, which suffering and death must bring?

  No human thing could bear this. Even God-in-flesh could not. How can I?

  Then Suley was there, leaning near.

  He clutched the Jurneian’s hand—“Suley—Suley—

  No—you must—”

  Suley-Masroor’s lips were at his ear.

  “For a great one, great things must be done. But do you think our God cannot see—or forgive? Or that we cannot lie?”

  And then Danielus wept. He wept because they had overthrown him quite. He had been returned to infancy, was a baby. And a baby cries.

  All this the crowd saw and reported. Misread, it was considered appropriate.

  Later, as Danielus, no longer a prisoner, and in command of himself once more, told Cristiano of the plan for Beatifica, and of the message he had received of its success, the first three benign miracles took place.