Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) (12 page)

Aretzo frowned.

Jian amended, “Truth has varied somewhat in the matter besides. Depending on which spy has sent which report from Candisi. And whether he lived beyond its dispatch.”

“Hell waits for Jurneia,” said Aretzo. His cheeks burned, as when he put a javelin into the boar.

Cristiano, silent. He had been so most of the journey.

The stair led to the Magister’s apartment, when visiting. The farm folk had seen to the bed and hung thick curtains. A fire burned, and there was a dish of winter apples, wizened but sweet. The Magister’s three knights would sleep in the lesser room, the four outriders and two Primo guard in the barn beside the kitchen.

As servants sorted the baggage, there came the shriek of chickens chased with knives across the slippy courtyard.

“What’s the matter, Cristiano? Sorry for the fowl?” Jian and Aretzo, worldly enough to like the jaunt, with its hunting and novelty. Cristiano smiled mirthlessly.

“The chapel here’s a
stable
,” said Aretzo.

Jian said, “So was the birthplace of our Lord. What bag is
that? Hey, fellow, where are you lugging it?”

The servant replied, “It’s to go up for mistress.”

“Oh, take it then.”

The woman came in with compressed lips. She did not look at Beatifica-Volpa, but the girl, as so often she did, kept her own eyes down.

“The Magister Major has sent this. You’re to wear it.” An order. A slave obeyed orders, always. “He’ll conduct the service of the Venusium at sunfall. I’ll come for you then. Here’s the slave to help you dress.”

This (second) slave came into the room. A true slave, Beatifica’s reminder by example that
she
was no longer of that kind.

Over the chair which stood by the window, the clothing had been laid. It caught the glimmer of the brazier. Beatifica-Volpa stared one long moment at it.

Then, with the other slave’s assistance, she took off her garments of a wealthy farmer’s son, and put on the new ones Fra Danielus had sent.

As sometimes happened, in the minutes before it set, the sun appeared out of the clotted gray-white sky, a maroon ball, lightless enough to be gazed at. The sky was torn all around it, bleeding. Then the sun became a semicircle, and then a slice, and was gone. Color left the sky, and in the courtyard a boy was banging on a copper vessel, to summon the household to prayer.

Advancing to the left of the stable-chapel, the women had entered in a group. There were five or six of them, the farmer’s wife, his elderly widowed mother and
widowed aunt, to the front. At the other side, the right, the farmer and his sons were closest to the altar.

For the Magister Major, Eastern incense-gum had been brought from its chest, and lit. The air was fragrant.

Fra Danielus stood by the altar, and by the altar to the right, the three Soldiers of God. These four, facing the doorway, therefore saw her come in, as always, alone.

Of the Bellatae, only Cristiano, who had seen her before, did not take her at first for some unexpected young man of noble birth.

He noted the eyes of Jian slant inquiringly. Aretzo looked haughty, flaunting his own priestly rank.

In Cristiano a shock-wave broke. He did not know what he felt—horror? Disbelief?

But then Fra Danielus began to speak the words of the Sunset Mass.

Were the peasant family, the Magister’s retainers, aware of what lived among them? This—
changeling
.

Cristiano forced his mind away from the girl, standing now at the back, neither on the womens’ side nor the mens’, but in the middle, before the door. Her eyes seemed fixed on Danielus, or on the altar, perhaps. When the responses were uttered, and in the chant, he detected her voice easily, silver-pure, the Latin exact.

And when they kneeled before the uplifted chalice, so did she. But on one knee only, as did the knights. Dressed as she now was, it gave her no difficulty.

Cristiano sought for God blindly, and through his great self-discipline, shut out reaction to the girl. But even so, could not quite grasp the majestic otherness of the Venusium, its true meaning and heart.

Religion was his food and drink, desire, rest, his life’s love.
He rose, cheated. Just as, six times now, from the Vigil he had had to rise. For six times the essence of God had failed him—that is, been failed by
him
. Each month, through the summer and the autumn, the arrival of winter, kneeling before the Virgin window, lifted high above his pain and able to withstand it—but achieving nothing. The sheer white radiance, the overwhelmment of flawless bliss—they had not been his. And though in the past, occasionally, he had not achieved this state, always then it had been his the next time. Now no fast or punishment brought him back to it. Before the last Vigil, Cristiano had stretched out three hours on the floor, beseeching God, requesting to be told what fault of his had barred him from the pinnacle. Frustrated, unanswered.

Was his fault so grave that God refused to reveal it? Frustrated … that now always. Reining himself like the horse he had ridden today, fighting over and over a restless bitter rage, like the boar they had slain.

He must not become a petulant child, fractious because his toy had been taken from him for his own good, seeing that he valued it too highly.

Was this the message God had sent him, then?

Even holy delight might become the sin of greed?

He had believed, while he stayed worthy—Ah, then, he must no longer be worthy.

In what way? What had he done? Reveal, Oh Lord, my
fault
—

Cristiano held himself finally in bands of steel. Self-governance was all that had been left to him.

It was by now dark outside, and a torch burned on a pole in the yard, which was perfumed, after the incense, with chickens and sheep.

But indoors the candles were lit, and they went into the farmer’s parlor to eat.

The table was finely dressed
tonight with a white cloth, and water for the hands. The woman of the house and her servants brought the dinner. Only the elderly women sat down with the farmer and his five sons.

Danielus was placed at the table’s head, and his three Bellatae on either side. One place still stood empty. Then, in came the girl, the abomination of Woman dressed as a man.

Cristiano stared at her. Her lids were not lowered, but she looked only at Danielus.

The perverse garments were white. Whiter than the common white of ordinary things, the old tablecloth, the womens’ aprons. Church white. Pristine as the new snow. And the cloak, where it was looped back, was thinly edged by gold. While on her hips the low male belt was hatched with gold. She wore a golden crucifix, not large, but set with one smoldering red gem, to represent the Blood of Christ.

In the candlelight, as she came nearer and nearer, her unbound flood of hair was like the torch from the yard, a water of fire. Cristiano saw her eyes were not after all yellow, but, like her cross, made of gold.

“Beatifica,” said Fra Danielus. He spoke casually. No one at the table, or among the women, stirred. As if nothing much went on.

Yet Cristiano felt Jian beside him abruptly alter. And Aretzo across from them, (by whom, it seemed, the changeling would sit down) craned his neck. His eyes started like those of a fish.

“Speak the Grace for us, Beatifica,” Danielus gently said.

She brought her hands together, folded one on the other. Her eyes now lifted above them all. Motionless, she moved beyond them. Cristiano saw it, as he had seen it that other time, in the court of the nunnery.

She spoke the
Grace.

The table bowed its collective head, even the Bellatae. Cristiano
felt
his fellow Soldiers
listening
.

Her voice—was not like a woman’s, not like a boy’s—certainly nothing like a man’s. It was like an
instrument
. The sounding-board of the sacred words. (Beside Cristiano, Jian shuddered.)

At the proper juncture, they marked themselves with the cross.

The Grace was finished, and Beatifica took the stool left vacant for her.

It was Danielus who glanced about at them. Who said, “The Maiden Beatifica has learned her orisons, as you see. And here, she learns other accomplishments.” Aretzo said, “To sew, Magister? To make broth?”

Danielus said, lightly, “As you learned to plough, Aretzo, and to break hods.”

Aretzo flushed. “I was called to serve God.”

“And thus,” said Danielus.

The women were placing the central dishes and a rich savory aroma went up. The kitchen had labored to present its best, a pottage of chicken in a great pan, flavored with pears and onions, ginger and pepper; slabs of the boar, roasted, stuck with cloves and powdered by cinnamon and grain-of-paradise. The Soldiers of God, today allowed their fill, reached out hungrily, angrily. Only Cristiano was abstemious, selecting solely from the chicken. The Magister, as usual, touched neither meat, contenting himself with pancakes made with eggs and white wine.

The girl—the
Maiden Beatifica
—was served a separate bowl, some vegetable thing, while from a little wooden dish she took a sliver of boiled white meat.

Cristiano’s belly had turned in any case.

The family ate heartily.
They seemed to have no troubles. The sons were even becoming sometimes rather loud over their ale, despite the Magister.

The woman though, the Housewife, stood with her servants, her lips drawn in tight. Only when Danielus complimented and thanked her did she wrench them in a smile.

The slave—the girl—the
Maiden
—she ate nicely, like a princeling. But very little. By her trencher the wine cup filled just once, waited mostly unused. She was frugal even with the cup of water.

Danielus spoke to the farmer about the land, crops, weather, the horses.

Later some cheese was brought and winter fruits, and a frumenty with rose-sugar.

They rinsed their hands and wiped them on napkins.

“The Maiden shall say the prayer to close our meal.” Danielus looked at Aretzo, at Jian. Not at Cristiano. “The Warriors of God shall make choice of which.”

Aretzo spoke at once. “Let her say one of the King’s Psalms.”

And Jian said, “The forty-second Psalm.”

“That has a few verses,” said Danielus. He turned to the girl. “Speak this, then, Beatifica—” and he said the first words of the Psalm in Latin.

Immediately she took it up from him, and spoke it all, in the beautiful argent voice.

“Deep thunders to deep, the waves go over me and I drown. Yet the Lord will send to me His kindness by day, and by night His love shall be my song …”

There was no noise at the table now, as that silvery instrument played.

Cristiano recalled the silence in
the street when Berbo accused her. He thought of her in the convent, speaking alone in the sunlight.

A pressure had risen in him. A child might have identified it as the upsurge of tears. But the man sat transfixed, locked in steel, at war with himself.

The Psalm ended.

Jian sighed. Aretzo, always the redder, was pale.

And the woman among her servants held her hand to her lips as if to hide their relaxation.

Danielus rose to his feet.

The roomful of people gazed up at him, the faces lit from low candlelight.

He called the farmer by name. “Marco, you have been a faithful servant to me. And your wife, a paragon. Now you shall see something to wonder at. Jian, I ask that you will get up and shut the door. And you, Marco, put out all these lights except for that one there, on the chest.”

Oddly, from beyond, in the kitchen, at that moment came a noise of the Primo guard, and their servants, some joke told, and laughter.

It was unseemly, and the two old widows clucked their teeth. Marco half turned, scowling.

“No matter,” said Danielus. “Always remember, my friends, God gave us the earth also to be happy in. Doesn’t the Psalm say this,
benevolentia et carmena
.”

As Marco and his eldest son dowsed the candles on the table, a luminous shadow gathered them all in.

There in the heart of it, only the white clothes and the hair of the girl went blazing on—and Cristiano’s blondness, too, had he known it.

He spoke quickly, quietly, to Danielus.

“Magister—if you want her to make her conjuring here—”

“It isn’t conjuring, Knight. But I value
your caution. And—your agitation.”

Cristiano’s guts churned. There was a swirling in his head like drunkenness, but he had drunk only water. The pressure was rising through the core of him, pushing, scorching, agonized as an arrow working in a wound—insistent and dreadful as nausea.

But he was accustomed to conceal and to restrain his flesh. He had ridden partly unconscious through battles and cut men down like a machine. He had kept the Vigil, eight hours on his knees, even when God avoided him.

Yes, the sea had drowned him. Yes, he cried for the kindness and the song by night—

It was very dark.

Miles off through the stillness now, not the laughter of men, but a wolf’s howling arced over the plain. Danielus nodded to his made creature, the Maiden.

“Look, Beatifica.”

Cristiano in his locked—fast turmoil, sensed more than saw the crystals of her eyes. Chrysoprase from the breastplate of a High Priest—

It was as if she found him in the dark as he had found her in the obscure alley, alerted by some sound. Did she hear then, in stillness, the wolf howl of his emotion?

Away and away, the other wolf cried slenderly again over the snow. And then no more.

She saw his heart. She, this absurdity, this abomination—this joke cruder than any told in Marco’s kitchen. He felt her eyes upon his heart, cool, like pearls, sliding through his flesh.

And then—Oh God who is in Heaven—then—the light of the fire—

Aretzo cried out. Marco too and one
of the sons. The woman by the door, the paragon, let go a wild scream.

(Did the wolf, searching the plain, in turn hear these animal noises?)

One saw the Christ shown in this way, the halo, the sun, behind his head. And she too, Virgin Maria. Beatifica—