Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) (16 page)

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 compare 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.

But the seven Soldiers of God who attended her tonight had never before seen what she could do.

The music had stopped. Joffri turned to Fra Danielus, his eyes brighter than Jian’s.

Cristiano heard the Ducem say, “Will she come in?”

“Yes, my lord,” said Danielus. “If you’re ready.”

“I long to see it, Father. Trust me.”

On his other side, the hoarse priest from the Council said, gratingly, “If we are to believe she can.”

Cristiano thought,
How can he doubt?
And then,
The simplicity of it is what is horrible to me. I believe. I know. I wish I could go out—no, I wish before God this was not to happen.

But God must have decreed it. Miracles were in the provenance of God. God could not make an error. And yet, the Magister had told him she was descended from a witch—

Joffri stood up, and everyone became hushed. A little god upon earth, a man strutting in his crown.
Think of the skull behind the skin, Joffri
!

Cristiano’s heart beat, a drum in his side. He tried to cool himself, half reached out for the wine. Took his hand back and sat motionless.

“Generally,” Joffri said to the huge, worldly room, “I call jugglers now, and men who swallow birds and let them back out from their ears. Or a poet to sing his latest ode.”

They looked at him. Men drunk, feeding their hounds on bits of swan. Women with the upper moons of their breasts shining.

Joffri said, “Christ’s resurrection is scarcely past. And God has not forgotten us. Men say, let’s eat and make merry and forget the grave gapes for us. But why fear
the grave? Christ makes nothing of it. And He, knowing an enemy steals upon us even now, a dragon that slips across the ocean—” They stared. Faces had whitened. Here and there a woman clutched her male companion’s arm, or held her own hand, as if to pray. “God sends signs to us, it seems. We needn’t be afraid even of a mortal foe.” Joffri flipped one nonchalant hand, and the trumpet sounded again. The wide doors at the room’s far end were opened.

The Ducem sat. He shot one gleaming look at the Magister Major. The uncaring hand had said, Oh, let’s do it then, let’s see. The eyes said, You’ll need God’s help and to spare if you fail now, will you not?

It was exactly as Cristiano had thought.

Startlement first.

He had seen the red horse brought for her. But not reckoned on quite how she would look on it. Here in the City, it was at once a symbol of the rare, and too of war … It was a steady animal, despite its lean and graceful, hound-like lines. Ferried through the waterways on a barge, and here to the Rivoalto, it had needed to be. It placed its hoofs with the sure balance of a dancer. In color it was like burnished copper. The saddlecloth was white, sewn with golden stars and suns, and from the white bridle and halter, hung golden bells, which jinked faint but clear in the silence, as it brought her forward.

She was also in her white and gold. Her hair, unbound, was one pure shade brighter than the horse.

The seven Bellatae walked, three on either side, and one at her back. They had come armed into the presence of the Ducem, the only men who might, save for his own guards. And the swords were all drawn, the tips of them dipped earthward.

Down the room the red horse stepped.

Her face was blanker than
unwritten paper. All but the wide eyes. Golden. Fixed, as Cristiano remembered, on the Magister. Until, suddenly, they moved, and fixed on
him
.

The drum in his side jolted. Missed, and began again.

But she looked at Jian now. (He heard Jian catch his breath.) And then straight at the Ducem. Straight, straight, straighter than any sword.

Joffri crossed himself. Then he said, very low, “You never told me, Fra Danielus, she was beautiful.”

Cristiano heard Danielus answer instantly in his quiet voice, “Of course, my lord. Her beauty comes from God.”

Joffri sounded shaken a little. He said, “Doesn’t it always, holy Father?”

“By a conduit, it does. On her, it seems, the Almighty has directly breathed.”

Cristiano heard another voice in his mind, which contemptuously said that No, she was not beautiful. She
had
no beauty, was more than beauty. Beauty was a tiny word of fools, used to describe what had no word, here on earth.

And a wave of fear followed the inner voice. The instinct to beware.

The horse had passed through the room, and come up to the highest table, where the Ducem sat with his family, and the priests.

They were aware now, most of the crowd, that the young man on the horse was not masculine. As he had predicted, Cristiano heard the quick rills of laughter, the smothered oaths. Until silence resumed.

But the rough-voiced priest spoke loudly.

“This is against the law of God.”

The Ducem said, “Holy brother—”

And the priest said through him, not bothering
with him, “A woman clad as a man is blasphemous and immoral. She must be wicked and an imbecile, and those in charge of her too.”

Danielus now used his voice, pitched not raised, to find the far reaches of the chamber. “God makes the law and God can unmake it.”

“You dare to say, Fra, that God—”

As easily as the priest had broken in on Joffri’s sentence, Danielus overrode the priest’s. “Who am I to speak for God, brother. And who are you to speak for Him. I say this: A sword travels in its sheath for battle. Not in a female gown.”

The hoarse priest surged up and now Sarco, the other Council Brother, put out his hand and stayed him. “Let us only see.”

The Magister would have told her what to do, and how and when. At some signal from him, now she dismounted from the horse. She did this without flurry or awkwardness, and with no display. She had the coordination of a knight, used to it.

“This,” said Danielus, as he had on the farm on the plain, “is the Maiden Beatifica. Speak for us now, Beatifica, the Grace.”

She did so.

As Cristiano had expected and predicted. In her perfect Latin.

Hands rose, a roomful of hands, faltering, belated to mark the cross.

From a side door two of the Ducem’s men were coming in. They carried between them a great black pot, and there was oil washing about in it.

They set this down between the girl and the high table, and went away.

One of the seven Bellatae guided the red
horse aside. They all drew back, and left the central space clear for the girl and the cauldron.

She would do it now.

Cristiano braced his body and his mind. The Magister had said she drew her impetus from emotion. The room thrummed with it, like the strings of some instrument before a storm. But she should have none from him. Not one jot.

He felt but did not see her golden eyes go over him. He was one among so many.

The Magister spoke. “Bring the fire, Beatifica.”

Cristiano, within a wall of milky adamant that could not be cracked, waited.

It would come.

It came.

He
heard
it,
felt
it—felt nothing.

Heard them screaming, and felt the heat of fire, absolutely present. The rasp of the oil igniting with the sound of tearing cloth. Chairs and benches scraped. Dogs volleying and baying in fright, voiding themselves—the silky bundled sound of a woman falling and caught by servants—sparks singeing his own cloak—
the smell of burning—

Cristiano blinked to clear his vision, and looked and saw the pot full now of fire—and the Ducem, his eyes open wide and lips parted, and little Arianna, the Duccessa, shrinking away.

A column of smitch and smolder flaring into the roof where the banners hung.

A glass goblet, rare, brought to impress, smashing.

Purple light.

Her hair, deep colored now as blood, fading.

Her white face that seemed also burning from within, paling down to
a human paleness that was almost ghostly.

She was bowing her head. Her shoulders drooped.

It cost her something to do this. He had never realized that before. Now she was tired. Shivering perhaps, he was not certain. But she kept firm, standing there.

Oh, not as a warrior must. From obedience, duty. She had been a slave. It had been whipped into her.

He had remained on guard. She had not penetrated the wall. But inside it now, for a second, he too felt stunned and drained. Into himself however, he also had beaten the strength to withstand his own weakness.