Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series)

by Tanith Lee

  When she woke, it was night, yet through the high window of the kitchen a full white moon was blazing.

  Somehow the contrast of its color scorched the dream of a red mountain into Volpa’s brain.

  She got up silently. The male slave lay sleeping in his corner. The houses were soundless, but for the lisp of the spring canal.

  When she went out, the whole City of Ve Nera, Venus, seemed laid to sleep. Nothing stirred. No human voice nor cry of any creature, not one bell.

  Volpa went to the fig tree and danced slowly around it, as she had done with her mother.

  The boughs were silver with moonlight, but showed no hint of renewal.

  On the Isle of the Dead her mother would be ashes now, and tipped in some hole. But the people in the dream were so black, surely they had been in fire and come back out of it, whole, and far stronger, better.

  Once she had danced, Volpa leaned on the tree, holding it, and crying noiselessly. Her pain rose and fell like waves, and it occurred to her that perhaps God noted this, and the height of her suffering, and that by her grief she helped to buy the life beyond life in God’s perfect world.

  Then something rustled, up in the bare tree. And for half a second, Volpa thought it was her mother, become now an angel, perhaps black, and leaning through the branches to say something kind.

  But when she looked, Volpa saw it was a scrap of some refuse, blown up there in the winter, now coming apart and so making movement and sound to deceive her.

  2

  As spring took hold, Ghaio felt new optimism. This was almost always to do with money. The untamed scents of sea and fish and sap that now filled Ve Nera, put a bounce in his step, but only so he went up the ladder more quickly to count the money.

  Having counted it, he selected a bag of silver duccas and one gold venus, and dressed himself in his tatty best.

  (There had been some talk of an edict against usury, when practiced by Christians. Ghaio did not think this could come to anything, but it was wise to stay friendly with the Church.)

  The hired boat ferried him out on to the wide Fulvia lagoon. Ghaio Wood-Seller looked about. How much of the City could he now buy? How soon could he buy more?

  The gift to the Church was a sensible insurance.

  It was almost midday, and Ghaio was going to attend Midday Mass, the Solus, in the Primo.

  The lagoon was a sheet of green silk. The very sort of silk for which Ve Nera had become a rival in the cities of Candisi and the East. After the winter, the buildings crowded round the lagoon looked dank and draggled, matted beasts that had slunk to drink. Then the shoreline opened into the great square, swept, and tinted like Juvanni’s prettiest sweets. From which rose the moon-dome of the Basilica.

  Ghaio would not mind the mass. Although impervious to the holy ritual and the ethereal singing, the gold ceiling was of some interest to him, and the jewels and magenta of the priests.

  When his boat reached the bank, the bell began to call.

  Ghaio got out, paid the boatman (meanly) and strutted across and in at an enormous door.

  Black robes moved at the square’s edges. Eyes and Ears noted the pious hurrying in to God.

  Ghaio stepped into an alcove, and awarded his gift to the relevant hands, leaving his name as donor for the notice of the Council of the Lamb. He then moved on into the body of the temple. Here the poorest sat on the floor. The better classes had chairs. Several stared up, as now Ghaio commenced to do.

  Arch rose through arch, minor dome through dome, until at last the ultimate circle lifted, as if weightless, high above. Gold. It was more like fire. And in the fire, the painted angels flew, pausing to raise their hands in blessing.

  There were great treasures hidden here. Relics, standards, icons, thick with bullion and gems…. The apartments above, they said, had riches like those of Heaven itself—

  How many chests of money would it take …?

  Angelic voices rang from the balconies, and Ghaio basked in his insurance. With God. If God did indeed exist, and the afterlife. But Ghaio turned his mind from his own demise. He would live long.

  O God, the voices sang, If I render to You all my heart, I am free. Yet, when You turn to me, You will demand of me everything. For Your love I must forget the world.

  A tavern song—surely?

  Ghaio watched the priests, a cross stuck with rubies and chrysoprase.

  Nearby a woman wept. They always did.

  Not much longer and the show would be over.

  Then some dinner at an inn. Then two debtors to watch squirm.

  By the time the Venus star stood over this City, Ghaio would be at home, and the Fox would come in her rags, bringing wine.

  A twitch of feeling moved in Ghaio. After all the spring had found him, there in church. Sap and sea, milk and salt.

  After the first dream of the scarlet mountain, for a time Volpa dreamed every night. Not entirely acquainted with dreams, she did not think to ponder that each one followed from the one before. They were like pages torn from an illuminated book, and falling down into her sleep, one after another, telling a story in bright pictures. In the second dream, Volpa was aware of the summer heat of the wide plain. The sand was a terracotta shade and softly burned the soles of her feet, which in her sleep were bare.

  On the land, between herself and the mountain, that in this second vision was darker, more of a maroon color, though glowing like a lamp, a haze of heat trembled. And out of this came walking a figure, slowly.

  It was Volpa’s mother.

  Volpa felt at once very glad to see her. There was no memory that the mother had died. Only a joy which might have indicated some previous parting.

  Then, as the woman moved nearer and nearer through the wavering pink air, Volpa saw she was almost naked, and though recognizably still the woman Volpa had known, younger—and darker of skin.

  Volpa did nothing, only waited. When the woman reached her she touched Volpa’s mouth with her palm. The mother smelled of hot things, stones and cinders.

  Volpa thought, vaguely, Oh, it’s that she was burned, on the Isle. There was no terror in that. Here her mother stood, compact and alive.

  When her mother spoke to Volpa, Volpa realized it was in another language. Even so, Volpa understood it, and was able, in turn, to utter it.

  After this, they walked away over the land.

  Waking, the girl never knew what they had said to each other, beyond a phrase of two. Her mother seemed to be teaching her things. In Volpa’s infancy, the mother had done this as a matter of course, and necessity. It was simple to resume the manner of it. In the later years, Volpa had perhaps missed her mother’s conversation, her advice, her stories. Now the dreams themselves were the stories, and the advice was inherent in them.

  After the second dream, came others.

  When Volpa woke in the cold spring dawns, to skim frost from the cistern, to cook as best she could Ghaio’s porridges and rice, and bake his bread, the dreams did not fade. They sank back a little, as if replaced neatly into the revealed book from which they had fallen to her mind. They were also, the dreams, very similar, for the most part.

  Always the mountain was at the center of them, curved, striated, and a rich red. Sometimes the land had tufts of grass, boulders, even groups of blond trees with tasseled foliage on the boughs. The time of day was always late, near sunfall probably. Things cheeped from the low thickets. Birds of wild dyes flew over, or settled in the trees like topazes, jacinths.

  In every dream, however, Volpa’s mother darkened.

  Her hair grew black and her skin like brown ebony. She seemed comfortable with this, changing her skin. Her teeth were very white, and often she raised her arms, lifting by the gesture her heavy naked breasts. She laughed. Every thing which she taught to Volpa—which consistently, as with the conversations, Volpa did not recall on waking—seemed nevertheless good. That is, benign. It made the girl happy, and made the mother happy to dispense it, like nourishing food or the kiss of
love.

  One of the few phrases of speech Volpa retained was this: that she said to her mother, “Why do you teach me all this now you’ve gone away?” And the mother had replied, “How could I teach it to you, when I was with you?” In the dream that had seemed, quite reasonably, to explain everything.

  Sometimes, other people crossed their path, literally appearing to move on other specific but—to Volpa—invisible roads. They were invariably a little way off or greatly distant. All were black. Sometimes they raised their hands in greeting.

  Volpa and her mother wandered. Now and then, the mother would lean and snatch something from the grass or the sand, or out of a tree. These things were often live animals, but curious in form. Either Volpa or her mother then carried them on. The animals did not struggle. When Volpa grew hungry, she and her mother would sit down, and the mother would make a fire. She did this by rubbing her hand along a piece of stick. Volpa watched, fascinated, seeing first a thin smoke, and then a tongue of flame lick up.

  When the fire was ready, the mother would shake it off on to the earth, and here it would burn. Then she would place in the fire the animals they had collected.

  There was nothing horrible or bizarre in this. The animal would vanish at once, and reappear almost at once, on the ground a few strides away. There it would run or preen a few moments, before darting off. After that, Volpa would have the sense of having eaten something delicious. She was no longer hungry, but satisfied, as she had rarely been when fed on the scraps of Ghaio’s house.

  In rather a similar, equally peculiar way, as they wandered, once or twice Volpa saw one of the animals prey on another. There would be a chase or a struggle, but when it was done, the prey animal would only get up and go off, or, on one occasion, it lay down companionably by the creature which had stalked it, and together they sunned themselves under the metallic sky.

  The dreams came, if Volpa could have counted, for twenty-one nights. They were very alike in all but slight details. She and her mother, though circling the red mountain and sometimes even seeming to approach it, never reached the place.

  Yet the last dream had one great alteration. In this dream, night had come. As Volpa stepped forward into it, the sand was gray under her feet, and ahead of her stood the mountain, as ever, but now it was the blackest of all things, the fount of the night itself.

  “Come, make up the fire,” said Volpa’s mother. So they sat down, and Volpa took the stick, which always came at once, from nowhere, and she rubbed her hand along it as she had seen her mother do. Her hand felt warm, then cold.

  Through the dark, the flame birthed clear and yellow. She set it on the sand. The mother said, “Now always you can make fire.”

  Then they looked up to the sky, which was quite light, far lighter than the earth or the mountain. And it was scaled with brilliant stars. Over the sky too went a shimmering ribboning path, which seemed to rise out of the smoke of their fire.

  Winds blew across the plain, that sang almost in human voices. Somewhere things chorused like bubbles opening on the surface of water.

  Did mother and daughter speak? What did the mother say to her child? Volpa thought her mother told her a story. That years ago Volpa had come to her as the woman walked, but this was before Volpa had been born.

  “Let me in,” said Volpa. “Who are you?” said the mother. But Volpa had only flown into the body of the woman like a tiny white moth.

  “What are the stars?” Volpa asked in the last dream.

  “Yesterday,” said the woman, now black as the night mountain. “Tomorrow.”

  When Volpa woke, she began to cry. Worse than at her mother’s death, she felt bereft. The mortal City dawn was coming up through the yard. The dreaming was over.

  It was sunset when Ghaio returned to his house. The bells of the Venusium, the service of the evening star, were ringing across the City. The bell of Santa La’Lacrima sounded hoarse from over the lagoon, as it sometimes did in the spring.

  Ghaio was disgruntled. The two debtors had both paid up all their debt, triumphant rather than squirming. Coins appealed to him less than power, although he was not aware of this, and blamed his mood on other things—the bells, the tedious mass he had attended, the bad cooking of the stupid slave girl who now kept his home.

  Red dimmed above the canal. Ghaio’s walls darkened, and the alley further along seemed black and ominous, as if robbers might lurk there.

  Ghaio scrambled from the hired boat, and in at his door. He locked it thoroughly and let down the great bar. Safe now.

  “What’s this muck?” he demanded as the bowl was set before him.

  “Fish stew.”

  “That old fool. He can buy nothing any more. Can’t see. Can’t hear useless. Call this fish? You’ll have to do it. Market for the food. And improve your kitchen skills.”

  The candles beamed as Ghaio thrust a lump of bread into the stew and brought it to his snout. The bread was burned, as often now, and Ghaio, having champed and swallowed, turned and cuffed the girl. The touch of her resilient flesh, springing at the blow, reminded him. He grunted, and drank some wine.

  “Tonight, “said Ghaio. “Upstairs.” Then, a strange caution overcame him. He added, “I want you to help me count my money.”

  And the naive girl said, “I can’t add up, signore.”

  “I’ll learn you, then.” This made him chuckle. “Yes, I’ll learn you, Foxy. Climb up the ladder as soon as you hear the Moon Bell from Santa La’La.”

  * * *

  When her chores were done, Volpa drew water and warmed it, and washed her hair. She had no idea why she did this, for hygiene was irregular among the slaves.

  The nights were cold still, yet the hearth had some fire left there, and here she dried the mass of tresses, seeing the flames shine through as she rag-rubbed and combed them with her mother’s broken comb.

  Already the old man slave slept in his corner, but Volpa did not dare lie down. She was afraid she would sleep through the Luna Vigile—the Moon Bell, which called the priesthood again to pray, about two hours before midnight.

  Her mother had frequently had to be up late to serve Ghaio. Her mother had never specified what these late duties entailed, beyond the carrying of food and drink.

  Had she too helped Ghaio count his cash?

  Volpa, despite her care, dozed. She wakened with a start to hear the bell, eerie and far away in the vastness of night.

  Her hair was dry, the fire was out. In the yard, as she hurried across it, she smelled the aroma of the stacked wood. And, for the first time, she saw the fig tree showed no buds. She realized with a pang of sadness, almost fear, that the tree had died that winter, even as her mother had died. Ghaio would cut it down to increase his stock. And then only the dead would be there, in bundles in the barren yard.

  3

  Climbing the ladder, the girl was glad Master was not sitting below, watching her legs—for that had made her uncomfortable. This way, he saw her head first, the hair all crushed in again under its cloth. And she saw him as she never had in her life, sitting on his mattress, which was ancient and stuffed with straw, and contributed greatly to the room’s foul odor. He wore a loose robe, rather short, so under it his bony, veined and hairy legs stuck out. If she had been a child, she might have wanted to laugh at this, but now it only faintly repulsed her.

  Far, far away, the bell ebbed to silence.

  She was afraid for a moment that he would reprimand her for being late.

  No such thing. He seemed quite jolly. And his color was high.

  “Here you are,” he said.

  She could hardly fail to be struck—not by his hand this time—but by his changed demeanor.

  Volpa did not know Ghaio had decided he might take her even into his bed. She was a virgin after all, and could prove awkward at this first exercise. They were better on their backs for that.

  Besides, she was young, and smooth. He did not in the end dislike the notion of her by him, in the night, perhaps co
nvenient for a second game. And this too tickled him, the thought that he might utterly surprise her.

  “Now, Volpa. If you’re to help with the cash, you must take off your clothes.”

  She stared at him. Which amused him.

  “You see, you might thieve a coin otherwise. I daren’t risk it. If you’re bare, you can’t stow anything away.” Even at the word bare, (pleasing him) his tool rose under the robe. Oh, he was man enough.

  “Come now, come on,” he said, pretending impatience, “are you daft? Do as you’re told.”

  She was a slave. Molded in obedience. With a shrinking that—for Volpa—had no real reason, she pulled off her slave’s tunic, and then, in a kind of frenzy of shame, her shift.

  Ghaio lay back, and dropping his hand in his lap, fondled himself.

  Now this was not so bad. Despite her ineptitude with the food, he had an article of value here. It would not last, of course. A year or so, and she would be dross.

  Feed well then, while he might.

  “And that scarf. Take it off. Not a stitch. Or I can’t trust you.”

  In one wild movement she ripped the rag from her hair.

  Five or six candles were burning in the chamber.

  Ghaio had wanted a proper look.

  Now, for a second, he was startled.

  His possession was, as he knew, very young, and very slender—but not after all skin and skeleton. Over the fragile bones, the creamy flesh had covered her, well made and perfectly fitted, like a lord’s glove. Yet she was so pale, even the round little beads on her breasts barely the shade of watered wine—a match to her mouth. And her eyes, which never before had he noticed, were also pale, a sort of amber color; now he thought of it—just like the eyes of the fox he had seen once, in a picture. In her groin, however, these pallors deepened and flushed alive. She was red-amber, there. But that had not prepared him for her hair, nor its evocation.