Free Saint Fire (Secret Books of Venus Series) by Tanith Lee Page A

her. In fact, she had thought he sold her to the inn-woman with blonde hair, because subsequently Volpa had been in the kitchen there, and performed duties. But later she remembered that before this, she had been homeless in the alleys. Did she remember too making the fire come to the hearth at the kitchen of the inn?
    Volpa here seemed to hesitate.
    The priests’ large white faces swelled. Even the clerk glared up at her.
    Volpa said, “Mistress wanted the fire. So I made it.”
    “How was it made?”
    “How mumma showed me.”
    “The mother was also a witch,” snapped one of the priests. Volpa heard him say this, but, it made no sense.
    Her mother had been a slave. “
How
did she show you?
What
did she show you?”
    “In a dream. After shedied.”
    The priests recoiled. As snakes do sometimes, before they strike.
    “A ghost? A
demon?
Where did she appear to you?”
    “In a beautiful place. With a fiery mountain.”
    “
Hell
!” exclaimed one of the men.
    “
Beautiful
—” said the other—“in what way?”
    The girl raised her head and her eyes again. Her eyes were very clear, as if washed in light.
    “It was easy and happy there,” said the girl.
    The priests sank back.
    Hell could not be described as easy, nor happy, even by a malefactor. Nor beautiful. But the Devil was cunning.
    One of the priests rose. He moved around the table and came to stand by Volpa. He put his hand on her shoulder.
    “Now, my girl you’re not helping yourself. This business at the inn. Don’t you know what you’ve done?”
    She was a slave, with whom obedience was paramount. She said, without guile or omission, frankly, “I lit the fire.”
    Perhaps she was in that room five days and nights. She was allowed, as most were not, intervals of rest, and to eat, and to void herself.
    On the sixth evening, two women came, nuns, with only one man as guard. They took Volpa away up many flights of steps.
    In a chamber which had several windows, but these high up, showing only a summer sky fading, Volpa was stripped and washed by a servant, in a bath that had a fountain running into it. Then her hair was also washed. As this went on, both nuns stood by (the guard was outside) and chanted, holding their crosses.
    Volpa was dressed in a shift and aplain long gown, and her hair and neck covered by a scarf and cap. This dress, that of a woman neither well-to-do nor poor, most relevantly a
free
woman, surprised Volpa. She said nothing. The non-slavish questioning nature of youth had mostly ended with her mother’s silence.
    The two nuns then conducted Volpa up further flights of stairs, the guard walking behind.
    Until now, the inner landscape of the building had not attracted Volpa’s notice, or not very much. Presently however there was a passage, whose deep red walls were patterned by golden flowers. Then came a sort of circular space, in the middle of which rose a marble pillar, painted around in plummy colors, with pictures of robed men. Beyond was a door of iron. Here stood another guard. Unlike the guard who had come with them, and was clad only as a lay brother of the Church, this one wore leggings, and a tunic embroidered by the sigil of the Primo, the Lion ridden by the Child.
    The nuns did not accompany Volpa beyond the gate, nor did the lay brother. Instead, a lean, stooping man in black, and hooded, stepped through the door. “Is this the woman?”
    “It is.” The nuns seemed taken aback, anxious.
    “Is she named Vixen?”
    “Yes, brother.”
    And turning on her his thin eyes—thin both in width and tint—he beckoned Volpa.
    The iron door was shut behind her.
    The second corridor was patterned by golden beasts—all of them rare, and mostly uncanny. It opened into a hall less large than high.
    Those brought here had been sometimes overcome.
    Like the vast Basilica that ran below and alongside these apartments,the Golden Rooms suggested the glories of Heaven.
    The walls were blood red, so thickly painted and inlaid by