In some ways, it seemed to Severo, Jaime resembled the great and learned Beneditx. Both saw with the eye of faith. One saw innate knowledge of God, and the other saw a human soul in a creature degraded to the likeness of a wolf. Jaime had saved the snow-child twice – once from death at the moment of capture, and again from death by starvation in unkind hands. No-one could doubt his faith, or his charity. But the third virtue also was needed for life in this world, and perhaps the third virtue, hope, was the most fragile. It was baptism Jaime had sought for the child; and since Beneditx seemed to think that baptism did not affect the question of knowledge one way or the other, Severo could see no reason to disappoint him. The child was already a crushing burden on the young man’s green, untempered, and uneducated spirit.
Towards sunset, therefore, Severo took Rafal with him and went to the mason’s yard. Jaime was there, keeping his watch, sitting on a barrel and cutting a whistle from a length of wood. As she usually was at dusk, the snow-child was awake, snuffling and running in her cage, pawing at the ground with her hands as though she might have been seeking to dig herself out.
‘Have you thought of a name for her?’ Severo asked. ‘We are going to baptize her.’
‘Now, Holiness?’
‘Now.’
‘Holiness, I do not think we can take her to the font in the baptistry. She will resist, howl, foul the floors . . .’
‘No need, Jaime. Baptism is as valid under the open skies as under the grandest roof. Indeed, what church is roofed as splendidly as the open air by the setting sun? All we need is a little water. Can you bring her to me?’
Jaime opened the cage door cautiously and drew it shut behind him. The child backed away to the far corner, snarling, a soft and warning sound. The bared teeth caught the low rays of the sun behind Severo, showing yellowish between her rolled-back lips, and her eyes returned an alien reflected glare. Jaime was talking to her, saying, ‘Come, little one . . . no harm, little one . . .’ She sprang at him at the same moment as he sprang at her. She knocked him flying, and they rolled over and over in the dust. Jaime’s arms were clasped round her belly, but her arms were free. They heard him cry in agony as she mauled him, clawing at his face, sinking her teeth in the thick of his arm.
‘In the name of Christ . . . can we help?’ cried Severo to Rafal.
Rafal picked up a balk of timber and entered the cage. Waiting for his moment, he struck the child with it. She released her grip on Jaime and turned on Rafal, snarling round his ankles, but the swinging folds of his soutane were all she got a grip on with her snapping teeth. Jaime got up and, picking up a piece of canvas, threw it over the child. ‘Get some rope,’ he said in a shaking voice. Severo ran to bring it, to pass it into the cage. The two men struggled together to tie the child firmly into the bundle, only her head emerging. The bundle heaved and fought in their arms. They could not hold her.
‘Put her down,’ said Severo. They put her on one of the blocks of stone, like Isaac on the altar.
‘You are hurt, Jaime,’ said Severo. ‘I am sorry; I did not realize . . .’
‘I will manage, Holiness. I will get bandages when the thing is done . . .’
‘Her name, then?’ But Jaime, blood flowing from wounds in his face, his sleeve soaking darkly, swayed on his feet and did not answer.
‘A black and bitter name!’ said Rafal.
‘Amara, then,’ said Severo. ‘In Latin, “bitter”,’ he explained to Jaime.
And as he poured the water over the filthy forehead of the creature, looking down he saw its eyes rolling in its head, and the features twisted into an expression of blind terror, as though the devil himself were within the child, and facing the presence of God.
‘I baptize you,’ he said, ‘Amara . . .’ He would have added, ‘And God have mercy on you!’ but he stopped himself just in time; for was it not to be forbidden to mention God to her?
Because Jaime was bleeding, they dumped Amara back in her cage and left her tied up, and Rafal took him in haste to the infirmary. Jaime did not sleep in the yard that night, but in Severo’s cell, Severo’s bed, while Severo, returning late from penitential prayer, stretched out on the floor instead of waking the boy.
In the morning he sent Jaime away. ‘You have done well in this, Jaime, my brother,’ he said. ‘You have known in your heart what wiser men should have known, and I commend you. I am making a gift to you; I am giving you gold enough to buy three fields or so. Make the most of it; I will not be sympathetic if you return to me asking for more.’
‘But Holiness, what will become of her?’
‘You are still troubled by that, after what she did to you last night?’
‘But Holiness, she does not know what she is doing . . . and . . .’
‘I so pity her.’
‘Listen, Jaime. On your obedience to our Holy Mother the Church; on your obedience to me, your prince and your cardinal; on your hope of heaven and fear of hell, I command you to go your way and think of her no more.’
‘I will obey you if I can,’ said the boy, dejectedly. ‘But I don’t know if I can help thinking of her. Since the moment that we found her . . .’
‘You must treat such thoughts like thoughts of lust, or impulses of anger; avoid them if you can, confess them as sins if you cannot.’
‘Yes, Holiness. But . . . what will you do with her?’
‘Did you not hear what I commanded you? Go!’