The Sheen on the Silk (23 page)

“Thank you,” Anna replied, taken by surprise.

“Odd that Eulogia should call just as you were here,” Helena went on. “She was related to Justinian Lascaris, you know?”

Anna felt herself tense. “Was she?”

“He was married, some time ago.” Helena’s tone dismissed it as if it were not relevant anymore. “She died. She was Eulogia’s sister.” She was watching Anna’s face as she spoke.

Anna stood motionless, awkward. Her hands seemed clumsy and in the way, as if she had no idea what to do with them. She swallowed. “Really?” She tried to sound uninterested. She was trembling.

Helena picked up a small jeweled box from the table. It was exquisite, silver set with chalcedony and surrounded by pearls. Anna could not help looking at it.

“You like it?” Helena held it out for Anna to see.

“It’s very beautiful,” Anna replied sincerely.

Helena smiled. “Justinian gave it to me. Unwise, I suppose, but as I told you, he loved me.” She said it with satisfaction, but still looking at Anna under her eyelashes. “Bessarion gave me very little that I can recall. If he had chosen anything, it would have been books, or icons; dark ones, of course, heavy and very serious.” She looked back at Anna. “Justinian was fun, you know? Or don’t you know that? He had an elusive quality about him, as if you could never really know all of him. He would always surprise you. I like that.”

Anna’s sense of discomfort grew. Why was Helena telling her all this? Surely it was lies, as Constantine had said? Helena was beautiful and profoundly sensuous, but Justinian must have seen what was ugly inside her, if not immediately, then soon after. Helena turned the box in her hand, its pearls catching the light. Why had Justinian spent so much on her? Or was that a lie, too?

Helena was watching her. There was an intensity in her gaze that was almost mesmeric. The light was shining on the box, on the plum silk of her dalmatica, on the gloss of her hair. “Do you like beautiful things, Anastasius?” she asked.

There was only one possible answer to that. “Yes.”

Helena’s winged eyebrows rose, her eyes wide and dark. “Just ‘yes’? How unimaginative of you. What kinds of beautiful things?” she insisted. “Jewelry, ornaments, glass, paintings, tapestries, statuary? Or do you like music, and good food? Or something you can touch, like silk or fur? What gives you pleasure, Anastasius?” She put the box on the table and walked three steps closer to Anna. “Do eunuchs have pleasure?” she said softly.

Was this what had happened to Justinian? Anna felt the sweat run down her body and the blood hot in her face. Helena was trying to awaken her sexually for entertainment, power, simply to see if she could.

The air in the room prickled as if a storm were about to break. Anna would have given anything on earth to escape. It was excruciating.

Helena’s eyes swept down Anna’s body. “Do you have anything left, Anastasius?” she asked, her voice soft not with pity, but with a sharp and curiously coarse interest. Her small hand reached out to touch Anna’s groin where her male organs would have been, had she had them. They met nothing.

Anna panicked, and hysteria welled up as if she were going to choke. Helena’s eyes were bright, laughing, at once both inviting and contemptuous.

No man, however mutilated, would refuse to speak at all. And whatever Anna said, it must be what a man would say, not the revulsion that was beating inside her now like a huge bird trapped and breaking itself to force a way out.

Helena was still waiting. She would never either forget or forgive a rebuff. She was so close, Anna could feel the warmth of her and see the pulse beating in her throat.

“Pleasure must be mutual, my lady,” Anna said, her voice catching in her throat. “I think it would take a remarkable man to please you.”

Helena stood absolutely still, her features slack with surprise and disappointment. Anastasius had been polite to her, flattering, yet she knew she had been robbed of something. She made a sharp little sound of annoyance and stepped back. Now it was she who did not know how to answer without giving herself away.

“Your money is on the table by the door,” she said between her teeth. “You bore me. Take it and go.”

Anna swiveled and went out, forcing herself not to run.

ANNA ARRIVED HOME AFTER HER ENCOUNTER WITH Helena with her mind racing and her body still trembling as if she had been physically assaulted. She strode past Simonis with barely a word and went to her own room. She took off her clothes and bandages and stood naked, then washed herself over and over again, as though she could cleanse herself with harsh, astringent lotion, smelling the bite of it with pleasure. It stung, even hurt, but the pain pleased her.

She dressed again in her plain golden brown tunic and dalmatica and left the house without eating or drinking. She was fortunate that Constantine was at home.

He rose from his seat, his broad face filled with anxiety the moment after she entered. “What is it?” he demanded. “What’s happened? Is it another monk tortured? Dead?”

It was preposterous! Her obsession with her own, so desperately trivial hurt, when people were dying terribly. She started to laugh, hearing it run out of control and end in sobbing. “No,” she gasped, fumbling her way forward to sit in her accustomed chair. “No, it’s nothing at all, nothing that matters.” She put her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands. “I saw Helena. I’ve been treating her-nothing serious, just painful. She…”

“What?” he demanded, sitting opposite her. His voice was gentle, but there was an edge of alarm in it.

She looked up at him, steadying herself. “Really nothing,” she repeated. “You told me that she made an advance to Justinian, which he found acutely embarrassing.” She did not add her own experience, but he understood it. She saw his face darken and then pity and revulsion leap to his eyes, as if he had been touched by it himself.

“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Be careful. She is a dangerous woman.”

“I know. I think I made a reasonably graceful refusal, but I know she won’t forget it. I hope I don’t have to treat her again. Perhaps she won’t want me to…”

“Don’t rely on that, Anastasius. It entertains her to humiliate.”

Anna pictured Helena’s face. “I think she knows humiliation. She told me Justinian was in love with her. She showed me a beautiful box that she said he gave her.” She saw it in her mind as she said it. It was the sort of thing Justinian would have chosen, but surely not for Helena?

Constantine’s mouth curled with distaste and perhaps a vestige of pity. “Lies,” he said without hesitation. “He disliked her, but he believed that Bessarion could lead the people against the union with Rome, so he hid his feelings.”

“She said he quarreled with Bessarion badly, shortly before he was killed. Was that a lie, too?”

Constantine stared at her. “No,” he said quietly. “That was the truth. He told me of it himself.”

“Why?” she demanded. “Was it about Helena? Did Justinian tell him that Helena had… How could he tell him such a thing?”

“He didn’t.” Constantine shook his head minutely. “It was not to do with Helena.”

“Then what?”

“I can’t tell you,” he replied. “I’m sorry.”

The protest welled up inside her. She saw in his face that he knew the answer and that he would not tell her.

“Was it a confession?” she said shakily. “Justinian?” Now the fear gripped inside her like an iron hand closing.

“I cannot tell you,” Constantine repeated. “To do so would betray others. Some things I know, some I guess. Would you have me speak that aloud, were it your heart and your secret?”

“No,” she said hoarsely. “No, of course I wouldn’t. I’m sorry.”

“Anastasius…” He swallowed hard. His skin was very pale. “Be very careful of Helena, of all of them. There is such a lot that you don’t understand, life and death, cruelty, hatred, old debts and dreams, things that people never let go of.” He leaned farther toward her. “Two men are dead already, and a third exiled, and that is only a tiny part of it. Serve God in your own way, heal their ills, but leave the rest of it alone.”

To argue with him would be pointless and unfair. She had not told him the truth, so how could he understand? They were each trying to reach the other, he failing because he was bound by the sanctity of confession, she because she could not trust him with the truth of why she could not let go of any of it.

“Thank you,” she said quietly. “Thank you for listening.”

“We shall pray together,” he replied. “Come.”

She was at the Blachernae Palace, having treated one of the eunuchs for a bad chest infection and been up with him all night until the crisis broke. Then she had been sent for by the emperor over a minor skin irritation. She was still with him when the two papal legates from Rome, Palombara and Vicenze, were granted an audience and were shown in, as was customary, by the Varangian Guard. They were always there, strong men with lean, hard bodies, dressed in full armor. The emperor was never without them, no matter the time of day or night, how formal or trivial the occasion.

Anna stood a little apart, not included, yet neither had she been given leave to go. She recalled her unpleasant journey to Bithynia with Vicenze, during which Cyril Choniates was nearly killed.

All the ritual greetings were exchanged, well-wishes that no one meant. Beside Anna, Nicephoras was watching every inflection while outwardly seeming merely to wait. Only once did he glance at her with a momentary smile. She realized that he would remain here, judging both words and silences, and afterward give Michael his counsel. She was glad of that.

“There is still some dissension among certain factions who do not see the need for Christendom to stand together,” Vicenze said with barely concealed impatience. “We must do something decisive to prevent them from causing trouble among the people.”

“I’m sure His Majesty is aware of that.” Palombara glanced at Vicenze, then away again, both humor and dislike in his eyes.

“He cannot be,” Vicenze argued impatiently. “Or he would have addressed it. I seek only to inform, and ask advice.” The look of contempt he shot his fellow legate was sharp and cold.

Palombara smiled, and that too was a gesture without warmth. “His Majesty will not tell us everything he knows, Your Grace. He would hardly have led his people back again to their city, and kept them safe, were he ignorant of their nature and their passions, or lacking in either the skill or the courage to govern them.”

Anna hid her smile with difficulty. This was becoming interesting. Rome certainly did not speak with a single voice, although it might be only ambition or personal enmity that divided them.

Palombara looked at Michael again. “Time is short, Your Majesty. Is there some way in which we might assist? Are there leaders with whom we might speak, and resolve some of their fears?”

“I have already spoken with the patriarch,” Vicenze told him. “He is an excellent man, of great vision and understanding.”

For half a second, it was clear in Palombara’s face that he had not known that. Then he concealed it and smiled. “I don’t think the patriarch is where we need to concentrate our efforts, Your Grace. Actually I believe it is the monks in different abbeys who harbor the greatest reservations about trusting Rome. But perhaps your information is different from mine?”

Two spots of color stained Vicenze’s pale cheeks, but he was too furious to trust himself to speak.

Palombara looked at Michael. “Perhaps if we were to discuss the situation, Your Majesty, we might learn of a way in which, in Christian brotherhood, we could find an accord with these holy men, and persuade them of our common cause against the tide of Islam, which I fear is lapping ever closer around us.”

This time it was Michael whose face lit with amusement. The conversation continued for a further twenty minutes, and then the two legates withdrew, and shortly afterward Anna went after them, having finally been noticed and given permission to leave.

She was on the way through the last hall before the great doors when she encountered Palombara, apparently alone. He looked at her with interest, and she was unpleasantly aware of a certain curiosity in him because he was clearly unfamiliar with eunuchs. She became self-conscious, aware of her woman’s body under the clothes, as if he could see some kind of guilt in her eyes. Perhaps to a man unused to even the concept of a third gender, her masquerade was more apparent. Did she look feminine to him? Or was he simply considering how mutilated she was that her hands were so slender, and her neck, her jaw, lighter than a man’s? She must say something to him quickly, engage his intellect away from her physical presence.

“You will find it a difficult task persuading the monks of the truth of your doctrine, Your Grace.” Normally she was not conscious of her voice, but now to her it sounded so much that of a woman, without the mellower, more throaty quality of a eunuch. “They have given their lives to Orthodoxy,” she added. “Some in most terrible martyrdom.”

“Is that what you advise the emperor?” he asked, taking a step closer to her. In spite of his bishop’s robes and emblems of office, there was a virility about him that was unpriestly. She wanted to make some uniquely eunuch gesture, to remind both of them that she was not a woman, but she could think of nothing that would not be absurd.

“The last advice I gave him was to drink infusion of camomile,” she answered, and was delighted to see Palombara’s puzzlement.

“For what purpose?” he asked, knowing she was taking some advantage of him to amuse herself.

“It relaxes the mind and assists digestion,” she replied. Then, in case he should think the emperor was ill: “I came to attend one of the eunuchs who had a fever.” Now she was aware of her crumpled dalmatica after a long night of nursing and the pallor of her face from weariness. “I have been with him for many hours, but fortunately he is past the crisis. Now I am free to leave, and attend my other patients.” She moved forward to pass him.

“The emperor’s physician,” Palombara observed. “You look young to have attained such responsibility.”

“I am young,” she responded. “Fortunately the emperor has excellent health.”

“So you practice on the palace eunuchs?”

“I make no distinction between one sick person and another.” She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t care whether they are Roman, Greek, Muslim, or Jew, except as their beliefs affect their treatment. I imagine you are the same. Or have you ceased to minister to ordinary people? That would explain your perception of the monks who do not wish to be driven into union with Rome.”

“You are against the union,” he observed with faint irony, as if he had known she would be. “Tell me why. Is the issue of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only, or the Father and the Son, worth sacrificing your city for-again?”

She did not wish to concede his point. “Let me be equally direct. It is you who will sack us, not we who will come to Rome and burn and pillage it. Why does the issue mean so much to you? Is it enough to justify the murder and rape of a nation for your aggrandizement?”

“You are too harsh,” he said softly. “We cannot sail from Rome to Acre without stopping somewhere on the way, for water and provisions. Constantinople is the obvious place.”

“And you cannot visit a place without destroying it? Is that what you have in mind for Jerusalem also, if you beat the Saracens? Very holy,” she added sarcastically. “All in the name of Christ, of course. Your Christ, not mine-mine was the one the Romans crucified. It seems to be becoming a habit. Was once not enough for you?”

He winced, his gray eyes widening. “I had no idea eunuchs were so savage in argument.”

“From the look on your face, you have no idea about them… us… at all.” That was a bad slip. Did he anger her because he was a Roman or because he could not take the gender for granted and made her so aware of her lie and the loss of herself as a woman?

“I am beginning to realize how little I know about Byzantium,” he said softly, laughter and curiosity at the back of his eyes. “May I call on you if I need a physician?”

“If you fall ill, you should call one of your own,” she responded. “You are more likely to need a priest than someone skilled in herbs, and I cannot minister to a Roman’s sins.”

“Are not all sins much the same?” he asked, amusement now quite open in his face.

“Exactly the same. But some of us do not see them as sins, and it is the healing I am responsible for, not the shriving-or the judgment.”

“Not the judgment?” His eyes widened.

She winced as the barb struck home.

“Are the sins different?” he asked.

“If they are not, then what have Rome and Byzantium been fighting for over the centuries?”

He smiled. “Power. Is that not what we always fight for?”

“And money,” she added. “And pride, I suppose.”

“Not much is hidden from a good physician.” He shook his head a little.

“Or a good priest,” she added. “Although the damage you do is harder to attribute. Good day, Your Grace.” She moved past him and walked down the steps toward the street.