The Sheen on the Silk (25 page)

WHEN ANASTASIUS WAS SHOWN INTO ZOE’S magnificent room, the physician was clearly angry, but quietly so, his eyes hard as stones on the shore. He looked appalling; his face was swollen and dark with bruises, and he limped. He dropped herbs on the table as if she had ordered them, but presumably they were to explain to the servants why he was here.

“What are they?” Zoe inquired with interest, as if she had no concern at his appearance, no sudden welling up of fear that he was really hurt.

“The antidote to the poison you used on Maria Vatatzes,” Anastasius replied icily. “I brought it so that you know I have it, and other antidotes. And that Arsenios knows I have it.”

Zoe raised her eyebrows. “It seems to have taken you rather a long time to find it. I assume you learned nothing about Bessarion’s death from Georgios, before he attacked you? Unfortunately you will learn nothing now.”

Temper flared in Anastasius’s eyes. “It won’t take so long if it happens again,” he retorted, entirely ignoring the question about Georgios and Bessarion’s death. “Because I shall know where to look. Of course, should you be the victim, that would be different. You might find it yourself first, if you are well enough to get out of bed.”

Zoe was stunned. Was he threatening her? “How ungrateful of you, Anastasius. After I had the forethought to send Sabas to your rescue.” She regarded him up and down carefully. “You look awful. Not that I doubted Sabas, he never lies.”

Anastasius’s face tightened. “He told the truth. Had he not come, I would be dead. Were I not grateful for that, I would have made it public that you had poisoned Maria. I know that from the flower seller, and she will say nothing, but if harm comes to her, then I will speak. You can’t poison everyone. But in case you have a mind to, Arsenios is perfectly aware that it was you who destroyed his daughter, and who caused his son to be killed in disgrace. I have no idea why you hate him, but he knows, and has taken steps to protect himself.”

“You’re threatening me!” Zoe said in amazement. Perversely, she was pleased.

“That amuses you?” Anastasius said, disgust twisting his mouth. “It shouldn’t. People are at their most dangerous when they have nothing left to lose. If you hate Arsenios, you should have left him something worth surviving to save. That was a mistake.” He turned and walked out, still limping, but with dignity.

Of course, the question of allowing Arsenios to continue spreading the rumors was settled. Zoe could not. She must deal with him, but the question was how?

Again, poison was the obvious weapon. It was her supreme skill. Of course, Arsenios would never take food or drink from her, even in a public place. She would have to find another way to administer it.

Another hundred candles to the Virgin.

She selected the poison carefully, something to which there was no antidote. It had no color and no odor, and it acted rapidly enough that Arsenios would have no chance to call for help or to attack her before he was incapacitated. It was ideal. This would look like a hemorrhage. No one would ever trace it back to her, either from its nature or because she was known to have purchased it. She had possessed it for years and had never needed it until now.

A further hundred candles to light. The priest smiled at her, knowing her now.

Zoe arrived at Arsenios’s home carrying her own most precious and beautiful icon, the dark blue sloe-eyed figure in the frame inset with smoky citrine and river pearls. She wrapped it in silk first, then over that oiled silk, to protect it from the weather should it suddenly rain. The sky was overcast and there was a light wind from the west, but she did not feel the chill in it, even now at dusk. He had agreed to see her only because she was bringing the icon. He sensed she was afraid, at a disadvantage, and his lust for revenge mounted higher. It was what she counted on, but it was a dangerous game.

Sabas was barred from entering and told to wait outside. She was shown into Arsenios’s presence. That was what she had expected. She trusted Sabas, but she did not want him to see her kill Arsenios. That might strain his loyalty. He was a good man, but his willing blindness would go only so far.

Arsenios dismissed the servants, telling them the matter was private. He smiled as the door closed, leaving them alone in the room with its walls inlaid with porphyry and its tessellated floor. It seemed he had no more desire to have servants present than she did. Her pulse quickened.

“The icon?” he asked, looking at it as she laid it on the table. “Gorgeous, I trust?”

She allowed herself to flinch, confirming what he already believed. He must not think she was in control, acting.

“From my own collection,” she replied huskily. Then she lowered her eyes. “But you know the real from the false.” It was time to let him know that she understood his anger and that it was justified. She should seem afraid to anger him further.

“Why do you bring it to me, Zoe Chrysaphes? What are you looking for in return? You never trade except for advantage.”

“Trade?” She allowed the tension in her to show in the trembling hand, the uncertain words. “Yes, of course I want something, but not money.”

He did not answer her but pulled on a pair of fine, soft leather gloves, so light in weight that he could move his fingers easily in them, and then carefully he unwrapped the icon from its silks.

She watched, listened to the sudden intake of his breath with admiration as the last wrapping fell away and he saw the glowing beauty of the Virgin’s face and felt the weight of gold in the frame. She saw the lust for it in his eyes and the delicate movement of his finger as it traced the lines of the frame and moved it so the light caught the gems.

She stood motionless, watching.

He turned and looked at her, studying her face, the rigidity of her body, the power of emotion in her, savoring it. This was what he wanted-her fear.

She started to speak and then stopped.

He smiled slowly and turned back to the icon. “It’s exquisite,” he said, his voice filled with awe in spite of himself. “But it is rather similar to one I already have.”

It did not matter. She had no intention of giving it to him, but she tried to appear crushed and, even more than that, afraid. Again she started to speak and stopped. She looked at him, imagining his cousin Gregory, perhaps the only man she had loved for himself, years ago, and made her eyes plead with him.

Arsenios fingered the front of the icon, picked it up, and examined the back, his heavy-lidded eyes flicking up at her and down at the frame. He saw the small tack she had left projecting, and his smile widened.

Deliberately, she shuddered. She would have gone pale were it within her power.

“Careless,” he whispered. “Not up to your usual standard, Zoe.” His voice was a hiss, anger flaring in his eyes.

“I’m s-sorry,” she stammered, reaching into the folds of her tunic for the dagger in its jeweled sheath, crystals blazing in the light. She pulled it forward enough for him to see it.

He saw it and lunged forward, his fingers grasping her wrist like a vise. She did not need to pretend in order to cry out in pain. She was a tall woman, his height, but she was no match for him in strength. He wrenched the sheath from her easily, bruising the slender bones of her wrist and bending the arm back until it was twisted, bringing tears to her eyes.

He was close to her; she could smell the sweat of anger on him and see the pores of his skin.

“Just a little scratch,” he said between his teeth. “An accident with a careless tack, and I would have been dead. Why, Zoe? Because Gregory would not marry you? You fool! Eirene was a Doukas. Do you imagine he would have given that up for you? Why bother? You lay with him whenever he wanted anyway. One doesn’t marry a whore.”

She did not have to pretend anger, or pain. She let it blaze up in her eyes and tried to snatch back the dagger, but deliberately aiming to the left, as if misjudging.

He laughed, a harsh, ugly sound, and grasped the handle to yank it free. It did not come, and he pulled harder. “You tried to stab me,” he said jubilantly. “That’s what you came for, to murder me. We struggled, and tragically, in spite of all I could do, you slipped and the knife turned on you-fatally.” His lips drew back from his teeth in triumph; he pulled again on the knife hilt, his other hand on the sheath to free it, and felt the tiny needle in his flesh.

It was seconds before he knew what it was; then, as the pain flooded through him, his eyes widened and he stared at her in sudden, terrible understanding.

She stood straight now, shoulders back, head high, but far enough away from him that even if he fell forward, he could not reach her. She smiled, a slow, sweet taste of victory.

“It was nothing to do with Gregory,” she told him as he fell forward onto his knees, his face purple, his hands clutching at his stomach. “I had all I wanted from him.” That was almost true. “It was your father’s theft of the icons when the city was burning. You took our family relics, and you kept them. You betrayed Byzantium, and for that you must pay with your life.” She stepped backward as he crawled a few inches toward her. His throat was closing and his eyes bulged in his head. Saliva dribbled from his mouth and there was a terrible hacking, rasping sound in his chest, then he vomited blood in a scarlet tide. He screamed and almost instantly choked as more blood spewed out. His eyes rolled in terror, and he gagged and choked, swallowing, drowning.

She watched a few moments longer until his face turned purple and he lay still. She walked around him and picked up her icon and the knife, rewrapping both carefully in the silk. She walked to the door and opened it silently. There was no one in the hall or the room beyond. She moved soundlessly over the marble and out the great carved front door. Sabas was watching for her and appeared out of the shade. Servants would find Arsenios and suppose he had died of a hemorrhage; perhaps too much wine had ulcerated his stomach.

That night, she celebrated with the best wine in her cellar. But she awoke sometime in the dark, shivering and nauseated, her body running with sweat. She had been dreaming, seeing Arsenios’s body on the floor again, vomiting rivers of blood, and the icons on the wall above him, their calm-eyed faces watching his horror. She lay rigid in the bed. What if his servants knew it was poison? Was anyone clever enough to find traces of it? Surely not. She had been careful. He had died dreadfully-quickly, but in agony and horror.

When daylight came, it was not so bad. She could see the realities of her house, her servants moving around. Sabas came in, and at first she dared not meet his eyes, then she could not look away from him. What did he know? To explain herself to a servant would embarrass them both-and yet she wanted to. Desperately she wanted not to be alone.

That night, the dreams were worse. Arsenios took longer to die. There was more blood. She saw his bulging eyes always looking at her, staring, stripping her clothes off literally until she stood in front of him naked, vulnerable, her breasts hanging, her stomach bulging, repulsive. He crawled on the floor after her, refusing to be paralyzed, refusing to choke, to die. He grasped her ankle with his claw of a hand, pain shooting through her again as it had when he had taken her wrist.

He had been going to kill her! He had said so. She had had no choice. She was justified. It was self-defense, to which everyone is entitled. There was no justice in this!

She woke with her body covered in sweat, her clothes sticking to her, ice-cold the minute she threw off the cover and slid out. She knelt on the marble floor, shuddering, her hands folded in prayer, knuckles shining white in the candlelight.

“Blessed Virgin, Holy Mother of God,” she whispered hoarsely. “If I have sinned, forgive me. I did it only to prevent him from keeping the icons which belong to the people. Forgive me, please wash me of my sins.”

She crept back to bed, still shaking with cold, but she dared not sleep.

The following night she did the same, but spending longer on her knees, recounting to the Blessed Virgin the icons Arsenios had taken and his impiety in keeping them all these years-and that was apart from the less precious, less beautiful ones he had sold, anyone could guess as to whom-the buyer with the most money. As if that mattered!

On the fourth day, she heard the news she had prayed for. Arsenios Vatatzes had been buried. They said he had died of a hemorrhage to the stomach shortly after Zoe had visited him. His servants had found him. She listened carefully, but there was no whisper of blame. She had got away with it!

The conclusion was obvious. Heaven was with her; she was an instrument in the hands of God. The rest was just bad dreams, nothing more. They should be forgotten, like any other nonsense.

Tomorrow she would go out and offer her thanks, with gifts, to the Virgin Mary in the Hagia Sophia, knowing that she had divine approval. Candles were not enough, but she would offer them anyway, hundreds of them, enough to light the whole dome, and also perhaps one of her lesser icons.

GIULIANO DANDOLO ENJOYED BEING BACK IN CONSTANTINOPLE. The vitality of the city excited him; the tolerance and width of vision was like the wind off a great ocean. It called to him more and more powerfully each time he saw it.

Now he was here at Contarini’s orders to observe for himself, rather than by rumor, whether Byzantium was finally keeping the rules of the union with Rome or, as before, paying them lip service while going its own way.

What he had seen so far should have pleased him for the prospects of a new crusade passing this way and storming the city and the profit that that would mean for Venice. But Giuliano could not rejoice in it. He learned of the strength of the resistance with a sense of foreboding. Not only had the leaders of opposition to the union been blinded, mutilated, or banished; many had fled to separatist Byzantine states. The prisons were crowded, and most embarrassing to Michael, many of his immediate relatives were actively engaged in plotting against him. It seemed he was attacked at the front and beset on all sides.

The Blachernae Palace was beautiful, even if it was poor compared with the glories of Venice. There were still the marks of fire and pillage all through it, and it had none of the sheer grace of pale marble and the endless reflections of light that he was used to.

But when Giuliano was face-to-face with Michael, he saw a man of remarkable composure. There was a weariness in the emperor’s face, but nothing of fear. He received Giuliano with courtesy and even a shadow of wit. Against his will, Giuliano felt both a pity and an admiration for him. Whatever Michael lacked, it was not courage.

“And of course there is the East,” a eunuch told Giuliano as he was conducted away after his audience was over. The eunuch’s name was Nicephoras.

Giuliano dragged his mind back to the issues as they walked side by side along a vaulted corridor paved with mosaics.

“Everything is changing all the time,” Nicephoras added, choosing his words carefully. “It appears at the moment as if the greatest threat to us is from the West, the next crusade, but in truth I think we have as much, if not more, to fear from the East. It is simply that the West will be first, if we do not find some accommodation with Rome, however much we hate it. But there is no accommodation to be found with the East.” He looked at Giuliano. “There is much balancing to be done, and it is hard to know which way to turn first.”

Giuliano wanted to say something intelligent and sympathetic, without betraying Venice or sounding patronizing, but nothing whatever came to him. “I begin to feel as if Venetian politics are relatively simple,” he said quietly. “This is like taking out a boat that is leaking in ten different places.”

“A good analogy,” Nicephoras agreed with appreciation. “But we are good at it. We have had much practice.”

Giuliano was still on the steps, leaving the palace, when he came to the bottom at the same time as another eunuch, apparently also leaving. This person was considerably smaller, several inches shorter than Giuliano himself, and more delicate of appearance. When he turned there was a flash of recognition in his dark gray eyes, and Giuliano remembered him from the Hagia Sophia. This was the same man who had seen him clean Enrico Dandolo’s tomb and whose face had shown such grief and such compassion.

“Good morning,” Giuliano said quickly, then wondered if perhaps he had been precipitate in speaking to him, that it would be taken as overfamiliarity. “Giuliano Dandolo, ambassador from the doge of Venice,” he introduced himself.

The eunuch smiled. His face was effeminate, but certainly not without character and again the burning intelligence Giuliano thought he had seen in the Hagia Sophia. “Anastasius Zarides,” the eunuch said. “Sometime physician to Emperor Michael Palaeologus.”

Giuliano was surprised. He had not placed the man as a physician. But it only reminded him how alien Byzantium was. He hastened to say something else. “I live in the Venetian Quarter.” He made a gesture roughly in the direction of the shore. “But I am beginning to think perhaps that restricts me from knowing the city better.” He stopped, gazing across the rooftops. The Golden Horn was spread below them, shining in the morning sun, dotted with boats from every corner of the Mediterranean. The air was warm, and Giuliano could imagine he smelled the odors of salt and spice drifting up from the harbor front.

Anastasius followed his gaze. “If I could choose, I would live where I could see the sun rise over the Bosphorus, and that requires some height. Such places are expensive.” He laughed with gentle self-mockery. “I would have to save the life of the richest man in Byzantium in order to afford that, and fortunately for him, if less so for me, he is in excellent health.”

Giuliano regarded him with amusement. “And if he were ill, would he send for you?” he asked.

Anastasius shrugged. “Not yet, but by the time he is ill, maybe.” He was joking, lightly.

“In the meantime, healing merely the emperor, where do you live?” Giuliano kept up the easy tone.

Anastasius pointed down the hill. “Over there, beyond those trees. I still have a good view, although only to the north. But there is an excellent place, my favorite in the city, a hundred yards away, up on that hill, where you can see in almost a full circle. And it is quiet. Very few other people seem to go there. Perhaps I am the only one with time to stand and stare.”

Giuliano had a sudden thought that perhaps what he really meant was to stand and dream, but self-consciousness had prevented him from saying so.

“Were you born here?” he asked quickly.

Anastasius looked surprised. “No. My parents were part of the exile. I was born in Thessalonica, and I grew up in Nicea. But this is our ancestral home, the heart of our culture, and I suppose of our faith as well.”

Giuliano felt stupid. Of course he was born somewhere else. He had forgotten that almost everyone he spoke to in this city would have been born during the exile and was therefore from somewhere else. Even his own mother had been.

“My mother was born in Nicea,” he said aloud, then instantly wondered why. He looked away, keeping his face in profile to Anastasius.

As if sensing something of a retreat, Anastasius changed the subject. “They say that some of Venice is like Constantinople. Is that true?”

“Some of it, yes,” he replied. “Especially where there are mosaics. One in particular I like, in a church very similar to one here.” Suddenly he remembered how many Byzantine works of art had been stolen in the ruin in 1204 and felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. “And the money exchanges, of course, and the…” He stopped. The silk trade had once been purely Byzantine; now the art, the weaving, and even the colors were Venetian. “We’ve learned much from you,” he said a little awkwardly.

Anastasius smiled and gave a slight shrug. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. I opened the door to an honest answer.”

He was startled. It was a response with more grace than he had expected or perhaps deserved. He smiled back. “We are learning, but there is a vitality here, a complexity of thought we may never acquire.”

Anastasius inclined his head in acknowledgment, then excused himself with ease, as if they might meet again with the same interest.

Giuliano walked down the steep street lightly. Anastasius had been born during the exile, and judging from his age, his parents must have been also. It had been over seventy years now. That meant, of course, that Giuliano’s own mother had been a child of the exile, even if her heritage was pure Byzantine. And so shortly after the pillage of the city, her hatred for Venice must have been very strong. How on earth had she come to marry a Venetian? More than before, now that he had stood in the wind and the sun and spoken so candidly with another lost, different child of the exile, born away from a spiritual home, he was compelled to find out more about the woman whose child he was.

He began to inquire diligently, and the answers led him to many interesting people and eventually to a woman well into her seventies, who had actually fled the invading armies after the fall of the city. She must have been amazingly beautiful in her youth and in her middle years. Even now she had a depth of passion, a flair and individuality that fascinated him. Her name was Zoe Chrysaphes.

She seemed to be willing to talk about the city, its history, its legends, and its people. The room where she received Giuliano overlooked a vast panorama of the roofs of lesser houses. Standing beside him at the window, she told him of the traders who came from Alexandria and a great river of Egypt that wound like a snake into unknown heart of Africa.

And from the Holy Land,” she went on, extending her arm, jeweled fingers pointing below, down near the sea’s edge, “Persians and Saracens, and remnants of the crusader armies of the past, ancient kings of Jerusalem, and Arabs from the desert.”

“Have you been there, to the Holy Land?” Giuliano asked impulsively.

She was amused. Her golden eyes flashed at some memory she would not share. “I have never been far from Byzantium. It is my heart and mind, the roots from which I live. In the exile my family went first to Nicea, then east to Trebizund, and Georgia and the shores of the Black Sea. Once, for a while, farther still to Samarkand. Always I looked to come home again.”

He was stabbed with the old guilt of being Venetian and his people’s part in carrying the crusader army here. It seemed foolish to ask why Zoe had hungered to come home, even though she could hardly know it after so many years and none of her family were left. He must instead ask her the questions that mattered. He might not have the opportunity again, and the hunger ate inside him with a growing need. “You know all the old families,” he said a little abruptly. “Did you know of Theodoulos Agallon?”

She stood quite still. “I’ve heard of him. He has been dead many years now.” She smiled. “If you want to know more, I’m sure it can be learned.”

He turned away so she would not read the vulnerability in his eyes. “My mother’s name was Agallon. I should be interested to know if there was a connection.”

“Really?” She sounded interested, not inquisitive. “What was her Christian name?”

“Maddalena.” Even saying it was painful, as if it revealed something private that could not be recovered again. He swallowed, his throat tight. His mother was probably dead, and if she wasn’t, the last thing he wanted was to meet her. Giuliano turned to look at Zoe, searching for a way to change his mind.

She was staring at him, her brilliant tawny-colored eyes almost at a level with his. “I will inquire,” she promised. “Discreetly, of course. An old story, something I heard and can’t remember where.” She smiled. “It may take me a little while, but it would be interesting. We are linked in love and hate, your city and mine.” For a moment her expression was unreadable, as if she contained inside her some other creature, unknowable, driven by pain. Then it was gone again, and she was smiling at him, still beautiful, still full of laughter and a craving for the taste, the smell, and the texture of life. “Come back in a month, and see what I have discovered.”