The Sheen on the Silk

by Anne Perry

  Now Palombara went to the one person who had the power and the means to destroy a papal legate. He needed to convince her of the need.

  Zoe welcomed him with interest, her curiosity sharpened. However, he was not blind to the hatred in her eyes, the hunger to hurt him because he was the one who had persuaded Michael to give the icon of the Virgin to Rome.

  Instead of telling her that he too believed in the need for Byzantium to survive, with its values and its civilization, he told her of the shipping of the icon. He described his own fury as he saw Vicenze in the stern of the ship, waving at him. He touched briefly on his seemingly endless voyage in pursuit, but only for dramatic effect. Then in detail, drawing it out, he told her of the unveiling, the moment of incredulity, and then in much freer detail than he would have to any other woman, he described the picture, and the cardinal’s horror, the pope’s laughter, and Vicenze’s incandescent rage.

  She laughed until the tears ran down her cheeks. In that moment, he could have reached across and touched her and she would not have pulled away. As thin as spider’s silk and as strong, it was a bond neither of them would ever forget, an unbreakable intimacy.

  “I don’t know where it is,” he said softly. “I would guess in Venice. I imagine Dandolo took it from Vicenze. He is the only one who had the chance to. But I will see that the pope receives it, and perhaps even sends it back.”

  “And what are you going to do, Enrico Palombara? You must deal with Vicenze.”

  “Oh, I know!” he assured her, smiling bitterly. “This pope would protect me today, but tomorrow could be different.” He shrugged. “Over the last few years, popes have come and gone faster than the weather has changed. Their promises are worth nothing, because their successors are not bound by them.”

  She did not answer him, but there was a sudden light in her eyes, a different understanding. It took only an instant for him to know that she had let slip the dream of defying the union and seen the reality, and its flaws. It was his first step toward convincing her. He must tread lightly. The smallest attempt at deception and he would lose her.

  She searched his face, curiously, quite frankly. “You are trying to tell me that union with Rome may not be as bad as I had supposed, because little note can be kept of actual practice. A pope’s word is worth little, so ours need be worth no more. As long as we are discreet and do not force anyone’s attention to us, we may quietly do as we have always done.”

  He smiled his acknowledgment.

  Although she understood perfectly, she was enjoying playing with him. “And what is it you would like of me, Palombara?”

  “I find it inconvenient always having to watch over my shoulder,” he replied.

  “So you wish Vicenze … got rid of? You think I can do that? And that I would?”

  “I am quite sure you could,” he replied. “But I don’t want him killed. I would be suspected, whatever the circumstances. And of rather more practical importance than that, he would only be replaced, and by someone I don’t know, and therefore would find harder to predict.”

  She nodded. “You have been in Byzantium long enough to learn a little wisdom.”

  He smiled and inclined his head. “I need Vicenze’s attention diverted, something that will give him no time to concentrate on destroying me.”

  She considered carefully. “You cannot afford to leave alive someone who will kill you if they can. Sooner or later they will find the opportunity. You cannot stay awake all the time. One day you will forget, be at a disadvantage, too tired to think. Seize the time, Palombara, or he will.”

  He realized with a wave of certainty that she was speaking from her own experience, and the instant after he knew exactly where and when. The grief was for Gregory Vatatzes, but she had had no choice, for her own survival. Was Arsenios Vatatzes’s death her doing also? One of her vengeances?

  “The important thing is that only you and I know this.” He chose his words carefully, edged with double meaning. “While I appreciate your help, I cannot afford to be in your debt.”

  “You won’t be,” she promised. “You have given me knowledge of papal plans which enables me to … revise my situation on the union with Rome. That is important to me.”

  He rose to his feet and she did also, standing close enough to him that he could smell the perfume of her hair and her skin. If the balance between them had been just a little different, he would have touched her, and maybe more than that. As it was, their understanding was deep, even intimate. She would curb Vicenze for him, and it would amuse her to do so. If he ever presented a danger to her, with intense regret, she would kill him. They both knew that, too. The difference between them was that apart from his admiration for her, his involvement was ultimately sealed in his mind, his urgent, busy intellect; there was no wave strong enough to knock him off his feet, bury him, pummel him, and carry him far, far out of his depth. Whereas she cared passionately.

  He envied her that.

  Seventy-two

  CONSTANTINE PACED THE FLOOR OF HIS BEAUTIFUL ROOM with the icons, grasping at the air with his hands.

  “Please help her, Anastasius. She is so wounded by the betrayal, she is ill with grief. I think she does not care if she lives or not. I have done all I can, but I am no use. Theodosia is a good woman, perhaps the best I know. How can a man abandon a wife of years for some … some harlot with a pretty face, just because she may give him a child?”

  “Yes, of course I’ll go to her,” Anna replied. “But I have no cure for grief. All I can do is wait with her … try to persuade her to eat, help her to sleep. But the pain will still be there when she wakens.”

  Constantine breathed out a great sigh. “Thank you.” He smiled suddenly. “I knew you would.”

  Anna found Theodosia Skleros suffering in spirit as deeply as Constantine had said. She was a dark-haired woman of great dignity, if not beauty. She was sitting in a chair, staring out of the window with unfocused eyes.

  Anna carried over another chair and sat near her, for a long time saying nothing.

  Finally Theodosia turned to her, as if her presence required some response. “I don’t know who you are,” she said politely. “Or why you have come. I did not send for you, and I seek no counseling. There is no purpose you can serve here, except the easing of your own sense of duty. Please feel released from obligation and leave. There is probably someone you can serve elsewhere.”

  “I am a physician,” Anna explained. “Anastasius Zarides. I came because Bishop Constantine is deeply concerned for you. He told me you are the finest woman he knows.”

  “There is no comfort in being ‘fine’ alone,” Theodosia said bitterly.

  “There is not much comfort in doing anything alone,” Anna replied. “I hadn’t imagined you did it for comfort. From what Bishop Constantine said, I had thought it was simply who you were.”

  Theodosia turned slowly and looked at her, very slight surprise in her face, but no light, no hope. “Is that supposed to cure me?” she said with mockery. “I have no interest in being a saint.”

  “Perhaps you would like to be dead, but you haven’t the anger yet to commit that sin, because it would be irrevocable. Or perhaps you are just afraid of the physical pain of dying?”

  “Please stop insulting me and go away,” Theodosia said clearly. “I have no need of you.” She looked back out of the window.

  “Would you want him back, if he came?” Anna asked her.

  “No!” Then Theodosia drew in her breath sharply and turned to face Anna again. “I’m not grieving for him, I am mourning what I believed he was. Perhaps you can’t understand that….”

  “Do you imagine you are the only person to taste the dregs of disillusion?”

  “Did you not understand me when I told you to go away?”

  “Yes. The words are simple enough. You keep twisting your hands. Your eyes are sunken and your color is bad. Do you have a headache?”

  “I ache everywhere,” Theodosia replied.


  “You are not drinking enough. Your skin will begin to hurt soon, I expect, then your stomach, although I imagine that pains you already. And you will become constipated.”

  Theodosia winced. “That is too personal, and it is not your business.”

  “I am a physician. Are you trying to punish someone by deliberately afflicting your body? Do you imagine your husband cares?”

  “My God, you are cruel! You’re heartless!” Theodosia accused.

  “Your body doesn’t care about just or unjust, only practical,” Anna pointed out. “I cannot stop your heart aching, any more than I could stop my own, but I can heal your body, if you don’t leave it too long.”

  “Oh, give me the herbs, then go away and leave me in peace,” Theodosia said impatiently.

  But Anna stayed until Theodosia was asleep. And she returned every day for the next week, then every second or third day. The grief did not go, but the urgency of it abated. They spoke together of many things, seldom personal, more of art and philosophy, of tastes in food, of works of literature and thought.

  “Thank you,” Constantine said to Anna a little more than a month later. “Your gentleness of spirit has bound the wound. Perhaps in time God may heal it. I am truly grateful.”

  Anna had seen Theodosia at her deepest distress, at her most vulnerable and humiliated. Anna understood very well why she did not wish their association to continue. It was forever taking the plaster off the wound to look at it again. It was wiser to leave it alone to mend unseen.

  She acknowledged Constantine’s thanks and changed the subject.

  Seventy-three

  ANNA PICKED DELICATELY AT THE HERB LEAVES IN HER small garden. It was time to harvest many of them. The wild poppy heads were nearly ready to gather. She watered and tended the hellebore, aconite, digitalis, pennyroyal, and the mandrake she was carefully encouraging. If it grew successfully, she would take some of it to Avram Shachar. It would be a small gift in return for all his kindness.

  Here in the shelter of the house on one side, and the outer wall on the other, the sun was warm on her shoulders, a memory of summer as the year faded fast. If the union did not become real enough to hold off Charles of Anjou and his crusaders, next summer might be the last before they attacked.

  Would she be one of those who tried to escape, or would she stay, as perhaps a physician should? She would be needed here.

  And afterward, what then? Life in an occupied city, under an enforced crusader rule. There would be no Orthodox Church then. But if she was honest, it was becoming more and more difficult for her to ally wholeheartedly with the Orthodox faith. She was beginning to accept that the way to God was a solitary one, born of a passion and a hunger of the spirit that no hierarchy, no ritual however beautiful, could give you, nor in the end prevent you from achieving.

  She missed Giuliano. She could still remember, as if it had been moments ago, the look in his face when he had seen her in a dress. It was almost as if part of him had known and been repelled so intensely that it had churned his stomach, filled his mind with an inner betrayal he could not bear.

  Afterward on the voyage back, he had made a massive effort of will to forget it, but nothing could erase the knowledge from his mind or hers. In a way, they had gone back almost to the beginning again, strangers feeling their way delicately.

  Now she would do for him the only thing she could: release him from his own sense of being tainted by his mother’s betrayal, unloved and possibly unable to love, as if her blood in him were a poison in his soul.

  If she was able to discover more, perhaps it would not be as bad as Zoe had said.

  Where would Zoe have looked for Maddalena Agallon? Was there still an Agallon family in Constantinople, or had they remained in the cities of their exile?

  Anna collected what she had harvested and took it inside. She washed her hands, separated the leaves and roots, labeled them, and put them away, all except the lemon thyme and the mandrake root big enough to harvest. She wrapped them separately to take.

  She would begin her quest by asking Shachar. Months passed as she awaited his answers.

  She came in answer to his summons. The heavy skies of early winter were closing in, and his message told her to come warmly clothed and prepared for a long ride.

  “I have made inquiries about the Agallons. We are going to a monastery,” Shachar informed her. “It is several miles outside the city. We may not be back until morning.”

  She felt a quickening in her pulse, fear, and surprise.

  He smiled, leading the way through to the back courtyard of his house where she had never been before. Two mules were ready, and obviously he intended to leave without delay.

  They were a mile beyond the outskirts of the city, and it was dark, almost moonless, when he spoke to her quietly. “I have found Maddalena’s sister, Eudoxia. I have little idea what she will tell you, but she is old and ill, a nun in a monastery. You are calling as a physician to see her and possibly treat her. You may ask what you wish, but you will have to accept whatever she says, and under whatever conditions she imposes. Your treatment is not conditional. If she chooses to tell you nothing, then still you will do your best for her.”

  “I?” she said quickly. “What about you?”

  “I am a Jew,” he reminded her. “I will be your manservant. I know the way and you do not. I will wait outside. You are both a Christian and a eunuch, the ideal person to treat a nun.”

  They rode together in silent companionship for another two hours until the black mass of the monastery loomed out of the shadows on the hillside. It was a huge building with small, high windows, like a fortress or a prison. Shachar was admitted only as far as the shelter of the kitchen.

  Anna was conducted along narrow stone corridors to a cell where an old woman lay on the bed. Her face was ravaged by age and grief, but it still held the remnants of great beauty.

  Anna did not need to ask who she was. The likeness to Giuliano jarred her as if she had been physically struck.

  She tried to swallow the tightness in her throat and thanked the nun who had escorted her, then stepped into the room. There was a plain wooden crucifix above the bed, and near the door was a dark, severe, and beautiful icon of Mary. “Sister Eudoxia?” she said quietly.

  The woman opened her eyes curiously and then sat up a little farther on the bed. “The physician. They are kind to have sent for you, but you are wasting your time, young man. There is no cure for age, except God’s cure, and I think I shall gain that quite soon.”

  “Do you have pain?” Anna asked, sitting down.

  “Only such as mortality and regret bring to all of us,” Eudoxia replied.

  Anna reached for her pulse and felt it, thin but regular enough. She did not have a fever. “It is not a trouble. Do you sleep well?”

  “Well enough.”

  “Are you sure? Is there nothing I can do for you? No discomfort I can ease?”

  “Perhaps I could sleep better. Sometimes I dream. I would like to do that less,” the old woman replied with a slight smile. “Can you help that?”

  “A draft could ease you. What about pain?”

  “I am stiff, but that is time catching up with me.”

  “Sister Eudoxia …” Now that the moment had come, what Anna had to say seemed intrusive, and she was ashamed.

  The old woman looked at her curiously, waiting. Then she frowned. “What troubles you, physician? Are you looking for a way to tell me I am going to die? I have made peace with it.”

  “There is something I would like very much to know, and only you can tell me,” Anna began. “I recently sailed to Acre, on a Venetian ship. The captain was Giuliano Dandolo….” She saw the shock in Eudoxia’s face, the sudden leap of pain.

  “Giuliano?” Eudoxia said, no more than a breath between her lips.

  “Can you tell me about his mother?” Anna asked. “The truth. I will tell him only if you give me permission to. He suffers bitterly, believing that she left him willi
ngly, not loving or wanting him.”

  Eudoxia put a frail, blue-veined hand up to her cheek, fingers still slender. “Maddalena ran away with Giovanni Dandolo,” she said quietly. “They were married in Sicily. Our father followed her, found her, and took her away by force. He brought her back to Nicea. He married her to the man he had chosen for her in the first place.”

  “But her marriage to Dandolo …” Anna protested.

  “Father had it annulled. He did not know that Maddalena was already with child.”

  Eudoxia was pale; tears welled in her eyes. Anna leaned over with a soft muslin and wiped them gently. “Giuliano?” she asked.

  “Her husband accepted the situation to begin with. He took Maddalena to live some distance away. However, when the baby was born, and was a boy, he became jealous. He was brutal, not only to Maddalena, but he threatened the child also. At first it was only in little ways, and Maddalena thought he would get over it.” Her voice was strained with old grief, sharp again as when it was new. “But Maddalena’s husband knew she still loved the boy’s father, and every time he looked at the child, it was a reminder, another twist to the knife of his jealousy. His violence increased. Giuliano began to have accidents. Twice the servants rescued him only just in time from being seriously injured, perhaps killed.”

  Anna could imagine it only too vividly: the fear, the shame, the constant anxiety.

  “To protect the boy, Maddalena took him and fled,” Eudoxia continued. “She came to me. I was married then, and happy enough. My husband bored me.” She flinched at the admission. “He was wealthy, and gave me a good life, but he could not give me children. In fact, he could not …” She left the sentence unfinished.

  Anna smiled and touched the thin hand on top of the nun’s gown. “Did you help Maddalena?”

  “I did as she asked, which was that I should rear the child as my own. My husband agreed. I think at first he was quite happy to do it. I took Giuliano, and gave Maddalena what support I could.” She blinked, but not fast enough to hold the tears. “I loved the boy….”