by Anne Perry
Anna broke out in a sweat. Whatever happened, she must not move or make the slightest sound. If he knew she was here, he would kill her, too. Her nose itched. Her mouth was dry. Still the intruder sat silently by Zoe’s side.
Then she heard a footstep outside the door, a brief knock, and the door opened. The intruder moved toward the tapestry like a shadow.
Anna turned as the door swung open and Thomais entered. Only then did Anna see, in the widening light, that one of the windows was not fastened.
Anna stirred, as if just waking up. “I’ll come and get a little wine,” she said sleepily to Thomais. “Can you find me some cakes? I’m hungry.”
Anna walked over to the door, not even glancing at the shadow beyond Zoe’s bed where the intruder had melted into the corner. He would not hurt Zoe, and if Anna was out of the room for a few minutes, he would leave as he must have come, through the window into the night.
She must see that from now on all the windows and doors were more carefully barred.
Two days later Zoe opened her eyes, puzzled, frightened, unable to speak. She tried, but the words were garbled, animal sounds. Thomais tried offering her a pen and a piece of paper. She gripped the pen awkwardly, made a few scratches on the white surface, and gave up.
Helena was informed that her mother was awake but unable to speak. She came, stared at Zoe with a strange pleasure, then turned and left. It was after she had gone that Zoe spoke her first comprehensible word. “Anna…” she said clearly.
It was a slow task. By evening, Zoe had managed a few more simple words and names, requests, movement that was a little more coordinated. Anna looked at the terror in her eyes and in spite of herself felt a sharp pity for her. She wished Zoe could have died simply, at the first blow of the apoplexy, rather than inch by inch like this.
And Anna also knew that if she recovered, the intruder would be back, and Zoe would give the order for Giuliano to be murdered. If she could not stop Zoe, perhaps she could find the intruder and stop him. There was only one man she could trust and who had the power to help-Nicephoras.
It was late and raining hard when she reached the Blachernae Palace, and it took her several minutes of argument to persuade the guard to allow her in and then to disturb Nicephoras to receive her.
He looked troubled; his face was grave, still heavy with sleep, his beardless cheeks soft. “What is it?” he asked anxiously. “Is Zoe dead?”
“No, she’s not dead,” Anna replied. “In fact, she may recover completely. Her progress is very rapid, and she has a will of iron.”
Briefly, Anna told Nicephoras of the intruder, his assumption that Zoe could hear him, and his promise to kill Giuliano as soon as she gave the word. “He is trying to provoke a rising in Sicily, against Charles of Anjou… I think,” she added. “But Giuliano Dandolo is an ally, not an enemy. If we destroy those who serve us, or allow them to be destroyed, we will not find many wanting to help us next time we need them. And there will always be a next time.”
Nicephoras smiled. “From your description, it has to have been Scalini. I will not allow Dandolo to be killed-at least not at Zoe’s behest. What else happens to him in Sicily is outside my control. I think Scalini has now served his purpose. And he is Zoe’s creature, not ours.”
“Is he?” she asked quickly.
“Oh, yes.” His expression was bleak. “But I know where to find him. He will not leave Constantinople, I promise you.”
“Thank you,” she said with profound gratitude. “Thank you.”
Zoe continued to recover. In another few days she could form sentences, although many words still eluded her. She began to eat and to drink all the herbs Anna mixed for her. Surprisingly, she was a good patient, obeying every instruction, and she progressed accordingly.
Two weeks after her initial attack, the four Skleros brothers publicly declared total allegiance to the emperor Michael in his efforts to save the empire and privately changed from giving a large donation to the Church to giving a significant part of their fortune to Zoe, to further whatever civil unrest she could effect in the dominions of Charles of Anjou.
Eighty-nine
CONSTANTINE STOOD ALONE IN THE COURTYARD STARING at the fountain, and in his mind everything shrank into a tiny, crystal-clear picture, sharp-edged as a polar wind and just as simple. He could see the whole pattern as clearly as a great mosaic, every piece in its place. His whole life, every experience good and bad, had been leading up to this time when his understanding was like a shaft of light and at last undeniable. Even betrayed, he had not abandoned the cause. From that surely he must conclude that God would never abandon him?
His task now was the one above all others. Zoe Chrysaphes must be stopped. He had struck her down once, with the power of God in his hand, and Anastasius the vain, the shallow, and fickle as water, had healed her.
He must go to Zoe late in the evening, when he was certain to find her alone. His resolve was absolute. He could not leave the destiny of God’s people on earth in the slippery hands of Zoe Chrysaphes.
It was a dark night, cloud-covered and windy, with pieces of debris blown rattling along the street. He would not have chosen to be out, but this must be done. And perhaps such a night was created for decisions that could never be reversed.
He was admitted warily by her servants and shown into the entrance room with its old mosaic floors and arched doorways leading to her private apartments; but he had to insist, even imply the threat of excommunication to them, in order to see her alone. After his last visit, Zoe’s servants mistrusted him.
Finally, only Anastasius stood in his way.
“I will see her alone,” Constantine said firmly. “That is her right. Would you deny her the final sacrament of extreme unction? Can you face God yourself, if you do such a thing?”
Anastasius reluctantly stepped away, and Constantine went in, closing the door behind him.
The great room was as magnificent as always. The torches were burning in their ornate stands, yellow flames giving it a warm, peaceful feeling, like a fine painting framed and dusted with gold. The great crucifix was hanging in its usual place. It was beautiful, but Constantine did not like it. There was something almost barbaric about it. It made him uncomfortable, like a sort of indecency.
Zoe sat in a huge chair with her back to one of the tapestries, all wines and scarlets and purples, with threads of bronze. She was wearing red again, a brazen color. It lit her face, which was not as gaunt as it should be after her illness, and showed off those golden eyes.
“I know what you have done, Zoe Chrysaphes,” he said quietly. “And what you plan to do.”
“Really?” She seemed barely interested.
He leaned closer. “There are plans in heaven that earth knows nothing of,” he said harshly. “That is the meaning of faith. Trust God that He will provide for us whatever is necessary.”
Her fine eyebrows rose. “Do you believe that, Bishop Constantine?”
“I more than believe it,” he said with ringing certainty. “I know it.”
“You mean I cannot change you?” she persisted.
“Not at all.” He smiled.
“You have such faith!” Her voice was slow, almost a caress.
“I have,” he declared.
“Then why are you here?”
He felt the heat in his skin. Zoe had nearly tricked him.
“To save your soul, woman!” he retorted.
“You told me I had already lost it,” she reminded him. “Are you going to forgive me after all?”
“I can do,” he told her. “If you repent, and come back as an obedient daughter of the Church. Recant all that you have said in support of union with Rome, forgive your enemies, return the money to the Church you have taken, and submit yourself to discipline. Continue the rest of your days in prayer to the Holy Virgin, and you may at the last be washed clean.”
“All that before Charles of Anjou burns us to the ground again?” she said with mocking incredul
ity.
“God can do anything!” he said forcefully. “If you repent, and obey.”
“I don’t believe you,” she said softly. “We must help ourselves.”
“You blaspheme!” His voice rose in amazement and fury. “God will strike you dead!” He lifted his hand and pointed at her, jabbing his finger in the air as if it were a weapon.
She sat staring at him, smiling slightly lopsidedly, the right side of her face a little stiff. “Then my physician will heal me… again,” she replied. “You have the power to destroy, and he to make whole. Think of that, Bishop! Which of you does that make the greater?”
He lunged forward and seized a cushion from the nearest chair. He flung himself on top of her, pressing the soft, stifling fabric over her face. She struggled, arms and legs thrashing, but he was more than twice her weight and he held her down, crushing her lungs, suffocating her. It was only a few hideous moments before she stopped moving, and his rage went cold, his body covered in icy sweat. He stood up slowly and looked at Zoe where she lay sprawled on the floor, hair tangled, tunic up around her thighs. He should remember her like this: broken, without dignity, at once both exciting and disgusting in her suggestion of sensuality.
Feeling a revulsion he could barely control, he touched her hair with his hand to straighten it around her face. It was soft, so soft that he could barely feel it. The backs of his fingers brushed against her cheek. Her skin was still warm.
He shuddered convulsively. This was obscene! He wanted to strike her, tear down one of the huge tapestries and cover her with it.
But of course he must not do that. He was a bishop, tending a penitent sinner on her deathbed.
He pulled her tunic down as far as it would go. It was not far enough. It still looked as if she had had it lifted, as if… He refused to follow that thought. His mutilation burned in his soul. He lifted her thighs; she was heavy and warm. Then he pulled her tunic straight.
He stood up, his whole body trembling.
He waited several more minutes, then walked to the door and opened it. He stopped abruptly or he would have bumped into Anastasius standing just beyond it.
He looked Anastasius straight in the eye. “She repented of all her errors and saved her soul. It is a time for great rejoicing. Zoe Chrysaphes died a loyal daughter of the true Church.” He took a deep, steadying breath. “She will be buried in the Hagia Sophia. I shall offer the funeral Mass myself.” He forced himself to smile. It was like the rictus of the dead on his face.
Anastasius stared in total disbelief, his eyes wide and, unbelievably, filled with grief.
Constantine crossed himself and walked past him, his huge hands clenched, his heart pounding with victory.
Ninety
ANNA WALKED INTO THE ROOM AND STARED DOWN AT the body of Zoe. She saw the blue face, the bitten lip, and the blood on it. She bent down beside her, pushing back a stray lock of hair off her brow. Gently she lifted one eyelid. She saw the tiny pinpricks of red and knew what had happened. She stood up slowly and faced Thomais.
“Lay her out,” she said. “Make her look beautiful.” Her voice strangled in her throat. It was not only Zoe who was dead, it was Constantine also, and in an infinitely more terrible way.
Anna went outside into the rising wind and the first spots of rain. She walked alone to Helena’s house to give her the news. She did not want to do it, so it was best done quickly. Now the weight of what Constantine had said lay increasingly heavily on her. He would claim that Zoe had taken back all her support for union with Rome and died in the bosom of the Church. He would make pomp and display of it.
Helena took a long time to appear. The servants had admitted Anna only with great reluctance, but she had told them why she had come, and not one of them wished to tell Helena of Zoe’s death themselves. Anna waited, grateful for the wine and bread she was offered. She was cold through to the bone now, and her eyes stung with tiredness and with sorrow.
Helena came across the room, and Anna rose to her feet.
“What on earth have you to say that cannot wait until morning?” Helena said irritably.
“I am very sorry indeed to tell you that your mother is dead,” Anna replied.
Helena’s dark eyes widened in momentary disbelief. “Dead?”
“Yes.”
“Really? At last.” Helena straightened her back and held her head a little higher. A slight smile touched the corner of her mouth, and one might have thought it was superb courage and dignity in the face of loss. Anna had the ugly thought that in fact it was an attempt to contain her victory.
She felt the tears for Zoe welling behind her own eyelids. Something of Byzantium was gone. It was more than an age that was past, it was a passion, a fury, a love of life, and its leaving took something irreplaceable from the world.
Ninety-one
PALOMBARA LANDED IN CONSTANTINOPLE WEIGHED DOWN by the bitter news he carried. The fleet of Charles of Anjou had sailed for Sicily, and from there it would leave for Constantinople. They could count the time until invasion in weeks.
Back again at the house he shared with Vicenze, Palombara found him busy in his study, writing a pile of dispatches. Vicenze, secretive as always, turned them upside down the moment he saw him in the doorway.
“Good voyage?” Vicenze asked politely.
“Good enough,” Palombara replied. He held out the letters the pope had sent Vicenze, still sealed.
Vicenze took them. “Thank you.” He looked at Palombara. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard yet, but Zoe Chrysaphes is dead. Had an apoplexy or something. Bishop Constantine said a requiem Mass for her in the Hagia Sophia, the hypocrite. Said she died reconciled to the Orthodox Church. Damn liar!” He smiled.
Palombara was stunned. It had seemed as if nothing could destroy Zoe. He stood still in the middle of the floor and was overwhelmed with loss, as if Byzantium itself had begun to die.
Vicenze was still staring at him, still smiling. Palombara had an almost overwhelming desire to strike him so hard that it would break his teeth.
“Perhaps it’s just as well,” he said as calmly as he could. “Charles of Anjou has set sail for Messina. At least she will be spared knowing that.”
He went to see Helena Comnena to offer his condolences. She had moved into Zoe’s house, and she received him in the room that had once been her mother’s. The view was the one Palombara remembered, but the colors were already different. The new tapestries were pale, intricately detailed. There were blues and greens, no warmth of the earth tones.
Helena’s perfectly balanced face, with its winged eyebrows, almost like her mother’s, was lovely. But he had no sense of the steel within. There seemed to be in her a hunger without joy.
“I am grieved to hear of your mother’s death,” he said formally. “Please accept my condolences.”
“Personally?” she asked. “Or do you speak for Rome?”
He smiled. “Personally.”
“Really?” She regarded him with dry, rather sour amusement. “I had not realized that you were fond of her. I rather assumed the opposite.”
He met her dark eyes. “I admired your mother. I enjoyed her intelligence and her infinite capacity to care about everything.”
“Admired her…” Helena repeated the words curiously, as if she found them inappropriate. “But surely she was nothing that Rome approves of? She had no humility, she was never obedient to anything but her own desires, and she was certainly very far from chaste!”
He was angry with her for not defending her mother. “She was more alive than anyone else I know.”
“You sound like the eunuch physician Anastasius,” she observed sourly. “He mourns her, which is stupid. She would have destroyed him without a thought, if it had been worth her trouble.” There was contempt in her voice and a sharp edge that Palombara recognized with surprise as resentment.
“You are mistaken,” he said icily. “Zoe admired Anastasius greatly. Quite apart from his medical skill, she liked hi
s wit and his courage, his imagination, and the fact that he was not afraid of her, or of life.”
Helena laughed. “How quaint you are, Your Grace. And how terribly innocent. You know nothing.”
He forced himself to smile. “If you have your mother’s papers, I daresay you are aware of a great deal that others are not. Some of it will be very dangerous. But you must already know that?”
“Oh yes, very dangerous indeed,” she said in little more than a whisper. “But you are foolish to pretend that you know of what you speak, Your Grace.” Her smile was bright and hard. “You don’t.”
What was it that obviously pleased her so much? She was looking at him and gloating. Why?
“It seems not,” he agreed, lowering his eyes as if he were crestfallen.
Helena laughed, a shrill, cruel sound. “I see my mother did not share it with you,” she observed. “But she discovered that your precious eunuch, whom you admire so much, is actually the most superb liar! His entire life and everything about him is a lie.”
Palombara stiffened, anger swirling up inside him.
Helena looked at him with derision. “Or to be accurate, I should say ‘her whole life.’” She went on, “Anna Zarides is as much a woman as I am. Or at least legally she is. There must be something repulsively wrong with her that she would masquerade as a man all these years, don’t you think? Wouldn’t you say it was a sin? What do you think I should do, Bishop Palombara? Should I assist in her deceit? Is that morally right?”
He was so stunned he could hardly find his voice. Yet as Helena said the words, he believed them. He looked at her face, shining with malice, and he hated her.
Then he smiled. Her envy was so highly visible. Zoe was gone, and now Helena could not taste her victory completely. Without Zoe to see, there was no flavor in it. But she could at least destroy Anastasius, the daughter Zoe had preferred.
Palombara met Helena’s eyes and saw the fury in them. “My condolences,” he repeated, then excused himself and walked away.