The Sheen on the Silk (13 page)

“Probably.” Mocenigo’s voice was soft and sad. “Most sane people don’t want war, but wars still happen. The only way you change people’s religion is by convincing them of something better, not by threatening to destroy them if they refuse.”

Giuliano stared at him. “Is that how they see it?”

“Don’t you?” Mocenigo countered.

Giuliano realized that Mocenigo identified with Constantinople, not with Rome. “Do you think other Venetians here feel the same?” he asked. Then instantly he wondered if it was too soon to have been so blunt.

Mocenigo shook his head. “I can’t answer for others. None of us knows yet what obedience to Rome will mean, apart from months of delay before we get answers to appeals, and money paid out of the country in tithes, instead of it staying here, where we desperately need it. Will our churches still be cared for, mended, filled with beauty? Will our priests still be paid well, and left their consciences and their dignity?”

“Well, there cannot be a crusade before ’78 or ’79 at the soonest,” Giuliano reasoned aloud. “By then we may have reached a more sensible understanding, earned a little latitude, perhaps.”

Mocenigo smiled-a sudden radiance in his face. “I love a man with hope,” he said, shaking his head. “But find out all you can about trade, by all means. There’s profit to be made, even in a short time. See what others think. Many believe the Holy Virgin will protect us.”

Giuliano thanked him and let the subject fall for the time being. But the easy way in which Mocenigo, a Venetian, had said “us” when referring to Constantinople remained in his mind. It suggested a sense of belonging that he could neither dismiss nor forget.

In the following days, he explored the shops along Mese Street and the spice market with its rich, aromatic perfumes and bright colors. He talked to the Venetians in the quarter, listened to the jokes and the arguments. At home in Venice most quarrels were about trade; here they were about religion, faith versus pragmatism, conciliation versus loyalty. Sometimes he joined in, more with questions than opinions.

It was not until his third week that he went farther up the hills and into the old back streets, where he found the dark stains of fire on the stones and every now and then rubble and weeds where there had been people’s homes at the turn of the century; and for the first time in his life, he was ashamed of being Venetian.

One house in particular caught his attention as he stood in a brief shower of rain, the water running down his face and plastering his hair to his head. He stared at the faded paint of a mural showing a woman with a child in her arms. His mother would not have been born when the city was broken and burned, but she might have looked like that, young and slender, in a Byzantine tunic, with a child close to her, proud, gentle, smiling out at the world.

FROM THE EMPEROR,” SIMONIS SAID, HER EYES WIDE AS she stood in the doorway of the herb room. “They want you to go with them, immediately. He is ill.”

“I expect someone is ill,” Anna replied, following after Simonis toward the outer room. “A servant, perhaps.”

Simonis snorted with impatience and pushed open the door for Anna to go in.

Simonis was right: It was Michael himself who wished to consult Anna. Almost lost for words, she gathered up her case of herbs and ointments and accompanied the servants out along the street and up toward the Blachernae Palace.

Inside, she was met by a court official and together they were escorted by two of the Varangian Guard, the emperor’s personal troops. They led her through the magnificent, crumbling aisles and galleries to his private apartments. He was apparently suffering from some complaint of the skin that was causing him severe discomfort.

It must have been Zoe who had spoken of her in such a way that the emperor would call her. What would she want in return? Without any doubt at all, it would be a large favor and probably dangerous. Yet it would never have been possible for Anna not to accept. One did not refuse the emperor.

She would have liked to. Failing to cure him might be the end of her career, at least among the wealthy and influential. Zoe would certainly not favor her again. She would be fortunate if that were all the revenge she took for such an embarrassment to her own reputation. And not every ailment was curable, even with the Jewish and Arabic medicine Anna used, let alone Christian.

Even though the great days of the court eunuchs were past, and the emperor no longer spoke to or listened to the world solely through them, there were still many here. She would have to deceive them with her imposture.

She had tried so hard to mimic Leo that she was losing her own identity, pretending to dislike apricots when she loved them, to like sweet pastries full of honey when they made her gag. She had had to spit out a hazelnut because it revolted her, after she had seen him take one and copied without thinking. She was using his phrases, adopting his voice, and she despised herself for it. She did it because it was safe. Nothing of her old, female self must be left to betray her.

How great a fool was she making of herself now, hurrying along the vast gallery behind a somber-robed official and the huge Varangian Guardsmen, hoping to practice the medicine her father had taught her-on the emperor, no less-because she thought she could rescue Justinian? Her father would have understood, and even approved her aims, but would he question her sanity in trying to put it into practice? What would he think of her if he knew the truth of what she owed Justinian? He had died before she had found the courage to confess to him.

The official had stopped, and there was another man in front of Anna. He was tall and broad-shouldered, but with the smooth face of a eunuch, the long arms and slightly odd grace of movement. She could not judge his age, except that he was certainly older than her. The skin of a eunuch was like that of a woman, softer, more prone to fine lines, and a eunuch’s hair seldom receded as a whole man’s often did. When he spoke, his voice was low-pitched and his diction beautiful.

“I am Nicephoras,” he introduced himself. “I will conduct you to the emperor. Is there anything you need that we may bring to you? Water? Incense? Sweet oils?”

She met his eyes for an instant, then looked down. She must not forget that this eunuch was one of the most senior courtiers in Byzantium. “Water would be helpful, and whatever sweet oils the emperor most favors,” she replied.

Nicephoras gave the order to a servant waiting in a farther doorway almost out of sight. Then he dismissed the official who had brought Anna, and the guards, and he himself led the way forward.

Outside the emperor’s room, he stopped. Anna felt as if he must see through her disguise and was about to tell her so. She wondered for a hideous moment if they might actually search her before allowing her into Michael’s presence. Then she had an appalling thought as to where his skin rash might be, and after she looked at it she would never be forgiven for the intimacy. It even came to her in a wild instant to confess now, before it was beyond recall. The sweat broke out on her skin, and the blood beat so loudly in her ears that it almost deafened her.

Nicephoras was speaking, and she had not heard him.

He realized it.

“He is in some pain,” he repeated patiently. “Do not ask him anything unless it is necessary for you to know it, and address him formally at all times. Do not stare. Thank him if you wish, but do not embarrass him. Are you ready?”

She would never be ready, but it was too late to run away. She must have courage. Whatever lay ahead, it would not be as terrible as turning back. “Yes… I am.” Her voice came out as a squeak. This was ridiculous. Suddenly she wanted to giggle. It welled up inside her like hysteria, and she had to pretend to sneeze to hide it. Nicephoras must think she was a simpleton.

Nicephoras led the way into the bedchamber. It was huge, and unlike the official room, this was barely refurnished even after more than eleven years. Michael lay on the bed with a loose tunic on the upper part of his body and linen bedding over his thighs up to the waist. He looked flushed, his face and neck mottled red. His mane of black hair, threaded with gray, was damp and bedraggled.

“Majesty, the physician, Anastasius Zarides,” Nicephoras said distinctly, but keeping his voice lowered. He gestured for Anna to approach the emperor. She obeyed as confidently as she could. The more afraid you were, the more important it was to carry yourself with courage. Her father had told her that over and over.

“Majesty, may I be of service?” she asked.

Michael looked her up and down curiously. “The Jews don’t have eunuchs, yet Zoe Chrysaphes said you know Jewish medicine.”

The room swam in her vision, heat burning up her cheeks. “Majesty, I am Byzantine, from Nicea, but I have learned as much as I could of all forms of medicine.” She almost added, “from my father,” and realized just in time that that might be a fatal error. She bit her tongue, hoping the pain would remind her of her lapse.

“Born in Nicea?” he asked.

“No, Majesty, Thessalonica.”

His eyes widened fractionally. “So was I. If I wanted a priest, I’d send for one. I have hundreds at my beck and call, all of them more than willing to tell me my sins.” He smiled bleakly and winced. “And give me due penance, I’m sure.” He pulled his tunic apart at the neck, showing the red, blistered weals across his chest. “What is wrong with me?”

She saw the anxiety in his eyes and the sweat beading his brow.

She studied the rash, memorizing the pattern of it, the frequency of the blisters, and the degree to which they were raised. “Please cover yourself again, in case you get chilled,” she requested. “May I touch your brow to gauge your fever?”

“Do it,” he responded.

She did so and was unhappy with how hot he seemed. “Does the rash burn?”

“Don’t they all?” he said tersely.

“No, Majesty. Sometimes they only itch, sometimes they ache, others are very painful, like lots of little stings. Does your head ache? Have you any difficulty in breathing? Does your throat hurt?” She wanted to ask him also if his belly hurt, if he had vomited or suffered diarrhea or constipation, but how could she ask an emperor such things? Perhaps she could ask Nicephoras later.

He answered all her questions, mostly in the affirmative. She asked for permission to withdraw and spoke privately with Nicephoras.

“What is it?” he asked her with deep concern. “Is he poisoned?”

She realized with a jolt of horror how realistic was that suspicion. She had never considered what it must be like to live forever in the shadow of envy and hate such that you never know which of your servants, or even your family, might wish you dead passionately enough to connive at bringing it about.

“I don’t know yet,” she said aloud to Nicephoras. “Wash gently wherever the rash has come. Make sure the water is clean. I will prepare medicines, and unguents to relieve the pain.”

She took a bold step. Timidity would cause even greater fear. “Then I will learn what it is, and prepare an antidote,” she said. A hideous thought flashed through her mind that it could be Zoe herself who might have poisoned him. She was highly skilled in beauty preparations; her own superbly preserved appearance was testimony to that. Possibly she knew poison just as well.

“Nicephoras!” she called as he moved away.

He turned, waiting for her to speak, his dark eyes anxious.

“Use new oils, ones that you have purchased yourself,” she warned. “Nothing that is a gift from anyone at all. Purify the water. Give him nothing to eat that you have not prepared, and has not already been tasted.”

“I will,” he promised, and then added wryly, “and for my own safety, I will have a companion watch my every move, and we will both touch and taste everything.” His features were powerful, though they had no beauty, except for his mouth. But when he smiled, even ruefully as now, it lit his entire face.

Anna realized with a shiver one small shadow of what she had stepped into.

When she returned to the palace the following day, she saw Nicephoras first. He looked anxious, and he made no pretense at conversation.

“He is no worse,” he said immediately they were alone. “But he still finds eating painful, and the rash has not subsided. Is it poison?”

“There is accidental poison, as well as intentional,” she prevaricated. “Some foods spoil, or are poisonous if unripe, or if they are touched by things unclean. One may cut an apricot with a knife, one side of which has been smeared with poison, the other not. Eat one half-”

“I see,” he interrupted. “I must be more careful.” He caught her flash of understanding. “For my own sake,” he added with an ironic curl of his lip.

“Do you fear anyone in particular?” she asked.

“There are factions all over the city,” he replied. “Mostly those who feel passionately against the union with Rome; or who are exploiting those who do. You’ve seen the riots yourself.”

She felt the sweat prickle her skin, acutely conscious of Constantine’s part in the unrest and now her knowledge of it. “Yes.”

“And of course there are always those who have their own ambitions to the throne,” he added, his voice lower. “Our history is full of usurpation and overthrow. And there are those who harbor desires of revenge for what they see as past wrongs.”

“Past wrongs?” She swallowed hard. This was getting painfully close to Justinian, and if she was honest, to herself. “You mean personal enmity?” she said softly.

“There are those who feel that John Lascaris should have remained emperor, regardless of his youth, inexperience, and profoundly contemplative nature.” His face creased with pain for that old, terrible mutilation. “There was a man in the city until recently-Justinian Lascaris,” he said quietly. “Presumably a kinsman. He came to the palace several times. The emperor spoke with him out of our hearing, and I don’t know what about. But he was involved in the murder of Bessarion Comnenos, and he is now exiled in Palestine.”

“Could he have returned and done this?” Her voice shook, and she did not know what to do to control her hands. She pushed them half under her robes, twisting the cloth.

“No.” The idea brought a flicker of bleak humor to his eyes. “He is locked in a monastery in Sinai. He will never leave it.”

“Why did he collude in killing Bessarion Comnenos?” She had to ask, in spite of the danger to herself and her fear of the answer.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “Bessarion was one of many who hated the union with Rome, and he was gathering a considerable following.”

“And was this Justinian Lascaris for union with Rome, then?” Surely that could not be?

“No.” Nicephoras smiled with a surprising softness. “He was profoundly against it. Justinian’s arguments were less theological, but more telling than Bessarion’s.”

“Then it couldn’t have been a religious disagreement,” she said, grasping at straws of hope.

“No. The enmity, if it was such, seems to have been born of his friendship with Antoninus, who appears to have been the one actually to have killed Bessarion.”

“Why would he? Was he not a soldier, a very practical man?” She felt she must explain herself. “I have treated men, soldiers, who knew him.”

He looked at her directly. “There was a suggestion that Antoninus and Bessarion’s wife were lovers.”

“Helena Comnena? She’s very beautiful…”

“Do you think so?” He seemed interested, even puzzled. “I find her empty, like a painting whose colors are flat. There is no passion in her, and little ability to know the pain of high dreams one cannot grasp.”

“Did Antoninus see that in her? Why else would he kill Bessarion?”

“I don’t know,” Nicephoras admitted. “I keep coming back to the union with Rome and his passion against it, his attempt to stir up the people to resist. Which leads me nowhere, because both Justinian and Antoninus were against it also.”

She sensed a complexity of emotions in him and wondered what Nicephoras’s own feelings were about the union.