The Sheen of the Silk Read online

  Helena turned away so Zoe did not see her face. “He was probing, as if he wondered how much I knew of Bessarion’s death.” She looked back at Zoe for a moment with blazing clarity. “And what I might say,” she added. “Fool!” It was almost a whisper, but Zoe caught the edge of fear in it.

  “Constantine has no choice but to be against union with Rome,” she said sharply. “He’s a eunuch. With Rome in charge, he would be nothing. Stay loyal to the Orthodox Church, and everything else will be forgiven you.”

  Helena’s eyes widened. “That’s cynical.”

  “It’s realistic,” Zoe pointed out. “And practical. We are Byzantine. Never forget it.” Her voice was savage. “We are the heart and the brain of Christianity, and of light and thought and wisdom-of civilization itself. If we lose our identity, we have given away our purpose in living.”

  “I know that,” Helena replied. “The question is, does he? What does he really want?”

  Zoe looked at her with contempt. “Power, of course.”

  “He’s a eunuch!” Helena spat the word. “The days are gone when a eunuch could be everything except emperor. Is he so stupid he doesn’t know that yet?”

  “In times of enough need, we will turn to anyone we think can save us,” Zoe said quietly. “You would be wise not to forget that. Constantine is clever, and he needs to be loved. Don’t underestimate him, Helena. He has your weakness for admiration, but he is braver than you are. And you can flatter even a eunuch, if you use your brains as well as your body. In fact, it would be a wise idea if you were to use your brains rather than your body where all men are concerned, for the time being.”

  Again the color surged up Helena’s cheeks. “Said with all the wisdom and rectitude of a woman too old to do anything else,” she sneered. She smoothed her hands over her slim waist and flat stomach, lifting her shoulders again, very slightly, to offer an even more voluptuous curve.

  The taunt stung Zoe. There were places in her jaw and her neck she hated to see in the glass; the tops of her arms and her thighs no longer had the firmness they used to, even a few years ago.

  “Use your beauty while you can,” she replied. “You’ve nothing else. And as short as you are, when your waist thickens, you’ll be square, and your breasts will sit on your belly.”

  Helena snatched up a length of silk tapestry from the chair and swung it as a lash, striking out at Zoe. The end of it caught one of the tall, bronze torch brackets and toppled it over, and burning pitch spilled on the floor. Instantly Zoe’s tunic was on fire. She felt the heat of it scorch up her legs.

  The pain was intense. She was suffocating in smoke. Her lungs were bursting, yet the shrill sounds deafening her were her own screams. She was hurled back into the far past, the crucible of all she had become. She was engulfed by the flaring red light in the darkness, the noise of walls collapsing, crashing stone on stone, the roar of flames, everywhere terror, confusion, throat and chest seared in the heat.

  Helena was there, flinging water at her, shouting something, her voice high-pitched with panic, but Zoe was beyond thought. She was a tiny child clinging to her mother’s hand, running, falling, dragged up and on, stumbling over the broken walls, bodies slashed and burned, blood on the pavement. She could smell the stench of human flesh on fire.

  She fell again, bruised, aching. She climbed to her feet, and her mother was gone. Then she saw her; one of the crusaders had yanked her mother up off the ground and thrown her against a wall. He slashed at her robe and her tunic with his sword, then leaned against her, jerking violently. Zoe knew now what he had been doing. She could feel it as if it were her own body violated. When he finished, he had cut her mother’s throat and let her slide, gushing blood onto the stones.

  Zoe’s father found them both, too late. Zoe was sitting on the ground as motionless as if she too were dead.

  Everything after that was pain and loss. They were always in unfamiliar places, aching with hunger and the terrible emptiness of being dispossessed, and a horror inside her head that Zoe could never lose. And after horror came the hate. Prick her anywhere, and she bled rage.

  Helena was close to her, wrapping her in something. The light of flames was gone, but the burning was still there, agonizing. Zoe’s legs and thighs were throbbing with pain. She could make out words: Helena’s voice, sharp and strained with fear.

  “You’re safe! You’re safe! Thomais has gone for a physician. There’s a good one just moved here, good for burns, for skin. You’ll be all right.”

  Zoe wanted to swear at her, curse her for the stupid, vicious thing she had done, wreak a revenge on her that would be so terrible, she would want to die to escape it; but her throat was too tight and she could not speak. The pain robbed her of breath.

  Zoe lost all awareness of time. The past was there again, over and over, her mother’s face, her mother’s bleeding body, the smell of burning. Then at last someone else was there, talking to her, a woman’s voice. She was unwrapping the cloths Helena had put around the burns. It hurt appallingly. It felt as if her skin were still on fire. She bit her lips till she tasted blood, to stop herself from screaming. Damn Helena! Damn her, damn her, damn her!

  The woman was touching her again, with something cold. The burning eased. She opened her eyes and saw the woman’s face. Except it was not a woman, it was a eunuch. He had soft, hairless skin and his features were womanish, but there was a strength in them, and his gestures, the certainty with which he moved his hands, were masculine.

  “It hurts, but it’s not deep,” he told her calmly. “Treat it properly and it’ll heal. I’ll give you ointment which will take the heat out of it.”

  It was not the pain now that troubled Zoe but the thought of scarring. She was terrified of disfigurement. She made a gasping sound, but her mouth would not form the words. Her back arched as she struggled.

  “Do something!” Helena shouted at the physician. “She’s in pain!”

  The eunuch did not turn to Helena but looked steadily at Zoe’s eyes, as if trying to read the terror in her. His own eyes were a curious gray. He was good-looking, in an effeminate way. Good bones, nice teeth. Pity they hadn’t left him whole. Zoe tried to speak again. If she could make some sensible contact with him, she might drive away the panic that was welling up inside her.

  “Do something, you fool!” Helena snarled at the eunuch. “Can’t you see she’s in agony? What are you just kneeling there for? Don’t you know anything?”

  The eunuch continued to ignore her. He seemed to be studying Zoe’s face.

  “Get out!” Helena ordered. “We’ll get someone else.”

  “Bring me a goblet of light wine with two spoonfuls of honey in it,” the eunuch told her. “Dissolve the honey well.”

  Helena hesitated.

  “Please get it quickly,” he urged.

  Helena spun on her heel and left.

  The eunuch busied himself putting more ointment on the burns, then binding them with cloths, but lightly. He was right; it took the heat away, and gradually the fearful pain subsided.

  Helena returned with the wine. The physician took it and eased Zoe up gently until she was sitting and could hold the wine in her own hands. To begin with, her throat felt raw; but each mouthful was easier, and by the time she had drunk half of it, she could speak.

  “Thank you,” she said a little huskily. “How bad will the scarring be?”

  “If you are lucky, keep the wounds clean, and the ointment on them, maybe there will be none at all,” he replied.

  Burning always scarred. Zoe knew that. She’d seen other people burned. “Liar!” she said between her teeth. Her body was stiff again, resisting his arms around her. “I saw the crusaders sack the city when I was a child,” she told him. “I’ve seen fire burning before. I’ve smelled the stench of human flesh roasting and seen bodies you wouldn’t recognize as having once been human.”

  There was pity in the eunuch’s eyes as he looked at her, but Zoe was not sure whether pity was w
hat she wanted.

  “How bad?” Zoe hissed at him again.

  “As I told you,” he replied calmly. “If you look after the wounds properly, and use the ointment, there will be no scarring. You must take care of them. The burns are not deep; that is why they hurt so much. Deep ones don’t, but often they don’t heal, either.”

  “I suppose if you come back in a day or two, you’ll want paying twice,” Zoe snapped.

  The physician smiled, as though it amused him. “Of course. Does that trouble you?”

  Zoe leaned back a little. Suddenly she was desperately tired, and the pain had eased so much, she could almost put it from her mind. “Not in the slightest. My servant will attend to you.” She closed her eyes. It was dismissal.

  Zoe did not remember much of the next few hours, and when she awoke in her own bed, it was the middle of the following day. Helena stood beside her mother, looking down, and the light through the window was clear and harsh on her face. Her daughter’s skin was blemishless, but the sun picked out the hardening line of her lips and the faintest slackening of the flesh under her chin. Helena’s brow was puckered with anxiety. She smoothed away all sign of it as soon as she realized Zoe was awake.

  Zoe looked at her coldly. Let her be afraid. Deliberately Zoe closed her eyes again, shutting her daughter out. The balance of power between them was changed. Helena had caused her both pain and terror, and the terror was worse. Neither of them would forget that.

  The burning in her legs was no more than discomfort now. The eunuch was good. If he was right and there was no scarring, she would reward him well. It could also be profitable to cultivate his acquaintance and his gratitude by finding him other patients. Physicians found themselves in places others did not. They saw people at their most vulnerable; they learned their weaknesses, their fears, just as this one had learned Zoe’s. He might also learn their strengths. Strength was a good place to attack because no one expected it. People did not realize that their strengths, if nurtured, praised, carried to excess, could also become their undoing.

  She was intensely aware that she could have been crippled by the burning, even killed. If she waited any longer to begin her revenge, it could be too late. Something else might happen to her.

  Or there was always that other unwelcome possibility-her enemies might die naturally, in their own beds, and she would be robbed of the victory. She had waited so long only that the full flavor might be realized. Before her foes had returned from exile and gained power and wealth in the new empire, there would have been no point. If they had nothing to lose, no riches to hold on to, vengeance would have no sweetness.

  She breathed out slowly and smiled. It was time to begin.

  Six

  ANNA LEFT THE HOUSE OF ZOE CHRYSAPHES WITH A SOARING sense of achievement. At last she had been able to use her hard-won skills in the treatment of serious burns, which without the ointment from Colchis would have left lifelong scars. Her father had brought back the recipe from his travels in the Black Sea and the home of the legendary Medea, from whose name and science the very word medicine had sprung. Healing Zoe could bring more patients, if she was fortunate, among them those who had known Bessarion and therefore Justinian, Antoninus, and whoever was really responsible for the murder.

  As she walked home in the warm night air, she thought of the house she had just left. Zoe was an extraordinary woman. Even when she was injured, terrified, and in pain, the intensity of feeling in her charged the air with the kind of tension before a great storm that makes the skin tingle.

  What had caused the fire in that gorgeous room with its wrought-iron torch stands and its rich tapestries? Something deliberate? Was that why Helena was afraid?

  Anna quickened her pace, her mind exploring every possible use she could make of this opportunity. As a eunuch, she was invisible, like a servant. She could overhear, piece together, make sense of odd threads of information.

  She returned to see Zoe every day for the first week. The calls were brief, simply enough to ensure that the healing was continuing as expected. It was obvious from the texture of her skin and the rich color of her hair that Zoe herself was skilled in the use of herbs and unguents. Of course, Anna never mentioned it; it would have been tactless. However, on the fourth occasion she found Helena visiting her mother, and she had no such qualms.

  Anna was sitting on the edge of Zoe’s bed when Helena observed, “That smells disgusting.” She wrinkled her nose at the sharp odor of the unguent Anna was using. “At least most of your other oils and creams are pleasant, if a little heavy.”

  Zoe’s eyes narrowed to agate-hard slits. “You should learn their use, and the value of perfume. Beauty begins as a gift, but you are rapidly approaching the age when it begins to become an art.”

  “Followed by the age when it is a miracle,” Helena snapped.

  Zoe’s golden eyes widened. “Difficult for someone with no soul to conceive of miracles.”

  “Maybe I will, by the time I need them.”

  Zoe looked her up and down. “You’ve left it late,” she whispered.

  Helena smiled, a slow, secret satisfaction oozing through it. “Not as late as you think. It was my intention that you should think you knew everything-but you didn’t. You still don’t.”

  Zoe hid her surprise almost instantly, but Anna saw it.

  “If you mean about Bessarion’s death,” Zoe answered, “then of course I knew it. The poisonings, and the knifing in the street. They had your hand all over them-they failed. Misconceived, and stupid.” She sat up a little, pushing Anna aside, her attention fully upon her daughter. “Who did you think would take his place, you fool? Justinian? Demetrios? That’s it-Demetrios. I suppose I have Eirene to thank for that.” It was a conclusion, not a question. She sank back against the pillows, the pain showing in her face again. And Helena walked out.

  Anna tried to keep her concentration on the slowly healing skin, but the thoughts raced in her mind. There had been other attempts on Bessarion’s life. By whom? Apparently Zoe thought by Helena. Why? Who was Demetrios? Who was Eirene? Now she had something concrete to seek.

  She finished the bandages, willing herself to keep her fingers steady.

  It was not difficult to make the initial inquiries. Eirene was a woman of great note, ugly, clever, of ancient imperial family both by birth as a Doukas and by marriage as a Vatatzes. Gossip had it that she was responsible for the steady increase of her husband’s fortune, even though he had not yet returned from exile, for most of which he had been in Alexandria.

  She had one son-Demetrios. There the information stopped, and as yet Anna dared not press it any further. The connections she was looking for now were more sinister, perhaps dangerous.

  By August, Zoe’s burns were almost entirely healed and her patronage was bringing other patients to Anna. Some of these were wealthy merchants, dealers in furs and spices, silver, gems, and silks. They were happy to pay two or three solidi for the best herbs and even more for personal attention on demand.

  Anna told Simonis to buy lamb or kid, even though they were recommended only for the first half of the month. They had been frugal ever since they had arrived in March. Now it was time for a celebration. She should serve it hot, with honey-vinegar and perhaps some fresh gourd.

  “You know what vegetables to eat in August,” Anna added. “And yellow plums.”

  “I’ll get some rose wine.” Simonis had the last word.

  Anna went back to the local silk shop and picked up the length she had admired before. She let the soft, cool fabric slide through her fingers, almost like liquid, and watched as the light fell on it, turning it slowly. The sheen was first amber, then apricot, then fire, changing as it moved like a living thing. People said that of eunuchs, that the essence of them was elusive, never the same twice. It was meant as condemnation-that they were unreliable.

  She saw it only that they were different as they were viewed, because they needed to be to survive; and that they were human, full o
f hungers, fears, and dreams like everyone else, and had the same ability to be hurt.

  She bought a length of the silk sufficient to make a dalmatica for herself and accepted the shop owner’s offer to have it cut and stitched and delivered to her home. She thanked him and left, smiling even in the heat of the road outside and the dust of too many rainless days.

  Then she went south toward Mese Street and looked at the shops there. She bought new linen tunics for both Leo and Simonis and a new outdoor cloak for each of them, requesting that they be delivered.

  She had attended the nearest church every Sunday except when a patient required her urgent presence, but now she felt like taking a water taxi the considerable distance to the great cathedral of the Hagia Sophia. It stood out on the promontory, at the farthest end of Mese Street, between the Acropolis and the Hippodrome.

  It was a calm evening, the air still close and warm, even on the water. As the sun sank lower in the west, color spilled across the Golden Horn, making it look like a sheet of silk. It was its brilliant reflection at sunrise that had given it its name.

  The water taxi put ashore at dusk, and she climbed the steep streets up from the harbor as the lamps and torches were lit.

  She approached the Hagia Sophia, now black against the fading sky, with a sense of awe and excitement. For a thousand years it had stood on this spot, the largest church in Christendom. It had been completely destroyed by fire in 532. The great dome had collapsed in 558, brought down by an earthquake, and been replaced almost immediately by the dome that now soared huge and dark against the sky.

  Of course she had seen it many times from the outside. The building itself was over 250 feet in either direction. The stucco was of a reddish color, and in the rising or setting sun it glowed with such warmth that mariners approaching the city could see it from afar.

  She went in through the bronze doors and then stopped in amazement. The vast interior was bathed in light from countless candles. It was like being in the heart of a jewel. The porphyry marble columns were deep red. Her father had told her they were originally from the Egyptian temple in Heliopolis, ancient, beautiful, and priceless. The polychrome marble in the walls was cool green and white, from Greece or Italy. The white of it was inlaid with ivory and pearls, and there were gold icons from the ancient temples of Ephesus. It far surpassed every description she had heard.