The Sheen on the Silk (40 page)

“WELL?” SIMONIS DEMANDED WHEN ANNA WAS HOME AT last, washed and rested and sitting in clean clothes at the table, hot soup and fresh bread in front of her. “What did you learn of Justinian? I can see by your face that he is alive. What else? When will he be home?” Anna had told Simonis and Leo nothing of Zoe’s picture. They had both assumed her entire journey was to gain news of Justinian. Leo had cautioned her against going, saying she would endanger herself for little purpose. Simonis had been furious with him and praised Anna for at last taking the step that she had hoped of her from the beginning. “I saw him,” Anna began. “He is thinner, but he seemed well.”

“Drink your soup,” Simonis directed. “What did he say?” Anna felt the knot of disappointment tighten inside her. “He told me what happened,” she replied, beginning the soup because its fragrance tempted her and eating would not make what she had to say better or worse. “It was almost what I had believed, from what I learned myself…”

“You didn’t tell us!” Simonis accused, her face darkening again. Leo touched her arm gently, with a small, restraining gesture. She shook him off, still staring at Anna. “So how are you going to prove his innocence?” she repeated.

“I’m not,” Anna said bluntly. “He killed Bessarion…”

“He couldn’t!” Simonis said furiously. “Not Justinian. You, perhaps! You could have-”

“Stop it,” Leo said sharply. “You exceed yourself.”

Simonis blushed hotly.

Anna too was caught by surprise. “Thank you, Leo,” she said to him gravely. “The story is simple, and now that I know from Justinian that it is true, I shall tell you, but if you value your lives, or mine, you will not repeat it.” She waited for their word. “This is as Justinian wishes.”

Simonis nodded reluctantly, her face still hot and angry.

“Of course,” Leo promised.

Briefly she told them, not elaborating any of the details.

Simonis looked crushed. She stared in miserable silence.

“Anna, you must obey Justinian’s wishes,” Leo said with concern. “You can’t let anyone know that you are aware of all this, or they will destroy you.”

Simonis was looking at her, too, but she expected action. “You’ll go to the emperor and tell him who the other conspirators were,” she said as if it were a conclusion they had all agreed. “You’ll say you saw Justinian, and he told you who they were. Then the emperor will free him.”

“No, I can’t,” Anna said. “They tortured Justinian to make him tell, and he didn’t. You want me to do it now, after the price he has paid…”

Simonis shouted at her, “Men are fools. They keep to people who betray them when there’s no sense in it. You must do it for him. That way his hands are clean-”

“Not if she says that it was Justinian who told her,” Leo interrupted her.

“It doesn’t matter!” Anna said desperately. “He doesn’t want it done, by me, or himself, or anyone.”

“Of course he does,” Simonis contradicted her witheringly. “Why else would he tell you?”

“He didn’t need to tell me, I already knew,” Anna pointed out. She did not mention her conversation with Nicephoras.

“Oh, so it’s your honor now, is it?” Simonis almost choked on her words. “He sits in prison in the desert, beaten and tortured, and you increase your practice here in Constantinople and grow fat, wearing silks, but you don’t want to stain some honor you imagine you have. You didn’t mind sacrificing his whole future over your mistakes in Nicea, did you? Or have you chosen to forget that? None of this would ever have happened if you’d owned up then. He’d be a doctor and you wouldn’t! Where was your precious honor then, you… you coward…” Sobbing, gasping for breath, she blundered out of the room and they heard her feet down the passageway.

Anna found the tears were hot in her eyes. “He begged me not to,” she whispered. “It’s not for me… it’s for him.”

“I will speak to her,” Leo said quietly. “Perhaps you should send her back to Nicea…”

“No.” She shook her head. “I can’t do that.”

“You can’t excuse what she said,” he replied. “It was unforgivable.”

“Very little is unforgivable,” she said wearily. “And anyway, I can’t afford to have a stranger here in her place, not in the house.”

“Are you afraid she will betray you?” he asked.

“No, of course not,” she denied too quickly. “She would never do that. Justinian wouldn’t forgive her.”

Anna took the picture to Zoe Chrysaphes the following day. There were no servants present, simply the two of them in the silent room. It was filled with sharp, pale spring sunlight. She handed over the package, quite small, heavily wrapped, just as Giuliano had passed it back to her.

Zoe did not pretend to be interested in Anna. She cut the fastenings with a small, thin-bladed knife, then undid them and stared at the wooden panel. For a long time she did not speak, her face transfixed with crowding emotions: awe, amazement, overwhelming joy. Strangely, there was no open victory in it-rather the opposite: a sense of sudden humility. Finally she looked up at Anna, and her eyes were totally without guile.

“You did well, Anastasia,” she said quietly, as one woman might speak to another who was an equal-possibly, for a moment, even her friend. “I could pay you in gold for your skill and your hardship, but that seems crass. There is a jeweled candlestick on the table. It is yours. Take it, and set your taper in it to carry the light.”

Anna turned and saw it. It was exquisite: small-not more than a few inches high-but set with rubies and pearls that burned softly even in the harsh morning light. She picked it up and turned to thank Zoe, but Zoe’s head was bent and she was totally absorbed in the picture.

Anna left without breaking the silence.

MICHAEL PALAEOLOGUS, EMPEROR OF BYZANTIUM, STOOD in the pale sunlight in his private chamber. On the chest in front of him was a simple picture, but the face in it was that of the Mother of God. He knew it without question. The artist who had painted it had known, and the passion, the suffering, and the beauty of soul were attempted in the lines. It was not his imagination, not an ideal, he was trying to capture in line and shading what he saw in front of him.

Zoe Chrysaphes had sent the eunuch physician to Jerusalem to bring it back. It was a gift not to the Church, but to Michael personally.

Of course, Michael knew why Zoe had given it to him. She was afraid that he was aware of her part in Bessarion Comnenos’s plan to usurp the throne and that one day when Michael would have no need of her, he would take his revenge for that. This was to buy him off. It had succeeded. If it was not the greatest relic in Christendom, it was certainly the most beautiful, the most moving to the soul.

Very slowly he bent to his knees, the tears wet on his cheeks. The Blessed Virgin was back in Byzantium again, in a way she had never been before. How strange that Zoe, of all people, had caused her to be brought.

IN CONSTANTINOPLE, THE SUMMER OF 1278 WAS HOT AND still. Palombara was again in the city, surrounded by its vivid mixture of sounds and colors, its racing ideas, its passionate religious debate.

Unfortunately, he had once more been accompanied by Niccolo Vicenze. The Holy Father had told Palombara that Vicenze knew nothing of his real mission, which was supporting the emperor in obeying the act of union with Rome. And naturally to preserve the emperor’s life and power, should they be threatened. It was implicit that it was also Palombara’s task to be sure he was aware of such threats, whoever posed them.

Of course, what the Holy Father had actually said to Vicenze could be completely different. That must never be forgotten.

The priority now was to deal with Bishop Constantine. He was foremost among those still irrevocably opposed to the union. Arguing with him was pointless. He must be defeated. It was an ugly thought, but too many lives rested on it to be squeamish. The question was one of means.

At Constantine’s side, through hunger and disease, had been the physician Anastasius. If anyone knew the bishop’s weaknesses, it was he. And what was equally certain in Palombara’s mind was that Anastasius would never willingly betray them, least of all to Rome. Deceiving him was not something Palombara looked forward to.

Another thought occurred to him, subtle and dangerous. If he were in Constantine’s place, determined at any cost to save the freedom of the Orthodox Church, the one man above all others who stood in his way was Michael himself. Remove the emperor, put an Orthodox believer in his place, without either his intelligence or his steel, and all this other maneuvering would be unnecessary.

His urgency to see Anastasius doubled. Fragments of conversation came back to his mind, old plots and murders, imperial names like Lascaris and Comnenos, his intimacy with Zoe Chrysaphes, that most Byzantine of women, and his treatment of the emperor.

It was over a week before the opportunity came without forcing it. He had been attempting to cross Anastasius’s path by chance, and eventually they met on the hill above the docks. Palombara had just arrived by water taxi, and Anastasius was walking along the cobbles. It was early evening, the sun low and hazy, healing the jagged scars of violence and poverty beneath a patina of gold.

“My favorite time of day,” Palombara said quite casually, as if it were a natural thing they should meet again after so long a space of time.

“Is it?” Anastasius said. “You look forward to the night?”

He stood still, and courtesy demanded that Anastasius do the same. “I was speaking of these moments only, not what came before, or will follow.”

There was interest in Anastasius’s eyes. Palombara knew they were dark gray, but facing the sun as he was, he thought they could have been brown.

Palombara smiled. “There is a tenderness in the shadows,” he continued. “A mercy the hard light of morning doesn’t allow.”

“You like mercy, my lord?” Anastasius said curiously.

“I like beauty,” Palombara corrected him. “I like the unreality of the softer light-the permission to dream.”

Anastasius smiled, the quick, warm gesture lighting his face. Palombara had the sudden thought that he was beautiful; neither man nor woman, but not a distortion of either.

“I need to dream,” he explained quickly. “Reality is harsh, and its fruits will come quickly enough.”

“You refer to something specific?” Anastasius glanced to his side at the ruin of a tower; one side of it had crashed to the ground, the rubble still uncleared. “Are you still here trying to persuade us to join Rome in heart, as well as in treaty?”

“Charles of Anjou wants any excuse to take Constantinople again. The emperor knows that.”

Anastasius nodded. “He would hardly unite with Rome against a lesser threat.”

Palombara winced. “That’s harsh. Shouldn’t Christendom be united? Islam is rising in the East.”

“Do we fight one darkness by embracing another?” Anastasius said softly.

Palombara shivered. He wondered if Anastasius really saw it like that. “What is so different between Rome and Byzantium that you can consider one light and the other darkness?” he asked.

Anastasius was silent for a long time.

“It is all far subtler, a million shades between one and the other,” he said at length. “I want a Church that teaches pity and gentleness, patience, hope, forbearance from self-righteousness, but still with room for passion and laughter, and dreams.”

“You want a lot,” Palombara said gently. “Are you expecting the elders of the Church to produce all this as well?”

“I just need a Church that doesn’t stand in our way,” Anastasius replied. “I believe God wants us to teach, to befriend, and finally to create-that is the purpose. To become like God, as all children dream of becoming like their fathers.”

Palombara studied his face: the hope in it, the hunger, and the ability to be hurt. Anastasius had been right: The thought was beautiful, but it was also turbulent, intensely alive.

Palombara did not believe for an instant that either the Byzantine Church or the Roman would ever accept such an idea. It painted something of an awe and a beauty too limitless for ordinary men to conceive of. One would have to catch some glimpse of the heart of God even to dream so much.

But then perhaps Anastasius had, and Palombara envied him that.

They stood over the darkening seascape, the lights of the dockside behind them. For long minutes, neither of them spoke. Palombara was afraid Anastasius would leave and his opportunity would be lost.

Finally, he spoke. “The emperor is determined to save the city from Charles of Anjou by declaring union with Rome, but he cannot force his subjects to abandon the old faith, not even enough to satisfy appearances from the pope.”

Anastasius did not answer. Perhaps he knew it was not a question.

“You ask a great deal about the murder of Bessarion Comnenos several years ago,” Palombara pressed on. “Was that a thwarted attempt to usurp the throne, and then fight to keep religious independence?”

Anastasius turned slightly toward him. “Why do you care, Bishop Palombara? It failed. Bessarion is dead. So are those who conspired with him.”

“So you know who they were?” he said instantly.

Anastasius drew in a deep, slow breath. “Only two of them. But without those, and without Bessarion himself, what can they do?”

“That question concerns me,” Palombara replied. “Any such attempt now would incite a terrible revenge. The mutilation of the monks would seem trivial by comparison. And the only man to win would be Charles of Anjou.”

“And the pope,” Anastasius added, his eyes catching the light of a cart passing with a lantern held high. “But it would be a bitter victory, Your Grace. And the blood of it would not wash off your hands.”