The Sheen on the Silk (5 page)

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 what 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.

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 of 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.

The impression of light was everywhere, as if the whole structure floated in the air, needing no physical support. The arches were inlaid with mosaics of staggering beauty, somber blues, grays, and browns against backgrounds of countless tiny squares of gold: pictures of saints and angels, Mary with the child Christ, prophets and martyrs from all the ages. Her eyes were dragged away from them only by the beginning of the Mass and the voices rising in unison and then in harmony.

Moved by the sacred solemnity of it, uplifted by a surge of her own faith and an ache to belong, she went toward the steps to the upper level. Head bent, she was carried forward by the others around her. This was the familiar ritual and the creed that had nourished her all her life. She had walked up to the women’s section of her own church in Nicea as a little girl with her mother, while Justinian and her father went with the men to the main body of the hall.

She reached the top and stood with the others staring down into the heart of the church as, in profound reverence, the priests performed the blessing and the taking of the sacrament of Christ’s body and blood, given to redeem mankind. The ritual was Byzantine to the heart, solemn and subtle, ancient as the trust between man and God.

The sermon was about the faith of Gideon leading the armies of the children of Israel against a force that seemed overwhelming. Again and again God commanded Gideon to reduce his meager army until it seemed absurd even to attempt a battle. The priest pointed out that this was so that when they won, as they would do, they would know that it was God who had made it possible. They would be victorious, but also both humble and grateful. They would know upon whom to rely in all future paths. First obey, and nothing is impossible, no matter what appearances suggest.

Was he speaking of the threat to the Church posed by the union with Rome? Or an invasion by crusading forces again, if the union was refused and the Latins returned, violent and bloody as before?

After the last notes of the singing faded away, she turned to leave, and then the horror dawned on her. Unthinking, she had followed the other women up to the women’s section. She had utterly forgotten she was supposed to be a eunuch. What on earth could she do? How could she escape now? The sweat broke out on her body, drenching her and leaving her cold. Everyone knew that the balconies of the upper floor were for women. She was agonized with shame.

The women were streaming past her, eyes downcast, heads veiled, unlike hers. None of them looked back up to where she stood clinging to the banister, swaying a little as dizziness overwhelmed her. She must find an excuse, but what? Nothing could account for coming up here.

An old woman stopped beside her, her skin pale, her face withered. Dear heaven, was she going to demand an explanation? She looked ashen. Was she going to faint and draw the attention of the entire crowd?

The old woman swayed and gave a hacking cough; a spot of blood stained her lips.

The answer came like a shaft of light. Anna put her arm around the woman and eased her down to sit on the steps. “I’m a physician,” she said gently. “I’ll help you. I’ll see you home.”

A younger woman turned and saw them. She quickly came back up a step.

“I’m a physician,” Anna said quickly. “I saw her looking ill and I came up to help her. I’ll take her home.” She assisted the old woman to her feet, arm around her again, supporting most of her weight. “Come,” she encouraged. “Direct me where to go.”

The younger woman smiled and made way for them, nodding approval.

Nevertheless, afterward, Anna arrived home trembling with relief. Simonis looked at her anxiously, knowing there was something wrong, but Anna was too ashamed of her stupidity to tell her what it was.

“Have you found anything further?” Simonis asked, holding out a goblet of wine and placing a dish of bread and chives in front of Anna.

“No,” Anna said quietly. “Not yet.”

Simonis said nothing, but her look was eloquent. They were not here risking their lives a hundred miles from home so Anna could gain a new medical practice. In Simonis’s opinion, there was nothing wrong with the one Anna had had in Nicea. Their only reason for leaving it, and the places and friends they had known all their lives, was to rescue Justinian.

“My tunics are very good,” Simonis said quietly. “Thank you. You must be getting new patients. Rich ones.”

Anna could see the disapproval in her stiff shoulders and the way she pretended to be concentrating on grinding the mustard seeds to make the sauce for the flatfish she would cook tomorrow.

“Rich is incidental,” she told her. “They knew Justinian and the other people around Bessarion. I am learning about his friends, and perhaps Bessarion’s enemies.”

Simonis looked up quickly, her eyes bright. She smiled briefly; it was as far as she dared go, in case her belief invited bad luck, and the prize slipped away. “Good.” She nodded. “I see.”

“You don’t like the city much, do you?” Anna said softly. “I know you miss the people you knew at home. So do I.”

“It’s necessary,” Simonis replied. “We’ve got to find the truth of what happened, and get Justinian back. You just keep trying. I’ll make new friends. Now go to bed. It’s late.”