The Sheen of the Silk

Twelve

PALOMBARA AND VICENZE WERE HELD UP BY BAD WEATHER as the year waned and did not reach Constantinople until November. But their first formal duty would be to witness the signing by the emperor and the bishops of the Orthodox Church of the agreement reached at the Council of Lyons. This was to take place on January 16 of the following year, 1275. After that, they would continue as papal legates to Byzantium. It was the job of each to report to His Holiness upon the other, which made the whole exercise a juggling act of lies, evasions, and power.

As envoys of the pope, it was expected that they would live well. Neither humility nor abstinence was expected of them, and their choice of house immediately made even more obvious the differences in their characters.

“This is magnificent,” Vicenze said approvingly of a great house not far from the Blachernae Palace, which would be made available to them at a reasonable price. “No one calling here will mistake our mission or whom we represent.” He stood in the middle of the tessellated floor and surveyed the exquisitely painted walls, the arched ceiling with its perfect proportions, and the ornate pillars.

Palombara looked at it with distaste. “It’s expensive,” he agreed. “But it’s vulgar. I think it’s new.”

“Would you prefer some nice Aretino castle, perhaps? Familiar and comfortable?” Vicenze said sarcastically. “All little stones and sharp angles?”

“I would like something a little less brash,” Palombara replied, trying to keep the coldness out of his voice. Vicenze was from Florence, which had been engaged in a bitter artistic and political rivalry with Arezzo for years. He knew that was what lay behind the remark.

Vicenze regarded him sourly. “This will impress people. And it is convenient. We can walk to most of the places we shall need to go. It is near the palace the emperor lives in now.”

Palombara turned around slowly, his eyes stopping at the heavily crowned pillars. “They will think we are barbarians. It’s money without taste.”

Vicenze’s long, bony face was bleak with incomprehension and a growing impatience. He considered preoccupation with the arts to be effete, a digression from the work of God. “It doesn’t matter whether they like us or not, only whether they believe what we say.”

Palombara settled to the conflict with a sense of satisfaction. The man was obedient without imagination, and dogged as an animal following a scent. In fact, there was something faintly canine in the way he sniffed. Vicenze sought nothing but a sterile, obedient power for himself.

“It is ugly,” Palombara insisted with harshness in his voice. “The other house, to the north, has grace of proportion, and quite sufficient room for us. And we can see the Golden Horn from the windows.”

“To what purpose?” Vicenze asked, his face completely innocent.

“We are here to learn, not to teach,” Palombara said, as if explaining to someone slow of wit. “We wish people to feel comfortable when we speak with them, and let down their guard. We need to know them.”

“Know your enemy,” Vicenze said with a slight smile, as if the answer had satisfied him. He conceded to Palombara’s choice of a more modest house.

“Our brothers in Christ!” Palombara retorted. “Temporarily alienated,” he added dryly, the humor there only to please himself.

Palombara set out to explore the city, which in spite of the winter weather, brisk winds off the water, and occasional rain, he found fascinating. It was not particularly cold, and he was perfectly comfortable to walk. A Roman bishop’s dress was not remarkable here in streets where so many nations and faiths passed one another every day. After a long day of studious walking, he was exhausted and his feet were blistered, but he understood the broad layout of the city.

The following day he was stiff, to Vicenze’s sarcastic pleasure. But the day after, ignoring blisters, he wandered in his own neighborhood. The weather was fine, with bright sun and little wind. The streets were narrow, old, and bustling, not unlike the Roman ones he was accustomed to.

He bought lunch from a peddler and ate it while watching two old men playing chess. The board was set out on a table barely large enough to hold it. The carved wooden pieces were worn from use and darkened with the natural oils of the hands that had held them.

One old man had a lean face, a white beard, and black eyes almost hidden in the wrinkles of his skin. The other was bearded also, but nearly bald. They played with total dedication, oblivious to the world around them. Other people passed by, children shouted across the street, donkey carts rumbled over the stones. A peddler asked them if they wished for anything and was not heard.

Palombara watched their faces and saw the intense pleasure in them, an almost fierce joy at the intricacy of the mental battle. He waited for a full hour until it was finished. The thin man won and ordered the best wine in the house and fresh bread, goat cheese, and dried fruit so they could both celebrate, which they did with as great a delight as they had in playing.

He returned earlier the next day and watched the game from the beginning. This time the other man won, but there was just the same celebration at the end.

Suddenly he was overwhelmed by the arrogance of coming here to tell old men like these what they should believe. He stood up and walked away into the wind and sun, too disturbed in mind to think clearly; yet the ideas raced in his head.

One day in early January, having forced himself to work with Vicenze on the coming signing of the agreement, Palombara escaped to a public restaurant.

He sat deliberately close to another table where two middle-aged men were involved in a fierce debate on the Byzantines’ favorite subject-religion. One of the men observed Palombara listening and immediately drew him in, asking his opinion.

“Yes,” the other added eagerly. “What do you think?”

Palombara considered for several seconds before plunging in with a quote from Saint Thomas Aquinas, the brilliant theologian who had died on his way to the Council of Lyons.

“Ah!” the first man said quickly. “Doctor Angelicus! Very good. Do you agree that his choosing to stop his own greatest work, the Summa Theologica, was right?”

Palombara was taken aback. He hesitated.

“Good!” the man said with a brilliant smile. “You don’t know. That is the beginning of wisdom. Didn’t he say that all he had written was as straw compared with what he had seen in a vision?”

“Albertus Magnus, who knew him well, said that his works would fill the world,” his friend argued. He swung around to Palombara. “He was Italian, may God rest his soul. Did you know him?”

Palombara remembered meeting him once: a large man, corpulent, dark-skinned, and immensely courteous. One could not help but like him. “Yes,” he answered, and described the occasion and what had been said.

The second man seized on it as if he had found a treasure, and both attacked the ideas with intense enjoyment. Then they immediately moved on to discuss Francis of Assisi and his refusal to be ordained. Was that good or bad, arrogance or humility?

Palombara was delighted. The free-flowing urgency of it was like the wind off an ocean, erratic, undisciplined, dangerous, but sweeping in from an endless horizon. It was not until he was joined unexpectedly by Vicenze that suddenly he realized how far he had strayed from the accepted doctrine.

Having overheard some of the conversation, Vicenze interrupted in a tone barely civil, saying that he had urgent news and Palombara was to come immediately. Since it was merely an acquaintance fallen into by chance, Palombara had no excuse to finish the discussion. He pardoned himself reluctantly and walked out into the street with Vicenze, angry and frustrated, startled by his sense of loss.

“What is this news?” he asked coldly. He resented not only the interruption, but the high-handed manner in which Vicenze had made it, and now his tight-lipped expression of disapproval.

“We have been summoned to present ourselves to the emperor,” Vicenze replied. “I have been arranging this, while you have been philosophizing with atheists. Try to remember: You serve the pope!”

“I would like to think I serve God,” Palombara said quietly.

“I would like to think you do, too,” Vicenze retaliated. “But I doubt it.”

Palombara changed the subject. “Why does the emperor wish to see us?”

“If I knew what he wanted, I would have told you,” Vicenze snapped.

Palombara didn’t think so, but it was not worth an argument.

Their audience with Emperor Michael Palaeologus was held in the Blachernae Palace. To Palombara, who had learned a little of its history, the glories of the past seemed to haunt the air like bright ghosts lost in the grayer present.

All the walls he passed had once been without blemish, inlaid with porphyry and alabaster, hung with icons. Every niche had had its statue or its bronze. Some of the greatest works of art in the world had stood here, marbles of Phidias and Praxiteles from the classical age before Christ.

He had seen the smoke stains of the crusader invasion in the city and was ashamed of it. Here he saw the scars of poverty also: the tapestries unmended, the mosaics with broken pieces, columns and pilasters chipped. For all their pretense in serving God, what barbarians of the heart the crusaders were. There were many kinds of unbelief.

They were conducted into the presence of the emperor in a magnificent hall with huge windows overlooking the Golden Horn. The view of the city far below was a vast panorama of roofs and towers, spires, masts of ships in the harbor, and clustered houses on the far shore.

The hall itself was marble-floored with porphyry columns that held up a ceiling ornately decorated with mosaic arches that flickered here and there with gold.

But all that was only a fleeting impression. As Palombara walked toward the emperor, he was startled by the inner vitality of the man. He was dark, with thick hair and a full beard. His clothes were silk, heavily embroidered and jeweled, as one would expect. He wore not only the customary tunic and dalmatica, but also a sort of collar that ended with something like a priest’s breastplate at the front. This was crusted with gems and ringed around the edges with pearls and gold thread. He wore it as if he were accustomed to it and it were of no importance. Palombara remembered with a jolt that Michael was considered to be Equal of the Apostles. He was a brilliant soldier who had led his people through battle and exile and back to their own city. He had regained his empire by his own hand. They would be foolish to underestimate him.

The emperor gave Palombara and Vicenze all the appropriate formal greetings and invited them to be seated. The protocol for the signing of the agreement had already been arranged, there did not seem to be anything further to discuss, but if there were, it would be done with less senior officials.

“The princes and prelates of the Orthodox Church are aware of the choices facing us, and the necessities driving us,” Michael said quietly, glancing from one to the other. “However, the cost to us is high, and not all are willing to pay.”

“We are here to be of any assistance we may, Majesty.” Vicenze felt compelled to fill the silence.

“I know.” A faint smile played on Michael’s lips. “And you, Bishop Palombara?” he asked softly. “Do you also offer your assistance to our cause? Or does Bishop Vicenze speak for both of you?”

Palombara felt the blood burn up his face. He must not give Michael leverage so quickly.

The emperor’s black eyes reflected his laughter. He nodded. “Good. Then we wish for the same result, but for different reasons, and perhaps in different ways-I for the safety of my people, and perhaps for the survival of my city; you for your ambition. You do not want to return to Rome empty-handed. You will get no cardinal’s hat. Not for failure.”

Palombara winced. Michael was rather too much of a realist, but life had given him little chance to be anything else. The emperor chose union under Rome as the only chance for survival, not for any meeting of beliefs. He was letting them know that, in case they cherished any notions that they could reach him with a religious conversion. He was Orthodox to the bone, but he meant to survive.

“I understand, Majesty,” Palombara answered. “We are faced with hard choices. We pick the best of them.”

Vicenze bowed so slightly, it was barely discernible. “We will do what is right, Majesty. We understand that haste would be unfortunate.”

Michael looked at him dubiously. “Very unfortunate,” he agreed.

Vicenze drew in his breath sharply.

Palombara froze, dreading the clumsiness of what Vicenze might say and yet a tiny part of him wishing for his downfall.

Michael waited.

“There would be little to recommend failure, in any way,” Palombara said quietly. As a matter of pride, he wanted Michael to see him quite separately from Vicenze.

“Indeed.” Michael nodded. Then he looked beyond them and signaled for someone to come forward. He was obeyed by a person of curious stature, walking with an oddly graceful gate. His face was large and beardless, and when he spoke, with the emperor’s permission, his voice was as soft as a woman’s and yet not feminine.

Michael introduced him as Bishop Constantine.

They acknowledged each other formally and with some discomfort.

Constantine turned to Michael. “Majesty,” he said emphatically, “the patriarch, Cyril Choniates, should also be consulted. His approval would be of great service toward persuading the people to accept unity with Rome. Perhaps you have not been advised of the depth of feeling there is?” He phrased it as a question, but the emotion in his voice made it into a warning.

Palombara found him an uncomfortable presence because of his indeterminate masculinity, but the strange person also seemed to be laboring to hide some passion he was afraid to show. Yet it was so powerful that it broke through in the ridiculous gestures of his pale, heavy hands and now and then in a loss of control in his voice.

Michael’s face darkened. “Cyril Choniates is no longer in office.”

Constantine was not deflected. “The monks are likely to be the most difficult section of the Church to convince that we should forfeit our ancient ways and submit to Rome, Majesty,” he stated. “Cyril could help with that.”

Michael stared at him, the expression in his face changing from certainty to doubt. “You puzzle me, Constantine,” he said at last. “First you are against union, now you are addressing me how best to smooth the path for it. You seem to change like water in the wind.”

Suddenly Palombara had an acutely awkward awareness, as if someone had taken a blindfold from his eyes. How could he have been so slow to see? Bishop Constantine was one of the eunuchs of the court of Byzantium. Palombara found himself looking away and was aware of a heat in his cheeks and a disturbing consciousness of his own wholeness. He had associated passion and strength with masculinity, and effeminacy with change, weakness, lack of decision or courage. It seemed Michael felt the same.

“The sea is made of water, Majesty,” Constantine said softly, staring at Michael without lowering his glance. “Christ walked upon the lake of Gennesareth, but we would be wise to treat it with greater caution and respect. Or else lacking faith, as Peter did, we may drown without a divine hand reaching to save us.”

The silence prickled in the great room.

Michael drew in his breath slowly, then let it out again. He studied the bishop’s face for a long time. Constantine did not waver.

Vicenze drew in his breath to speak, and Palombara poked him sharply, with his elbow. He heard Vicenze gasp.

“I have no confidence that Cyril Choniates will see the necessity of union,” Michael said at last. “He is an idealist, and I am guardian of the practical.”

“Practicality is the art of what will work, Majesty,” Constantine replied. “I know you are too good a son of the Church to suggest that faith in God does not work.”

Palombara barely hid a smile, but no one was looking at him.

“If I decide to seek Cyril’s help,” Michael said carefully, his eyes unwavering, “I know you will be the man to send to him, Constantine. Until then I look to you to persuade your flock to keep faith both in God and in your emperor.”

Constantine bowed, but there was little obeisance in it.

A few moments later, Palombara and Vicenze were permitted to leave.

“That eunuch could prove a nuisance,” Vicenze said in Italian as the Varangian Guard accompanied them on their way out into the air where there was a breathtaking view of the city beneath them. He gave a little shiver, and his lip curled with distaste. “If we cannot convert people like that”-he carefully avoided using the term man-“then we will have to think of a way of subverting their power.”

“At the height of their power eunuchs ran the whole court and much of the government,” Palombara informed Vicenze with perverse satisfaction. “They were bishops, generals in the army, ministers of government and law, mathematicians, philosophers, and physicians.”

“Well, Rome will put an end to that!” Vicenze said with savage satisfaction. “We are not come a day too late.” And he marched forward, leaving Palombara to catch up with him.