The Sheen of the Silk

Nineteen

ANNA WAS AWARE OF THE DANGERS OF ASKING ABOUT religious contention in a climate already riven with differences and a sense of impending danger. Yet the answer as to who had killed Bessarion was not going to fall into her hands without her actively seeking it.

What did Constantine know? That seemed the best place to begin.

He was in his room by the courtyard with the summer sun bright on the water and the stones beyond the arches, and the shadows cool inside. He looked almost fully recovered from his illness.

“What can I do for you, Anastasius?” he asked.

“I have been thinking how you wear yourself out in helping the poor and those in trouble of heart or conscience…” she began.

He smiled, his shoulders easing as if he had expected something more critical from her.

“My medical practice is sufficiently established to provide for the needs of my household,” she continued. “I would like to offer some of my time to caring for those who cannot pay… with your guidance as to who is the most in need.” She hesitated only a moment. “Perhaps you would like me with you, so I could act both wisely and without delay?”

His eyes widened and his face filled with pleasure. “That is a truly noble desire, and I accept. We will begin straightaway-tomorrow. I was discouraged, uncertain what next to do for the best, but God has answered my prayers in you, Anastasius.”

Surprised and pleased by the vehemence of his response, she found herself smiling. “What ailments will we be most likely to find, so I can bring the best herbs?”

“Hunger and fear,” he replied ruefully. “But we will also find diseases of the lungs and of the stomach, and no doubt of the skin, from poverty, insect infestations, and dirt. Bring what you can.”

“I’ll be here,” she promised.

She went with Constantine at least two days in every week. They traveled the poorer areas down by the docksides, the back streets, narrow and cramped. There were so many sick, especially during the summer heat when there was little rain to clear the gutters and flies swarmed everywhere. It was a difficult course to steer between the spiritual ailments and the bodily ones. It was even more so with Constantine so close and the certainty that all she said to a patient could be repeated back to him.

Often a patient would say to her, “I’ve repented, why aren’t I getting better?”

“You are,” she would reply. “But you must also take the medicine. It will help.” Then she tried to bring back to her memory all the appropriate saints to pray to for the specific illness and realized in doing so that she did not believe it at all. But they did, and that was what mattered. “Pray to St. Anthony the Abbot,” she would add. “And put on the ointment.” Or whatever was right for the problem.

Gradually she let slip from her mind the part Constantine had played in the riots. He loved the people, and he was tireless in ministering to them. He had a purity of thought and a strength of faith that eased away the fear that crippled so many.

Always he comforted them. “God will never abandon you, but you must have faith. Be loyal to the Church. Do the best you can, always.”

She too felt the need for someone who knew more than she did and whose certainty healed her own gnawing doubts. How could she deny it to anyone else?

At the end of one particularly long day, tired and hungry, she was glad to accept the invitation to return to his home and eat with him.

The meal was simple, bread and oil, fish, and a little wine, but with the poverty she had seen in the last weeks, abundance would have been close to obscene.

She sat opposite Constantine at the table in the quiet summer evening. It was late and the torches were all that lit the night, throwing warm, yellow radiance onto the walls, catching the flash of a gold icon. The fish was finished and the plates removed, only bread, oil, and wine were left, along with an elegant ceramic bowl of figs.

She looked across at him. The lines in his smooth face were deep with tiredness, his shoulders slumped under the weight of other people’s pain.

He became aware of her glance and looked up, smiling. “Something troubles you, Anastasius?” he asked.

She ached to tell him and be rid of the burden of guilt that sometimes weighed so heavily that she was not sure she could ever stand upright beneath it. And of course she could say nothing.

He was watching her now, his eyes searching.

“Yes, I am troubled,” she said at last, crumbling bread absentmindedly in her fingers. “But then I imagine many people are. I was called to treat the emperor a short time ago…”

He looked up, startled, and then a darkness came into his face, but he did not interrupt her.

“I could not help becoming more aware of some of his views,” she continued. “Of course, I didn’t discuss such things with him. I think he is committed to union with Rome, whatever the cost, because he believes there will be another invasion if we remain separate.” She gazed at Constantine steadily. “You know better than he does the poverty we have. How much worse will it be if there is another crusade, and it comes through here again?”

His heavy hand on the table clenched until it formed a fist, knuckles white. “Look about you!” he said urgently. “What is beautiful, precious, and honest in our lives? What keeps us from the sins of greed and cruelty, of the violence that despoils what is good? Tell me, Anastasius, what is it?”

“Our knowledge of God,” she said immediately. “Our need for the light we have seen, and can never wholly forget. We have to believe that it exists and that if life is lived well, in the end we can become part of it.”

His body eased, and he let out his breath slowly. “Exactly.” A smile ironed the weariness from his face. “Faith. I tried to tell the emperor that, only two days ago. I said to him that the people of Byzantium will not accept any pollution of who we are, and what we have believed since the first days of Christianity. Accepting Rome tells God that we will sacrifice our beliefs when it is expedient to us.”

He saw the understanding in her face, and perhaps something of the peace that he had brought her. “The emperor agreed with me, of course,” he went on. “He said that Charles of Anjou is planning another crusade even now, and that we have no defense. We will be slaughtered, our city burned, and those of our people who survive will be exiled, perhaps this time forever.”

She stared into his face, his eyes. “God can save us, if it is His will,” she said softly.

“God has always saved His people. But only when we are faithful.” He leaned across the table toward her. “We cannot put our trust in the arm of flesh, deny our loyalties, and then when we are losing, turn back to God and expect Him to rescue us.”

“What should we do?” she asked quickly. She must not let him deviate too far in the conversation. “Bessarion Comnenos was passionately against the union, and for the sanctity of the Church as we know it. I have heard so many people praise him and say what a great man he was. What did he plan?” She tried to make it sound almost casual.

Constantine stiffened. Suddenly the room was so silent, she could hear a servant’s feet on the tiles in the outer corridor. At last he sighed. He looked down at the dishes on the table when he spoke.

“I fear Bessarion was something of a dreamer. His plans may not have been as practical as people thought.”

Anna was startled. Was she at last close to the truth? She kept her expression deliberately innocent. “What did they think?”

“He spoke a great deal about the Holy Virgin protecting us,” Constantine began.

“Oh yes,” she said quickly. “I heard that he told the story many times of the emperor riding out of the city when they were besieged by barbarians long ago. He carried an icon of the Virgin with him, and when the barbarian leader saw it he fell dead on the spot, and all the besiegers fled.”

Constantine smiled.

“Do you think the emperor Michael would do that again?” she asked. “Do you think it would stop the Venetians, or the Latins from invading us from the sea? They may be barbarians of the soul,” she added wryly, “but they are sophisticated in the mind.”

“No,” Constantine said reluctantly.

“I cannot imagine Michael Palaeologus doing that,” she admitted. “And Bessarion was neither emperor nor patriarch.”

Was Bessarion looking to be patriarch? He was not even ordained! Or was he? Was that his secret? She could not let the chance slip away. “If Bessarion was no more than a dreamer, why would anyone bother to kill him?”

This time his answer was instant. “I don’t know.”

She had half expected that, but looking at his smooth face, the anxiety easing away from it now, she did not entirely believe him. There was something he felt unable to tell her, possibly something Justinian had told him in the bonds of the confessional. She tried another approach.

“They tried to kill him several times-before they succeeded,” she said gravely. “Someone must have felt he was a very serious threat to them, or to some principle they valued above even safety, or morality.”

Constantine did not disagree, but neither did he interrupt her.

She leaned a little farther across the table. “No one could care for the Church more than you do. Nor, I believe, could anyone serve it so wholeheartedly and with such honor that all the people of Constantinople must be aware of it. Your courage has never deserted you.”

“Thank you,” he said modestly, but his intense pleasure was almost like a physical warmth radiating from him.

She lowered her voice. “I fear for you. If someone would murder Bessarion, who was so much less effective than you are, might they not attempt to kill you also?”

His head jerked up, eyes wide. “Do you think so? Who would murder a bishop for preaching the word of God?”

She looked down at the table, then up at him again quickly. “If the emperor thought Bessarion was going to make union with Rome more difficult, and so endanger the city, might not he himself have had Bessarion killed?”

Twice Constantine started to speak and then stopped again.

Had he really not thought of it? Or was it that he knew it was not true, because he knew what was? “That is what I was afraid of.” She nodded as if it were confirmed. “Please be very careful. You are our best leader, our only honest hope. What will we do if you are killed? There would be despair, and it might end in the sort of violence that would be not only the ruin of the city, and any chance of unity within ourselves, but think of what it would do to the souls of those involved, who would be so stained by sin. They would die without absolution, because who would there be to offer it to them?”

He was still staring at her, appalled at what she had said.

“I must continue,” he said. His body was shaking, his face suffused with color. “The emperor and all who advise him, the new patriarch, have forgotten the culture we have inherited, the ancient learning that disciplines the mind and the soul. They would sacrifice all of it for physical survival under the dominion of Rome with its superstitions, its gaudy saints, and its easy answers. Their creed is violence and opportunism, the selling of indulgences for more and more money. They are the barbarians of the heart.” He looked at her as if at this moment it were almost a physical need within him that she understand.

It made her uncomfortable, embarrassed by the intimacy of it. She could think of nothing to say that was even remotely adequate.

His voice was thin with pain when he spoke again. “Anastasius, tell me, what use is it to survive if we are no longer ourselves, but something dirtier and infinitely smaller? What is our generation worth if we betray all that our forebears loved and died for?”

“Nothing,” she said simply. “But be careful. Someone murdered Bessarion for leading the cause against Rome, and made it look as if Justinian were to blame. And you say he felt equally strongly.” She leaned forward again. “If that was not the reason, then what was?”

He drew in a deep breath and let it out in a sigh. “You are right, there is no other.”

“Then please take care,” she said again. “We have powerful enemies.”

“We need powerful people on our side.” He nodded slowly, as if it were she who had pointed it out. “The rich and the noble of the old families, the people others will listen to, before it’s too late.”

Anna felt her stomach tighten and her hands grow slick with the sweat of fear.

“Zoe Chrysaphes could be such a person,” he said thoughtfully. “She has much influence. She is close to the Comneni, as well as to the emperor. She would do things for Byzantium that many others would not.” He nodded his head slightly, the shadow of a smile on his lips. “If I make her see that an act has the Virgin’s blessing, then she will do it. And there is also Theodosia Skleros and all her family. They have great wealth, and they are all devout, she most of all. I have but to preach, and she will obey.” His eyes were bright and he leaned closer toward her. “You are right, Anastasius, there is great hope, if we have the courage and the faith to seize it. Thank you. You give me heart.”

Anna felt the first stab of doubt, fine as a needle. Could holiness use such shadowed means and remain pure? The torches burned in their stands, and there was no wind, no sound outside, but suddenly she was colder.

Anna was still troubled with doubts and aware of the tensions in the city. She had warned Constantine of the personal dangers to him because she needed to raise the subject of Bessarion’s murder, but some of her fear for him was real. And she also knew that by asking questions, she drew attention to herself. There was no question of stopping her inquiry, but she took more care about walking alone, even though to everyone else she appeared to be a eunuch, and there was nothing lacking of propriety in going wherever she chose. But when called out late, after dark, which happened only rarely at this time of year with the short summer nights, she took Leo with her.

With all she had used in her own practice, and the extra needed for assisting the poor, she was running short of herbs. It was time she replenished her supply.

She walked down the hill to the dockside in the warm light, the sun still well above the hills to the west, the breeze blowing and smelling a little salt. She had to wait only twenty minutes, listening to the shouts and laughter of fishermen, before a water taxi came, and she shared it with a couple of other passengers going across the Golden Horn to Galata.

She relaxed in the taxi; the slight rocking of the boat and the steady slap of the water were soothing, and the other passengers seemed to feel the same. They smiled but did not disturb the evening with unnecessary conversation.

Avram Shachar welcomed her as always, taking her into the back room with its shelves and cupboards full of supplies.

She made her purchases and then was happy to accept his invitation to stay and dine with his family. They ate well, then the two of them sat in the small garden late into the evening, discussing some of the physicians of the past, especially Maimonides, the great Jewish physician and philosopher who had died in Egypt the same year the crusaders had stormed Constantinople.

“He is something of a hero to me,” Shachar said. “He also wrote a guide to the entire Mishnah, in Arabic. He was born in Spain, you know.”

“Not Arabia?” she asked.

“No, no. His name was really Moses ben Maimon, but he had to flee when the Muslim overlord, Almohades, gave people no choice except to convert to Islam or be put to death.”

Anna shivered. “They’re to the south and to the west of us. And they seem to be getting more powerful all the time.”

Shachar made a gesture of dismissal. “There is enough evil and pain to fight today, don’t look for tomorrow’s. Now tell me about your medicine.”

It was with pleasure and some surprise that she realized he was interested in her growing practice. She found herself answering his questions about her treatment of Michael, although she was discreet enough to say only that she was afraid for him because of the anger among the people regarding the union with Rome.

“That is something of an honor for you to attend him,” he said gravely, but he looked more anxious than happy.

“It was Zoe Chrysaphes’s recommendation that earned it,” she assured him.

“Ah… Zoe Chrysaphes.” He leaned forward. “Tell her nothing you do not have to. While I know her only by repute, I cannot afford to be ignorant of where the power lies. I am a Jew in a Christian city. You would do well to be careful also, my friend. Do not assume that everything is as it seems.”

Why did he warn her? Surely she had been discreet enough with her inquiries. “I’m Byzantine, and Orthodox Christian,” she said aloud.

“And a eunuch?” he added softly, a question in his eyes. “Who uses Jewish herbs and practices medicine on both men and women, and who asks a lot of questions.” He touched her arm where her robe covered it, very lightly, barely enough for her to feel, and not on her skin, just as he would if she were a woman. Then he withdrew it and sat back.

She felt the horror surge through her and bring the sweat out on her body. Somewhere she had made mistakes, perhaps many. Who else knew she was a woman?

Seeing her fear and understanding it, he shook his head fractionally, still smiling. “No one,” he said gently. “But you cannot hide everything, especially from an herbalist.” His nostrils flared slightly. “I have a keener sense of smell than most men. I had sisters, and I have a wife.”

She knew with a rage of embarrassment what he was referring to. It was her time of the month; in spite of her injuries it still came, and with it, of course, the warm, intimate odor of blood. She thought she had masked it.

“I will give you herbs which will keep you safe from others’ suspicion, and perhaps ease the pain a little,” he offered.

She could only nod. In spite of his kindness, she felt humiliated and deeply afraid.