The Sheen of the Silk

Thirty-four

ZOE HAD SEEN THE NECKLACE WHEN IT WAS ALMOST finished. She had stood in the goldsmith’s shop and watched him working the metal, heating it slowly, bending it, and smoothing it into exactly the shape he wanted. She had seen the stones because he had had them out in order to make the shapes to hold them: golden topaz, pale topaz almost like spring sunlight, dark, smoky citrines, and quartz almost bronze. Only a woman with hair like autumn leaves and fire in her eyes could wear this without being dominated by it and made to look eclipsed rather than enhanced.

The goldsmith would be flattered that she wore it. It would advertise his art and earn him more customers. Then everyone would want his work.

She arrived at his shop at midmorning, gold coins ready in a small leather pouch. She would not send Sabas for this because she wanted to make sure the piece was perfect before she passed over her money.

She was irritated to see someone already there, a gaunt-faced middle-aged man, his graying hair prematurely thin. He was holding coins in his hand. He closed his fingers over them, smiling, and passed them to the smith. The smith thanked him and picked up Zoe’s necklace. He laid it on a piece of ivory silk, wrapped it gently, and passed it to the man, who took it and folded it away until it was concealed by his dalmatica. He thanked the smith, then turned and walked away toward Zoe, his face alight with satisfaction.

Zoe’s fury overtook her. The man had taken her necklace, and the smith had allowed it.

It was only as the man passed her that she recognized him, even after all these years-Arsenios Vatatzes, Eirene’s cousin by marriage, the head of the house whose crest was carved on the back of her crucifix.

It was his family who had robbed Zoe’s father in 1204, promising to help in that terrible escape, then betraying them by keeping the relics, the icons, the documents of history that were uniquely Byzantine. They had fled to Egypt and sold them to the Alexandrians to finance a fat, comfortable exile, while Zoe’s father, hideously bereaved, a widower with one small daughter, had had to labor with his hands in order to survive.

Now Arsenios was rich and back again in Constantinople. The time was right. She turned away, in case he might recognize her also.

She arrived home with her mind racing. There were a dozen ways of achieving someone’s ruin, but it depended upon circumstance, the person’s friends and enemies, their family or lovers, their hungers, their strengths, the weaknesses through which they were vulnerable. Arsenios was clever, and it seemed he had wealth, which these days meant power. The Vatatzes had ruled Byzantium in exile from 1221 to 1254. Arsenios’s brother Gregory was married to Eirene, who was also of aristocratic descent from the Doukas dynasty. Only a disgrace so clear, so blatant as to be unarguable, would work.

What kind of disgrace? She paced the floor of her room, walked over to the great cross, and stared at it, seeing in her mind’s eye the other side with one goal achieved, one of its fourfold emblems meaningless at last. The Vatatzes must be next.

Whom was the necklace for? Someone Arsenios loved, but whom?

It did not take long to find out that he was a widower and had one daughter, Maria, who was soon to make a fortunate marriage into a family with not only wealth, but immense power and ambition. Her beauty and her lineage were her strengths, and therefore Arsenios’s strength also. That was where to strike.

The plan took shape in her mind. It would avenge the humiliation she had suffered in Syracuse all those years ago. Arsenios would pay for that, as he would pay for betraying Byzantium.

Anastasius Zarides was the perfect vehicle. But with a peculiar mixture of emotions, she remembered their last encounter. At first she had thought his saving the monk Cyril was just one of those random pieces of good fortune that happen from time to time to anyone. But then she had seen something in the healer’s eyes that made her believe he knew she had tried to poison Cyril and had himself worked out exactly how.

She could see him in her mind’s eye, and it was almost as if she had caught half an image on some polished surface: herself and yet not herself. The clothes were different, the shape of the body, no lush curves of bosom and hip. Yet the turn of the neck, the refinement of the jaw, just for half a second, the blink of an eye, were the same.

It was a delusion, of course. It was the fire in the mind that was the resemblance, the steel inside.

Of course, Anastasius had serious flaws. He forgave, and that was a weakness that sooner or later would prove fatal. He overlooked faults. Such a defect infuriated Zoe. It was like a chip on the face of an otherwise perfect statue. The mutilation of his manhood was a shame, but he was too young to be of any interest to her, although it was difficult to be accurate about the age of a man who was not a man. A human being without the spirit or the fire to hate was only half-alive. That was a waste. She liked him-apart from that.

She shook herself impatiently. The only thing of importance was that he was the perfect tool for this task and perhaps for others in the future. She realized with surprise just how sorry she would be if it did destroy him.

The sun was making bright patterns on the floor, its warmth soothing her shoulders. What was the cause of this new hate of Anastasius in Helena? Had he bested her too in something, and was she stupid enough to resent it instead of tasting the amusement of it? Zoe’s daughter gave in to emotion instead of using it.

The idea that was forming in her mind had far greater possibilities than merely destroying Arsenios. By using Anastasius, she might also learn the answer to several questions that had become more and more insistent lately. Anastasius was always interested in the murder of Bessarion. Zoe had assumed that the law was correct and Antoninus had killed him, and then Justinian had helped him conceal it. She had thought that she knew why, but possibly she had been mistaken. It could be dangerous to be wrong.

Also dangerous was the possibility of Michael learning that she had deliberately ruined Arsenios. If he discovered this, he might deduce that she had also killed Cosmas. He might feel inclined to stop her.

That must be prevented. Michael was clever, inventive, a true Byzantine. Above all, he would save his country, his people, against their will if necessary, but he would live or die to prevent the crusaders from burning Constantinople again.

If Zoe were indispensable to him in any part of foiling Charles of Anjou, then he would protect her from the devil himself, let alone some mere question of the law.

Even as she stood in the sun, the sounds of the street echoing below her, the far light gleaming on the sea, she began to see how she would do it.

It took over two weeks for Scalini, the Sicilian, to visit her, alone and at night, as she had insisted. He was a weasel of a man, but clever and not without a sense of humor, and that quality alone redeemed him in her eyes.

“I have a job for you, Scalini,” she told him as soon as he sat in the chair opposite her and she had poured wine. It was long after midnight, and she had only one torch lit.

“Of course.” He nodded and reached for the glass. He put it to his long, sharp nose and sniffed. “Ascalon wine, with honey and something else?”

“Wild camomile seeds,” she told him.

He smiled. “Where is the job? Sicily, Naples… Rome?”

“Wherever the king of the Two Sicilies might be,” she replied. “As long as he is not here. By then it would be too late.”

He grinned. His teeth were sharp and white, well cared for. “He will not be here yet,” he said with relish, licking his lips as if tasting something sweet. “The pope has forgiven the emperor of Byzantium. When he heard this piece of news, His Majesty of the Two Sicilies was so beside himself with rage that he snatched up his own scepter and bit off the top of it!”

Zoe laughed until the tears were wet on her face. Scalini joined in, and they finished the wine. She opened a new bottle, and they finished that as well.

It was coming toward three in the morning when at last she leaned forward, her face suddenly grave. “Scalini, for reasons which are not your concern, I need to have something of great worth to offer the emperor. A year from now may be sufficient, but I need to be certain of it.”

He pursed his lips. “The only thing Michael Palaeologus wants is his throne secure and Constantinople safe. He’ll trade anything else on earth for the city’s security-even the Church.”

“And who threatens him?” she whispered.

“Charles of Anjou. The world knows that.”

“I want to know everything I can about him. Everything! Do you understand me, Scalini?”

His small brown eyes searched her face, studying inch by inch. “Yes, I understand.”