The Sheen of the Silk

Thirty-seven

GIULIANO DANDOLO ENJOYED BEING BACK IN CONSTANTINOPLE. The vitality of the city excited him; the tolerance and width of vision was like the wind off a great ocean. It called to him more and more powerfully each time he saw it.

Now he was here at Contarini’s orders to observe for himself, rather than by rumor, whether Byzantium was finally keeping the rules of the union with Rome or, as before, paying them lip service while going its own way.

What he had seen so far should have pleased him for the prospects of a new crusade passing this way and storming the city and the profit that that would mean for Venice. But Giuliano could not rejoice in it. He learned of the strength of the resistance with a sense of foreboding. Not only had the leaders of opposition to the union been blinded, mutilated, or banished; many had fled to separatist Byzantine states. The prisons were crowded, and most embarrassing to Michael, many of his immediate relatives were actively engaged in plotting against him. It seemed he was attacked at the front and beset on all sides.

The Blachernae Palace was beautiful, even if it was poor compared with the glories of Venice. There were still the marks of fire and pillage all through it, and it had none of the sheer grace of pale marble and the endless reflections of light that he was used to.

But when Giuliano was face-to-face with Michael, he saw a man of remarkable composure. There was a weariness in the emperor’s face, but nothing of fear. He received Giuliano with courtesy and even a shadow of wit. Against his will, Giuliano felt both a pity and an admiration for him. Whatever Michael lacked, it was not courage.

“And of course there is the East,” a eunuch told Giuliano as he was conducted away after his audience was over. The eunuch’s name was Nicephoras.

Giuliano dragged his mind back to the issues as they walked side by side along a vaulted corridor paved with mosaics.

“Everything is changing all the time,” Nicephoras added, choosing his words carefully. “It appears at the moment as if the greatest threat to us is from the West, the next crusade, but in truth I think we have as much, if not more, to fear from the East. It is simply that the West will be first, if we do not find some accommodation with Rome, however much we hate it. But there is no accommodation to be found with the East.” He looked at Giuliano. “There is much balancing to be done, and it is hard to know which way to turn first.”

Giuliano wanted to say something intelligent and sympathetic, without betraying Venice or sounding patronizing, but nothing whatever came to him. “I begin to feel as if Venetian politics are relatively simple,” he said quietly. “This is like taking out a boat that is leaking in ten different places.”

“A good analogy,” Nicephoras agreed with appreciation. “But we are good at it. We have had much practice.”

Giuliano was still on the steps, leaving the palace, when he came to the bottom at the same time as another eunuch, apparently also leaving. This person was considerably smaller, several inches shorter than Giuliano himself, and more delicate of appearance. When he turned there was a flash of recognition in his dark gray eyes, and Giuliano remembered him from the Hagia Sophia. This was the same man who had seen him clean Enrico Dandolo’s tomb and whose face had shown such grief and such compassion.

“Good morning,” Giuliano said quickly, then wondered if perhaps he had been precipitate in speaking to him, that it would be taken as overfamiliarity. “Giuliano Dandolo, ambassador from the doge of Venice,” he introduced himself.

The eunuch smiled. His face was effeminate, but certainly not without character and again the burning intelligence Giuliano thought he had seen in the Hagia Sophia. “Anastasius Zarides,” the eunuch said. “Sometime physician to Emperor Michael Palaeologus.”

Giuliano was surprised. He had not placed the man as a physician. But it only reminded him how alien Byzantium was. He hastened to say something else. “I live in the Venetian Quarter.” He made a gesture roughly in the direction of the shore. “But I am beginning to think perhaps that restricts me from knowing the city better.” He stopped, gazing across the rooftops. The Golden Horn was spread below them, shining in the morning sun, dotted with boats from every corner of the Mediterranean. The air was warm, and Giuliano could imagine he smelled the odors of salt and spice drifting up from the harbor front.

Anastasius followed his gaze. “If I could choose, I would live where I could see the sun rise over the Bosphorus, and that requires some height. Such places are expensive.” He laughed with gentle self-mockery. “I would have to save the life of the richest man in Byzantium in order to afford that, and fortunately for him, if less so for me, he is in excellent health.”

Giuliano regarded him with amusement. “And if he were ill, would he send for you?” he asked.

Anastasius shrugged. “Not yet, but by the time he is ill, maybe.” He was joking, lightly.

“In the meantime, healing merely the emperor, where do you live?” Giuliano kept up the easy tone.

Anastasius pointed down the hill. “Over there, beyond those trees. I still have a good view, although only to the north. But there is an excellent place, my favorite in the city, a hundred yards away, up on that hill, where you can see in almost a full circle. And it is quiet. Very few other people seem to go there. Perhaps I am the only one with time to stand and stare.”

Giuliano had a sudden thought that perhaps what he really meant was to stand and dream, but self-consciousness had prevented him from saying so.

“Were you born here?” he asked quickly.

Anastasius looked surprised. “No. My parents were part of the exile. I was born in Thessalonica, and I grew up in Nicea. But this is our ancestral home, the heart of our culture, and I suppose of our faith as well.”

Giuliano felt stupid. Of course he was born somewhere else. He had forgotten that almost everyone he spoke to in this city would have been born during the exile and was therefore from somewhere else. Even his own mother had been.

“My mother was born in Nicea,” he said aloud, then instantly wondered why. He looked away, keeping his face in profile to Anastasius.

As if sensing something of a retreat, Anastasius changed the subject. “They say that some of Venice is like Constantinople. Is that true?”

“Some of it, yes,” he replied. “Especially where there are mosaics. One in particular I like, in a church very similar to one here.” Suddenly he remembered how many Byzantine works of art had been stolen in the ruin in 1204 and felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. “And the money exchanges, of course, and the…” He stopped. The silk trade had once been purely Byzantine; now the art, the weaving, and even the colors were Venetian. “We’ve learned much from you,” he said a little awkwardly.

Anastasius smiled and gave a slight shrug. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. I opened the door to an honest answer.”

He was startled. It was a response with more grace than he had expected or perhaps deserved. He smiled back. “We are learning, but there is a vitality here, a complexity of thought we may never acquire.”

Anastasius inclined his head in acknowledgment, then excused himself with ease, as if they might meet again with the same interest.

Giuliano walked down the steep street lightly. Anastasius had been born during the exile, and judging from his age, his parents must have been also. It had been over seventy years now. That meant, of course, that Giuliano’s own mother had been a child of the exile, even if her heritage was pure Byzantine. And so shortly after the pillage of the city, her hatred for Venice must have been very strong. How on earth had she come to marry a Venetian? More than before, now that he had stood in the wind and the sun and spoken so candidly with another lost, different child of the exile, born away from a spiritual home, he was compelled to find out more about the woman whose child he was.

He began to inquire diligently, and the answers led him to many interesting people and eventually to a woman well into her seventies, who had actually fled the invading armies after the fall of the city. She must have been amazingly beautiful in her youth and in her middle years. Even now she had a depth of passion, a flair and individuality that fascinated him. Her name was Zoe Chrysaphes.

She seemed to be willing to talk about the city, its history, its legends, and its people. The room where she received Giuliano overlooked a vast panorama of the roofs of lesser houses. Standing beside him at the window, she told him of the traders who came from Alexandria and a great river of Egypt that wound like a snake into unknown heart of Africa.

And from the Holy Land,” she went on, extending her arm, jeweled fingers pointing below, down near the sea’s edge, “Persians and Saracens, and remnants of the crusader armies of the past, ancient kings of Jerusalem, and Arabs from the desert.”

“Have you been there, to the Holy Land?” Giuliano asked impulsively.

She was amused. Her golden eyes flashed at some memory she would not share. “I have never been far from Byzantium. It is my heart and mind, the roots from which I live. In the exile my family went first to Nicea, then east to Trebizund, and Georgia and the shores of the Black Sea. Once, for a while, farther still to Samarkand. Always I looked to come home again.”

He was stabbed with the old guilt of being Venetian and his people’s part in carrying the crusader army here. It seemed foolish to ask why Zoe had hungered to come home, even though she could hardly know it after so many years and none of her family were left. He must instead ask her the questions that mattered. He might not have the opportunity again, and the hunger ate inside him with a growing need. “You know all the old families,” he said a little abruptly. “Did you know of Theodoulos Agallon?”

She stood quite still. “I’ve heard of him. He has been dead many years now.” She smiled. “If you want to know more, I’m sure it can be learned.”

He turned away so she would not read the vulnerability in his eyes. “My mother’s name was Agallon. I should be interested to know if there was a connection.”

“Really?” She sounded interested, not inquisitive. “What was her Christian name?”

“Maddalena.” Even saying it was painful, as if it revealed something private that could not be recovered again. He swallowed, his throat tight. His mother was probably dead, and if she wasn’t, the last thing he wanted was to meet her. Giuliano turned to look at Zoe, searching for a way to change his mind.

She was staring at him, her brilliant tawny-colored eyes almost at a level with his. “I will inquire,” she promised. “Discreetly, of course. An old story, something I heard and can’t remember where.” She smiled. “It may take me a little while, but it would be interesting. We are linked in love and hate, your city and mine.” For a moment her expression was unreadable, as if she contained inside her some other creature, unknowable, driven by pain. Then it was gone again, and she was smiling at him, still beautiful, still full of laughter and a craving for the taste, the smell, and the texture of life. “Come back in a month, and see what I have discovered.”