The Sheen of the Silk

One

ANNA ZARIDES STOOD ON THE STONE PIER AND GAZED across the dark waters of the Bosphorus toward the lighthouse of Constantinople. Its fires lit the sky with a great beacon outlined against the paling March stars. It was beautiful, but she was waiting for the dawn to show her the city’s rooftops and, one by one, all the marvelous palaces, churches, and towers she knew must be there.

The wind was chill off the waves, whose crests were only barely visible. She heard the sound of them sucking and hissing on the pebbles. Far away on the promontory the first rays of daylight caught a massive dome, a hundred, two hundred feet high. It glowed a dull red, as if with its own inner fire. It had to be the Hagia Sophia, the greatest church in the world, not only the most beautiful, but the heart and soul of the Christian faith.

Anna stared at it as the light strengthened. Other rooftops grew clearer, a jumble of angles, towers, and domes. To the left of the Hagia Sophia she saw four tall, slender columns, like needles against the horizon. She knew what they were, monuments to some of the greatest emperors of the past. The imperial palaces must be there, too, and the Hippodrome, but all she could see were shadows, white gleams of marble here and there, more trees, and the endless roofs of a city larger than Rome or Alexandria, Jerusalem or Athens.

She saw the narrow stretch of the Bosphorus clearly now, already growing busy with ships. With an effort she made out the vast battlements of the shoreline, and something of the harbors below them, crowded with indistinguishable hulls and masts, all riding the safe calm within the breakwaters.

The sun was rising, the sky a pale, luminescent arch shot with fire. To the north, the curved inlet of the Golden Horn was molten bronze between its banks-a beautiful spring morning.

The first ferry of the day was making its way toward them. Worried once again how she would appear to strangers, Anna walked over to the edge of the pier and stared down at the still water in the shelter of the stone. She saw her own reflection: steady gray eyes, strong but vulnerable face, high cheekbones, and soft mouth. Her bright hair was jaw length, not dressed and ornamented like a woman’s, and with no veil to hide it.

The ferry, a light, wooden boat big enough to carry half a dozen passengers, was less than a hundred yards away now. The oarsman was fighting the stiff breeze and the perverse currents, treacherous here at the narrows where Europe met Asia. She took a deep breath, feeling the bandages tight around her chest and the slight padding at her waist that concealed her woman’s shape. In spite of all her practice, it still felt awkward. She shivered, pulling her cloak closer.

“No,” Leo said from behind her.

“What’s wrong?” She turned to look at him. He was tall, slender-shouldered, and round-faced, with hairless cheeks. His brow was furrowed with anxiety.

“The gesture,” the eunuch replied gently. “Don’t give in to the cold like a woman.”

She jerked away, furious with herself for making such a stupid mistake. She was endangering them all.

“Are you still sure?” Simonis asked, her voice brittle. “It’s not too late to…to change your mind.”

“I’ll get it right,” Anna said firmly.

“You can’t afford mistakes, Anastasius.” Leo deliberately used the name Anna had chosen to take. “You would be punished for masquerading as a man-even a eunuch.”

“Then I mustn’t get caught,” she said simply.

She had known it would be difficult. But at least one woman had succeeded in the past. Her name was Marina, and she had entered a monastery as a eunuch. No one had known differently until after her death.

Anna nearly asked Leo if he wished to go back, but it would be insulting, and he did not deserve that. Anyway, she needed to observe and mimic him.

The ferry reached the dock and the oarsman stood up with the peculiar grace of one accustomed to the sea. Young and handsome, he threw a rope around the stanchion, then stepped up onto the boards of the dockside, smiling.

About to smile back, Anna remembered not to only just in time. She let go of her cloak, allowing the wind to chill her, and the boatman passed by her to offer his hand to Simonis, who was older, plumper, and obviously a woman. Anna followed, taking her seat in the ferry. Leo came last, loading their few boxes, which held her precious medicines, herbs, and instruments. The oarsman took his place again and they moved out into the current.

Anna did not look behind. She had left everything that was familiar, and she had no idea when she would see it again. But it was only the task ahead that mattered.

They were far out into the current now. Rising sheer from the waterline like a cliff was the wreckage of the seawalls breached by the Latin crusaders who had looted and burned the city seventy years ago and driven its people into exile. She looked at it now, soaring up as vast as if it had been built by nature rather than man, and wondered how anyone could have dared to attack it, never mind succeeded.

She held on to the gunwale and twisted in her seat to look left and right at the magnitude of the city. It seemed to cover every rock face, inlet, and hillside. The rooftops were so close, they gave the illusion you could walk from one to another.

The oarsman was smiling, amused at her wonder. She felt herself coloring at her naiveté and turned away.

They were now close enough to the city that she could see the broken stones, the thready outlines of weeds, and the darker scars of fire. She was startled how raw it looked, even though eleven years had passed since 1262, when Michael Palaeologus had led the people of Constantinople back home from the provinces where they had been driven.

Now Anna too was here, for the first time in her life, and for all the wrong reasons.

The oarsman strained against the wash that rocked them hard as a trireme went past, bound for the open sea. It was high-sided, three tiers of oars dipping and rising, water running bright from their blades. Beyond it were two other boats almost round, men busy furling their sails, scrambling to lash them fast enough so they could let down anchor in exactly the right place. She wondered if they had come from the Black Sea and what they had brought to sell or trade.

In the shelter of the breakwaters, the sea was calm. Someone somewhere laughed, and the sound carried across the water, above the slap of the waves and the cry of the gulls.

The ferryman guided their way to the quayside and bumped gently against the stones. She paid him four copper folleis, meeting his eyes for no more than a moment, then rose and stepped ashore, leaving him to assist Simonis.

They must hire transport for the boxes, then find an inn to offer them food and shelter until she could look for a house to rent and set up her practice. She would have no help here, no recommendations as she would have had from her father’s good name at home in Nicea, the ancient, magnificent capital of Bithynia across the Bosphorus to the southeast. It was only a day’s ride away, yet Constantinople was a new world for her. Apart from Leo and Simonis, she was alone. Their loyalty was absolute. Even knowing the truth, they had come with her.

She started along the worn stones of the quayside, making a path between bales of wool, carpets, raw silk, piles of crockery, slabs of marble, exotic woods, and smaller bags that gave off the odors of exotic spices. Heavy in the air were also the less pleasant smells of fish, hides, human sweat, and animal dung.

Twice she turned around to make certain Leo and Simonis were both still with her.

She had grown up knowing that Constantinople was the center of the world, the crossroads of Europe and Asia, and she was proud of it, but now the babel of alien voices in among the Byzantines’ native Greek, the teeming, anonymous busyness of it, overwhelmed her.

A bare-chested man with gleaming skin and a sack across his shoulders weighing him down bumped into her and muttered something before staggering on. A tinker laden with pan and kettles laughed loudly and spat on the ground. A turbaned Muslim in a black silk robe walked by without a sound.

Anna stepped off the uneven cobbles and crossed the street, Leo and Simonis close behind. The buildings on the landward side were four or five stories high and the alleys between them narrower than she had expected. The smells of salt and stale wine were heavy and unpleasant, and the noise even here made speaking difficult. She led the way up the hill a little farther from the wharfside.

There were shops to left and right and living quarters above, apparent from the laundry hanging from windows. A hundred yards inland, it was quieter. They passed a bakery, and the smell of fresh bread made her suddenly think of home.

They were still climbing upward, and her arms ached from carrying her medical supplies. Leo must be even more exhausted because he had the heavier boxes, and Simonis carried a bag of clothes.

She stopped and let her case drop for a moment. “We must find somewhere for tonight. At least to leave our belongings. And we need to eat. It is more than five hours since breakfast.”

“Six,” Simonis observed. “I’ve never seen so many people in my life.”

“Do you want me to carry that?” Leo asked, but his face looked tired and he already had far more weight than either Simonis or Anna.

In answer, Simonis picked up her bag again and started forward.

A hundred yards farther, they found an excellent inn that served food. It had good mattresses stuffed with goose down and was furnished with linen sheets. Each room had a basin large enough for bathing and a latrine with a tile drain. It was eight folleis each, per night, not including meals. That was expensive, but Anna doubted others would be much cheaper.

She dreaded going out in case she made another mistake, another womanish gesture, expression, or even lack of reaction in some way. One error would be enough to make people look harder and perhaps see the differences between her and a real eunuch.

They ate a lunch of fresh gray mullet and wheat bread at a tavern and asked a few discreet questions about cheaper lodgings.

“Oh, inland,” a fellow diner told them cheerfully. He was a little gray-haired man in a worn tunic that came no farther than his knees, his legs bound with cloth to keep him warm but leaving him unencumbered for work. “Farther west you go, cheaper they are. You strangers here?”

There was no point in denying it. “From Nicea,” Anna told him.

“I’m from Sestos myself.” The man gave them a gap-toothed grin. “But everyone comes here, sooner or later.”

Anna thanked him, and the following day they hired a donkey to carry their cases and moved to a cheaper inn close to the western edge of the city by the land walls, not far from the Gate of Charisius.

That night, she lay in her bed listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the city around her. This was Constantinople, the heart of Byzantium. She had heard stories of it all her life, from her parents and her grandparents, but now that she was here it was so strange, too big for the imagination to grasp.

But she would accomplish nothing by remaining in her lodgings. Survival demanded that in the morning she go out and begin the search for a house from which she could establish her practice.

In spite of her tiredness, sleep did not come easily, and her dreams were crowded with strange faces and the fear of being lost.

She knew from her father’s stories that Constantinople was surrounded by water on three sides, and that the main street, named Mese, was Y shaped. The two arms met at the Amastrianon Forum and continued east toward the sea. All the great buildings she had heard him speak of were along this stretch: the Hagia Sophia, the Forum of Constantine, the Hippodrome, the old imperial palaces, and of course shops with exquisite artifacts, silks, spices, and gems.

They set out in the morning, walking briskly. The air was fresh. Food shops were open, and at practically every corner bakeries were crowded with people, but they had no time to indulge themselves. They were still in the web of narrow streets that threaded the whole city from the calm water of the Golden Horn in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south. Several times they had to stand aside to let donkey carts pass, piled high with goods for market, mostly fruit and vegetables.

They reached the wide stretch of Mese Street just as a camel swayed past them, high-headed, sour-faced, and a man hurried behind it, bent double under the weight of a bale of cotton. The thoroughfare teemed with people. In among the native Greeks she saw turbaned Muslims, Bulgars with close-cropped heads, dark-skinned Egyptians, blue-eyed Scandinavians, and high-cheeked Mongols. Anna wondered if they felt as strange here as she did, as awed by the size, the vitality, the jumble of vibrant colors in the clothes, on the shop awnings-purples and scarlets, blues and golds, half shades of aquamarine, wine red, and rose pink, wherever she looked.

She had no idea where to start. She needed to make inquiries and learn something about the different residential areas where she might find a house.

“We need a map,” Leo said with a frown. “The city is far too big to know where we are without one.”

“We need to be in a good residential district,” Simonis added, probably thinking about the home they had left in Nicea. But she had willed to come almost as much as Anna herself. Justinian had always been her favorite, even though he and Anna were twins. Simonis had grieved when he left Nicea to come to Constantinople. When Anna had received that last, desperate letter about his exile, Simonis had thought of nothing but rescuing him, at any cost. It was Leo who had had the cooler head and wanted a plan first and who had cared so much for Anna’s safety as well.

It took them several more minutes to find a shop selling manuscripts, and they inquired.

“Oh, yes,” the shopkeeper said immediately. Short and wiry, with white hair and a quick smile, he opened a drawer behind him and pulled out several scrolls of paper. He unrolled one of them and showed Anna the drawing.

“See? Fourteen districts.” He pointed to the loosely triangular shape drawn in black ink.

“This is Mese Street, going this way.” He showed them on the map. “There’s the Wall of Constantine, and west of that again the Wall of Theodosius. All except district thirteen, across the Golden Horn to the north. That’s called Galata. But you don’t want to live there. That’s for foreigners.” He rolled it up and passed it to her. “That will be two solidi.”

She was taken aback and more than a little suspicious that he knew she was a stranger and was taking advantage. Still, she passed over the money.

They walked the length of Mese Street, trying not to stare around them like the provincials they were. Row after row of merchants’ stalls lined the street. They were shaded by canopies of every color imaginable, tied tightly to wooden posts to anchor them against the wind. Even so they snapped loudly in every gust, as if they were alive and struggling to get free.

In district one there were spice merchants and perfumers. The air was redolent with their wares, and Anna found herself drawing in her breath deeply to savor them. She had neither time nor money to waste, but she could not help gazing at them, lingering a moment to admire their beauty. No other yellow had the depth of saffron, no brown the multitoned richness of nutmeg. She knew the medical values of all of them, even the rarest, but at home in Nicea she had had to order them specially and pay extra for their freight. Here they were laid out as if they were commonplace.

“There’s plenty of money in this district,” Simonis observed with a hint of disapproval.

“More important, they’ll have their own physician already,” Leo replied.

Now they were among the perfumers’ shops and there were rather more women than in the other areas, many of them clearly wealthy. As custom required, they wore tunics and dalmaticas from the neck almost to the ground, and their hair was concealed by headdress and veil. One woman walked past them, smiling, and Anna noticed that she had darkened her brows very delicately, and perhaps her lashes. Certainly there was red clay on her lips to make them look so vivid.

Anna heard her laughter as she met a friend, and together they tried one perfume after another. Their embroidered and brocaded silks stirred in the breeze like flower petals. She envied their lightheartedness.

She would have to find more ordinary women, and male patients, too, or she would never learn why Justinian had been a favorite with the emperor’s court one day and an exile the next, fortunate to have his life. What had happened? What must Anna do to gain justice for him?

The following day, by mutual agreement, they left the Mese and its immediate surroundings and searched farther into the side streets, in little shops, and in the residential districts north of center, almost under the giant arches of the Aqueduct of Valens, catching occasional glimpses of the light on the water of the Golden Horn beyond.

They were on a narrow street, barely wide enough for two donkeys to pass each other, when they came to a flight of steps up to the left. Thinking the height might give them a better sense of their bearings, they began to climb. The passage turned one way, then the other. Anna nearly stumbled over the rubble on the steps.

Without any warning, the path ended abruptly and they were in a small courtyard. Anna was stunned by what lay around her. All the walls were damaged, some by holes where pieces had fallen out, others by the black stains of fire. The broken mosaic floor was scattered with stones and chips of tile, and the doorways were choked with weeds. The single tower left standing was pitted and dark with the grime of smoke. She heard Simonis stifle a sob, and Leo stood silent, his face pale.

Suddenly the terrible invasion of 1204 was real, as if it had been only a few years ago, not more than half a century. Other things they had seen made sense now, the streets where houses were still derelict, weed-strewn and rotting, the occasional broken wharves she had seen from above, the poverty in what had seemed to her first superficial look to be the richest city in the world. The people had been back for over a decade, but the wounds of conquest and exile were still raw underneath.

Anna turned away, imagined terror gripping her and making her body cold even in the sharp spring sunlight, sheltered here from the wind, where it should have been hot.

By the end of the week, they had found a house in a comfortable residential area on a slope to the north of Mese Street, between the two great walls. From several of the windows Anna could see the light on the Golden Horn, a glimpse of blue between the rooftops that gave her a moment’s wild illusion of endlessness, almost as if she could fly.

It was a small house, but in good repair. The tiled floors were beautiful and she particularly liked the courtyard with its simple mosaic and the vines that climbed onto the roof.

Simonis was satisfied with the kitchen, although she made a few disparaging remarks about its size, but Anna could see by the way she poked into every corner and touched the furniture with its marble surfaces, the deep basin and the heavy table, that she liked it. There was a small room for storage of grains and vegetables, racks and drawers for spices, and, like all the rest of the better parts of the city, access to plenty of clean water, even if it was a little salty.

There were enough rooms to have a bedroom each, a dining room, an entrance hall for patients to wait in, and a room for consulting. There was also another room with a heavy door to which Leo could attach a lock and where Anna could keep herbs, ointments, unguents, and tinctures, and of course her surgical blades, needles, and silks. In here she placed the wooden cabinet with its dozens of drawers into which she put the herbs she had, each one labeled, and including one whole leaf or root so one could not be mistaken for another.

But in spite of the discreet notice she put at the front of the house stating her profession, patients would not come to her. She must go out and seek them, let people know of her presence and her skills.

So it was at midday that she stood on the step of a tavern in the hard sunlight and the wind. She pushed open the door and went inside. She walked through the crowd and saw a table with one empty chair. The rest were filled with men eating and talking excitedly. At least one was a eunuch, taller, long-armed, soft-faced, his voice too high, with the strange, altered tone of his gender.

“May I take this seat?” she asked.

It was the eunuch who replied, inviting her in. Perhaps he was pleased to have another of his kind.

A waiter came and offered her food, cut pieces of roast pork wrapped in wheat bread, and she accepted.

“Thank you,” she said. “I have just moved in, the house with the blue door, straight up the hill. My name is Anastasius Zarides. I am a physician.”

One of the men shrugged and introduced himself. “I’ll remember if I am ill,” he said good-naturedly. “If you stitch up wounds, you might stay around. There’ll be business for you when we’ve finished arguing.”

She was uncertain how to reply, not sure if he was joking or not. She had heard raised voices from the doorway as she came in. “I have needle and silk,” she offered.

One of the others laughed. “You’ll need more than that if we’re invaded. How are you at raising the dead?”

“I’ve never had the nerve to try,” she replied as casually as she could. “Isn’t that more of a job for a priest?”

They all laughed, but she heard a hard, bitter sound of fear in it and realized the power of the undercurrents she had barely listened to before, in her own urgency to find a house and begin a practice.

“What kind of a priest?” one of the men said harshly. “Orthodox or Roman, eh? Which side are you on?”

“I’m Orthodox,” she said quietly, answering because she felt compelled to say something. Silence would be deceit.

“Then you better pray harder,” he told her. “God knows we’ll need it. Have some wine, physician.”

Anna held out her glass and found her hand was shaking. Quickly she put the glass on the table. “Thank you.” When the glass was full she held it up, forcing herself to smile. “Here’s to your good health… except for perhaps a slight skin rash, or the occasional hives. I’m good at that, for a small sum.”

They laughed again and lifted their glasses.