The Sheen of the Silk

Fifty

WITH GREGORY, ZOE WOULD HAVE NO SECOND CHANCE.

In a perverse way, this last battle between them was another kind of bond. She thought of him during the day. She lay awake at night and remembered how it was to be with him.

Another piece of the plan fell into her hands. It was the street attacks upon Bessarion and then upon herself that gave her the idea.

The first thing was to plant the seeds in people’s minds that there was a quarrel between Gregory and Giuliano Dandolo. It must be just a superficial word, so slight that the meaning was recalled only afterward and understood then.

The second thing was to go to Bardas, a maker of daggers whom she knew and had trusted in the past. She put on her heaviest dalmatica and went out into the windy street and the light rain. Walking quickly, she left Sabas far behind her as he was used to being, discreet, seeing and hearing nothing. The pain in her leg was barely there anymore.

“Yes, mistress,” the swordsmith said immediately, pleased to see her again. Only a fool forgot a benefactress or broke his word to a woman who never forgot or forgave. “What can I make for you this time?”

“I want a good dagger,” she replied. “It doesn’t have to be the best, but I want a family crest on the hilt, and I want you to be discreet about it. It is a gift, and it will be spoiled if anyone else hears of it.”

“Your business is no one else’s, lady. Whose crest would that be?”

“Dandolo,” she answered.

As soon as she had the dagger, which was beautiful-Bardas was even better than his word-she sent a letter to Giuliano Dandolo, who was still lodging in the Venetian Quarter. The message was simple: She had learned more about his dead mother.

Giuliano came, as she had known he would. She looked at him standing in her magnificent room. Although he was ill at ease, trying to hide the eagerness to learn what she had to say burning inside him, he still moved with grace, and grudgingly she admitted to herself he was better than handsome: He had a vitality of mind that she could not ignore. If she had been younger, she would have wanted to lie with him. But he was a Dandolo, and the dream in the eyes, the shape of a cheekbone, the width of his shoulders, or the way he walked could not pardon that.

He made all the usual polite remarks, not rushing into asking for the new information, and she played the game, uncertain whether she enjoyed it or not.

“I have heard more of your mother,” she said as soon as the greetings were over and the casual remarks that courtesy required. “She was beautiful, but perhaps you knew that already.” She saw the flicker of emotion in his face, the sharp hurt too deep to camouflage. “Perhaps you did not know that Maddalena had a sister, Eudoxia, also beautiful, but regrettably there is considerable scandal about her name.” Again she saw the emotion raw in him. A pity she could not be young again. “What I did not know before is that Eudoxia is said by some to have repented deeply in her old age, and to have joined some holy order. I do not know which, but I may be able to learn. It is possible that she is still alive.”

“Alive?” His eyes opened wide.

“Please, leave it to me. I have ways which are not open to you, and I can do it discreetly. I will let you know as soon as I have something that is certain.”

“Thank you.” He smiled at her, a handsome, self-assured man with a charm that came without effort.

“I was three when my mother died,” she said to Giuliano, aware that her voice was shaking but unable to control it.

“I’m sorry,” he responded with sudden shock, his eyes tender.

She did not wish his sympathy. “She was raped and murdered.” Then she wished she had not told him. It was a weakness and a tactical error. He might work out the year, and the circumstances, and then know he could never trust her. “I have something for you,” she said hastily, trying to cover it. “I came by it almost by chance, so please feel no obligation.” She moved away from him over to the table on which lay the dagger with the Dandolo crest. She unwrapped the blue silk cloth around it and held it out, hilt toward him, crest upward. Bardas had done a perfect job: It looked old and well used, yet every detail of it was clear.

Giuliano stared at it, then looked up at her.

“Take it,” she urged. “It should be yours. Anyway, what on earth would I do with a dagger that carried a Venetian crest on it?”

He was not clumsy enough to offer to pay for it. He would give her a gift of appropriate value, a little more than he judged the dagger to be worth.

He weighed it in his hands. “The balance is perfect,” he observed. “Where did it come from?”

“I don’t know,” she answered. “But if I find out, I shall tell you.”

“Thank you.” He was not effusive, but the depth of his feeling filled his voice, his eyes, even the way he stood and the touch of his hands on the knife.

“Wear it,” she said quite casually. “It will become you.” She would pray that he did, kneel before the Virgin Mary and beseech her that he did. Unless the dagger was known to be Giuliano’s, Zoe’s plan would not work.

“I will.” He seemed about to add something further, then changed his mind and took his leave.

She watched him go with an odd little pain biting in her side, as if something were slipping out of her hands. Now there was nothing to do but wait, two or three weeks, at least. She had to be sure others had seen Giuliano with the knife and knew it was his.

She waited a month. Time seemed to crawl by like a crippled thing, dragging days behind it. The heat of noon paralyzed, the afternoons were heavy and silent, darkness was a mask that could hide anything, every creak and footstep a possible assassin.

As she had expected, Giuliano sent her a gift: a brooch for her dalmatica. She liked it more than she wished to. It was black onyx and topaz, in a bed of gold. She did not want to wear it, yet she could not resist doing so, her fingers straying to it because it was also beautiful to the touch. Damn him!

Finally she could wait no longer, and she sent for a thief she had used in the past, when necessity dictated. She told him the knife was hers and had been taken in a robbery, then sold to Giuliano Dandolo. She had seen him with it and realized he had no idea of its origin. She had offered to buy it back, and because of the family crest, he had, not surprisingly, refused. She had no recourse but to have it stolen, as it had been stolen from her.

The thief asked no questions and promised to do as she wished, for a price.

Next she wrote a letter to Gregory, disguising her hand to look like that of Dandolo, copying from the letter he had sent her accepting her earlier invitation. She said she had accidentally stumbled on a revealing secret about Zoe Chrysaphes and would be willing to inform Gregory, if Gregory would assist him in a certain diplomatic matter, of no detriment to Byzantium. She signed it with his name, also copied.

Finally she sent a similar letter to Giuliano from Gregory saying he had heard that Giuliano was interested in learning about Maddalena Agallon. He had known and admired her and would be happy to tell Giuliano all he was able to. She signed it “Gregory Vatatzes.” She knew his hand well enough to forge it without effort.

Then she sat in the large red chair under the torches and stared at the ceiling, relishing the moment, feeling her heart beat so hard and so high in her chest that she could scarcely breathe.

The night of the assignation between Gregory and Giuliano, Zoe was filled with a torrent of doubts. She stood at the window and looked out at the hazy darkness and the faintly moving gleam of lanterns like crawling fireflies in the streets below. Was she being absurd? Poor Zoe Chrysaphes, once the greatest beauty in exiled Byzantium, the mistress of emperors, soon to be a crazy old woman in the streets, dressed in rags, trying to kill people!

She strode over to the great cross on the wall and stared at it, willing herself to regain the passion of vengeance that would overcome her weakness. The Kantakouzenos were destroyed in Cosmas, and the Vatatzes with Arsenios, the Doukas in Euphrosane; the rest did not matter. Only Dandolo was left, and that would soon be over, too.

She moved to the icon of the Virgin Mary and knelt. “Blessed Mother of God, fill me with strength to complete my mission!” she pleaded.

She looked up at the somber face with its aureole of gold, and it seemed to smile at her. As if some hidden floodgates inside Zoe had opened, the blood throbbed in her veins and her muscles had the vitality of a young woman.

She rose, crossed herself, and hurried out alone in the night, as light and easy in her stride as a deer. It was mild, the wind off the sea smelling of salt. Only when she was half a mile from her home did she realize that the old beggar woman she was dressed to seem would never have walked as she was doing. As she rounded a corner, she bent a little and slowed her pace. She went another mile slowly, painfully.

Gregory had to pass this way to keep his appointment with Giuliano. Here was the place to catch him, in the Venetian Quarter. She had calculated the time he would pass, and before Giuliano could arrive, but only just. It had to be exact. She touched the dagger at her belt, hidden by her cloak, then crossed herself again. Now she must wait.

There was someone coming along the street now. Two young men, arm in arm, drunk, their bodies swaying, making the shadows move. She heard their voices and their laughter and shrank back into the lee of a doorway.

Should she attack Gregory from behind? No, that was a coward’s way. He would suspect anyone following him, but not an old woman face-to-face. She bent farther forward, as if age crippled her.

There was laughter down the street, lights going the other way. The wind was saltier here, close to the waterfront.

There was someone else coming, a tall man carrying a lantern. She recognized his step. She hobbled, barely glancing at his face, her voice whining, high-pitched, and servile. “Spare an old woman a few pence? May God bless you…”

He stopped, his hand going toward his side. Money or a weapon? There was no time to wait and see. Zoe drew out the knife from beneath her cloak and clawed upward with it, at the same time kicking him as hard as she could on the shin. He jerked forward with surprise, and she swept the blade hard across his throat, using all her strength, helped by the weight of his body as he lurched off balance from the kick. The lantern crashed and went out, but her eyes were accustomed to the night. There was blood jetting out of his throat, warm and sticky on her hand. She could smell it. He did not even cry out, making only a terrible gurgle as he choked, wrenching around, grabbing at her as his life gushed out of him. He tore at her shoulder, pulling the muscles, hurting as if he had stabbed her, but he was already losing his balance, carrying her down with him. She felt herself falling, and the ground hit her hard with a pain in her elbow that took her breath away.

But his grasp had loosened. She did not want him to go without knowing it was she who had done it.

“Gregory!” she said clearly. “Gregory!”

For a moment, his eyes focused on her and his lips formed something that might have been her name; then the light in him went out, and his tar black eyes were empty.

Slowly, her bones aching, her muscles stiff, she rose and turned to walk away. Her vision was blurred; hot tears streamed down her face. It puzzled her why she felt as if the void were not at her feet but inside her, and she knew with certainty that it would never again be filled.