The Sheen of the Silk

Fifty-three

A WEEK AFTER THAT, ANNA RETURNED HOME TO FIND SIMONIS waiting for her with a strip of paper in her hand.

“From Zoe Chrysaphes,” Simonis said, pursing her lips.

“Thank you.” She put down her bag of herbs and oils and opened the paper.

Anastasius,

Unfortunately I have a slight wound in my leg which needs a surgeon’s attention. Please call on me immediately you receive this.

Zoe Chrysaphes

“When did this come?” Anna asked.

“Less than an hour ago. Half an hour, perhaps.” Simonis raised her eyebrows. “Are you going?”

“I am,” Anna replied. Simonis knew perfectly well that ethically she could not do anything else, nor would she easily survive the damage to her reputation were she to refuse.

What she found upon her arrival at Zoe’s was the one thing Anna had never considered. Giuliano was there, leaning casually against the sill of the great window that looked across to the Bosphorus. He straightened up with slight discomfort when Anna came in, and she saw the flush on his cheeks. He acknowledged her courteously, with no shadow in his face from their last conversation or Gregory’s murder.

“Ah!” Zoe said with clear pleasure. “Thank you for coming, Anastasius. I have a deep spelk in my leg. I am afraid if it is not removed and treated, it may poison me.” She pulled the hem of her gold-colored tunic higher and exposed an angry wound with a spelk of wood sticking out of it and a crust of dried blood around the edges.

“When did it happen?” Anna put her bag on the floor and bent to examine the leg.

“I was walking in the courtyard last night,” Zoe replied. “After dark. It did not seem serious enough to call you then, but this morning I realized the spelk was still there.”

“Perhaps I should leave you…” Giuliano’s voice came from behind Anna, the reluctance so sharp that he could not disguise it. “I can return on another occasion.” He moved away from the window.

“Not at all,” Zoe dismissed the idea. “It is only my ankle. It would be pleasanter for me to have company to take my mind off what Anastasius must do. Please.”

Anna looked up and saw Zoe smiling, and inside her own mind she could hear her wild, almost delirious laughter, completely out of control. The sound of it had haunted Anna.

Giuliano relaxed. “Thank you.”

Zoe looked at Anna again. “Tell me what you need, and I shall send my maid for it. Hot water, bandages?”

“Yes, please.” Anna tried to concentrate her attention on the wound. “And salt.”

“You are not one to put salt in anyone’s wounds, are you, Anastasius?” Zoe said lightly

“Not so far,” Anna replied. “But the thought has occurred to me once or twice. The salt is to clean my knife when I use it, and the ointment for the first layer of bandages. It will be less painful if they do not cling to the flesh, especially if it bleeds.”

Thomais brought the water in several dishes, and the salt and a pile of clean linen bandages, then Zoe dismissed her. She rested her leg on a stool, leaving Anna to work on it, ignoring her, and turned to Giuliano.

“I have learned a great deal more about Maddalena Agallon.” She said it softly, dropping her voice as if in deep emotion and causing Giuliano to move closer to her and into Anna’s range of vision.

“Most of it concerns her life after she left her husband and her infant son.” Zoe’s face was full of pain, but it was impossible to tell if it was pity for that long ago abandoned child or from the prick of the blade in Anna’s hand as she pierced the angry flesh around the spelk of wood.

“Why did she go?” Giuliano forced the words from deep inside him.

Zoe hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said gently to Giuliano, ignoring the wound as if she could not even feel the blade. “It seems she did not want the responsibility of caring for a small boy. She became bored with it. She returned to the life she had had before, but no decent man would have her.”

“How did she… live?” Giuliano asked, his voice cracking.

Anna looked up and saw Zoe’s golden eyes looking back, first at the knife, then at Anna directly. There was triumph burning in her mind, and Anna read it as clearly as words. She bent to the wound again, blade poised.

“Can’t you do it?” Zoe asked. “No stomach for it, Anastasius?”

Anna saw her smile, and the knowledge in it bright as a flame, which turned her own stomach cold. Was it conceivable Zoe had guessed she was a woman?

She looked down again and deliberately pushed the point of her knife into the flesh on the other side of the spelk, saw the blood ooze and then flood. She was tempted to push harder, even to slice through an artery and watch it gush, pumping, as Gregory’s blood must have, pouring life away.

Zoe turned back to Giuliano. “She turned to the streets, as all women do when there is nothing else,” she said, her voice filling the silence of the room. “Especially beautiful women. And she was beautiful.”

Anna turned the knife delicately, lifted out the spelk, and dropped it on one of the spare plates.

“As beautiful as Anastasius here would be,” Zoe went on. She had not even flinched. “If he were a woman, and not a eunuch.”

Anna felt her face flame. She could feel Giuliano’s hurt as if the blade had gouged a living organ out of him. She should not be here to witness this awful scene.

She looked up and met Zoe’s eyes, bright and hard as agate.

“Have I offended you, Anastasius?” Zoe asked with mild interest. “It is not a bad thing to be beautiful, you know.” She turned and looked across at Giuliano, then picked up a paper from the table beside her. “A letter from the Mother Abbess of Santa Teresa. I’m sorry, but you have to know this one day. You have insisted on knowing. Maddalena ended her life a suicide. So many women do, who look to the street for their livelihood.”

Every vestige of blood drained from Giuliano’s face.

Anna spoke impulsively, out of a passion to protect him. Nothing could undo the wound, nothing could make him imagine she had not heard or seen his pain.

“I suppose some are better at whoring than others,” she said, looking Zoe full in the face. “But even the most beautiful fade eventually. The lips crease, the breasts sag, the thighs become lumpy, the skin wrinkles and falls away. Lust becomes empty, and then only love matters.”

Giuliano gasped, swinging around to Anna in amazement, even taking a step toward her as if physically to protect her from Zoe’s fury.

Zoe’s eyes widened. “The little eunuch has teeth, Signor Dandolo. I do believe he likes you. How grotesque.”

The blood burned up Giuliano’s cheeks and he turned away. “Thank you for taking the trouble to find the information for me,” he said, his voice choking. “I will leave you to your… treatment.” He walked out of the room, and they both heard the footsteps of his leather boots along the marbled corridor.

“You are leaving me to bleed,” Zoe remarked, looking down at her ankle and foot, now dripping scarlet onto the floor. “I thought you were a more honorable physician than that, Anastasius.”

Anna saw the gloating in Zoe’s face. This was vengeance on Giuliano because of his great-grandfather and on Anna for loving a Dandolo. And she did love him; it would be pointless now to deny it to herself.

“It is good for it to bleed,” she said, forming the words deliberately, even though her voice shook. “It will carry away the poison the spelk may have left.” She picked up the knife again and touched the wound with the point of it, pricking, but no more deeply than she had to. “Then it will be clean, and I shall bind it.”

Several moments of silence went by.

“This must be hard for you,” Zoe said quietly.

Anna smiled. “But not impossible. I decide who I am, you don’t. But you are right: Beauty can be dangerous. It can give people delusions of being loved when in truth they are only consumed, like a peach or a fig. Eirene Vatatzes said that Gregory liked figs.”

Zoe’s foot dripped blood onto the floor more rapidly, making a little pool of scarlet.

“I think it is ready to be bound up.” Anna met Zoe’s eyes and smiled. “I have just the ointment here to put on it. It would be very serious if it were to become poisoned now, when the flesh is so… vulnerable.”

A sudden shadow of fear crossed Zoe’s face. She leaned forward. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Your love for Dandolo could cost you very dear, even your life. If my foot does not heal, you will regret it.”

Anna smiled at her even more widely, her eyes ice cold. “There is nothing wrong with it that removing the spelk did not cure. You were wise enough not to pick a poisonous wood.”

The surprise flashed in Zoe’s eyes for only an instant. “I would not like to destroy you,” she said casually. “Don’t oblige me to do so.”