The Sheen of the Silk

Seventy-three

ANNA PICKED DELICATELY AT THE HERB LEAVES IN HER small garden. It was time to harvest many of them. The wild poppy heads were nearly ready to gather. She watered and tended the hellebore, aconite, digitalis, pennyroyal, and the mandrake she was carefully encouraging. If it grew successfully, she would take some of it to Avram Shachar. It would be a small gift in return for all his kindness.

Here in the shelter of the house on one side, and the outer wall on the other, the sun was warm on her shoulders, a memory of summer as the year faded fast. If the union did not become real enough to hold off Charles of Anjou and his crusaders, next summer might be the last before they attacked.

Would she be one of those who tried to escape, or would she stay, as perhaps a physician should? She would be needed here.

And afterward, what then? Life in an occupied city, under an enforced crusader rule. There would be no Orthodox Church then. But if she was honest, it was becoming more and more difficult for her to ally wholeheartedly with the Orthodox faith. She was beginning to accept that the way to God was a solitary one, born of a passion and a hunger of the spirit that no hierarchy, no ritual however beautiful, could give you, nor in the end prevent you from achieving.

She missed Giuliano. She could still remember, as if it had been moments ago, the look in his face when he had seen her in a dress. It was almost as if part of him had known and been repelled so intensely that it had churned his stomach, filled his mind with an inner betrayal he could not bear.

Afterward on the voyage back, he had made a massive effort of will to forget it, but nothing could erase the knowledge from his mind or hers. In a way, they had gone back almost to the beginning again, strangers feeling their way delicately.

Now she would do for him the only thing she could: release him from his own sense of being tainted by his mother’s betrayal, unloved and possibly unable to love, as if her blood in him were a poison in his soul.

If she was able to discover more, perhaps it would not be as bad as Zoe had said.

Where would Zoe have looked for Maddalena Agallon? Was there still an Agallon family in Constantinople, or had they remained in the cities of their exile?

Anna collected what she had harvested and took it inside. She washed her hands, separated the leaves and roots, labeled them, and put them away, all except the lemon thyme and the mandrake root big enough to harvest. She wrapped them separately to take.

She would begin her quest by asking Shachar. Months passed as she awaited his answers.

She came in answer to his summons. The heavy skies of early winter were closing in, and his message told her to come warmly clothed and prepared for a long ride.

“I have made inquiries about the Agallons. We are going to a monastery,” Shachar informed her. “It is several miles outside the city. We may not be back until morning.”

She felt a quickening in her pulse, fear, and surprise.

He smiled, leading the way through to the back courtyard of his house where she had never been before. Two mules were ready, and obviously he intended to leave without delay.

They were a mile beyond the outskirts of the city, and it was dark, almost moonless, when he spoke to her quietly. “I have found Maddalena’s sister, Eudoxia. I have little idea what she will tell you, but she is old and ill, a nun in a monastery. You are calling as a physician to see her and possibly treat her. You may ask what you wish, but you will have to accept whatever she says, and under whatever conditions she imposes. Your treatment is not conditional. If she chooses to tell you nothing, then still you will do your best for her.”

“I?” she said quickly. “What about you?”

“I am a Jew,” he reminded her. “I will be your manservant. I know the way and you do not. I will wait outside. You are both a Christian and a eunuch, the ideal person to treat a nun.”

They rode together in silent companionship for another two hours until the black mass of the monastery loomed out of the shadows on the hillside. It was a huge building with small, high windows, like a fortress or a prison. Shachar was admitted only as far as the shelter of the kitchen.

Anna was conducted along narrow stone corridors to a cell where an old woman lay on the bed. Her face was ravaged by age and grief, but it still held the remnants of great beauty.

Anna did not need to ask who she was. The likeness to Giuliano jarred her as if she had been physically struck.

She tried to swallow the tightness in her throat and thanked the nun who had escorted her, then stepped into the room. There was a plain wooden crucifix above the bed, and near the door was a dark, severe, and beautiful icon of Mary. “Sister Eudoxia?” she said quietly.

The woman opened her eyes curiously and then sat up a little farther on the bed. “The physician. They are kind to have sent for you, but you are wasting your time, young man. There is no cure for age, except God’s cure, and I think I shall gain that quite soon.”

“Do you have pain?” Anna asked, sitting down.

“Only such as mortality and regret bring to all of us,” Eudoxia replied.

Anna reached for her pulse and felt it, thin but regular enough. She did not have a fever. “It is not a trouble. Do you sleep well?”

“Well enough.”

“Are you sure? Is there nothing I can do for you? No discomfort I can ease?”

“Perhaps I could sleep better. Sometimes I dream. I would like to do that less,” the old woman replied with a slight smile. “Can you help that?”

“A draft could ease you. What about pain?”

“I am stiff, but that is time catching up with me.”

“Sister Eudoxia…” Now that the moment had come, what Anna had to say seemed intrusive, and she was ashamed.

The old woman looked at her curiously, waiting. Then she frowned. “What troubles you, physician? Are you looking for a way to tell me I am going to die? I have made peace with it.”

“There is something I would like very much to know, and only you can tell me,” Anna began. “I recently sailed to Acre, on a Venetian ship. The captain was Giuliano Dandolo…” She saw the shock in Eudoxia’s face, the sudden leap of pain.

“Giuliano?” Eudoxia said, no more than a breath between her lips.

“Can you tell me about his mother?” Anna asked. “The truth. I will tell him only if you give me permission to. He suffers bitterly, believing that she left him willingly, not loving or wanting him.”

Eudoxia put a frail, blue-veined hand up to her cheek, fingers still slender. “Maddalena ran away with Giovanni Dandolo,” she said quietly. “They were married in Sicily. Our father followed her, found her, and took her away by force. He brought her back to Nicea. He married her to the man he had chosen for her in the first place.”

“But her marriage to Dandolo…” Anna protested.

“Father had it annulled. He did not know that Maddalena was already with child.”

Eudoxia was pale; tears welled in her eyes. Anna leaned over with a soft muslin and wiped them gently. “Giuliano?” she asked.

“Her husband accepted the situation to begin with. He took Maddalena to live some distance away. However, when the baby was born, and was a boy, he became jealous. He was brutal, not only to Maddalena, but he threatened the child also. At first it was only in little ways, and Maddalena thought he would get over it.” Her voice was strained with old grief, sharp again as when it was new. “But Maddalena’s husband knew she still loved the boy’s father, and every time he looked at the child, it was a reminder, another twist to the knife of his jealousy. His violence increased. Giuliano began to have accidents. Twice the servants rescued him only just in time from being seriously injured, perhaps killed.”

Anna could imagine it only too vividly: the fear, the shame, the constant anxiety.

“To protect the boy, Maddalena took him and fled,” Eudoxia continued. “She came to me. I was married then, and happy enough. My husband bored me.” She flinched at the admission. “He was wealthy, and gave me a good life, but he could not give me children. In fact, he could not…” She left the sentence unfinished.

Anna smiled and touched the thin hand on top of the nun’s gown. “Did you help Maddalena?”

“I did as she asked, which was that I should rear the child as my own. My husband agreed. I think at first he was quite happy to do it. I took Giuliano, and gave Maddalena what support I could.” She blinked, but not fast enough to hold the tears. “I loved the boy…”

“Go on,” Anna whispered.

“All was well, until Giuliano was five. My husband became possessive, and even more… dogmatic, more boring. I…” She let out her breath in a sigh. “I was beautiful when I was younger, like Maddalena. We were so alike people sometimes mistook one of us for the other…”

Anna waited.

“I was lonely, both in mind and in body,” Eudoxia went on. “I took a lover-in fact, more than one. I behaved badly. My husband accused me of being a common whore, and said that he had witnesses to prove it.” She gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “Maddalena took the blame. She insisted it was she, and not I, who had been with the man. She did it for Giuliano’s sake-I know that-not mine. I could care for the boy, she couldn’t.”

Anna found she could barely swallow the pain choking her throat.

“Maddalena was found guilty, and suffered the penalty for being a whore. She died not long afterward, beaten and destitute. I think by then she wanted to die. She never stopped loving Giovanni Dandolo, and there was nothing else left for her.”

Eudoxia’s voice was choked with tears. “My husband knew it was I who had been in the tavern that night, and he knew why Maddalena had lied for me. He forced me to grant him a divorce, and to take the nun’s veil. But he refused to take Giuliano. He would put him on the street, or sell him to some dealer in children, for God knows what use.” She shivered. “I took him myself. I ran away from Nicea and begged and stole and prostituted my way to Venice with him. There I gave him to his father. A Dandolo, he wasn’t difficult to find. I thought of staying in Venice, even of dying there. But I hadn’t the courage. There was something in me which needed a better atonement than that. I came back and took the veil, as I had promised my husband I would. I have been here nearly forty years. Perhaps I have made my peace.”

Anna nodded, the tears wet on her own face.

“A human mistake, a loneliness and a hunger so easy to understand. Of course you have made your peace. Now may I bring Giuliano so you can tell him?”

“Please-please do!” Eudoxia cried. “I… I did not even know if he was still alive. Tell me, is he a good man, a happy man?”

“He is very good,” Anna replied. “And this will give him a greater gift of happiness than anything else possible.”

“Thank you.” Eudoxia sighed. “Don’t bother with the draft for sleep. I shan’t need it.”