The Sheen of the Silk

Seventy-nine

ANNA HAD BEEN CALLED YET AGAIN TO THE HOUSE OF Joanna Strabomytes, even though the servants did not know if there was money left to pay her. It did not matter. Payment was not part of Anna’s decision to come. She was here not to prolong her suffering, only to ease the pain of her letting go.

Joanna was wasted by disease so that she looked far more than her forty-odd years, and now she had little time left. The draft Anna had given her had afforded an hour or so of peace, and she was no longer troubled by needless pain of body or the torment of mind that twisted inside her. She had said little about it. It had wounded her so deeply, it had robbed her of words, other than the same question over and over-couldn’t her husband have waited?

Leonicus had left Joanna as she was dying, because he was in love with Theodosia, whose own husband had so cruelly abandoned her. Leonicus would not wait until he was free; he wished his own happiness now, this week, this month. Or perhaps Theodosia wanted it, and he had not had the courage or the honor to deny her.

For once, the hot, still room was silent as Anna stood at the end of the bed making certain Joanna was really asleep before she turned and walked away. She went out briefly into the courtyard, where in spite of the summer heat she could at least escape from the odor of herbs and the bodily functions of the dying.

Theodosia had been a religious woman all her life. Anna pictured her at prayer, kneeling before Constantine in devout gratitude for the sacrament of repentance and absolution. Theodosia knew the bitterness, the shock, of being rejected. How could she, of all people, do this to another woman? What sweetness was there in taking any man at such a price?

Would Anna have wanted even Giuliano this way?

Theodosia had been in good health when her husband had gone, and it had hurt her almost beyond bearing, bringing her to the edge of suicide. Anna remembered it still with pity. Joanna was ill and dying. Could Theodosia really mean to do this? Was Joanna suffering some kind of delusion, a despair that was part of her illness? Perhaps it was Anna’s judgment that was hasty, partial in knowledge and therefore completely unfair?

During one of Joanna’s better spells, Anna gave careful instructions to the servants. Then, after returning to her own home to collect more herbs, she went to Theodosia’s house and requested to see her.

“I am sorry, but the lady Theodosia is unable to receive you,” the servant said some moments later.

Anna insisted upon the urgency and importance of her errand. The servant took the request again. The second time, it was Leonicus who came to the entrance himself. There was a sadness in his eyes as well as a certain anger when he faced Anna.

“I am sorry, but Theodosia does not wish to speak with you,” he said. “She has no need of your services, and there is really nothing further to add. Thank you for coming, but please do not do so again.” He turned and walked away, leaving the servant to close the door in Anna’s face.

Anna returned to complete her care for Leonicus’s wife and ease her pain of mind and body as well as she could. She mixed herbs for her, sat with her when she could not sleep, spoke to her of anything and everything she could think of that was funny, kind, or offered any beauty. And then she held her hand as her consciousness slipped away, and then finally her life.

By September, much of the overt anger at Rome’s demands upon the Church was swept away by the more urgent anxieties of news about the gathering armies to the west.

Anna was in the Blachernae Palace, having attended various eunuchs who were indisposed with minor illnesses, when she was sent for to go to Nicephoras’s rooms. She found him unusually grim, his face dark with anxiety.

“I have just received news from Bishop Palombara,” Nicephoras said. “The pope is dead.”

“Again? I mean… another pope?” She could scarcely believe it. “So we have no leader in Rome to argue with, even if we wanted to?”

“It’s far worse than that,” he said quickly, no longer even attempting to mask his fear. “Pope Nicholas exacted from Charles of Anjou an oath not to attack Byzantium. Nicholas’s death frees him from that. Apparently oaths do not carry from one pope to another.” Bitter humor flashed in his eyes for an instant, then was gone.

Anna was stunned. “What does the emperor say?” She heard her voice wavering.

“I am about to tell him.” Nicephoras drew in his breath deeply, then let it out in a sigh. “He will find it very hard. I would like you to come with me… in case he is… ill.”

She answered only with a nod, and as he turned to lead the way to the emperor’s rooms, she followed him with a heavy sense of foreboding.

Michael was sitting at a table writing when she entered behind Nicephoras. The strong sunlight slanted across the chair, the papers spread across the tabletop, and the assorted pens. It was a cruel light, and it laid bare his weariness. The heavy gray was not only in his hair, but in his beard; but more than that, there were shadows around his eyes, and his skin had a thin, papery texture. Even the iron will that had carried him to military victory was fading. Perhaps harder than that of arms was the victory of the mind over the fractiousness of his people, the ceaseless threats to his power, his life, his family, the quarrels over every conceivable issue arising from union with Rome. And every year there was at least one ugly suggestion that this person or that had more right to the throne than he. He was never safe from the threat of a usurper.

“Yes?” he asked, looking up at Nicephoras. Reading bad news in the man’s face, he tensed, a tightening of expression that was barely perceptible to Anna.

Briefly, Nicephoras told the emperor that Pope Nicholas III was dead. There was no need to add that there was now nothing to prevent Charles of Anjou from sacking Constantinople as he wanted to and in time conquering what was left of the Byzantine Empire.

Michael sat perfectly still, absorbing the shock. Anna saw the exhaustion in him, the fight not to crumple under the blow. He had preserved his people in the city for eighteen long, difficult years, and now she was seeing clearly at what cost it had been to himself.

Was it surprising if he felt beaten, even by fate, now that yet another pope was dead? Anna felt it, too, a gathering of dread. She was afraid of a future without him.

Constantine was ill again and sent for Anna. She took the herbs she thought she would need and followed his servant along the busy street and finally up the steps into Constantine’s increasingly handsome house. Every time she went there, there was some new ornament or embellishment, always the gift of a grateful petitioner that the bishop explained he could not refuse.

She found him lying in his bed, his face pale. From the position of his heavy body, he was apparently in some discomfort. She considered it was probably caused largely by anxiety, a stomach too clenched with emotion to digest his food.

“I must be well in two weeks’ time,” he told her with some concern, his eyes narrowed, his lips tight.

“I will do all I can,” she promised. “You would greatly improve your health if you were to rest more.”

“Rest!” His body flinched as if she had hurt him. “Every hour is precious. Do you not know the peril we are in?”

“I know, but your health still demands that you rest. What is happening in two weeks’ time?”

He smiled. “I am going to perform the marriage ceremony for Leonicus Strabomytes and Theodosia. It will be in the Hagia Sophia-a truly splendid occasion. An example to the people of the blessing and mercy of God. It will uplift everyone and fire a new piety in them.”

Anna assumed she must have misunderstood. “Theodosia Skleros?”

He looked at her steadily. “Does your largeness of heart not extend to her, Anastasius? I have given Theodosia a special icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a token of her absolution.”

Anna was amazed. “Theodosia and Leonicus committed real sin, and they did it knowingly, and with choice. They deliberately took what was not theirs, and they kept it. They haven’t repented a jot!” She said so to him harshly, her words tearing out of her all the loneliness and her own weight of guilt that she had carried through the years, knowing the fault was still in her. “It is a mockery of those who are truly sorry, and have paid long and bitterly.”

“I asked no payment of her, except humility and obedience to the Church,” he retorted. “You have sins also, Anastasius. It ill becomes you to judge when you yourself have neither confessed nor repented. I don’t know what your sins are, but they are heavy and deep. I know that, because I see it in your eyes. I know you ache to confess and find absolution, but your pride holds you prisoner, and you cling to it rather than to the Church.”

She said nothing, almost breathless with the accuracy of his blow, deep as the bone, shocking her with pain.

He sat up, his hand on her wrist, his face close to hers. “You are in sin, Anastasius. Come to me and confess, in humility, and I will give you pardon.”

She was frozen inside, as if he had in some profound way assaulted her. She could only remove his fingers from her arm and straighten the bottles on the table, then turn and leave, walking in a daze of misery and wild, twisting confusion. Never in her life had she felt more absolutely alone.