The Sheen of the Silk

Eighty-two

ZOE PACED THE FLOOR OF HER GREAT ROOM, EACH TIME she turned gazing at the great cross, only the back of which carried a name still burned on her heart-Dandolo, the greatest of them all. She must create a way to be revenged on him and his heirs, on Giuliano, before the crusaders came again and it was too late. The year of 1280 was waning fast, and the invasion would be soon now, perhaps even next year.

By the window, she stopped and stared out at the darkening winter sky. Helena had been particularly arrogant lately. Several times Zoe had caught a look in her eyes that seemed to be laughter, close to mockery, as some people see in another’s defeat. Zoe was growing more and more certain that Helena knew Michael was her father and that she was planning to use it for her gain.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to send Sabas to watch her rather more carefully. Helena had appeared cooler toward Demetrios. The signs were tiny, a little less voluptuousness in her dress, a momentary distraction of mind now and then that clearly had nothing to do with him, an inattention to his words. Was there someone else? There was no better pretender to the throne.

She was still pondering this when one of the servants came in. He stood in front of her with his eyes on the beautiful tessellated floor, not daring to raise them.

“What?” she demanded. What news could paralyze the idiot like this?

“We have just heard that Doge Contarini abdicated a few weeks ago,” he replied. “There is a new doge in Venice.”

“Of course there is, fool!” she snapped. “Who is it?”

“Giovanni Dandolo-” His voice cracked with nervous tension.

She made a suppressed noise of fury and told him to get out. He obeyed with indecent haste.

So there was another Dandolo in the Ducal Palace in Venice. Beyond her reach-but Giuliano was not. What relationship was there between him and this new doge? It did not matter; old Enrico was common to both of them, and that was all that counted.

Giuliano might now be returned to Venice, to a higher calling. She must exact her revenge quickly, before that too slipped out of her grasp.

She was still considering this when an old friend called. He came in white-faced, his body tense, hands curling and uncurling even as he spoke.

He stammered over his words. “You may wish to go, although I can’t imagine it, not now. It is too near the end. Charles of Anjou’s armies are besieging Berat.”

Berat was the great Byzantine fortress in Albania, just 450 miles away and holding the key to the land route from the west.

“When it falls,” he went on, “Constantinople will lie open and undefended before him. The emperor has no army capable of withstanding an assault from the land, or from the sea when the Venetian fleet arrives. Perhaps that will not even be needed? They can take what they want of food and stores and sail on to Acre.”

She was cold inside, as if his framing it in words had made it real.

“Zoe?” he prompted.

But she did not answer him. There was nothing to say. She received it in silence, as the darkness of the night comes without sound.

He crossed himself and left.

Her nightmares of childhood returned. She woke sweating alone in the darkness. Even in the winter night her body was seared by a heat that still lay in her dreams, but how much longer would that be true? When would the acrid smell of smoke, the crushing and the screaming, be real? Pictures danced before her of her mother, clothes torn, thighs scarlet with blood, her face distorted with terror, trying to crawl back to protect her child.

When she rose in the morning, people around her were packing up, ready to leave if the news got worse, gathering in little huddles in street corners, stopping every stranger to ask if there was any further word.

Zoe put together jewels and artifacts, things of great beauty, a winged horse in bronze, necklaces of gold, dishes, ewers, gem-encrusted reliquaries, alabaster and cloisonné jars, and sold them.

With the money she bought great vats full of pitch and had them piled up on the roofs of her house. She would burn the city down herself and destroy the Latins in their own flames before she would let Constantinople be taken again. This time she would die in the fires; never would she run away. Let them all leave, if they were coward enough. She would do it alone, if necessary. She would never surrender, and she would never run away again.