The Sheen of the Silk

Eighty-six

THE WINTER SEEMED TO ZOE UNNATURALLY DARK, BUT after Palombara’s visit the cold no longer touched her bones. She knew what she was going to do, it merely required a little thought as to exactly how.

She knew from Scalini and other men like him that the forces of the new crusade were gathering in the West. He had brought her word of siege engines, catapults, horse armor and trappings ready for the foot soldiers and the mounted knights that would mass in Sicily. They would storm Constantinople, then ride in triumph into Jerusalem, with Charles of Anjou at their head. Anyone in their path would be trampled. A road stained with blood had never troubled crusaders.

Also of great concern to Zoe was the change in Helena. It dated since soon after Eirene’s death-so soon, in fact, that it was hard to believe they were unconnected. The conclusion was unpleasantly clear. Somehow Helena had found out who her father was.

Zoe stood warming herself by the fire. The thought of Helena kept returning to her mind, so sharp that it was as if someone had left a window open, letting in a knife cut of ice-laden air from outside.

Helena would not stand on the walls with her mother and pour fire on the invaders, then die in her own funeral pyre. She was a survivor, not a martyr. She would find a way to escape and start again somewhere else. And she would certainly escape with money.

Michael would never yield. He would die before he accommodated Charles. Not that Charles would leave him alive anyway. He would destroy all royal claimants, and if Helena did not know that, then she was a fool. Her birth would be her death sentence. Charles would leave his puppet emperor without a rival of any sort.

The answer came to Zoe with the scorching heat of the Greek fire she planned to use. If Charles wanted to hold Byzantium with a hand of peace, to free his armies to go on to Jerusalem, what better than to marry his puppet emperor to a legitimate heir of the Palaeologi? Murder Michael and Andronicus, and who was left? Helena!

Zoe’s mind raced, horrified. It was betrayal beyond imagining.

She sat with her arms around herself, shivering in spite of the fire. Before it came anywhere near that, she must raise the money Palombara had suggested, buy all the trouble, anger, and rebellion she could. And she knew now exactly where that money was coming from.

Her power had always lain in knowledge of other people’s secrets and the proof that could ruin them. The man to help her now was Philotheos Makrembolites. She had heard only last week that he was on his deathbed. Perfect! In pain, frightened, and with nothing to lose.

Zoe went to her herb room and prepared various mixtures for the relief of different kinds of pain. She also collected sleeping powders, sweet-smelling oils, and restoratives that would give a short-lived clarity to the mind, even if after that there was only the slipping away into the last silence.

She bathed and dressed, perfuming herself but wearing rich, sober colors, as befitted one going to visit the dying. She did not worry that Philotheos would not receive her. He had a withered arm from the fires of 1204 and a bitter heart. He would want to relive old wrongs and would not be unwilling to help her exact a vengeance that was beyond his own reach. Secrets were worth nothing in the grave.

He received her in his dim, overhot room with as much curiosity as she had hoped. He hoisted himself onto his elbows, wincing with pain and screwing up his face into a snarl, drawing his lips back from stained teeth. “Come to gloat at my death, Zoe Chrysaphes?” he said, his breath wheezing out of his lungs with a sound like tearing cloth. “Make the most of it. Your turn will come, and you’ll likely see the city put to blood and fire again before that happens.”

She put down the leather satchel in which she had brought the herbs and ointments. They knew each other far too well for pretenses. She would not have come except for good reasons of her own.

“What’s in there?” he asked, eyeing it suspiciously.

“Relief from pain,” she answered. “Temporarily, of course. It will all be finished when God wishes it.”

“You are little younger than I am, for all your paint and perfume. You smell like an alchemist’s parlor,” he responded.

She wrinkled her nose. “You don’t. Rather more like a charnel house. Do you wish a little ease or not?”

“What’s the price?” His eyes were yellowing, as if his kidneys were failing him. “Have you spent all your money? No more charms to get men to give it to you?”

“Keep your money. You can bury it with you, for all I care,” she replied. “Better that than let it fall into crusader hands. They’ll probably dig you up anyway, just to see if there’s anything worth taking.”

“I’d rather they ravaged my corpse than my living body,” he retorted, looking her up and down. His gaze lingered on her breasts and then her belly. “Perhaps you’d better kill yourself before they come.”

“Not before I’ve finished what I mean to do.” She would not be distracted by his spite.

Interest flared up in his face. “What’s that?”

“Revenge, of course. What else is there left?”

“Nothing,” he answered. “Who is there to pay anything now? The Kantakouzenos are all gone, and the Vatatzes, the Doukas, Bessarion Comnenos. Who’s left?”

“Of course they’re gone,” she said impatiently. “But there are new traitors who would sell us again. Let us begin with the Skleros, then perhaps the Akropolites, and the Sphrantzes.”

He breathed out with a harsh rattle in his throat, and a little more of the color drained from his face.

She was seized by a fear that he would die before he could tell her what she needed to know. There was a jug of water on the table. She rose, took a small glass, and measured a portion of liquid into it from one of the vials she had brought, then added a little water. She returned to the bed and held it for him.

He drank the potion and choked. It exhausted him for several minutes, but when he finally opened his eyes again, there was a touch of color in his cheeks and his breathing was easier.

“So what is it you want, Zoe Chrysaphes?” he asked. “Charles of Anjou will burn all of us. The only difference is that I shall not feel it, and you will.”

“Probably. But you know many secrets about the old families of Constantinople.”

“You want to damage them?” He was surprised. “Why?”

“Of course I don’t, you fool!” she snapped. “I want them to crush the rebellions and back Michael. You want my herbs. You may roast in the flames of hell tomorrow, like a pig on a spit, but tonight you can be a lot easier, if you tell me what I want to know.”

“All the shabby and fraudulent secrets of the dissenters to union?” he said, turning the idea over in his mind. “I could tell you those. There are plenty of them.” His smile was cruel and sharp with pleasure.

She remained with Philotheos three long days and nights, portioning out the medicine, keeping him alive using all the skills she had. Little by little, laced with viciousness, he told her the secrets that she could use to bleed the Skleros dry of money, and the Sphrantzes and the Akropolites. It would be worth thousands of gold byzants. Used with skill and care, as she would, it might just foment enough doubt and rebellion in the West to weaken even the strength of Charles of Anjou.

The day after Philotheos died, Zoe was at the Blachernae Palace and told some of her plan to Michael as they walked together along one of the great galleries. The light streaming in through the long, high windows showed cruelly the chipped marble of pillars, the broken hands of a porphyry statue.

The emperor looked at her wearily, and the defeat in his face frightened her. “It’s too late, Zoe. We must think of defense. I tried everything I know, and I couldn’t carry the people with me. Even now, they don’t see the destruction awaiting them.”

“Not from Charles of Anjou, maybe.” She leaned closer to him, ignoring all the rules of etiquette. “But they will understand shame in the eyes of their peers, the men they see every week, the men they talk to in business and government. The men they will do business with, even in a new exile. They will pay to avoid that.”

He looked at her more closely, his eyes narrowing. “What shame, Zoe?”

She smiled. “Old secrets.”

“If you know them, why didn’t you use them before?” he asked.

“I’ve only just learned them,” she replied. “Philotheos Makrembolites is dead. Did you know that?”

“Even so, it is too late. This pope is France’s creature. Spain and Portugal will ally with him. They can’t afford not to. All the gold in Byzantium won’t change that.”

“He’s pope for as long as he lives,” she replied softly. “What does he need the King of the Two Sicilies for now? Are you saying he will honor all his debts?”

“He’ll pay them only if there is something he still wants,” Michael agreed.

“Think of your own people,” she urged. “Think of their suffering in the long years of exile, and of those who never came back. We have been here a thousand years, we have built great palaces and churches. We have created beauty to the eye, the ear, and the heart. We have imported spices, colored silks like the sun and the moon, jewels from the corners of the earth, bronze and gold, jars, urns, bowls, statues of men and beasts.”

She spread her hands. “We have measured the skies and traced the paths of the stars. Our medicine has cured what no one else could even name.” She spoke with intense intimacy. “But more than any of these, our dreams have lit fire in the minds of half the world. Our lives have brought justice to rich and poor, our literature has furnished the minds of generations of people, and made the world sweeter than it would ever have been without us. Don’t let the barbarians kill us again! We will not rise a second time.”

“You don’t know when you are beaten, do you, Zoe?” he said with a soft, sweet smile.

“Yes, I do,” she answered. “I was beaten the first time, seventy years ago. I saw the fires of hell consume everyone I loved. This time, if it happens, I will go with it.” She took a breath. “But in the name of the Holy Virgin, I will not die without a fight. If we fail, Michael, history will not forgive us.”

“I know,” he admitted quietly. “Tell me, Zoe, Cosmas Kantakouzenos is dead, and Arsenios Vatatzes, and Georgios, and Gregory, and now Eirene. Why is Giuliano Dandolo still alive?”

She should have known he would have understood all along and allowed her to take her revenge only if it suited him.

He was waiting. “He is still useful to me,” she replied. “He is courting enemies of Charles of Anjou, awakening trouble in Sicily. I will have Scalini kill him when we don’t need him. I would have liked something more elegant, but we no longer have time,” she added.

He nodded, his eyes sad. “A pity. I liked him.”

“So did I,” she agreed. “What has that to do with it? He is a Dandolo.”

“I know,” he said softly. “It’s still a pity.”