She crossed herself and stepped out into the night, Sabas following behind her, for safety in the shadows of twilight and for their return in the dark.
She stood for a moment in the street, reciting the Ave Maria to herself, hands folded. Then she started to walk again.
She drew a deep breath into her lungs. This was her vengeance at last. By tomorrow, the first of those whose emblems were on the back of her crucifix would be dead.
She left Sabas outside as the servant showed her in to Cosmas’s house. Even the entrance hall was magnificent, especially the marble bust of a Roman senator on a plinth, his elderly face lined with the emotion and experience of a lifetime. Blue Venetian glasses stood on a table, the light making them look like jewels. An Egyptian alabaster dog with huge ears took pride of place on a carved wooden table.
When she was shown into his room, Cosmas was sitting in a wide chair, staring at an inlaid table on which stood a jug of Sicilian wine, which was now more than half-empty. Beside it was a dish of dates and honeyed fruits. He was a short man with a curved nose and heavy-lidded eyes, red-rimmed in shadowed sockets.
“I don’t owe you anything,” he said sourly. “So I assume you have come to see what you can plunder.”
She wanted to do more than gloat; she needed a quarrel, one that could be escalated into violence.
“You are a wretched judge of character,” she replied, still standing. He did not rise. “I have not come to make financial profit out of you. I will buy icons to give to the church so all may worship them there and be blessed. I will pay you a fair price.”
His shoulders straightened and his head lifted a little.
“But I will see them first,” she added with a slight smile.
“Of course. Wine?”
“With pleasure.” She had no intention of drinking anything in his house, but she wanted the glass. A pity to break it-it was exquisite.
He rose stiffly, knees creaking, and fetched another glass from a cupboard. He poured it half-full for her and set it within her reach. “Let us talk money. The icons are on the wall in there.” He indicated an archway leading to a dimly lit room beyond.
She accepted the invitation and walked through. Then she stopped, her heart pounding. There were still half a dozen icons left, images of St. Peter and St. Paul, of Christ. One icon of the Virgin was in gold leaf and green-and-azure enamel, and blue so dark as to be almost black. She was somber-faced, with a tenderness that held the viewer in amazement.
Others had jewels encrusted on the clothes of the figures or were inlaid with ivory. There was such beauty in them that momentarily she forgot why she was here or why the hatred scorched inside her.
There was a sound behind her, and she froze. Very slowly she turned. He was there in the doorway, fat and soft, full of good living and the savor of profit.
“I would rather destroy them than be robbed,” he said between his teeth. “I know you, Zoe Chrysaphes. You do nothing without a reason. Why are you really here?”
“The icons are beautiful,” she said, as if that were a reply.
“Worth a great deal of money.” His merchant’s heart was in his face.
“Then let us haggle,” she said, unable to keep the contempt out of her voice as she brushed past him, accidentally touching the protrusion of his belly as he stood in the middle of the archway. “Let us argue how many byzants the face of Mary is worth.”
“It is an icon,” he said with a sneer. “The creation of man’s hands, made of wood and paint.”
“And of gold leaf, Cosmas; never forget the gold leaf or the gems,” she responded.
He frowned at her. “Do you want to buy one of them or not?” he snapped.
“How many pieces of silver, Cosmas, for the Mother of God? Forty seems an appropriate number.” She took a small purse of silver solidi out of her robe and placed the coins on the table.
Temper flared up his face. “It is an icon, you stupid woman! An artist’s work, no more. It is not Christ I sell!”
“Blasphemy!” she shrieked at him, her fury only in part pretense. She lunged for one of the glasses, her hand sweeping high, making clear her intention to smash it and use it as a weapon.
He darted forward first and seized it, dashing off the lovely golden rim of it and leaving jagged ends bristling from the stem. He held it out like a dagger, his eyes wide, flickering with fear, his lips parted.
She hesitated. She had borne pain before, and she hated it. Body’s ecstasy and agony were equally deep for her, right on the cliff edge of the unbearable. But this was revenge-what she had lived for over the long, arid years. She pushed forward again, using the end of her cloak to dull some of the cutting edge when he struck her.
He jerked upward at her with the ragged stem, impelled by fear.
She felt the glass cut, and she twisted away and grasped it with the other hand, screaming out, intending the servants to hear her. Afterward, she would need their testimony. He must be the aggressor, only one glass broken, she merely defending herself.
He was caught by surprise. He had expected her to fall backward, bleeding. Instead she pressed on up to him, turning the stem against him with her weight and her other hand over his. The broken edge caught him, a thin, slashing cut.
Then she drew back, allowing surprise into her face as servants came rushing into the room.
“It’s nothing!” Cosmas said angrily, shouting at them but still looking at her. His face was red, his eyes blazing.
Zoe turned toward the two men and the woman, forcing herself to sound apologetic. This was what they must remember. “I dropped a glass and it broke,” she said with a charming smile, rueful, just a little ashamed. “We reached for it at the same moment and… and bumped into each other. I am afraid we both grasped for the glass, and have cut ourselves on its shards. Perhaps you would bring water, and bandages.”
They hesitated.
“Do it!” Cosmas yelled at them, clutching the wound where the blood was already staining his robe.
“I have a tincture to ease pain,” Zoe said helpfully, reaching inside her tunic for the fold of oiled silk with the antidote in it.
“No,” he refused instantly. “I will use my own.” There was a slight sneer in his voice, as if he had seen her trick and sidestepped it.
“As you please.” She emptied the powder into her mouth and took a sip of the wine from his glass, still whole on the table.
“What’s that?” he demanded.
“A powder against the pain,” she replied, holding up her bleeding arm. “Do you want some?”
“No!” There was derision in his eyes.
The servants returned and carefully washed the wounds of both of them.
“I have a salve…” Zoe reached with her other hand for the porcelain jar of ointment with its painted chrysanthemums. She put a little on her wound. It was mildly soothing, but she relaxed her body, as if it had brought great ease. She held out the open jar to Cosmas; her face was composed, as close to indifferent as she could make it.