In district one there were spice merchants and perfumers. The air was redolent with their wares, and Anna found herself drawing in her breath deeply to savor them. She had neither time nor money to waste, but she could not help gazing at them, lingering a moment to admire their beauty. No other yellow had the depth of saffron, no brown the multitoned richness of nutmeg. She knew the medical values of all of them, even the rarest, but at home in Nicea she had had to order them specially and pay extra for their freight. Here they were laid out as if they were commonplace.
“There’s plenty of money in this district,” Simonis observed with a hint of disapproval.
“More important, they’ll have their own physician already,” Leo replied.
Now they were among the perfumers’ shops and there were rather more women than in the other areas, many of them clearly wealthy. As custom required, they wore tunics and dalmaticas from the neck almost to the ground, and their hair was concealed by headdress and veil. One woman walked past them, smiling, and Anna noticed that she had darkened her brows very delicately, and perhaps her lashes. Certainly there was red clay on her lips to make them look so vivid.
Anna heard her laughter as she met a friend, and together they tried one perfume after another. Their embroidered and brocaded silks stirred in the breeze like flower petals. She envied their lightheartedness.
She would have to find more ordinary women, and male patients, too, or she would never learn why Justinian had been a favorite with the emperor’s court one day and an exile the next, fortunate to have his life. What had happened? What must Anna do to gain justice for him?
The following day, by mutual agreement, they left the Mese and its immediate surroundings and searched farther into the side streets, in little shops, and in the residential districts north of center, almost under the giant arches of the Aqueduct of Valens, catching occasional glimpses of the light on the water of the Golden Horn beyond.
They were on a narrow street, barely wide enough for two donkeys to pass each other, when they came to a flight of steps up to the left. Thinking the height might give them a better sense of their bearings, they began to climb. The passage turned one way, then the other. Anna nearly stumbled over the rubble on the steps.
Without any warning, the path ended abruptly and they were in a small courtyard. Anna was stunned by what lay around her. All the walls were damaged, some by holes where pieces had fallen out, others by the black stains of fire. The broken mosaic floor was scattered with stones and chips of tile, and the doorways were choked with weeds. The single tower left standing was pitted and dark with the grime of smoke. She heard Simonis stifle a sob, and Leo stood silent, his face pale.
Suddenly the terrible invasion of 1204 was real, as if it had been only a few years ago, not more than half a century. Other things they had seen made sense now, the streets where houses were still derelict, weed-strewn and rotting, the occasional broken wharves she had seen from above, the poverty in what had seemed to her first superficial look to be the richest city in the world. The people had been back for over a decade, but the wounds of conquest and exile were still raw underneath.
Anna turned away, imagined terror gripping her and making her body cold even in the sharp spring sunlight, sheltered here from the wind, where it should have been hot.
By the end of the week, they had found a house in a comfortable residential area on a slope to the north of Mese Street, between the two great walls. From several of the windows Anna could see the light on the Golden Horn, a glimpse of blue between the rooftops that gave her a moment’s wild illusion of endlessness, almost as if she could fly.
It was a small house, but in good repair. The tiled floors were beautiful and she particularly liked the courtyard with its simple mosaic and the vines that climbed onto the roof.
Simonis was satisfied with the kitchen, although she made a few disparaging remarks about its size, but Anna could see by the way she poked into every corner and touched the furniture with its marble surfaces, the deep basin and the heavy table, that she liked it. There was a small room for storage of grains and vegetables, racks and drawers for spices, and, like all the rest of the better parts of the city, access to plenty of clean water, even if it was a little salty.
There were enough rooms to have a bedroom each, a dining room, an entrance hall for patients to wait in, and a room for consulting. There was also another room with a heavy door to which Leo could attach a lock and where Anna could keep herbs, ointments, unguents, and tinctures, and of course her surgical blades, needles, and silks. In here she placed the wooden cabinet with its dozens of drawers into which she put the herbs she had, each one labeled, and including one whole leaf or root so one could not be mistaken for another.
But in spite of the discreet notice she put at the front of the house stating her profession, patients would not come to her. She must go out and seek them, let people know of her presence and her skills.
So it was at midday that she stood on the step of a tavern in the hard sunlight and the wind. She pushed open the door and went inside. She walked through the crowd and saw a table with one empty chair. The rest were filled with men eating and talking excitedly. At least one was a eunuch, taller, long-armed, soft-faced, his voice too high, with the strange, altered tone of his gender.
“May I take this seat?” she asked.
It was the eunuch who replied, inviting her in. Perhaps he was pleased to have another of his kind.
A waiter came and offered her food, cut pieces of roast pork wrapped in wheat bread, and she accepted.
“Thank you,” she said. “I have just moved in, the house with the blue door, straight up the hill. My name is Anastasius Zarides. I am a physician.”
One of the men shrugged and introduced himself. “I’ll remember if I am ill,” he said good-naturedly. “If you stitch up wounds, you might stay around. There’ll be business for you when we’ve finished arguing.”
She was uncertain how to reply, not sure if he was joking or not. She had heard raised voices from the doorway as she came in. “I have needle and silk,” she offered.
One of the others laughed. “You’ll need more than that if we’re invaded. How are you at raising the dead?”
“I’ve never had the nerve to try,” she replied as casually as she could. “Isn’t that more of a job for a priest?”
They all laughed, but she heard a hard, bitter sound of fear in it and realized the power of the undercurrents she had barely listened to before, in her own urgency to find a house and begin a practice.
“What kind of a priest?” one of the men said harshly. “Orthodox or Roman, eh? Which side are you on?”
“I’m Orthodox,” she said quietly, answering because she felt compelled to say something. Silence would be deceit.
“Then you better pray harder,” he told her. “God knows we’ll need it. Have some wine, physician.”
Anna held out her glass and found her hand was shaking. Quickly she put the glass on the table. “Thank you.” When the glass was full she held it up, forcing herself to smile. “Here’s to your good health… except for perhaps a slight skin rash, or the occasional hives. I’m good at that, for a small sum.”