She had the lie well practiced. “A distant kinsman of mine, Justinian Lascaris, wrote to me that you had been of great help to him in a time of difficulty,” she began. “Then I did not hear from him again, and there are disturbing rumors of some tragedy, but I do not dare to pursue them, in case I bring him further trouble.” She shivered in spite of the warmth in the room. He was looking at her face and the way she stood, her hands loosely at her sides, as a woman would stand, deferentially. She raised her hands in front of her and then did not know what to do with them and let them fall again. How much did the bishop know about Justinian? That his parents were dead? That he was a widower? She must be careful. “His sister is anxious.” That, at least, was true.
Constantine’s large face was grave, and he nodded slowly. “I am afraid I have not good news for her,” he replied. “Justinian is alive, but in exile in the desert beyond Jerusalem.”
She contrived to look shocked. “But why? What has he done to warrant such a punishment?”
Constantine compressed his lips. “He was accused of complicity in the murder of Bessarion Comnenos. It was a crime that shocked the city. Bessarion was not only of noble birth, but regarded by many as something of a saint. Justinian was fortunate not to be executed.”
Anna’s mouth was dry and she found it hard to draw breath. The Comneni had been emperors for generations, before the Lascaris, and now the Palaeologi.
“That was the difficulty with which you helped him?” she said, as if it were a deduction. “But why would Justinian be accomplice to such a thing?”
Constantine considered for a moment. “Are you aware of the emperor’s intention to send envoys to mediate with the pope in little more than a year’s time?” he asked, unable to conceal the edge from his voice that betrayed his emotions. They clearly lay harsh and close to the surface, like a woman’s feelings, as a eunuch’s were said to be.
“I have heard whispers here and there,” she answered. “I hoped that it was not true.”
“It is true,” he rasped, his body stiff, his pale, strong hands half-raised. “The emperor is prepared to capitulate on everything in order to save us from the crusaders, whatever the blasphemy involved.”
She was aware that in spite of his passion, Constantine was watching her intently. “The Blessed Virgin will save us, if we trust in her,” she replied. “As she has done in the past.”
Constantine’s fine eyebrows rose. “Are you so new to the city you have not seen the stains of the crusaders’ fires seventy years ago?”
Anna swallowed, her mind made up. “If our faith then had been unblemished, I am mistaken,” she replied. “I would rather die faithful than live having betrayed my God to Rome.”
“You are a man of conviction,” Constantine said, a slow, sweet smile lighting his face.
She returned to her first question. “Why would Justinian assist anyone to kill Bessarion Comnenos?”
“He did not, of course,” Constantine replied regretfully. “Justinian was a fine man, and as much against the union with Rome as Bessarion was. There were other suggestions, the truth of which I don’t know.”
“What suggestions?” She remembered her deference just in time and lowered her eyes. “If you can tell me? Who is Justinian suspected of helping, and what happened to him?”
Constantine lifted his hands higher. It was an elegant gesture and yet disturbing in its lack of masculinity. She was sharply aware that he was not a man, but not a woman, either, yet still a passionate and highly intelligent being. He was what she was pretending to be.
“Antoninus Kyriakis.” His voice cut across her thoughts. “He was executed. He and Justinian were close friends.”
“And you saved Justinian?” Her voice was hoarse, no more than a whisper.
He nodded slowly, allowing his hands to fall. “I did. The sentence was exile in the desert.”
She smiled at him, the warmth of her gratitude burning through. “Thank you, Your Grace. You give me great heart for the struggle to keep faith.”
He smiled back and made the sign of the cross.
She went out into the street in a turmoil of emotions: fear, gratitude, dread of what she might find in the future, and in them all a powerful awareness of Constantine, strong, generous, firm in a clean and absolute faith.
Of course Justinian had not murdered this Bessarion Comnenos. Although there were marked physical differences between them, in coloring and balance of features, Justinian was her twin brother. Anna knew him as well as she knew herself. He had written to her in the last desperate moments before being taken into exile and told her that Bishop Constantine had helped him, but not why or in what way.
Now her whole purpose was to prove his innocence. She quickened her pace up the incline of the cobbled street.
Three
AFTER ANASTASIUS ZARIDES HAD LEFT, CONSTANTINE remained standing in the ocher-colored room. This physician was interesting and could very possibly prove an ally in the upcoming battle to defend the Orthodox faith from the ambitions of Rome. He was intelligent, subtle, and clearly well educated. With its uncouth ideas and love of violence, Rome could offer nothing to someone like that. If he had a eunuch’s patience, suppleness of mind, and instinctive understanding of emotion, then the brashness of the Latins would be as revolting to him as it was to Constantine himself.
But the questions he had asked were troubling. Constantine had assumed that with Antoninus’s execution and Justinian’s exile, the matter of Bessarion’s murder was closed.
He walked back and forth across the colored floor.
Justinian had mentioned no close kinsmen. But then one did not often speak of cousins or those even further removed.
If Constantine were not careful, the questions could become awkward, but it should be easy enough to deal with them. No one else knew Constantine’s part, or why he had helped or asked for mercy, and Justinian was safely in Judea, where he could say nothing.
Anastasius Zarides might be useful, if in fact he was a skilled physician. Having come was from Nicea, a city known for its learning, he would have had even better opportunity to mix with Jews and Arabs and perhaps acquire a little of their medical knowledge. Constantine disliked admitting it even to himself, but such people were sometimes more skilled than the physicians who adhered strictly to Christian teaching that all illness was a result of sin.
If Anastasius had greater skills, sooner or later he would gain more patients. When people are ill, they are frightened. When they fear they are dying, sometimes they tell secrets they would otherwise keep.
He spent the rest of the afternoon on Church business, seeing priests and petitioners for one sort of grace or another, guidance or a leniency, an ordinance performed, a permission granted. As soon as the last one was gone, his mind returned to the eunuch from Nicea and the murder of Bessarion. There were precautions to take, in case the young man pursued his questions about Justinian elsewhere.