“I am doing what I can to prove he was wrongly accused,” she said impulsively. “If I succeed, they will have to pardon him and he will return.”
“A cousin of a cousin?” He smiled at her.
“And a friend,” she added. “I don’t wish to tire you.” She rose, frightened now in case she was tempted into betraying herself irreparably.
He lifted his hand in the old blessing. “May God light your path in the darkness, and comfort your aloneness in the cold of the night, Anna Lascaris.”
The heat washed up her in a wave like fire, yet it was sweet, in spite of all the fear there should have been. He knew her; he had used her own name. For a long, terrible, wonderful moment, she was herself.
She leaned forward and touched his hand softly, a totally feminine gesture. Then she turned and walked to the door. The instant she was beyond it, she would resume her role.
When she had made the long journey back to Constantinople, saying nothing but the few civil words necessary to Vicenze, she called upon Zoe.
Anna stood in the same room as always, with its great golden cross on the wall and its magnificent view, and faced Zoe with a smile, tasting the moment.
“Were you able to save the good Cyril?” Zoe asked, her topaz eyes hard and too bright to hide her eagerness or the strange, powerful emotions warring inside her.
“Yes indeed,” she replied levelly. “He may live for many years yet.”
There was a flicker in Zoe’s eyes. “And the legate Vicenze-did he succeed in his purpose?”
Anna raised her eyebrows. “His purpose?”
“He did not go merely to accompany you!” Zoe said, keeping the temper out of her voice with difficulty.
“Oh, he had an audience with Cyril,” Anna replied quite casually. “Of course I was not present. Poor Cyril was taken ill after that, and all my attention was bent on treating him.”
Zoe’s anger burned behind her glittering gaze. For the first time, she had been balked by Anna. Suddenly they met as equals.
Anna smiled. “That was when I gave Cyril the herbs that you so thoughtfully provided.”
Zoe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. In that moment something changed in her, a knowledge of having been confounded. “And they helped?” she asked, knowing the answer already.
“Not at first,” Anna told her. “In fact, the effect was most unpleasant. I quite feared for his life. Then I remembered that when you and I had taken them, we did so with wine. It made all the difference.” She smiled, meeting Zoe’s eyes unflinchingly. “I am grateful to you for your foresight. I explained to the abbot exactly what had happened. I would not wish such a holy man to imagine you had attempted to poison poor Cyril. That would be fearful.”
Zoe’s expression froze like white marble, so tightly controlled that neither fury nor relief showed. Then something quite remarkable was there, just for a second, but long enough that Anna was perfectly certain of what it was-admiration.
“How kind of you,” Zoe said in a low voice. “I shall not forget it.”
Thirty
VICENZE RETURNED TO THE HOUSE IN A VICIOUS TEMPER.
“How was your journey to Bithynia?” Palombara asked.
“Pointless,” Vicenze snapped. “I went only because it was my holy duty to try.” He looked at Palombara malevolently, faintly suspicious as to how much he might know or guess. “One of us must do something to win over these obdurate people, or give them room to condemn themselves utterly.”
“So that whatever we do, we are justified.” Palombara was surprised at how bitter he sounded.
“Exactly,” Vicenze agreed. “It was a last attempt.”
“Last?”
Vicenze’s eyebrows rose and there was a gleam of satisfaction in his cold eyes. “Next week we return to Rome. Had you forgotten?”
“Of course not,” Palombara told him. Actually, he had thought it was a little longer than that. He had been considering with some anxiety exactly what he would report to the pope, in what terms he would explain the nature of their failure to gain any more support for the agreement. He had come to the point where he believed that Michael could carry his people sufficiently for the appearance of union with Rome and that the fact of a degree of independence could be disguised. People would always believe differently from one place to another, one social class, one degree of wealth or education or emotional need to another. But he did not think the pope would be well pleased with that. It was an eminently practical answer, but it was not a political victory.
Thirty-one
IT WAS ONLY DAYS AFTER THAT WHEN ANNA ATTENDED AN accident in the street. An old man had tripped and bruised himself badly. She was bending over his leg, examining it, when there was a disturbance in the crowd that had gathered, and a young priest, ashen-faced, elbowed his way through, pushing people aside roughly, calling out her name.
“Is it an emergency?” she asked without looking up. “This man has had a bad shock and needs-”
“Yes, you may already be too late.” The priest reached for her arm and pulled her to her feet. “He is bleeding to death. They have torn his tongue out.”
She turned to the crowd and gestured to the old man. “Take him home. Give him hot drinks and keep him wrapped up. I have to go.”
She picked up her bag and allowed the priest to half drag her around the corner and up an alley to a small house where the door was open. She could hear gagging and wails of fear and distress even before she was inside.
The scene that met her was appalling. A monk knelt sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from his mouth, pooling scarlet on the tiles in front of him, covering his hands and forearms and the front of his robe. He gasped, gagged again, and more blood gushed out of him. His face was gray with pain and terror, his eyes staring. Around him three other monks stood helplessly, not knowing what to do. The man was bleeding to death in front of them.
Anna put down her bag and seized a piece of cloth from one of them, glanced at it quickly to make certain it was clean, then went to the man on the floor. Someone said his name was Nicodemus.
“I can help you,” she said firmly, praying that please God she could. “I’m going to stop the bleeding, and you won’t choke. You’ll have to breathe through your nose. It may be difficult, but you can do it. Keep still and let me press this. It’s going to hurt, but it’s necessary.” And before he could pull away, she put her arm around him. One of the monks suddenly grasped what she was going to do and moved forward to help. Together they held the terrified man while Anna forced his mouth open wider and placed the cloth as hard as she could on the bloody remnant of his tongue.
It must have been agony, but after the first convulsive jerk and shudder he kept as still as he could.
In a perfectly level voice she ordered the other monks, and the priest who had come for her, to fetch more clean cloths, to open her case and take out certain herbs and spirits in small vials, also her surgical needles and silk. She directed two of them to fetch water and clean up the blood from the tiles.
All the time she kept the pressure on the stump of tongue, trying desperately to prevent the man from bleeding to death, choking on blood, or suffocating because he could not draw air into his lungs.
She changed one blood-soaked cloth for another, still holding the man with her left arm. She could hear the rhythmic murmur of prayer and wished she could join in.
Finally, more than half an hour after she had begun, she pulled the cloth away slowly and judged that if she was quick, she would be able to stitch the flesh and seal off the vessels enough to remove the cloth permanently.