“I have already spoken with the patriarch,” Vicenze told him. “He is an excellent man, of great vision and understanding.”
For half a second, it was clear in Palombara’s face that he had not known that. Then he concealed it and smiled. “I don’t think the patriarch is where we need to concentrate our efforts, Your Grace. Actually I believe it is the monks in different abbeys who harbor the greatest reservations about trusting Rome. But perhaps your information is different from mine?”
Two spots of color stained Vicenze’s pale cheeks, but he was too furious to trust himself to speak.
Palombara looked at Michael. “Perhaps if we were to discuss the situation, Your Majesty, we might learn of a way in which, in Christian brotherhood, we could find an accord with these holy men, and persuade them of our common cause against the tide of Islam, which I fear is lapping ever closer around us.”
This time it was Michael whose face lit with amusement. The conversation continued for a further twenty minutes, and then the two legates withdrew, and shortly afterward Anna went after them, having finally been noticed and given permission to leave.
She was on the way through the last hall before the great doors when she encountered Palombara, apparently alone. He looked at her with interest, and she was unpleasantly aware of a certain curiosity in him because he was clearly unfamiliar with eunuchs. She became self-conscious, aware of her woman’s body under the clothes, as if he could see some kind of guilt in her eyes. Perhaps to a man unused to even the concept of a third gender, her masquerade was more apparent. Did she look feminine to him? Or was he simply considering how mutilated she was that her hands were so slender, and her neck, her jaw, lighter than a man’s? She must say something to him quickly, engage his intellect away from her physical presence.
“You will find it a difficult task persuading the monks of the truth of your doctrine, Your Grace.” Normally she was not conscious of her voice, but now to her it sounded so much that of a woman, without the mellower, more throaty quality of a eunuch. “They have given their lives to Orthodoxy,” she added. “Some in most terrible martyrdom.”
“Is that what you advise the emperor?” he asked, taking a step closer to her. In spite of his bishop’s robes and emblems of office, there was a virility about him that was unpriestly. She wanted to make some uniquely eunuch gesture, to remind both of them that she was not a woman, but she could think of nothing that would not be absurd.
“The last advice I gave him was to drink infusion of camomile,” she answered, and was delighted to see Palombara’s puzzlement.
“For what purpose?” he asked, knowing she was taking some advantage of him to amuse herself.
“It relaxes the mind and assists digestion,” she replied. Then, in case he should think the emperor was ilclass="underline" “I came to attend one of the eunuchs who had a fever.” Now she was aware of her crumpled dalmatica after a long night of nursing and the pallor of her face from weariness. “I have been with him for many hours, but fortunately he is past the crisis. Now I am free to leave, and attend my other patients.” She moved forward to pass him.
“The emperor’s physician,” Palombara observed. “You look young to have attained such responsibility.”
“I am young,” she responded. “Fortunately the emperor has excellent health.”
“So you practice on the palace eunuchs?”
“I make no distinction between one sick person and another.” She raised her eyebrows. “I don’t care whether they are Roman, Greek, Muslim, or Jew, except as their beliefs affect their treatment. I imagine you are the same. Or have you ceased to minister to ordinary people? That would explain your perception of the monks who do not wish to be driven into union with Rome.”
“You are against the union,” he observed with faint irony, as if he had known she would be. “Tell me why. Is the issue of whether the Holy Spirit proceeds from the Father only, or the Father and the Son, worth sacrificing your city for-again?”
She did not wish to concede his point. “Let me be equally direct. It is you who will sack us, not we who will come to Rome and burn and pillage it. Why does the issue mean so much to you? Is it enough to justify the murder and rape of a nation for your aggrandizement?”
“You are too harsh,” he said softly. “We cannot sail from Rome to Acre without stopping somewhere on the way, for water and provisions. Constantinople is the obvious place.”
“And you cannot visit a place without destroying it? Is that what you have in mind for Jerusalem also, if you beat the Saracens? Very holy,” she added sarcastically. “All in the name of Christ, of course. Your Christ, not mine-mine was the one the Romans crucified. It seems to be becoming a habit. Was once not enough for you?”
He winced, his gray eyes widening. “I had no idea eunuchs were so savage in argument.”
“From the look on your face, you have no idea about them… us… at all.” That was a bad slip. Did he anger her because he was a Roman or because he could not take the gender for granted and made her so aware of her lie and the loss of herself as a woman?
“I am beginning to realize how little I know about Byzantium,” he said softly, laughter and curiosity at the back of his eyes. “May I call on you if I need a physician?”
“If you fall ill, you should call one of your own,” she responded. “You are more likely to need a priest than someone skilled in herbs, and I cannot minister to a Roman’s sins.”
“Are not all sins much the same?” he asked, amusement now quite open in his face.
“Exactly the same. But some of us do not see them as sins, and it is the healing I am responsible for, not the shriving-or the judgment.”
“Not the judgment?” His eyes widened.
She winced as the barb struck home.
“Are the sins different?” he asked.
“If they are not, then what have Rome and Byzantium been fighting for over the centuries?”
He smiled. “Power. Is that not what we always fight for?”
“And money,” she added. “And pride, I suppose.”
“Not much is hidden from a good physician.” He shook his head a little.
“Or a good priest,” she added. “Although the damage you do is harder to attribute. Good day, Your Grace.” She moved past him and walked down the steps toward the street.
Thirty-four
ZOE HAD SEEN THE NECKLACE WHEN IT WAS ALMOST finished. She had stood in the goldsmith’s shop and watched him working the metal, heating it slowly, bending it, and smoothing it into exactly the shape he wanted. She had seen the stones because he had had them out in order to make the shapes to hold them: golden topaz, pale topaz almost like spring sunlight, dark, smoky citrines, and quartz almost bronze. Only a woman with hair like autumn leaves and fire in her eyes could wear this without being dominated by it and made to look eclipsed rather than enhanced.
The goldsmith would be flattered that she wore it. It would advertise his art and earn him more customers. Then everyone would want his work.
She arrived at his shop at midmorning, gold coins ready in a small leather pouch. She would not send Sabas for this because she wanted to make sure the piece was perfect before she passed over her money.
She was irritated to see someone already there, a gaunt-faced middle-aged man, his graying hair prematurely thin. He was holding coins in his hand. He closed his fingers over them, smiling, and passed them to the smith. The smith thanked him and picked up Zoe’s necklace. He laid it on a piece of ivory silk, wrapped it gently, and passed it to the man, who took it and folded it away until it was concealed by his dalmatica. He thanked the smith, then turned and walked away toward Zoe, his face alight with satisfaction.