Anne Perry - The Sheen of the Silk

On the left arm was the emblem of the Kantakouzenos, an imperial family older still; their arms were red, with the double-headed eagle in gold. They had been greedy, blasphemous, without honor or shame. To the third and fourth generation, they would pay. Constantinople did not forgive the violation of her body or her soul.

On the main trunk, against which hung the figure of Christ, was the emblem of the worst of them all, the Dandolo of Venice. Their coat of arms was just a simple lozenge horizontally halved, white above, red below. It was Doge Enrico Dandolo, over ninety years old and blind as a stone, who had stood in the prow of the leading ship of the Venetian fleet, impatient to invade, despoil, and then burn the Queen of Cities. When no one else had had the courage to be the first ashore, he had leapt down onto the sand, sightless and alone, and charged forward. The Dandolo family would pay for that as long as the scorch marks of ruin scarred the stones of Constantinople.

She heard a sound behind her, a clearing of the throat. It was Thomais, her black serving woman, with her close-cropped head and beautiful, fluid grace. “What is it?” Zoe asked without taking her eyes off the cross.

“Miss Helena has come to see you, my lady,” Thomais replied. “Shall I ask her to wait?”

Zoe carefully replaced the cross on the wall and stepped back to regard it. Over the years since her return from exile, she had put it back up there hundreds of times, always perfectly straight.

“Walk slowly,” Zoe replied. “Fetch her a glass of wine, then bring her here.”

Thomais disappeared to obey. Zoe wanted to keep Helena waiting. Her daughter should not simply walk in at a whim and expect Zoe to be available. Helena was Zoe’s only child, and she had molded her carefully, from the cradle; but no matter what she achieved, Helena would never outwit or outwill her mother.

Several minutes later, Helena entered quietly, smoothly. Her eyes were angry. Her respect was in her words, not in the tone of her voice. As was obligatory, she still wore mourning for her murdered husband, and she looked with some resentment at Zoe’s amber-colored tunic, its flowing lines accentuated by the height that Zoe had and she did not.

“Good evening, Mother,” she said stiffly. “I hope you are well?”

“Very, thank you,” Zoe replied with a slight smile of amusement, not warmth. “You look pale, but then mourning is designed to do that. It is appropriate that a new widow should look as if she has been weeping, whether she has or not.”

Helena ignored the remark. “Bishop Constantine came to see me.”

“Naturally,” Zoe responded, sitting down with easy grace. “Considering Bessarion’s status, it is his duty. He would be remiss if he didn’t, and other people would notice. Did he say something interesting?”

Helena turned away so Zoe did not see her face. “He was probing, as if he wondered how much I knew of Bessarion’s death.” She looked back at Zoe for a moment with blazing clarity. “And what I might say,” she added. “Fool!” It was almost a whisper, but Zoe caught the edge of fear in it.

“Constantine has no choice but to be against union with Rome,” she said sharply. “He’s a eunuch. With Rome in charge, he would be nothing. Stay loyal to the Orthodox Church, and everything else will be forgiven you.”

Helena’s eyes widened. “That’s cynical.”

“It’s realistic,” Zoe pointed out. “And practical. We are Byzantine. Never forget it.” Her voice was savage. “We are the heart and the brain of Christianity, and of light and thought and wisdom-of civilization itself. If we lose our identity, we have given away our purpose in living.”

“I know that,” Helena replied. “The question is, does he? What does he really want?”

Zoe looked at her with contempt. “Power, of course.”

“He’s a eunuch!” Helena spat the word. “The days are gone when a eunuch could be everything except emperor. Is he so stupid he doesn’t know that yet?”

“In times of enough need, we will turn to anyone we think can save us,” Zoe said quietly. “You would be wise not to forget that. Constantine is clever, and he needs to be loved. Don’t underestimate him, Helena. He has your weakness for admiration, but he is braver than you are. And you can flatter even a eunuch, if you use your brains as well as your body. In fact, it would be a wise idea if you were to use your brains rather than your body where all men are concerned, for the time being.”

Again the color surged up Helena’s cheeks. “Said with all the wisdom and rectitude of a woman too old to do anything else,” she sneered. She smoothed her hands over her slim waist and flat stomach, lifting her shoulders again, very slightly, to offer an even more voluptuous curve.

The taunt stung Zoe. There were places in her jaw and her neck she hated to see in the glass; the tops of her arms and her thighs no longer had the firmness they used to, even a few years ago.

“Use your beauty while you can,” she replied. “You’ve nothing else. And as short as you are, when your waist thickens, you’ll be square, and your breasts will sit on your belly.”

Helena snatched up a length of silk tapestry from the chair and swung it as a lash, striking out at Zoe. The end of it caught one of the tall, bronze torch brackets and toppled it over, and burning pitch spilled on the floor. Instantly Zoe’s tunic was on fire. She felt the heat of it scorch up her legs.

The pain was intense. She was suffocating in smoke. Her lungs were bursting, yet the shrill sounds deafening her were her own screams. She was hurled back into the far past, the crucible of all she had become. She was engulfed by the flaring red light in the darkness, the noise of walls collapsing, crashing stone on stone, the roar of flames, everywhere terror, confusion, throat and chest seared in the heat.

Helena was there, flinging water at her, shouting something, her voice high-pitched with panic, but Zoe was beyond thought. She was a tiny child clinging to her mother’s hand, running, falling, dragged up and on, stumbling over the broken walls, bodies slashed and burned, blood on the pavement. She could smell the stench of human flesh on fire.

She fell again, bruised, aching. She climbed to her feet, and her mother was gone. Then she saw her; one of the crusaders had yanked her mother up off the ground and thrown her against a wall. He slashed at her robe and her tunic with his sword, then leaned against her, jerking violently. Zoe knew now what he had been doing. She could feel it as if it were her own body violated. When he finished, he had cut her mother’s throat and let her slide, gushing blood onto the stones.

Zoe’s father found them both, too late. Zoe was sitting on the ground as motionless as if she too were dead.

Everything after that was pain and loss. They were always in unfamiliar places, aching with hunger and the terrible emptiness of being dispossessed, and a horror inside her head that Zoe could never lose. And after horror came the hate. Prick her anywhere, and she bled rage.

Helena was close to her, wrapping her in something. The light of flames was gone, but the burning was still there, agonizing. Zoe’s legs and thighs were throbbing with pain. She could make out words: Helena’s voice, sharp and strained with fear.

“You’re safe! You’re safe! Thomais has gone for a physician. There’s a good one just moved here, good for burns, for skin. You’ll be all right.”

Zoe wanted to swear at her, curse her for the stupid, vicious thing she had done, wreak a revenge on her that would be so terrible, she would want to die to escape it; but her throat was too tight and she could not speak. The pain robbed her of breath.