Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [108]
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.
Zoe’s fury overtook her. The man had taken her necklace, and the smith had allowed it.
It was only as the man passed her that she recognized him, even after all these years—Arsenios Vatatzes, Eirene’s cousin by marriage, the head of the house whose crest was carved on the back of her crucifix.
It was his family who had robbed Zoe’s father in 1204, promising to help in that terrible escape, then betraying them by keeping the relics, the icons, the documents of history that were uniquely Byzantine. They had fled to Egypt and sold them to the Alexandrians to finance a fat, comfortable exile, while Zoe’s father, hideously bereaved, a widower with one small daughter, had had to labor with his hands in order to survive.
Now Arsenios was rich and back again in Constantinople. The time was right. She turned away, in case he might recognize her also.
She arrived home with her mind racing. There were a dozen ways of achieving someone’s ruin, but