Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [111]
“What question is that?” Anastasius’s voice had dropped to a whisper. There was no doubt that Zoe had his total attention now.
“Who betrayed Justinian to the authorities?” Zoe answered.
“Antoninus …,” Anastasius replied, but the certainty had gone from his voice.
Zoe felt victory sing inside her, at least for this first step. “I assumed it was, but your questions stirred doubt in me. Shortly before Bessarion was killed Justinian quarreled with him, passionately. Justinian went to Eirene about it, but she gave him no help. He went to Demetrios, but he was no help, either. He did not come to me. Why was that?” Zoe could see the thoughts racing behind Anastasius’s dark gray eyes. Sometimes for an instant he looked like Justinian, the same expression. Except that Justinian had been such a man!
“Do you think this poisoning of Maria, if that’s what it is, could have something to do with Bessarion’s murder?” Anastasius asked, doubt still in his voice. “Georgios Vatatzes?”
“It might.” Not the truth, but close enough to be believable. “Georgios knew Bessarion, and he knew Antoninus even better.”
“Thank you,” Anastasius said quietly. “Perhaps that is true.”
Anna found Georgios as he was leaving the Blachernae Palace. He was a better-looking man than his father, taller and leaner, without the years of soft living larding his body with fat. He recognized her after only a moment’s hesitation.
“Is my sister worse?” he said sharply, stopping in the shadow of the great outer wall with its immense stones fitted so perfectly together and the high windows that let in so much light.
“No,” Anna said with rather more certainty than she felt. “But she may be, if I don’t find the source of the poison.”
He stiffened. “Why do you say it is poison? Or is this just an excuse because you don’t know how to treat her?”
“I don’t know who is poisoning Maria,” she said quietly. “But I think that if you examine everything you know, particularly about other plots, other deaths, you might know.”
He looked totally confused. “Whose death?”
“Bessarion Comnenos?” she suggested. “Or Antoninus? Was he not a friend of yours? And Andronicus Palaeologus?”
He froze. “God Almighty! That?” His face was pale.
“Do you know something that could be of danger to someone? Or of use?”
“And they’d poison Maria?” He was aghast.
“Wouldn’t they?” she asked. “What was Antoninus like? And Justinian Lascaris?” She almost stumbled over the name.
“They were close friends,” he said slowly, remembrance sharpening in his mind as he found the words. “Justinian cared about the Church more than he let on, I think.” He frowned. “Antoninus was different. When he was with Justinian, he was thoughtful, loved beautiful things. But when he was with Andronicus and Esaias, he was just like any other soldier, enjoying the moment. I never knew which was the real man.”
A shadow crossed his face. “We were going to have a great party the night after Bessarion was killed. Esaias and Andronicus were going to be there. Andronicus planned to have races first—that was Antoninus’s idea, like the old days, before the exile. Justinian loved horses, too. He always said we’d know we really had our city back when we opened the Hippodrome again.”
“Was Justinian going to be at the party?”
“No. Antoninus said he had to be somewhere else. But what the devil can this have to do with Maria?” Anger darkened his face again. “Just cure her! I’ll find out who did it.”
It was pointless to argue any further. Anna thanked him and walked away, leaving him staring out across the city toward the western headland and the old Hippodrome.
She turned over everything that he had said. Was the party important? It had been canceled because Antoninus was arrested that day. Had he betrayed Justinian? For what? They had executed him anyway. Or was Zoe right, and it had been someone else? Perhaps Esaias?
What was supposed to have happened at that party? Which was the real Antoninus—the partygoer,