Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [116]
That night, she celebrated with the best wine in her cellar. But she awoke sometime in the dark, shivering and nauseated, her body running with sweat. She had been dreaming, seeing Arsenios’s body on the floor again, vomiting rivers of blood, and the icons on the wall above him, their calm-eyed faces watching his horror. She lay rigid in the bed. What if his servants knew it was poison? Was anyone clever enough to find traces of it? Surely not. She had been careful. He had died dreadfully—quickly, but in agony and horror.
When daylight came, it was not so bad. She could see the realities of her house, her servants moving around. Sabas came in, and at first she dared not meet his eyes, then she could not look away from him. What did he know? To explain herself to a servant would embarrass them both—and yet she wanted to. Desperately she wanted not to be alone.
That night, the dreams were worse. Arsenios took longer to die. There was more blood. She saw his bulging eyes always looking at her, staring, stripping her clothes off literally until she stood in front of him naked, vulnerable, her breasts hanging, her stomach bulging, repulsive. He crawled on the floor after her, refusing to be paralyzed, refusing to choke, to die. He grasped her ankle with his claw of a hand, pain shooting through her again as it had when he had taken her wrist.
He had been going to kill her! He had said so. She had had no choice. She was justified. It was self-defense, to which everyone is entitled. There was no justice in this!
She woke with her body covered in sweat, her clothes sticking to her, ice-cold the minute she threw off the cover and slid out. She knelt on the marble floor, shuddering, her hands folded in prayer, knuckles shining white in the candlelight.
“Blessed Virgin, Holy Mother of God,” she whispered hoarsely. “If I have sinned, forgive me. I did it only to prevent him from keeping the icons which belong to the people. Forgive me, please wash me of my sins.”
She crept back to bed, still shaking with cold, but she dared not sleep.
The following night she did the same, but spending longer on her knees, recounting to the Blessed Virgin the icons Arsenios had taken and his impiety in keeping them all these years—and that was apart from the less precious, less beautiful ones he had sold, anyone could guess as to whom—the buyer with the most money. As if that mattered!
On the fourth day, she heard the news she had prayed for. Arsenios Vatatzes had been buried. They said he had died of a hemorrhage to the stomach shortly after Zoe had visited him. His servants had found him. She listened carefully, but there was no whisper of blame. She had got away with it!
The conclusion was obvious. Heaven was with her; she was an instrument in the hands of God. The rest was just bad dreams, nothing more. They should be forgotten, like any other nonsense.
Tomorrow she would go out and offer her thanks, with gifts, to the Virgin Mary in the Hagia Sophia, knowing that she had divine approval. Candles were not enough, but she would offer them anyway, hundreds of them, enough to light the whole dome, and also perhaps one of her lesser icons.
Thirty-seven
GIULIANO DANDOLO ENJOYED BEING BACK IN CONSTANTINOPLE. The vitality of the city excited him; the tolerance and width of vision was like the wind off a great ocean. It called to him more and more powerfully each time he saw it.
Now he was here at Contarini’s orders to observe for himself, rather than by rumor, whether Byzantium was finally keeping the rules of the union