Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [117]
What he had seen so far should have pleased him for the prospects of a new crusade passing this way and storming the city and the profit that that would mean for Venice. But Giuliano could not rejoice in it. He learned of the strength of the resistance with a sense of foreboding. Not only had the leaders of opposition to the union been blinded, mutilated, or banished; many had fled to separatist Byzantine states. The prisons were crowded, and most embarrassing to Michael, many of his immediate relatives were actively engaged in plotting against him. It seemed he was attacked at the front and beset on all sides.
The Blachernae Palace was beautiful, even if it was poor compared with the glories of Venice. There were still the marks of fire and pillage all through it, and it had none of the sheer grace of pale marble and the endless reflections of light that he was used to.
But when Giuliano was face-to-face with Michael, he saw a man of remarkable composure. There was a weariness in the emperor’s face, but nothing of fear. He received Giuliano with courtesy and even a shadow of wit. Against his will, Giuliano felt both a pity and an admiration for him. Whatever Michael lacked, it was not courage.
“And of course there is the East,” a eunuch told Giuliano as he was conducted away after his audience was over. The eunuch’s name was Nicephoras.
Giuliano dragged his mind back to the issues as they walked side by side along a vaulted corridor paved with mosaics.
“Everything is changing all the time,” Nicephoras added, choosing his words carefully. “It appears at the moment as if the greatest threat to us is from the West, the next crusade, but in truth I think we have as much, if not more, to fear from the East. It is simply that the West will be first, if we do not find some accommodation with Rome, however much we hate it. But there is no accommodation to be found with the East.” He looked at Giuliano. “There is much balancing to be done, and it is hard to know which way to turn first.”
Giuliano wanted to say something intelligent and sympathetic, without betraying Venice or sounding patronizing, but nothing whatever came to him. “I begin to feel as if Venetian politics are relatively simple,” he said quietly. “This is like taking out a boat that is leaking in ten different places.”
“A good analogy,” Nicephoras agreed with appreciation. “But we are good at it. We have had much practice.”
Giuliano was still on the steps, leaving the palace, when he came to the bottom at the same time as another eunuch, apparently also leaving. This person was considerably smaller, several inches shorter than Giuliano himself, and more delicate of appearance. When he turned there was a flash of recognition in his dark gray eyes, and Giuliano remembered him from the Hagia Sophia. This was the same man who had seen him clean Enrico Dandolo’s tomb and whose face had shown such grief and such compassion.
“Good morning,” Giuliano said quickly, then wondered if perhaps he had been precipitate in speaking to him, that it would be taken as overfamiliarity. “Giuliano Dandolo, ambassador from the doge of Venice,” he introduced himself.
The eunuch smiled. His face was effeminate, but certainly not without character and again the burning intelligence Giuliano thought he had seen in the Hagia Sophia. “Anastasius Zarides,” the eunuch said. “Sometime physician to Emperor Michael Palaeologus.”
Giuliano was surprised. He had not placed the man as a physician. But it only reminded him how alien Byzantium was. He hastened to say something else. “I live in the Venetian Quarter.” He made a gesture roughly in the direction of the shore. “But I am beginning to think perhaps that restricts me from knowing the city better.” He stopped, gazing across the rooftops. The Golden Horn was spread below them, shining in the morning sun, dotted with boats from every corner of the Mediterranean. The air was warm, and Giuliano could imagine he smelled the odors of salt and spice drifting up from the