Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [118]
Anastasius followed his gaze. “If I could choose, I would live where I could see the sun rise over the Bosphorus, and that requires some height. Such places are expensive.” He laughed with gentle self-mockery. “I would have to save the life of the richest man in Byzantium in order to afford that, and fortunately for him, if less so for me, he is in excellent health.”
Giuliano regarded him with amusement. “And if he were ill, would he send for you?” he asked.
Anastasius shrugged. “Not yet, but by the time he is ill, maybe.” He was joking, lightly.
“In the meantime, healing merely the emperor, where do you live?” Giuliano kept up the easy tone.
Anastasius pointed down the hill. “Over there, beyond those trees. I still have a good view, although only to the north. But there is an excellent place, my favorite in the city, a hundred yards away, up on that hill, where you can see in almost a full circle. And it is quiet. Very few other people seem to go there. Perhaps I am the only one with time to stand and stare.”
Giuliano had a sudden thought that perhaps what he really meant was to stand and dream, but self-consciousness had prevented him from saying so.
“Were you born here?” he asked quickly.
Anastasius looked surprised. “No. My parents were part of the exile. I was born in Thessalonica, and I grew up in Nicea. But this is our ancestral home, the heart of our culture, and I suppose of our faith as well.”
Giuliano felt stupid. Of course he was born somewhere else. He had forgotten that almost everyone he spoke to in this city would have been born during the exile and was therefore from somewhere else. Even his own mother had been.
“My mother was born in Nicea,” he said aloud, then instantly wondered why. He looked away, keeping his face in profile to Anastasius.
As if sensing something of a retreat, Anastasius changed the subject. “They say that some of Venice is like Constantinople. Is that true?”
“Some of it, yes,” he replied. “Especially where there are mosaics. One in particular I like, in a church very similar to one here.” Suddenly he remembered how many Byzantine works of art had been stolen in the ruin in 1204 and felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. “And the money exchanges, of course, and the …” He stopped. The silk trade had once been purely Byzantine; now the art, the weaving, and even the colors were Venetian. “We’ve learned much from you,” he said a little awkwardly.
Anastasius smiled and gave a slight shrug. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have asked. I opened the door to an honest answer.”
He was startled. It was a response with more grace than he had expected or perhaps deserved. He smiled back. “We are learning, but there is a vitality here, a complexity of thought we may never acquire.”
Anastasius inclined his head in acknowledgment, then excused himself with ease, as if they might meet again with the same interest.
Giuliano walked down the steep street lightly. Anastasius had been born during the exile, and judging from his age, his parents must have been also. It had been over seventy years now. That meant, of course, that Giuliano’s own mother had been a child of the exile, even if her heritage was pure Byzantine. And so shortly after the pillage of the city, her hatred for Venice must have been very strong. How on earth had she come to marry a Venetian? More than before, now that he had stood in the wind and the sun and spoken so candidly with another lost, different child of the exile, born away from a spiritual home, he was compelled to find out more about the woman whose child he was.
He began to inquire diligently, and the answers led him to many interesting people and eventually to a woman well into her seventies, who had actually fled the invading armies after the fall of the city. She must have been amazingly beautiful in her youth and in her middle years. Even now she had a depth of passion, a flair and individuality that fascinated him. Her name was Zoe Chrysaphes.
She seemed to be willing to talk about the city, its history, its legends, and its people. The room where