Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [130]
“Your Grace …” She reached out as if to touch him, then dropped her hand at the last moment. “Be careful,” she warned, thinking of his arrest, perhaps worse. “If you speak out too clearly against the union, you will be thrown out of office,” she said urgently. “And then who will minister to the poor and the sick? You will end up in exile, like Cyril Choniates, and what good will that do?”
“I have no intention of being so impractical,” he promised her. “I shall walk quietly and keep the faith.”
Constantine was on the steps of the Church of the Holy Apostles. A crowd was pressing forward anxiously, looking to Constantine, waiting for him to speak and reassure them, tell them that their ancient comforts were not empty. He was not aware of Anna in the shadow a few yards behind him. His eyes and his mind were on the eager faces in front of him.
“Be patient,” he said quietly. In order to hear him, they ceased talking to one another, and gradually the silence spread. “We are entering a difficult time,” he went on. “We must be outwardly obedient, or we will cause dissension in the community, perhaps violence. Old ways vie with new ones, but we know the truth of our faith, and we will practice virtue in our homes, even should it become impossible in our streets or churches. We will keep the faith and abide in hope. God will yet rescue us.”
The panic ebbed away. Anna could see the faces begin to smile, the jostling cease.
“God bless the bishop!” someone called out. “Constantine! Bishop Constantine!” The cry was taken up and repeated like an incantation.
Constantine smiled. “Go in peace, my brethren. Never lose faith. To the true heart there is no such thing as defeat, only a time of waiting, an exercise of trust, and a keeping of God’s Commandments, until the dawn.”
Again the cry came, his name, blessings, then again his name, over and over. Anna looked at him and saw the humble bearing of his head, the gesture of declining the praise. But she also saw his body shiver, his fist half-hidden in his robes tighten into a clench, and the sheen of sweat on his skin. When he turned toward her, modestly withdrawing from the adulation, his eyes were shining and his cheeks were flushed. She had seen the same look on Eustathius’s face the first time he had made love to her, back in the beginning, when the hunger and the anticipation had burned through both of them, before the bitterness.
Suddenly she was revolted and ashamed, wishing she had not seen it, but it was too late. The look in Constantine’s face was printed on her mind.
He did not notice. He was reveling in being adored.
She stood in the shadow and was hot with guilt because she was aware of the ugliness in him, the doubt and then the lust, and she had not the honesty to tell him.
Constantine had given her a link to the vast body of the Church again, a purpose to strive for beyond the daily healing of the sick. To separate from him irrevocably—and it would be irrevocable—would mean standing alone.
Which was the greater betrayal, to face him with the truth or not to face him? She turned and walked away, ahead of him, so she could not see his eyes nor he see hers.
Forty-five
ANNA STOOD IN EIRENE VATATZES’S ELEGANT, QUIET bedroom and looked down at the woman lying on the bed. Her clothes were rumpled and marked with blood, and around her neck there were stains of an ointment. In two places was also the yellow mucus of suppuration. There was an open ulcer on her cheek and another just under her jawline on the opposite side. Her hands were covered in red weals, some already swollen where the pus was gathering into a head.
Anna knew from her son, Demetrios, that his father, Gregory, was due to return shortly from Alexandria, this time to remain indefinitely. Eirene was in physical pain, but her distress was greater.