Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [134]
“I am in no mood to receive Helena when I look more like the Gorgon.” Eirene said it wryly, as if it were amusing, but there was pain behind it, and it showed in her eyes and in the tightness of her shoulders as she turned away.
Anna forced herself to smile.
“I wonder what Helen looked like, that they were willing to burn a city and ruin a civilization for her,” Eirene went on, pursuing the conversation as if there were nothing else to remark upon.
“I was taught that their concept of beauty was far deeper than a mere matter of form,” Anna replied. “It needed to be of the mind as well, of the intellect and imagination, and of the heart. If all you want is a beautiful face, a statue will do. And you can own it completely. It doesn’t even need feeding.” She wondered if Eirene’s self-knowledge had created Gregory’s rejection. Was it possible that her belief in her own ugliness had made her seem so to others? Might they have forgotten it, had she allowed them to?
Anna looked at her. The awkwardness of Eirene’s movement was no more than that of many other women her age. Time and intelligence had lent a distinction to her features that they would not have had in youth. Had Eirene not allowed herself to see it?
She both loved and hated Gregory. The look in her eyes, the tension in her hands, gave her away. She believed she could not be loved, not with passion or laughter or tenderness, not with that desperate hunger for her to love in return that made passion a mutual thing.
Later, as Anna stood in the main room receiving payment from Demetrios for the herbs, she was conscious of Helena in a pale tunic trimmed with gold, her hair elaborately dressed. Without intending to, Anna compared her with Zoe, and Helena was still the loser.
“Thank you,” Anna said as Demetrios gave her the coins. “I shall return in a day or two. I believe she will continue to recover, and by then it may be time to change the treatment a little.” She did not add that she was concerned not to dose Eirene too heavily with the intoxicant she had used, in case she became dependent upon its artificial sense of well-being. She intended to use it only as long as it was necessary to face Gregory’s return.
“Don’t change it,” Demetrios said hastily, his face puckered with concern. “It is working well.”
Anna left and walked to her next patient and the one after. It was late and she was tired when she turned aside to climb the steps to her favorite place overlooking the sea.
This place drew her because of its silence. The wind and the gulls were no disturbance to the flight of thought. She was not yet ready to answer Leo’s solicitous questions as to her welfare or see in Simonis’s eyes the slow dying of hope that they would one day prove Justinian’s innocence.
Anna stood on the small, level surface at the top of the path, the wind fluttering the leaves above her. Slowly the color bled away on the horizon and dusk filled the air.
She was annoyed when she heard footsteps on the path below her. Deliberately she turned her back and faced the east and the blurred coast of Nicea, already dark.
She heard her name. It was Giuliano’s voice. It took her a moment to compose herself before she greeted him. “Are you back here for the doge again?” she asked.
He smiled. “He thinks so. Actually I am back for the sunset, and the conversation.” He was flippant, but there was a rueful honesty there for a second. “Home is never quite the same when you go back.” He walked the last few paces and stood beside her.
“Everything is smaller,” she agreed lightly. She must not allow her burning emotions to show. She was glad to have her back to the last of the light.
He looked at her, and something of the tension in his face smoothed away. The smile became wider, easier. “The cafés on the waterfront here haven’t changed. Neither have the arguments. That’s another kind of home.”
“We Greeks are