Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [140]
Zoe was in too much distress to complain about waiting. Blood had soaked through the makeshift bandage, and the wound was throbbing so she could feel it all the way up to the groin. She told Anastasius what had happened and watched while he unbound the bloody edge of her tunic and exposed the wound. It looked horrible, and it turned her stomach and sent a chill of fear through her, but she would not let him see her avert her eyes.
He worked quickly. She noticed that he had beautiful hands, like a woman’s—slender, long-fingered—and he moved with both delicacy and strength. She wondered what he would have been like had he been allowed to grow into a man. There was something in the turn of his head, an inflection of the voice, that reminded her of Justinian. It came suddenly as he frowned and bent to look more closely at an herb, then the likeness was gone again.
“I need to stitch the sides together,” Anastasius told her. “Otherwise it will take a long time to heal, and it will leave a worse scar. I’m sorry, but it will feel unpleasant.”
“Then do it quickly,” Zoe ordered him. “I want it healed. And I don’t care for blood all over the place.”
Anastasius threaded one of his curved needles with silk. “Now please keep perfectly still. I don’t wish to cause you any more pain than I have to. Would you like Thomais to hold you steady?”
Zoe looked at Anastasius and met the unflinching gray eyes. It was the first time she had looked at him so intently. He had long eyelashes and his eyes were beautiful, but it was the intelligence in them that excited her, even alarmed her. It was as if his mind touched hers and read it much more intimately than she would have expected.
He had started to stitch, and she had not noticed it. She watched him work quickly, admiring his skill.
“It seems you are busy now, Anastasius,” she remarked. “Your reputation has spread. I hear many people speaking of your abilities.”
He smiled without taking his eyes from his work. “I am grateful to you for that. I owe my first recommendations to you. I believe it was you who gave my name to Eirene Vatatzes. I have attended her since then.”
Zoe froze, her body suddenly rigid.
“I’m sorry,” Anastasius apologized. “I am nearly finished.”
Zoe swallowed. “Tell me about Eirene. It will take my mind off what you are doing. How is she, now that her husband has returned from Alexandria?”
“Recovering.” Anastasius put in the last stitch and, very gently, so as not to pull the flesh, cut the silk with a blade. “It may take her a little while.”
“Thank you. Did you meet her husband?”
Anastasius looked up. “Yes. An interesting man. He mentioned that he knew you.”
“A long time ago. What did he say?”
Anastasius smiled, as if he knew exactly what was in her mind and in Eirene’s. “He said you were the most beautiful woman in Byzantium, not for your face, or even your body, but for the passion in you.”
Zoe looked away. She could not face Anastasius’s eyes. “Really? No doubt he said it to annoy Eirene. She has a temper, and that amuses him. And what did you say?” she demanded, facing him again, the high color in her cheeks masked as anger.
Anastasius smiled. “My answer was unimportant.”
“Oh? What was it?”
“I told him that I was not in a position to appreciate it, but I quite believed him that it was so,” Anastasius replied.
She gasped at his nerve, felt the remembered heat scorch up her face again, then burst into laughter, a rich peal of pure delight.
Anastasius poured some fine powder into a small silk sachet and then placed a jar of ointment on the table beside it. “Take a spoonful of this in hot water once a day.” He handed her a ceramic spoon, wide but shallow. “Level, do not heap it. Draw a knife over the top to make certain of that. It will keep the infection from getting worse. And put the ointment on if it starts to itch. It probably will do, as it heals. I shall call again in a week to remove some of the stitches, and then take out the rest a week or so after that. But if it gives you cause