Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [142]
He eased her back down again. He was stronger than she had expected. Or perhaps she was weaker.
“It’s morning,” Anastasius observed.
“I can see that!” Zoe snapped.
A smile flickered in Anastasius’s eyes. “Then you will tell me why Justinian was a fool not to trust you?” he said with an edge to his voice. “Or was I the fool to believe it?”
Memory rushed back. “What was that you just gave me?”
Anastasius smiled. “You haven’t answered my question.”
“Justinian knew Bessarion was useless,” Zoe said quietly. “He would have been a disaster on the throne. But the others wouldn’t believe Justinian. They’d put everything into it and the plans had gone too far. The only way to stop it was to kill Bessarion. Antoninus believed Justinian. He helped.” She almost laughed when she thought of it, except that it was so futile. “Fool. I would have stopped it. They could have done nothing without me. But Justinian didn’t trust me. What was it I just drank?”
Anastasius stared at her as if mesmerized.
“What was it I just drank?” Zoe repeated, her voice more angry and frightened than she had wanted to betray.
“Infusion of camomile,” Anastasius answered. “It’s good for the digestion. Just camomile leaves in hot water, nothing else. It’s bitter because you’ve been ill. That alters your taste.”
She did not want to admire Anastasius, and it was a curious feeling to trust him. Yet at least as far as medicine was concerned, she did. She lay back at last, for the time being content.
After three days, she began to regain strength and the wound was less red and the swelling subsided. After a week, he pronounced it satisfactory and said he would leave and return at the end of another three days.
She thanked him, paid him generously, and also gave him the gift of a small enameled box made of silver and inlaid with aquamarine. He touched it gently, looking first at its beauty, then up at her. His appreciation of it was clear in his face, and she was satisfied. She told him to leave.
Zoe was glad Anastasius had liked it. He had ministered to her not only with skill, but with gentleness. It had given her a serious fright to be so vulnerable. It could not go on like this.
An idea was beginning to take shape in her mind. She would make Gregory’s death count. She would contrive a means to have Giuliano Dandolo blamed for it. That way, she could bear to kill Gregory. She could even do it herself.
Fifty
WITH GREGORY, ZOE WOULD HAVE NO SECOND CHANCE.
In a perverse way, this last battle between them was another kind of bond. She thought of him during the day. She lay awake at night and remembered how it was to be with him.
Another piece of the plan fell into her hands. It was the street attacks upon Bessarion and then upon herself that gave her the idea.
The first thing was to plant the seeds in people’s minds that there was a quarrel between Gregory and Giuliano Dandolo. It must be just a superficial word, so slight that the meaning was recalled only afterward and understood then.
The second thing was to go to Bardas, a maker of daggers whom she knew and had trusted in the past. She put on her heaviest dalmatica and went out into the windy street and the light rain. Walking quickly, she left Sabas far behind her as he was used to being, discreet, seeing and hearing nothing. The pain in her leg was barely there anymore.
“Yes, mistress,” the swordsmith said immediately, pleased to see her again. Only a fool forgot a benefactress or broke his word to a woman who never forgot or forgave. “What can I make for you this time?”
“I want a good dagger,” she replied. “It doesn’t have to be the best, but I want a family crest on the hilt, and I want you to be discreet about it. It is a gift, and it will be spoiled if anyone else hears of it.”
“Your business is no one else’s, lady. Whose crest would that be?”
“Dandolo,” she answered.
As soon as she had the dagger, which was beautiful—Bardas was even better than his word—she sent a letter to Giuliano Dandolo, who