Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [144]
As she had expected, Giuliano sent her a gift: a brooch for her dalmatica. She liked it more than she wished to. It was black onyx and topaz, in a bed of gold. She did not want to wear it, yet she could not resist doing so, her fingers straying to it because it was also beautiful to the touch. Damn him!
Finally she could wait no longer, and she sent for a thief she had used in the past, when necessity dictated. She told him the knife was hers and had been taken in a robbery, then sold to Giuliano Dandolo. She had seen him with it and realized he had no idea of its origin. She had offered to buy it back, and because of the family crest, he had, not surprisingly, refused. She had no recourse but to have it stolen, as it had been stolen from her.
The thief asked no questions and promised to do as she wished, for a price.
Next she wrote a letter to Gregory, disguising her hand to look like that of Dandolo, copying from the letter he had sent her accepting her earlier invitation. She said she had accidentally stumbled on a revealing secret about Zoe Chrysaphes and would be willing to inform Gregory, if Gregory would assist him in a certain diplomatic matter, of no detriment to Byzantium. She signed it with his name, also copied.
Finally she sent a similar letter to Giuliano from Gregory saying he had heard that Giuliano was interested in learning about Maddalena Agallon. He had known and admired her and would be happy to tell Giuliano all he was able to. She signed it “Gregory Vatatzes.” She knew his hand well enough to forge it without effort.
Then she sat in the large red chair under the torches and stared at the ceiling, relishing the moment, feeling her heart beat so hard and so high in her chest that she could scarcely breathe.
The night of the assignation between Gregory and Giuliano, Zoe was filled with a torrent of doubts. She stood at the window and looked out at the hazy darkness and the faintly moving gleam of lanterns like crawling fireflies in the streets below. Was she being absurd? Poor Zoe Chrysaphes, once the greatest beauty in exiled Byzantium, the mistress of emperors, soon to be a crazy old woman in the streets, dressed in rags, trying to kill people!
She strode over to the great cross on the wall and stared at it, willing herself to regain the passion of vengeance that would overcome her weakness. The Kantakouzenos were destroyed in Cosmas, and the Vatatzes with Arsenios, the Doukas in Euphrosane; the rest did not matter. Only Dandolo was left, and that would soon be over, too.
She moved to the icon of the Virgin Mary and knelt. “Blessed Mother of God, fill me with strength to complete my mission!” she pleaded.
She looked up at the somber face with its aureole of gold, and it seemed to smile at her. As if some hidden floodgates inside Zoe had opened, the blood throbbed in her veins and her muscles had the vitality of a young woman.
She rose, crossed herself, and hurried out alone in the night, as light and easy in her stride as a deer. It was mild, the wind off the sea smelling of salt. Only when she was half a mile from her home did she realize that the old beggar woman she was dressed to seem would never have walked as she was doing. As she rounded a corner, she bent a little and slowed her pace. She went another mile slowly, painfully.
Gregory had to pass this way to keep his appointment with Giuliano. Here was the place to catch him, in the Venetian Quarter. She had calculated the time he would pass, and before Giuliano could arrive, but only just. It had to be exact. She touched the dagger at her belt, hidden by her cloak, then crossed herself again. Now she must wait.
There was someone coming along the street now. Two young men, arm in arm, drunk, their bodies swaying, making the shadows move. She heard their voices and their laughter and shrank back into the lee of a doorway.
Should she attack Gregory from behind? No, that was a coward’s way. He would suspect anyone following him, but not an old woman face-to-face. She bent farther forward, as if age crippled her.
There was