Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [150]
“When did it happen?” Anna put her bag on the floor and bent to examine the leg.
“I was walking in the courtyard last night,” Zoe replied. “After dark. It did not seem serious enough to call you then, but this morning I realized the spelk was still there.”
“Perhaps I should leave you …” Giuliano’s voice came from behind Anna, the reluctance so sharp that he could not disguise it. “I can return on another occasion.” He moved away from the window.
“Not at all,” Zoe dismissed the idea. “It is only my ankle. It would be pleasanter for me to have company to take my mind off what Anastasius must do. Please.”
Anna looked up and saw Zoe smiling, and inside her own mind she could hear her wild, almost delirious laughter, completely out of control. The sound of it had haunted Anna.
Giuliano relaxed. “Thank you.”
Zoe looked at Anna again. “Tell me what you need, and I shall send my maid for it. Hot water, bandages?”
“Yes, please.” Anna tried to concentrate her attention on the wound. “And salt.”
“You are not one to put salt in anyone’s wounds, are you, Anastasius?” Zoe said lightly
“Not so far,” Anna replied. “But the thought has occurred to me once or twice. The salt is to clean my knife when I use it, and the ointment for the first layer of bandages. It will be less painful if they do not cling to the flesh, especially if it bleeds.”
Thomais brought the water in several dishes, and the salt and a pile of clean linen bandages, then Zoe dismissed her. She rested her leg on a stool, leaving Anna to work on it, ignoring her, and turned to Giuliano.
“I have learned a great deal more about Maddalena Agallon.” She said it softly, dropping her voice as if in deep emotion and causing Giuliano to move closer to her and into Anna’s range of vision.
“Most of it concerns her life after she left her husband and her infant son.” Zoe’s face was full of pain, but it was impossible to tell if it was pity for that long ago abandoned child or from the prick of the blade in Anna’s hand as she pierced the angry flesh around the spelk of wood.
“Why did she go?” Giuliano forced the words from deep inside him.
Zoe hesitated. “I’m sorry,” she said gently to Giuliano, ignoring the wound as if she could not even feel the blade. “It seems she did not want the responsibility of caring for a small boy. She became bored with it. She returned to the life she had had before, but no decent man would have her.”
“How did she … live?” Giuliano asked, his voice cracking.
Anna looked up and saw Zoe’s golden eyes looking back, first at the knife, then at Anna directly. There was triumph burning in her mind, and Anna read it as clearly as words. She bent to the wound again, blade poised.
“Can’t you do it?” Zoe asked. “No stomach for it, Anastasius?”
Anna saw her smile, and the knowledge in it bright as a flame, which turned her own stomach cold. Was it conceivable Zoe had guessed she was a woman?
She looked down again and deliberately pushed the point of her knife into the flesh on the other side of the spelk, saw the blood ooze and then flood. She was tempted to push harder, even to slice through an artery and watch it gush, pumping, as Gregory’s blood must have, pouring life away.
Zoe turned back to Giuliano. “She turned to the streets, as all women do when there is nothing else,” she said, her voice filling the silence of the room. “Especially beautiful women. And she was beautiful.”
Anna turned the knife delicately, lifted out the spelk, and dropped it on one of the spare plates.
“As beautiful as Anastasius here would be,” Zoe went on. She had not even flinched. “If he were a woman, and not a eunuch.”
Anna felt her face flame. She could feel Giuliano’s hurt as if the blade had gouged a living organ out of him. She should not be here to witness this awful scene.
She looked up and met Zoe’s eyes, bright and hard as agate.
“Have I offended you, Anastasius?” Zoe asked with mild interest. “It is not a bad thing to be beautiful, you know.” She turned and looked across at Giuliano, then picked up a paper from the table