Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [158]
“A Venetian?” Anna was appalled. “They’ll let me get the painting, then steal it, probably throw me overboard, and you’ll never see the painting again.”
“Not this captain,” Zoe said with secret amusement. “He is Giuliano Dandolo. I have told him only that it is the picture of a Byzantine Madonna, posed for by a merchant’s daughter, perhaps his mother. You would be wise not to tell him differently.”
Anna stood rigid. “And if I refuse?” she stammered.
“Then I shall no longer feel bound to be discreet about your … identity. To the emperor, the Church, or to Dandolo. Be sure that that is what you want before you provoke it to happen.”
“I’ll go,” she said quietly.
Zoe smiled. “Of course you will.” She picked up a package lying on the table at her side and held it out to Anna. “Here is the money, and your instructions, a letter of safe conduct for you, with the emperor’s signature. Godspeed, and may the Blessed Virgin protect you.” She crossed herself piously.
At the teeming dockside, Anna came to a three-masted Venetian round ship with lateen sails and a high stern. It was broad-beamed, hence the name, and she judged it to be at least fifty paces from end to end. She made inquiries of the sailor at the bottom of the gangway, stating her name and Zoe’s, and was permitted to board. She found Giuliano on deck. He was dressed in a leather coat and britches, nothing like the courtly tunic and robes he’d worn in the city. Suddenly he looked Venetian, and alien.
“Captain Dandolo,” she said firmly. Whatever the cost, there was nowhere to retreat. “Zoe Chrysaphes told me that you had agreed to take me as passenger on your voyage to Acre, and then afterward to Jerusalem with you. She said she had paid you the price you considered fair.” Anna’s voice was cold with the tension that knotted inside her.
He turned around slowly, surprise in his face, then a quick flame of recognition suffocated the moment after by memory of the last time they had met.
“Anastasius Zarides.” His voice was quiet, not audible twelve feet away where sailors were working on the ropes and rigging. “Yes, Zoe made arrangements for a passenger. She did not say it would be you.” His face darkened. “Since when were you her servant?”
“Since she has the power to hurt me,” she replied, not flinching from his gaze. “But the commission on which she sends me is good: to bring back a picture which belongs in Constantinople.”
“A picture? Did she tell you of whom?”
Anna longed to be able to answer him honestly. Lying was like deliberately staking out a space between them, but the gulf was there already.
“A Byzantine lady of good family,” she answered. “But apparently the victim of some tragedy or other.”
“Why does Zoe care?”
“Do you think I asked her?” she said with an attempt at light sarcasm.
“I think you might have guessed,” he replied. She was not sure if there was gentleness in his voice or sadness.
Now it was her turn to look away, over the choppy waters of the harbor. “I think it is a picture she wants because it will give her power,” she answered. “But it could be merely one whose beauty she likes. She has a passion for beauty. I’ve seen her stare at the sunset till the sight of it should be printed on her soul.”
“She has a soul?” he said with sudden bitterness.
“Surely a soul twisted is far worse than no soul at all?” she asked. “It is the loss of what could have been which tortures, the fact that something was within your reach and you let it slip away. I don’t think hell is fire and torn flesh and the smell of sulfur choking you. I think it is the taste of heaven remembered—and lost.”
“God preserve us, Anastasius!” Giuliano exclaimed. “Where on earth do you come up with things like that?”
He put his hand on her back, swiftly, in a companionable gesture, far from a caress. A moment later he took it away, and it was as if she had lost the warmth of the sun on her.
“You’d better come to Jerusalem with us and get this picture for Zoe,” he said cheerfully. “We sail tomorrow morning. But I daresay you know that.” He gave a brief laugh,