Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [186]
“I?” she said quickly. “What about you?”
“I am a Jew,” he reminded her. “I will be your manservant. I know the way and you do not. I will wait outside. You are both a Christian and a eunuch, the ideal person to treat a nun.”
They rode together in silent companionship for another two hours until the black mass of the monastery loomed out of the shadows on the hillside. It was a huge building with small, high windows, like a fortress or a prison. Shachar was admitted only as far as the shelter of the kitchen.
Anna was conducted along narrow stone corridors to a cell where an old woman lay on the bed. Her face was ravaged by age and grief, but it still held the remnants of great beauty.
Anna did not need to ask who she was. The likeness to Giuliano jarred her as if she had been physically struck.
She tried to swallow the tightness in her throat and thanked the nun who had escorted her, then stepped into the room. There was a plain wooden crucifix above the bed, and near the door was a dark, severe, and beautiful icon of Mary. “Sister Eudoxia?” she said quietly.
The woman opened her eyes curiously and then sat up a little farther on the bed. “The physician. They are kind to have sent for you, but you are wasting your time, young man. There is no cure for age, except God’s cure, and I think I shall gain that quite soon.”
“Do you have pain?” Anna asked, sitting down.
“Only such as mortality and regret bring to all of us,” Eudoxia replied.
Anna reached for her pulse and felt it, thin but regular enough. She did not have a fever. “It is not a trouble. Do you sleep well?”
“Well enough.”
“Are you sure? Is there nothing I can do for you? No discomfort I can ease?”
“Perhaps I could sleep better. Sometimes I dream. I would like to do that less,” the old woman replied with a slight smile. “Can you help that?”
“A draft could ease you. What about pain?”
“I am stiff, but that is time catching up with me.”
“Sister Eudoxia …” Now that the moment had come, what Anna had to say seemed intrusive, and she was ashamed.
The old woman looked at her curiously, waiting. Then she frowned. “What troubles you, physician? Are you looking for a way to tell me I am going to die? I have made peace with it.”
“There is something I would like very much to know, and only you can tell me,” Anna began. “I recently sailed to Acre, on a Venetian ship. The captain was Giuliano Dandolo….” She saw the shock in Eudoxia’s face, the sudden leap of pain.
“Giuliano?” Eudoxia said, no more than a breath between her lips.
“Can you tell me about his mother?” Anna asked. “The truth. I will tell him only if you give me permission to. He suffers bitterly, believing that she left him willingly, not loving or wanting him.”
Eudoxia put a frail, blue-veined hand up to her cheek, fingers still slender. “Maddalena ran away with Giovanni Dandolo,” she said quietly. “They were married in Sicily. Our father followed her, found her, and took her away by force. He brought her back to Nicea. He married her to the man he had chosen for her in the first place.”
“But her marriage to Dandolo …” Anna protested.
“Father had it annulled. He did not know that Maddalena was already with child.”
Eudoxia was pale; tears welled in her eyes. Anna leaned over with a soft muslin and wiped them gently. “Giuliano?” she asked.
“Her husband accepted the situation to begin with. He took Maddalena to live some distance away. However, when the baby was born, and was a boy, he became jealous. He was brutal, not only to Maddalena, but he threatened the child also. At first it was only in little ways, and Maddalena thought he would get over it.” Her voice was strained with old grief, sharp again as when it was new. “But Maddalena’s husband knew she still loved the boy’s father, and every time he looked at the child, it was a reminder, another twist to the knife of his jealousy. His violence increased. Giuliano began to have accidents. Twice the servants rescued him only just in time from being seriously injured, perhaps killed.”
Anna could imagine it only