Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [187]
“To protect the boy, Maddalena took him and fled,” Eudoxia continued. “She came to me. I was married then, and happy enough. My husband bored me.” She flinched at the admission. “He was wealthy, and gave me a good life, but he could not give me children. In fact, he could not …” She left the sentence unfinished.
Anna smiled and touched the thin hand on top of the nun’s gown. “Did you help Maddalena?”
“I did as she asked, which was that I should rear the child as my own. My husband agreed. I think at first he was quite happy to do it. I took Giuliano, and gave Maddalena what support I could.” She blinked, but not fast enough to hold the tears. “I loved the boy….”
“Go on,” Anna whispered.
“All was well, until Giuliano was five. My husband became possessive, and even more … dogmatic, more boring. I …” She let out her breath in a sigh. “I was beautiful when I was younger, like Maddalena. We were so alike people sometimes mistook one of us for the other….”
Anna waited.
“I was lonely, both in mind and in body,” Eudoxia went on. “I took a lover—in fact, more than one. I behaved badly. My husband accused me of being a common whore, and said that he had witnesses to prove it.” She gave a deep, shuddering sigh. “Maddalena took the blame. She insisted it was she, and not I, who had been with the man. She did it for Giuliano’s sake—I know that—not mine. I could care for the boy, she couldn’t.”
Anna found she could barely swallow the pain choking her throat.
“Maddalena was found guilty, and suffered the penalty for being a whore. She died not long afterward, beaten and destitute. I think by then she wanted to die. She never stopped loving Giovanni Dandolo, and there was nothing else left for her.”
Eudoxia’s voice was choked with tears. “My husband knew it was I who had been in the tavern that night, and he knew why Maddalena had lied for me. He forced me to grant him a divorce, and to take the nun’s veil. But he refused to take Giuliano. He would put him on the street, or sell him to some dealer in children, for God knows what use.” She shivered. “I took him myself. I ran away from Nicea and begged and stole and prostituted my way to Venice with him. There I gave him to his father. A Dandolo, he wasn’t difficult to find. I thought of staying in Venice, even of dying there. But I hadn’t the courage. There was something in me which needed a better atonement than that. I came back and took the veil, as I had promised my husband I would. I have been here nearly forty years. Perhaps I have made my peace.”
Anna nodded, the tears wet on her own face.
“A human mistake, a loneliness and a hunger so easy to understand. Of course you have made your peace. Now may I bring Giuliano so you can tell him?”
“Please—please do!” Eudoxia cried. “I … I did not even know if he was still alive. Tell me, is he a good man, a happy man?”
“He is very good,” Anna replied. “And this will give him a greater gift of happiness than anything else possible.”
“Thank you.” Eudoxia sighed. “Don’t bother with the draft for sleep. I shan’t need it.”
Seventy-four
GIULIANO HAD GIVEN THE ICON TO THE POPE. HE WOULD have liked to give it back to Michael, but with reluctance he understood why that could not be. If he did, it would only necessitate Michael packing it up and sending it again. It could be lost at sea, especially at this time of year.
So when the pope’s envoy had approached him in Venice, he had produced the icon immediately and presented it to the man to take with him to Rome, a gift from the Venetian Republic, which had rescued it from pirates. No one believed that, but it did not matter. They split a good bottle of Venetian wine, laughed hard, and the envoy left with the icon, well guarded by a number of soldiers.
Giuliano left for Constantinople and arrived six weeks later, sailing up the Sea of Marmara against a heavy wind and glad to dock at last in the Golden Horn. The familiar outline of the great lighthouse, the warm red of the Hagia Sophia, were strangely pleasing to his mind,