Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [192]
After the man had gone, Palombara remained alone in the great room, watching the afternoon sun sink over the ferries and water taxies and the distant business of the harbor. Rome saw Constantinople’s tolerance of ideas as a moral laxity, its patience with even the most ridiculous or abstruse idea, rather than suppression of it, to be a weakness. They did not see that blind obedience eventually ended in the suffocation of thought.
Palombara did not want to return to Rome and work at some timeserving job shuffling papers, delivering messages, playing at the politics of office. He faced the window, and the light came in on his face. He closed his eyes and felt its warmth on his eyelids.
The darkness was closing in, but he was not yet ready to give up. If Charles of Anjou landed here, Palombara might save something from the wreckage. Definitely he could not simply walk away.
He found the words quite clear in his mind. “Please, dear Lord, do not let all this be destroyed. Please do not let us do that to them—or to ourselves.”
He stood silent for a moment.
“Amen,” he added.
Seventy-eight
GIULIANO DANDOLO RETURNED TO VENICE WITH A SHIP filled with gold from all over Europe. In England, Spain, France, and the Holy Roman Empire, men were preparing for a great crusade. Some of the ships were built already. The shipyards worked night and day. Charles of Anjou had paid his share of the contract; he would receive what he had ordered.
Nevertheless, Giuliano was not happy as he stood on the balcony and stared at the splendor of the dying sun over the Adriatic.
The doge had told him that Venice had abrogated the treaty it had made with Byzantium. It had lasted just two years. Giuliano had had nothing to do with it, neither its creation nor its destruction, yet he felt racked with shame for the betrayal of it.
He stared at the light on the water, watching it change. The translucency of it, the moving shadows, were so subtle that one nameless tone vanished into another. It was like the Bosphorus.
What would happen to Constantinople when the crusaders landed?
The whole issue of fighting over faith was absurd. How far from the teachings of Christ were all these quarrels as to who had power or rights over what. He remembered the conversations he had had with Anastasius at sea and in that desolate site that might, or might not, have been Golgotha.
The thought of Anastasius cut to the heart of his pain. How would the crusaders treat him? How could he protect himself? The thought of it was too terrible to allow into Giuliano’s mind. It was the whole city that mattered, and all the lands around it, but in the end, as perhaps with everyone, it all came down to those you knew, the faces, the voices, the people you broke bread with and who trusted you.
The shadows were stronger. The light was fading rapidly.
Seventy-nine
ANNA HAD BEEN CALLED YET AGAIN TO THE HOUSE OF Joanna Strabomytes, even though the servants did not know if there was money left to pay her. It did not matter. Payment was not part of Anna’s decision to come. She was here not to prolong her suffering, only to ease the pain of her letting go.
Joanna was wasted by disease so that she looked far more than her forty-odd years, and now she had little time left. The draft Anna had given her had afforded an hour or so of peace, and she was no longer troubled by needless pain of body or the torment of mind that twisted inside her. She had said little about it. It had wounded her so deeply, it had robbed her of words, other than the same question over and over—couldn’t her husband have waited?
Leonicus had left Joanna as she was dying, because he was in love with Theodosia, whose own husband had so cruelly abandoned her. Leonicus would not wait until he was free; he wished his own happiness now, this week, this month. Or perhaps Theodosia wanted it, and he had not had the courage or the honor to