Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [194]
“Yes?” he asked, looking up at Nicephoras. Reading bad news in the man’s face, he tensed, a tightening of expression that was barely perceptible to Anna.
Briefly, Nicephoras told the emperor that Pope Nicholas III was dead. There was no need to add that there was now nothing to prevent Charles of Anjou from sacking Constantinople as he wanted to and in time conquering what was left of the Byzantine Empire.
Michael sat perfectly still, absorbing the shock. Anna saw the exhaustion in him, the fight not to crumple under the blow. He had preserved his people in the city for eighteen long, difficult years, and now she was seeing clearly at what cost it had been to himself.
Was it surprising if he felt beaten, even by fate, now that yet another pope was dead? Anna felt it, too, a gathering of dread. She was afraid of a future without him.
Constantine was ill again and sent for Anna. She took the herbs she thought she would need and followed his servant along the busy street and finally up the steps into Constantine’s increasingly handsome house. Every time she went there, there was some new ornament or embellishment, always the gift of a grateful petitioner that the bishop explained he could not refuse.
She found him lying in his bed, his face pale. From the position of his heavy body, he was apparently in some discomfort. She considered it was probably caused largely by anxiety, a stomach too clenched with emotion to digest his food.
“I must be well in two weeks’ time,” he told her with some concern, his eyes narrowed, his lips tight.
“I will do all I can,” she promised. “You would greatly improve your health if you were to rest more.”
“Rest!” His body flinched as if she had hurt him. “Every hour is precious. Do you not know the peril we are in?”
“I know, but your health still demands that you rest. What is happening in two weeks’ time?”
He smiled. “I am going to perform the marriage ceremony for Leonicus Strabomytes and Theodosia. It will be in the Hagia Sophia—a truly splendid occasion. An example to the people of the blessing and mercy of God. It will uplift everyone and fire a new piety in them.”
Anna assumed she must have misunderstood. “Theodosia Skleros?”
He looked at her steadily. “Does your largeness of heart not extend to her, Anastasius? I have given Theodosia a special icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a token of her absolution.”
Anna was amazed. “Theodosia and Leonicus committed real sin, and they did it knowingly, and with choice. They deliberately took what was not theirs, and they kept it. They haven’t repented a jot!” She said so to him harshly, her words tearing out of her all the loneliness and her own weight of guilt that she had carried through the years, knowing the fault was still in her. “It is a mockery of those who are truly sorry, and have paid long and bitterly.”
“I asked no payment of her, except humility and obedience to the Church,” he retorted. “You have sins also, Anastasius. It ill becomes you to judge when you yourself have neither confessed nor repented. I don’t know what your sins are, but they are heavy and deep. I know that, because I see it in your eyes. I know you ache to confess and find absolution, but your pride holds you prisoner, and you cling to it rather than to the Church.”
She said nothing, almost breathless with the accuracy of his blow, deep as the bone, shocking her with pain.
He sat up, his hand on her wrist, his face close to hers. “You are in sin, Anastasius. Come to me and confess, in humility, and I will give you pardon.”
She was frozen inside, as if he had in some profound way assaulted her. She could only