Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [197]
“What is it you expect me to confess?” she asked, and he heard the bitterness in her voice. Anastasius was right. Constantine looked around the room. “Where is the icon?” he asked. Theodosia would know which one he meant; there was only one icon that had passed between them, his gift to mark her absolution and return to the Church.
“In my private apartments,” she replied.
“Does it help your faith to look at her and remember her sublime trust in God’s will?” he asked. “‘Be it unto me according to thy word,’” he quoted Mary’s answer when Gabriel had told her she would be the Mother of Christ.
The silence was harsh between them. “Confession and penitence can heal all mortal sin,” he said gently. “That is the Atonement of Christ.”
She faced him. “Believe what you wish to, Bishop, if it comforts you. I no longer have that certainty. Perhaps one day I may regain it, but there is nothing you can do for me.”
He was annoyed. She had no right to speak to him in such a way, as if the sacrament of the Church were ineffectual.
“If you accepted a penance,” he said firmly, “such as parting from Leonicus for a space, and devoting yourself to caring for the sick, then—”
“I do not need a penance, Bishop,” she cut off his words. “You have already absolved me from any error I may have committed. If my faith is less than it should be, that is my loss. Now please leave, before Leonicus returns. I do not wish him to think that I have been confiding in you.”
“Do you need human love so much that you would forfeit divine love to keep even the semblance of it?” he asked with a terrible pity.
“I can love a human being, Bishop,” Theodosia said fiercely. “I cannot love a principle men adhere to when it suits them. What you preach is a set of myths and ordinances, rules that move with your own convenience. Leonicus is a human man, not perfect, maybe, as you say, not even loyal, but real. He speaks to me, answers me, smiles to see me, even needs me at times.”
He bowed to the inevitable. “You will change your mind one day, Theodosia. The Church will be here, and willing to forgive.”
“Please leave,” she said softly. “You don’t love God any more than I do. You love your office, your robes, your authority, your safety from having to think for yourself or from facing the fact that you are alone, and you mean nothing—just like the rest of us.”
Constantine stared at her, shuddering in her despair as if it were cold water lapping around his feet, ice cold as it crept up to his knees, his thighs, the mutilation where his organs should have been. Was it true of him also, that it was the Church he loved, not God? The order, the authority, the illusion of power, and not the passionate, exquisite, everlasting love of God?
He refused to think of it, thrusting it out of his mind. He turned on his heel and strode out.
“I offered it to her,” he told Anastasius later. “But she would not accept any penance at all. But I had to try.” He looked at Anastasius, searching for the respect that should have been in his eyes, the acknowledgment of patience and honor. He saw only contempt, as if he were making excuses. It appalled him how much that hurt.
“Your arrogance is blasphemous!” Constantine cried out in sudden, overwhelming outrage. “You have no humility. You are quick to suggest penance for Theodosia, but your own sins go unconfessed. Come back to me when you can do so on your knees!”
White-faced, Anastasius walked away, leaving the bishop glaring at his back, still wanting to say more but lost for words hard enough, sharp enough, to wound the heart.
The pain of Anna’s disillusion was deep. She had once seen so much that was good in Constantine, perhaps because she needed to. Now the ordinances of the Church were closed to her because she had not the belief to trust them. How could she? In offering