Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [36]
It was hard for Anna to listen and control her sense of loss. The bitter loneliness inside her was so vast, it threatened to tear through her skin.
Antoninus had been a soldier. It was far more difficult for her to learn more of him. The few soldiers she treated spoke well of him, but he had been their senior in rank, and all they knew was repute and hearsay. He was strict and he was unquestionably brave. He enjoyed wine and a good joke—not the sort of man Bessarion would have liked.
But Justinian would. It made no sense, no pattern.
She sought the only person she trusted—Bishop Constantine. He had helped Justinian, even at risk to his own safety.
He welcomed her into a smaller room in his house than the warm, ocher one with the marvelous icons. This had cooler earth tones and looked down at a courtyard. The murals were pastoral, with muted colors. The floor was green-tiled, and there was a table set for dining and two chairs beside it. At his insistence, she sat in one of them to leave sufficient space for him to walk gently back and forth, deep in thought.
“You ask about Bessarion,” he said, absentmindedly smoothing his fingers over the embroidered silk of his dalmatica. “He was a good man, but perhaps lacking the fire to stir men’s souls. He weighed, he measured, he judged. How can a man be at once so passionate of mind and so indecisive?”
“Was he a coward?” she asked quietly.
A look of sadness came across Constantine’s face. It was several moments before he spoke again. “I presumed he was simply cautious.” He crossed himself. “God forgive them all. They wished for so much, and all to save the true Church from the dominion of Rome, and the pollution of the faith that will bring.”
She echoed his sign of the cross. She wanted more than anything else to lay the burden of her own guilt at God’s feet and seek His absolution. She remembered her dead husband, Eustathius, with a coldness that still struck: the quarrel, the isolation, the blood, and then the never-ending grief. She would never carry another child. She was fortunate to have healed without crippling. She ached to tell Constantine, to spread all her guilt before him and be cleansed, whatever penance was necessary. But the confession of her imposture would rob her of any chance to help Justinian. There was no punishment fixed for such an offense, it would fall under other laws, but it would be harsh. No one liked to be made a fool of.
Her thoughts were interrupted by a knock on the door. A young priest came in, white-faced and struggling to control his emotion.
“What is it?” Constantine said. “Are you ill? Anastasius is a physician.” He gestured briefly to include Anna.
The priest waved a thin hand. “I am well enough. No physician can heal what ails us all. The envoys are back from Lyons. It was a complete capitulation! They gave up everything! Appeals to the pope, money, the filioque clause.” Tears glistened in his eyes.
Constantine stared at the priest, his face white with horror. Then slowly the blood suffused his skin. “Cowards!” he snarled between his teeth. “What did they bring back with them—thirty pieces of silver?”
“Safety from the crusading armies when they pass this way on their path to Jerusalem,” the priest said wretchedly, his voice quavering.
Anna knew this was a higher reward than perhaps this young priest understood. With a chill passing through her, she remembered Zoe Chrysaphes and the terror that so clearly still haunted her when she felt the flame sear her skin, seventy years afterward.
Constantine was watching her. “They have no faith!” he snapped, his lips drawn back in contempt. “Do you know what happened when we were besieged by barbarians, but kept our faith with the Holy Virgin, and carried