Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [43]
He was startled. It was not what he had expected her to say.
She was staring at him, searching his eyes. Then she laughed, a full-throated, rich sound of pulsing life. “Ah, I see! You don’t hear anyone’s voice at all—do you—only silence. Eternal silence. That is Rome’s secret—there is no one there except yourselves!”
He looked at the intelligence and the victory in her face. She had seen the emptiness inside him.
He stood still facing her while the departing people swirled around them. He could sense her pain, like the touch of fire. He could even empathize with her, but in the end the union was going to happen, with or without Zoe Chrysaphes’s agreement. All this unique glory of the eye, the ear, and, above all, the mind could be destroyed by the ignorant, if the crusader armies stormed through here yet again.
Knowing her might give him an advantage it would be wise not to let Vicenze know about.
In the weeks that followed, Palombara pursued his interest in Zoe Chrysaphes discreetly, listening for her name rather than raising it himself, collecting many facts about her once powerful family. Her only child, Helena, who had married into the ancient imperial house of Comnenos, had been recently widowed by murder.
It was rumored that Zoe had been mistress to many men, possibly Michael Palaeologus himself. Palombara was inclined to believe it. Even now there was a sensuality about her, a savagery and a life force that made other women seem tame.
For a moment, he regretted that he was a papal legate, abroad where he dared not slip the traces. Vicenze was always watching; and anyway, Zoe would not entertain lovers simply for the pleasure of it. Physical passion with her would have been a good battle, one worth the fighting, win or lose. It would always have been of the mind as well, even if rarely of the heart.
It was up to him to bring about the next encounter, which he did by hunting along Mese Street for an unusual gift for her. He wanted something individual that would earn her curiosity. Then he could visit her, ostensibly to seek her advice. He knew enough about her now to make that credible.
He was shown into her magnificent room, which overlooked the city and the Bosphorus beyond. It was like stepping back into the old city, before the sack: its glory fading only a little, its pride still secure. There were tapestries on the walls, rich and dark. Their colors were subdued by the centuries but not worn dim, only muted in places where the light had softened their tones. The floor was marble, smoothed by the passage of generations of feet. The ceiling in places was inlaid with gold. On one wall hung a gold cross nearly two feet long, the figure on it so exquisitely crafted that it seemed about to twist in a last agony.
Zoe wore a tunic of amber color under a darker, more vibrant dalmatica, and it was fastened with a gold pin set with garnets. She looked amused, as if she had known he would come, but perhaps not so soon.
There was another person present, about Zoe’s height but dressed in a plain tunic and dark blue dalmatica. He stood nearer the corner of the room, occupied with packing away powders into little boxes. Palombara could smell the rich aroma of them: some sort of crushed herbs.
Zoe ignored the other person, so Palombara did also.
“I found a small gift I hope will interest you,” he said, holding out what he had brought, wrapped in red silk. It fitted neatly into the palm of his lean, outstretched hand.
She looked at it, her golden eyes curious, as yet unimpressed. “Why?” she asked.
“Because from you I can learn more of the soul of Byzantium than from anyone else,” he replied with total honesty. “And I wish to have that knowledge, rather than my fellow legate, Vicenze.” He allowed himself to smile.
A flash of amusement lighting her expression, she then opened the silk and took out a piece of amber the size of a small bird’s egg. Inside it a spider was