Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [5]
“There’s plenty of money in this district,” Simonis observed with a hint of disapproval.
“More important, they’ll have their own physician already,” Leo replied.
Now they were among the perfumers’ shops and there were rather more women than in the other areas, many of them clearly wealthy. As custom required, they wore tunics and dalmaticas from the neck almost to the ground, and their hair was concealed by headdress and veil. One woman walked past them, smiling, and Anna noticed that she had darkened her brows very delicately, and perhaps her lashes. Certainly there was red clay on her lips to make them look so vivid.
Anna heard her laughter as she met a friend, and together they tried one perfume after another. Their embroidered and brocaded silks stirred in the breeze like flower petals. She envied their lightheartedness.
She would have to find more ordinary women, and male patients, too, or she would never learn why Justinian had been a favorite with the emperor’s court one day and an exile the next, fortunate to have his life. What had happened? What must Anna do to gain justice for him?
The following day, by mutual agreement, they left the Mese and its immediate surroundings and searched farther into the side streets, in little shops, and in the residential districts north of center, almost under the giant arches of the Aqueduct of Valens, catching occasional glimpses of the light on the water of the Golden Horn beyond.
They were on a narrow street, barely wide enough for two donkeys to pass each other, when they came to a flight of steps up to the left. Thinking the height might give them a better sense of their bearings, they began to climb. The passage turned one way, then the other. Anna nearly stumbled over the rubble on the steps.
Without any warning, the path ended abruptly and they were in a small courtyard. Anna was stunned by what lay around her. All the walls were damaged, some by holes where pieces had fallen out, others by the black stains of fire. The broken mosaic floor was scattered with stones and chips of tile, and the doorways were choked with weeds. The single tower left standing was pitted and dark with the grime of smoke. She heard Simonis stifle a sob, and Leo stood silent, his face pale.
Suddenly the terrible invasion of 1204 was real, as if it had been only a few years ago, not more than half a century. Other things they had seen made sense now, the streets where houses were still derelict, weed-strewn and rotting, the occasional broken wharves she had seen from above, the poverty in what had seemed to her first superficial look to be the richest city in the world. The people had been back for over a decade, but the wounds of conquest and exile were still raw underneath.
Anna turned away, imagined terror gripping her and making her body cold even in the sharp spring sunlight, sheltered here from the wind, where it should have been hot.
By the end of the week, they had found a house in a comfortable residential area on a slope to the north of Mese Street, between the two great walls. From several of the windows Anna could see the light on the Golden Horn, a glimpse of blue between the rooftops that gave her a moment’s wild illusion of endlessness, almost as if she could fly.
It was a small house, but in good repair. The tiled floors were beautiful and she particularly liked the courtyard with its simple mosaic and the vines that climbed onto the roof.
Simonis was satisfied with the kitchen, although she made a few disparaging remarks about its size, but Anna could see by the way she poked into every corner and touched the furniture with its marble surfaces, the deep basin and the heavy table, that she liked it. There was a small room for storage of grains and vegetables, racks and drawers for spices, and, like all the rest of the better parts of the city, access to plenty of clean water, even if it was a little salty.