Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [73]
They spoke politely of trivial matters until finally Zoe mentioned that she had been badly burned in an accident. She told how Anna had healed her, holding out her arm to display the unblemished skin for Eirene’s appreciation. She also looked at Helena with a flash of amusement that was very easy for Anna to read.
From then on, the conversation was less comfortable. Helena was sharp, walking across the room with an exaggeratedly graceful movement as if to display her youth in front of the two older women. She did not even glance at Demetrios, but she might as well have stared at him. It was for his attention; she clearly did not care in the least what Anna thought of her. She passed by her as if she barely existed.
Suddenly, Anna found the muted blues of her own tunic and the necessity of her eunuch mannerisms more than usually imprisoning. She felt as if she stood on the edge of the room like a cipher, while the exchanges, spoken and unspoken, passed in front of her. Did all eunuchs feel like this? Did a woman as unlovely as Eirene Vatatzes feel a little of the same thing?
She saw Zoe looking at her with bright, clever eyes. Too much understanding.
The conversation turned to religion, as sooner or later every conversation in Byzantium did. Helena had no particular faith, which was clear from her manner as much as her words. She was beautiful, physically very immediate, but there was no soul in her. Anna could see that, but was it invisible to a man?
She listened to them, averting her eyes slightly so as not to be noticed.
“Very tedious,” Zoe said with a shrug. “But it all comes to money, in the end.” She was looking at Eirene.
Helena looked from her mother to Eirene and back again. “With Bessarion, it was the faith, pure and simple,” she contradicted.
Eirene’s face flickered with impatience, but she kept it in check. “To organize a faith and keep it alive you need a Church, and to keep a Church you need money, my dear.” The words were gentle, even affectionate, but there was a condescension in them of the highly intelligent to the intellectually shallow. “And to defend a city we need both faith and armaments. Since the Venetians stole our relics we have far fewer pilgrims, even since our return in 1262. And most of the silk trade has gone to Arabia, Egypt, and Venice. Trade may be tedious to you, and perhaps to many of those who buy the artifacts, the games, and the fabrics. Perhaps you find blood messy, it smells ugly, it soils the linen, it attracts flies—but try living without it.”
Helena wrinkled her nose in slight revulsion at the simile, but she did not dare argue.
Amusement flashed in Zoe’s eyes. “Eirene understands finances better than most men do,” she observed, not entirely with kindness. “In fact, I have sometimes wondered if Theodorus Doukas really runs the Treasury, or if it is you, most discreetly, of course.”
Eirene smiled, a faint flush in her sallow cheeks. Anna had the sudden thought that there was much truth in Zoe’s remark, and the fact that she perceived it was not entirely displeasing to Eirene.
Conspicuously, Helena said nothing.
Anna became aware that Zoe was watching her, half smiling.
“Do we bore you with our talk of doctrine and politics?” Zoe asked her. “Perhaps we should ask Demetrios for some tales of his Varangian Guard? Colorful men, from all sorts of barbarous places. Lands where the sun shines at midnight in the summer, and it is dark all winter long.”
“One or two of them,” Demetrios agreed. “Others are from Kiev, or Bulgaria, or the principalities of the Danube, or the Rhine.”
Zoe shrugged. “You see?”
Anna felt herself blushing. She had not been listening. “I was thinking,” she lied. “Realizing how much I still have to learn of politics.”
“Well, if you’ve learned that, I suppose you have achieved something,” Helena said waspishly.
Zoe did not hide her laughter, but there was a crackle of ice in her voice when she turned to Helena. “Your tongue is sharper than your mind, my dear,” she said softly.