Sheen on the Silk - Anne Perry [97]
Emperor! Justinian? He must have misunderstood. “But he loved the Church,” she insisted. “He would have fought for it!”
“Oh yes,” he agreed. “He hungered to belong to it, to preserve its place, its rituals, its beauty, and above all its identity.”
A new idea flared up in her mind. “Enough to die for it?”
“I cannot answer that,” John replied. “No man knows what he will die for until the moment comes. Do you know what you would die for, Anastasius?”
She was taken aback. She had no answer.
He smiled. “What do you want of God? And what do you believe He wants of you? I asked Justinian that, and he did not answer me. I think he did not yet know what he believed.”
“You said he loved the Church,” she said softly. “Why the Orthodox, and not the Roman? They have beauty, too, and faith, and ritual. What did he believe in that he was willing to pay so much to keep it?”
“We love a familiar path,” John said simply. “None of us like to be told what to think, what to do, by a stranger imposing his will from another land in another tongue.”
“Is that all?”
“It is a great deal,” he said with a small, weary smile. “There are not many certainties in life, not much that does not change, wither, deceive, or disappoint at some time or other. The sanctities of the Church are the only things I know of. Are not these things worth living or dying for?”
“Yes,” she said immediately. “Did he find that … at least that hope?”
“I don’t know,” he answered, his voice sad and very lonely. “But I miss him.” He looked tired, the strength gone from his voice, the sunken eye sockets more deeply shadowed.
“I am doing what I can to prove he was wrongly accused,” she said impulsively. “If I succeed, they will have to pardon him and he will return.”
“A cousin of a cousin?” He smiled at her.
“And a friend,” she added. “I don’t wish to tire you.” She rose, frightened now in case she was tempted into betraying herself irreparably.
He lifted his hand in the old blessing. “May God light your path in the darkness, and comfort your aloneness in the cold of the night, Anna Lascaris.”
The heat washed up her in a wave like fire, yet it was sweet, in spite of all the fear there should have been. He knew her; he had used her own name. For a long, terrible, wonderful moment, she was herself.
She leaned forward and touched his hand softly, a totally feminine gesture. Then she turned and walked to the door. The instant she was beyond it, she would resume her role.
When she had made the long journey back to Constantinople, saying nothing but the few civil words necessary to Vicenze, she called upon Zoe.
Anna stood in the same room as always, with its great golden cross on the wall and its magnificent view, and faced Zoe with a smile, tasting the moment.
“Were you able to save the good Cyril?” Zoe asked, her topaz eyes hard and too bright to hide her eagerness or the strange, powerful emotions warring inside her.
“Yes indeed,” she replied levelly. “He may live for many years yet.”
There was a flicker in Zoe’s eyes. “And the legate Vicenze—did he succeed in his purpose?”
Anna raised her eyebrows. “His purpose?”
“He did not go merely to accompany you!” Zoe said, keeping the temper out of her voice with difficulty.
“Oh, he had an audience with Cyril,” Anna replied quite casually. “Of course I was not present. Poor Cyril was taken ill after that, and all my attention was bent on treating him.”
Zoe’s anger burned behind her glittering gaze. For the first time, she had been balked by Anna. Suddenly they met as equals.
Anna smiled. “That was when I gave Cyril the herbs that you so thoughtfully provided.”
Zoe took a deep breath and let it out slowly. In that moment something changed in her, a knowledge of having been confounded. “And they helped?” she asked, knowing the answer already.
“Not at first,” Anna told her. “In fact, the effect