The Sheen of the Silk

chapter 37-39

Thirty-seven

GIULIANO DANDOLO ENJOYED BEING BACK IN CONSTANTINOPLE. The vitality of the city excited him; the tolerance and width of vision was like the wind off a great ocean. It called to him more and more powerfully each time he saw it.

Now he was here at Contarini's orders to observe for himself, rather than by rumor, whether Byzantium was finally keeping the rules of the union with Rome or, as before, paying them lip service while going its own way.

What he had seen so far should have pleased him for the prospects of a new crusade passing this way and storming the city and the profit that that would mean for Venice. But Giuliano could not rejoice in it. He learned of the strength of the resistance with a sense of foreboding. Not only had the leaders of opposition to the union been blinded, mutilated, or banished; many had fled to separatist Byzantine states. The prisons were crowded, and most embarrassing to Michael, many of his immediate relatives were actively engaged in plotting against him. It seemed he was attacked at the front and beset on all sides.

The Blachernae Palace was beautiful, even if it was poor compared with the glories of Venice. There were still the marks of fire and pillage all through it, and it had none of the sheer grace of pale marble and the endless reflections of light that he was used to.

But when Giuliano was face-to-face with Michael, he saw a man of remarkable composure. There was a weariness in the emperor's face, but nothing of fear. He received Giuliano with courtesy and even a shadow of wit. Against his will, Giuliano felt both a pity and an admiration for him. Whatever Michael lacked, it was not courage.

"And of course there is the East," a eunuch told Giuliano as he was conducted away after his audience was over. The eunuch's name was Nicephoras.

Giuliano dragged his mind back to the issues as they walked side by side along a vaulted corridor paved with mosaics.

"Everything is changing all the time," Nicephoras added, choosing his words carefully. "It appears at the moment as if the greatest threat to us is from the West, the next crusade, but in truth I think we have as much, if not more, to fear from the East. It is simply that the West will be first, if we do not find some accommodation with Rome, however much we hate it. But there is no accommodation to be found with the East." He looked at Giuliano. "There is much balancing to be done, and it is hard to know which way to turn first."

Giuliano wanted to say something intelligent and sympathetic, without betraying Venice or sounding patronizing, but nothing whatever came to him. "I begin to feel as if Venetian politics are relatively simple," he said quietly. "This is like taking out a boat that is leaking in ten different places."

"A good analogy," Nicephoras agreed with appreciation. "But we are good at it. We have had much practice."

Giuliano was still on the steps, leaving the palace, when he came to the bottom at the same time as another eunuch, apparently also leaving. This person was considerably smaller, several inches shorter than Giuliano himself, and more delicate of appearance. When he turned there was a flash of recognition in his dark gray eyes, and Giuliano remembered him from the Hagia Sophia. This was the same man who had seen him clean Enrico Dandolo's tomb and whose face had shown such grief and such compassion.

"Good morning," Giuliano said quickly, then wondered if perhaps he had been precipitate in speaking to him, that it would be taken as overfamiliarity. "Giuliano Dandolo, ambassador from the doge of Venice," he introduced himself.

The eunuch smiled. His face was effeminate, but certainly not without character and again the burning intelligence Giuliano thought he had seen in the Hagia Sophia. "Anastasius Zarides," the eunuch said. "Sometime physician to Emperor Michael Palaeologus."

Giuliano was surprised. He had not placed the man as a physician. But it only reminded him how alien Byzantium was. He hastened to say something else. "I live in the Venetian Quarter." He made a gesture roughly in the direction of the shore. "But I am beginning to think perhaps that restricts me from knowing the city better." He stopped, gazing across the rooftops. The Golden Horn was spread below them, shining in the morning sun, dotted with boats from every corner of the Mediterranean. The air was warm, and Giuliano could imagine he smelled the odors of salt and spice drifting up from the harbor front.

Anastasius followed his gaze. "If I could choose, I would live where I could see the sun rise over the Bosphorus, and that requires some height. Such places are expensive." He laughed with gentle self-mockery. "I would have to save the life of the richest man in Byzantium in order to afford that, and fortunately for him, if less so for me, he is in excellent health."

Giuliano regarded him with amusement. "And if he were ill, would he send for you?" he asked.

Anastasius shrugged. "Not yet, but by the time he is ill, maybe." He was joking, lightly.

"In the meantime, healing merely the emperor, where do you live?" Giuliano kept up the easy tone.

Anastasius pointed down the hill. "Over there, beyond those trees. I still have a good view, although only to the north. But there is an excellent place, my favorite in the city, a hundred yards away, up on that hill, where you can see in almost a full circle. And it is quiet. Very few other people seem to go there. Perhaps I am the only one with time to stand and stare."

Giuliano had a sudden thought that perhaps what he really meant was to stand and dream, but self-consciousness had prevented him from saying so.

"Were you born here?" he asked quickly.

Anastasius looked surprised. "No. My parents were part of the exile. I was born in Thessalonica, and I grew up in Nicea. But this is our ancestral home, the heart of our culture, and I suppose of our faith as well."

Giuliano felt stupid. Of course he was born somewhere else. He had forgotten that almost everyone he spoke to in this city would have been born during the exile and was therefore from somewhere else. Even his own mother had been.

"My mother was born in Nicea," he said aloud, then instantly wondered why. He looked away, keeping his face in profile to Anastasius.

As if sensing something of a retreat, Anastasius changed the subject. "They say that some of Venice is like Constantinople. Is that true?"

"Some of it, yes," he replied. "Especially where there are mosaics. One in particular I like, in a church very similar to one here." Suddenly he remembered how many Byzantine works of art had been stolen in the ruin in 1204 and felt his face grow hot with embarrassment. "And the money exchanges, of course, and the..." He stopped. The silk trade had once been purely Byzantine; now the art, the weaving, and even the colors were Venetian. "We've learned much from you," he said a little awkwardly.

Anastasius smiled and gave a slight shrug. "Perhaps I shouldn't have asked. I opened the door to an honest answer."

He was startled. It was a response with more grace than he had expected or perhaps deserved. He smiled back. "We are learning, but there is a vitality here, a complexity of thought we may never acquire."

Anastasius inclined his head in acknowledgment, then excused himself with ease, as if they might meet again with the same interest.

Giuliano walked down the steep street lightly. Anastasius had been born during the exile, and judging from his age, his parents must have been also. It had been over seventy years now. That meant, of course, that Giuliano's own mother had been a child of the exile, even if her heritage was pure Byzantine. And so shortly after the pillage of the city, her hatred for Venice must have been very strong. How on earth had she come to marry a Venetian? More than before, now that he had stood in the wind and the sun and spoken so candidly with another lost, different child of the exile, born away from a spiritual home, he was compelled to find out more about the woman whose child he was.

He began to inquire diligently, and the answers led him to many interesting people and eventually to a woman well into her seventies, who had actually fled the invading armies after the fall of the city. She must have been amazingly beautiful in her youth and in her middle years. Even now she had a depth of passion, a flair and individuality that fascinated him. Her name was Zoe Chrysaphes.

She seemed to be willing to talk about the city, its history, its legends, and its people. The room where she received Giuliano overlooked a vast panorama of the roofs of lesser houses. Standing beside him at the window, she told him of the traders who came from Alexandria and a great river of Egypt that wound like a snake into unknown heart of Africa.

And from the Holy Land," she went on, extending her arm, jeweled fingers pointing below, down near the sea's edge, "Persians and Saracens, and remnants of the crusader armies of the past, ancient kings of Jerusalem, and Arabs from the desert."

"Have you been there, to the Holy Land?" Giuliano asked impulsively.

She was amused. Her golden eyes flashed at some memory she would not share. "I have never been far from Byzantium. It is my heart and mind, the roots from which I live. In the exile my family went first to Nicea, then east to Trebizund, and Georgia and the shores of the Black Sea. Once, for a while, farther still to Samarkand. Always I looked to come home again."

He was stabbed with the old guilt of being Venetian and his people's part in carrying the crusader army here. It seemed foolish to ask why Zoe had hungered to come home, even though she could hardly know it after so many years and none of her family were left. He must instead ask her the questions that mattered. He might not have the opportunity again, and the hunger ate inside him with a growing need. "You know all the old families," he said a little abruptly. "Did you know of Theodoulos Agallon?"

She stood quite still. "I've heard of him. He has been dead many years now." She smiled. "If you want to know more, I'm sure it can be learned."

He turned away so she would not read the vulnerability in his eyes. "My mother's name was Agallon. I should be interested to know if there was a connection."

"Really?" She sounded interested, not inquisitive. "What was her Christian name?"

"Maddalena." Even saying it was painful, as if it revealed something private that could not be recovered again. He swallowed, his throat tight. His mother was probably dead, and if she wasn't, the last thing he wanted was to meet her. Giuliano turned to look at Zoe, searching for a way to change his mind.

She was staring at him, her brilliant tawny-colored eyes almost at a level with his. "I will inquire," she promised. "Discreetly, of course. An old story, something I heard and can't remember where." She smiled. "It may take me a little while, but it would be interesting. We are linked in love and hate, your city and mine." For a moment her expression was unreadable, as if she contained inside her some other creature, unknowable, driven by pain. Then it was gone again, and she was smiling at him, still beautiful, still full of laughter and a craving for the taste, the smell, and the texture of life. "Come back in a month, and see what I have discovered."

Thirty-eight

ZOE STOOD ALONE AFTER THE VENETIAN HAD GONE. SHE had liked Giuliano. He was handsome. And he cared intensely; she knew that as vividly as she would feel a touch.

She had to hate him. He was a Dandolo. This could be the best of all the vengeances she hungered for. She must remind herself of all that was worst, most rending of the heart and soul. Deliberately, as if taking a knife to her flesh, she lived it again in her mind to remind herself.

At the end of 1203, the besieging crusaders had sent an insolent message to then emperor Alexios III. It was at the instigation of Enrico Dandolo. It was a threat, and the ringleader of a plot against the emperor, his son-in-law, had incited a riot in the Hagia Sophia. They tore down the great statue of Athena that had once graced the Acropolis of Athens in its golden age.

There was more rioting in the city, attempts in the harbor to set fire to the Venetian fleet. The besiegers must fight or die. Dandolo for the Venetians and Boniface of Montferrat and Baldwin of Flanders and other French knights agreed on the division of spoils when the city was sacked.

In March, the Westerners decided to conquer not only Constantinople, but the entire Byzantine Empire. By mid-April, the city was burning and pillage, robbery, and slaughter raged through the streets.

Houses, churches, and monasteries were robbed of their treasures, chalices for the taking of the sacrament were used to swill the wine of drunkards, icons were used as gaming boards, jewels were gouged out and gold and silver melted down. The monuments of antiquity that had been revered down the centuries were looted and broken, imperial tombs, even that of Constantine the Great, were stripped, and the corpse of Justinian the Lawgiver desecrated. Nuns were raped.

In the Hagia Sophia itself, soldiers smashed the altar and stripped the sanctuary of its silver and gold. Horses and mules were brought in to be loaded with the spoil, and their hooves slid in the blood on the marble floors.

A prostitute danced on the throne of the patriarch and sang obscene songs.

The treasure stolen was said to be worth four hundred thousand silver marks, four times as much as the cost of the entire fleet. The doge of Venice, Enrico Dandolo, personally took fifty thousand marks.

That was not all. The four great gilded bronze horses had been stolen and now adorned the Cathedral of St. Mark in Venice. Enrico Dandolo had chosen the bronze horses. He also took the vial containing drops of the blood of Christ, the icon encased in gold that Constantine the Great had carried with him into battle, a part of the head of John the Baptist, and a nail from the Cross.

Last and perhaps worst, there was the Shroud of Christ.

The loss of all these was far more than sacrilege of holy things, it was an alteration of the character of the whole city, as if its heart had been ripped out.

Pilgrims, travelers, the lifeblood of exchange, commerce, the trade of the world, now no longer came here. They went to Venice or Rome. Constantinople grieved in poverty, like a beggar at the gates of Europe. Zoe stood with her hands clenched till her bones ached and there was blood on her palms. If Giuliano died a thousand times over, it would not be enough to pay for that. There would never be mercy, only blood and more blood.

Thirty-nine

FOR ZOE CHRYSAPHES TO INQUIRE WAS EXCELLENT, BUT it was not all that Giuliano could do. He also looked in the other quarters of the city for people who knew which families had gone where during the long exile. It had to be done in the time he did not need for his duties to Venice. Toward the end of the month Zoe had set for his return, Giuliano visited the hill from which Anastasius had said he could see in every direction.

It was not difficult to find the exact place, and the view was as spectacular as described. It was also sheltered from the west wind, and there was a balm in the air. Vines below him were in flower and sent up a perfume, delicate and sweet. It was some time before he realized it was the softness of the waning light on the sea that reminded him of home. He looked up, narrowing his eyes, and the small, rippled clouds, like the scales of a fish, were the same also, and mares' tails shredding in gossamer to the northeast, fanning the sun's rays into a skeletal hand.

The following evening he returned, and this time Anastasius was there. The physician turned and smiled but did not speak for several minutes, as if the sea spread before them were eloquent enough.

"It is a perfect place," Giuliano said at last. "But perhaps it would be wrong for any one person to possess it."

Anastasius smiled. "I hadn't thought of that. You are right, it should be here for everyone who can see, and no oaf who can't." Then he shook his head. "That's too harsh. I have been dealing with fools all day, and I am short-tempered. I'm sorry."

Giuliano was oddly pleased to find him fallible. He had been a trifle daunting before, although he realized it only now. He found himself smiling. "Did you know a family named Agallon in Nicea?" He asked the question before considering it.

Anastasius thought for a moment. "I remember my father mentioning a name like that. He treated many people."

"He was a physician also?" he asked.

Anastasius looked out across the water. "Yes. He taught me most of what I know."

He had stopped, but Giuliano sensed that there was more, an intimate memory that was so sweet, it was painful to bring it back now when the reality was gone. "Did you learn willingly?" he asked instead.

"Oh yes!" Suddenly Anastasius's face came alive, eyes bright, lips parted. "I loved it. From as far back as I can remember. He had no interest in me when I was born, but as soon as I could speak, he taught me all kinds of things. I remember helping him in the garden," he went on. "At least I imagined I was helping. I expect I was far more of a nuisance, but he never told me so. We used to tend the herbs together, and I learned them all, what they looked like, smelled like, which part to use, root or leaf or flower, how to harvest them and keep them safe and from spoiling."

Giuliano envisioned it, the small boy and his father teaching him, telling him over and over, never losing patience.

"My father taught me, too," he said quickly, memory sharp. "All the islands of Venice, and the waterways, the harbor, where the shipyards were. He took me to see the builders, how they laid the great keels and attached the ribs, then the timbers, and the caulking, how they seated the masts." It was the same thing, a man teaching his child the things he loved, the skills he lived by. He remembered it so clearly, always his father, never his mother.

"He knew every port from Genova to Alexandria," he went on. "And what was good and bad about each."

"Did he take you?" Anastasius asked. "Did you see all those places?"

"Some of them." He remembered the close quarters of the boats, feeling seasick and shut in, then the strangeness and the excitement of Alexandria, the heat and the Arab faces, and language he did not understand. "It was terrifying, and wonderful," he said ruefully. "I think I was petrified with fear more than half the time, but I would rather have died than said so. Where did your father take you?"

"Nowhere much to begin with," Anastasius replied. "Mostly to see old people with congested chests and bad hearts. I remember the first dead one, though."

Giuliano's eyes opened wide. "Dead one! How old were you?"

"About eight. Can't be squeamish about death if you're going to be a physician. My father was gentle, very kind, but on that visit he made me look at what had killed this patient." He stopped.

"And what was it?" Giuliano tried to picture a child with Anastasius's solemn gray eyes and delicate bones, that tender mouth.

Anastasius smiled. "The man was chasing a dog that had stolen his dinner, and he tripped and fell over it. Broke his neck."

"You're making it up!" Giuliano accused.

"I'm not. It was the beginning of a lesson in anatomy. Father showed me all the muscles of the back and the bones of the spine."

Giuliano was startled. "Are you allowed to do that? It was a human body."

"No." Anastasius grinned. "But I never forgot. I was terrified he'd be caught. I drew a picture of everything, so I'd never have to do it again." There was a sudden sadness in his voice.

"Were you the only child?" Giuliano asked aloud.

Anastasius looked momentarily taken aback. "No. I had a brother... have a brother. He is still alive, I believe." He looked disconcerted, annoyed with himself, as if he had not meant to say that. He looked away. "I have not heard from him for some time."

Giuliano had no wish to pry. "Your father must be proud of your skills if you treat the emperor." He meant it as a simple observation, not flattery.

Anastasius relaxed. "He would be." He took a deep breath and let it out slowly. He did not speak for a while, then he turned his back to the sea. "Is Agallon part of your family? Is that why you look for them?"

"Yes." Giuliano had no thought to lie. "My mother was Byzantine." He could see instantly from Anastasius's face that he understood the conflict. "I have made some inquiries. There are people who may be able to tell me more."

Sensing his reluctance, Anastasius said nothing more of it but started to point out some of the landmarks on the dark outline of the opposite shore, beyond which lay Nicea.

Giuliano continued in his quest for hard facts that pointed to the likelihood of a crusade by sea stopping here for provisions and support, rather than going by land, a choice that still allowed for the possibility of passing the city before crossing to Asia and south.

If only Michael could persuade his people to yield to Rome! No crusader would dare attack the sovereign realm of a Catholic emperor! No crusader or pilgrim would gain absolution for that, whatever shrines he visited afterward.

But as Giuliano watched, weighed, and judged, he still felt like a man assessing the chances and profits of war, and he was ill at ease with himself for doing it.

Toward the end of the month, he received a message from Zoe Chrysaphes saying that she had managed to learn some facts about Maddalena Agallon. She was not certain that he would wish to hear them, but if he did, she would be pleased to receive him in two days' time.

Of course he went. Whatever the news was, he was compelled to hear it.

When he arrived at Zoe's house and was admitted by her servants, he was struggling to keep a veneer of composure. She pretended to notice nothing.

"Have you seen more of the city?" she asked conversationally, leading him again toward the magnificent windows. It was early evening, and the light was soft, blurring the harsher lines.

"I have," he answered. "I have taken time to visit many of the places you spoke of. I have seen some views lovely enough to hold me spellbound. But nothing as good as this."

"You flatter me," she said.

"Not you-your city," he corrected with a smile, but his tone allowed that the distinction was minimal.

She turned to look at him. "It is cruel to stretch out the response." She gave a slight shrug. "Some people find spiders beautiful. I don't. The silken thread which traps flies is clever, but distasteful."

He felt his pulse beating so hard, he was surprised she did not see it in his temples. Or perhaps she did.

"Are you certain you wish to hear?" she asked quietly. "You do not have to. I can forget it and tell no one, if you prefer."

His mouth was dry. "I want to hear." In that instant he was not sure if he meant it, but he would be a coward to retreat now.

"The Agallons were an excellent family, with two daughters," she began. "Maddalena, your mother, eloped with a Venetian sea captain, Giovanni Dandolo, your father. It seemed at the time that they were very much in love. But after less than a year, in fact only a matter of months, your mother left him and returned to Nicea, where she married a Byzantine of considerable wealth."

He should not have been surprised; it was what he had expected. Still, to hear it in words so clear in this exquisite room was the end of all denial, all escape into hope.

"I'm sorry," Zoe said quietly. The muted light from the window removed all lines from her face, and she looked as she must have in her youth. "But when Maddalena's new husband discovered that she was already with child, he threw her out. He would not raise another man's son, and a Venetian's at that. He had lost his parents and a brother in the sacking of the city." Her voice cracked, but she faltered for only a moment. "She did not want the responsibility and the burden of a child, so she gave you away. News of it must have reached your father, and he came and found you, and took you with him back to Venice. I wish I could have told you something less cruel, but you would have learned this sooner or later, if you had persisted in searching. Now you can bury it, and not think of it again."

But that was impossible. He was barely aware of thanking her or of struggling through the rest of the evening. He did not know what time it was when he finally excused himself and fumbled his way out into the night.