The Sheen of the Silk

chapter 80-82
Eighty

IT WAS AUTUMN OF 1280, A MONTH AFTER THE WEDDING, before Anna saw Theodosia again. They passed in the street without speaking, and Anna felt strangely snubbed, while being quite aware that it was foolish of her. They had not been friends; they had shared an experience of deep pain in Theodosia's life, and it was easy to understand why she would avoid someone who had seen her at her most vulnerable.

She stood in the street, the wind harsh in her face. Perhaps Constantine was right. Did Anna fail to forgive Theodosia because she could not forgive herself, for Eustathius and the child she had not wanted because it would have been his? It was she who was wrong, not Theodosia. She should go to her and apologize. It would be galling, bitter to swallow, but nothing less would make it right.

She started to walk again, urgently, even up the steepening incline, needing to have the apology made before her resolve weakened.

Theodosia received her reluctantly. She stood looking toward the window. Anna barely noticed that the room was more ornate than before, the floor newly tiled in marble, larger torch brackets gilded at the top.

"Thank you for coming," Theodosia said politely. "But I believe I told you last time you called that I have no need of your services." She turned and looked momentarily at Anna, and there was a curious emptiness in her eyes.

"I came to apologize to you," Anna said. "I presumed to think that you could not have been absolved for taking Joanna's husband from her when she was dying. That was arrogant of me to the point of absurdity. It is none of my business, and I have no right even to think it."

Theodosia shrugged slightly. "Yes, it is arrogant, but I accept your apology. I have the Church's absolution, and that is really all that counts." She half turned away.

Anna contradicted her. "Your face, your eyes, say that it doesn't count at all, because you don't believe it."

"It isn't a matter of belief, it's fact. Bishop Constantine said so," Theodosia replied tartly. "And, as you say, it is not your concern."

"The Church's absolution, or God's?" Anna refused to be dismissed.

Theodosia blinked. "I am not sure that I believe in God, or resurrection and eternity in your Christian sense. Of course I can't imagine time ending, no one can. It will go on, what else could it do? A kind of endless desert stretching without purpose into the darkness."

"You don't believe in heaven," countered Anna, "but surely what you have described is hell? Or one kind of hell, if not the deepest."

Theodosia's voice was tinged with sarcasm. "Is there deeper than that?"

"The deepest would be to have held heaven in your hands and let it slip away, to have known what it was and then lost it," Anna replied.

"And would the God you believe in do that to anyone?" Theodosia challenged. "It's bestial."

"God doesn't do it," Anna answered her without hesitation.

Theodosia's voice was harsh with pain. "Are you saying I did that to myself?"

Anna opened her mouth to deny it, then realized it was dishonest. "I have no idea," she said. "Did you have heaven, or only something that was good, and at least a belief in joy in some reachable future?"

Theodosia stared at her, anger, confusion, and grief in her face.

Anna felt a moment of pity so fierce, it took her breath away. "There is a way back," she said impulsively, then instantly knew it was a mistake.

"Back to what?" Theodosia asked, surprise in her voice, as if she had taken a step only to find the ground beneath her was no longer there.

Now it was Anna who turned away, walking alone to the door and outside into the street. She moved along the cobbles slowly, up steps and down them.

Punishment was for society's sense of order, necessary for survival. Theodosia executed her own punishment, and it was far more terrible than God would have given her, because it was destructive. God's punishment should be for the healing of the sinner, freeing him from the sin, to move on without it. By denying Theodosia's sin, Constantine had injured her in lying, and she had injured herself, because she knew better.

Anna turned the corner, and the wind was cold in her face.

She could not let the matter rest. She went to Constantine and found him busy ministering to supplicants of one sort or another.

"What can I do for you, Anastasius?" he asked guardedly. They were in his ocher-colored room facing onto the courtyard.

There was no purpose in trying to be tactful. "I have just visited Theodosia. She has lost the strength and comfort of her faith."

"Nonsense," Constantine said sharply. "She attends Mass every Sunday."

"I did not say she has fallen from the Church," Anna replied patiently. "I said she is without that inner light of hope, the trust that keeps us going even when we cannot see the way at all, but still feel the love of God... in the dark."

She saw a flash of amazement in Constantine's eyes, as if he had caught a glimpse of something he had barely guessed at before.

Anna went on with a surge of belief within herself. "She does not believe in a God who overlooks her offense without healing it, as if neither she nor it mattered. If she were to offer some deep penitence, a sacrifice of something important to her, she might be able to believe again."

Constantine looked at her with a strange mixture of wonder and hostility. "What had you in mind?" he said coldly.

"Perhaps to part from Leonicus for a while-say, two years? It was being with him when Joanna was dying that was wrong. She could devote her time to caring for the sick, as Joanna was. Then she would come back from it whole, able to take up and treasure what she had paid for, albeit with pain. Then she could accept forgiveness, because she was honest."

Constantine raised his eyebrows. "Are you saying that she has not accepted God's absolution?" he said incredulously.

"The Church's, not God's. Please... at least offer Theodosia the chance to earn back her faith," Anna pleaded. "What are any of us without it? The shadows are closing in everywhere, armies on the outside, and selfishness, fear, and doubt within. If we haven't even a pinpoint of faith that God is absolutely good, a pure love of the heart and soul, what hope is there for any of us?"

Constantine blinked and stared at her. "I'll see her," he conceded. "But she won't agree."

Eighty-one

CONSTANTINE HAD BEEN CERTAIN AT THE TIME HE GAVE absolution to Theodosia that he was the instrument of her salvation and that she would be eternally grateful to him for that.

Now he felt the deep, gnawing pain inside him that Anastasius was right. He recalled Theodosia's desperate humiliation after her husband left her. She had been grateful for Constantine's support, his assurance, his constant promise to her of God's guidance and blessing.

Lately when they met she was courteous, but her eyes were blank.

She received him, and he felt his belly tighten with apprehension.

"Bishop Constantine," she said courteously, coming forward to greet him. "How are you?" She looked magnificent in an emerald green embroidered tunic and a dalmatica crusted with gold, gold ornaments in her dark hair. Somehow the hues, rich as they were, leached the color out of her skin.

"Well enough," he replied. "Considering that we live in such threatening times."

"We do," she agreed, turning her eyes away as if regarding some danger beyond the gorgeous painted walls of the room. "May I offer you refreshment? Perhaps some almonds, or dates?"

"Thank you." Having food would make his task easier. It would be too discourteous to ask him to leave while he was eating. "I have not had time to speak with you in the last month or two. You look disturbed. Is there anything with which I can help you?"

"I am well, I assure you," she said.

He had given much thought as to how he could broach the subject of penitence with any delicacy at all. "You have not been to confession lately, Theodosia. You are a fine woman, you have been as long as I have known you, but we all fall short at times, even if it is no more than a lack of complete trust in God, and His Church. That is a sin, you know... one it is hard not to commit. We all have doubts, anxieties, fear of the unknown."

"What is it you expect me to confess?" she asked, and he heard the bitterness in her voice. Anastasius was right. Constantine looked around the room. "Where is the icon?" he asked. Theodosia would know which one he meant; there was only one icon that had passed between them, his gift to mark her absolution and return to the Church.

"In my private apartments," she replied.

"Does it help your faith to look at her and remember her sublime trust in God's will?" he asked. "'Be it unto me according to thy word,'" he quoted Mary's answer when Gabriel had told her she would be the Mother of Christ.

The silence was harsh between them. "Confession and penitence can heal all mortal sin," he said gently. "That is the Atonement of Christ."

She faced him. "Believe what you wish to, Bishop, if it comforts you. I no longer have that certainty. Perhaps one day I may regain it, but there is nothing you can do for me."

He was annoyed. She had no right to speak to him in such a way, as if the sacrament of the Church were ineffectual.

"If you accepted a penance," he said firmly, "such as parting from Leonicus for a space, and devoting yourself to caring for the sick, then-"

"I do not need a penance, Bishop," she cut off his words. "You have already absolved me from any error I may have committed. If my faith is less than it should be, that is my loss. Now please leave, before Leonicus returns. I do not wish him to think that I have been confiding in you."

"Do you need human love so much that you would forfeit divine love to keep even the semblance of it?" he asked with a terrible pity.

"I can love a human being, Bishop," Theodosia said fiercely. "I cannot love a principle men adhere to when it suits them. What you preach is a set of myths and ordinances, rules that move with your own convenience. Leonicus is a human man, not perfect, maybe, as you say, not even loyal, but real. He speaks to me, answers me, smiles to see me, even needs me at times."

He bowed to the inevitable. "You will change your mind one day, Theodosia. The Church will be here, and willing to forgive."

"Please leave," she said softly. "You don't love God any more than I do. You love your office, your robes, your authority, your safety from having to think for yourself or from facing the fact that you are alone, and you mean nothing-just like the rest of us."

Constantine stared at her, shuddering in her despair as if it were cold water lapping around his feet, ice cold as it crept up to his knees, his thighs, the mutilation where his organs should have been. Was it true of him also, that it was the Church he loved, not God? The order, the authority, the illusion of power, and not the passionate, exquisite, everlasting love of God?

He refused to think of it, thrusting it out of his mind. He turned on his heel and strode out.

"I offered it to her," he told Anastasius later. "But she would not accept any penance at all. But I had to try." He looked at Anastasius, searching for the respect that should have been in his eyes, the acknowledgment of patience and honor. He saw only contempt, as if he were making excuses. It appalled him how much that hurt.

"Your arrogance is blasphemous!" Constantine cried out in sudden, overwhelming outrage. "You have no humility. You are quick to suggest penance for Theodosia, but your own sins go unconfessed. Come back to me when you can do so on your knees!"

White-faced, Anastasius walked away, leaving the bishop glaring at his back, still wanting to say more but lost for words hard enough, sharp enough, to wound the heart.

The pain of Anna's disillusion was deep. She had once seen so much that was good in Constantine, perhaps because she needed to. Now the ordinances of the Church were closed to her because she had not the belief to trust them. How could she? In offering such an empty forgiveness to Theodosia, Constantine had poured away the possibility of Anna's absolution also.

She could lean only on her own understanding of God, seeking that flame in the night, the warmth that wrapped around the heart when she was alone on her knees.

Perhaps that was as it had to be. When there was no one beside you, you looked upward. It is the darkness that tests the light. She must accept being alone, not looking for the support or the forgiveness of others, but working in her mind and her soul until she found it for herself.

Eighty-two

ZOE PACED THE FLOOR OF HER GREAT ROOM, EACH TIME she turned gazing at the great cross, only the back of which carried a name still burned on her heart-Dandolo, the greatest of them all. She must create a way to be revenged on him and his heirs, on Giuliano, before the crusaders came again and it was too late. The year of 1280 was waning fast, and the invasion would be soon now, perhaps even next year.

By the window, she stopped and stared out at the darkening winter sky. Helena had been particularly arrogant lately. Several times Zoe had caught a look in her eyes that seemed to be laughter, close to mockery, as some people see in another's defeat. Zoe was growing more and more certain that Helena knew Michael was her father and that she was planning to use it for her gain.

Perhaps it would be a good idea to send Sabas to watch her rather more carefully. Helena had appeared cooler toward Demetrios. The signs were tiny, a little less voluptuousness in her dress, a momentary distraction of mind now and then that clearly had nothing to do with him, an inattention to his words. Was there someone else? There was no better pretender to the throne.

She was still pondering this when one of the servants came in. He stood in front of her with his eyes on the beautiful tessellated floor, not daring to raise them.

"What?" she demanded. What news could paralyze the idiot like this?

"We have just heard that Doge Contarini abdicated a few weeks ago," he replied. "There is a new doge in Venice."

"Of course there is, fool!" she snapped. "Who is it?"

"Giovanni Dandolo-" His voice cracked with nervous tension.

She made a suppressed noise of fury and told him to get out. He obeyed with indecent haste.

So there was another Dandolo in the Ducal Palace in Venice. Beyond her reach-but Giuliano was not. What relationship was there between him and this new doge? It did not matter; old Enrico was common to both of them, and that was all that counted.

Giuliano might now be returned to Venice, to a higher calling. She must exact her revenge quickly, before that too slipped out of her grasp.

She was still considering this when an old friend called. He came in white-faced, his body tense, hands curling and uncurling even as he spoke.

He stammered over his words. "You may wish to go, although I can't imagine it, not now. It is too near the end. Charles of Anjou's armies are besieging Berat."

Berat was the great Byzantine fortress in Albania, just 450 miles away and holding the key to the land route from the west.

"When it falls," he went on, "Constantinople will lie open and undefended before him. The emperor has no army capable of withstanding an assault from the land, or from the sea when the Venetian fleet arrives. Perhaps that will not even be needed? They can take what they want of food and stores and sail on to Acre."

She was cold inside, as if his framing it in words had made it real.

"Zoe?" he prompted.

But she did not answer him. There was nothing to say. She received it in silence, as the darkness of the night comes without sound.

He crossed himself and left.

Her nightmares of childhood returned. She woke sweating alone in the darkness. Even in the winter night her body was seared by a heat that still lay in her dreams, but how much longer would that be true? When would the acrid smell of smoke, the crushing and the screaming, be real? Pictures danced before her of her mother, clothes torn, thighs scarlet with blood, her face distorted with terror, trying to crawl back to protect her child.

When she rose in the morning, people around her were packing up, ready to leave if the news got worse, gathering in little huddles in street corners, stopping every stranger to ask if there was any further word.

Zoe put together jewels and artifacts, things of great beauty, a winged horse in bronze, necklaces of gold, dishes, ewers, gem-encrusted reliquaries, alabaster and cloisonne jars, and sold them.

With the money she bought great vats full of pitch and had them piled up on the roofs of her house. She would burn the city down herself and destroy the Latins in their own flames before she would let Constantinople be taken again. This time she would die in the fires; never would she run away. Let them all leave, if they were coward enough. She would do it alone, if necessary. She would never surrender, and she would never run away again.