It was up to him to bring about the next encounter, which he did by hunting along Mese Street for an unusual gift for her. He wanted something individual that would earn her curiosity. Then he could visit her, ostensibly to seek her advice. He knew enough about her now to make that credible.
He was shown into her magnificent room, which overlooked the city and the Bosphorus beyond. It was like stepping back into the old city, before the sack: its glory fading only a little, its pride still secure. There were tapestries on the walls, rich and dark. Their colors were subdued by the centuries but not worn dim, only muted in places where the light had softened their tones. The floor was marble, smoothed by the passage of generations of feet. The ceiling in places was inlaid with gold. On one wall hung a gold cross nearly two feet long, the figure on it so exquisitely crafted that it seemed about to twist in a last agony.
Zoe wore a tunic of amber color under a darker, more vibrant dalmatica, and it was fastened with a gold pin set with garnets. She looked amused, as if she had known he would come, but perhaps not so soon.
There was another person present, about Zoe’s height but dressed in a plain tunic and dark blue dalmatica. He stood nearer the corner of the room, occupied with packing away powders into little boxes. Palombara could smell the rich aroma of them: some sort of crushed herbs.
Zoe ignored the other person, so Palombara did also.
“I found a small gift I hope will interest you,” he said, holding out what he had brought, wrapped in red silk. It fitted neatly into the palm of his lean, outstretched hand.
She looked at it, her golden eyes curious, as yet unimpressed. “Why?” she asked.
“Because from you I can learn more of the soul of Byzantium than from anyone else,” he replied with total honesty. “And I wish to have that knowledge, rather than my fellow legate, Vicenze.” He allowed himself to smile.
A flash of amusement lighting her expression, she then opened the silk and took out a piece of amber the size of a small bird’s egg. Inside it a spider was caught perfectly, immortalized in the moment before victory, the fly a hairbreadth beyond its reach. She did not hide her fascination with it, or her pleasure. “Anastasius!” she said, turning to the person with the herbs. “Come see what the papal legate from Rome has brought me!”
Palombara saw that it was another eunuch, smaller in stature and younger than Bishop Constantine, but with the same smooth, hairless face and-when he spoke-the same unbroken voice.
“Disturbing,” he remarked, looking at it closely. “Very clever.”
“You think so?” Zoe asked him.
Anastasius smiled. “A graphic picture of the instant, and of eternity,” he replied. “You think the prize is in your grasp, and it eludes you forever. That moment is frozen, and a thousand years later you are still poised, and empty-handed.” He looked across at Palombara, who was struck by the intelligence and the courage in his eyes. They were cool and gray, utterly unlike Zoe’s, although the rest of his coloring was almost the same. And he too had high cheekbones and a sensuous mouth. It disturbed Palombara that Anastasius had seen so much in the amber, more than he had himself.
Zoe was watching. “Is that what you mean to say to me, Enrico Palombara?” she asked. She refused to call him “Your Grace,” because he was a bishop of Rome, not of Byzantium.
“I wished it to give you pleasure, and interest,” he answered, speaking to her, not the eunuch. “It will say whatever you read into it.”
“Speaking of mortality,” Zoe went on, “if you should fall ill while you are in Constantinople, I can recommend Anastasius. He is an excellent physician. And he will cure your illness without preaching to you of your sins. A trifle Jewish, but very effective. I know my sins already, and find it tedious being told of them again, don’t you? Especially when I am not feeling well.”
“That depends upon whether they are being envied or despised,” Palombara said lightly.
He saw a flicker of laughter in the eunuch’s face, but it was gone again almost before he was certain of it.
Zoe saw it also. “Explain yourself,” she ordered Anastasius.
Anastasius shrugged. It was a gesture oddly feminine, yet he seemed not to have the volatile emotionalism of Constantine. “I think that contempt is the cloak that envy wears,” he replied to Zoe, smiling as he said it.
“What should we feel for sin?” Palombara asked quickly, before Zoe could speak. “Anger?”
Anastasius looked at him steadily, with an oddly unnerving stare. “Not unless one is afraid of it,” he said. “Do you suppose God is afraid of sin?”
Palombara’s reply was instant. “That would be ridiculous. But we are not God. At least we in Rome do not think we are,” he added.
Anastasius’s smile broadened. “We in Byzantium do not think you are either,” he agreed.
Palombara laughed in spite of himself, but it was out of embarrassment as well as humor. He did not know what to make of Anastasius. One moment he seemed lucid, intellectual like a man, and the next joltingly feminine. Palombara found himself wrong-footed too often. He thought of one of the silks he had seen in the markets: Hold it up one way and the light picked up the blue; then turn it, and it was green. The character of eunuchs was like the sheen on the silk-fluid, unpredictable. A third gender, male and female, yet neither.
Zoe turned the amber over in her hand. “This is worthy of a favor,” she said to Palombara, her eyes bright. “What is it you want?” She flashed a glance at the eunuch. Palombara saw irritation in it and perhaps a momentary contempt. But then a woman of passion and sensuality like Zoe would never forget that Anastasius was not a whole man. What did it feel like to be denied that most basic of appetites? To be hungry is to be alive. Palombara wondered if there was anything Anastasius wanted with that intensity burning in his eyes.
He told her what he had come for. “Knowledge, of course.”
Zoe blinked. “Knowledge of whom?”
He glanced at Anastasius.
Zoe smiled, looking Anastasius up and down, as if measuring whether he was worthy of dismissing or, like a servant, too unimportant to matter.
Anastasius took the decision himself. “The herbs are on the table,” he told Zoe. “If they please you, I will bring more. If not, then I shall suggest something else.” He turned to Palombara. “Your Grace. I hope your stay in Constantinople will be interesting.” He bowed to Zoe and walked away, picking up his bag of herbs as he left. He moved stiffly, as if he had to be careful to keep his balance or maybe his dignity. Palombara wondered if perhaps he had pain of some acutely private nature, a wound never entirely healed. How could a man endure such a thing-such an indignity, a mutilation-without a bitterness of soul? He was sufficiently effeminate; perhaps they had removed not only his testicles, but everything? What an incomprehensible mixture of beauty, wisdom, and barbarity eunuchs were. Rome should fear them more than it did.
He turned back to Zoe, prepared to listen to all she would say of her city and regard it all with interest and skepticism.