“Thank you,” Anna replied, taken by surprise.
“Odd that Eulogia should call just as you were here,” Helena went on. “She was related to Justinian Lascaris, you know?”
Anna felt herself tense. “Was she?”
“He was married, some time ago.” Helena’s tone dismissed it as if it were not relevant anymore. “She died. She was Eulogia’s sister.” She was watching Anna’s face as she spoke.
Anna stood motionless, awkward. Her hands seemed clumsy and in the way, as if she had no idea what to do with them. She swallowed. “Really?” She tried to sound uninterested. She was trembling.
Helena picked up a small jeweled box from the table. It was exquisite, silver set with chalcedony and surrounded by pearls. Anna could not help looking at it.
“You like it?” Helena held it out for Anna to see.
“It’s very beautiful,” Anna replied sincerely.
Helena smiled. “Justinian gave it to me. Unwise, I suppose, but as I told you, he loved me.” She said it with satisfaction, but still looking at Anna under her eyelashes. “Bessarion gave me very little that I can recall. If he had chosen anything, it would have been books, or icons; dark ones, of course, heavy and very serious.” She looked back at Anna. “Justinian was fun, you know? Or don’t you know that? He had an elusive quality about him, as if you could never really know all of him. He would always surprise you. I like that.”
Anna’s sense of discomfort grew. Why was Helena telling her all this? Surely it was lies, as Constantine had said? Helena was beautiful and profoundly sensuous, but Justinian must have seen what was ugly inside her, if not immediately, then soon after. Helena turned the box in her hand, its pearls catching the light. Why had Justinian spent so much on her? Or was that a lie, too?
Helena was watching her. There was an intensity in her gaze that was almost mesmeric. The light was shining on the box, on the plum silk of her dalmatica, on the gloss of her hair. “Do you like beautiful things, Anastasius?” she asked.
There was only one possible answer to that. “Yes.”
Helena’s winged eyebrows rose, her eyes wide and dark. “Just ‘yes’? How unimaginative of you. What kinds of beautiful things?” she insisted. “Jewelry, ornaments, glass, paintings, tapestries, statuary? Or do you like music, and good food? Or something you can touch, like silk or fur? What gives you pleasure, Anastasius?” She put the box on the table and walked three steps closer to Anna. “Do eunuchs have pleasure?” she said softly.
Was this what had happened to Justinian? Anna felt the sweat run down her body and the blood hot in her face. Helena was trying to awaken her sexually for entertainment, power, simply to see if she could.
The air in the room prickled as if a storm were about to break. Anna would have given anything on earth to escape. It was excruciating.
Helena’s eyes swept down Anna’s body. “Do you have anything left, Anastasius?” she asked, her voice soft not with pity, but with a sharp and curiously coarse interest. Her small hand reached out to touch Anna’s groin where her male organs would have been, had she had them. They met nothing.
Anna panicked, and hysteria welled up as if she were going to choke. Helena’s eyes were bright, laughing, at once both inviting and contemptuous.
No man, however mutilated, would refuse to speak at all. And whatever Anna said, it must be what a man would say, not the revulsion that was beating inside her now like a huge bird trapped and breaking itself to force a way out.
Helena was still waiting. She would never either forget or forgive a rebuff. She was so close, Anna could feel the warmth of her and see the pulse beating in her throat.
“Pleasure must be mutual, my lady,” Anna said, her voice catching in her throat. “I think it would take a remarkable man to please you.”
Helena stood absolutely still, her features slack with surprise and disappointment. Anastasius had been polite to her, flattering, yet she knew she had been robbed of something. She made a sharp little sound of annoyance and stepped back. Now it was she who did not know how to answer without giving herself away.
“Your money is on the table by the door,” she said between her teeth. “You bore me. Take it and go.”
Anna swiveled and went out, forcing herself not to run.
Thirty-three
ANNA ARRIVED HOME AFTER HER ENCOUNTER WITH Helena with her mind racing and her body still trembling as if she had been physically assaulted. She strode past Simonis with barely a word and went to her own room. She took off her clothes and bandages and stood naked, then washed herself over and over again, as though she could cleanse herself with harsh, astringent lotion, smelling the bite of it with pleasure. It stung, even hurt, but the pain pleased her.
She dressed again in her plain golden brown tunic and dalmatica and left the house without eating or drinking. She was fortunate that Constantine was at home.
He rose from his seat, his broad face filled with anxiety the moment after she entered. “What is it?” he demanded. “What’s happened? Is it another monk tortured? Dead?”
It was preposterous! Her obsession with her own, so desperately trivial hurt, when people were dying terribly. She started to laugh, hearing it run out of control and end in sobbing. “No,” she gasped, fumbling her way forward to sit in her accustomed chair. “No, it’s nothing at all, nothing that matters.” She put her elbows on the table and dropped her head into her hands. “I saw Helena. I’ve been treating her-nothing serious, just painful. She…”
“What?” he demanded, sitting opposite her. His voice was gentle, but there was an edge of alarm in it.
She looked up at him, steadying herself. “Really nothing,” she repeated. “You told me that she made an advance to Justinian, which he found acutely embarrassing.” She did not add her own experience, but he understood it. She saw his face darken and then pity and revulsion leap to his eyes, as if he had been touched by it himself.
“I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “Be careful. She is a dangerous woman.”
“I know. I think I made a reasonably graceful refusal, but I know she won’t forget it. I hope I don’t have to treat her again. Perhaps she won’t want me to…”
“Don’t rely on that, Anastasius. It entertains her to humiliate.”
Anna pictured Helena’s face. “I think she knows humiliation. She told me Justinian was in love with her. She showed me a beautiful box that she said he gave her.” She saw it in her mind as she said it. It was the sort of thing Justinian would have chosen, but surely not for Helena?
Constantine’s mouth curled with distaste and perhaps a vestige of pity. “Lies,” he said without hesitation. “He disliked her, but he believed that Bessarion could lead the people against the union with Rome, so he hid his feelings.”