“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.