“How did she… live?” Giuliano asked, his voice cracking.
Anna looked up and saw Zoe’s golden eyes looking back, first at the knife, then at Anna directly. There was triumph burning in her mind, and Anna read it as clearly as words. She bent to the wound again, blade poised.
“Can’t you do it?” Zoe asked. “No stomach for it, Anastasius?”
Anna saw her smile, and the knowledge in it bright as a flame, which turned her own stomach cold. Was it conceivable Zoe had guessed she was a woman?
She looked down again and deliberately pushed the point of her knife into the flesh on the other side of the spelk, saw the blood ooze and then flood. She was tempted to push harder, even to slice through an artery and watch it gush, pumping, as Gregory’s blood must have, pouring life away.
Zoe turned back to Giuliano. “She turned to the streets, as all women do when there is nothing else,” she said, her voice filling the silence of the room. “Especially beautiful women. And she was beautiful.”
Anna turned the knife delicately, lifted out the spelk, and dropped it on one of the spare plates.
“As beautiful as Anastasius here would be,” Zoe went on. She had not even flinched. “If he were a woman, and not a eunuch.”
Anna felt her face flame. She could feel Giuliano’s hurt as if the blade had gouged a living organ out of him. She should not be here to witness this awful scene.
She looked up and met Zoe’s eyes, bright and hard as agate.
“Have I offended you, Anastasius?” Zoe asked with mild interest. “It is not a bad thing to be beautiful, you know.” She turned and looked across at Giuliano, then picked up a paper from the table beside her. “A letter from the Mother Abbess of Santa Teresa. I’m sorry, but you have to know this one day. You have insisted on knowing. Maddalena ended her life a suicide. So many women do, who look to the street for their livelihood.”
Every vestige of blood drained from Giuliano’s face.
Anna spoke impulsively, out of a passion to protect him. Nothing could undo the wound, nothing could make him imagine she had not heard or seen his pain.
“I suppose some are better at whoring than others,” she said, looking Zoe full in the face. “But even the most beautiful fade eventually. The lips crease, the breasts sag, the thighs become lumpy, the skin wrinkles and falls away. Lust becomes empty, and then only love matters.”
Giuliano gasped, swinging around to Anna in amazement, even taking a step toward her as if physically to protect her from Zoe’s fury.
Zoe’s eyes widened. “The little eunuch has teeth, Signor Dandolo. I do believe he likes you. How grotesque.”
The blood burned up Giuliano’s cheeks and he turned away. “Thank you for taking the trouble to find the information for me,” he said, his voice choking. “I will leave you to your… treatment.” He walked out of the room, and they both heard the footsteps of his leather boots along the marbled corridor.
“You are leaving me to bleed,” Zoe remarked, looking down at her ankle and foot, now dripping scarlet onto the floor. “I thought you were a more honorable physician than that, Anastasius.”
Anna saw the gloating in Zoe’s face. This was vengeance on Giuliano because of his great-grandfather and on Anna for loving a Dandolo. And she did love him; it would be pointless now to deny it to herself.
“It is good for it to bleed,” she said, forming the words deliberately, even though her voice shook. “It will carry away the poison the spelk may have left.” She picked up the knife again and touched the wound with the point of it, pricking, but no more deeply than she had to. “Then it will be clean, and I shall bind it.”
Several moments of silence went by.
“This must be hard for you,” Zoe said quietly.
Anna smiled. “But not impossible. I decide who I am, you don’t. But you are right: Beauty can be dangerous. It can give people delusions of being loved when in truth they are only consumed, like a peach or a fig. Eirene Vatatzes said that Gregory liked figs.”
Zoe’s foot dripped blood onto the floor more rapidly, making a little pool of scarlet.
“I think it is ready to be bound up.” Anna met Zoe’s eyes and smiled. “I have just the ointment here to put on it. It would be very serious if it were to become poisoned now, when the flesh is so… vulnerable.”
A sudden shadow of fear crossed Zoe’s face. She leaned forward. “Be careful,” she whispered. “Your love for Dandolo could cost you very dear, even your life. If my foot does not heal, you will regret it.”
Anna smiled at her even more widely, her eyes ice cold. “There is nothing wrong with it that removing the spelk did not cure. You were wise enough not to pick a poisonous wood.”
The surprise flashed in Zoe’s eyes for only an instant. “I would not like to destroy you,” she said casually. “Don’t oblige me to do so.”
Fifty-four
GIULIANO LEFT ZOE’S HOUSE AND WALKED OUT INTO THE broad, open street, barely seeing where he was going. The pain seemed so huge, it threatened to tear through his skin from the inside and overwhelm him. He was filled with shame and the knowledge that this woman he could just remember-a lovely face, tears, warmth, and a sweet smell-not only had not loved him enough to keep him, but had descended to that most despicable of trades.
He had seldom used whores himself; he was handsome and charming and had had no need to. He shivered with a new revulsion at himself when he remembered the times he had.
He barely saw the street around him. Other people were so many blurs of color and movement. He felt sick, cold to the very pit of his belly, and shivering. Thank God at least his father had never known that Maddalena had died by her own hand, beyond the reach of the Church, even in death.
He crossed the busy street, traffic stopping, drivers of carts shouting at him, but their words did not penetrate his mind. He went on down the steep incline toward the Venetian Quarter by the shore.
She had borne him, carried him within her body, and given him life. He hated her for what she had become, yet he had learned love at his father’s knee, at his side. Her name had been the last word he spoke. What was Giuliano if he denied her now?
Damn Zoe Chrysaphes-damn her to a hell of pain that would last all life long-as his would.
Anastasius had been extraordinary. He was a true friend, first rescuing him from being blamed for Gregory Vatatzes’s murder, which he deserved for stupidity, if nothing else, and then defending him against Zoe. Both times it had been at risk to himself: Giuliano was realizing now just how great a risk. And Anastasius had asked for nothing in return. Still, Giuliano could not bear to be with Anastasius again, after this. He was the one person who had seen and heard, and he would never be able to forget it, even if only in anger at Zoe. Or in pity. It was the pity that hurt the deepest.
After stopping at his lodging, he went along to the busy dockyards, looking for any Venetian ship in the harbor. There were two. The first was a merchantman bound for Caesarea, the second just berthed and due out to Venice again within the week.
“Giuliano Dandolo, on the doge’s business,” he introduced himself. “I seek passage home, to report to the doge as soon as possible.”
“Excellent,” the captain said enthusiastically. “A little earlier than I expected, but excellent all the same. Welcome aboard. Boito will be delighted. You may use my cabin. You will not be interrupted.”
Giuliano had no idea what the man was speaking about. “Boito?” he said slowly, searching for meaning in it.
“The doge’s emissary,” the captain replied. “He has letters for you, and no doubt other things too complex or too secret to commit to paper. I was not aware he had even sent word to you yet, but he said it would be today, as soon as possible. Come. I’ll take you.”