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.

CONSTANTINE STOOD IN HIS FAVORITE ROOM OF THE house, his hand caressing the smooth marble of the statue. Its head was buried in thought, its naked limbs perfect. He passed his hand over it again, moving his fingers as if he could knead it and feel muscle and nerve in the stone shoulders.

His own body was so tightly knotted that he ached.

Michael had reenacted the signing, affirming it for all Constantinople to see, and to satisfy Rome, and Constantine had been helpless to prevent it. It would be a mark of subservience, a signal to the world, and above all to God, that the people of Byzantium had forsaken their faith. Those who had trusted the leadership of the Church would be destroyed by the very men sworn to save their souls. How infinitely shortsighted! Selling today to purchase tomorrow’s safety. What about their salvation in eternity? Was that not more important than any earthly thing?

But he had known what to do, and he had done it.

As he thought of it the sweat broke out on his body, even here in this cool room. The Byzantime people had a right to fight for life!

And that he had done. He had lit the fire in their hearts and it had exploded into a riot in the streets, scores and then hundreds pouring into the squares and marketplaces, crying out against the union with Rome and everything alien and forced.

Of course Constantine had contrived to look as if he were doing all in his power to stop them, to sympathize and yet try to stem the violence, to plead for order and respect while leading them on. What difference was there between a gesture of blessing and one of encouragement? It lay in the angle of the hand, the inflection of a voice carefully raised not quite loudly enough to be heard above the din.

It had been marvelous, superb. They had come in their thousands, filling the streets until they choked the byways. He could still hear their voices as he stood here in his quiet room. There the blood had pounded in his veins, his heart racing, sweat of heat and danger running off his skin as the noise carried him along.

“Constantine! Constantine! In the name of God and the Holy Virgin, Constantine for the faith!”

He had smiled at them, stepping back a pace or two as if to decline in modesty, but they had shouted the louder.

“Constantine! Lead us to victory, for the Holy Virgin’s sake!”

He had lifted his hands in blessing, and gradually they had calmed, the shouting ceased. They stood in the square and in the streets beyond, silent, waiting for him to tell them what to do.

“Have faith! God’s power is greater than that of any man!” he had told them. “We know what is truth and what is false, what is of Christ and what of the devil. Go home. Fast and pray. Be loyal to the Church, and God will be loyal to you.”

God would save them from Rome only if their faith were perfect, and it was Constantine’s mission to do everything heavenly possible to see that it was.