“She is beautiful,” Anna pointed out.

Constantine looked slightly surprised. “I suppose so. There is no modesty in her, no humility.”

“True,” Anna conceded, “but those are not always qualities that men look for.”

Constantine shifted a little in the bed, as if he were uncomfortable. “Justinian told me that Helena had once made it very clear that she wished him to lie with her, and he had refused. He told me that he still loved his wife, who had died not long before, and he could not yet think of another woman, least of all Helena.” Constantine smoothed his hands over the rumpled sheet. “He showed me a painting of his wife, very small, only a couple of inches square, so that he could carry it with him. She looked very beautiful to me, a gentle face, intelligent. Her name was Catalina. The way Justinian said it made me believe everything he said.”

Anna took the tray from the side of the bed and rose to put them on a table at the far side of the room. It gave her a chance to compose herself. His words, the story of Justinian and Catalina’s portrait, brought their presence so sharply to her mind that the loss was almost like a physical pain.

She put down the tray and turned back to Constantine. “Then he would have wanted Bessarion alive, wouldn’t he?” she asked. “Both to lead the struggle against the union and to excuse him from having to justify his refusal of Helena?”

“That is another reason I pleaded for his exile,” Constantine said sadly.

“Then who did help kill Bessarion? Could we not prove it, and have Justinian freed?” She saw the surprise in his face. “Would it not be our holy duty?” she amended quickly. “Added to which, of course, he could return and continue in the struggle against Rome.”

“I don’t know who helped kill Bessarion,” he said, spreading his hands in a gesture of helplessness. “If I did, don’t you think I would already have told the emperor?”

His tone had changed. She was convinced he was lying, but it was impossible to challenge him. She should retreat now, before she antagonized him or aroused his suspicion as to why she should care so much.

“I suppose it was some other friend of Antoninus,” she said as lightly as she could. “Why did he kill him, anyway?”

“I don’t know that, either.” Constantine sighed.

Again she was certain he was lying.

“I’m glad you liked the soup,” she said with a slight smile.

“Thank you.” He smiled back. “Now I think I will go to sleep for a while.”

GIULIANO DANDOLO STOOD ON THE STEPS OF THE LANDING stage and watched the water of the canal rippling in the torchlight. He smiled in spite of the faint sense of unrest he felt. One moment the wavelets were crested with glittering ribbons of light, the next they were shadowed and as dense as if he could walk out over them and they would bear his weight. Everything was shifting, beautiful and uncertain, like Venice itself.

His thoughts were disturbed by the sharper slap of water on the steps, and as he moved forward he saw the outline of a small, swiftly moving barge. There were armed men standing on the sides, and it slid smoothly to the mooring post and stopped. The torches blazed up and the slender, heavily robed figure of Doge Lorenzo Tiepolo rose and in an easy movement stepped ashore. He was in his later years. His sons had all risen to eminence, and many suggested it was purely by their father’s favor. But then people always said such things.

Tiepolo walked forward across the marble as the torchlight wavered in the rising breeze. He was smiling, his small, heavy-lidded eyes bright and his hair silver like a halo.

“Good evening, Giuliano,” he said warmly. “Did I keep you waiting?” It was a rhetorical question. He was ruler of Venice; everyone waited for him. He had known Giuliano since he had been brought here as a small child nearly thirty years ago, as he had known and loved Giuliano’s father also.

Still, one did not take liberties. “A spring evening on the canal can hardly be thought of as waiting, Excellency,” Giuliano replied, falling into step with the doge, but just behind him.

“Always the courtier,” Tiepolo murmured as they crossed the piazza in front of the ornate Ducal Palace. “Perhaps it is a good thing. We have sufficient enemies.” He led the way inside through the great doors, the guard before and behind him silent and watchful.

“The day we have no enemies it will mean we have nothing for any man to envy,” Giuliano replied a trifle dryly. They took off their outdoor cloaks and walked along the high-ceilinged hall with its painted walls, their feet loud on the inlaid floor.

Tiepolo’s smile widened. “And no teeth to bite with,” he added. He turned right into a high anteroom and then into his own chambers with their frescoed walls and heavy chandeliers. The sandalwood table held dishes of dried dates and apricots and a selection of nuts. The torches glimmered, throwing warm light over the tessellated floor.

“Sit!” He waved his arm in the general direction of the carved chairs around the huge fireplace, where a fire burned to warm the still chilly March air. The great portrait of his father, Doge Jacopo Tiepolo, hung above it. “Wine?” he offered. “The red is from Fiesole, very good.” Without waiting for an answer, he took two of the glass tumblers and filled them, then passed one to Giuliano.

Giuliano accepted it, thanking him. Tiepolo had been his friend and patron since his own father’s death, but he knew he had not been summoned simply for the pleasure of conversation. That happened quite often, but it was late at night for casual talk of art or food, boat races, beautiful women, or, far more entertainingly, scandalous ones-and, of course, of the sea. Tonight the doge was serious; his narrow face with its long nose had a pensive expression, and he moved uneasily, as if paying more heed to the thoughts occupying his mind than to his actions.

Giuliano waited.

Tiepolo looked at the light through the wine in his glass but did not yet drink. “Charles of Anjou still cherishes his dreams of uniting the five ancient patriarchies of Rome, Antioch, Jerusalem, Alexandria, and Byzantium again.” His look was bleak. “All under his own sovereignty, of course. Then he would be Count of Anjou, senator of Rome, king of Naples and Sicily and Albania, king of Jerusalem, lord of the patriarchates, and of course uncle to the king of France. Such power in any one man would make me uneasy, but in him it is a danger not only to Venice, but to the whole world.

“His success would threaten our interests right along the east coast of the Adriatic. Michael Palaeologus has signed the agreement of unity with Rome, but my information tells me he will have considerably more difficulty in taking his people with him than the pope may imagine. And we all know that the Holy Father is a passionate crusader.” He smiled bleakly. “He is reputed to have sworn the skill of his right hand that he will never forget Jerusalem. We would be wise to remember that.”

Giuliano waited.

“Which means he will aid Charles, at least in that,” Tiepolo added.

“Then he would have Rome on his side, and Jerusalem and Antioch in his hands.” Giuliano spoke at last. “Would Charles attack Byzantium, even though the emperor has signed the agreement of union and submitted to the pope? Surely he would then be attacking an equally Christian city, and the Holy Father could not countenance that.”

Tiepolo lifted one shoulder very slightly. “That might depend whether the people of Byzantium, especially the city of Constantinople, will honor the union.”

Giuliano thought about it, aware of the doge’s eyes probing, watching every flicker and shadow of his expression. If Charles of Anjou took all five of the old patriarchies, including Constantinople astride the Bosphorus, he would hold the gateway to the Black Sea and everything beyond it: Trebizond, Samarkand, and the old Silk Road to the East. If he also gained control of Alexandria and thus the Nile, and so Egypt, he would be the most powerful man in Europe. The trade of the world would pass through his hands. Popes came and went, and the election of them would be his decision.