“How kind of you,” Zoe said in a low voice. “I shall not forget it.”

VICENZE RETURNED TO THE HOUSE IN A VICIOUS TEMPER.

“How was your journey to Bithynia?” Palombara asked.

“Pointless,” Vicenze snapped. “I went only because it was my holy duty to try.” He looked at Palombara malevolently, faintly suspicious as to how much he might know or guess. “One of us must do something to win over these obdurate people, or give them room to condemn themselves utterly.”

“So that whatever we do, we are justified.” Palombara was surprised at how bitter he sounded.

“Exactly,” Vicenze agreed. “It was a last attempt.”

“Last?”

Vicenze’s eyebrows rose and there was a gleam of satisfaction in his cold eyes. “Next week we return to Rome. Had you forgotten?”

“Of course not,” Palombara told him. Actually, he had thought it was a little longer than that. He had been considering with some anxiety exactly what he would report to the pope, in what terms he would explain the nature of their failure to gain any more support for the agreement. He had come to the point where he believed that Michael could carry his people sufficiently for the appearance of union with Rome and that the fact of a degree of independence could be disguised. People would always believe differently from one place to another, one social class, one degree of wealth or education or emotional need to another. But he did not think the pope would be well pleased with that. It was an eminently practical answer, but it was not a political victory.

IT WAS ONLY DAYS AFTER THAT WHEN ANNA ATTENDED AN accident in the street. An old man had tripped and bruised himself badly. She was bending over his leg, examining it, when there was a disturbance in the crowd that had gathered, and a young priest, ashen-faced, elbowed his way through, pushing people aside roughly, calling out her name.

“Is it an emergency?” she asked without looking up. “This man has had a bad shock and needs-”

“Yes, you may already be too late.” The priest reached for her arm and pulled her to her feet. “He is bleeding to death. They have torn his tongue out.”

She turned to the crowd and gestured to the old man. “Take him home. Give him hot drinks and keep him wrapped up. I have to go.”

She picked up her bag and allowed the priest to half drag her around the corner and up an alley to a small house where the door was open. She could hear gagging and wails of fear and distress even before she was inside.

The scene that met her was appalling. A monk knelt sprawled on the floor, blood streaming from his mouth, pooling scarlet on the tiles in front of him, covering his hands and forearms and the front of his robe. He gasped, gagged again, and more blood gushed out of him. His face was gray with pain and terror, his eyes staring. Around him three other monks stood helplessly, not knowing what to do. The man was bleeding to death in front of them.

Anna put down her bag and seized a piece of cloth from one of them, glanced at it quickly to make certain it was clean, then went to the man on the floor. Someone said his name was Nicodemus.

“I can help you,” she said firmly, praying that please God she could. “I’m going to stop the bleeding, and you won’t choke. You’ll have to breathe through your nose. It may be difficult, but you can do it. Keep still and let me press this. It’s going to hurt, but it’s necessary.” And before he could pull away, she put her arm around him. One of the monks suddenly grasped what she was going to do and moved forward to help. Together they held the terrified man while Anna forced his mouth open wider and placed the cloth as hard as she could on the bloody remnant of his tongue.

It must have been agony, but after the first convulsive jerk and shudder he kept as still as he could.

In a perfectly level voice she ordered the other monks, and the priest who had come for her, to fetch more clean cloths, to open her case and take out certain herbs and spirits in small vials, also her surgical needles and silk. She directed two of them to fetch water and clean up the blood from the tiles.

All the time she kept the pressure on the stump of tongue, trying desperately to prevent the man from bleeding to death, choking on blood, or suffocating because he could not draw air into his lungs.

She changed one blood-soaked cloth for another, still holding the man with her left arm. She could hear the rhythmic murmur of prayer and wished she could join in.

Finally, more than half an hour after she had begun, she pulled the cloth away slowly and judged that if she was quick, she would be able to stitch the flesh and seal off the vessels enough to remove the cloth permanently.

It was a difficult task in the wavering candlelight, and she was acutely conscious of the pain she must be causing; unlike most other patients, he could not even be given any herbs to drink to deaden the sensation. His mouth and throat were a mass of swollen scarlet flesh, terribly mutilated, but all she had time to consider was saving his life from hemorrhaging away. She worked as quickly as she could, stitching, pulling, tying, cutting, stanching again, always with too much blood and with pain almost palpable in the air.

Finally, she finished and swabbed away the remaining blood. She gently washed his face, meeting his eyes, remembering that although he would never speak again, he could hear everything. She picked up herbs to show to all of them, saying when to use them and how and in what proportions.

“And you must keep his lips and his mouth moist,” she went on. “But don’t touch the wound yet, especially not with water. If he will take it, give him a little honeyed wine to drink, but carefully. Don’t let him choke.”

“Food?” someone asked. “What can he eat?”

“Gruel,” she replied. “Warm, not too hot. And soups. He will learn to chew and to swallow properly, but give him time.” She hoped that was true. She had no prior experience with such a mutilation.

“Thank you,” the priest who had called her said sincerely. “Your name will always be in our prayers.”

She waited with them all night, watching, listening to them trying to reassure one another and find courage for what they knew lay ahead, perhaps for all of them. Nicodemus was the first, but he would not be the last.

“Who did this?” she asked, dreading the answer.

The monks glanced at one another, then at her. “We do not know who they were,” one of them replied. “They had the emperor’s authority, but they were led by a foreigner, a Roman priest with light-colored hair and eyes like a winter sea.” He breathed in and out slowly, and his voice dropped even lower. “He had a list.”

Anna felt the coldness scour through her as if strength drained away. She was wrong to have doubted Constantine, too squeamish, too cowardly of spirit to acknowledge the truth because she wanted to keep her hands clean. She was ashamed of her stupidity.

Faith called for high prices-faith in God, the light, and the hope. Crucifixion was brutal. She was sick at the thought of it, the reality of the gasping for breath, the agony through belly and loins and every sinew, the sheer terror. Why did the images soften it, as if Christ had not been flesh like everyone else, as if His searing horror had been different? The answer was obvious-to escape knowing it, because it made our own betrayal of Him easier.

Then a curious peace filled her. Se had been wrong in her judgment of Constantine, wrong, ignorant, and shallow. She was crushed with penitence. They would all have to fight, to pick up and use weapons that would hurt them as well as the enemy. But the conflict inside her had ceased, and instead there was the wide, sweet balm of assurance.