She pushed her hand through her hair, which was dusty already, and smiled at him. It was an admission he had made, describing the venal side of his city, as well as the clever and the beautiful. He did not say he was ashamed, but she knew it.

Anna was not used to walking all day. Her feet became blistered, and her back and legs ached until she was filled with an all-consuming weariness. She was bitterly aware that Giuliano had so much more strength than she, and she dared not allow him to help her, even when he offered with real concern.

By the first nightfall, they stopped at an inn. She was overwhelmingly relieved just to sit down, and it was only after they had all eaten, around one large wooden board, that she realized she was also glad of the warmth. It was far colder outside than she had expected, and the pilgrim’s gray cloak was not as warm as her own woolen dalmatica would have been.

• • •

Over the next days she forced herself to walk on, even when her feet bled. She found herself so weak that she staggered more, often losing her balance and stumbling, but always she rose again. She insisted on privacy for bodily functions, but as a eunuch that was granted her, even if for quite mistaken reasons. No one wished to embarrass her for the organs they rightly assumed she did not have.

They all suffered the same blisters, the cold from the wind and rain, the rough road under their feet, the ache in the bones from nights on hard boards and with too little sleep. The land was hard, built of rock and dust, and the few trees were wind-gnarled. There were long stretches where there was no water at all except what they carried with them. The rain was cold and made mud of the track underfoot, but it was still welcome on the parched skin.

She tried not to look at Giuliano. She knew exactly why the doge had sent someone not only to sail to Acre, but to walk this route, as the crusader army would have to walk it. He would be looking at the fortifications of Jerusalem also, with a soldier’s eyes, seeing their strengths and weaknesses, whatever had changed since Western knights and squires were last here. Venice’s full profit would depend on the degree of their success.

She did not want to know if that thought was as sour to him as it was to her. He was Venetian. He must see it differently. She thought of the first Roman soldiers, marching in their legions to conquer the troublesome Jews. Could even the boldest of them have imagined one man from Judea would change the world forever? Over a thousand years later, the road was worn smooth with people, summer and winter, who believed that in some way they were following in Christ’s footsteps.

Were they, in any way that mattered?

Without having intended to, she looked quickly at Giuliano and found his eyes steady on hers. He smiled, and there was an intense gentleness in him. For a terrible instant, she thought he understood the real nature of her physical weakness; then she realized it was the confusion he read in her that moved him.

Anna smiled back and was surprised how lifted her spirits were, just to know he was there.

FIVE DAYS LATER, THEY REACHED THE CREST OF THE SLOPE, legs aching, bodies weary. They had climbed almost three hundred feet since leaving Acre. There before them lay Jerusalem, spread out over the hills, all light and shadow. The sun-facing walls were blistered white, punctured by alleys like dark knife cuts, winding and impenetrable. The rooftops were flat, with here and there the smooth arc of a dome or the sudden, steep sides of a tower.

There were few trees, mostly the silver gray of olives or the dark irregularity of date palms. The huge, crenellated outer walls were unbroken, except for the great gates, now open and crowded by little antlike figures coming and going, tiny spots of color.

Anna stood beside Giuliano and stared in spite of herself, gasping with amazement. She looked at him quickly and saw the same wonder in his eyes.

The Arab signaled impatiently, and they began to move forward toward the Jaffa Gate, where pilgrims entered. As they came closer, the walls became enormous and pockmarked by time and erosion and the violence of siege. The gate itself was vast, like half a castle.

Men crowded outside it, dark-eyed, bearded, robes dusty from the ever creeping sand. They talked, gesticulating with their hands, arguing, haggling over an opinion or a price. A group of children played some game with small stones, throwing them up and catching them on the backs of their thin brown hands, making complicated patterns. A woman was beating a carpet, a cloud of dust rising. It was all so ordinary-daily life and a moment in eternity.

Then reality engulfed them again. There was money to pay, directions to ask, and accommodations to find before nightfall. Anna said good-bye to her traveling companions with real regret. They had shared too many simple, physical hardships for parting to be easy.

The safety of the journey was over; the danger of being too close, of betraying emotion or physical weakness, was past, at least for the time being. A different kind of loneliness was beginning.

They secured rooms at a hostelry. The first night Anna could barely sleep, tired as she was. The night was cold and the darkness full of strange noises and totally different odors from the ones she was accustomed to. The voices she heard were Arabic, Hebrew, and others she could not place. There was a mustiness in the air of closed streets, of animals, and of the dry, bitter smell of unfamiliar herbs. It was not unpleasant, but it left her feeling alien and uneasy.

She read again and again her instructions from Zoe. She must find a Jew by the name of Simcha ben Ehud. He knew where the painting was and would verify it, although Zoe had given instructions for Anna to look at it minutely also. The description was exact. She dared not fail. Not for an instant did she doubt that Zoe would take the first chance she had to use her power to destroy. Once she had the painting, she might well do it anyway. Anna had been naive to imagine she would be able to hand it over and walk away, safe because Zoe had promised. Between now and then, she would have to think of some weapon for her own use. Zoe had no respect for mercy.

After she had the picture, she would have time to think of Justinian and find a way to travel to the monastery in Sinai.

In the morning, she and Giuliano ate breakfast together. They had grown accustomed to dates and a little coarse bread.

“Be careful,” he warned as they parted in the street. He was on his way to study first the warren of alleys, the half-hidden waterways of underground rivers and springs. A desert city lives or dies on its water, as does any army besieging it.

“I will,” she said quietly. “Zoe gave me the name of the man to ask for, and a story as to why I want the picture. And I know what it is supposed to look like. You be careful, too. Examining fortifications isn’t a good thing to be caught doing either.”

“I’m not,” he said quickly. “I’m a pilgrim, praying in every place Christ walked, just like all the others.”

She smiled at him, then turned away quickly and went without looking back. Her feet felt bruised on the uneven pavement; her shoulders bumped one moment against other people, the next against the protruding walls as the alley became narrower. Then suddenly there were steps, and she was climbing down.

She began in the Jewish Quarter, at the address she had been given by Zoe.

“Simcha ben Ehud?” she asked several local shopkeepers. They all shook their heads.

She tried day after day, growing afraid that she was drawing attention to herself. One morning, when she had been in Jerusalem a little over three weeks, Anna was walking up a narrow flight of steps. Legs aching, muscles so weary that she was consumed in the concentration of forcing one foot after the other, she almost collided with a man coming in the opposite direction. She apologized and was about to move on when he caught her by the shoulder. Her first instinct was to fight; then he spoke to her quietly, with his mouth almost to her ear. “You are looking for Simcha ben Ehud?”