“And what are you going to do, Enrico Palombara? You must deal with Vicenze.”

“Oh, I know!” he assured her, smiling bitterly. “This pope would protect me today, but tomorrow could be different.” He shrugged. “Over the last few years, popes have come and gone faster than the weather has changed. Their promises are worth nothing, because their successors are not bound by them.”

She did not answer him, but there was a sudden light in her eyes, a different understanding. It took only an instant for him to know that she had let slip the dream of defying the union and seen the reality, and its flaws. It was his first step toward convincing her. He must tread lightly. The smallest attempt at deception and he would lose her.

She searched his face, curiously, quite frankly. “You are trying to tell me that union with Rome may not be as bad as I had supposed, because little note can be kept of actual practice. A pope’s word is worth little, so ours need be worth no more. As long as we are discreet and do not force anyone’s attention to us, we may quietly do as we have always done.”

He smiled his acknowledgment.

Although she understood perfectly, she was enjoying playing with him. “And what is it you would like of me, Palombara?”

“I find it inconvenient always having to watch over my shoulder,” he replied.

“So you wish Vicenze… got rid of? You think I can do that? And that I would?”

“I am quite sure you could,” he replied. “But I don’t want him killed. I would be suspected, whatever the circumstances. And of rather more practical importance than that, he would only be replaced, and by someone I don’t know, and therefore would find harder to predict.”

She nodded. “You have been in Byzantium long enough to learn a little wisdom.”

He smiled and inclined his head. “I need Vicenze’s attention diverted, something that will give him no time to concentrate on destroying me.”

She considered carefully. “You cannot afford to leave alive someone who will kill you if they can. Sooner or later they will find the opportunity. You cannot stay awake all the time. One day you will forget, be at a disadvantage, too tired to think. Seize the time, Palombara, or he will.”

He realized with a wave of certainty that she was speaking from her own experience, and the instant after he knew exactly where and when. The grief was for Gregory Vatatzes, but she had had no choice, for her own survival. Was Arsenios Vatatzes’s death her doing also? One of her vengeances?

“The important thing is that only you and I know this.” He chose his words carefully, edged with double meaning. “While I appreciate your help, I cannot afford to be in your debt.”

“You won’t be,” she promised. “You have given me knowledge of papal plans which enables me to… revise my situation on the union with Rome. That is important to me.”

He rose to his feet and she did also, standing close enough to him that he could smell the perfume of her hair and her skin. If the balance between them had been just a little different, he would have touched her, and maybe more than that. As it was, their understanding was deep, even intimate. She would curb Vicenze for him, and it would amuse her to do so. If he ever presented a danger to her, with intense regret, she would kill him. They both knew that, too. The difference between them was that apart from his admiration for her, his involvement was ultimately sealed in his mind, his urgent, busy intellect; there was no wave strong enough to knock him off his feet, bury him, pummel him, and carry him far, far out of his depth. Whereas she cared passionately.

He envied her that.

CONSTANTINE PACED THE FLOOR OF HIS BEAUTIFUL ROOM with the icons, grasping at the air with his hands.

“Please help her, Anastasius. She is so wounded by the betrayal, she is ill with grief. I think she does not care if she lives or not. I have done all I can, but I am no use. Theodosia is a good woman, perhaps the best I know. How can a man abandon a wife of years for some… some harlot with a pretty face, just because she may give him a child?”

“Yes, of course I’ll go to her,” Anna replied. “But I have no cure for grief. All I can do is wait with her… try to persuade her to eat, help her to sleep. But the pain will still be there when she wakens.”

Constantine breathed out a great sigh. “Thank you.” He smiled suddenly. “I knew you would.”

Anna found Theodosia Skleros suffering in spirit as deeply as Constantine had said. She was a dark-haired woman of great dignity, if not beauty. She was sitting in a chair, staring out of the window with unfocused eyes.

Anna carried over another chair and sat near her, for a long time saying nothing.

Finally Theodosia turned to her, as if her presence required some response. “I don’t know who you are,” she said politely. “Or why you have come. I did not send for you, and I seek no counseling. There is no purpose you can serve here, except the easing of your own sense of duty. Please feel released from obligation and leave. There is probably someone you can serve elsewhere.”

“I am a physician,” Anna explained. “Anastasius Zarides. I came because Bishop Constantine is deeply concerned for you. He told me you are the finest woman he knows.”

“There is no comfort in being ‘fine’ alone,” Theodosia said bitterly.

“There is not much comfort in doing anything alone,” Anna replied. “I hadn’t imagined you did it for comfort. From what Bishop Constantine said, I had thought it was simply who you were.”

Theodosia turned slowly and looked at her, very slight surprise in her face, but no light, no hope. “Is that supposed to cure me?” she said with mockery. “I have no interest in being a saint.”

“Perhaps you would like to be dead, but you haven’t the anger yet to commit that sin, because it would be irrevocable. Or perhaps you are just afraid of the physical pain of dying?”

“Please stop insulting me and go away,” Theodosia said clearly. “I have no need of you.” She looked back out of the window.

“Would you want him back, if he came?” Anna asked her.

“No!” Then Theodosia drew in her breath sharply and turned to face Anna again. “I’m not grieving for him, I am mourning what I believed he was. Perhaps you can’t understand that…”

“Do you imagine you are the only person to taste the dregs of disillusion?”

“Did you not understand me when I told you to go away?”

“Yes. The words are simple enough. You keep twisting your hands. Your eyes are sunken and your color is bad. Do you have a headache?”

“I ache everywhere,” Theodosia replied.

“You are not drinking enough. Your skin will begin to hurt soon, I expect, then your stomach, although I imagine that pains you already. And you will become constipated.”

Theodosia winced. “That is too personal, and it is not your business.”

“I am a physician. Are you trying to punish someone by deliberately afflicting your body? Do you imagine your husband cares?”

“My God, you are cruel! You’re heartless!” Theodosia accused.

“Your body doesn’t care about just or unjust, only practical,” Anna pointed out. “I cannot stop your heart aching, any more than I could stop my own, but I can heal your body, if you don’t leave it too long.”

“Oh, give me the herbs, then go away and leave me in peace,” Theodosia said impatiently.

But Anna stayed until Theodosia was asleep. And she returned every day for the next week, then every second or third day. The grief did not go, but the urgency of it abated. They spoke together of many things, seldom personal, more of art and philosophy, of tastes in food, of works of literature and thought.

“Thank you,” Constantine said to Anna a little more than a month later. “Your gentleness of spirit has bound the wound. Perhaps in time God may heal it. I am truly grateful.”