by Anne Perry
“Yes, mistress,” the swordsmith said immediately, pleased to see her again. Only a fool forgot a benefactress or broke his word to a woman who never forgot or forgave. “What can I make for you this time?”
“I want a good dagger,” she replied. “It doesn’t have to be the best, but I want a family crest on the hilt, and I want you to be discreet about it. It is a gift, and it will be spoiled if anyone else hears of it.”
“Your business is no one else’s, lady. Whose crest would that be?”
“Dandolo,” she answered.
As soon as she had the dagger, which was beautiful—Bardas was even better than his word—she sent a letter to Giuliano Dandolo, who was still lodging in the Venetian Quarter. The message was simple: She had learned more about his dead mother.
Giuliano came, as she had known he would. She looked at him standing in her magnificent room. Although he was ill at ease, trying to hide the eagerness to learn what she had to say burning inside him, he still moved with grace, and grudgingly she admitted to herself he was better than handsome: He had a vitality of mind that she could not ignore. If she had been younger, she would have wanted to lie with him. But he was a Dandolo, and the dream in the eyes, the shape of a cheekbone, the width of his shoulders, or the way he walked could not pardon that.
He made all the usual polite remarks, not rushing into asking for the new information, and she played the game, uncertain whether she enjoyed it or not.
“I have heard more of your mother,” she said as soon as the greetings were over and the casual remarks that courtesy required. “She was beautiful, but perhaps you knew that already.” She saw the flicker of emotion in his face, the sharp hurt too deep to camouflage. “Perhaps you did not know that Maddalena had a sister, Eudoxia, also beautiful, but regrettably there is considerable scandal about her name.” Again she saw the emotion raw in him. A pity she could not be young again. “What I did not know before is that Eudoxia is said by some to have repented deeply in her old age, and to have joined some holy order. I do not know which, but I may be able to learn. It is possible that she is still alive.”
“Alive?” His eyes opened wide.
“Please, leave it to me. I have ways which are not open to you, and I can do it discreetly. I will let you know as soon as I have something that is certain.”
“Thank you.” He smiled at her, a handsome, self-assured man with a charm that came without effort.
“I was three when my mother died,” she said to Giuliano, aware that her voice was shaking but unable to control it.
“I’m sorry,” he responded with sudden shock, his eyes tender.
She did not wish his sympathy. “She was raped and murdered.” Then she wished she had not told him. It was a weakness and a tactical error. He might work out the year, and the circumstances, and then know he could never trust her. “I have something for you,” she said hastily, trying to cover it. “I came by it almost by chance, so please feel no obligation.” She moved away from him over to the table on which lay the dagger with the Dandolo crest. She unwrapped the blue silk cloth around it and held it out, hilt toward him, crest upward. Bardas had done a perfect job: It looked old and well used, yet every detail of it was clear.
Giuliano stared at it, then looked up at her.
“Take it,” she urged. “It should be yours. Anyway, what on earth would I do with a dagger that carried a Venetian crest on it?”
He was not clumsy enough to offer to pay for it. He would give her a gift of appropriate value, a little more than he judged the dagger to be worth.
He weighed it in his hands. “The balance is perfect,” he observed. “Where did it come from?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “But if I find out, I shall tell you.”
“Thank you.” He was not effusive, but the depth of his feeling filled his voice, his eyes, even the way he stood and the touch of his hands on the knife.
“Wear it,” she said quite casually. “It will become you.” She would pray that he did, kneel before the Virgin Mary and beseech her that he did. Unless the dagger was known to be Giuliano’s, Zoe’s plan would not work.
“I will.” He seemed about to add something further, then changed his mind and took his leave.
She watched him go with an odd little pain biting in her side, as if something were slipping out of her hands. Now there was nothing to do but wait, two or three weeks, at least. She had to be sure others had seen Giuliano with the knife and knew it was his.
She waited a month. Time seemed to crawl by like a crippled thing, dragging days behind it. The heat of noon paralyzed, the afternoons were heavy and silent, darkness was a mask that could hide anything, every creak and footstep a possible assassin.
As she had expected, Giuliano sent her a gift: a brooch for her dalmatica. She liked it more than she wished to. It was black onyx and topaz, in a bed of gold. She did not want to wear it, yet she could not resist doing so, her fingers straying to it because it was also beautiful to the touch. Damn him!
Finally she could wait no longer, and she sent for a thief she had used in the past, when necessity dictated. She told him the knife was hers and had been taken in a robbery, then sold to Giuliano Dandolo. She had seen him with it and realized he had no idea of its origin. She had offered to buy it back, and because of the family crest, he had, not surprisingly, refused. She had no recourse but to have it stolen, as it had been stolen from her.
The thief asked no questions and promised to do as she wished, for a price.
Next she wrote a letter to Gregory, disguising her hand to look like that of Dandolo, copying from the letter he had sent her accepting her earlier invitation. She said she had accidentally stumbled on a revealing secret about Zoe Chrysaphes and would be willing to inform Gregory, if Gregory would assist him in a certain diplomatic matter, of no detriment to Byzantium. She signed it with his name, also copied.
Finally she sent a similar letter to Giuliano from Gregory saying he had heard that Giuliano was interested in learning about Maddalena Agallon. He had known and admired her and would be happy to tell Giuliano all he was able to. She signed it “Gregory Vatatzes.” She knew his hand well enough to forge it without effort.
Then she sat in the large red chair under the torches and stared at the ceiling, relishing the moment, feeling her heart beat so hard and so high in her chest that she could scarcely breathe.
The night of the assignation between Gregory and Giuliano, Zoe was filled with a torrent of doubts. She stood at the window and looked out at the hazy darkness and the faintly moving gleam of lanterns like crawling fireflies in the streets below. Was she being absurd? Poor Zoe Chrysaphes, once the greatest beauty in exiled Byzantium, the mistress of emperors, soon to be a crazy old woman in the streets, dressed in rags, trying to kill people!
She strode over to the great cross on the wall and stared at it, willing herself to regain the passion of vengeance that would overcome her weakness. The Kantakouzenos were destroyed in Cosmas, and the Vatatzes with Arsenios, the Doukas in Euphrosane; the rest did not matter. Only Dandolo was left, and that would soon be over, too.
She moved to the icon of the Virgin Mary and knelt. “Blessed Mother of God, fill me with strength to complete my mission!” she pleaded.
She looked up at the somber face with its aureole of gold, and it seemed to smile at her. As if some hidden floodgates inside Zoe had opened, the blood throbbed in her veins and her muscles had the vitality of a young woman.
She rose, crossed herself, and hurried out alone in the night, as light and easy in her stride as a deer. It was mild, the wind off the sea smelling of salt. Only when she was half a mile from her home did she realize that the old beggar woman she was dressed to seem would never have walked as she was doing. As she rounded a corner, she bent a little and slowed her pace. She went another mile slowly, painfully.
Gregory had to pass this way to keep his appointment with Giuliano. Here was the place to catch him, in the Venetian Quarter. S
he had calculated the time he would pass, and before Giuliano could arrive, but only just. It had to be exact. She touched the dagger at her belt, hidden by her cloak, then crossed herself again. Now she must wait.
There was someone coming along the street now. Two young men, arm in arm, drunk, their bodies swaying, making the shadows move. She heard their voices and their laughter and shrank back into the lee of a doorway.
Should she attack Gregory from behind? No, that was a coward’s way. He would suspect anyone following him, but not an old woman face-to-face. She bent farther forward, as if age crippled her.
There was laughter down the street, lights going the other way. The wind was saltier here, close to the waterfront.
There was someone else coming, a tall man carrying a lantern. She recognized his step. She hobbled, barely glancing at his face, her voice whining, high-pitched, and servile. “Spare an old woman a few pence? May God bless you….”
He stopped, his hand going toward his side. Money or a weapon? There was no time to wait and see. Zoe drew out the knife from beneath her cloak and clawed upward with it, at the same time kicking him as hard as she could on the shin. He jerked forward with surprise, and she swept the blade hard across his throat, using all her strength, helped by the weight of his body as he lurched off balance from the kick. The lantern crashed and went out, but her eyes were accustomed to the night. There was blood jetting out of his throat, warm and sticky on her hand. She could smell it. He did not even cry out, making only a terrible gurgle as he choked, wrenching around, grabbing at her as his life gushed out of him. He tore at her shoulder, pulling the muscles, hurting as if he had stabbed her, but he was already losing his balance, carrying her down with him. She felt herself falling, and the ground hit her hard with a pain in her elbow that took her breath away.
But his grasp had loosened. She did not want him to go without knowing it was she who had done it.
“Gregory!” she said clearly. “Gregory!”
For a moment, his eyes focused on her and his lips formed something that might have been her name; then the light in him went out, and his tar black eyes were empty.
Slowly, her bones aching, her muscles stiff, she rose and turned to walk away. Her vision was blurred; hot tears streamed down her face. It puzzled her why she felt as if the void were not at her feet but inside her, and she knew with certainty that it would never again be filled.
Fifty-one
ANNA WOKE IN THE NIGHT TO FIND SIMONIS STANDING over her with a candle in her hand.
Simonis’s voice was sharp with irritation. “It’s a man from the Venetian Quarter, on horseback. Says you’re to come right away. There’s been an accident and they need help. He wants you to go on his horse. They’re mad people. I’ll go and tell him to get one of their own.” She half turned away.
“Tell him I’ll be there in a minute,” Anna ordered.
She went with the Venetian, accepting his hand to haul her up into the saddle behind him, clutching her bag.
“You won’t need it,” he told her. “He’s dead. We … we need your help to get rid of the body so it won’t be found and we won’t get the blame for his murder.”
She was stunned. “Why on earth would I help you?” she demanded, preparing to slide off and return to her bed.
He urged the animal forward, gathering speed too quickly for her to do such a thing. They clattered down the hill and along the level. If he replied to her question, she did not hear his words. It was a quarter of an hour of clinging to him awkwardly in the hazy darkness, her bag slapping against her legs, before they came to a halt in an alley. A little knot of people had gathered outside the doorway of a small shop. At their feet was sprawled the body of a man. One of the group produced a lantern and held it up. In its wavering light, she could see the fear in his face and the scarlet of blood on the stones.
“We found him in our doorway,” the man said quietly. “We didn’t do it. He’s not one of us, he’s a nobleman, and Byzantine. What shall we do?”
Anna took the lantern from him and lowered it to look at the body. She saw straightaway that it was Gregory Vatatzes. His throat had been cut in a terrible, jagged wound, and scarlet with gore on the road beside him was a fine dagger with the Dandolo crest on the hilt. She had seen it before, less than a week ago, in Giuliano’s hands. He had cut a ripe peach with it, offering her half. They had laughed together over something trivial. There had been only the one peach. It had been his, and he had shared it with her.
She ran her hands over the body, searching to see if he was armed, if there had been a fight. She was cold with fear that Giuliano could have been injured as well.
She found a weapon, another jeweled knife, this one with a different shape of blade, still in its sheath at his belt and unstained. Gregory had not even drawn it. There was a piece of paper in his pocket: an invitation to meet about three hundred yards from here, signed by Giuliano.
With stiff hands, she tore the paper into tiny pieces and put the Dandolo dagger in her own bag, then turned to the man who had come for her. “Help me move him into the middle of the road. Somebody get a horse with any kind of cart. As many of you as can, climb into it and drive over the body, just once, over his neck, so we can hide the wound. Go on! Quickly!”
Anna bent down, forcing herself to grip Gregory’s body. It was heavy. It was hard work to drag it into the middle of the street where the traffic had worn the stones concave over the years. The sweat broke out on her body, yet she was shivering so violently that her teeth chattered. She tried not to think of what she was doing, only what it would cost Giuliano if she failed, and these people who had trusted her and would pay a terrible price to the authorities if it was thought to be murder.
When the task was completed, in swaying, jerking lantern light, the women helped her find the place where Gregory had been killed so that in daylight the blood would not make it obvious he had been moved. They worked hard, with lye and potash and brushes to get rid of every trace, scrubbing, swilling, scraping between the stones.
By the time they were satisfied, the man had returned with the cart, drawn by a swaybacked horse. He did not say where he had got it, and no one asked.
It was a fearful job. The horse was frightened by the smell of blood and death, and it did everything it could to avoid treading on the corpse. It had to be led, talked to softly, encouraged against its will, in order to draw the wheels over Gregory’s neck and shoulders.
“It’s not good enough,” Anna told them, staring at the mangled flesh and hideously exposed bone. She could not leave it looking so obviously like a murder. “Do it once more. No one will believe it an accident if it’s clear the cart went over him several times. They might accept that the horse was frightened and backed once. Be careful.” The cart began to move, the man dragging at the halter of the reluctant animal, which was sweating, its flanks lathered, its eyes rolling.
“To the left!” she said urgently, waving her arm. “More! … That’s it. Now forward.”
She forced herself to look. The body looked terrible. Anyone seeing it would assume he had been knocked down and then dragged until the wheels finally went over him as the animal panicked. She turned away.
“Thank you,” the man said. His voice cracked with emotion. “I’ll take you back home.”
“You stay here. Clean the cart and the horse’s hooves. Do that very carefully or they’ll find it if they look. I’ll tell the authorities you called me to an accident.” She gulped again, her head swimming. “It’s easy to explain. Dark night, frightened horse, a man returned from a long exile in Alexandria who didn’t know the Venetian Quarter well. Bad accident, but they happen. Don’t add to it.” She felt her stomach churning. “You found him. You called me because you knew me. You didn’t see in the dark how bad it was.”
She walked away quickly, and as soon as she was around the corner, she retched. It took her several minutes before she was well enough to stand up and go on. She was less than a mile fro
m the house where Giuliano lodged, and he should have returned by now. The time of his appointment with Gregory was long past. Before she could report Gregory’s death to the night watch, she must give Giuliano back the dagger.
She reached the door he used at the side of the house and rapped on it hard. There was no answer. She tried again and waited. She had tried a third time and was about to walk away, but then she heard a brief noise, and the door swung open to show light and the bulk of a man behind it.
“Giuliano?” she said urgently.
He pulled it wider, his face stunned with surprise in the upward glow of the lantern. “Anastasius? What’s happened? You look terrible. Come in, man.” He pulled the door wide. “Are you hurt? Let me …”
She had forgotten how filthy she was, stained with dirt from the street and with Gregory’s blood. “I’m not hurt!” she said sharply. “Close the door … please.”
He was standing in a nightshirt, his hair tousled as if he had already been back in bed. She felt her face burning.
She took the bloody dagger out of her bag and showed it to him, gripping it by the handle, but so that he could see the Dandolo crest. The blade was scarlet with blood—congealing but not yet dry.
Giuliano’s face went white. He stared at her in horror.
“I found it in the street a mile from here,” she told him. “Beside the body of Gregory Vatatzes. His throat had been torn out.”
He started to speak but choked on the words.
She told him briefly how she had been sent for and what she had done. “They’ll assume it was an accident. Clean your knife. Soak it until there isn’t a smear of blood on it anywhere, even in the crevices of the handle. Did you go to meet him?”
“Yes,” Giuliano said hoarsely, having to clear his throat to force out the word. “He wasn’t there. That’s my knife. Zoe Chrysaphes gave it to me, because it has the Dandolo crest on it. But it was stolen a couple of days ago.”
