The Sheen on the Silk by Anne Perry

Author:Anne Perry
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9780345519795
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2010-03-23T10:00:00+00:00

Forty-five

ANNA STOOD IN EIRENE VATATZES’S ELEGANT, QUIET bedroom and looked down at the woman lying on the bed. Her clothes were rumpled and marked with blood, and around her neck there were stains of an ointment. In two places was also the yellow mucus of suppuration. There was an open ulcer on her cheek and another just under her jawline on the opposite side. Her hands were covered in red weals, some already swollen where the pus was gathering into a head.

Anna knew from her son, Demetrios, that his father, Gregory, was due to return shortly from Alexandria, this time to remain indefinitely. Eirene was in physical pain, but her distress was greater.

“Is the rest of your body affected as well?” Anna asked gently.

Eirene glared at her. “That doesn’t matter.” She made a sharp gesture with her hands. “Cure my face. Do whatever you have to. The cost is unimportant.” She drew in a long breath. “So is the pain.” Her voice was brittle; Anna could hear the edges of the words like shards of glass grating together.

Anna’s mind raced over every possibility she could think of, every treatment, however radical—Christian, Jewish, or Arabic. Were any of them of use if the source of the illness was the fear in Eirene’s mind?

Anna’s imagination flew to the wounds she guessed at: the rejection of clever, ugly, vulnerable Eirene for the sensuous Zoe, who would laugh and enjoy, then leave, taking whatever she wanted and needing nothing. Was Gregory a man bored by what he could have and fascinated by what he could not? How shallow. How cruel. And yet how desperately understandable.

What was the point in healing the skin from outside, only to have it erupt again a day later?

“Don’t stand there like a fool!” Eirene snapped, twisting a little to look at her. “If you don’t know what to do, say so. I’ll call someone else. If you’re in poverty, for God’s sake take some money, but don’t stare at me as if you expected me to heal myself. What are you going to tell me? That I should pray? Do you think I haven’t prayed all my life, you stupid …” Suddenly she turned her face away, tears wet on her blemished cheeks.

“I am considering what remedies there are, and which would be best,” Anna said gently. Some form of intoxication would relieve the self-consciousness that prevented Eirene from allowing her passion or her anger to show and that had perhaps masked the laughter that could have made her less easy to read. It might even allow the sensuality that could have made her entertaining and just beyond Gregory’s total reach. It would be a short-term answer, but what use was a long-term cure if she perished of misery now?

“I will give you an ointment to take away the heat,” she said aloud.

“I don’t care what it feels like, you fool!” Eirene shouted at her. “Can you see nothing, you—”

“And the redness,” Anna finished calmly. Eirene needed her to understand, yet if she did, that would be intolerable also, another humiliation.

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