Basil shook his head. "I have no idea. Perhaps they quarreled; he fell overboard and panicked. It can be difficult trying to help someone who is thrashing around; they become as much a danger to others as they are to themselves."
Anna had a vision of Justinian losing his temper, striking more forcefully than he had intended. He was strong. Bessarion could have overbalanced. He would flail around in the water and be pulled down, gasping, crying out, drowning. Had Justinian panicked? Not unless he had changed beyond all recognition from the man she had known. He had never been a coward. And if he had intended to kill Bessarion, then he would not have cut the ropes, he would have stayed all night and found the body, then tied weights to it and rowed far out in the Bosphorus and let it sink forever.
She felt a sudden sense of release. It was the first tangible evidence to grasp. She had facts, and even if she could not use them yet, they showed her brother's innocence irrefutably to her. "It sounds like an accident," she pointed out.
"It's possible," Basil conceded. "Perhaps if it had been anyone else, they would have taken it as such."
"Why not for Bessarion?"
Basil made a slight gesture of distaste. "Bessarion's wife, Helena, is very beautiful. Justinian was a handsome man, and while he was religious, he was also imaginative, articulate, and had a dry and sharp sense of humor. He was a widower, and therefore free to follow his inclinations where they led him."
"I see..." Anna was a widow and held a hollow pain of loss inside her, too, but it was different. Eustathius's death had been both a guilt and a release. He had been of good family, wealthy, a soldier of courage and skill. His lack of imagination bored her and eventually made her find him repugnant. And he had been brutal. She still felt nausea rise inside her at the memory. The emptiness within seemed as if it would fill her until it burst through her skin. She was incomplete, maybe as much as the eunuch she pretended to be.
"You think that Justinian cared for Helena?" she asked incredulously. "Is that what people are saying?"
"No." Basil shook his head. "Not really. I should think a quarrel that got out of hand is more likely."
After he had gone, she examined her herb and general medicine store. She needed more opium. Theban was the best, but it was imported from Egypt and not easily obtained. She might have to settle for second quality. She also needed more black hyoscyamus, mandragora, juice of climbing ivy. She was low in such ordinary herbs as nutmeg, camphor, attar of roses, and a few other of the common remedies.
The following morning, she set out to find a Jewish herbalist whose name she had heard recommended. Like all Jews, he lived across the Golden Horn in district thirteen, Galata. She took as much money as she could afford to spend and set out for the shore. Since having Basil as a patient, she was much better off than previously.
It was hot already, even this early in the day. It was not a long walk, and she enjoyed the sound and bustle as people unloaded donkeys from the day's trade. There was a pleasant smell of baking in the air and the salt breath up from the water.
At the harbor, she waited until there was a taxi going across to Galata that she could share, and fifteen minutes later she was on the northern shore. Here it was even more run-down than the main city. Houses were in need of repair, windows were paned haphazardly with whatever was to hand. The shabbiness of poverty touched every street corner, and she saw people in unembroidered cloaks and tunics, and of course few horses. Jews were not allowed to ride them.
After a few inquiries, she found the small, discreet shop of Avram Shachar, on the Street of the Apothecaries. She knocked on the door. It was opened by a boy of about thirteen, slender and dark, his features Semitic rather than Greek.
"Yes?" he said politely, caution edging his voice. Her fair skin, chestnut hair, and gray eyes would tell him she was unlikely to be of his own people; her robes and beardless face could belong only to a eunuch.
"I am a physician," she replied. "My name is Anastasius Zarides. I came from Nicea, and I need a supplier of