her mother's, was lovely. But he had no sense of the steel within. There seemed to be in her a hunger without joy.
"I am grieved to hear of your mother's death," he said formally. "Please accept my condolences."
"Personally?" she asked. "Or do you speak for Rome?"
He smiled. "Personally."
"Really?" She regarded him with dry, rather sour amusement. "I had not realized that you were fond of her. I rather assumed the opposite."
He met her dark eyes. "I admired your mother. I enjoyed her intelligence and her infinite capacity to care about everything."
"Admired her..." Helena repeated the words curiously, as if she found them inappropriate. "But surely she was nothing that Rome approves of? She had no humility, she was never obedient to anything but her own desires, and she was certainly very far from chaste!"
He was angry with her for not defending her mother. "She was more alive than anyone else I know."
"You sound like the eunuch physician Anastasius," she observed sourly. "He mourns her, which is stupid. She would have destroyed him without a thought, if it had been worth her trouble." There was contempt in her voice and a sharp edge that Palombara recognized with surprise as resentment.
"You are mistaken," he said icily. "Zoe admired Anastasius greatly. Quite apart from his medical skill, she liked his wit and his courage, his imagination, and the fact that he was not afraid of her, or of life."
Helena laughed. "How quaint you are, Your Grace. And how terribly innocent. You know nothing."
He forced himself to smile. "If you have your mother's papers, I daresay you are aware of a great deal that others are not. Some of it will be very dangerous. But you must already know that?"
"Oh yes, very dangerous indeed," she said in little more than a whisper. "But you are foolish to pretend that you know of what you speak, Your Grace." Her smile was bright and hard. "You don't."
What was it that obviously pleased her so much? She was looking at him and gloating. Why?
"It seems not," he agreed, lowering his eyes as if he were crestfallen.
Helena laughed, a shrill, cruel sound. "I see my mother did not share it with you," she observed. "But she discovered that your precious eunuch, whom you admire so much, is actually the most superb liar! His entire life and everything about him is a lie."
Palombara stiffened, anger swirling up inside him.
Helena looked at him with derision. "Or to be accurate, I should say 'her whole life.'" She went on, "Anna Zarides is as much a woman as I am. Or at least legally she is. There must be something repulsively wrong with her that she would masquerade as a man all these years, don't you think? Wouldn't you say it was a sin? What do you think I should do, Bishop Palombara? Should I assist in her deceit? Is that morally right?"
He was so stunned he could hardly find his voice. Yet as Helena said the words, he believed them. He looked at her face, shining with malice, and he hated her.
Then he smiled. Her envy was so highly visible. Zoe was gone, and now Helena could not taste her victory completely. Without Zoe to see, there was no flavor in it. But she could at least destroy Anastasius, the daughter Zoe had preferred.
Palombara met Helena's eyes and saw the fury in them. "My condolences," he repeated, then excused himself and walked away.
Outside in the street, the sense of triumph wore off within moments, replaced by fear. If Anastasius was actually a woman and Helena knew it, then she was in the most intense danger. If Helena chose to expose her, he did not know what punishment Anastasius would face, but it would be savage.
Zoe had known and had not betrayed Anastasius's secret. That too was a mystery. She must, in her own way, have had a great respect, even a kind of affection, for her.
He walked along the busy street with the crowd jostling around him. News of the fleet having left for Messina had reached Constantinople with the ship on which Palombara arrived. Fear spread like fire on the wind, sharp and dangerous, edged with panic, quick to violence as the threat became suddenly no longer a nightmare, but a reality.
He walked more rapidly, facing into the wind. The more he considered what Helena had said, the more it frightened him. Should he find Anna Zarides and warn her? But what use would that be? There was nothing she