better if they stay here for a few days, at the very least. Helena's friends and allies will be watching. Esaias and whoever else, Demetrios, perhaps, and others. Helena was like her mother in one thing: Come victory or despair, triumph or ruin, she never forgot a vengeance. You do, sometimes easily, and Zoe thought that was a weakness in you. It kept you from being truly like her."
She was surprised. "Like her?"
"She saw in you her own passion for life, but weakened by the power to forgive. But I think in the end she realized it was really your strength. It made you whole, where she was not."
A tide of guilt swept over Anna that she was not worthy of this praise. Certainly she had forgiven many things, small and unimportant. But she had kept the greatest ones, where the injury had wounded her where no healing was possible. She had never forgiven her husband, Eustathius. She had hidden the revulsion she had felt, the guilt because she could not love him, could not bear to carry his child, or for the hunger that had burned inside her, unanswered. She had never let go of blaming him for her own act of provoking that terrible searing, debasing fight. She remembered the shame even more than the pain and the blood.
Was she blaming him because he had allowed all his frustration, his fury of helplessness, confusion, and defeat, to explode in violence? Or was it her own guilt because she had half wanted him to descend so far?
Yes, he had been brutal, but that was a burden on his soul that she could not reach or help now. The time when perhaps she could have was past, and she had wasted it. That was something else for which she needed forgiveness.
She tried to think of what had been good in him. It was difficult, until she thought first of what had been wounded also, and then the pity came, scouring deep with the awareness that she should have been gentler. If she had helped him, instead of lashing out from her own hurt, he might have found the best in himself.
She remembered his skill with animals, how he spoke softly to his horses, sat up all night with them when they were wounded or ill, his total joy at the birth of a foal, and how he had praised the mare, stroked her, loved her. She found the tears wet on her own face with regret that she had let that slip away from him, selfish with her own need.
She let go of her anger and in the darkness bowed her head.
I'm sorry. She said the words in her mind, humbly and passionately. Please God, forgive me. Help me to be whole in spirit, to give others the mercy I so desperately need myself.
Slowly she felt the burden dissolve, and absolution enfolded her like an embrace, easing out all the old pain and washing it away. The ache disappeared, and a sweet warmth filled the emptiness inside.
They reached the edge of the water. The barge was ready, knocking gently against the steps as the ripples carried it. It was time to go.
There was nothing more to say. She was dressed as a woman again; the only other time in nearly ten years had been in Jerusalem with Giuliano. This was difficult. She put her hand up and touched Nicephoras's face, then kissed his cheek. Then, as his arm tightened around her for a moment, she slipped away and went down the steps into the boat.
It was dawn when she arrived at Avram Shachar's house, by now long familiar to her. It was far too early to expect anyone to be up, but she dared not wait in the streets. A woman alone was more vulnerable than a eunuch would have been. Even with a fuller tunic and her figure unbound so the outline of her breasts and hips was clear, she had to keep reminding herself that now she looked utterly different. Beneath the minimal veil of decency, her bright chestnut hair was visible.
The heat was oppressive and would be worse when the sun rose. The streets were parched and dusty with summer drought.
She knocked on Shachar's door and waited. After several minutes had gone by, she knocked again, and almost immediately he appeared, blinking a little, obviously woken from sleep.
"Yes?" He looked her up and down, puzzled but gentle as always. "Is someone in your house ill? You'd better