were less theological, but more telling than Bessarion's."
"Then it couldn't have been a religious disagreement," she said, grasping at straws of hope.
"No. The enmity, if it was such, seems to have been born of his friendship with Antoninus, who appears to have been the one actually to have killed Bessarion."
"Why would he? Was he not a soldier, a very practical man?" She felt she must explain herself. "I have treated men, soldiers, who knew him."
He looked at her directly. "There was a suggestion that Antoninus and Bessarion's wife were lovers."
"Helena Comnena? She's very beautiful..."
"Do you think so?" He seemed interested, even puzzled. "I find her empty, like a painting whose colors are flat. There is no passion in her, and little ability to know the pain of high dreams one cannot grasp."
"Did Antoninus see that in her? Why else would he kill Bessarion?"
"I don't know," Nicephoras admitted. "I keep coming back to the union with Rome and his passion against it, his attempt to stir up the people to resist. Which leads me nowhere, because both Justinian and Antoninus were against it also."
She sensed a complexity of emotions in him and wondered what Nicephoras's own feelings were about the union.
"Does Bessarion still have followers alive?" She dragged his attention back to the present issue. "Not just admirers, but people who would continue his cause?"
"Justinian and Antoninus are gone," he replied with an edge of sadness. "I think the others have drifted back to their own concerns, other loyalties. Bessarion was a dreamer, like Bishop Constantine, imagining Byzantium can be saved by faith rather than diplomacy. We have never relied on great armies or navies. We have always pitted our enemies against each other, and stood apart from their battles ourselves. But that takes skill, willingness to compromise, and above all the nerve to hold on and wait."
"A rare kind of courage," she conceded, while thinking of Constantine's passionate belief in the Virgin's power to protect them, if they kept the Orthodox faith. Constantine's way of defending the city was surely what God wanted; the emperor's was the intellectual way of man trusting to himself and the arm of flesh-or, more accurately, of cunning.
She wondered what Justinian had really believed rather than what it was politic to say.
A servant had come to call them, and she followed Nicephoras into the emperor's presence.
Michael was still a little feverish, but the rash was definitely improved and no longer spreading. This time, she had brought leaves to make an infusion-a different sort that would reduce fever and pain-and also more ointment of frankincense, mastic, and elder bark, mixed with oil and white of egg.
Two days after that when she came again, the emperor was up and dressed. He had sent for her to thank her for her skill and to pay her handsomely. She did not allow him to see the intensity of her relief.
"Was I poisoned, Anastasius Zarides?" Michael asked, his black eyes searching her face.
She had expected the question. "No, Majesty."
His arched eyebrows rose even higher. "Then I have sinned, but you did not tell me?"
She had expected that also. "I am not a priest, Majesty."
He considered a moment. "Nicephoras says you have intelligence, and that you are honest. Is he wrong, then?"
"I hope not." She made her voice as pious as she could and avoided his eyes.
"Do I sin in seeking union with Rome, and you have not the courage or the faith to tell me?" he persisted.
This question she had not foreseen. There was laughter in his eyes, and impatience. She had only seconds to think. "I believe in medicine, Majesty. I do not know enough about faith. It did not save us in 1204, but I don't know why not."
"Perhaps we had not enough?" he suggested, looking her up and down slowly, as if he might read her answer in the way she stood or the hands knotted together in front of her. "Is lack of faith a sin, or is it an affliction?"
"To know whether to have faith or not, one has to understand what it is that God has promised," she replied, searching her mind frantically. "To have faith that God will give you something merely because you want it is foolish."
"Will He not protect His true Church, because He wants it?" he responded. "Or does it depend upon us observing every detail, and then standing against Rome?"
He was playing with her. Nothing she said would change his mind, but it might decide her fate. Perhaps he