She looks up, startled, and there he is, a black apparition in the trembling lamplight, in her bedroom! without a knock on the door, without the warning sound of a footstep.
“Good evening, Zoe. They said you were in here. Do I find you ready for bed so soon? Well, I will only take a minute of your time.”
John! For a moment she can’t breathe, the blood beats in her temples, she clutches her dressing gown to her throat. “How dare you come here without invitation? I am the Empress.”
“Of course you are, Zoe. May I?” He draws a chair up to her bedside. “You’re looking very well.” He takes hold of her hand and draws his fingernail along the back of it. The soft flesh yields and springs back. It feels like a cockroach is walking on her. It takes all her strength not to pull away. “Remarkable skin for a woman of your age. You never seem to grow old.” His smile like curdled cream.
But she knows she is old. She knows it in her aching knees when she kneels to pray; knows it in the heaviness in her chest when she lies in bed at night unable to sleep; knows it in the quaver in her voice, which she is struggling now to control. She is old, but, by The Virgin of Pharos, she will outlive this mincing capon, this devil, if it takes every atom of her being.
“How have you been, Zoe? How do you spend your days?”
“Talking to Christ,” she whispers.
“Really. You surprise me. I thought only saints did that.”
“Tell me what you want and then go away.”
“All right. We need you to become Calaphates’s mother.”
His mother! The child was pathetic, a half-wit, uneducated, undisciplined. He stole and lied. He’d had a succession of pets that all died mysteriously. Well, what could you expect from parents like Stephen and Maria? “He has a mother,” she says.
John smiles again. “I believe Maria’s willing to part with him. I’ve brought the necessary document.”
“So he can succeed to the throne through me and keep you Paphlagonian scum in power?”
“Scum, is it? May I remind you, Zoe, that nobody forced you to marry our brother. You threw yourself at him—a mere boy. Disgusting, really. And your first husband? What should we say of him? Died opportunely? And now you regret it all? Too late, I’m afraid.
I will sign nothing. Get out.”
“Poor Zoe, I can make your life much more unpleasant than it is. Try me. On the other hand, if you cooperate perhaps we could permit the perfume business again? You’d like that wouldn’t you?”
Her perfumery has been idle—ever since the ‘incident.’ The vats empty, the fires extinguished, her assistants dismissed. Only the smell lingers faintly on, in the draperies, the carpets, the furniture.
“We could perhaps allow you a little more freedom?”
She had tried to poison him two years ago. He knew it, she knew he knew it. But there had been no formal accusation, no admission. It was a fact that neither of them could afford to acknowledge. Her servants had been tortured in secret and forced to confess. Loyal Sgouritzes, that dear old man, burned with irons. All her people had been sent away and replaced by John’s picked guards. Her little dog had been found dead in the garden one morning—poisoned. Now, except on state occasions where she is led like a performing ape, to the audience hall, the hippodrome, the cathedral, she spends her days alone, without companions, without visitors. Her letters are opened, her every movement watched. She has thought of throwing herself on his mercy. But the man has no mercy.
“I don’t believe my husband approves of this. I demand to see him.”
“Your husband, Zoe, has recently returned to Thessaloniki to pray for a cure at the shrines. Didn’t you know?” It is a sneer. Of course, she doesn’t know. She knows nothing. “Now sign the fucking paper.” Suddenly his hand is gripping her wrist with a strength she wouldn’t have guessed. “Sign it and we can both go to bed.”
She signs. What else can she do?
And, as silently as he appeared, John is gone.
After he has left, she goes to the little altar, where votive candles flicker in the dark. She lifts from it the little figurine wrapped in purple silk, lovingly unwraps it, holds it to her lips, kisses it, wets it with her tears. Her Christ. A luminous thing that is sometimes gold, and sometimes silver, and sometimes as red as blood. It speaks to her that way. And what it says to her now is “Be strong, Zoe. There will be another time. You won’t always be the weak one.”