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“Rest!” His body flinched as if she had hurt him. “Every hour is precious. Do you not know the peril we are in?”
“I know, but your health still demands that you rest. What is happening in two weeks’ time?”
He smiled. “I am going to perform the marriage ceremony for Leonicus Strabomytes and Theodosia. It will be in the Hagia Sophia-a truly splendid occasion. An example to the people of the blessing and mercy of God. It will uplift everyone and fire a new piety in them.”
A
He looked at her steadily. “Does your largeness of heart not extend to her, Anastasius? I have given Theodosia a special icon of the Blessed Virgin Mary as a token of her absolution.”
A
“I asked no payment of her, except humility and obedience to the Church,” he retorted. “You have sins also, Anastasius. It ill becomes you to judge when you yourself have neither confessed nor repented. I don’t know what your sins are, but they are heavy and deep. I know that, because I see it in your eyes. I know you ache to confess and find absolution, but your pride holds you prisoner, and you cling to it rather than to the Church.”
She said nothing, almost breathless with the accuracy of his blow, deep as the bone, shocking her with pain.
He sat up, his hand on her wrist, his face close to hers. “You are in sin, Anastasius. Come to me and confess, in humility, and I will give you pardon.”
She was frozen inside, as if he had in some profound way assaulted her. She could only remove his fingers from her arm and straighten the bottles on the table, then turn and leave, walking in a daze of misery and wild, twisting confusion. Never in her life had she felt more absolutely alone.
Eighty
IT WAS AUTUMN OF 1280, A MONTH AFTER THE WEDDING, before A
She stood in the street, the wind harsh in her face. Perhaps Constantine was right. Did A
She started to walk again, urgently, even up the steepening incline, needing to have the apology made before her resolve weakened.
Theodosia received her reluctantly. She stood looking toward the window. A
“Thank you for coming,” Theodosia said politely. “But I believe I told you last time you called that I have no need of your services.” She turned and looked momentarily at A
“I came to apologize to you,” A
Theodosia shrugged slightly. “Yes, it is arrogant, but I accept your apology. I have the Church’s absolution, and that is really all that counts.” She half turned away.
A
“It isn’t a matter of belief, it’s fact. Bishop Constantine said so,” Theodosia replied tartly. “And, as you say, it is not your concern.”
“The Church’s absolution, or God’s?” A
Theodosia blinked. “I am not sure that I believe in God, or resurrection and eternity in your Christian sense. Of course I can’t imagine time ending, no one can. It will go on, what else could it do? A kind of endless desert stretching without purpose into the darkness.”
“You don’t believe in heaven,” countered A
Theodosia’s voice was tinged with sarcasm. “Is there deeper than that?”
“The deepest would be to have held heaven in your hands and let it slip away, to have known what it was and then lost it,” A
“And would the God you believe in do that to anyone?” Theodosia challenged. “It’s bestial.”
“God doesn’t do it,” A
Theodosia’s voice was harsh with pain. “Are you saying I did that to myself?”
A
Theodosia stared at her, anger, confusion, and grief in her face.
A
“Back to what?” Theodosia asked, surprise in her voice, as if she had taken a step only to find the ground beneath her was no longer there.
Now it was A
Punishment was for society’s sense of order, necessary for survival. Theodosia executed her own punishment, and it was far more terrible than God would have given her, because it was destructive. God’s punishment should be for the healing of the si
A
She could not let the matter rest. She went to Constantine and found him busy ministering to supplicants of one sort or another.
“What can I do for you, Anastasius?” he asked guardedly. They were in his ocher-colored room facing onto the courtyard.
There was no purpose in trying to be tactful. “I have just visited Theodosia. She has lost the strength and comfort of her faith.”
“Nonsense,” Constantine said sharply. “She attends Mass every Sunday.”
“I did not say she has fallen from the Church,” A
She saw a flash of amazement in Constantine’s eyes, as if he had caught a glimpse of something he had barely guessed at before.
A
Constantine looked at her with a strange mixture of wonder and hostility. “What had you in mind?” he said coldly.
“Perhaps to part from Leonicus for a while-say, two years? It was being with him when Joa