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She dreaded going out in case she made another mistake, another womanish gesture, expression, or even lack of reaction in some way. One error would be enough to make people look harder and perhaps see the differences between her and a real eunuch.
They ate a lunch of fresh gray mullet and wheat bread at a tavern and asked a few discreet questions about cheaper lodgings.
“Oh, inland,” a fellow diner told them cheerfully. He was a little gray-haired man in a worn tunic that came no farther than his knees, his legs bound with cloth to keep him warm but leaving him unencumbered for work. “Farther west you go, cheaper they are. You strangers here?”
There was no point in denying it. “From Nicea,” A
“I’m from Sestos myself.” The man gave them a gap-toothed grin. “But everyone comes here, sooner or later.”
A
That night, she lay in her bed listening to the unfamiliar sounds of the city around her. This was Constantinople, the heart of Byzantium. She had heard stories of it all her life, from her parents and her grandparents, but now that she was here it was so strange, too big for the imagination to grasp.
But she would accomplish nothing by remaining in her lodgings. Survival demanded that in the morning she go out and begin the search for a house from which she could establish her practice.
In spite of her tiredness, sleep did not come easily, and her dreams were crowded with strange faces and the fear of being lost.
She knew from her father’s stories that Constantinople was surrounded by water on three sides, and that the main street, named Mese, was Y shaped. The two arms met at the Amastrianon Forum and continued east toward the sea. All the great buildings she had heard him speak of were along this stretch: the Hagia Sophia, the Forum of Constantine, the Hippodrome, the old imperial palaces, and of course shops with exquisite artifacts, silks, spices, and gems.
They set out in the morning, walking briskly. The air was fresh. Food shops were open, and at practically every corner bakeries were crowded with people, but they had no time to indulge themselves. They were still in the web of narrow streets that threaded the whole city from the calm water of the Golden Horn in the north to the Sea of Marmara in the south. Several times they had to stand aside to let donkey carts pass, piled high with goods for market, mostly fruit and vegetables.
They reached the wide stretch of Mese Street just as a camel swayed past them, high-headed, sour-faced, and a man hurried behind it, bent double under the weight of a bale of cotton. The thoroughfare teemed with people. In among the native Greeks she saw turbaned Muslims, Bulgars with close-cropped heads, dark-ski
She had no idea where to start. She needed to make inquiries and learn something about the different residential areas where she might find a house.
“We need a map,” Leo said with a frown. “The city is far too big to know where we are without one.”
“We need to be in a good residential district,” Simonis added, probably thinking about the home they had left in Nicea. But she had willed to come almost as much as A
It took them several more minutes to find a shop selling manuscripts, and they inquired.
“Oh, yes,” the shopkeeper said immediately. Short and wiry, with white hair and a quick smile, he opened a drawer behind him and pulled out several scrolls of paper. He unrolled one of them and showed A
“See? Fourteen districts.” He pointed to the loosely triangular shape drawn in black ink.
“This is Mese Street, going this way.” He showed them on the map. “There’s the Wall of Constantine, and west of that again the Wall of Theodosius. All except district thirteen, across the Golden Horn to the north. That’s called Galata. But you don’t want to live there. That’s for foreigners.” He rolled it up and passed it to her. “That will be two solidi.”
She was taken aback and more than a little suspicious that he knew she was a stranger and was taking advantage. Still, she passed over the money.
They walked the length of Mese Street, trying not to stare around them like the provincials they were. Row after row of merchants’ stalls lined the street. They were shaded by canopies of every color imaginable, tied tightly to wooden posts to anchor them against the wind. Even so they snapped loudly in every gust, as if they were alive and struggling to get free.
In district one there were spice merchants and perfumers. The air was redolent with their wares, and A
“There’s plenty of money in this district,” Simonis observed with a hint of disapproval.
“More important, they’ll have their own physician already,” Leo replied.
Now they were among the perfumers’ shops and there were rather more women than in the other areas, many of them clearly wealthy. As custom required, they wore tunics and dalmaticas from the neck almost to the ground, and their hair was concealed by headdress and veil. One woman walked past them, smiling, and A
A
She would have to find more ordinary women, and male patients, too, or she would never learn why Justinian had been a favorite with the emperor’s court one day and an exile the next, fortunate to have his life. What had happened? What must A
The following day, by mutual agreement, they left the Mese and its immediate surroundings and searched farther into the side streets, in little shops, and in the residential districts north of center, almost under the giant arches of the Aqueduct of Valens, catching occasional glimpses of the light on the water of the Golden Horn beyond.
They were on a narrow street, barely wide enough for two donkeys to pass each other, when they came to a flight of steps up to the left. Thinking the height might give them a better sense of their bearings, they began to climb. The passage turned one way, then the other. A
Without any warning, the path ended abruptly and they were in a small courtyard. A