“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 Anna noticed that she had darkened her brows very delicately, and perhaps her lashes. Certainly there was red clay on her lips to make them look so vivid.

Anna heard her laughter as she met a friend, and together they tried one perfume after another. Their embroidered and brocaded silks stirred in the breeze like flower petals. She envied their lightheartedness.

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 Anna do to gain justice for him?

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. Anna nearly stumbled over the rubble on the steps.