The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (13 page)

My heart pounded as I held my breath and sauntered back to the
vomitorium
, refusing to glance behind me. My feet touched the shadows of the arch just as the audience burst into applause so loud I feared the roof would crumble.

The only two ways out of this profession were from the top or the bottom. I preferred the top.

T
he ropes burned my wrists.

“The fires of Gehenna will burn worse, my child.” The black-robed Patriarch gave me a patronizing smile as I picked at the rough cords. “I act with the authority of God and his vassal on earth, Emperor Anastasius. You have defied the sanctity of the very body God has given you with your lewd display here at the Kynêgion. Such vulgarity cannot be tolerated.”

I stifled the urge to roll my eyes and gave Hilarion a pointed look instead.

He cleared his throat. “Perhaps we could reach some sort of agreement? Negotiate a deal that would be mutually beneficial to all parties?”

“My role as shepherd of the Empire cannot be compromised.” The Patriarch snapped his fingers, and two slaves came forward to lead me away. We were almost out the door when Hilarion stopped us.

“Perhaps a cut of the profits?” He sounded as if he were merely bargaining for a cut of veal in the market, but I knew he must be desperate to make such an offer.

The Patriarch paused, then shook his head. “Coins cannot sway me. The girl shall remain in prison until I have deemed she has fully repented her evil ways. This is as God wills.”

I wouldn’t be led away to rot in prison, locked away from my daughter. I’d seen the way the man’s eyes lingered over the swell of my breasts under my stola. “Perhaps a cut of the profits and a private viewing of Leda?” I asked. “Free of charge?”

The Patriarch stopped and nodded to his slaves. They dropped the ropes and left Hilarion’s office. He waited until the door shut to speak. “A
very
private show.” He spoke to my breasts. “And fifteen percent of the show’s profits.”

Hilarion choked, but he relented after the glare I shot him. “Fine. But we get to finish out the season with
Leda
.” He spat on his hand and offered it to the Patriarch, but he received only a cold stare in return.

The Patriarch’s fingers were gentle as he untied me. “When may I expect that private viewing?”

I rubbed my wrists and gave him a peck on the cheek. “I’ll go change right now.”

.   .   .

“I know I’m going to trip and fall on my face.” Chrysomallo clutched my hand.

“Careful.” I shook her off and rubbed my wrist, the skin still pink despite all the olive oil I’d rubbed into the evidence of the Patriarch’s ropes.

“Still sore?”

More than my wrists were sore, but I shrugged. “Could be worse.”

“I’ve never been to a
kyria
’s house before.” Chrysomallo gaped as we passed under the pink marble arch to the villa of General Flavius Justinus, now commander of Emperor Anastasius’ palace guard. The Empire had always been a place where an ambitious military man might be promoted, but the fall of the Western capital to the Vandals
meant even more opportunities for men in Constantinople. Justin had been a Thracian swineherd in his youth, and he had risen high in his old age, at least high enough to install two gaudy gold statues of Heracles and Theseus—both in all their naked glory—to glower at his guests as they entered his villa. Our troupe was to play a sedate number for the wives during a dinner for the senators and other illustrious guests. I’d have tangled with a demon to perform for the men instead, but I would take what I could get. Hilarion had tried his best to exclude me, claiming he wanted me to perform exclusively on his stage, and only after I’d thrown a bust of Sophocles at his head and threatened to take Leda to another theater did he relent.

Chrysomallo gawked at a mother-of-pearl table with its gold reliquary case and cross, then glanced at me. “Your sister would love this. Do you think she’ll come back to the Kynêgion now that her patron threw her out?”

That was news to me—last I’d heard Comito had been happily ensconced in the villa of her Tyrian dye merchant. I missed my sister, but her return would make things thorny.

I didn’t have to answer. A beardless man in a delectable white and gold tunica herded us through the atrium. His lips were plump, and his skin looked soft as rose petals, his elongated fingers delicate as bird wings. My suspicions were confirmed when I heard him speak to Hilarion, his singsong voice high and unbroken. He was a
castrato
, likely once the child of a poor family eager to place its son in a patrician’s villa to entertain his guests with his sweet singing voice.

We followed the eunuch through a lavish garden surrounded by bushes trimmed to resemble various animals, a short giraffe stalked by a leafy lion and a rhinoceros with a bird on its rump. Another slave stood over a pretty little pond in the middle of a cluster of roses. He rang a tiny silver bell as we passed, and several red fish—mullets from the look of them—kissed the surface as he hummed and leaned down to caress them. This truly was another world.

A freshly scrubbed mosaic gleamed under our feet as we passed the kitchens, a domestic scene of sparkling children playing with fluffy black dogs. A peacock and peahen with matching pearl collars strolled over to us from the garden, and a heavy green curtain edged with gold thread muffled the low hum of women’s conversation from the
gynaeceum
, a reminder that we might visit this world, yet never truly belong.

My stomach growled as slaves paraded past with platters of purple sea urchins split open to show their orange guts atop tureens of creamy soup with garlic croutons, parrots dressed in their feathers and smeared with brown gravy, and a whole roast lamb stuffed with black olives and goat cheese. Chrysomallo groaned as a giant bowl of steaming stewed chicken and liver patties went by, so large two slaves struggled to carry it. “This is torture,” she said. “I should have eaten before I came.”

“Me, too,” I said. “But then we wouldn’t fit into our costumes.”

She pulled a face at our proper stolas, worn tonight out of respect for our patrician audience, although these women rarely showed so much wrist or ankle.

The eunuch slipped through the curtain and cleared his throat. “They are ready for you.”

Hilarion remained behind as we entered the
gynaeceum
, its walls the creamy color of soft parchment and painted with delicate floral frescoes to match the buttery silk couches. The
kyrias
of Constantinople’s noble families resembled an artist’s palette in their rainbow of silks, gemstones, and pearls glittering at their throats, ears, and wrists as they lounged on couches and nibbled their food. Every nose possessed a noble sweep, their oiled hair twisted into elaborate knots and curls to rival any Gordian knot. They were all I wanted to be.

One well-preserved lady with a face like that of a woodpecker outmatched all the others with the sheer number of jewels—all rubies—attached to her tiny frame. General Justin’s wife, Lupicina. No wonder she dripped with jewels—the woman had been a slave before Justin
married her. Worse, she’d actually been a barbarian prostitute until the General took a liking to her. Perhaps there was hope for us all.

I bowed my head. “We are honored to perform for such an illustrious group of Constantinople’s most revered wives and mothers.”

The ruby
kyria
managed a tight smile that didn’t reach her eyes. “You may begin.”

The show for the women was a sedate affair—the very proper marriage of Abraham and Sarah—and I had only a bit part since I wasn’t interested in fighting for the role of the elderly church matriarch. The
kyria
yawned into their hands and returned to their gossip before we’d even finished our bows.

Our troupe moved back to the waiting area behind the curtain to don our cloaks while Hilarion waited for the eunuch to return with the coin purse. Chrysomallo and the other actresses drooled over the rich mosaics and gilded furniture, but I didn’t care a whit for the anemone flowers in the wall fresco or the gold capitals topping the marble columns. From the other side of another green curtain came the low hum of voices, the conversation of some of the Empire’s richest and most powerful men. They were men I wanted to meet, but we were going home.

My earring caught my
paludamentum
as I threw the cloak over my shoulder, ready to leave, but the eunuch emerged from the curtain and touched his palms together.

“The General begs another performance,” he said, his girlish tone more command than request. “He and his guests await in the
triclinium
.”

There was a titter of excitement as we shrugged off our cloaks and girls rearranged their cleavage and pinched one another’s cheeks. The men’s dining room was smaller than I expected, made smaller yet by the jet ceiling and red and black rectangular frescoes that stretched from ceiling to floor, surrounding a central fresco depicting a boar hunt and naked hunters armed with spears and bronze shields. Men in
white tunicas, many wearing a red senatorial sash tied around their waist, lounged together on saffron
lecti
as they finished their meals, the tiny bird bones and feathers discarded on the mosaic floor. Dregs of wine already spattered one crimson wall panel, and several toppled redware goblets revealed humorous paintings of men and women in rather inventive positions. This promised to be quite the evening.

“Leda!” A patrician with curls the color of sand and a dimpled chin waved to me with his wine cup—one that had probably been refilled a few too many times. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him. “You cruel goddess, come to steal my heart again!” All the room laughed save a man at his elbow. He was scarcely older than me, but a scar cut from the base of his nose to his upper lip. His black hair was cropped close to his head, and his shoulders resembled a slave’s in a marble quarry. Yet no slave glowered like that.

A beast of a man in the center of the room crooked a finger at us. He might have been a goose amongst swans in his plain brown tunica with solid leather sandals, a cloud of unruly white curls on his head that matched the sparse hairs peeking over his neckline, and the largest ears I’d ever seen. I liked him immediately.

“My guests have requested a display of dancing,” he said, waving his goblet to the twenty or so men on the couches. “And as I am old and fat, I thought they might prefer a number performed by the fairer sex.”

“My ladies are happy to oblige, General.” Hilarion was all smiles and bows, but I hurried to take a place at the back of the circle. I wasn’t likely to run into most of these men—or their fortunes—again, and none of them would rush to claim me once they realized I danced like an elephant. A clumsy elephant.

Thanks be to Christ they didn’t expect us to sing, too. General Justin clapped a hasty beat, and the rest of the men joined in, singing one bawdy song after another. Chrysomallo gave me a wide berth as we danced, castanets snapping and the room turning warm until
sweat pearled on our skin and I flung my hands in the air. “Enough!” I laughed, panting and fanning myself with my hand. “We won’t have any energy for the rest of the night if we keep this up.”

“And what do you plan to do that takes so much energy?” The sandy-haired man who’d called to me earlier waggled his brows.

One of the men punched his arm. “We all know what you want to do with her, John.”

John.

Now I recognized him, the same man who’d hung on Chrysomallo’s arm the night I’d met Karas at the Boar’s Eye. I wondered if he remembered spewing his dinner over the ground before stumbling into the night. Probably not—he’d likely woken up in an alley the next morning.

I sidestepped a few of the other girls, hiked up my stola, and perched on the arm of his
lectus
, tapping my chin as if searching for an answer. He might have been mistaken for Apollo with his soft skin and pale hair. I leaned down as if to whisper in his ear. “If you have to ask what takes so much energy,” I said, tracing the dimple in his chin and speaking loud enough so all could hear, “you should probably go home before the big boys start to play.”

He laughed with the rest of them, even as his ears turned red as the wall behind him. The waters of the Mediterranean couldn’t have been warmer than the attention of all these men’s eyes on me. Not everyone smiled though. John’s black-haired friend crossed his arms against his chest and watched me with his original scowl. There was no mistaking which god of old he resembled: Ares, god of war.

“So, young lady.” General Justin shifted on his
lectus
, waving away the flurry of slaves. “If we are not to have the pleasure of watching you dance, what do you propose for our entertainment?”

The way the men devoured us with their eyes, I knew what answer they expected. “A
skolion
,” I said. There was a collective groan, but I waved them down. “The winning poet shall receive a kiss”—I grinned
and shook my hips—“and maybe more—from whichever girl he chooses, free of charge!”

That got their attention. Chrysomallo looked at me with wide eyes. “Lord, Theodora. Are you sure you aren’t a pimp?”