The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (21 page)

And this morning I’d surprised myself by spewing the contents of my stomach all over the cobbles of the alley where I’d slept. A quick calculation told me my moon bloods were late by several weeks. My curses frightened off a little boy rummaging through a trash heap.

Hecebolus had gotten me pregnant before I’d even left Apollonia, despite all the potions I’d been forced to gag down. Everything I’d prayed for, all at the wrong time.

I couldn’t very well tread the boards pregnant, nor did I have even half the fare I needed to get home. I trudged through the alley, stepping over heaps of filthy linen, some shifting and moaning as I passed. One reached out an open hand, but I had nothing to give.

Outside of the shadows, a gleaming white church faced the sea. If
anyone could help me, it was probably God, despite the choice words I had for him.

The basilica was silent, save the beating of the waves on the shore outside. The altar towered on the far end of the nave, an island in a sea of ancient mosaics. The church must have been a pagan temple at one time—the floor mosaics contained a drunken Bacchus among his grapes, a leopard impaled by crows, and a curvaceous water nymph spearing a brown flounder. I shivered at the altar and fell to my knees, eyes closed and hands clasped before me. Without thinking, I began to move my lips in silent prayer. As always, there was no answer.

And then I cried. I wept at my humiliation, my stupidity, and having to sell myself again. I sobbed away the loss of my daughter and the child I now carried, who would be far better off raised by wolves. I sobbed until I was empty.

I’d given up my daughter and come all this way. For nothing.

Something shuffled behind me. I turned to see a black-robed prelate, eyes shiny and black as beetles on a face old enough to be my father’s father’s. I moved to stand, but he waved me to stay. “I don’t wish to disturb you, Sister.”

Sister. This priest would throw me from his church if he knew the stains on my soul.

I wiped my cheeks as he motioned me to the kneeler of a well-worn pew, its dark surface shiny from all the sinners who had begged for forgiveness. I smelled lemon as I sat and took a moment to realize it came from him. “I’m sorry. I’ll go.”

“That’s not necessary.” He tucked his hands inside his wide sleeves. “God helps those who ask for help.”

I gave a strangled laugh. “God would be wise to abandon me.”

“Never. Surely things are not so bad as they seem.”

I snorted, but the priest’s eyes only crinkled with kindness. “God has seen every sin under the sun. There’s nothing you can do to surprise him.”

I don’t know what possessed me—probably some narcissistic urge to prove my story truly horrific—but I poured out the whole sordid tale to the priest, even admitting to the babe in my womb. To his credit, the man never flinched, although I’d have wagered my last
nummi
the story made his ears bleed.

It took him a moment to compose his question once I’d finished. “What is your name, child?”

I wasn’t sure I’d heard right, but he looked at me expectantly. I swallowed. “Theodora.”

“And how old are you, Theodora?”

“Sixteen.”

He almost seemed to wince. “Well, Theodora, I am Severus.”

“
The
Severus? The Patriarch of Antioch deposed by Emperor Justin?” I recalled talk of him at Justin’s coronation.

“Better to lose my city than my head.”

He had a point. “And you’re a Monophysite?” That heresy had gotten Vitus into trouble with Uncle Asterious. It seemed to me that believing in Christ and saying your prayers were good enough.

Severus glanced at the magnificent bronze cross on the altar and sighed. “I believe Christ was divine, not human. Such a radical idea did not sit well with the Emperor’s plan to reconcile with the Church of Rome.” He spoke slowly, as if weighing each word before it passed his lips. “May I ask you a question, Theodora?”

“I believe we’re past the niceties.”

“Do you believe Christ died for your sins?”

“Of course.”

“And can you recite the Ten Commandments?”

I smiled prettily. “In my sleep. My mother made sure all her children knew them.” I ticked them off my fingers, ending with “Thou shalt not covet.”

The priest nodded his approval. “And which of these commandments is most important?”

“For the sake of my immortal soul, I certainly hope adultery is toward the bottom.”

His eyes widened—I thought for sure I’d be banished and damned to the fires of Gehenna—but then he gave a wry chuckle. “Well, it is seventh on the list.”

A pigeon fluttered overhead, taking up its roost above a glittering mosaic of the Virgin. I stood and smoothed my rumpled stola. “Thank you for your time, Father.”

He didn’t rise, only folded his hands in his lap. “Where will you go now, Theodora?”

I rubbed the bridge of my nose. “I don’t know.” I expected him to offer some platitude—
God will always provide
—or some other useless drivel.

“Do you plan to keep the child?”

I thought of my pregnancy with Tasia. I knew now I’d been lucky Antonina’s potion had failed. But how was I supposed to care for another child while still making my way back home to my daughter? “I want to, Father,” I said, wiping my eyes on the back of my stained sleeve. “But I don’t know how I’m going to manage.”

“I know of an extra room in a convent nearby.” He eyed my stomach. “The women there would let you stay, at least until the baby comes.”

It was a generous offer, but I doubted it came from the goodness of his heart. I wouldn’t be taken advantage of again. “What’s in it for you?”

He started at the venom in my tone. “There’s room for an extra hand keeping up the church.”

I searched for any trace of hidden malice, but his eyes were warm. I supposed if I discovered any deceit on his part, I could always leave later. “I’d be a regular Saint Mary the Egyptian.” She, too, had been a prostitute but became an ascetic on the banks of the River Jordan, living off the wilderness until she died and was buried by a lion. I gave a wry smile. “But I have no calling to take on an order.”

“I don’t expect you to become an ascetic.” He returned the smile. “Or be buried by a lion.” He gestured me toward the sunshine but stopped short of the door. “One more thing, Theodora, to put my mind at ease. Do you believe in the single or dual nature of Christ?”

The way he asked it made me wonder if my new room and position might hinge on my answer. “I’ve been a bit busy these past few years, Father. I truly haven’t given the topic much thought.”

“Well.” He smiled so wide the wrinkles around his lips turned to deep crevasses. “Now you’ll have plenty of time to do just that.”

.   .   .

I stayed on with Severus as he proposed, donning an itchy black wool tunica and twisting my hair into a dark knot under an equally scratchy scarf. My hands bled with work and my knees callused over, but Severus’ church was the cleanest in Egypt.

Once a week, usually on Saturday evenings, Severus lectured in convents and monasteries, and the occasional lavish villa of Alexandria’s elite. His renown as the world’s premier Monophysite theologian had only increased following his banishment from Antioch. Whereas once I might have followed him in the hopes of meeting some wealthy patron, now I tagged along only to fill my mind.

Severus was a patient teacher, allowing me to ask questions after each lecture and praising my quick thinking. We talked of everything—the lives of saints, the Holy Trinity, and Jesus’ sacrifice on the cross. Sometimes our conversations strayed to the Empire’s history, the stories of the old gods, and times of conquest. It seemed there wasn’t anything Severus didn’t know. I still wasn’t sure if I believed as he did regarding God’s true form, but I knew one thing: It was a miracle I’d found Severus when I did.

“You seem happier these days, Theodora,” he said to me one rainy evening as we returned from a lecture, jumping from cobbles to curb to avoid the sluice of winter rainwater rushing down the street. “More content.”

“I suppose I am.” It was easy to be content with a warm bed and full belly, not to mention the lack of the constant pressure to please and keep a man.

“Good,” Severus said. “God helps the helpless. He will happily lift your burdens, but only if you let him.”

I’d have been happy to gift God with many of my burdens over the years if only he’d been there to take them. Yet it seemed I felt lighter with every day I stayed at the convent, more confident that I could do more than just survive in this life.

“I hope God has strong shoulders,” I said.

“He does indeed.” Severus chuckled, steering me under an awning to avoid the worst of the rain. “He does indeed.”

Once, in my fifth month of pregnancy, I accompanied him for an afternoon visit to the anchorite hermits in the desert outside the city, praying with them while Severus granted the Sacrament. These ragged men and women lived off beetles and roots, sleeping in pagan tombs under blankets of sand, but their eyes blazed with the fervor of their worship. I wished I could be like them, but no matter how I searched, my heart never lit with the fire of God’s divine love. I still felt abandoned by Christ, but along with a deeper understanding of what it meant to be a true Christian—and not just go through the motions as I had my whole life—I discovered a quiet affinity for Mary as my belly grew. I could understand the Virgin’s sacrifice and motherhood more than a distant God who had ignored me most of my life. Instead of praying to Jesus as Severus suggested, I directed my prayers to Mary and felt a sort of peace fill me as I let out my tunica again and again. Yet the time after my lying-in stretched like a dark abyss when Severus might dispose of me, satisfied that he had done his duty to prevent me from destroying my child.

One late morning I felt a familiar pang as I’d swung my legs from under my hippo’s belly after breaking my fast in the refectory.

“I wanted to join the sisters for prayers in a few minutes,” I told the nun in the infirmary, a shriveled old woman ancient enough to have heard Jesus’ sermon on the rock. The fine spring day was filled with birdsong and the buzz of the honeybees kept by the nuns. A good day for a birth, but I craved the quiet calm of settling into prayers with the sisters, the image of the Virgin smiling down on us. One never knew whether a birth would bring joy or sorrow—or death. “The pains are fast, but I’ll be back as soon as I finish.”

The nun gestured to a mattress, clean, but slumped in the middle after years of bearing the sick and dying. “I’m due for my afternoon nap. Let me check you now.”

I supposed when I was her age I wouldn’t let something as trivial as a child being born interrupt my nap either. I lay on my back and stared at the pile of woolen bandages I’d helped her cut a few days ago while she probed between my legs.

She chuckled and wiped her hands on a
mappa.
“The babe has a lovely head of thick dark hair.”

“Excuse me?”

She pushed me down, her tongue pursed between gums toothless as a newborn. “A few minutes longer and you’d have dropped the poor mite on its head.”

This time my child wasn’t born in the filth of an alley among trampled fish heads and rotten vegetables, but in the warm cell of a Monophysite convent, caught by the scrubbed hands of a wimpled sister. I still screamed and begged God to let me die.

The old nun laid the squalling bundle of blood and wrinkled flesh on my deflated stomach. “Your son, Theodora. A perfect gift from God.”

Ten tiny fingers with ten ragged fingernails and a head with a troubling conical shape, topped by a spike of black hair still tangled with vernix. He
was
a gift from God.

And he was all mine.

.   .   .

Severus came to see me the last day of my lying-in. I expected him to hover near the door and mumble his congratulations, but instead he plucked my son from his basket and tucked him to his chest.

“A sturdy lad,” Severus said. “What have you decided to call him?” He gave a wide grin. “I don’t suppose you considered Severus?”

I chuckled. “Too late, my friend. One of the sisters already suggested John.”

“A sturdy name, too.” Severus’ eyes softened as John gave a wide yawn, showing off his pink gums. Severus patted my son on the back, but he didn’t look at me. “And has his mother decided what she’s to do now?”

I’d known this moment would come, but it still caught me off guard.

“I’ll probably go to the Blues here in Alexandria, see if their network can help me get back to Constantinople.” The Lord only knew what they would expect me to do for such a favor.

“I see.” Severus tickled John’s palm until my son’s tiny fingers closed around Severus’ thumb. “I thought you might stay here.”

“With you?”

His eyes flicked to mine. “With the church.”

I felt the reprimand. Before I’d given birth, I’d asked Severus why he’d never married.

“Why do you want to know?”

“I’m just curious,” I had said. “I can’t fathom why a man like you—talented, easy on the eyes, and too smart for his own good—doesn’t have a plump wife and a house packed with children.”

“Don’t,” he said.

“Don’t what?”

“Don’t do whatever it is you do with men,” he said, opening his codex of the Gospels.

“I don’t know what you mean.”

He studied me, then sighed. “No, you probably don’t. And that makes you even more dangerous.” He caressed the codex when he closed it.
“God has given you many gifts, Theodora, gifts that would make any man lucky to call you his wife. But”—he smiled—“I am too old for you. And I decided long ago never to marry. The church decreed a man of my rank must cast off his wife if he seeks to serve the Lord. I couldn’t do that to any woman I loved.”

“You are a noble man, Severus.”

He smiled, sadly. “A man will give up much for love.”

I thought of those words as I watched Severus with my son now. It seemed to me a woman would do much for love, too, most especially for her children. I thought of Mary, of her sacrifice as she watched Jesus on the cross. “I can’t stay in Alexandria,” I said. “I need to get back to Constantinople. To my daughter.”