The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (24 page)

Almost three years ago.

“I didn’t know.” I sat down, clutching my silver and amber necklace as if to draw strength from the cross. I’d worried almost every day that something had happened to Tasia, but I’d never really considered my mother dying. It seemed strange that the woman who gave me life could die and I wouldn’t even notice.

“How did it happen?”

“Too much poppy juice, I think. The wet nurse downstairs heard Tasia crying and sent me the message.” Antonina sat next to me on the bench. “I made sure she was buried by your father. I slipped an amphora in with her—a good vintage, too.”

“She’d appreciate that. Thank you.” I owed Antonina more than I could ever repay her.

“Comito’s back at the Kynêgion—I swear she’s one of the longest running actresses in the history of the city. I’m sure she’d like to know you’re back, but you should stay here tonight. Timothy’s trading for silver in Chalcedon for the next few days, and there’s a flat down the street for let. Timothy knows the landlord—I’ll make sure you get a fair price.”

“I owe you.”

She waved her hand as if to dismiss the idea. “I’m sure you’ll find a way to pay me back sometime. Speaking of—what do you plan to do now that you’re here? The theater again?”

Macedonia’s letters were in the bag at my hip. “I’ve got a few tricks up my sleeve.”

“Better than up your skirts.” She raised her glass to me. “You’ve got more lives than a one-eyed alley cat, Theodora. To your newest one—may you land on your feet!”

.   .   .

The next morning I took the children to visit Mother’s grave. They watched with solemn faces as I tipped an amphora of good wine into the soil, but then they went off to play amongst the graves while I told her everything that had happened since I’d left.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here, Mother.” At that moment John toddled after Tasia as she squealed and ducked behind a tree. I smiled and wiped my eyes with the back of my hand. “I wish you could have met my son.”

I rented the room Antonina had suggested and traipsed through the debris of yesterday’s festival on our way to the food market. A merchant with orange stains down his front used a cherry-sized bronze weight to measure a tiny terra-cotta jar of
garos
to go with the omelets I planned to make tonight.

“Who’s that?” Tasia pointed at a woman’s face etched onto a bronze weight the size of a melon.

I recognized the severe bird face, crown and earrings dripping with jewels, possibly the rubies I’d once seen. “Empress Lupicina. Pretty, isn’t she?”

Tasia pulled a face, then covered it and looked at me with hesitant eyes. “Sort of.”

I chuckled, and the merchant joined in. “They say she was lovely when she was young,” he said. “But age hasn’t agreed with the poor old girl.”

My basket was only half full with an onion and four brown eggs, but with our new address we were also eligible for the city’s bread tokens. Life was looking up, at least for now.

Tasia and John chased a scrawny tortoiseshell cat past stalls of pottery and copper urns—a magic cat according to Tasia because it had one green eye and one blue—while I rearranged our basket to fit the loaf of bread. Fat pigeons pecked at trampled cherries and apricots, green peas and lettuce, then took flight as two patricians floated past in a sedan, the feet of their slaves stopping all at once.

“Are you attending the
convivium
at the Palace of Hormisdas tonight?” The first was a portly old fellow and the second a pudgy man half his age, both clambering out of the sedan. Perhaps father and son.

I was about to turn down an alley to take a shortcut to our new flat, but the second man’s words drifted to my ears, sweet as the music of an
aulos.

“Justinian is always good for a party.”

The first man snorted. “His consulship extravaganza cost the Imperial Treasury two hundred eighty-eight thousand gold
solidi
. I quiver to think what will happen to the Treasury should he manage to take his uncle’s place on the throne.”

The second man grimaced. “Or our taxes.”

They turned away from the market—I was tempted to follow, but the children were wilting in the afternoon sun.

Justinian was hosting a party tonight.

And I had a letter of introduction. I only had to decide whether to use it.

I
drew far too many stares as I passed through the gates of the Palace of Hormisdas, compliments of my homespun and black scarf. A crow amongst swans. This was not the usual villa of Constantinople’s upper crust—the granite palace was set back from the road behind straight rows of olive trees and lacked the shops on its front that some of the nobility rented to tradesmen and artisans. Justinian’s sprawling villa had once been the residence of a Persian prince and possessed a breathtaking view of the sweep of the Sea of Marmara. I slipped between sedans as they jostled up the path, wishing I’d had the spare coin to hire a litter to keep the dust from my hem.

A troupe of female dancers—younger than I and dressed in scanty tunicas—flitted up toward the palace but diverged from the caravan of litters to the side of the house. I debated which to follow for a moment—it would be easy to slip back into my old life, but the weight of Macedonia’s letter anchored me. I followed the cloud of perfumes wafting from the tide of nobility instead. A gaggle of patrician girls entered the palace with their mothers before being herded off to the
gynaeceum
; they were likely all virgins hoping for a chance to snare the consul and become the next Empress.

“I’m beginning to think Justinian will never take a wife,” one of them said to her mother, retying a ribbon at her waist and plumping her breasts under her stola. “The man might as well be a monk for all the interest he pays us.”

“Or worse.” Another girl scratched her head with a single finger, a sign denoting an effeminate man, one worse than a eunuch.

The mother pulled a lock of dark hair from under her daughter’s veil and curled it around her finger. “Of course Justinian will take a wife,” she said. “Even if he doesn’t care for her bed. And that lucky girl will receive a double boon—a crown and a husband who frequents her chamber only long enough to sire an heir on her.”

No matter our class, we women all sold ourselves to men. The only difference was the manner in which we went about it.

Two portly patricians provided the perfect shelter up to Justinian’s palace, and only a single elderly steward stood guard at the vestibule. I had almost passed by when he plucked me from the shadows like an errant child and deposited me before two colossal pink marble lions.

“We have enough dancers and poets. Come back next time for a proper interview.” His voice was deep and heavily accented, Armenian from the sound of it. The steward was less grandfatherly upon closer inspection, although he approached that age, and while he was not a large man, the muscles snaking up his bare arms were thick and tanned. He wore a short beard twisted to a sharp point and already streaked with white, but his gold collar studded with rubies and the red cloak trimmed with gold told me he was a eunuch. He must have been gelded late in life.

“I’m not here to dance or recite poetry. I’m here for the
convivium
,” I said.

“Only men are allowed.”

“Justinian let you in, didn’t he?”

One day I swore I was going to learn to control my tongue.

The eunuch glowered and crossed his arms. I caught a hint of his spicy perfume before he gave me a none-too-gentle push back into the night. “Plebian trash is not permitted in the Palace of Hormisdas.”

The river of nobility stopped to raise their perfectly penciled brows. I gave them a look to freeze the Bosphorus and stood as tall as I could, but even on tiptoes I could still see up the eunuch’s nose. “Better plebian trash than a barbarian half man.”

His upper lip quivered like that of a guard dog. “In my country, children like you are left to perish on a windswept crag. It’s a pity this Empire is so civilized.”

Only the devil was going to stop me from seeing Justinian. I stood my ground, hands on hips. “I’ve been sent by an acquaintance of Justinian’s. I demand to see him.”

The eunuch threw his head back and laughed. I stomped my foot. “Listen to me, you imbecile. Macedonia of Antioch gave me a recommendation to see Justinian, and I’m not leaving until I see him.” I shoved the parchment under his nose, Macedonia’s tiny seal so close he might have inhaled it.

He laid his palm atop the letter and lowered it to his chest. “I don’t care if God himself recommended you. This is not a taverna or a theater or a
lupinar
. Go back to where you belong.”

I threw the parchment at him. The paper hit him square in the nose, and he jumped as if I’d scalded him with a pot of boiling water.

“Take that to your master, little man. Or wipe your ass with it.” I turned and stormed down the stairs.

Five steps later I regretted the move, but I’d sooner cut out my tongue than apologize to that arrogant half man, even if he did have my letter of introduction to the future Emperor of Byzantium.

Instead, I cursed myself all the way home.

.   .   .

I wanted to gouge out my eyes with my spindle. My armpit ached from squeezing my distaff, and the constant scrape of wool had rubbed my fingers raw. All that, and my yarn scarcely resembled string. More like something a cat had hacked up.

It took exactly five days for the Mistress of the Wool House to demote me to drafting instead of spinning. I glowered at the silk workers, those lucky women and children chosen for their nimble fingers to unravel silk thread from Serinda and Persia, and then weave it into designs of lions and griffins. Instead, I sat all day with girls half my age, only to emerge at night like a pale moth, gossamer strands of blond fibers threaded in my hair, woven into my clothes, and clinging to my eyelashes.

It was an honest living, and I despised it.

I was more surprised than anyone when a rain-dampened messenger from the Palace of Hormisdas showed up at our front door one week after Justinian’s
convivium
. The day was gray and dreary, so Antonina had brought the children over. Meowing, Tasia and Kale crawled around the floor, their tunicas hiked up to their hips and rags stuffed into the ropes at their waists as makeshift cat tails. Photius lay sprawled on his stomach, embellishing sketches of charcoal animals from Justinian’s consular games at the Hippodrome.

“I presume one of you is Theodora?”

I set down the tiny bites of bread I was feeding John—his little cheeks were already puffed up like a squirrel’s. “Depends on who’s asking.”

“Consul Justinian requests the presence of the famed actress Theodora at the Palace of Hormisdas tonight.” The messenger turned on his heel and stalked down the creaky stairs, his duty complete. Justinian certainly didn’t screen his servants based on their good manners.

I closed the door behind me, heart pounding in my ears. “Dear God.”

Antonina gaped at me. “Since when do you consort with consuls?”

“I don’t consort with them.” I explained the letter from Macedonia all the way to pelting that snide eunuch with it. I tossed John in the air, earning a squeal of delight. “This is what I’ve been waiting for.”

“Don’t be a fool. You’ve been called to take your clothes off for his guests, not because Justinian plans to put you on the imperial payroll.”

I stopped tossing John—I wanted to lob something else at Antonina. Preferably a brick.

“I doubt I’m his type.”

“Who cares what his type is—women, boys, goats? All three at once?” She clapped her hands over her mouth, shoulders shaking with silent mirth. “No, I know. Geese!”

I looked to the heavens, but couldn’t stop my smile as she gasped for breath through her laughter. “You really are foul—you know that?” I said.

“You have no idea.” She dabbed her eyes with the corner of her
paludamentum
, then put on a mostly serious face. “Really, darling, all that matters is that Justinian is willing to make time for Constantinople’s favorite actress.”

“I’m done with all that. I need him to give me a position like he gave Macedonia.”

Antonina flashed a wicked grin. “I’m sure he has all sorts of positions in mind for you.”

I threw John’s half-eaten loaf of bread at her.

I had no intention of sleeping with Justinian. He was a man, and like all men, he would toss me out with the evening’s trash as soon as he tired of me. Antonina was probably right. It was a miracle I’d been summoned at all, especially after the little scene with that insufferable eunuch. Justinian probably wanted me to perform my Leda routine or something equally salacious.

Damn.

.   .   .

This time I wore a silk stola the color of ripe plums—one of Antonina’s—to the Palace of Hormisdas. Its high neckline and wide sleeves were embroidered with tiny birds, so I looked perfectly respectable for once. Antonina had brushed my hair until it shone, then covered the dark knot at the nape of my neck with a matron’s scarlet veil. I only hoped Justinian wouldn’t notice my scuffed slippers.

It had stopped raining as I waved to the children and retraced my steps to the Palace of Hormisdas, careful to avoid the buckets of dirty rainwater the shopkeeps sluiced onto the cobbles. I was too slow to dodge one and ended up with a drenched foot. The merchant got an earful from me, but he only rolled his eyes.