The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (6 page)

“Stay back, you little vermin, or I’ll cut your ears off, too.” He waved the blade between Comito and me. “It’s your fault I had to do this—you who eat my food and sleep under my roof, but don’t bring home a single
nummi
to pay for any of it.”

“You slimy piece of offal!” I screamed. “We were out begging for your position while you butchered my sister.” I collapsed next to Anastasia and kissed her sweaty forehead as she sobbed, thumb in her mouth. I wanted to fix her, make her whole again, but there was nothing I could do. I should have told my mother my plan before we left for the baths, or we should have come straight home before the races—then none of this would have happened. This was all my fault.

Vitus picked up his bear whip, and I steeled myself for the blow; instead, he stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him.

“I tried to stop him.” My mother’s eyes were dead. “He said Anastasia would bring in more than both of you.”

She peeled the filthy bandage from the holes where Anastasia’s ears should have been, prompting a fresh gush of bright red blood and another scream from my sister. “We have to stop the bleeding.”

Comito ran out without a word. I wanted to lob curses at her retreating back, but Anastasia’s fresh cries stopped me as blood soaked through the dirty linens. I crooned to her, songs my father used to sing, hoping they might soothe her and trying to think what to do. I tucked the stained blanket to her chin, ignoring the cloud of dust that billowed up from it. She settled into intermittent sobs and hiccups, but clutched my hand tight as she clasped her one-eyed doll to her chest.

I had done this. And there was nothing I could do to fix it.

.   .   .

Comito returned in the pitch of night with an apothecary’s bottle and fresh linens. She doused the linens—the brown liquid smelled like urine—and pressed
them to the bloody wounds of Anastasia’s ears as I rocked her. I was so thankful for the supplies I didn’t bother to ask where she’d gotten them.

“The saint said we need to keep the wounds clean,” Comito said. “He told me he’d pray for her.”

I sent my own prayers to God, not trusting the word of some brown-robed apothecary. I offered God whatever he wanted to heal my sister, to save us all. And if that wouldn’t work, I’d start praying to every demon in the underworld.

.   .   .

It became apparent a week later that our prayers hadn’t been enough. Vitus had abandoned us, but Comito had managed to persuade the owner of the taverna to let us keep the room so we at least had the bread dole. My older sister was never around anymore, but I’d seen her talking to Mother, and later I’d heard her voice in one of the upstairs rooms, followed by the grunts of the owner. I didn’t ask questions.

I awoke in the middle of the night to Anastasia’s convulsing. It was cool in the room, but she was burning up. She whimpered as Mother lit an olive oil lamp, illuminating the wall frescoes of men and women in various compromising positions. A line of drool slipped from the corner of my sister’s mouth to her chin as her muscles twitched in a terrifying dance.

My mother poured a clay cup of watered wine and held it to Anastasia’s lips, but she wouldn’t open her mouth. “Sweet pea, this will make you feel better. Please open up.”

My sister only cried, her jaw locked tight. We were up all night, and the spasms became so strong my mother feared Anastasia’s arm had broken, the bone on her upper arm bent at a painful angle as my little sister screamed through clenched teeth. The muscles in her back moved of their own accord, and she arched into my mother as she lost control of her bowels, the stench of blood and feces filling the room.

“A demon has possessed her,” my mother said. “There’s nothing I can do.”

Comito returned with the first light of dawn, blanched at the scene before her, and pressed a kiss onto our sister’s forehead. “I’ll fetch the saint.”

My mother muttered prayers as I took Anastasia, her hot little body bent like a bow as her birdlike hands fluttered on my lap, her eyes closed as I sang over her gasps, a jumble of hymns and taverna songs. Her eyes rolled back into her head, only the eerie whites staring unseeing, and her lips pulled back in a horrible grimace, her tiny teeth bared like a dog’s. Then she was still.

“Anastasia?” I hoped she had gone to sleep, but there was no slump of relaxation, no even breathing. There was no breathing at all.

My mother tried to take her from me. “Anastasia?”

She shook my little sister, but it was no use. She was gone. The saint Comito brought to save Anastasia said her last rites instead, anointing her forehead with cooking oil from the taverna’s hearth below as we stitched her stiff body into a moth-eaten blanket.

We had no money for a coffin and nothing to tuck next to her body since I had hidden her one-eyed doll under my pallet, wanting to keep something she had touched. Through her tears, Comito plaited Anastasia’s hair like a patrician’s daughter, looping the braids around the mottled flesh where her ears should have been. We buried her close to our father the next morning in the churchyard outside the city walls and piled her grave high with wildflowers, the stench of fermenting fish still permeating the air.

That night I slept with Anastasia’s doll tucked under my chin, the mattress soaked through with my tears. I wished I could take her place—it was my fault Vitus had attacked her, my fault my little sister was cold in the ground while I lay warm in her bed.

Vitus had the decency not to show himself again. I prayed the devil found new ways to torture him.

.   .   .

None of us wanted to face the next day, but the keeper of the taverna called on us before the sun had risen. “I need this room for paying customers,” he said, avoiding our eyes as he wiped his hands on his stained tunica. “You’ll have to leave by this evening.”

“Tonight?” I asked.

He opened his mouth to answer, but Comito pushed me out of the way. “We’ll be gone tonight,” she said, slamming the door in his face.

“Where are we going to go?” I gestured to our filthy room with its stone bench and risqué frescoes. Pigs lived better. “Without this we won’t even have the bread dole.”

“I’ll be back in an hour,” Comito said. She pinched her cheeks and slipped out the door before any of us could say anything. I wanted to follow, but she was already gone. Mother and I sat in silence while we waited for her return—there seemed to be nothing left to say that wouldn’t remind us of Father or Anastasia.

Comito’s promised hour stretched into two and almost three by the time she returned. “Did you find us somewhere to stay?” I asked.

“No.” Comito stood still for a moment, her chin trembling. Then she threw herself onto the bench and sobbed into our mother’s lap.

Christ’s blood. We were about to be turned out again, and now we had to deal with Comito’s theatrics? I yanked her up by her arm. “What happened?”

“Karas told me he loved me—we had talked about getting married.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I thought he would help us, but he told me he couldn’t see me anymore—that I’d disgraced myself.” At this she dissolved into tears.

I sat next to her, patting her leg awkwardly as my mother stroked her hair. “He doesn’t deserve you then,” I said. “We didn’t disgrace ourselves by begging—”

“Not by begging.” Comito’s blotchy face was truly unattractive, but
now probably wasn’t the best time to mention that. “He found out about the other men.”

“What men?” I had my suspicions.

“The apothecary across from the butcher.” She blubbered into her sleeve. “When Anastasia was hurt. And the taverna owner—”

“Karas is a fool.” My mother pulled Comito to her chest. “You did what you had to.”

“I love him,” Comito sobbed. My sister was a fool, too. But I stopped myself from saying so.

“I thought he would marry me and we’d be happy the rest of our days. I’m tired of being so poor we can’t count on having bread on the table or a roof over our heads.”

That made two of us.

Comito sniffed, her face mottled as a freshly plucked chicken. “I could work here. The owner offered me this room, but I turned him down.”

“No. That’s a life sentence,” my mother said. We sat in silence for a moment, and then she heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You girls must take to the stage. I’ve tried to protect you from it, but that’s the only way.”

Comito and I stared dumbstruck at her. Being an actress was only one step up from a
pornai
.

“I’m terrified of performing,” Comito said. “And Theodora is too young.”

I’d had my moon bloods for several months now—I could do all that was expected of me as an actress, including any offstage duties that would be required in a room like the one we sat in now. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to.

“I was an actress before I met your father,” my mother said.

“What?” I forced my jaw closed. Comito looked just as stunned.

“How do you think we met? Your father trained animals and I danced. I was good, too.” She stood and pushed the ragged curls from her face, revealing new streaks of white at her temples. “There are only two options open to our type of women: the stage or a man’s bed. I’m too
old for the stage, and neither of you has a chance at making a decent marriage. You’ll both go to the Kynêgion today and do whatever it takes to get on that stage. Unless either of you has any better ideas.”

There was nothing to say to that—she was right. Men would love to see Comito prancing around the stage, especially clad only in the girdle the law required. I had to admit she had a decent singing voice. And she could dance.

I, on the other hand, would likely be as successful as a goat onstage. This became painfully obvious as we practiced with our mother that afternoon.

“This isn’t going to work,” I said, after stomping on Comito’s foot for the third time. “No Master of the Stage in his right mind would hire me as an actress.”

“Stop complaining,” my mother said. “Follow Comito’s lead.”

But Comito sat on the bench, nursing her flattened toes. “Theodora’s right. But I’ll still need her help.”

“On the stage?” I asked.

She laughed so hard her eyes watered. “No, goose. As my servant.”

“No.”

She shook her head, instantly sober. “If I’m to do this, I’m going to do it right. All the actresses have pretty slaves to help dress them, carry their chairs. We can’t afford to buy a slave. You’d be perfect.”

I’d be a candidate for sainthood if I had to be Comito’s servant. Unless I killed her first, which was a distinct possibility.

“Both you and Theodora will ask the Blues for a position on the boards,” my mother said. “Your sister earns no money if she only assists you.”

I had never been so thankful for my mother in all my life.

Comito glared at me, then swept her hand over her head and curtsied with a flourish. “All of Constantinople will bow at my feet.”

Provided she actually managed to squeak out her lines once she was before the audience. “Everyone will bow except the clerics and
priests and monks and all the others who believe actresses consort with the devil,” I said.

Comito ignored me, but then I doubted she’d ever paid much attention to the men outside the Kynêgion, damning the women within to Gehenna’s flames. “I’ll find a patrician to be my patron,” she said. “We’ll wear silk and eat eel and lamb every day.” She gave a sigh fit for the stage and collapsed onto the bench. “Then Karas will realize his mistake and come crawling back to me.”

We borrowed tunicas from the
pornai
I’d interrupted the night Vitus had cut off Anastasia’s ears—the girl had heard what happened to our sister and was happy to help—and Mother bid us good-bye with a kiss to our foreheads. “May God be with you,” she said. I wished she could come with us, but it was unseemly for a woman to attend the theater, unless she was on the stage. Actresses were tolerated because they made the wretched populace happy. And many of the actresses made the theater patrons
very
happy once they were off the stage.

We stepped around the foul-smelling carcass of a donkey that had expired in the street outside the Boar’s Eye and skirted the walls of the Hippodrome to climb the hill to the Kynêgion. There were shouts from within and the clang of swords, but the smallest dwarf I’d ever seen barred the entrance under a granite arch.

“Show isn’t until after sundown,” he said, arms crossed in front of his chest. “Come back later.”

“Aren’t you adorable?” Comito bent down so close their noses almost touched. “Although if you jumped out of a trash heap at night, you’d certainly give me quite a scare. Go get the Master of the Stage—tell him he has two new actresses to interview.”

I had no idea who had replaced my sister, but I rather liked this new girl. Even more startling was the fact that the dwarf actually obeyed her, although his eyes did linger on her breasts as he shuffled off. “Just what Hilarion needs—two more tarts,” I heard him mutter under his breath.

The Master of the Stage wiped his mouth on the sleeve of his tunica when he emerged, smelling of onions and digging between his teeth with a bone pick. He didn’t even look at us. “We don’t need new girls. Come back in a few months.”

“You wouldn’t have come to see us if you weren’t interested,” Comito said.

I was sure the man was going to berate her, but he stared at her for a moment—no doubt taking in every curve she owned—and chuckled. “Quite right,” he said. “You’d make a lovely dancer.”

Because dancers wore the least number of clothes.

“Unfortunately, I hired another dancer this morning.” He wiped his bulbous nose, one that resembled a lumpy clove of garlic. “Try back in two weeks—it’s the best I can do.”

In two weeks we’d starve to death on the streets. The man’s tunica was piped with blue—it was worth a chance.

“The Blues sent us,” I called after him. “Macedonia promised you would take care of us.”

Hilarion stopped and stroked his beard. “Now there’s a name I haven’t heard in a while.” He looked to Comito. “I suppose we can find a position in the chorus for you—the crowd always enjoys a pretty face.”

“I can sing as well,” Comito said.