The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (14 page)

‘Angry?’

Now Belisarius stood up straight, shoved his glass into the hands of a startled servant, pushed Narses out of the way and, bowing to Theodora, spoke quietly. ‘We are all angry, Mistress. Things have not gone well today, not at all, so if you have a solution for the August, then I suggest you make it, and quickly.’

With that he walked from the room, with no bow to his Emperor, no permission to be dismissed.

The room was silent, waiting for Theodora’s reaction. She stared at the door he had left swinging with his exit; slowly she exhaled, and turned back to her husband.

A look passed between them and then Justinian said quietly, ‘Belisarius is tired, Augusta.’

‘Apparently so.’

For two long days the Palace waited. Narses’ spies kept him informed about what was going on within the individual factions and what their leaders were planning together. A delegation from both Green and Blue had gone to Pompeius suggesting that either he, or his brother Hypatius, take the August’s place and rule with the factions’ support. Pompeius, the better speaker, had managed to fob off the faction leaders while promising nothing, and as soon as they had gone he reported the conversation to the Palace. Hypatius was a less skilled politician than his brother; when asked if he would take the rioters’ side he fumbled his reply to the leaders, unable to refuse their request outright. He wanted to stay on their good side, but on the other hand, he was loyal to Justinian and the very thought of leading the Palace, trying to bring order to the current chaos, filled him with dread. Both great-nephews of Anastasius turned down the offer, but only Pompeius reported his meetings to Narses. Hypatius was
embarrassed even to mention he had been approached. His silence was noted.

Narses sat quietly with the Emperor and Empress late on the Saturday night. After the street fighting and brutality of Thursday things had stayed quiet. At Theodora’s suggestion, Justinian was preparing to appear in the Kathisma on Sunday morning: he would carry the Gospel and stand before his people, a penitent. All three listened carefully as Narses’ spy recounted the rebel leaders’ discussions with Hypatius and Pompeius.

When the spy left the room, Narses asked, ‘What do you think about Hypatius, August?’

‘He would never accept their offer,’ said Justinian, ‘he knows he couldn’t lead, doesn’t want to.’

Theodora agreed. ‘Even so, it might be useful for us to have someone to cast as a rebel leader?’

‘How so?’ Justinian asked.

‘We have the superior power; the generals are with us, the army is too, for now. In the long run, if we hold, the rioters will be overcome. The people are unhappy – this is the tantrum that comes every dozen years or so. But it will pass, and when they are sober, when they are themselves, they will remember they love the City.’

Narses picked up from her: ‘And when that calm comes we’ll need to make a reckoning.’

‘Apportion blame?’ Justinian asked.

‘Yes,’ Narses answered.

‘The Palace cannot condemn the majority of the City,’ said Justinian.

‘No,’ Theodora said, ‘but it could condemn a rebel leader, however reluctant.’

Justinian looked from his wife to his chief adviser, glad for
their support, their faith in him and in his rule. And he felt a little sorry for Hypatius.

Sunday morning. It was cold, colder than it had been all week. Justinian and Theodora again walked along the corridor to the Kathisma. The Emperor was plainly dressed, a simple purple wool, no gold embroidery to pick out his status, and the warmth of the torches lighting the dark corridor made little difference to the chill in his body, down his spine; the ice that had settled on his chest seemed to have bled into his feet and his hands.

Theodora waited as her husband went out to face the people alone, to show them the Gospel he held, to offer an amnesty to the rioters in return for peace in the City, to call on all good men to do the right thing. And through the heavy doors she listened as the crowd responded, mocking his attempts at piety, at peace.

‘Why trust you now?’

‘We know you and your uncle conspired against Vitalian.’

‘How do we know this is not another plot?’

Justinian was given no chance to refute the old rumour before another call came. And another, and another.

The shouting became jeering, and the jeering became braying. The bar-room joke where the Greek version of Justinian’s name sounded a little like the word for donkey had been a good laugh for years now. The August himself had used the joke to his own advantage when he’d publicly called himself a stubborn Slav while explaining how forcefully he would protect the Empire. At the time, with his wife by his side, on a warm spring day, he had been applauded for doing so. Now there was no applause and the force of the cheers greeting Justinian’s exit was as ferocious a sound as any Theodora had heard in the Hippodrome.

*

Justinian walked silently back into the Palace. Once he was in the main body of the building he was all quiet urgency, dictating commands as he went.

‘Hypatius and Pompeius are to leave the Palace immediately. Send them back to their own homes. Any senators still within the walls, whether working for us or waiting out the riots, are also to leave. Send Narses to my office and call Belisarius. Now.’

The messages were delivered, counsellors gathered.

Hypatius begged to stay. He too had heard the crowd, knew there were calls for him to take the August’s purple; he neither wanted it, nor wanted to be an Imperial scapegoat. But the servant carrying the message and the guards accompanying him were clear: Hypatius must leave. Having been so publicly rejected by the people, Justinian needed only the most trustworthy around him. He limited himself to slaves, servants, and his closest allies – Theodora, Narses, Belisarius, Mundus, and a handful of less publicly recognised advisers. He kept Germanus close too.

‘Germanus has only ever shown himself loyal to me, to Rome,’ he said, in response to Theodora’s uncertain look. ‘He doesn’t want to be August, he likes being a soldier.’

‘He might have persuaded you of that, but Pasara still has high hopes for him – he hasn’t managed to convince his wife.’

‘No. Sometimes wives take too much convincing.’

Justinian left her and went to speak with his men.

The Emperor and his advisers talked urgently, considering both attack and exit strategies. Occasional short bursts of argument over one strategy or another were followed by quieter, more formal discussions, interrupted just once by a burst of laughter from the men, with much back-slapping and
head-shaking, and then a return to street maps and charts, discussion, planning.

Theodora sat with her women in an adjoining room, chosen for their waiting because it was comfortable, and because the windows faced the outer courtyards and the Bosphorus, not the Palace walls and the rioting beyond. And because, if the worst came to the worst, there was a pathway from the patio leading directly to the small, private Palace harbour. Ana and Mariam sewed silently side by side, neither young woman interested in what she was sewing but both happier to do something with their hands than nothing. Comito sat with her daughter Indaro. In the last season of her pregnancy, Comito’s concern for Sittas, away on the Danube frontier, had lessened as each passing day suggested there was more to fear here at home. Antonina, newly pregnant but no less concerned for her future, placed herself with a clear view of the men through the folded-back doors, trying to judge from her husband’s stance and attitude what he might be thinking – whether he really was as supportive of the Emperor as he said, or whether they’d both be better off somewhere else right now.

Of Theodora’s close circle, only Sophia was not with them and the Empress missed her friend. Sophia would have made things feel more easy, she would have been joking at the men’s expense, mocking their inability to stamp down a bunch of Green and Blue idiots, and Theodora knew the anger she’d have provoked in the men would have been a welcome distraction. But no one had seen Sophia for three days, not since the fire that brought down the hospital. Theodora hoped her friend was long gone, entertaining other exiles who were also waiting it out, ready to return when someone finally stood in the Kathisma with the people’s blessing, whoever he might be. Theodora, who would have been happy to be with her old
friend, shook her head again at the turns of fortune that had brought her so high and now threatened to take it all away, in violence and fire. And then, with the others, she sat down to wait.

T
he crowd were in the mood for a new Emperor. After the Kathisma doors had closed on Justinian, the Gospel in his white-knuckled hands, the bulk of the crowd laughed and relaxed for a while in the mess that was now the Hippodrome; they had made their point. Finally, the calm after the morning’s Emperor-baiting turned again to agitation, and a carefully orchestrated cry went up from one end of the arena and was echoed at the other. The call was for a new August. The faction leaders congratulated themselves on the authentic tones of the actors they had employed: but the words only needed to be heard once before they were the crowd’s new call and the sole cause of the day. As one, they streamed through the gates and out into the City, massing first at the Forum of Constantine, and then charging on through the chaos in the streets. The Green leader’s men led them to Pompeius, whose villa with its famous three-directional sea view was closest of all the likely candidates’ homes. When they found the house empty, the mob ransacked it anyway, and then, taking their cue from the Blue leader this time, ran on to find Hypatius.

Knowing what the people wanted, but without his
brother’s stronger sense of foreboding, Hypatius came to his own door. He told the leaders politely and quietly he could not accept their commission, he did not want to usurp Justinian, he was not the man for them. The crowd were not persuaded, the faction leaders accepted no refusal, and two hours later Hypatius was hoisted up from the body of the Hippodrome and into the Kathisma, a laurel on his head, his robes in disarray, terrified of the Palace guards just two heavy doors behind him, and just as frightened of the mob proclaiming him August.

Even as he was lifted to the Kathisma, Hypatius grabbed hold of a Palace servant and whispered urgently to the boy, ordering him to run to Justinian and tell his master, their master, that Hypatius was still loyal to the August.

’Explain that I will stand here only to placate the people. I do not want the purple. Tell the Emperor I said so.’

The servant nodded, but as he made his way round to the staff passageway he noted that Hypatius placed the laurel more securely on his own head, that he waved back almost in time with the crowd chanting his name, that he seemed to smile as the people applauded him, shouting Nika again. Nika – their own victory, Nika – Hypatius’s new crown, Nika – Justinian’s downfall.

The men and women at either end of the adjoining rooms heard the stillness and then the cheers. A look passed from Antonina to Belisarius, another between Justinian and his wife. A loud cry from the Hippodrome, a second, a third, and then, in the silence of the room, it was easy to reckon the speed of news. Running feet were heard in a distant hallway, then on the stone floor of a corridor, then the polished wood of the passage outside. There was the sound of a guard questioning a messenger, a muffled answer, and finally the doors
were carefully opened. The guards holding the doors stood aloof and still; they were not worried, whatever happened, their jobs were secure. No matter who held the title of August, their concern was for Palace protocol.

Narses nodded, the doors were closed. Two people, a messenger and a young servant, approached. The servant headed for Narses, the other made for Theodora who, alone of everyone present, was not surprised he wanted to speak to her. The messenger wore the colours of the City theatre company. Theodora and Comito felt bile rise in their throats.

The young man dropped to his knees and kissed the foot Theodora offered. Both acted out protocol, politeness, both without thinking and then, trained in conveying all news in the same measured tone, the same careful speech of state, he began.

‘Mistress, I am charged with informing you—’

‘Sophia is dead?’

Comito spoke and Theodora was grateful she had not been forced to say the words herself, the news the sisters had been dreading, even as they half expected it. All Theodora’s imagining of Sophia safe from harm, Sophia across the water, had been to protect herself from what she already felt to be truth. Sophia was dead and had been for some days: it did not take a theatre messenger to tell her what she knew in her gut, had known in the dreams she avoided by refusing to sleep. The Empress let the young man speak anyway, she knew he must have been rehearsing the whole time he’d run through the bloody and broken city. He deserved the chance to deliver his big speech.

‘We heard she was in the Church of St Eirene. Or near it, perhaps.’

Theodora nodded, there was a quiet bar around the back of the Eirene, they’d often been there in the old days, members
only, drinks given half price to old theatre stars this boy could never have known, a membership made up solely of actresses and soldiers.

‘She must have left the church. Two people reported seeing her near the hospital. She had a young man with her, a soldier or a rioter, we’re not sure. He was wounded, she was taking him to the hospital.’

Theodora whispered under her breath to Comito who was now standing at her side, ‘Stupid bitch had probably sent him into shock, she always liked to fuck in a storm.’

‘She was trampled, Mistress,’ the messenger continued, ‘in front of the hospital steps. She was bringing the soldier in, when too many others were trying to get out. And the fire…there were carts, horses bringing water.’

Theodora suddenly knew what he was trying to tell her: ‘There is no body?’

‘There is a body,’ he replied, not looking up, ‘but it is…she is…’ and here he lapsed into a messier, less formal Greek as he explained that the woman he knew the Empress loved, the woman he and all his fellow theatre apprentices adored both as mentor and star, had not only been broken, but dismembered when she was run over by a chariot, racing to or from the fire and the chaos, no one knew which. They had brought her broken body back to the Palace.