The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (28 page)

Theodora walked into the grand chamber and, every part of her wanting to look into Justinian’s eyes to see what he had planned before she heard it, bowed without meeting his gaze, as was appropriate, bowed as low as she could in the stiff robes. Justinian reached out his hand to raise her. Then he stood by her side and, Theodora following his lead, they turned in a smooth circle to the whole room. The chamber was full of councillors, senators and law-makers, representatives of the people and representatives of dominions and other lands: the Persian ambassador, the linguist-dealers who specialised in the Chinese silk trade, four wealthy merchants from the other side of the Black Sea – newly arrived in the City and noted already not only for their trading prowess, but also for their interest in the still-growing Hagia Sophia. There were representatives of every rank of their society, and each one took note as the Emperor introduced his wife.

‘Theodora, our most pious consort, given us by God.’

Justinian spoke the words first in Greek, and then in Latin. And when the assembled company followed Narses’ example and fell to their knees, he led her from the chamber.

They were back in Justinian’s main office when Theodora finally spoke.

‘Thank you.’

‘You’re welcome.’ Justinian was smiling, waiting for the question.

‘What was that for?’ she said, her voice raised louder, her pitch higher than she had intended, a pitch Menander would no doubt have slapped her for.

Her husband laughed and, helping her off with the chlamys and the headdress, the robes and the embroidered gowns, he explained.

‘I know it’s been hard for you, these past months, years. You saved me, saved us, saved the purple during the Nika riots. And we might have hoped, since then, to have had a quiet time, time for each other. Instead it’s been worse – greater struggles with the Church, more of my time taken strategising the war, the offensive against the Goths.’

‘We’re a partnership.’

‘Yes, we are, we have been since Narses first brought you to me. We’ve known, felt – believed,’ he shook his head, grappling for the right word, ‘no, we have determined, that we were meant to work together, and we do so very well. Now, heading into a time of real battle in Italy, and as the spies tell us Khusro may yet be drawn into the war as well …’

‘But the Endless Peace?’ Theodora interrupted.

‘Might end.’

‘Oh.’

‘And there’s the loss of Timothy, you still grieve Sophia …’

‘I have Comito’s Sophia to think of now.’

‘And to train, I see that.’

Theodora frowned. ‘I didn’t think I was so obvious.’

‘Only to me.’

‘Then also to Narses.’

‘He knows more than either of us, I’m sure.’

Theodora nodded her agreement, aware that Justinian was also speaking about Anthemius, and that even in nodding her head she was acknowledging what neither of them would speak.

He went on: ‘You’re right to think of the succession, of the purple. I don’t have time to do so, but it’s good that one of us does, it’s good that you do.’

Justinian held out his hand and Theodora, seeming younger now, smaller without the ceremonial robes, went to him. They sat together, looking out from his office, across the wall into the City.

‘It’s going to be hard,’ Justinian said at last. ‘We’ve lost Mundus, we may lose many of our soldiers, but I believe this is the right thing to do. One Rome, one Church, one people.’

‘One language?’ Theodora asked in Greek.

Justinian smiled, held up her hand to kiss it. ‘Latin’s fine for strategy, for law, for war,’ he replied in Latin.

‘We are at war.’

‘For now. We’ll be at peace too, and Greek is a better language for faith. Making it the language of state is just a gesture in some ways. People will always use the words that suit their purpose, but these public statements do make a difference. You’re more than my wife; you are my partner, my consort. Even when you don’t feel it, you have always been God’s gift to me. Theou doron.’

It was a long speech for Justinian, longer than she had heard from him for years. Theodora walked to the door, ushered out the slaves, locked it behind them. She closed the shutters that let in the light and sound and smells of the City and the hills and sea beyond. She removed the cushions from the divan Justinian never sat on, a divan that was covered in papers and maps and folios and scrolls, some so terribly old she knew he would have to look away rather than watch her handle them, some so new the ink smelt fresh and slightly bitter. She laid out the cushions and spread her own purple cloak on the floor over them, Justinian shaking his head and grinning as she did
so. She then slowly removed her clothes. First the heavily embroidered red slippers, then the chiming gold bracelets, each one engraved with her own monogram, the heavy earrings of beaten gold and the layered ropes of pearls around her neck. Each piece was taken off and carefully placed on the floor, a precious mosaic around the bed on her husband’s office floor. She undid the silver and lapis brooch that held up the elegant draping of her tunic, the silk falling in a rush to the floor, the purples of her cloak and tunic clashing and chiming with the reds and greens of the finely knotted carpet, the deep blues of the cushions, with Theodora’s dark hair, her green eyes, and her pale olive-toned skin now that she lay naked on the floor.

She was thirty-five, he fifty-three. They were August and Augusta and outside the room, beyond the shutters and the closed door, the great City and the labyrinthine, ever-expanding Palace kept on their constant pace. In the room, now, for this moment, they were the two people who had first astonished each other with their mutual pleasure in lust, in passion. They were Justinian who gained his skills early in life with a girl from his own village, and then perfected them forty years ago in the City with an older woman he had loved but could never marry. Justinian who believed both women had readied him for Theodora. He stroked her back, his hands sending goose bumps down her spine, across her lower belly. She was Theodora, star of the Hippodrome and plenty of bedrooms as well, child prostitute and theatre-whore, with too many images she wanted to forget. She kissed his lips, dark-ringed eyes, stubbled cheeks, full chin. Kissed his shoulders and arms and hands and flesh and the knock at the door and the City screams outside and the Palace tension inside were ignored in the pleasure of his mouth and her mouth, tasting the ink and parchment on his
fingers, the rose oils on her back and arms, his fingers twining into the long coil of her dark hair, hers reaching up to stroke his curls, his finally, just this year, just-thinning curls. His body and her body, just bodies, just flesh, beating and rolling and sliding against the fine silk on the floor, in the room where the hardest decisions were made, in the Palace that was the office that ran half the world.

The Emperor and his pious consort slowly parted, breath returning to normal, hearts to a regular beat.

She leaned over him; his smile was relaxed, his dark eyes untroubled.

‘I should do this more often, lock you in here and force you to pleasure me until you are calm,’ she said.

Justinian sat up, pulling the purple over her shoulders, the room was cool now, her skin cool too. ‘Forcing me to stain and rip this silk. That’s exactly what those who speak against me want to hear, how profligate our rule has become, how debauched.’

‘Those who believe us debauched have done so since you made me patrician. I’m not worried about them, we have the people on our side again, and they like it when you show them you’re a man.’

‘And all men want to bed Theodora?’

She looked away, wondering how many levels there were to his question, knowing that Anthemius remained unspoken between them. When she looked back Justinian was already eyeing the piles of papers she’d moved from the divan; she knew he was listening beyond the door to the impatient shuffling feet of any number of courtiers, that he was already present at the meetings he had to attend. She was sure he knew about Anthemius, sure too that his public declaration of her as consort, his private passion just now, and the work he
had already moved on to, did not need the distraction of something that was firmly in the past.

She stood up, pulling her clothes back on. ‘I’ll go to my rooms.’

‘Thank you.’

‘Thank you.’

They kissed, not as the two people who had, moments earlier, been locked in the sweat and hunger of desire and demand, but as August and Augusta. She bowing to him, he blessing her in his response.

A
fter too long a wait, City spies finally returned with the news that Belisarius’ troops were on their way to the city of Rome. The papal seat was vacant and Justinian sent for Vigilius, the papal nuncio to Constantinople. Relatively young to be papal nuncio, younger than the Empress by several years, Vigilius arrived breathless and hopeful, keen to support the Emperor he endorsed and keen, too, to hear of what he hoped might be a promotion, a rise in status and power he could only have dreamed of as a boy. He wasn’t disappointed.

‘We are sending you to Rome, Vigilius.’

‘Yes, Master,’ Vigilius answered, trying to keep the excitement out of his voice and hold his eager, round face in as solemn a mask as the occasion demanded. Excitement and fear – they were not sending him to a safe country palace.

‘You’ll be accompanied by your own retinue and our soldiers, of course. We have a letter for Belisarius that instructs him to make you Pope.’

Vigilius, who had begun to rise, fell back to his knees. All his plans, all his fear, all his hopes, in one simple command.

Justinian continued: ‘The Augusta and I know you are with
us, our desire to make one Rome, one Church. We trust you’ll be better placed to further our cause from Rome itself.’

Macedonia was waiting for Vigilius when he arrived in Italy and visited him in the rooms Belisarius had commandeered for him. She knelt for his blessing and he greeted her warmly, if carefully. He stood before a charming and good-looking woman, and again, just as in the presence of the Empress, he could feel his cheery round cheeks growing red with shyness. Very quickly those cheeks were red with rage.

‘I have bad news,’ Macedonia said.

‘Yes?’

‘The Goths have appointed Silverius as Pope.’

‘But I have letters, and gold. The Emperor himself …’

‘I know. And still, they have appointed Silverius.’

‘He has St Peter’s keys? He actually holds them?’

‘He does.’

She looked at the man before her, ready to take up the keys of the highest office of faith, thwarted the moment he stepped on Italian soil, Goth soil. All that hope, all that desire, all that hidden, hungry ambition. He looked like a fifteen-year-old taken to his first brothel and told the whores were only for show.

Macedonia waited with Vigilius through the next weeks as furious letters came from the Palace demanding that Belisarius depose Silverius and replace him with Vigilius. But in early December Silverius showed his own military skill and ordered that the gates of Rome be opened to Belisarius and his soldiers. Belisarius, in turn, allowed Silverius to keep the papal throne.

With Belisarius finally in Rome, even if it was a Rome with a less amenable pontiff, Justinian and Narses agreed it was vital to build on that success. Vigilius was told to wait for now,
and the consecration of the great Hagia Sophia was set for the days just after the Christmas festival.

The night before the consecration, Theodora and Justinian walked through one of the underground passages that took them directly from the outer offices of the Palace, beneath the wall and the Augustaion, into a screened-off section of the main entrance to the grand new church. Narses had wanted to come with them: like most of the City he was hungry to see the finished article. Anthemius had practically begged to show off his masterpiece, and Isodore walked off in exhausted exasperation when it became obvious that the Empress was not to be persuaded – she would view their great new church with her husband and no one else. The old Hagia Sophia had been Theodora’s sanctuary as a child, its fall would always be linked to the riots, to Sophia’s death; now it was the finest symbol of Justinian’s regenerated Rome. The Christ’s birthday feast was over, tomorrow they would attend the consecration of this great space. The thin, cold, winter light would filter through the finest alabaster windows, a thousand candles inside the building would bounce reflections from mosaics and gold and silver surfaces at every turn. There had been praying and feasting for days, and there would be plenty to come – priests and patricians, City gentry and half the Palace in attendance when the church itself became holy. The other half of the staff would stay behind to prepare the feast and celebrations. Tonight Theodora wanted to be only with her husband, looking on their achievement, their precious contribution to the City and its future.

Isodore might have stormed off, but Anthemius had not lost his theatrical touch. Every candle on every candelabra was lit and, as they walked into the warm, welcoming light, a single, bright, pure voice filled the space. A eunuch child,
a boy who could not have been more than nine or ten, singing an old song Theodora knew from her childhood. Despite the nerves in his slightly trembling voice, she knew immediately he had been rehearsed by Comito: he had her sister’s perfect phrasing, her intonation. It was a song Comito used to sing when soothing their little sister Anastasia, a song their grandmother had taught them, promising a better time, an easier life, in the next world, if not this. Justinian didn’t know the song, but he did know his wife, and he also knew how terrified the child must be; he had once been that child, new to the Palace, to the August’s presence, to the fuss and rigmarole of court. He waited until the boy came to a pause, then held up his hand. The child immediately fell to the floor.

Justinian leaned down, thanking the boy. ‘It’s hard to stand alone and you’ve done well. The Empress and I are grateful.’

‘The Augusta looks sad,’ the boy whispered as he knelt before his Emperor.