The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (22 page)

“Of course you do.” Severus extracted his finger and ran his palm over John’s spiky tuft of hair. “But I’ve seen great growth in you since you came, Theodora. You’re no longer the frightened girl who showed up at my altar. And I have a feeling the young woman you’ve become would continue to flourish if you stayed at the convent a while longer. The invitation remains if you’d like to stay.”

I reached out and squeezed his fingers—the first time I’d ever touched him. “Thank you. You’re a good man, Severus of Pisidia.”

His hand lingered under mine. “A selfish man, actually. I don’t want to have to scrub the floors of the basilica myself.” He made the sign of the cross over John and turned to go.

“Severus—”

“Yes?”

“I’d like to be baptized with John, this time with the Monophysite prayer. Could you arrange that?”

His eyes smiled. “It would be an honor.”

.   .   .

The waters were cool and salty as Severus tipped me back into the baptismal pool. There was a moment of dark tranquility, silent as a womb before strong hands pulled me back into the air.

“Holy God,

Holy and mighty,

Holy and immortal,

Christ crucified for us.”

A mosaic of Mary looked down on me as I chanted the Monophysite prayer with Severus, then watched as he dipped John into the same waters. My red-faced son howled as if someone had dropped him. Just as Tasia had. She’d be two now.

Alexandria had given me a fresh start, purifying and healing me. Never again would I sell myself. I would find another way to survive—to live—for my children. And for myself.

“B
ird! Bird!” John squirmed to point at the gulls that screamed overhead, giggling as one swooped in front of our faces. I smoothed his hair, but it stubbornly stuck up in a sort of rhinoceros horn at the front of his head. Almost two years old now, he was big enough to walk, but I didn’t want him getting trampled on the docks despite the ache in my shoulders from carrying him in his linen sling all morning.

“How long to Antioch?” Severus stood beside me in his black homespun, my woolen bag a lumpy brown puddle at his feet. This time I journeyed with a wooden rabbit Severus had carved for John when he was teething, a spare tunica for each of us, and a precious parchment copy of the Gospels that Severus had given me on my last name day. I was eighteen.

“A month, maybe more.”

“Don’t let the Blues harass you into doing anything you don’t wish to,” Severus said. He took something from his pocket and slipped it over my head.

I gasped at the heavy silver cross inlaid with amber, strung on a
gold chain thin as a strand of hair. A mosquito was frozen in the center of the ancient stone.

“This must have cost a fortune.” I moved to take it off, but Severus covered my fingers with his age-spotted hands.

“Turn it over.”

Tiny words were etched into the back of the silver.
“Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.”

“Proverbs 3:3.” Severus pushed the black veil back from my shoulders, the movement of a proud father. “So you don’t forget what’s important.”

I smiled through my tears even as he turned and stared at the ship he’d arranged to take me as far as Antioch. From there I would connect with the Blues to manage the rest of the way to Constantinople, although I still wasn’t sure how I’d pay my way. My letters to Mother and Tasia had gone unanswered, as had two I’d sent to Antonina. I had been gone for a year before John was born, and then almost two more years in Alexandria. There had been no word from anyone since I’d left the Queen of Cities three years ago. I told myself they might have moved, but I feared what I might find upon my return.

Severus glanced at me, his lips in a hard line. “Write to me as soon as you’re settled.”

“Are you worried about me, Severus?” I tried to make my tone light, but he wasn’t the only one who was worried. I was about to be alone as I’d never been before, with my son to care for.

“I’m not worried at all,” Severus said. “Alexandria has made you strong. It’s time for you to use that strength.” It wasn’t only the city that had tempered me. Severus had restored my faith in all that was good in the world. I owed him my life, maybe more.

“I’ll write so often you’ll soon hide from the post,” I promised.

“Never.” His eyes shone in the sun as he kissed his fingers and
pressed them to John’s forehead, so close I smelled the rosemary and lemon on his homespun. “May God keep you both.”

The last of the freight had been loaded—we traveled not with fish this time, but with dusty crates of Egyptian grain—and the captain strummed his fingers on his beefy arm.

“Good-bye, John.” Severus kissed the top of my son’s head.

“Bye-bye.” John waved, backward, still watching the gulls.

“Until we meet again, Severus.” I kissed both his cheeks. “I love you.”

His eyes widened at my words, and then he smiled. “As I do you, Theodora.”

We stood on deck until Severus’ form disappeared. Only then did the tears slip down my cheeks.

.   .   .

John snored softly in my arms as we jostled our way to Antioch’s theater. I had felt like a leaf cast about in a storm since we’d left Alexandria, plagued by dreams of a great demon who would meet me in Constantinople, and I wondered every day at the possible folly of my decision. I desperately missed Severus and the security of my little cell in the convent.

I counted fifteen churches in Antioch and at least thirty tavernas, some gleaming with new façades and others a hodgepodge of ancient walls and fresh mortar. We passed the slave market with its river of naked bodies of every hue, plus two small theaters and a rowdy cockfight with the carcasses of several bloodied birds already strewn about the cobbles. Suddenly, the earth shuddered under my feet. People froze like ants in a summer shadow; then the ground stilled, and they continued their gossip and haggling as if nothing had happened. The crumpled skeletons of several buildings lay where the last quake had knocked them, their broken pillars like exposed ribs. A group of youths sat atop the rubble of an old church, tossing a skin of wine between them. Antioch was the hedonistic capital of the world, so
often shaken by earthquakes that its citizens had learned to live for the moment and repent later. It wouldn’t do for me to stay here long.

I expected to be shown to the manager upon entering the pillared building of the Blues’ administration, but the slave ushered me into a room lined with codices and a few crumbling scrolls, the dusty scent the same as the cargo hold we’d just left. A woman sat with her back to me, her hair hidden under a blue scarf. The slave cleared his throat, and the scratching of her stylus stopped.

“An actress from Alexandria,
kyria
.”

John chose that moment to lift his head, yawn, and grab one of the bronze hoops at my ear. It went straight into his mouth.

“Theodora?” The woman had turned around and set down her stylus. “Your customers would never recognize you in that costume.”

I almost dropped my son.

I hadn’t seen Macedonia since the night of the Medusa performance when I’d burst onstage for the first time. I wore my black wool tunica today, worthy of a postulant nun. Macedonia, however, shone like a peacock in mating season—a peacock with a taste for gold. Gold discs hung from her ears, knobs of the metal gleamed from her thumbs, and there were even gold ribbons threaded atop her veil. “What are you doing here?” I said.

She chuckled. “I might ask you the same thing.”

“We stopped on our way to Constantinople.”

“I see you’ve been busy.” She nodded at John. “Traveling with the boy’s father?”

She was nothing if not straightforward. “No,” I said. “Just the two of us.”

“Children are a rather avoidable ailment, you know.” Macedonia made a face at John that he found hilarious. “You’ve been gone from the capital for some time now.”

“Almost three years. When did you leave?”

Macedonia gestured to a wooden stool as the slave reappeared
with two glasses of watered wine and an amphora carved with frolicking satyrs. She smoothed the hair at her temples—still copper, but I thought I detected traces of henna there. “Almost a year ago. Whoring only lasts until our youth fades,” she said. “I had to move on while I still had the chance.”

It was hard to picture Macedonia, one of the most successful
scenicae
in Constantinople, scrambling for survival. She sipped her wine. “I made Justinian an offer he couldn’t refuse.”

“Justinian?” I recalled the man with the dark curls at Justin’s coronation. I could easily picture Macedonia on his arm.

“He practically runs the Empire for his uncle,” she said.

I shifted John to my other knee. “So, he became your patron?”

“In a manner of sorts. Justinian is an unusual man with unusual tastes.” She looked up from the brim of her glass, took a long sip, and smiled. “I’m his spy.”

I laughed. “No, really.”

“It’s the truth. I dance, too, to keep up pretenses. And then I report every filched coin, every rumor of misappropriated taxes to Justinian. Men like to talk after a romp between the sheets or a few too many drinks. I still prefer to listen.” She gave me an odd look. “Speaking of—I heard about Hecebolus. It’s unfortunate that things didn’t work out between you two.”

“The man is a prick.”

She froze, her cup halfway to her lips. “Is?”

“He’s probably thrown out several mistresses by now.”

“You did fall off the ends of the Empire, didn’t you?” Macedonia shook her head. “He married his mistress.”

I almost spewed my wine all over John’s head. He squirmed to be put down, oblivious to the news of his father.

“The one with the orange hair? Flacilla?”

Macedonia nodded. “At first I thought it might be you, but that’s the one. He rewrote his will to leave her everything.”

“His will?”

She stared, then laughed. “You really don’t know, do you? Hecebolus is dead, Theodora. Rumor has it the mistress poisoned him after she got her red sandals.”

By the dog.
I could have had everything I’d wanted if only I’d used my brain. The flame-haired tramp had managed it, and all I’d managed to do was set their bed on fire. Although I had to admit that had almost been worth it.

“Well, I hope it was a long, painful death,” I said. I hid my face from John, then stuck out my tongue, prompting a fit of giggles from him.

He pushed my palms to my face with his chubby hands. “Do it ’gain, Mama!”

I humored him, peeking out to look at Macedonia. “Did they have any children?”

“None that I’m aware of.” Macedonia gestured toward John. “Is this one his?”

“Not that I could ever prove it.”

“That’s unfortunate. You might have challenged her for the estate.”

I sent a silent prayer to the Virgin to calm my fury and stood, hefting John onto my hip. “It doesn’t matter. I have to get back to Constantinople. To my daughter.”

Macedonia shifted a few pieces of parchment on her desk and held one in front of her nose. Even her squint didn’t mar her beauty. “There’s a merchant headed to the capital this week for the Blues—I could probably arrange for you to accompany him.”

“I’d owe you.”

She smiled. “It seems to me you already do.”

I thought back to her help persuading Hilarion to hire me—it seemed an eternity ago.

“What will you do when you get there?” she asked. “Go back to your Leda show?”

Easy money, especially with all the men who would flock to me
afterward. It was beyond tempting, but I shook my head. “I need to learn a trade.”

Macedonia poured herself another glass from the amphora. “You realize there are few trades open to women? You happen to be experienced in the most lucrative one of all.”

“I have two children, Macedonia. It’s time I started acting like a mother.”

“So you’re willing to be, say, a washerwoman?”

Reek of urine and become stooped and leathery before my time. God help me.

“If I have to.”

“Either you’re very brave or very stupid.”

I grinned. “Perhaps both.”

“Can you spin?”

“No, but I can learn.”

“The Blues have a wool shop for stage costumes near the Kynêgion. They might have a place for you.” She took up her stylus and a fresh sheet of parchment. “I’ll write you a recommendation.”

I wanted to kiss her. “You’re a saint.”

“Far from it.”

John toddled over to a pile of costumes while she wrote. I set a gaudy gilded crown on his head, but he promptly replaced it with a woman’s girdle set at a jaunty angle. Macedonia finally scattered sand over the ink, sifted the grains to the side, and shoved two sheets of paper to me.

“You can thank me anytime,” Macedonia said. “I’m partial to gold.”

The second missive was fraught with misspellings, but even once I’d deciphered her writing, it took a moment for her meaning to penetrate my brain.

“This is a letter recommending me to Justinian.” I set the paper down and looked at her with wide eyes. “Have you lost your mind?”