The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (19 page)

T
he anniversary of the Nika riots was marked by the constant ring, crack and thud of hammer and chisel resounding from every wall. Spring came early and then it was Easter again, with its public ritual and processions, the court keeping time with the Church. In the throes of the massive rebuild, the City was either all mud or all dust, nothing between, men working day and torchlit night, chipping away at marble and stone, building upon deep foundations, adding finishing touches to the projects deemed most urgent. The Hippodrome seats and broken boards were replaced, damaged statues exchanged for new, any sign of the dead obliterated. The new Baths were completed, as was the Senate. The unfinished Chalke was already in use while a team of artists worked on designs for its completed decoration, a golden mosaic depicting the Empire’s defeat of both Gelimer’s Vandals and the Goths in Italy. No matter that Belisarius’ troops had not yet left the City. The general was sure of his coming success in Carthage, and Justinian was keen to immortalise it – in his own favour. Adjoining the Chalke was the Augustaion, the open square where tens of thousands of rebels had gathered just a year ago and where their dead
bodies were piled not long after. The square was smaller now, its size diminished by the layout of the new Baths and the foundations for the rebuilt Church of Hagia Sophia. The City planners had not set out to lessen the space, but when the various architects came together and compared their drafts for the work, no one in power thought it a problem that there would be less room for public assembly, public anger.

For three months Theodora met with Anthemius at least twice a week. She heard the stories of his successful family and entertained his brothers – the doctor, the lawyer, the lecturer, the linguist. She put up with the engineer Isodore’s polite but obvious dismissal of her interest when she asked him to explain more about the great dome they were planning for the huge church, how exactly it would work, how it could possibly be held in place. Then she enjoyed a glass of wine and Anthemius’ company as he mocked his brilliant partner, his inability to talk to women, his incoherence in the face of power. Anthemius suffered from neither fault.

As the dusty summer of building continued into the longest days, warmest nights, Theodora knew she was becoming too fond of the younger man and asked Justinian to assign someone else for these meetings.

‘The paper I’m working on, “On Pimps and Prostitutes”, needs more attention. I think the builders can manage without my overseeing them for a while?’

Justinian barely took in her request. Overwhelmed with both theological and military problems, he simply praised her discernment and insisted there was no one else he trusted to make sure the works followed his own desires so clearly.

‘Only you know what I care about. If I can’t supervise the
work as closely as we would both like, I trust you to do so in my stead.’

At her husband’s insistence, Theodora continued seeing Anthemius twice a week.

The architect bowed before his Empress, lowered himself further to kiss her proffered foot, stood up to smile and said, ‘Mistress, I have a treat for you.’

‘You do?’

Theodora was surrounded by her ladies. Mariam stood close by with the baby Sophia, Ana played with Anastasius, Comito and Indaro were rehearsing for a private Palace recital in the rooms beyond, Comito’s voice both stronger and more colourful with age. Armeneus sat at a desk against the wall, where he was checking the Empress’s accounts and shaking his head at the expense of the silks Theodora insisted the children were dressed in; after a youth of cold and hard work herself, she had no intention of letting the young ones feel the bite of a northern wind. The penitents at Metanoia were not so lucky: the fabric allocated for their dress cost a great deal less, despite their numbers being many more.

Theodora brushed away Armeneus’ query over the disparity. ‘Metanoia is a place of redemption, it’s only right we offer our penitents the same opportunities for physical and moral redemption I experienced myself. They have a roof over their heads, that’s more than we had in the desert.’

She nodded to Anthemius. ‘Now, what’s this treat?’ she asked.

Anthemius called one of his apprentices to him. The nervous boy held up a wooden box and the architect lifted off the lid. Carefully, he pulled out a thin, palm-sized piece of cold, heavy marble. It was dark green. The green of the Sea of Marmara in her dreams when Theodora had been in the
desert all that time, the green of the statue she prayed to daily, the green of her own eyes, she knew, Justinian had compared them to their sea often enough.

‘It’s for the women’s gallery, Mistress.’

Theodora nodded, understanding immediately. ‘Where is it from?’

‘You mentioned your love of the water,’ Anthemius answered, gesturing to the view. ‘I’ve been looking for the perfect match. This piece comes via a spice dealer, a Gujjar from Bhinmal, his cousin knows a man…’ he shrugged, the intricacies of trading and deals irrelevant now. ‘We will order more if you like it. When the women’s gallery is complete, it will be laid to mark your place – where the Empress will stand for now, and in the future.’

It was a room full of busy, noisy people. Theodora sat in the centre, using all her theatrical training to stay calm, to maintain her distance from the architect, the man who had just handed her a tangible piece of her own dreams. The man who was promising, with no prompting from her, to recreate a scene from the dream she’d had fourteen years ago in North Africa. Rejected by Hecebolus, travelling alone to Alexandria and hiding in a deserted church, she had slept alone, cold and lost. That night she had dreamed this new Hagia Sophia, dreamed the light that Isodore promised would flow from the dome, dreamed its grand scale and its excess, dreamed the impossible beauty. Now Anthemius offered to mark her place in stone, to mark the green marble spot she had also dreamed, before her conversion, before her hope, back when all she had was her own will not to give in, and little enough faith in that. Theodora took the piece of marble Anthemius offered her and saw that perhaps his hands might be beautiful after all.

That afternoon, Anthemius of Tralles, the architect, the
brightest son of a family of fine young men, became Theodora’s lover.

Her hand in his, calluses and stone cuts rubbing against oiled and smoothed skin. Her mouth on his, lips different to Justinian’s, less full. One muscled arm twisted around her back, a broad hand on her bare stomach. His skin, browner, stronger from days outside, supervising his sites. Her fingers in his hair, hair finer, paler than her husband’s. Her legs stretched against his, her back against his belly, now her breasts to his chest. Her lips, mouth exploring a new torso, a new body. She traced a small scar on his right calf, a serpent tattooed on his lower back, coiled into her hand’s width, following its spiral with her tongue. When Anthemius looked into her eyes, Theodora remembered again that he had found the green marble for her, remembered too that she was Augusta and he the architect of her church and there was danger, real danger, in their touch, and that danger was as potent an aphrodisiac as any herbal concoction the old whores ever knew. Her pleasure rising, as he faltered, hesitated, as he became aware of the risk and she watched him push it away, intent on her mouth, her skin, her body. Intent on her flesh, not the Empress Theodora or his commission or this room in this Palace, just her body and his. They were not skilled at each other, she was new to him as he was to her, they had no pattern for this, no template. Theodora, fourteen years fully faithful to Justinian, gave herself over to enjoying the new, thrilling to the new.

Afterwards she fell asleep in his arms, new arms, a new hold, for a few moments. When she began, slowly, to come to her senses, swimming to the surface of a post-sex stupor, she did so reluctantly, unwilling to acknowledge the risk they had just
let into their lives, unwilling to let the moment go at all. Eventually all sleep was gone and she was only Augusta.

‘I don’t need to tell you…’

‘No, Mistress, you don’t,’ he stopped her, and they were themselves again, Empress and architect.

Theodora gave him directions and left him to it.

Anthemius left the private room within the private rooms, leaving by a back door hidden behind a woven hanging. He walked through one dark passage after another and then into an underground tunnel.

Theodora hoped a long walk through the bowels of the Palace might persuade him that those rumours of her dungeons and torture chambers were not entirely exaggerated. She knew the whispers of poisoned and tortured political enemies, she knew that sometimes court officials disappeared at short notice, and she knew too that Narses could be utterly ruthless in his determination to protect the August. She had employed that pitiless strength for her own ends on occasion and was ever wary of seeing it turned against herself.

She didn’t need to worry. Heading through the underground passages, Anthemius walked past corridors with stark dead ends, and others that seemed to wind on and down, leading into further, darker rooms. He walked carefully and silently, making his way with a strong sense of direction, a lit torch, and a builder’s eye for detail – this stone must be from the original Greek occupiers on this spot, that from a later Roman palace, this just since Constantine. Anthemius had no desire to bring down his rising star as court architect, or to risk his working relationship with the Empress. If this happened again, the gloriously pleasurable delight and terror of fucking the Empress, then good, as long as they maintained secrecy. If not, he was happy being her favourite. In bed, or as an architect, either was good for him, though it was true there
was more future in the latter option. Anthemius had a mind of pure design and elegant lines, housed in a body well suited to pleasure, but he was also a businessman. It would need all his care to ensure that when the affair, if it became an affair, ended – as it surely would – Theodora still wanted him around.

The final corridor, slanting upwards, led him out into a tree-lined avenue close to the wall, not far from the Hagia Sophia site. He reached into his bag, pulled out a measure and began calculating distances. Anyone watching would have thought the architect was simply hard at work as he also calculated how long to wait before calling on the Empress again, how to behave in her presence, how this new development might help his career. Anyone watching would also have seen him smiling a little more than might be expected from the study of an old stone wall.

Theodora was less easy. After two days with the unspoken secret burning at the back of her throat, she called Antonina to her rooms, sent Mariam and her other girls away, and told her friend what had happened.

‘About time. You’re Empress, not the Mother of God…’

‘No, Antonina.’

Theodora might joke about Antonina’s lack of faith, she was not prepared to have her own belief mocked.

‘Don’t glare, you’ll get wrinkles. It’s absurd how faithful you’ve been to Justinian.’

‘He’s been faithful to me. Belisarius is to you.’

‘So they say, and we like to believe. Who knows? Anyway, that’s not my point, Justinian was no whore before you met him.’

‘And I was?’

‘You were more experienced.’

‘In number, of course, but Justinian’s very…’

Antonina covered her ears, ‘Please, he’s August, there are some things I don’t need to know. The point is, you’ve been really good, impeccable. It’s perfectly normal to lapse.’

‘The Church doesn’t think so.’

‘The Church is confused about its very nature – you think whether or not a woman commits adultery is truly that important?’

‘It is to me. And yet…’

‘Yes?’

‘I feel awake, alive.’ She grinned, whispering, ‘Before everything that happened last year, the riots and the damage and losing Sophia, I’d just assumed this was my destiny – the purple, the Augusta – simply because I couldn’t understand why else I should be here.’

‘But now?’

‘Since then I’ve started to think it’s not quite that. It might be fate, that I am Augusta, Justinian’s partner, that may be what I’m meant to be. Certainly when I was in the desert I learned to give myself over to that understanding, trusting my teachers knew best.’

‘What’s changed?’

Theodora shook her head, then smiled. ‘I’m older. And giving in to fate was easier in the desert, listening to Severus’ teachings, than it is here, in the world.’

‘You want some control.’

‘If Augusta is my destiny, so be it, but I need to find a way to make it my mission as well.’

Antonina nodded slowly, and said, ‘Then you can say you chose this life, instead of feeling it was chosen for you?’

‘Yes.’

‘We all rationalise how we live, and in a life as scrutinised as yours, there’s even more reason to do so. But how does taking
a lover have anything to do with seeing your position as choice rather than fate?’

‘Anthemius is different.’

Antonina laughed, ‘Oh, they’re all different, Theodora, that’s why we make them our lovers.’

‘But I’d forgotten the pleasure of difference.’ Theodora was speaking more urgently now. ‘I’ve schooled myself to turn away whenever I’ve looked at another man.’

‘Other men? Plural?’

Theodora ignored her friend’s smirk. ‘I have to be Justinian’s constant. I want to be that for him.’

‘But you want the new as well?’

‘I do. And I want it because I choose it, not because it’s forced on me by circumstance or someone else’s idea of what will be good for state or City. I want it for me.’

‘You know, Belisarius thinks he takes me on campaigns with him so he can keep an eye on me…’

‘But actually it’s so you can keep an eye on his men?’

‘My golden general and his lovely men,’ Antonina smiled, stretching her elegant arms above her head then bringing her hands together in her lap, the picture of a passive wife. ‘I know he’s faithful to me, but that doesn’t stop every tart from here to Carthage trying it on. Besides, when the men are in training, away from their families and ties at home, there are so many more of them to choose from, all crammed into those tents together. Not all our soldiers want to fuck each other. I’m doing the Empire a service by keeping up the men’s morale.’