The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (21 page)

Theodora nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

Justinian went on, ‘I will not lose you, Theodora.’

It was a question and a statement at the same time. They were closer now to the councillors and staff who were waiting to wave them off, Theodora had no time to explain or defend herself, which was no doubt what Justinian had intended.

She whispered, ‘No.’

‘Nor,’ he added, loosening his grip just a little, stroking his thumb along her fingers, ‘do I want to lose you to Narses’ idea of what a good wife should be.’

‘The eunuch likes his ladies to be quiet.’

‘It was the eunuch who brought me a grown woman in the first place. We had no call for a malleable girl. Perhaps he has forgotten that. The dutiful Theodora is too placid for our Palace and, I admit, less useful. I miss my adversary, my cohort. I need your mind and your energy more than I need your wifely obedience.’

Theodora smiled then. ‘But you do require wifely obedience?’

Justinian was not smiling when he answered, ‘Yes. A little.’

Then the Emperor stepped back on to the dock, and the Empress stepped aboard the first grand vessel, all five ships were untied from their moorings, and Theodora gave a deep bow that brought everyone else down to the deck to honour the August, including a furious ship’s captain who had better
things to do right now than bob up and down at the theatre whore’s will.

The boats pulled away and Theodora stood, eyes locked with her husband’s, astonished again at how well he understood her.

That night Theodora lay in a thick-walled and dark room in the Metanoia convent, close to the Bithynia shore. Her room was no more than a slightly enlarged cell, with a mattress as lumpy, and blanket as thin, as any used by the women in the convent. She thought about how well her husband understood her. Anthemius held her in the small and dark room, lifting her on to his body and pulling her to him so fiercely with his tanned arms, his dust-ingrained fingers, that he left bruises on her back and thighs that would last for weeks. Their teeth smashed together in furious kisses and as they bucked and fought to breathe, each trying to find the other, as they sucked in the scent, taste, the richness and the full, hungry flesh of the other, there was a moment when Theodora saw Justinian quite clearly. His dark eyes, his beautiful hands, his faith in her, and his trust in their shared vision. And then Anthemius was all she thought of, and then they slept.

A
nthemius left Theodora’s bed before dawn, returned silently to the boat that had brought him across the Bosphorus, paid the mute ferryman who was used to carrying tired men back from Metanoia to the City, and was at the Hagia Sophia site by the time his workmen arrived. He would not see Theodora again until her return from Bithynia.

The Empress’s first appointment was with Domnica, the woman in charge of Metanoia. Starkly religious, wearing robes pulled so tightly that her bones were sharp beneath her all-encompassing gown, Domnica was thin to the point of emaciation. She prostrated herself fully in a bow that Theodora thought more ostentatious than observant. She had cold, dry hands she clasped together in either reverence or fervour, the Empress wasn’t sure which. Theodora outlined her first thoughts about the establishment.

‘I’m concerned to hear it’s not unusual for men to find their way into the building late at night.’

‘I have tried to deal with it, Mistress, but without the power to fully punish these sluts satisfying their lust, it has been hard to put a stop to it.’

Theodora heard the anger in her tone and probed further, ‘You have tried?’

‘Oh yes’ – and now Domnica’s cold hands were clenched so tightly her knuckles were stark white – ‘I have tried refusing food, even refusing water to those caught meeting with men.’

‘Denying them water?’

‘And still they sin,’ Domnica answered, disgust colouring her simple words.

Theodora nodded. ‘Yes, some appetites are hard to subdue. Still, we want no more men ferried across the water by the obliging sailor out there.’

‘Of course, Mistress,’ Domnica said eagerly.

‘The women are either penitent and welcome to stay in the house, free from the pressure of poverty and pimps, or they’re not, in which case they’re welcome to leave. I want nothing in between.’

Domnica could not have agreed with Theodora more, and saw the Empress’s statement as an opportunity to list the penalties and punishments she wanted to implement. Theodora noted that all of them involved some form of denial, from food to water to sleep to conversation. In her time in the desert Theodora had known men and women who devoted their entire lives to penitence and some who found a perverse pleasure in exploring and punishing the sins of those less pious.

Domnica finished her speech, telling herself as much as the Empress, ‘We will beat their sin from them, if need be, or starve it out. Or both.’

Domnica wiped the spittle of invective from the corner of her mouth as she brought her rant against the sins of the flesh to a close, and Theodora knew the woman was a danger to those she supervised, as well as herself.

*

Later that day Theodora met with Jacob Baradeus. The teacher travelled the length and breadth of Asian Rome, preaching in Syriac, Aramaic and Coptic as well as Greek, and was a constant barb to the Roman authorities. Occasionally he enraged local leaders enough for a call to be made for his arrest and then he would slip away, disguised in his beggar’s rags, leaving only silence in his wake. Months later he would turn up again, speaking for the anti-Chalcedonian Christ that the Western Church condemned, as well as self-determination for the smaller nations under Rome, but always so gently that his passion was rarely noticed until it was too late to stop the whispers and suggestions of rebellion. Baradaeus was also known for his healing abilities; Theodora’s religious mentor Timothy, who’d known the preacher in their youth, attributed it to his education in the Levant. Severus, who had taught Theodora in the desert and for whom miracles were a more everyday affair, believed the ragged priest possessed a healing gift. Both men trusted him implicitly and Theodora turned to him in relief. After a long afternoon in discussion, from which Armeneus noted that Theodora returned particularly thoughtful, Domnica was deposed as the ruler of Metanoia and an older, kinder woman took her place.

Theodora and her own priest John of Tella met with Jacob every day that week. A week that was six days too long for most of her ladies, who gazed across the shimmering water, imagining the towers and scaffolding of the City and wished for even the building-site comforts of home. Theodora talked with each of the women and girls in Metanoia; she listened to their stories and sent those who were unwell or especially unhappy to Jacob when she thought it necessary. Where she heard penitence and an eagerness to remain, the women were
welcome to stay. Where she heard resentment of the rule but a greater fear of the world – girls who railed against the close confines of a convent but were too scared of pimps to return to their old lives – she suggested they remain until they had learned a trade, sewing or weaving. Although the law had changed and marriage was no longer impossible as it had been when Theodora was a girl, not all men had changed with the law, finding husbands for these damaged young women was still difficult. The younger girls found it easier to agree with her, the older women had further to bend, and not all of them welcomed the Empress’s interest. Several agreed to leave after these conversations, some were asked to leave, and one made a show of her exit.

Domnica raged at any who came near her, furious at her loss of status, ‘How dare that stage whore, living in luxury and ease, question my integrity?’

Her rants were loud and prolonged, but they bounced from the stone walls of her small cell and fell into silence when none of the women she had bullied chose to respond.

Determined to make her point, Domnica waited until the Empress and her people were assembled in the convent courtyard, loaded up and ready to leave for the healing springs at Pythium. The Empress was kneeling for blessing from both Jacob and John, as were the women and girls, who had lined up at the entrance, when Domnica called down from the tower on the western corner of the wide building, where the view across to Sykae was clearest, the afternoon light brightest. Leaning out into the courtyard, her now-loosened robe flying behind her in the wind off the water, with a curse against Theodora on her breath, she threw herself to the ground below.

Children’s eyes were covered by adults’ hands, half a dozen
women ran inside pulling crying girls behind them as the rest looked on in shock.

Theodora remained on her knees and spoke quietly to the priests: ‘You have not finished your blessing.’

They completed the prayer and only then did the Empress rise. Bowing to the house, nodding to the woman she had left in charge in Domnica’s place, she joined those waiting for her.

As their caravan rode away Theodora took Sophia from Comito and kissed the hand that reached for her mouth, whispering to her niece, ‘See, Little One? I knew she wasn’t fit to lead. Far too extreme.’

The rest of their time in Bithynia was more relaxed. There was a week at the hot springs in Pythium where the women were pampered, the children played in warm sun all day and ran through fields with a freedom they rarely experienced in the Palace. Theodora sat beside her sister.

‘You remember when we were like those two?’ she asked, watching the toddlers Anastasius and Sophia tumbling and crawling over Ana and Indaro, all four squealing and giggling.

‘Not quite,’ Comito answered. ‘We tended to squeal in glee when we’d stolen pastries and sweets from market stalls.’

‘And squeal in pain from Menander’s cane.’

The sisters smiled in remembrance of their brutal, beloved master.

‘I sometimes think we were more free than these little ones, though,’ Theodora said. ‘I hear you and the girls shushing them all the time.’

‘Our babies have more than we could have dreamed of. Yes, they have to be quiet at times: they do live in the heart of government, it’s not much to ask.’

‘I don’t know, these Palace children will never have the freedoms we did.’

Comito turned back to her sister. ‘Surely you’re not pining for the days when you weren’t mistress of the world? I know you crave solitude sometimes, but you love the machinations of the Palace as much as any of the men, maybe even as much as Narses.’

She was teasing, but Theodora agreed. ‘I do, mostly. I don’t love some of the problems that come with it, the endless negotiations and persuasions.’

‘Hmm.’ Comito closed her eyes against the sun and, settling herself more comfortably on the thick cushions laid out for their ease, said, ‘You don’t have to always negotiate, do you? You could just make some things happen.’

‘Like what?’

‘You did with Metanoia.’

‘Yes.’

‘And you have plans for my daughter already, no?’

Comito’s eyes were still closed, her tone light, but this was the first time either had mentioned Sophia’s future, and both knew it was a delicate subject.

‘I think I do,’ Theodora said, ‘she’s very young yet, it will depend…’

‘On how she turns out?’

‘Among other things.’

‘Like Pasara’s brat?’

Theodora sighed. ‘You’d think over here I could forget about her.’

‘But you hear her barbs anyway?’

‘All the time.’

‘It’s because we weren’t brought up to think ourselves worthy of all this.’

‘It’s because she’s a bitch.’

‘Yes, that too,’ Comito agreed, sitting up, eyes wide at the sound of the toddlers smacking heads. In the split second of
silence between the crack and the wail that would come when they realised they were hurt, she stood, turned to her sister and repeated herself, very clearly, ‘You could just make some things happen.’

Comito hurried off to soothe her howling daughter and Theodora realised her sister was as ambitious for Sophia as she was.

From the springs they journeyed on to three different monasteries where the Empress, as she had promised Narses, handed over large endowments. A new roof at one, a rebuilt wall for another, a gilt mosaic for the third. The artist commissioned to create the gilt and lapis mosaic was keen to flatter the Augusta and offered to add her to his picture: perhaps he could depict her helping the local women, blessing the children of the small town?

‘That won’t be necessary,’ Theodora began, aware that paying to enshrine herself was hardly what Narses had in mind when he’d demanded this fiscal penance.

John of Tella spoke up: ‘Your household is funding these mosaics, Mistress?’

‘Yes, but there’s no need to make my image simply because I’m paying.’

The priest nodded in agreement. ‘True, yet the roads on this side of the Bosphorus, travelled long enough, would take us to Antioch, to Syria, to those who worship and believe as we do. Men like the holy Severus.’

‘Who brought me to my conversion.’

‘And who even now is spoken of as anathema by the Chalcedonians.’

John lowered his voice and the mosaic artist moved away, aware that if the priest persuaded the Empress he stood to increase his commission fee considerably.

‘Mistress, if you give endowments to your people, and if they want to create your image with that gold, then I don’t see it as arrogance.’

‘No?’

‘It could be seen as a sign that our faithful are welcome in this Eastern stretch of Rome, where local languages flourish, and our worship puts its emphasis on form, on gesture, rather than the texts.’

‘My image in this mosaic would do all that?’ Theodora asked, smiling.

‘Your image in this monastery would confirm that the Emperor is working towards the reconciliation of both sides, it would say his Empress is engaging with the people in the way she knows best.’

‘I doubt it’s what Narses intended when he told me to spend my own income…’

‘In penitence, yes, Mistress.’

Theodora stared at the man beside her. She had not brought him with her as a penitent might bring a religious adviser, but although they were united in faith, he was still a priest, and a fervent one at that. John of Tella opened his mouth to speak and then stopped himself, turning his face away, looking at the wall where the artist was working out his design.