The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (37 page)

Dressed in an old man’s robe, with an old man’s beard and fat belly, she waddled to the centre of the circle and the crowd erupted in applause and laughter. This was not Theodora playing her notorious youthful role; instead she was playing the old actor who had been Zeus in their infamous sketch. And, just as Petrus of Galatia had once opened his robe to reveal the geese that famously pecked grain from Theodora’s naked thighs, now the bearded Empress opened her cloak to reveal Ana’s son Anastasius, Comito’s Sophia, and Antonina’s Joannina, all dressed as geese. The three children leapt out, hissing and squawking, they scrabbled about the mosaic paving, collecting the beads of solid silver grain, and gave them to the crowd, one perfect grain for every person, from Narses and Armeneus standing either side of the seated Justinian, down to the new team of slave boys who silently followed the Emperor, their only job to be ready for him, twenty-four hours a day.

Theodora plucked off her beard, and pulled the cloak tight around her. She applauded her fellow performers, giving a special smile to Ana. When each of the crowd had their silver grains, Narses called for silence, and the Empress spoke.

‘The August thanks you for your strength through the illness, for your forbearance when we know every one of you must also have lost dear ones. We also give thanks for your courage to continue; working from the Palace, the heart of Rome, for the good of Rome.’

The staff applauded, Theodora bowed to them, and three big slaves then lifted each of the children high on their shoulders to wave to the crowd. Justinian stood and came forward to his wife. He waved and took her hand.

‘Nice speech,’ he said.

‘You wrote it,’ she answered, holding his hand tightly so that the people, still cheering, didn’t see how it shook, beyond his control.

‘Words, I mean … speaking … I … dictated it.’

‘Yes, you did. There’ve been plenty of rulers who could neither read nor write, Justinian, you’ll do both again, and well.’ Beside her, Theodora felt her husband lose his footing just a little, felt him falter. ‘No, not yet, two more steps,’ she said.

Justinian took a deep breath, and then turned, a broken smile on his tired, baggy-eyed face; with his better hand, he waved to his people. Then his wife led him inside.

T
heodora sent away Justinian’s chamber slaves, and began to undress her husband herself. She unpinned the two large brooches holding his outer robe in place and helped him shrug off the heavy silk, carefully laying it on the carved wooden chest so his servants could take it back to the robing room later. Free of the weight, Justinian sat down heavily on the bed, exhausted. His clothes were the finest available in Constantinople, the silk woven expressly for the Palace by the Jewish weavers who had housed Theodora when she first met Justinian, and dyed with the deepest purple Tyre had to offer. Leah, Esther’s daughter who had yet to be born when Theodora lived with the family, was now famed for her skill in working precious stones into intricate embroidery, creating mosaics with gems and gold thread. Hers was a lauded craft, loved more by those who looked on the garments than the few who had to stand up under their weight. Theodora helped Justinian off with his slippers, also embroidered, jewel encrusted. She unpinned the sleeves hiding the deep pox scars on his arms, scars that rounded his back, his torso, and she saw, as if for the first time, the soft, hanging skin of his upper arms. She
removed the gold chain belt from his waist, more of a waist now, she noticed, than before he was ill; her husband had never been fat, but she was small and to her he had always seemed a big man. She saw that his frame was still wide, still tall, but somehow hollow, the sickness had taken a great deal from him, and not just bodily. Justinian, strong in his hopes, sure in his ambitions for the Empire, the husband who had rarely seemed his full eighteen years older than her, appeared to have given in to age.

Naked, Justinian rolled over and into his bed, his eyes already closing. Before his sickness Theodora had never known Justinian to fall asleep before her or wake after; now half of his days seemed to be spent dozing. Alexander had warned it would take a long time for him to regain his full energy, if ever, but she hadn’t understood such depletion could be possible, not until she saw it in the flesh, the lack of substance to his flesh.

She pulled the covers up to his shoulders, doused the lights closest to him and turned to leave the room.

‘Don’t go,’ Justinian said, ‘lay … lie beside me.’

‘You’re exhausted, you need to sleep, I always disturb you when we sleep together.’

‘I want to … be distract … disturbed – Theodora, I don’t want to sleep. This c … constant tiredness will turn to … lethargy –’ he took a deep breath, forced his tongue and lips around the words, ‘if I’m not careful.’

‘You? Lethargic?’ Theodora laughed. ‘Not you.’

‘Take off your clothes … get into bed …’

Theodora looked at her husband in the half-light, she could see he was struggling to stay awake, but he wanted her there. She did as she was told.

‘I don’t want to feel like this,’ he said as she stretched out alongside him, her dark skin against his pale, her smooth arm
holding his trembling one. ‘I hate … that I can’t do … everything I want. I hate … speaking … like … this.’

‘It will come back, Alexander said it would. And you’ll do everything you want, you just need time.’

‘Yes, but he also … told us I may never full … fully recover.’

‘You’re alive, many are not.’

‘I know … I’m … lucky. But I saw it … Theodora, I saw … my death.’

She nodded, she too had seen her own mortality, many years ago in the desert, knew how it felt to truly realise that her own flesh, her own spirit, were not invincible; to know, for certain, that death was corporeal, utterly real.

‘And it is … was … frightening … as the sages have said … said it was. I was scared, lying there, unable to hear you much of the time, unable to see … at all, scared of what was to come.’

‘You’re a good man, Justinian. Faithful. You don’t need to fear death.’

‘I didn’t, I feared, I fear … not living. Not living long … enough. Our one … Church, one … Empire.’

‘We’ve achieved a great deal.’

‘Achieved and lost … gained again. Lost. It’s always been like that with l … l … with land, with borders. I should not have expected more.’

‘You won’t give up on Italy?’

‘I’m from the west – how could … could I give up on west … western Rome? But we’ll always spend time and gold and … too many … men holding borders. That’s what land does. The Church though …’ he stopped to breathe, the effort of speaking so much was exhausting him. Theodora watched him frowning in the half-light: ‘Seeing my … my own death … I’m no longer sure. About anything.’

Theodora held her husband tighter. ‘Justinian, many men, many women, never learn that in their lifetime. Well done.’

In the pale light before full dawn, as sailors left port and whores went back to their beds, when the windows let in the cries of market sellers laying out their stalls, and the City air was delicious with the smell of baking bread, stronger for the first time in many months than the stink of the dead, Justinian turned over and slowly lifted his good hand to Theodora’s face. His fingers passed over her lips, waiting for a moment to feel the sleeping kiss of her light breath, then down to her collarbone, his thumb tracing the line to her breasts. Theodora woke to feel his touch and kept her eyes closed, her breathing regular, waiting. Justinian moved his seeking hand to the slight concave of her upper stomach, the hungry dip between her ribs. Yesterday had been too big, too long, neither of them able to eat much, though the kitchens had provided the best that could be bought from a market half its usual size, the best that could be prepared by new staff unused to old ovens, replacing old staff in new graves. He was stroking now, smoothing her skin, her stomach rising, falling, quivering as she woke fully, to his hand, to his breath, to her husband.

Theodora reached up and Justinian turned, reaching out across her, with the flat palm of his trembling hand. Working to hold it as still as he could, he stroked the fine line crossing her lower belly. The scar she never mentioned, other than to dismiss the sickness during her year in the desert. Theodora rarely spoke of her conversion, she had told him simply that it was painful and wonderful and that Severus had taken care of her. Justinian had never asked for more, not even when she failed, month after month, to get pregnant when they were both so much younger. He had married Theodora because it
was wise, useful, and – surprising them both when it happened – because he loved her; he had not married her for children.

Theodora was concerned about succession. Justinian was not: he was concerned about creating, re-creating, the finest Rome he could build in his lifetime. And now he was worried that his best years were gone. Justinian knew he might have died, and had not. He knew he needed to make use of the life he had, work harder than before, even while he was so tired, so hungry to lie still, lie down beside his wife, his lover. She twisted beneath him and her hands were on his back, his shoulders, his thighs, pulling him into her, his trembling hands, his thin, muscle-wasted body an irrelevance. They were fucking as they always had. Fucking with the abandon and passion that had stunned Theodora the first time and now delighted Justinian and only slightly embarrassed the young slaves that stood outside, keeping the bedroom door. The slaves who had seen more than most, heard more than they had seen, and yet were still astonished that a couple like this, this August couple, at their age, could rut so passionately, so ferociously, so deliriously. And so loudly.

When they pulled apart, both sweating, both laughing, Theodora shook her head. ‘Narses will kill me.’

‘Prob … probably not.’

She smiled. ‘He made me promise to go easy on you.’

‘Hah!’ Justinian laughed, ‘The eunuch tells you … of all women, to spare me. It’s jealousy.’

‘No, it’s care.’

‘I know, but it’s … funny … too.’

They laughed and kissed and Theodora called in the Emperor’s chamber slaves, sending them for hot water and oils, fresh clothes. She washed Justinian herself, oiling his skin
and refused to exert him again, even when he asked nicely. She did not want to cross Narses twice in one day.

When the slaves had dressed Justinian and he was ready to go to his office, he leaned down to the bed, clumsy in his reach, kissed Theodora again and thanked her.

‘What for?’

‘Reminding me I … I’m … a man.’

‘Not just the Emperor?’

‘The Emp … Emperor always knows he is a man – I do. No, for … reminding me I’m not just an … invalid. That I am still … here.’

She held his trembling hand, kissing each finger and said, ‘You’re easily reminded.’

‘With you, yes.’

‘I could help.’

‘H … help?’

Theodora hesitated. Her husband had been fully in her care for weeks, had relied upon her for water and what little food he could keep down, to wash him and to clean him when sometimes, a dozen times daily, he soiled himself, dirtied the sheets, the bed, the clothes she had carefully dressed him in, dressed him so that more often than not the servants and chamber slaves saw only the August, when the man in the bed was anything but.

‘Go … go on?’ he asked.

‘I could help you,’ she spoke slowly, quietly.

‘You could help me st … st …,’ he sighed and tried again, ‘stop th … this?’ he finally stuttered out, holding up the hand, shaking now more than trembling, moving his arm, his shoulder, his upper body with its ferocity. ‘And … my … words?’

‘With time, with the right exercises, I think I can. And if not stop, then control. Or hide, mask. If you can’t be better,
fully, I can help you …’ she stopped: even between them the words sounded too harsh.

‘Seem … better?’

‘I could help you control your hand.’

‘And my sp … speech.’

‘Yes, if you work at it.’

Justinian walked slowly back to his bed where Theodora lay, surprised that she seemed not to realise how painful it was for him to talk about this. And then, when he was closer, he saw she knew exactly how painful it was for him and still she had dared to speak, dared to hurt him to help.

He stood above the woman who was digging her fingernails into her palms in an effort not to cry, not to show the pity she felt for her husband, the pity she knew he’d hate, and he nodded.

‘It won’t be easy,’ she said.

‘I … expect not.’

‘I’ll try and find interesting texts for you to practise on.’

‘Pr … practise ripping up, with this?’

He held up the offending right hand, trembling more than ever. They both knew he understood, both appreciated his attempt at making a joke.

‘I can ask Narses to set aside some time in your schedule,’ Theodora asked hesitantly.

And Justinian replied, very slowly, very carefully, ‘I will … tell … Narses.’

Theodora brought her hands together in supplication, in prayer and gratitude. ‘Yes, Master.’

The Emperor covered his wife then, lifting pure cotton and softest silk over her back and shoulders, and she happily allowed him to do it. He gave the slaves instructions to let her sleep, the morning had barely begun, their mistress would rest for a few hours.

Justinian was at the door when she called to him. ‘August?’ she said, old tears just escaping in her voice, but a new thought there too, a new idea.

‘Yes?’

It was morning and he was already tired.

‘We still have to do something about Belisarius.’

‘Yes.’

Theodora sat up. ‘You’re not going to say how wonderful and loyal he is?’

Justinian turned back to her. ‘He is whole and … younger than I. The people … applaud health.’ The deep breath he took before speaking again told its own story. ‘I need no … challengers now.’

The man holding Bouzes’ head under water was impassive. He waited as the servant by his side counted, slow counts, carefully measured, up to fifty. He dragged Bouzes up from the bucket of water, allowed him not quite enough time to grab for air, suck breath through a mouth clogged with vomit and spittle, with blood too, from the slow but constant beating across the face he had endured before this water torture began. This time the count was to sixty. The bucket was filling with as much bile as water. Bouzes was pulled up, a new bucket filled.