The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (41 page)

‘It’s not that,’ she said, sulking.

‘Oh?’ Theodora asked and Antonina swore under her breath.

‘She doesn’t want me to marry Anastasius.’

‘I didn’t—’ Antonina tried to interrupt, but Theodora held up her hand.

Sophia’s rhythmic stitching slowed a little as she listened more closely.

‘Go on,’ the Empress asked.

‘She says,’ and now Joannina smiled openly at her mother before turning her very pretty face to Theodora, ‘that I can do better.’

Theodora looked at Antonina for explanation.

‘Not quite, Mistress,’ said her old friend. ‘I said my daughter is still young, they were young when they were betrothed. It may be that there is someone better for both of them.’

Theodora turned to Joannina. ‘And what do you want Joannina?’

‘Anastasius and I are in love.’

Antonina shook her head and Theodora smiled. ‘In love. Really?’

‘And we would like to be married sooner rather than later.’

‘I see,’ said Theodora.

‘That’s not love, child, that’s lust,’ Antonina growled at her daughter and though she and Theodora were looking directly at one another, and though each knew the other understood more about lust than either of them would ever share with the girl, neither said so.

Theodora spoke directly to Joannina, ‘I’ll speak to Anastasius’ mother. It’s good to be in love when you’re about to be married, less useful if you have to wait for any length of time. You’ll need to be very careful.’

‘Yes, Mistress.’

‘Good. Joannina, go with Sophia. I would like to talk with your mother a little longer.’

The women waited until the girls had left the room, then accepted the drinks the servants brought for them. The heat pouring into the room through the open windows was fierce and the cold sherbet – originally made to the Persian ambassador’s recipe twenty years earlier and now a staple in the Palace – was refreshing, though not to Antonina’s taste.

‘Wouldn’t you prefer wine, Mistress?’

Theodora shook her head. ‘I don’t want to be any less than perfectly clear with you.’

‘And wine will muddy your thoughts?’

‘It will in the heat I have to endure so this artist can capture my ageing likeness. Are you nearly done?’ she asked the young man.

‘Almost, Mistress,’ he answered in Italian-accented Latin.

Theodora shrugged, turned back to Antonina. ‘I’m tired.’

‘So I’ve heard.’

‘From many?’

‘From a few.’

‘Let’s keep it that way. We made an agreement,’ Theodora went on, speaking carefully, ‘our children are betrothed, and we’re fortunate they believe themselves to be in love. Do you have someone else in mind for her?’

‘No. I just don’t feel there is any urgency for a marriage.’

‘She’s old enough to be a mother.’

‘Yes, but she’s also ten years younger than you were when you married. There’s plenty of time,’ Antonina stopped, peering at her friend, ‘isn’t there?’

Theodora shrugged, and smiled, gesturing for the door slave to open the door, Antonina’s signal to leave.

Antonina bowed, kissed Theodora’s foot, and left the room. Theodora stared after her, hating that she was powerless, not only over her own future, but the futures of those she loved.

Theodora continued to press Antonina to proceed with her daughter’s marriage, Antonina continued to find reasons for waiting: Joanina was too young, Anastasius needed to complete his studies, take his military training. There was always an excuse and the days were passing too rapidly for Theodora.

The Empress managed to hide her illness for most of the year, but by the time the celebration of the Christ’s birth gave way to that of his death and resurrection, her weight loss was obvious and her inability to stand for any length of time
meant she was unable to fulfil her usual role in the Easter processions.

Narses decided it was time for the Palace to admit that the Empress was ill, but Theodora had no intention of making the news public.

‘Mistress, they saw you couldn’t stand for the ceremony in Hagia Sophia …’

‘I’m no longer twenty-one, there’s no disgrace in that.’

‘Nor are you eighty-one, Mistress. Every other year you and the Emperor have made the full procession for the City’s feast day, right up to the Chora Monastery.’

‘And we will again this year.’

Narses shook his head. The woman before him seemed to have grown even thinner in the past day. This morning, before she had spent half an hour making herself up, her skin had been a sickly grey.

‘And what if you don’t make it? All I’m suggesting is we carry you.’

‘On a byre, perhaps?’

‘A sedan chair will do.’

‘Putting me in a chair will make it all the more obvious, they’ll have buried me before we even get to the Column of Marcian.’

‘And if you try to walk and fail they’ll think the same before you get through the Chalke.’

Narses sighed, he couldn’t bear to see Theodora’s decline, nor could he bear how hard she pushed herself to hide it.

‘We can do it,’ she went on, ‘I’ll just walk more slowly than usual. The Emperor has no concerns about the pace I can manage now.’

‘The Emperor is older, the people expect him to walk a little slower.’

Theodora looked at the man in front of her, four years
older than Justinian. She raised an eyebrow and the tall, muscled, shaven-headed eunuch smiled.

‘What can I say? We age better.’

Theodora laughed aloud even though to do so stabbed her ribs and shook her frame. ‘Half my life we’ve worked together, and only now you let out your eunuch-bitch?’

Narses shook his head and he was serious again, the man she had trusted and fought since coming to the Palace, ‘The Emperor looks his years.’

‘Showing the hard work he’s done for the Empire all this time.’

Narses agreed, ‘Yes Mistress, and the people understand that.’

‘Good, then tell the people I’m walking slowly for him.’

‘I would rather tell the people …’

‘I will not have you tell them I am sick.’

‘Mistress,’ Narses knelt now, close to her, looking into her yellowed eyes, ‘I would rather they heard you were sick from my office, where I can control what’s said, than in trying – and failing – to walk you confirm the rumour that you are dying.’

Theodora sat silently for a long time and Narses feared that perhaps even he had gone too far this time.

Then she looked up, ran a heavily veined hand over her darkened face and nodded. ‘Damn you, eunuch, why must you always be right?’

He shook his head, too sorry to reply.

She took a deep breath and continued, ‘I’ll use the sedan chair. Tell them I’ve hurt my knee, or my back, it’s what they expect of an old Hippodrome tart anyway.’

Narses bowed, ready to leave the room.

‘But when we get to the Mese, on the return of the procession …’

He turned back to hear what she was saying.

‘I will walk. I’ll save my energy and they can carry me about like an old relic if you insist, but that street is the spine of the City, I would like to walk down it.’

‘Of course, Mistress.’

‘I’ll walk through the Chalke back into the Palace too. I entered those gates willingly, if frightened, meeting you for the first time …’

‘Frightened and late.’

‘Yes,’ she smiled, remembering, ‘and the Palace has been my magnificent prison ever since. I’d rather walk back in than be carried, it feels more like a choice.’

Narses was about to speak, to tell her that of course she had a choice, she was Empress, could command anything she wanted, and then stopped himself. He knew as well as she did that since her marriage to Justinian, since they assumed the throne together, their choices had become more and more limited, the role itself making decisions for them, until now he stood before a woman clearly dying, insisting he knew best how she should make her last journey into her own city, insisting that protocol come first.

‘We’ll make the Mese especially beautiful for you, Mistress.’

Theodora looked up. ‘You’ll knock down the statue of Juliana of the Anicii? About damn time.’

The Empress was laughing as he left the room, the eunuch general knew he was close to tears.

T
he City’s feast day celebrations were always a huge joy. Theodora had adored them as a girl, when she was part of the troupe entertaining the public in the Hippodrome before the real stars came on stage, the racing teams, their trainers, the fierce horses, drivers as crazy as they were brave, dealers and bookies at every entrance. The buzzing sense of pride and passion, and a certain anarchy too, rippling out from the centre of the City into the old Hagia Sophia, the Chalke, the Hippodrome, and up through the Mese, out into the Empire itself. An arterial flow of passion with a pulsing background beat of chanting monks, intoning priests, beggars’ insistence, horses’ hooves, and the ever-present call-and-response of the factions. It was the sound of her city and, sitting in her sedan chair, propelled by the energy all around her, Theodora drank it in.

The procession had been going for over five hours, stopping at every monastery and church and shrine on the way. The priests and deacons walked at the head, followed by Justinian, with Narses and Belisarius and other generals behind him, then Theodora in the chair, Sophia close by, and her women fanning out to the sides. They were halfway back
down the Mese, just before the Column of Marcian, the sun close to setting now, the warm day picking up a little moisture from the air as well as the sea. The stallholders who’d earlier shut up shop to party had begun lighting fires in street braziers, evening meals being prepared on them already. Theodora inhaled the heady scent of flatbread, stuffed with fish, a few nuts and a little honey, a drop of oil, a dollop more of garum paste, a handful of spices, another of fresh herbs, and then toasted on a brazier, given out as feast day gifts by stallholders who usually haggled over every last crumb. She called her bearers to wait and Narses, who had been listening for Theodora’s call for the whole of the march, stopped the procession with a precise signal and made his way to her sedan chair.

The bearers bent down, the half-curtained door was opened and Theodora stepped out. There was a palpable intake of breath as those standing closest saw their Empress properly for the first time in many months. Theodora had attended church services, had been seen in the women’s gallery, wearing a tight shawl sometimes against the chill, or with her head veiled; neither were unusual, it had been a long and cold spring. But the woman who stood now, who quickly grasped Narses’ arm, was thin to the point of emaciation, and her hands so grey there seemed to be no blood running in her. There had been rumours for a while, impossible to keep anything hidden for long in the City, and here she was, the wild child of the Hippodrome, the Emperor’s mistress, whore and queen, Theodora-from-the-Brothel, standing hunched like an old lady, hanging on the eunuch for every step she took, her breathing slow and laboured. Plainly ill. Plainly dying. And then, astonishingly, extraordinarily, apparently starving.

She pushed Narses away, stood up straight, pulled her cloak
tighter to her body so it seemed to accentuate her even tinier waist while lifting her breasts. She raised her arms to shake her hair loose from the veil she’d been wearing, rubbing her cheeks at the same time and forcing some colour back into them, biting her lips to do the same.

Then, looking much more like herself, she walked, unaided to the closest stallholder, while calling to another fifteen paces away, ‘Which of you makes the better dish? Your Empress is exhausted from all this ceremony and I’ve had my fill of watching you lot enjoy yourselves while I miss out. It’s bad enough to sit in that great palace and catch the scent of food I can’t eat in there, I will not sit in that damn chair and be carried past it. Nor will my people. Hey, Treasurer,’ she called across to the man standing shocked alongside the Emperor, and the treasurer tentatively raised his hand, ‘we’ll eat here, I’ll have a taste of both men’s work, we all will. Make a note of how much is served and pay these stall-keepers tomorrow.’

The civil servants bowed, the keepers tending their braziers went to work, Theodora collapsed gratefully backward on to Narses and Mariam who were standing close, waiting for her, and was happy to be led back to the sedan chair. She sat, watching her husband and his men, as well as her ladies, enjoy the street food of her city.

‘Some of your fine Palace-bred stomachs might give you trouble in the night,’ she said. ‘If so, it’s no more than you deserve. This is your city, you should know its food.’

Theodora herself had less than a mouthful of each trader’s offerings, assured them she was getting on in years and needed to keep her figure in better check. ‘You know what they say about dancers – lean and lithe while young; broad and broken when old – it can’t be helped, but I try my best.’

The traders and the many who’d gathered around the royal
and religious party, streaming forward from the long procession, applauded and cheered. The people laughed as more food was brought out from shops that had been closed all day and had now opened because the royal procession had stopped, or from stallholders hurrying to lock-ups to find the perfect mouthful to tempt the dieting Empress, also offering the dishes to the crowds of people. In the twilight, the wide Mese warmed by braziers and just-lit torches, Justinian thought Theodora looked as well as he’d seen her in months. From the back of the crowd someone began to sing; it was one of Comito’s old songs, and the cry went up for the songbird herself.

Comito was having none of it at first, shaking her head, until Sophia turned to her mother and whispered, ‘You might not sing for her again, not like this. Not in pleasure.’

When Comito looked up she knew her daughter was right. Theodora, who couldn’t eat beyond a mouthful, who could barely drink without choking, actually looked happy. Her eyes were bright, her skin, tinted with the flames, seemed warm and alive, and she laughed in encouragement, clapping along with the chants of the crowd, clapping her bird-fine hands to ‘Com-i-to! Com-i-to!’