The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora (9 page)

The woman pushed her, spinning her out of their circle and Theodora stumbled away, their laughter ringing behind her.

As she went the younger woman called out, ‘Or there’s still a job for you in the theatre – you’re a dead match for the Augusta, honest. Unemployed whore plays Palace whore played by ex-whore. Nice.’

The women turned back to the far more pressing reality of their coin count.

Theodora pulled her cloak tighter. The loneliness of her position could not have been made more clear, and the laughing women had exposed a fear she could never shake: the fear that she wasn’t in her position as Justinian’s love, but as a symbol of so much the Palace needed to placate. Constantinople had always been busy, overcrowded with refugees, with people coming into the City to escape an old life as often as to make a new one. There were the angry religious, keen to set fire to what they saw as the world’s domination. Hungry and disaffected troops marching to and from the ghastliness of the Persian border were not new, Blues and Greens would always fight each other. The state knew this as well as anyone, the state benefited from it, had established the factions precisely for this purpose, if the Blues and Greens were fighting each other, they were not fighting their rulers. The City was at the centre of the world, and Theodora could feel the change, she knew it was on the boil.

She led Armeneus and Mariam back to the Palace across the Forum of Constantine and right to the Chalke Gate. No need to hide herself now. As they approached, she threw back
her cloak, lifted her head and, in the simple act of changing her bearing, altered her status so utterly it was obvious she was Augusta. It was a trick Armeneus had seen before and one he never grew tired of. She walked through the gate and walked into her position. Back in her office she called for Narses. Theodora understood the friction between the Palace and the people better than most; she had gone out to find reasons for her own unease, and had seen plenty. Justinian, and she as his wife, were in power because the old Emperor Justin had granted them the succession; they stayed in the purple because the people allowed it.

T
here was, inevitably, an argument. Narses, furious at being dragged from yet another urgent meeting with his Persian spies, was angrier still when he discovered where Theodora had been while her ladies were repeatedly assuring him she was sleeping, bathing, resting the whole day. The more Narses patronised, the sulkier Theodora became; the angrier she was, the more he lectured. Armeneus watched, aware that he hadn’t heard the last of Narses’ fury himself, and wishing his lover and his mistress would pay better attention to the matter in hand; while they were busy scoring points off one another, no one was dealing with the unhappiness beyond the Palace walls. Eventually Narses left, their debate at an impasse, and Theodora waited, knowing she would have to face her husband before she was allowed to sleep.

Justinian walked into Theodora’s rooms with no announcement and stood in the centre of the Empress’s main reception chamber. Servants scattered on the floor around him, no one certain if they were meant to ignore what was going on or scuttle away as quietly as possible.

Theodora knelt immediately.

‘You had no right to go out into the City alone,’ he said.

‘I was not alone.’

‘I’m not interested in sophistry, wife.’

‘And I am not interested in being treated like a disobedient child, husband.’ Theodora looked up. Unable to stand without his permission, she stayed on her knees. ‘You need to know what’s going on out there, I can tell you…’

Justinian shook his head. ‘I have people to tell me what’s going on, I hardly need the Empress to risk her own life and the honour of the purple…’

‘Keep me on my knees if you must, but don’t imagine that your Palace-bred lackeys have any idea how it is out there. This lot, for example, who even now don’t know if they should get up and leave us, or stay lying on the ground like so many dead ants. Get out! Now!’ she shouted, and the half-dozen maids and eunuchs struggled up, heads still bowed, and shuffled from the room on their knees, not wanting to raise themselves higher than their mistress, yet anxious to do her bidding.

Only once the doors were closed did Theodora continue, her voice quieter, but no less determined.

‘Your Palace staff are too scared to go anywhere other than the main streets – they think they’ll be stabbed if they walk fifty paces either side of the Mese. We used to laugh at them when we were girls, watching them spying on our conversations, as if the chatter of a bunch of Hippodrome tarts might be of use to the Emperor’s people.’

‘You’ve always told me that you saw the real world in your nights with those rich men, those private dinners.’

‘We did,’ Theodora agreed, ‘but we weren’t stupid enough to talk about the secrets we heard from whore-screwing senators in front of a couple of Palace bores who wouldn’t know the difference between backstage gossip and divine truth.’

‘So I should fire those young men working for me inside the Persian military? Does everyone know they are spies too?’

‘That’s different.’

‘How so?’

Theodora looked up at Justinian, ‘May I sit? I’ve been trained to stay on my knees for hours, for any number of reasons, but I am Empress now, and no longer as keen to prove my physical supremacy.’

Justinian pointed to a narrow stool and gestured for Mariam to bring it.

‘How kind. How comfortable.’ Theodora said, sitting down.

‘Don’t push me, Theodora.’

Justinian’s voice was cold and Theodora paused. Her husband usually found it funny, charming even, when she’d overstepped the mark, but clearly he didn’t find her charming today. Theodora took time to arrange herself on the stool, layer her robe over her legs, thinking fast. Defiance wasn’t working and he’d never believe abject apology; she’d just have to try harder with the truth.

‘There’s a deep anger on the streets,’ she said.

‘I’m sure you’re right,’ Justinian answered, ‘which makes it more worrying that you’d put your own safety at risk.’

‘What risk? A wife, with her husband and child? They had no idea who I was because they didn’t look at me. They saw the image of mother and child and ignored me as they do all mothers.’

‘Plenty saw you come back into the Palace.’

‘Because I chose them to. I know the people, Justinian, it’s one of the reasons Narses and Timothy pushed us together. And sometimes it’s good to be with them as people, as ourselves, not as August.’

Her husband laughed then, quietly. ‘This from the woman
who insisted on the titles Master and Mistress, that people bow and kiss your foot?’

‘I needed to establish my status quickly when we were elevated.’

‘You certainly did that.’

‘And it’s out of respect for the purple I ask them to bow. Not for me.’

Justinian nodded. ‘Yes, I believe that is why you do it.’

‘It’s also from respect for you that I went out today.’

‘In respect you broke my rule and in respect you defied my order?’

‘That’s right.’

Justinian stared at her, shook his head and, standing, turned once, twice, walked away to the far wall, his fists clenched, and then walked right up to Theodora. Leaning over her, raising both his arms, he let out a roar.

For a moment, Justinian shouting, fists clenched, arms raised, Theodora saw all the men who had ever hit her, from her stepfather to Menander, from Hecebolus who had deserted her after she followed him to the Pentapolis in North Africa, to the many men she had whored for and the few men she had loved, all the men except her father and – until now – except Justinian. Theodora sat utterly still, waiting, ready to take whatever was coming. Then, his anger released, Justinian ran his hands through his hair and burst out laughing and Theodora knew she had him back, the husband who trusted her, who cared about her in a way that no one else ever had.

Justinian took her hand, led her to a couch by the window, their view of the water, with gulls crying and distant sailors’ calls, caught on the wind, flung back at the City hills.

‘Explain,’ said Justinian, sitting beside her.

‘We could have been any family of travellers. Armeneus is
black-skinned, so they didn’t worry about what they said in front of him, and they never care what they say in front of a wife or a girl, we don’t matter. A child and a man beside you is the best disguise a woman can have – unnoticed because she’s just like all the others.’

‘I’d have thought you hated that.’

‘I often want to be left alone.’

‘Yes, but you wouldn’t want to be ignored for long.’

‘True,’ she agreed, ‘not for long.’

They talked on, Theodora sharing what she’d felt in the City, in particular the volatility between Blues and Greens.

‘I can’t stop the progress now,’ Justinian said. ‘If we want to restore the Empire, if we want to stop the war with Persia, regain Italy from the Goths, bring the Christ to our neighbours, then I have to allow the Cappadocian to keep on with both tax rises and cost-cutting, I have to make both factions understand I won’t tolerate misbehaviour from either side. But you’re right, I need to find a way to explain better. I will. Perhaps you should coach me.’

‘Teach you to speak from the Kathisma, overlooking the Hippodrome where every Emperor has stood, saying expressly what the people don’t want to hear?’

Justinian shook his head, unsure. He kissed Theodora and as he stood up, she pulled him closer to her, whispering, ‘I thought you were going to hit me.’

Justinian stared down at his wife, frowning, biting on his full lip. ‘I thought I was, too,’ he admitted.

Then he turned to go and the two door slaves who had stood silently throughout, studiously not watching the couple, sprang into action for their Emperor.

Theodora could not rest easily that night. Waking after several hours of interrupted sleep, sweating and uncomfortable
despite the winter chill of her cool room, heart pounding and head aching, she had no clear memory of the dream that disturbed her, but she knew it had not been good. She called Mariam from her room next door, asking for light. When the shadows finally stopped leaping in the lamplight, Theodora pulled herself from the bed, and reached for the statue of the emerald Virgin that had been her talisman for more than a dozen years. She stayed on her knees for an hour, in the prayer-trance she had learned in the desert outside Alexandria. She prayed to avert trouble, to save lives, to blunt knives and keep sharp tongues still. She prayed against worry and uncertainty and the rising tension outside the Palace walls, and even in the deepest part of her trance she found no ease, just a growing certainty that trouble was coming.

Eventually she went back to bed, allowing Mariam to stroke her forehead with a camomile-soaked cloth while humming the lullaby Theodora had taught the girl when she first came to live in the Palace, the lullaby that was a shared gift between them, soft notes and quiet words. Mariam doused the light and went back to her own bed. Theodora’s eyes were closed, and her breathing regular, but she was not sleeping; she acted sleep to allow Mariam to rest. She lay awake until the late winter dawn began to rise beyond the hills of Bithynia hoping – and failing – to hear the owl, her owl, in the dark. She rose unhappy and exhausted. Outside it was raining, the City was dark and cold.

C
onstantinople was in Theodora’s bones, and although she could not read its mind, she was right to be worried for its body. During the night a small fight had broken out near the Forum Bovis. Quelled by the local street police, apologies were made almost as quickly as offence was given, the handful of young men put away their knives, went home late to their beds and slept better than their Empress. All might have been well if two of them, one Blue, one Green, had not found themselves on the same side of the Mese the following day.

One smiled. ‘Sleep well?’

The other bowed. ‘Better than your mother, I’m sure.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Only that she’s offering a good price this morning – a cheaper whore won’t be found this side of the Theodosian Walls.’

The first bared his teeth and then his knife. The second’s knife was already unsheathed. One lunged, the other was ready, as were friends from both sides. Flesh was bruised, skin was broken, then skin was cut, blood spilled. The postponed fight began again in earnest.

Three hours later, one man was dead, another mortally
injured from a knife wound to his gut, and several more flaunted jagged cuts and bone breaks that would take months to heal and leave lifelong scars. The Blues blamed the Greens; the Greens insisted that not only had the Blues started it, but also that Justinian’s favouring of the Blues had finally gone too far. Lawyers and police hurried to meetings in the Palace, the Emperor consulted his advisers. Narses had a quiet word with the City Prefect, Eudaemon.

The next day Eudaemon ordered the release of two dozen young men from both sides, keeping six in custody, three Greens, three Blues. All six were questioned, their actions investigated, two were finally released, and the remaining four – two from each faction – were sentenced to death.

‘Death? He can’t do that – for fighting?’

A horrified Theodora stormed into Justinian’s rooms where he sat with Narses and Belisarius.

The Emperor rubbed his eyes. ‘We asked Eudaemon to show that he is dealing evenly with the factions.’

‘And this is his answer? A death sentence?’

Belisarius raised an eyebrow, but kept his eyes firmly on the papers before him.

‘Mistress,’ Narses spoke up, ‘Eudaemon is appointed to investigate and rule on these cases. If the Emperor intervenes it will look as if he’s trying to save members of his own faction – and yours, I might add. It will appear that he’s overriding the Prefect.’

‘He should override the Prefect. Blinding, banishment – either or both are perfectly common for murder. This was a street fight, these things happen. No one set out to kill.’

‘They were carrying knives,’ Narses said.

‘And how many men do that on our streets? Women too, sometimes. It doesn’t mean they intended to kill.’