The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (11 page)

I looked up to see Antonina watching, lit by the moon. She blinked a few times and went back to cleaning her hands. “What will you name her?”

Yet another thing I hadn’t let myself think of. “I’m not sure. Perhaps after my sister.” Many daughters carried their mother’s names. I kissed the baby’s head. “Theodora Anastasia.”

Antonina rolled her eyes. “I’ve had enough Theodoras to last a lifetime. But I like Anastasia—you could call her Tasia for short.”

I knew to hold my tongue, but the next question jumped from my lips before I could even think. “How did you know what to do?”

Antonina busied herself with scrubbing her fingernails. “When you’ve done this as long as I have, you’ve seen plenty of babes born.”

Perhaps she’d even gone to a bathhouse or left one at the Golden Gate herself. Antonina didn’t have any children, at least none I knew of.

“I owe you.”

She stood and wiped her fingers on the ripped costume. “I suppose you don’t have anywhere to stay, now, do you?”

I didn’t answer.

“I heard Comito threw you out. Really it was only a matter of time before you did something to tick her off, too.”

I glared at her. Tasia had fallen off my breast, eyes closed, and I could feel her warm breath on my skin, the brush of a butterfly wing. “We’ll manage.”

Antonina heaved an exasperated sigh and squatted next to me, looping her arm under mine. “Come on.”

“With you?”

“We might kill each other, but the alternative is to leave you out here to expire on your own.” Antonina grunted as she hoisted me to my feet. “I didn’t give up a roll with Timothy the Weasel for nothing, you know.”

“With a name like that, he must be quite a catch.” We looked at each other and exploded into giggles, mine more than a little hysterical. I leaned heavily on her while I maneuvered Tasia as best I could. A glaring alley cat suckled its kitten and hissed as we passed. I stumbled, light-headed.

“Brace up,” Antonina said. “My flat is outside the city walls, and you’re too blasted heavy to carry.” She gestured to Tasia. “Give me the baby. The last thing I need is you dying on me and leaving me to deal with a crumb snatcher.”

I almost protested, but Tasia felt like a giant watermelon and all I wanted to do was sleep. The rest of the way was quiet except for my labored breathing. Antonina stopped in front of a steep stairway shoved into the end of a three-story building, each level precariously stacked upon the others so it resembled a child’s mud paddy before it collapsed. A red-painted phoenix graced the wall, but it might have been mistaken for a harpy had it not been for the faded flames tickling its feet.

“Let me guess,” I said. “The top, right?” The top rooms were always the cheapest.

“The one with the view. Only the best.”

Once we reached the door, I waited only long enough for her to point at a pallet on the floor before I sank into sleep.

.   .   .

Water splashed from one of the clay jugs I carried as my sandal caught on the rough plank of the stair and Tasia thumped against my back. A tanner had just sloshed the stale urine from his pot onto the step in front of me, soaking my sandals. I held my breath, praying Tasia wouldn’t wake and start screaming again, but there was only silence. Miracle of miracles.

“By the dog,” I cursed at him. “What do you think you’re doing?”

His lip curled to reveal several brown teeth. “Dumping filth where it belongs.”

“How dare you—”

“You Jews deserve worse than a little urine.”

“I’m not a Jew.”

“Likely story—this whole building is stuffed full of the dim-witted fools.” With that, he hefted his pot onto his shoulder and stomped off. Somehow I doubted the tanner had seen the inside of Antonina’s room—she was at least one tenant who didn’t cling to the old faith.

The line at the water distribution center had snaked all the way to the aqueduct and sapped what little strength I’d recovered in the past week. I was determined not to leech off Antonina any more than I had to, but I had no money and wouldn’t be deemed clean enough to entertain any men until Tasia’s baptism. Right now I could only offer Antonina my share of the meager chores around her room, trying to keep Tasia quiet while Antonina slept through the afternoons. I had been startled to learn that Antonina did more than dabble in herbs and potions—the woman’s room was a shrine to every god known to man since the days of the book of Genesis, and she’d introduced me
to all of them. A painted statue of Bes welcomed visitors with a garish red smile, Isis stood festooned with a wreath of dried flowers, and Athena’s wooden owl looked down from where he had been hung on the ceiling, an olive branch clutched in the one talon that hadn’t been broken off. There was even a pile of white ash next to a cloudy beaker of water and an oil lamp for the Persian fire gods. Yet Antonina still wore a wooden cross around her neck.

“I like to spread my luck around,” she had said when I asked about the necklace. “My father’s father was a charioteer in Rome before the city fell. He had to flee when the Vandals sacked it, prayed to all the gods to save him as he fled here to the Eastern capital. I figure if I honor all the gods, then none will single me out for smiting.”

“I’m not sure that’s quite how it works.” I’d bit my lip. “I don’t think I’ve ever met a pagan before.”

She’d smiled and handed me a clay cup of tea, a concoction with anise and fennel to help stop my bleeding and keep my milk flowing. “You have now.”

I took the rest of the stairs slowly, one wet foot joining the other on each step, and wanting nothing more than to cuddle with my daughter until the sun set.

“It’s about damn time you showed up.”

I almost fell backward. My mother sat on my pallet, a cup of wine already accessorizing her black stola, one that somehow managed to enhance her sheet of blond hair, loose around her shoulders. She was in mourning.

Comito—

“You never told me what a barrel of laughter your mother is.” Antonina kept her voice down, but it was too late—Tasia blinked her eyes and screamed as if she’d been dropped on her head. The tenants downstairs were likely cursing me to the fires of Gehenna and back. Antonina rubbed her temples. “Especially this early in the morning.”

“Hello, Mother.” I undid the shoulder of my tunica to free my
breast and rubbed the nipple—cracked and raw though it was—on Tasia’s pink gums, but she still howled like a red-faced demon’s minion.

My mother set down her cup and took Tasia from me, hopped from one foot to the other, and thumped Tasia on the back, a little too hard for my taste. “What’s her name?”

I moved to take my daughter back, but her eyes started to droop. “Anastasia. We call her Tasia.” I gestured to my mother. I didn’t want to ask, but I had to. “Why are you in mourning?”

Antonina took a swig from the wine jug. “I believe you ladies have some things to talk about”—I followed her eyes to a cedar chest by the door, the same one that had held my mother’s belongings from Cyprus—“so I’m going to make myself scarce.”

I ran my hands through my hair as Mother sat, letting Tasia use her saggy breasts as a pillow. “How’d you manage that?” I asked. “She slept like an angel for the first few days, and now she’s a demon.”

“You were the same way.” Mother pointed to her wine, and I handed her the cup. “I almost sold you to a passing slave caravan before I discovered that thumping trick.” She glanced around the tiny room with its stain of black mold trailing down the wall and the sagging ceiling. “Mother of Christ. What have you gotten yourself into?”

“Life.”

“You’re an idiot. Some women have brains but are plain as mud. Others—like your sister—are beautiful but dumb as rocks. You were blessed with both brains and beauty. Those gifts are your weapons, but you certainly don’t use them.”

I ignored her, stripped out of my stola, and almost tossed it on the table, an ancient old thing with carved lion’s legs. The lion appeared to have lost a fight—one leg was mangled as if a dog had used it as a chew toy.

“I see having this little mite has filled you out a bit.”

“Perhaps.” I eyed the cedar box as I slipped into an old tunica. “What’s going on, Mother? Why are you here? And why are you in mourning?”

“Vitus is dead.”

I sat down on the pallet. Hard. “Really? Devoured by wild dogs? Covered with leeches until they sucked him dry?”

The grin she flashed me reminded me of when I was young and we’d hide from my father, only to jump out and scare the breath from him. “Nothing so exotic, unfortunately. Stabbed in the back after a horse bet went bad.”

My little sister would sit with the angels while Vitus burned for eternity. “May the man who did the deed be sainted by God.”

My mother raised her cup to me. “Amen.”

“And Comito?” I held my breath.

“Your sister would be happy to have your head on a pike within the city walls. Or anywhere, really.” My mother looked entirely nonchalant. “You really should be ashamed for what you did to her.”

As if I needed reminding.

The silence expanded around us. “You didn’t come all this way, with a trunk, to tell me about Vitus.”

My mother sighed and tried to shift in her seat, but she gave up when Tasia stirred. “No, I did not. I’m moving in with you.”

“What? Here?” I gestured to the room, so small Antonina and I could scarcely lie head to head without our feet touching the walls. We’d tried it.

“Your sister has a patron now, some Tyrian dye merchant.” My mother shrugged. “There’s not exactly room for me in his villa.”

My proud, passionate mother. This was not the life she’d envisioned for herself, for any of us. “I don’t know—it’s not my room. Antonina’s gone most nights, and I’m going to find a position as soon as I’m clean.”

“I’ll take care of Tasia while you two are out—God knows she’ll need someone to make sure she doesn’t end up like you. You won’t even know I’m here.”

“Right. It’ll be like sharing a room with a fury.”

She made a noise in the back of her throat, half laugh, half snort. “Sometimes I think I should have drowned you at birth.”

Ah yes. It was so lovely to have my mother back.

I
hugged my sleeping bundle as Antonina and I crested the city’s tallest hill and approached the domes of the Church of the Holy Apostles. Laid out like a crucifix, the white and gray basilica held the remains of our Emperors all the way back to Constantine, but it looked like a haggard old woman with its crumbling façade and chipped mosaics. The dank and gloomy interior reminded me more of a cave than a sanctified house of God.

Under the largest dome, mothers with ragged hair and dark smudges under their eyes held squalling and sleeping infants. A pigeon had made its nest on a niche above the altar, and a waterfall of white and black droppings obscured the face of Saint Peter on a fresco of Jesus surrounded by the twelve apostles. Despite the shabbiness of the church that held our Caesars, I rather liked the idea of Tasia being baptized there. I wished Comito could see this, but it was still too soon to go begging my way back into my sister’s good graces. Mother was absent, too, sleeping off a bout of too much wine. Old habits died hard, or not at all.

Tasia woke as the priest finished the baptism service, ending with the
usual verse in Latin from the Gospel of Matthew. “‘Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them,’” he said. “‘But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, “Let the little children come to me, and do not hinder them, for the kingdom of heaven belongs to such as these.”’”

I expected Tasia to cry as the red-robed priest took her from me and gingerly undid the mostly clean blanket Antonina had wrapped her in, but she only watched him with curious eyes. Of course, she screamed as if whipped when he dunked her in the holy water and handed her to her new godmother.

“The least they could do is warm the water,” Antonina murmured, earning the glare of the priest as both she and I struggled to wrap my daughter again. “She’s only a baby.”

“I think they’re more concerned with her immortal soul than her earthly comfort.” I unpinned the stola Antonina had let me borrow so Tasia could nurse. She gave one last howl of protest and latched onto the nipple so hard I winced.

The Communion bread was dry on my tongue and the wine bitter after the confession, but I felt clean again, prepared for a fresh start. We followed the other families into the light, keeping close to the stone buildings to avoid the sun on our skin. A kaleidoscope of colored silk banners fluttered on the balconies of patrician villas, a stark contrast to the dirty
mappae
and stained tunicas hung from our lone window.

“Thank you,” I said to Antonina.

“For what? For coming today?”

“For that.” I kicked a rock on the path. “And for everything.”

She glanced at me. “Don’t mention it. I kind of like this little thing.” She kissed the top of Tasia’s head. “And you’re not as bad as I thought.”

“Thanks.”

We walked on in silence, but then Antonina gave a sigh worthy of the stage. I ignored her, but she repeated the performance.