The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (27 page)

“Yes,” I lied.

“I haven’t. Send a tray,” Justinian said to Narses. “And an amphora of wine.” He gave a stiff smile and gestured me to a couch before the fire.

I ignored the chair and picked up one of the documents. “What are these?”

“Ideas. Dreams.” There was a long pause. “I’d like to leave my imprint on the city one day.”

Like Sostratus and the lighthouse at Alexandria. I turned the paper closest to me, a cruciform church with five domes. “The Church of the Holy Apostles?”

“I plan to tear it down. Save the crypts, of course, but replace the building with something worthy of its stature.”

I recalled the crumbling church with its roost of pigeons and decades of droppings. “A worthy project.” I gestured to another drawing, one of a building with a colossal dome. I stared at the scale, the tiny outline of a man sketched at the base of the structure. “Wouldn’t something so massive collapse under its own weight?”

Justinian shrugged and smiled. “Far better to dare mighty things and fail mightily than to never dare at all, eh?”

The arrival of the food stopped me from saying more. No gilded plates of stuffed birds or platters of oysters this time, but crusty loaves of raisin bread, fresh crumbles of goat cheese flecked with sage, and terra-cotta bowls of dried plums and apricots. I filled an earthenware plate painted with a swirl of grape leaves, trying to work out a way to stuff my pockets for John and Tasia.

“I presume you have a report for me?” Justinian sat against the edge of his desk, balancing a plate with one hand. It occurred to me that the man amid the golden delicacies at that first dinner might not have been the true Justinian. Or perhaps the consul had more than one face.

I told him what I’d learned—that people grumbled about no longer being skipped on tax collections but were resigned to pay the full amount they owed.

“Excellent,” he said. “Although the Emperor will refuse to implement all the reforms throughout the Empire. There’s nothing further to be done until my uncle changes his mind.”

I wondered if that meant Justinian would no longer require my services. If so, that might also explain why John the Cappadocian had been dismissed.

We talked a while longer—Justinian was interested in my opinion on a proposed law he wished to include in his compilation, one that would grant women more rights in divorce cases. The evening slipped away, marked by the gears and dials of the water clock. More than once, I swore I caught Justinian watching me. I was loath to leave the warmth of the room, or the consul’s twinkling eyes, but I couldn’t ignore the late hour forever.

“Thank you for the meal,” I said, feeling my cheeks pink with the heat of the fire.

He offered me a hand and helped me to my feet. “Narses has a basket of the same for you to take home to Tasia.”

Good thing I hadn’t stuffed my stola with cheese. “You’re too kind.”

He gave a throaty chuckle, so low it was almost a growl. “I most certainly am not.”

He reached up and touched a curl that had escaped my veil, his hand lingering. I knew the look in his eyes.

He wanted me. The future heir to the Empire wanted me.

We stood that way for a moment, so close the heat of him almost matched the warmth of the brazier at my back. My heart pounded, and my mouth felt stuffed with wool.

A choice.

I had sworn before the Virgin to keep myself pure. But the Virgin wasn’t standing here, intoxicated by a man who treated me as an equal, who cared what I thought. A man who smelled of mint and something entirely male.

My hands stopped short of his chest, hesitating, but then I dared touch him, feeling the sharpness of his inhale with my hands. He groaned and his lips were on mine, a kiss heady as any wine. I pressed
myself to him, surprised at the instant heat that spread through my body. I wanted to get rid of any space between us, to mold myself into his warmth.

Justinian pulled back and ran his hands through his hair so that it stuck out in all directions. “No.”

The heat in my blood made it hard to think. I had two warring urges, to either throw something at him or tear the tunica from his body. Three years alone had apparently been too long.

“No?” My chest heaved and my cheeks burned. Justinian stepped away and poured himself a glass of wine. Unwatered.

“No,” he repeated. He pressed a second cup into my hands. He smiled, a long, slow smile that almost undid me. “The men who have pursued you in the past were fools, Theodora. I’m no fool.”

My entire body flamed with my mortification. I must have seen something else in his eyes, perhaps interest in the aberration of my life, but not desire. I set down the wine and smoothed the now-crumpled silk of my stola. “You may not be a fool, but you
are
an insufferable cad. And a pompous ass.”

He grinned. “Is that the best you can do? I’ve been called worse.”

“Fine. You’re a miserable, curly headed, barbarian lout without the sense God gave a goat.” I had a few other choice words for him but forced myself to bite my tongue.

“That’s more like it.”

I’d had enough humiliation for one night. “I presume I can still take the basket of food?”

Take it straight back to my cold bed, and perhaps go see a diviner of the black arts in the morning. I had a curse or two that I wouldn’t mind putting on Justinian.

“Yes, you little imp—take the food.”

Later, tucked between Tasia and John on our pallet, I realized the full extent of Justinian’s scheming. He had already sacked John the Cappadocian and knew his uncle wouldn’t expand the new tax system.
The man had known everything he’d needed about the tax collections. The sneaky bastard had never really needed me at all, yet he’d sought me out.

He wasn’t a fool like the other men because he didn’t plan to pursue me. Or was there some other reason? I didn’t know what game Justinian was playing, but I had a feeling I hadn’t seen the last of him.

I drifted to sleep with a smile on my face.

.   .   .

A forest of firewood was stacked outside our door the next day. Then came a wheel of cheese wrapped in goatskin large enough to feed a small army. A season’s supply of olive oil made me snap at the children to stay away from the lamps lest we burn the entire building to the ground. The gifts were all anonymous, delivered in the dark of night, but there were really only two men who might have sent them.

The presents tapered off as a thin powder of snow dusted the roof of the Hagia Sophia and the Church of the Holy Apostles. I stifled a smile when a familiar sedan stopped before our building and a slave delivered a lidded basket with a message—my first note from Justinian.

The basket mewled. Inside, a scrawny patchwork kitten blinked its blue eyes. It was a pretty little thing except that it was missing half an ear.

I bit back a chortle of laughter as Tasia squealed.

“Do you have parchment?” I asked the messenger. He produced a fresh sheet, and I scribbled a response for him to deliver to his master.

Tasia promptly named the stray Hippolyta, after the Amazon queen, convinced the little thing was a fierce warrior despite her torn ear. The little furball thoroughly entertained the children in our now-warm apartment all morning. Dusk had almost extinguished the day’s meager light when Antonina arrived. Only her eyes were visible from her wool and squirrel skin wraps, which were dusted with tiny sparkling diamond flakes that melted as she stamped her feet.

“It’s colder out there than tits on a bear. Sorry to arrive unannounced, but I swear I’m going to have to sell some of my children to a passing caravan.”

There was a sharp gasp, and Tasia clutched Antonina’s hand. “You can’t sell them, Auntie Nina. I’d miss Kale and Photius.”

Antonina smiled at me and gave Tasia a dramatic sigh. “I suppose I’ll have to keep them then.” She tweaked my daughter’s nose. “But only for you, sweeting. Photius spent the morning coloring all over the frescoes in the
triclinium
—I wish that boy would play with swords instead of ruining the walls.”

The kitten chose that moment to pounce on Antonina’s toe as someone else knocked. Antonina shrieked, tripped over a chair, and stumbled back into her pile of furs as Tasia screamed. John, of course, mimicked his older sister.

A man stood outside, his arms wreathed in thick links of sausage still warm from the frying pan. “Are you Theodora?”

“I am.”

“Where can I put this?”

I clamped my hands over my mouth, but the laugh escaped through my fingers. “On the table.”

“What in the—” Antonina caught herself in front of the children. “First you house a demon rat—”

“Cat,” Tasia corrected her.

“And now you’ve wiped the city out of Lucanian sausages?”

The sausages filled the room with the scent of cumin and peppercorn. Hippolyta swatted one with her paw and got smacked in the head as it swung back at her. The man handed me another piece of folded parchment.

I popped it open and palmed the seal before Antonina could see it.

Antonina ripped the paper from my hands before I could stop her. “All right, who is he?”

“Who?”

“Don’t even. Mountains of firewood, enough sausages to make you ill, and a suspicious sparkle in your eye. Who is trying to woo you with cured meat?”

“No one. Well, someone.”

She sniffed the parchment. “Good quality. He’s wealthy, isn’t he?”

I thought of Justinian’s palace, the fortune he’d spent on his games. “He’s fairly well off.”

She stepped closer to me and gestured with her eyes to where Tasia and John were playing hide-and-find with the kitten. “Have you told him about them?”

Some of the warmth fled from the room. “He met Tasia by accident one day. But not John.” I didn’t tell her I’d told Justinian my son had died. “Why?”

“I lost two patrons because of Photius.” She caught my eye. “It’s hard for men with money to reconcile themselves to a woman whose son would muck up the inheritance for their own sprats. That is, assuming he’s not so decrepit he can’t sire a brood of his own.”

I did wonder on that for a moment. There was no doubt Justinian was pursuing me—and not a pretty soldier like Sittas—but at his age it did seem odd that he didn’t already have any illegitimate children hidden away somewhere.

“I don’t think this one has any designs to marry me,” I said. It was against ancient law for any man of senatorial rank or higher to marry an actress. “But Timothy took in Photius.”

Antonina pulled a knife from the box under the table and hacked the end off a sausage link. “Timothy is different. Do you know your man well enough to be sure how he’ll react?”

I couldn’t answer that.

“I thought not.” She popped a piece of sausage in her mouth, licked her fingers, and took my face in her hands. “Enjoy your man, whoever he is. And enjoy his sausage”—she flashed another wide grin—“but guard your secrets.”

A
ntonina had to be wrong. And yet I couldn’t summon the courage to tell Justinian the truth about my son, fearful he’d cast me off. Soon, I promised myself.

The snow melted, and Constantinople wore a shroud of brown when Justinian invited me on a tour of the city walls. He beamed like a proud papa as we passed the massive coiled chain that could be stretched across the Golden Horn to prevent foreign ships from invading, Constantine’s red column with Christ’s nail in his crown and priceless artifacts buried underneath, and the white vault of the Milion, the starting point for measuring all distances to the cities of the Empire. I’d seen these treasures before, but it was different seeing them with the man who would one day own them.

A sickle moon hung over the wooden roof of the Hagia Sophia, and the watchmen kept their eyes forward as Justinian and I sat on the ramparts of the city wall, legs almost touching and stale bread stuffed with mackerel in hand. Shadows from the flickering torches danced across Justinian’s face as he stared in the direction of the Princes’ Islands. He dipped the dried mallow leaves from his sandwich wrapper
into the flame of a torch, letting them writhe in the heat so the shadows tangled with political graffiti scrawled upon the walls.

Now seemed a good time for a little test. I stood and swept imaginary crumbs from my stola. “So, I’ve been wondering—”

He released the leaves, red embers floating lazily in the cold air before blinking into the dark night. “Yes?”

“Do you send all your subjects mangy kittens and a season’s supply of Lucanian sausages?”

“Only the vinegary ones who always say exactly what they think.” He laughed. “I’ll send more wood and oil if you run out before spring.”