The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora (46 page)

“What’s wrong?” I rubbed my eyes and pulled myself to sit. Cyr blinked from the foot of the bed and pushed his muzzle into Areobindus’ hand.

“Reports of plague.” He covered his mouth with a square of linen and pressed another to my nose, a bouquet of rosemary, bay, and vervain to ward off the sickness.

“Here?” I crossed myself as my feet hit the cool mosaic floor.

“In the capital. Confirmed yesterday, probably carried by an Egyptian grain ship—the
Alexander
. Most of the crew is already dead. The Virgin’s icon has been paraded about the walls, but people in the city are dying.”

I crossed myself, and Areobindus followed suit. “What about the Sacred Palace?”

His voice could scarcely be heard behind his linen. “The Emperor has ordered everyone to stay indoors.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Including us.”

I was trapped in a cage of my own making, quarantined from my own palace. But Justinian was still alive. That was all that mattered.

I waited until the door closed behind Areobindus, then sank to my knees, dropping my posy to clasp my hands before me. “Mary full of grace.” My eyes flickered toward the heavens, but then I squeezed them shut. “Please protect Justinian from this plague. Keep my love safe.”

.   .   .

Plague raged through Constantinople and spilled into Hieron while my husband barred the gates and locked the doors to the city. I paid an Emperor’s ransom to the man collecting the dead to travel to Tasia’s villa and find out how they fared, but he returned empty-handed. Their gates were locked, the villa empty of both the living and the dead. Tasia was a smart girl—I prayed they’d managed to escape to the country in time.

We had enough food in Hieron to last a few weeks, but messages shouted up the walls informed us that death’s appetite was far from sated. Ten thousand people a day died, so many that their graves couldn’t be dug fast enough. I watched from the window as a wagon made its way to gather more bodies, already creaking under its heavy load. A young girl lay atop the mountain of corpses, her black hair cascading in a waterfall over the tangle of white limbs and waxy faces. I let the curtain fall.

Easter neared, and with it, the fifteenth anniversary of our coronation, but there would be no games, no plays to celebrate our longevity on the throne. Nothing but black.

My eyes shut out the plague, but my other senses were not so lucky.
The bronze doors to my palace were barred; yet someone pounded from without for the better part of the day. The horizon had swallowed the sun by the time silence fell. I awoke that night to the smell of fire. It was Nika resurrected, the same stench after the riots as the bodies of non-Christians burned. I’d heard of the mass graves nearby in Sykae, and I knew there weren’t enough people living to bury the dead.

My palace was a fragile bubble of safety, but every bubble must burst.

I passed two kitchen slaves on my way to prayer one cloudy morning. A fire roared in the hearth and sprigs of dried rosemary and thyme hung from the rafters. The girls’ words stopped me dead.

“—Stricken with plague, too. What’ll the Empress do when she discovers it?”

The slave yelped to see me in the doorway and dropped the mound of dough she’d been kneading. The other almost missed cleaving off the head of a speckled chicken to strike her own fingers instead. She cursed, and the knife struck again. The head rolled off the table, and blood poured to the ground.

Plague here, in my palace. God couldn’t be so cruel. “Who is stricken?”

The girl turned as pale as her bread dough.

“Tell me, or I shall cast you into the street.” Whoever was ill, I would send the victim to a physician in the city—they couldn’t stay here and infect the rest of my household, including my son. The girl’s lips knit together, and her friend studied the dead chicken.

I heaved a sigh. “I’ll have the name beaten out of you if I must. We can’t risk contagion.”

A tear slid through the streaks of flour on her cheek. “It’s not here, Augusta.”

Her friend pulled feathers from the headless bird and let them fall to the ground. She wiped the hair from her eyes, leaving a smear of wet blood across her forehead. The first slave fiddled with the dough.
“We heard from the cook’s son who heard from the Master of the Horses”—she looked at me with wide eyes—“there are reports of plague in the Sacred Palace. And the Emperor’s taken to the streets.”

I worked to swallow, glad for the table’s support as my bones turned to water. “He’s mad.”

“No one knows if the Emperor is stricken.” The girl mistook me—some of those taken with fever in the early stages of the illness wandered the streets, raving lunacy and threatening to kill themselves. Justinian was never sick, at least not since his early illness that had robbed us of children. Plague might carry away half the population, but Justinian would find a way to outsmart death. He had to.

The slave trembled. “That’s all I know, Augusta. I’m sorry—I’ll do extra penance for listening to such gossip.”

I left the girl begging me not to have her beaten. Plenty of patricians surrounded Justinian in the Sacred Palace, many of whom would have been happy to attend his funeral. He needed those who were loyal to him, but I was all the way across the Bosphorus.

I flung open the doors to my empty chamber and rifled through the freshly packed chests, searching for my traveling cloak. Bent over a particularly large trunk, I almost hit my head when someone cleared his throat behind me.

“What are you doing?” Areobindus had stepped inside the threshold, but barely.

“I’m going to the Sacred Palace,” I said. “Now.”

“It’s not safe.”

Since when did I care about safety? God would watch over me now as He always had—playing it safe had cost me almost everything.

“Everyone else shall stay here.” I’d swim if I had to.

“I’ll come with you.” A loaf of moldy bread hung suspended from the arch over Areobindus’ head. It was believed the bread captured the miasmas in the air, but it only served to make my chambers stink like mold. “You’ll need someone to row you across the Bosphorus.”

“Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous.”

“I’m a grown man who can make decisions for himself,” he said. “I’m going with you.”

“No, you’re not.” I might lose Justinian—although I refused to think on that now. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my son, too.

Areobindus crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’m going, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

“Please,” I said, feeling the hysteria rising in my throat. “I don’t know what I’ll find at the palace—”

“You’re not going to lose me.” He clasped my hands. “No matter what you find in the palace, I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

I turned without answering, wincing to hear my son’s steps follow me.

I drew my wool cloak closer to ward off the chill of the rain once we were outside. No boats darted over the gray waves of the Bosphorus—none had for almost a week—but Areobindus found an abandoned skiff to carry us across the water, little better than a child’s toy and ready to sink at the slightest breeze.

My son handed me to my seat as the rain picked up and soaked through to my skin. I didn’t mind—the wet chill reminded me I was still alive. Areobindus arranged the oars, then threw off the ropes. The boat slipped into the embrace of the dark water. The Bosphorus was patient today and allowed us easy passage despite the rain. I watched another boat embark from the opposite shore, its deck piled high, but then stop and a man use a long pole to tip his cargo into the sea.

Bodies.

They fell like giant white spiders. The man was still at work as we bobbed past, and the stench of rot and decay hit us, conjured from the depths of Gehenna. I’d left my posy in my haste and buried my nose in my cloak, breathing in the damp wool as we passed the walls of Sykae.

Areobindus glanced at me and then at the towers that punctuated Sykae’s walls, his nose pressed into a square of white linen. “The city started storing bodies in the towers—there’s nowhere else to bury them.”

The corpses of Constantinople clung to my nostrils. It was too much to bear—I heaved the contents of my stomach over the side of the skiff. Areobindus kept his eyes averted as I dragged the back of my hand over my mouth.

The air should have rung with barked orders to slaves unloading ships and the cries of shopkeepers hawking their wares under awnings along the city walls. Instead, rotting melons lay in abandoned stalls, and the Baths of Zeuxippus watched over the bedraggled Queen of Cities, the bathing pools drained of the dangerous waters believed to spread contagion. My own pale marble face stared down at me from atop a porphyry column in the empty courtyard, a gift from Justinian years ago. We passed the old wool house where I’d once worked, now transformed into a hospital, and heard the death rattles of the hundreds of dying souls within. A piece of parchment tumbled down the cobbles in the breeze, an advertisement for a performance of
Antigone
set for a few days hence, a tragedy that would likely never play with most of the actors and audience dead in their beds. We covered our mouths with our cloaks as we passed through streets filled with ghosts, a forest of black slashes on the doors of those stricken with plague. The doors of those not afflicted were barred to shut out plague demons.

We were within the shadow of the Sacred Palace when a gaunt old man lurched into our path. He grabbed my arm and twisted it, and I cried out at the spasm of pain as he stumbled to the cobbles. His fever-glazed eyes bored into me, a giant black bubo like a rotten apricot bursting from his neck. I stared wide-eyed at the hand on my arm, the ragged fingernails edged with dirt and pale, knobby knuckles.

“Unhand the Empress.” Areobindus shoved the man away.

I ignored the lance of pain in my shoulder to bend over the man.
He had already exposed me with his touch, and soon I would be at my husband’s deathbed. If God—or a demon—chose to call me to Him now, so be it.

“May God rest your weary soul.” I squeezed the man’s hand, his flesh like parchment over bones so brittle they felt ready to snap in half.

He coughed, a bloody gurgle, and closed his eyes. His trial was almost over, but mine had only begun.

The guard posts at the bottom of the Chalke were empty, but someone looked down on us from the chapel atop the gate, a black head against the gray sky.

“The palace is closed, you fools,” he hollered, his voice muffled. “Go back to where you came from.”

“How dare you? Do you not know who this is?” Areobindus bristled like a peacock but stopped at my hand on his arm.

“Open the gate for the Empress,” I said. “Now.”

“Augusta?” the guard sputtered. “But you should be in Hieron—it’s not safe here.”

“Yet I’m already here.” I tried to keep my voice level. “Open the gate.”

There was scrambling from the other side, and a few moments later the massive hinges groaned and the thick bronze doors crept open. The guard bowed as I entered, one hand over his heaving chest—he was probably hoping I wouldn’t impale him—and the other clutching a posy of herbs to his nose. His face still bore the pocks of youth, yet he appeared to be the lone guard on duty. Heaven help us if the Empire was threatened now.

“My apologies, Augusta.”

I passed under the dome of the Chalke, watched by glittering eyes from the mosaic I’d ordered to commemorate Belisarius’ campaign in Rome. It depicted the Senate, Belisarius, Justinian, and me, all celebrating victory over the Gothic and Vandal kings. Lifetimes ago.

I scanned the courtyard, its fountains barren and walkways empty. A stack of bodies filled one corner, arms and legs splayed among heads and torsos. A fly landed on my arm, and I slapped it without thinking. Its iridescent wings came away on my palm. I shuddered, not wanting to think of what it had touched before me. Justinian’s massive balcony loomed at the far end of the courtyard, and I waited a moment, half hoping to see him emerge. “Where is the Emperor this hour?”

The guard snapped to attention. “In his apartments.”

“At least he’s not still out in the streets.”

The guard stared straight ahead. “The Emperor did take to the streets to rally the people, but that was before he fell ill.”

No. Not Justinian. His empty balcony mocked me now.

I might be too late, too late to apologize, to tell Justinian the truth. Too late to tell him how much I loved him.

My sandals slapped over the cobbles as I ran. Slaves huddled in doorways reached out as I passed, but I vaulted the stairs two at a time. Weary guards slouched outside Justinian’s chambers while a flock of black-robed patricians rustled at my approach. Carrion crows, all of them. I forced myself to slow and keep my head high as I passed, but one barred my way at the doors.

“Augusta,” he said. “You cannot go in there. The Emperor—”

I held up my hand to stop him. “I am well aware of the situation.”

“You would expose your most sacred person to the bad air within.” A physician crossed his arms in front of him. “We cannot allow that.”

“Get out of my way before I permanently relocate you below the palace.”

The physician blanched and removed his cap to wipe the few hairs on his head. “As you wish, Augusta.” He pressed a fresh sachet of herbs into my palm. “Take this.”

I breathed in the now-familiar tang of rosemary and vervain, my hand on the door as blood pounded in my ears. “Is he very bad?”

The physician had the decency to look me in the eye. “A saint has already said his last rites. I think he’s been waiting for you.”

I managed to keep the tears at bay until I was inside. An Emperor’s death chamber was usually crowded with witnesses, but Justinian’s bed curtains were drawn and the room was dark save for a fire in the brazier. A portly physician stood sentinel at the bedside.

My husband lay in the same wide bed as his uncle when he’d lost his battle with death, but Emperor Justin had been an old man with his wife and family waiting to greet him on the other side. Justinian wasn’t yet sixty. I needed him here.

I drew a curtain but let it drop with a gasp as the shaft of light fell on Justinian. His face wore the waxy mask of death, but the skin on his neck was a violent shade of red, an angry black bubo under his right ear.