Theodora (18 page)

After another week of the same she was starting to lose patience. No one had said a word about sending her on to Antioch, there was no sign that this house was anything other than a silent prison. She’d been good, quieter than she’d thought humanly possible, and though she’d come very close once or twice, she hadn’t yet spat in Livia’s face, the thin old nun from the night of her arrival, who seemed to have been appointed her personal invigilator and managed to pick on Theodora’s every action from morning to night.

At the end of the eighth evening, in the one hour allotted for the privilege of conversation, she made her way to the table where Livia sat with three other, equally thin, older women.

‘Livia, may I speak with you alone?’

It was one of the other women who answered, ‘There is no privacy for penitents. That is one of the privileges you have given up.’

Theodora curtsied. ‘Of course.’

She then very deliberately turned her back on the first speaker and addressed Livia alone. Speaking in front of the group but leaving them in no doubt to whom she was speaking. She should probably have tried to get the other women on side, but they were annoying her too much, she wanted them to know she could grab status back too, whether or not they would allow her to use it.

‘Livia, when I came here I understood it was to become part of a group of penitents who were to travel on to Antioch.’

The hands of the women sewing stilled a little, the tables nearby became quieter than they already were.

Theodora waited. And waited. More status games. Fine, she was well skilled at this, she could wait longer than these dry old bitches.

Eventually Livia’s needle stopped its rhythmic picking of threads and she looked up from the cloth she held in her dark-veined hands. ‘I don’t believe there are any plans to send you there.’ Livia stressed the word you, and one of the other women sitting at the table tittered – until Livia silenced her with a glare. ‘No, I do not believe Antioch is part of the plan for you. Perhaps the Patriarch will tell you later today.’

‘The Patriarch hasn’t said a word to me since I arrived, he’s completely ignored me, he walks right by me every night.’

‘Then perhaps this night will be different,’ Livia raised her eyes from her sewing and looked directly at Theodora. ‘Or not.’

It was such a little phrase, and lightly spoken. But it was far too much for Theodora, who released her iron grip on her composure and, kicking herself even as she did it yet still not
able to stop herself, leaned down and hissed into the older woman’s face, ‘Fine, then I’m out of here. I’ve spent over a week in the company of you dried-up old cunts and not one of you has deigned to offer me the time of day, the Patriarch hasn’t given me a second glance. I can get back to the City without you, I don’t need your arsing charity.’

Livia went back to her calm stitching. ‘You can’t leave.’

‘Look, I was just using you to get home. I figured I could travel on your charity instead of always on my own back. But it doesn’t matter, I’ll get home by myself. I know you all believe, and have been touched by God or the Patriarch as God’s messenger or whatever it is you think he is, but that’s not why I’m here. I’m wasting your time and mine and I might as well go back to my original plan – at least it won’t be as dull as this.’

‘You can’t leave.’

‘This isn’t a prison, I can do what I want.’

Livia continued to sew. ‘That’s true, but the Governor of the Pentapolis sent his men to find you, they came to the house two nights ago. They’re here, in Alexandria, and they know you are here too. As a true penitent you have sanctuary in this house: if you leave, you do not.’ A bell began to sound in the distance, precursor of the final toll that indicated the great silence until the next morning. ‘So, Theodora, you might want to rethink your stance on why you’re here. If you are not a true penitent then we have no reason to keep you. You might be prepared to lie in order to get somewhere; we have nowhere else we want to go – and no need, therefore, to lie on your behalf.’

The last bell sounded and Livia slowly walked away, followed by her fellow nuns and the other penitents, each one as quiet and calm as if they had just spent their usual hour in gentle handiwork and had not been listening, enthralled. The part of
Theodora that wasn’t horrified by what she’d just heard was impressed, they were as good a chorus as any she’d seen on the City stage. The other part of her felt sick. Hecebolus had sent his men more than twenty days’ journey to find her. Even if she gave back the candlestick, he could still charge her with theft, she’d have nothing with which to buy herself out of prison, and no one here in Egypt to care. Suddenly, boring looked very attractive.

Eighteen

It was three in the morning when Timothy called for her. Theodora had only been asleep a short while herself; the Patriarch had apparently not slept at all. His desk was covered in paperwork, several fresh candles had recently been lit, and he was hard at work making notes when she was shown into his office. She entered the room and immediately knelt as Livia had indicated, miming the instruction rather than break the rule of silence, even for the Patriarch in the middle of the night. Theodora knelt for almost forty minutes in the centre of the room before Timothy looked up.

He leaned forward over his desk, spilling a few papers on the floor as he did so and stared, frowning. ‘Don’t your knees hurt?’

She looked up, uncertain whether or not to speak. If this were Menander asking she’d expect him to slap her for not answering immediately, and then perhaps beat her as well, for countermanding the earlier order of silence. She said nothing.

Timothy spoke louder. ‘Your knees – do they hurt? Isn’t it uncomfortable there, kneeling?’

‘A little, Father.’

‘Would you like to sit?’

‘I have been told that would be inappropriate, Father. As is … this.’

‘What?’

‘The silence?’

He checked the level on an hour-candle close by. ‘Oh yes. Livia’s a stickler for the rule, isn’t she?’

‘She is very … certain.’

The Patriarch smiled and indicated the chair near his desk. She sat, doing her best to hide the physical relief of getting up from the mosaic floor, sharp dents in her knees and calves from the tile edges.

The odd-looking man watched her rise and walk to the chair, then sit carefully. ‘Most people complain of the austerities here, at least initially. I suppose, in your training, you encountered similar physical hardships?’

‘I was taught by a man who made Livia’s penalties seem like promises.’

‘Really?’

Theodora shrugged openly now. ‘I’m not saying I wouldn’t like to sleep longer, to eat more, that silence isn’t a hardship at times, but I’m used to subduing the needs of my own body.’

‘In order to provide for the needs of others?’

It was a sharp question, and the candlelight, bright and warm on Theodora but leaving the Patriarch in shade, was working all in his favour. For a moment it occurred to Theodora he might have been asking for her body, he would not be the first high-ranking clergyman to do so. Then she realised he was asking for confession. She felt oddly shy as she wondered how to answer him. There was no good reason for the man to unnerve her in this way, there was nothing she found attractive about him physically, and yet, again, there was something that made her hesitate.

Timothy was not used to waiting, and certainly not used to waiting for a woman. ‘I asked a question.’

‘I have subdued my body for the needs of others, as a performer and for money.’

‘And for your own pleasure?’ He was leaning forward now,
the candles behind him back-lighting his pate, cutting frown lines deeper into his wide forehead.

Theodora didn’t want to lie, nor did she think it would help: this man was her only chance of safety, she had nothing to lose now. ‘Yes, I have had a great deal of pleasure from my own body and that of very many others.’

He sat back. ‘Good. I’d hate you not to understand what it is we’re asking you to give up.’

He began to speak. About how they’d known who she was almost from the first day she was with them, that it took the perceptive Livia no time at all to see through Theodora’s dissembling protest of penitence, and how – contrary, he was sure, to Theodora’s expectations – it was also Livia who had spoken for her, Livia who insisted there was a truly penitent heart beneath the pride, that Theodora was clearly a soul begging to be saved, she just didn’t know it yet.

‘You have treated Livia and the others here as yet another audience, but my community are well trained and eager to share their learning with you. They don’t want to see you walk through the motions of salvation. What would be the point?’

Theodora tried to explain, to say as elegantly as she could the truth that the community were her passage back to the City, just as Hecebolus had been her passage to Africa. That all she craved now was a return to her old life, if only she could do so in safety.

‘You were happy in the City?’

‘I have been.’

‘And you have been unhappy.’

‘No one is happy always.’

‘Livia is.’

Theodora couldn’t help herself. ‘I’m not sure Livia and I have the same understanding of happiness.’

‘Possibly not. What is it to you? Happiness?’

‘Where can I start? Good food, good wine. Laughter. Applause.’

‘When the laughter and the applause and the food and drink are gone, what then?’

‘Then I’m just as pleased with what is always there, the company of my friends. People who love me, people I love.’

‘And when there is nothing to stand between you and your soul? When you are silent and alone?’

Theodora shook her head. ‘I’m sorry, Father, you can’t catch me like that. Then I’m happiest. All my life I have run away to silent churches and high trees and the hills that are hardest to climb. The Stylites up on those narrow pillars have always seemed especially blessed to me, far above the mess of daily life. Both the riches of the City and the riches of silence have given me enormous pleasure, though I am happy to admit, I do enjoy both.’

‘And you don’t feel that this desire to hurry back to the City means giving up the possibility of one for the other? You may have experienced the peace of an hour or so alone Theodora, but have you tried days? Weeks? Have you considered months?’

‘I have considered many paths for my life, Father. Unfortunately I have actually had the opportunity to choose very few.’

The older man nodded. ‘I’m glad you can see that. It’s also true that what I’m about to offer may not seem like much of a choice either. As you know, you have sanctuary with us now, if you leave the house, you will not. However, our community in the desert, with our brother Severus, is also part of this house.’

‘Severus? Of Antioch?’

‘He was Patriarch there, yes.’

‘And he was deposed by Justin, just before I left the City. You want to send me, for sanctuary, into the desert, to join a man the Emperor himself removed from his job?’

‘Severus and his community are in a place of safety, where he is able to continue his work. Yes, you could also have sanctuary there. We would like you to go. To choose to go.’

‘To choose where I have no choice?’

Timothy shook his head. ‘There is always choice. You can choose to go to the desert and follow the rule, but only in action, not in your heart. You can choose to stay on bended knee until your bones break, but keep your spirit closed to change. You can always choose to keep something back, Theodora. I expect you always have?’

She nodded, feeling uncomfortably that not only did he understand her strategies, but also that she wanted him to.

‘So now you can choose to do it differently,’ Timothy continued. ‘To really give yourself. I don’t say it will be easy – even for one who wants peace, a single night alone in the desert can be terribly long. I don’t say you can make the offer of giving yourself just once and be done with it, either. The true giving of the self must be offered with every new moment. To come to yourself, Theodora? Your true self? That is most certainly a choice.’

She knew what he was saying, Menander preached the same to his students: the transcendence of pain in pure submission to the body, to the dance, to the moment. And she knew that on the occasions when she had risen above, when she had truly chosen to give in to the work, the audience, the theatre, those were the times when she had experienced utter – fleeting – bliss. She understood that in the desert, in a community of ascetics, giving over the suffering of her body and mind to the primacy of spirit, she might find a similar joy. It was tempting. That, and freedom from the men who must even now be waiting at the gate for her, but she did have questions.

‘How long will it take?’

The Patriarch laughed. ‘Who knows the days of the Lord?’

‘All right, but if, after I have truly given myself to your rule …’

‘Not my rule, Severus leads that community. When he was exiled from Antioch, lost his position, it seemed the safest place to be. An ex-Patriarch is never a favourite with the Imperial Palace. So yes, after you have truly given yourself to Severus’ rule, however long that takes …?’

‘If I still want to return to the City?’

‘When that day comes, then it will be your choice to leave and you may do so freely, as an absolved penitent. You will go with my blessing.’

She chose to accept his offer. And, after she had admitted the theft, followed his direction that she should ask Livia to return the stolen candlestick to Hecebolus’ men. It would not stop them coming after her if she later renounced her desert pilgrimage, but it would mark the start of making amends. As Timothy said, once he and Severus declared her absolved, then Hecebolus would have no reason to charge her with any crime. Theodora wasn’t convinced that simply following the actions of penitence was the same as the spirit of penitence, and Timothy explained his belief that action was the beginning of spirit, that a rule followed faithfully could, eventually, lead to faith. Theodora asked, wouldn’t he have preferred faith in the first place? The Patriarch smiled, explaining that he always looked for faith in his followers: some were sure they had it and he could see no sign, others were adamant they did not and yet he felt it shone from them. He was sure of her potential. Theodora was used to hearing her body, her voice and her performance criticised on every level. She was used, as well, to hearing tens of thousands roar with laughter and approval at her on-stage style. And, with Hecebolus, she had grown used to hearing herself praised as a woman, a lover, a partner. She had never
before heard herself compared favourably to the faithful, it sounded blasphemous to her, and yet – in the Patriarch’s wide smile, in his silly sticking-out ears, and in the certainty that came with the rich depth of his beautiful voice – it seemed almost possible he could be right.