Theodora (22 page)

The task Macedonia hoped Theodora would help her with first was in aid of one such ordinary person. Phebe and Macedonia had once been friends, but several years earlier, when Macedonia became Timothy’s acolyte, Phebe followed another leader, Marcus Orontes, a preacher utterly opposed to Timothy’s beliefs. Orontes had grown up in Sykae, across the water from the central City where Theodora had plied her childhood trade. He left the City as a very young man, and travelled to Antioch, where he not only made his name as a preacher, advocating a faith that was unusually pro-Chalcedonian for that area, but he also so despised the City and all it stood for – the corruption of Rome, as he called it – that he had even taken the name of Antioch’s river, the Orontes, as his own name. Unlike Theodora, he had apparently cut off his past entirely. Macedonia had heard that Orontes was now preparing to publicly cast Phebe out of his group and, knowing his methods, she
was ready to rescue her when he did, not least because what Phebe had learned while part of his group might prove helpful to Timothy’s plans in the area.

Theodora agreed to help because it was what Timothy had asked of her and because Macedonia needed another to make the scheme work, but when the plan was explained, her stomach lurched with sick uncertainty.

‘Of course I can do what you ask … I could always do that, I just …’

‘Don’t think it matches your image of a good Christian woman?’

They were in bed together, going over the strategy again.

‘No. Yes …’ Theodora answered, ‘I’m not stupid, I can be as realistic as the next homeless, stateless believer.’ They both smiled then and Theodora continued, ‘I’d just hoped this kind of work was behind me. Assumed it was.’

‘Understandable, but it is another of your skills, isn’t it? We have been taught to be true to those talents, to use what we’re good at, not pretend to be other than we are.’

‘And doing so in the service of the Christ makes it all right?’

‘I believe it does.’

‘There are plenty of the religious who would disagree with you.’

‘Of course, but I don’t serve them, I serve the Patriarch. And myself.’

‘And which of those two do we serve today?’

‘Both. Hopefully.’

Her lover’s simple belief in the value of pragmatic action was persuasive to Theodora, who had been well trained in the practicalities of poverty, but it didn’t stop her being nervous as they approached Orontes’ huge home, the base for his followers. Macedonia’s plan was far removed from Theodora’s recent experiences in the desert, and while there was certainly going
to be a performance of a sort, failure here would be much more dangerous than the sting of Menander’s cane.

‘We should have left earlier.’ Theodora was disheartened by the throng of people already in the courtyard when they arrived at the house. ‘We’ll never get up front.’

Orontes would be speaking soon and there was a clear sense of anticipation among his followers.

‘Yes we will, work with me.’

Theodora watched Macedonia, quickly caught on, and the two women shape-shifted their way through the tight crowd, moving from virgin to whore, working whichever form suited the person nearest. Macedonia pushed slightly too close to a young man who, of course, stepped back where he hungered to step forward, while Theodora smiled shyly at an older woman who had no choice but to let the eager young acolyte past. Within five minutes Theodora and Macedonia were standing in the second row of the courtyard that now held about two hundred people, looking at Phebe, wrapped in a coarse woollen blanket and rocking in fear in the centre of the space.

Marcus Orontes started innocuously enough. As with so many of these new leaders, their small sects dotted all across Syria and the Levant, his text was mainly that of the Jews, as he cited first Ezekiel and then Daniel, with a little Lamentations thrown in for good measure. Then he increased the tension and pitch of his oration, reminding his audience that they stood here, so close to the birthplace of the Christ, and that they, not the dangerously misguided Nestorians or Arians or anti-Chalcedonians, were following the Church’s true path. Theodora had to hand it to him, the man was a very good speaker, and he was far prettier than Timothy. He waited until the crowd’s murmuring agreement died down, then left the raised dais at the side of the courtyard
and began circling Phebe. Eventually, his voice soft and low, he began to speak.

‘Each of us is part of a proud tradition of steadfast faith that follows in the footsteps of those who brought the Church to Antioch – Peter the evangelist, Paul, Barnabas the faithful. Yet there is one among us, who has worshipped with us, has adored the Christ with us, who has chosen to leave our community, turning her back on us.’

He paused and the crowd gratifyingly filled the silence with something between an ‘ooh’ and an ‘oh’.

‘One who wishes to leave the sanctuary of community and arrogantly strike out on her own.’

He continued for almost a full hour. On and on about the group’s sanctity as a unit, each individual as part of the whole, about Phebe’s betrayal of them all. Just at the point when he might have sounded cruel, he neatly managed a little self-deprecation, apologising to the group, and further, to the wider city and Christian whole even, for not noticing sooner what a viper he had allowed into their community, for being taken in himself by her cunning, her female graces. He likened himself to Adam, to Samson and then, in what Theodora thought was the kind of narrative leap that would have been booed off stage at the Kynegion but seemed to be going down very well with the Antioch crowd, to John the Baptist, betrayed by Salome. And every time he berated himself, his people confirmed his position as their leader, their head, their teacher. He certainly knew how to work them.

All the while Orontes was lecturing, Macedonia had been quietly working her way around the edge of the inner crowd, and she was now positioned directly in front of the shaking woman. Just as Macedonia had predicted, Orontes now upped his pace, his circling became faster, his rhetoric more fevered, with insults shouted directly at Phebe. The crowd were
shuffling closer, starting to join in; Orontes heard their engagement and simplified his speech so they could become his chorus. In just a few minutes their responses had shifted from a staggered, individual, murmured agreement to a communal chant – evict the whore, evict the whore. No matter that Orontes had started his oration by explaining she was leaving them: this crowd were determined to expel her first.

Macedonia nodded to Theodora across the tight circle. Then there was a call from the centre of the courtyard, an ululating cry seemingly set up by the woman around whom so much was happening but actually coming from Macedonia’s closed mouth. It set off all the others and the circle immediately began to buckle in on itself. Orontes slipped backwards, joining his wealthy guests on the safer raised dais at the side, leaving Phebe to the anger of the crowd. In the mess of bodies, Macedonia pulled the confused Phebe away, passing her first to one strategically placed contact, then a second, and then dragging her out of a back entrance, sliding beneath the kicking feet and the angry hands that were clawing in the centre of the courtyard, hungry to grab the traitor. Theodora slipped forward to cover herself with the blanket and take Phebe’s place. There was yelling and shouting, pushing from the outer edges, people fighting to get closer to the centre, to the spot where Theodora now crouched and finally, above it all, she heard a whistle from Macedonia, brief and sharp.

Theodora waited, one, two, three long breaths, and then, grabbing at the booted foot that was aimed at her face, she stood, knocking her aggressor flat, and threw down the blanket, sending the crowd back several inches in surprise. This was not the woman they had come to attack. Climbing on the shoulders of the closest man she could find, an elder statesman of Orontes’ church, who was so shocked to be touched by a
woman for the first time in years, let alone scaled by one, that he stood silent in fear – and not a little pleasure – as Theodora, one foot on his shoulder, the other on his head, called across the horrified crowd, ‘Marcus Orontes, your mistress is gone. The show is over.’

She then ran across the crowd, lightly stepping from head to shoulder to head, to the main entrance. Years ago she had crossed half the Kynegion audience in the same way, back then the applause had been tumultuous, and Menander’s fury palpable. Now the crowd were momentarily silent in shock, but Orontes’ anger was just as fierce, screaming at his men to grab her, his perfectly elegant tones cracking with rage. Theodora was at the entrance to the courtyard, ready to leap from the last shoulder to the ground, when she was pulled down by several of the young men in the crowd, suddenly brought to their senses by the rage of their leader. It was only the fact that they started arguing over what to do that limited her pain to a fierce slap across the back of the head and a few flailing kicks to her back. One of the young men then pulled his fist back aiming a punch and Theodora brought up her own foot in a blow to his groin. He doubled over, howling in silent agony, as two guards arrived from the outer door and, grabbing an arm each, hustled her into one of the long corridors of the main house, away from the baying mob.

She could hear Orontes’ voice fading as she was pushed up stairs and through long low rooms. The elder guard was all for throwing her out on the street there and then, leaving her to the anger of their fellow faithful, but the younger insisted Orontes would want to speak to her, find out what was going on.

Theodora spoke quietly, wincing a little where the blow to her head had made her bite the inside of her cheek, pointing out she was no prisoner.

‘No, of course not,’ replied the younger man, with a smile that was not quite as charming as his leader’s, ‘but I don’t imagine it’s entirely safe for you to leave, not just yet. And perhaps you would like a cool drink? You must be tired after all that exertion?’

Theodora nodded, ‘I would, thank you.’

She was led to the wide, bright chamber where Orontes greeted his most favoured guests. Exactly where she wanted to be.

Twenty-Three

‘Theodora, what a pleasure. I saw you perform once, years ago.’

‘How nice.’

‘We were both young.’

‘No doubt.’

‘We’d heard rumours you were in town.’

‘A man of your influence, you’d have been notified the moment I came ashore, surely?’

Marcus Orontes smiled, ‘Well, it didn’t take long. I gather you underwent a conversion in the desert?’

‘I have turned my face more clearly to the Christ, yes.’

‘And more clearly away from man? You’re living with the dancer, Macedonia?’

‘I have a place in her house.’

‘And in her bed, no?’

Theodora smiled and said nothing. Enjoyable though it might be to engage in verbal sparring with a skilled partner, she really didn’t have time. She was in his house, with guards hovering twenty feet away and a crowd of followers furious that they hadn’t seen their promised spectacle this afternoon. Theodora wasn’t here to fight with Orontes or his people.

He preached, she listened. He mocked, she smiled. She smiled, he liked it. He flirted, she parried. He dismissed the guards, and told them to wait just outside, she found a cushion and a soft cloth to lay over it. She poured his wine, he drank it. She
laughed with instead of at him, he liked it even more. She leaned back, her breasts elevated, her legs stretched, her arms wide, he sat and stared, waiting. He kissed, she kissed back. He led her through a door behind a curtain into a bedroom.

‘I don’t doubt you came here planning to seduce me, Theodora.’

‘You’re entirely correct,’ she answered, stepping up naked to his bed, her stomach flipping and hands shaking as she did so.

It wasn’t the thought of sex with a stranger, this stranger, that was unnerving her, or that by most standards this was hardly the behaviour of a new convert, no matter how well she accepted Macedonia’s belief in a pragmatic life for the greater sake of the faithful – it was the fine line between doing this for Macedonia, for Timothy, for the cause, and doing it for herself. The fear that her body, that old betrayer, might slip away from the very new mooring that was her faith. Theodora had enjoyed feeling her body and spirit as one since the coming together in the desert, and was not keen to embrace again the pain of dissociation, no matter how useful it might be right now. And so, by force of will, she held her spirit present, in her body, as she stepped naked to the man. It was harder to do than letting her mind, letting her spirit fly away, but it was more true, and the converted Theodora would now have herself be more true, whatever she was doing.

Not that Marcus Orontes noticed: he was still talking about himself.

‘I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but you won’t persuade me to take her back.’

‘That’s not why I’m here.’

‘My people hated that Greek bitch. Phebe was a foreigner to them, so Western, they don’t like foreigners here.’

‘No one likes foreigners, Marcus, that’s the way of the world.’

‘Very true. Fortunate that we’re both from the City, then.’

‘Isn’t it?’

It was three in the morning before Marcus Orontes was sated, later still before he was sleeping. When he finally gave in to the demands of his exhausted body, it was the sleep of an unworried man who knows his home is protected, his life well arranged, and that a lovely young woman is lying beside him. He knows this because he is sleeping on his front, one arm pulled tight around her neck, and a dead-weight leg slumped over both of hers, caring more to keep her safely beside him than to sleep comfortably.

Fortunately Theodora had been in this position more times than she cared to count. She slipped her legs out from under his prone form, one tiny movement after another, each one barely noticeable, so that she was always moving while always seeming still. He stirred, once, but did not wake. With her legs free, the weight of his arm was even stronger across her neck, pushing into her windpipe. She forced herself to breathe carefully, keeping her heartbeat steady and light. Infinitely slowly, she levered herself up on to the balls of her feet: her legs and full torso were now off the bed, the only parts of her touching the smooth sheet were her toes and the weight of her head where his arm pushed down on her neck. Reaching behind her, she bunched up the cushion she’d used as pillow, with her free hand gently and slowly tickled his ear, all the while hissing a tiny sibilant mosquito buzz. She continued until the minute movement and noise registered in his consciousness, felt the moment he woke just long enough to swat the non-existent creature. As he lifted his arm she pushed off from her toes into a side-twisting somersault, landing silently on the floor by the edge of the bed, at the same time pushing the cushion into place for the return of his arm. Even as she immediately moved away towards the door, she kept up the rhythmic sounds of her own breathing,
increasing her volume the further she was from the bed. Her heart was racing but there was no trace of it in her breath.