Theodora (25 page)

Leon was not so easily dismissed. ‘Absolutely not. The only way to get back into the City is to dive in.’ He had the grace to lower his voice a little when he added, ‘Anyway, you know you’ll regret it if you stay here playing happy families, your mother hasn’t got any cheerier with the passing years my love, and her husband is as much of an oaf as he ever was. If you’re not careful she’ll invite you back to hers to sit around the fire with their tiresome brood and his stinking feet.’

The image of her stepfather made up Theodora’s mind, and Leon was her perfect excuse. The explanation that she needed to visit the theatre to ask about potential work didn’t fool Hypatia, but she was glad to see her daughter had at least developed the kindness to pretend she had errands to run. The women kissed, Theodora saddened by the stoop in her mother’s shoulders, the grey in her hair – the three children with Basianus showing in every line on the older woman’s face. Hypatia didn’t tell her daughter she’d been missed, though it was true, and Theodora didn’t expect to hear it.

She splashed cold water over her face and body, then rebound the emerald safely to her breast, before grabbing a dress from Comito’s room and hurrying out of the house with Leon, up and over the crest of the hill, down to the Mese and the Constantine Forum and the streets winding round the Hippodrome, running into the centre as if she were fifteen again and the night was full of parties and shows and lovers and only she was needed to bring every space alive.

It was just supposed to be a meal and a few drinks, the local spiced meats and fresh bread she’d been missing for years, sweet honey cake, and whatever wine was on offer. No more, no less. Theodora had her letter to deliver, it was only meant to be a quick catch-up with each other and the City and anyone they happened to find in one of the actors’ bars. That was seven hours earlier. Leon did not make it back to his workshop to check his precious pigments. Theodora did not hand over her letter and move on with the next stage of her life. She drank more and more wine until she simply passed out, not ten yards from the steps of her beloved Hagia Sophia. Leon thought she was uttering a prayer of thanksgiving when she collapsed, very elegantly, into a small heap, though she might just have been asking for help to fall easily. No idea what else to do with her, he sent the skulking, besotted Marcellus to fetch Sophia and tell her he needed help getting a friend back home.

When Sophia arrived, roused from her bed after a long day’s rehearsal, she was not pleased. At least not until she looked closer at who was lying on the step. Then she burst out laughing, slapping her uncle around the chest, which was the highest she could reach.

‘You bastard, didn’t you think I’d want to come and help you poison the tart? Three years gone, and lost all her drinking skills along with her bastard boyfriend.’

She spat and then, exhibiting the strength she was rightly famed for, took hold of the legs, while her uncle more carefully lifted Theodora’s shoulders and lolling head, and they carried her home between them.

Sophia was covering her half-dressed friend with a blanket when Theodora finally woke enough to realise where she was. ‘Hello, dwarf.’

‘Hello, whore.’ Sophia passed her a cup of water and Theodora drank it down in one mouthful. Dropping back against the pillow, she patted the mattress and the small woman stretched out beside her old friend. ‘Are you coming back to work?’ Sophia asked.

‘I don’t think so. There’s something … I have a letter to deliver, I’ve been sent …’

Theodora broke off, not certain how much she was allowed to reveal.

‘Well, you’ve probably lost it now anyway.’ Sophia lifted her shoulders, shrugging against Theodora’s breast, and both women were glad to feel each other’s skin.

‘Probably.’

Theodora was floating back to sleep when Sophia asked, ‘Was it very hard? Being away?’

Theodora was surprised by the tears that came to her eyes. ‘It was hard. But it wasn’t all bad. It was good for me in the desert.’

‘That sounds like hard work.’

‘It was. Good hard work.’

‘And Antioch?’

‘The shock of being back in the City was big enough as it is – is big enough. If I hadn’t been in Antioch first, I could never have survived a night back here.’

‘So really, the only bad part of the past three years was with him? Hecebolus?’

Theodora smiled. ‘Yes, Little One. You were right, I was wrong. Happy now?’

Sophia nodded. ‘I am. Thank you.’

‘But Alexandria and the desert and Antioch, they all made me who I am now. And none of that would have happened if I hadn’t gone away with Hecebolus.’

‘What? So you’re grateful to him?’

‘Oh no. I definitely wouldn’t say that.’

‘And are you happy to be home?’

‘I’m happy to be here, Sophia.’

They slept, and it was ordinary to be together.

Theodora woke in a cold sweat of clarity. It was already late in the day, the ship had docked the afternoon before, she was meant to have delivered her letter immediately, she had not. While she didn’t know the full contents of the letter, nor to whom it was ultimately addressed – she’d been told to take it to a minor official who would then pass her on to someone more senior – she did know that she had failed already in this new life, before it had even begun. She howled in anger and exhaustion, threw herself off the bed, cursing herself, her stupidity, and the City. Cursing and loving the City.

Sophia moaned at her noise, ‘What are you doing?’

‘I have this letter to deliver.’

‘Who to?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘What about?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Oh good. And why?’

‘Because I was told to.’

Sophia’s eyes were wide open now. ‘Who did the telling?’

‘A dancer called Macedonia working on behalf of the Patriarch of Alexandria.’ Theodora took a deep breath and rattled
it out, knowing Sophia would pounce on any pauses: ‘I’ve been working for the Patriarch. I was with his people in Alexandria, and in the desert, I was out there for almost a year, after Hecebolus, before Antioch. I had a …’ She held out her hand to silence Sophia’s ready interruption: ‘No, listen, you need to hear this. I had a conversion.’

‘What?’

‘Something. I don’t know what.’

‘An epiphany?’

‘Nothing as dramatic.’

‘No lightning bolts?’

‘No.’

‘Shame.’

‘Not really. I came to an understanding. You asked, last night, was it hard? Yes it was, it was incredibly hard to come to an awareness of my faith, of who I have been, what I have been, and who I want to be. Of where I am now. They helped me, I learned from them. I am … I’m with them.’

‘You’re a Christian?’

‘We’re all Christians.’

‘Jacob the Jew’s not. Those Sassanid fire-eaters, they’re certainly not.’

‘You were baptised, Sophia.’

‘So were you. That doesn’t have to mean faithful.’

‘No.’

‘But you are now?’

‘Yes.’

‘And what next?’

‘Now I deliver the letter. At the Chalke.’

‘New friends in high places?’

‘I truly have no idea. I take the letter and wait for it to be passed on to whoever’s supposed to get it, and then they’ll tell me what to do next.’

‘And do you always do exactly as these new friends demand?’

Theodora shook her head. ‘Obviously not. Nearly three years away and I can still let down my mentor in the first five minutes. I can just see Menander’s face if I’d done the same to him. Damn, I can feel the print of his boot as well, I think.’

Theodora was rubbing her back as she spoke, tying on her sandals, but she felt the change in Sophia, the pause, and she knew what it meant. She didn’t look up.

‘When?’

‘Two weeks ago.’

This time it was a kick to the stomach.

‘Two weeks? I’d have seen him if I had come back sooner?’

‘He wouldn’t see anyone. It was eating him up, the disease. He was thin and tired and he wanted to go.’

‘Why didn’t Comito tell me? I spent an hour with her yesterday. I’d have gone to the grave. You should have told me.’

‘I just did,’ Sophia shook her head. ‘And your sister’s become a bit of a star in your absence. She’s certainly good, but she plays it up. We’re her past, us theatricals, she doesn’t like to talk about the old days.’

‘She must care.’

‘Yes, but you don’t get many invitations to sing in the Palace while you’re mourning your old eunuch dance teacher. This Emperor Justin’s very hot on form – for a farmer’s boy, with an ex-concubine for a wife.’

Theodora said that was probably exactly why he cared about outer show, and they agreed Comito’s life was different now and that Menander had been the best of bastards and Theodora cried that she had missed the chance to say goodbye and Sophia reminded her exactly what their old teacher would have said to the idea of Theodora’s new mentor, to her conversion. They kissed each other and Sophia said she didn’t understand about the faith, not at all, but she expected there would be plenty
more she wouldn’t understand about Theodora yet, and Theodora agreed there was a lot she didn’t understand herself, but she was glad to be home, and Sophia said they both shared in that.

Back on the street, Theodora was hit again by the City. She recognised market traders from her childhood, heard the bird cries of her youth, felt her mouth water with familiar scents from open doorways, down dark corridors – all of it was known, and none of it felt like home. She had been walking these streets in her head the whole time she was away, but now she was back and she was still homesick. She had left assuming that those staying behind would be here, holding the City still for her return: now she realised she had left the City, and the City had also left her. Just as tears began to stab her eyes, she rounded a corner and saw the Church of Hagia Sophia. The doors were thrown wide and she went in. Ignoring the angry glare from the church sentry, she turned away and up the stairs to the women’s gallery. Two old women stood together, shoulders hunched against the years; one glanced at Theodora, the other continued in her prayers, a young woman in a hurry was no concern of theirs. Theodora followed the gallery round to the far corner, to her place, to the mosaic she knew, the wood she remembered, the carved stone she followed by fingertip touch. The scents of the church – candle grease, incense and warm sea air – caught inside for a hundred years, settled on her skin. Her breathing slowed, the tears retracted their threat, the priest droned on, men rocking in prayer below, old women above swaying on tired legs.

Theodora lay on the cool stone floor, and instead of demanding the City come to her she gave herself to it – whatever was to come, it could wait another few minutes. She stayed until she heard people arriving for the evening service; the
streets would be clearer as the faithful came in for prayer or went home for food, the queue of beggars and law-office supplicants and refugees at the Chalke Gate would be lessening too. It was time.

She walked the short distance from the church to the Chalke, the carving and stonework becoming more ornate with every step. She arrived at the gate, the main entrance to the complex of government and Imperial Palace offices from which the Empire was run. A bored official, tidying away his day’s files, sat behind an even more bored guard. Eventually the official looked up from his nearly packed satchel, and did a double take as he realised who she was.

‘Theodora? Welcome home, girl. We missed you over at the theatre.’

Theodora allowed her mouth to form the gracious smile she would have given a fan in the old days, and then stopped as the guard added, ‘But not as much as the geese did,’ and both men creased up in laughter.

Once he’d had a good laugh, the official shushed his comrade and offered more kindly, ‘Heard you were back in town.’

‘Already? I only arrived …’

‘You know how it is. A ship docks, the sailors talk, one of the passengers has a pretty face …’

‘Or a nice arse,’ the guard added with a wink. Theodora did not smile back and he shrugged as if he were used to being rejected.

The official explained. ‘Look, we’ve shut up shop for the night now, not all of us want to work as hard as the boss. Pop back in the morning, I’ll let you come to the front of the queue. You always were my favourite.’

Theodora smiled again, less patiently this time. She reached into her robe and pulled out the letter. The parchment was
wrinkled, the ink smudged, but the seal on the scroll was intact and clear. She gave it to the official. ‘I appreciate your offer, but I was told to bring this to the Chalke the minute I arrived.’

‘Yeah, and you got in yesterday,’ the guard muttered, still sulking from her refusal to wink back.

‘Nothing escapes you, does it, big guy?’ Theodora smiled openly now. ‘So you’ll see this is the seal of the Patriarch of Alexandria. And yes, I am a day late, and no doubt I’ll get a bollocking for it, but perhaps not quite as ferocious as the bollocking you’ll get if you don’t get this letter to the Simeon of Galatia it’s addressed to.’

The official was confused. ‘Look, I’m sorry, but why would the Galatian, who’s only one rank higher than me, be getting a letter from the Patriarch? Are you sure this isn’t some kind of joke?’

She leaned in closer. ‘Have a feel – that’s just the outer parchment, there’s another letter inside. For someone a bit more important than this Simeon, perhaps?’

The official jumped into action. ‘I’ll be right back.’ He stopped, turned to Theodora, ‘Don’t want to be rude, love, but you might want to … I don’t know, comb your hair or something? If they ask you in …’

Theodora smiled and chose to take the insult as the kindness it was meant. ‘Thanks, old man. Good thought.’

Twenty-Six

Whatever Theodora had agreed to back in Antioch, following the young slave through a maze of alternating dark passages and brilliantly lit courtyards where the setting sun refracted into hundreds of tiny searchlights from the mosaic gold and glass in every wall, she felt less mistress of her own destiny than ever before. After a long ten-minute walk, they came to a series of colonnaded patios and one final corridor, busy even this late in the evening. The slave knocked on a door, opened without waiting for an answer, and ushered her into the room, leaving Theodora temporarily blinded as her eyes accustomed to the darkness inside.