by Stella Duffy
‘But you and I, we’ve shared all sorts between us, food, lodgings … men.’
‘Women.’
‘God, yes, women!’ Chrysomallo smiled now, nodding, relieved, this was more like it. She and Theodora laughing over their conquests, pleased with whatever they’d gained or learned or stolen between them, happy to share. None of it taken too seriously, none of it mattering too much. Now Chrysomallo could explain about the affair she’d been having for the past two months – her friend out of the house too often, Hecebolus just a man, any man, bored with his work and looking for company and finding it between Chrysomallo’s sheets, her arms, her legs. The point of this moment being to get her friend on side. She had promised Hecebolus she could do this, make Theodora understand.
‘We’ve certainly shared all sorts of things, people, you and me, so … I mean, I know it’s a bit of a shock, but really, he needs a lot of attention. Then there’s your visits to the Bishop, and God knows, Theo, you’ve told me often enough what appetites Hecebolus has, and all those walks you keep going off on – wandering up and down the coastline for hours at a time, the view’s fine once, but …’ Chrysomallo was wittering. Blindly unaware of the effect her words were having on her friend.
‘Women. Fucking, whoring, thieving women. Woman.’
‘Oh, come on, Theo …’
‘My name is Theodora.’ Theodora spoke slowly and calmly, with a deliberation that would have terrified a barbarian who spoke no Greek, let alone someone who knew her intimately.
Chrysomallo stepped back, a little closer to the door, all underestimation gone once she heard the rage in Theodora’s tone.
‘I brought you here. I gave you the chance of Africa, of advancement, of the world.’
‘I’m sorry, Theo …’
‘Fuck off, slut.’
There were plenty of words the two women might use to each other. Plenty of words used by women in the theatre companies they’d left behind. Whore and tart and hooker among them. Variations on actress and prostitute were a daily occurrence; what none of the women could bear to be called was slut. An actress worked for money, as did a whore, both were work, careers even. A slut, however, gave it away for free, which was simply stupid, and no one wanted to be accused of being stupid, not even Chrysomallo. She threw herself at Theodora. She was weaker than her friend, but she did have the advantage of height. Theodora was beyond surprise, she was so horrified by her friend’s betrayal, but she certainly hadn’t expected Chrysomallo to attack her. She went over flat on her back, her aggressor’s fingers and nails digging into her upper arms.
She wasn’t down for long. Twisting one leg up beneath her while pinning Chrysomallo’s legs with the other, she gained enough purchase to shove the taller, heavier woman off, prising the fingers from her arms, quite intentionally ripping several of Chrysomallo’s famed long nails in the process. Seeing the blood rise from the nail-beds and Chrysomallo’s horror and pain simply caused her to smile. Stupid pretty girls, their vanity meant they never could win in a physical contest. A naturally lovely girl like Chrysomallo was only ever reliant on good looks and, right now, at least five of those elements of good looks were scattered on the floor at their feet.
Chrysomallo was sobbing in pain, Theodora ranting in fury. Hecebolus and Armeneus came running, as did half a dozen members of staff, but Armeneus slammed the door in their faces before the rest of them could crowd into the room.
‘What the hell is going on?’
The Governor did not raise his voice; if anything, he sounded more concerned than angry. He looked only to Chrysomallo, and in that look Theodora understood that she had lost him.
‘Your new lover was just explaining the reversal of my fortunes. She broke a nail or two in the process. You know how girls are – breaking a nail all too often seems the end of the world.’
Chrysomallo ran to Hecebolus and he held the sobbing blonde softly, far more carefully than he’d ever held Theodora. She pushed Armeneus aside, glared at Yossef and the other servants hovering behind the door, and walked as calmly as she could to her own room. Only once the door was shut did she open her mouth and, ripping her hands through her hair, rocking in fury, fall to her knees and let out just one, long, silent roar of pain.
Eventually, her breath regained, her head clear, Theodora readied herself for the usual evening meal with Hecebolus and Chrysomallo, not easy when she’d been crying in rage for twenty minutes. She called on her training to contain her passion, and then, with rhythmic breathing to steady her shaking hands, applied all the skill she had learned from the old actresses working as makeup artists. By the time she was called to the dining room, Theodora was as lovely as ever Hecebolus had seen her. She had also packed a single bag, gathered everything she would need for a quick flight, including the money she’d been carefully holding back from the housekeeping purse for the past six months, aware that she never knew when she might need to leave, though never expecting it to be so soon. She took a candle to light her entrance, both utterly ready and not at all.
Chrysomallo had not made the same effort with her appearance, and sat at the table looking as bedraggled as she had an hour earlier. They ate figs and dates preserved in wine, small pigeons stuffed with herbs and almonds. Armeneus, knowing the room was a powder keg and keen to keep the staff at bay, waited on them himself, retreating to the dark of the far corner to wait and listen.
He did not have to wait long.
Chrysomallo began, wiping the pigeon grease from her hands. ‘Theodora, Hecebolus and I think …’
‘We think you should stay.’ The Governor finished her sentence. ‘We can carry on as we have been. I don’t want you to leave.’
‘How kind.’ Theodora’s voice was quiet, interested. ‘And how would this work? You’d screw us on alternate nights? Or maybe we’ll draw lots?’
Hecebolus sighed, ‘Don’t be difficult, Theodora, I’ve become very fond of Chrysomallo—’
‘Fond?’ Theodora interrupted him, looking at her friend. ‘Dear God, I’d have thought you might hope for more than “fond”, Chrys – hungry, desperate, can’t spend a night without? Weren’t they the phrases you used on me, Hecebolus? Back in the City when you promised me a whole new world?’
‘I gave you that, but it seems you weren’t satisfied. Chrysomallo tells me you want more.’
Theodora shook her head at her friend. ‘Oh, but you’re good, girl.’ Chrysomallo shrugged, she wasn’t prepared to be cowed now. Theodora turned back to the Governor. ‘Yes, I do – I did – want more from you. A chance to raise my status, to truly change my life. As I’m sure the songbird has been telling you, it’s what I’ve talked about with the Bishop, one of the things he and I discussed. And just as you paid to raise your status …’
‘Paid? What? Who?’
‘Whoever you paid to get this job. The “usual civil servant bribe”, isn’t that what you called it?’ Hecebolus growled, but said nothing. ‘I was hoping for a little of the same myself. Perfectly ready to pay with my body, pay with my charm. Pay, even, with love. Clearly I’ve been as foolish as I always thought the blonde here was. I trusted you.’
Armeneus refilled their wine cups, served tender strips of marinated, slow-roasted goat. Hecebolus ate and drank for a while in silence, then he wiped his hands and shook his head.
‘As if I don’t have enough to concern me with this dog of a colony. Look, Theodora, you’re upset, I thought our news would come better from Chrysomallo. I was wrong, I apologise. But really, I’m sure we can make this work out, I’ll be considerate of both of you, I understand there are accommodations to be made.’
‘Not least with the Church? One man, two mistresses?’
‘My faith is none of your business.’ Hecebolus spat back, and then tempered his voice, placating, keen for his plan to work, for the women to be friends again. Theodora would be useful later, both for his needs and Chrysomallo’s. As he tried to explain, ‘I’m sure we can get over this. After all, Chrysomallo will need you when the chi
ld comes …’
‘Hecebolus!’ Chrysomallo finally spoke up, but it was too late.
‘Oh.’ Theodora understood it all.
‘I thought you’d …?’ Hecebolus pushed back his chair, sending it slamming to the floor as Chrysomallo shook her head. ‘For God’s sake, you sort it out.’ He walked out of the room.
Theodora spoke first. ‘You have put on weight.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to … it just happened.’
‘Yes, apparently that’s how it works. With other women.’
‘It did to you.’
‘Did. Not since Ana ripped me apart, and not with Hecebolus, not even though I knew he might have liked it – wanting something to prove him the man since this job turned out so much less than he’d hoped. Well done, you’ve given him proof. What better way to make sure he stays yours?’
‘That wasn’t why. Really.’
‘No,’ Theodora sighed, ‘I’m sure it wasn’t. You always were hopeless at maths and the moon, weren’t you?’
Chrysomallo nodded, tears falling down her face into the uneaten goat on her plate, Armeneus wondering which of the staff would enjoy the salty leftovers for their supper. ‘I wanted to ask you … I’m not ready, I don’t really want it … but it’s too late now.’
‘No it’s not too late. I can get the herbs, if you’d like,’ Theodora offered, smiling, knowing what the reply would be, and continued without waiting for it when she saw the horror on Chrysomallo’s face. ‘You mean too late because you do want it, you and he both want it?’ Her old friend nodded and Theodora went on, ‘He’ll leave you, you know. He’ll find a good Christian wife one day, some frigid patrician bitch if he’s really lucky, and he will leave you and your bastard.’
‘Yes.’
‘So start readying yourself. Pretty won’t take care of you then. Save whatever you can, keep back clothes and any gold you can lay your hands on without him noticing. Get him to rent an apartment for you, tell him it’s better the child doesn’t grow up too close to him. That way at least you’ll have some furniture when the wife makes him kick you out. As she will, as she should, I would, and so would you.’ Chrysomallo nodded again. ‘And whatever you do,’ Theodora was up now, moving away from the table, heading for the door, ‘for God’s sake, don’t give birth to a girl. He might try and help a son, set him up in business somehow, use his family’s contacts. A girl will just remind him of where he found you, where he found both of us.’
‘But Theodora,’ Chrysomallo was wailing now, ‘I love him.’
‘Yes, you probably do. I thought I did too. Goodbye Chrys.’
Armeneus followed Theodora to her room. He had another bag packed for her, with food, wine, and a few small gold and silver pieces he’d taken from the kitchens earlier in the day when he too realised where this was heading. He also had a warm cloak, not as lovely as her fine cotton one, but far more useful for travelling. She kissed him goodbye, thanked him for his friendship. He promised to come and find her in the City; she promised to get there before he did.
Theodora went first to the Bishop. She did not expect much, but it was worth a try, worth giving the old man an opportunity to show charity. Her expectations were right. There was nothing he could do. Surely Theodora understood? In a way, part of the problem was that she had changed her life at all. As a common whore he would have been able to help her, find her a place in a convent of repentance, a life of penance and two plain meals a day. As a mistress, she was neither whore nor wife, and as such, the Church could not help her. Theodora suggested that even if the Church could not, the Bishop was an individual man, there might be something he could do, but the priest had already returned to his papers. He offered her his blessing and, having knelt for it, Theodora left the room. When he heard his servant close the outer door of the house on the young woman the Bishop sighed. He really was sorry, tied as he was by his vows and, worse, by the politics of his position, there was truly nothing he could do, nothing he was prepared to do.
From Church to bar, Theodora’s life had all too often followed the same route. She made her way down into the centre of the town, through narrow alleyways, pitch dark now except for the occasional wall lit from an opened door, a slammed gate. Few heads turned when she walked into the bar: not that plenty would not have been interested to see the Governor’s concubine in a public tavern, but that it was so late in the evening, everyone was already sunk deep in their drink, or asleep on benches lining the walls. She bought a jug of watered wine and a dry cake, took up a place in the corner of the room. She ate and drank quietly.
Three men who had been gambling shared out their coins and rose from a corner table. One of them looked across at her. ‘Are you looking for business, girl?’
His question was neither rude nor cruel, it was simply the obvious one to ask of a lone woman in the room. There were only two reasons for a woman to be in a bar – serving was one, trade the other.
Theodora seriously considered his proposal. Three drunken gamblers, at least one of them had to have a full pocket, she could have them all and they’d be asleep in an hour, their purses free for the taking.
‘Not tonight. Thank you, gentlemen.’
‘You sure, love?’ asked the least sober of the three.
‘Yes,’ she smiled, surprised that she was telling the truth. ‘But thanks for asking. And sleep well.’
As the night turned to very early morning more men came and went, she accepted cups of wine from two, and a chunk of corn bread from a third, but that was all. She asked several sailors about routes back to the City, and listened for almost an hour as a grain trader told her about Alexandria, the Nile, and the coast road to the Holy Land. Eventually, she could put it off no longer. The barman was closing up, it was time to leave.
Fourteen
Walking out into the quiet street felt almost like old times, although tonight she was walking alone, and for that she was grateful: the few hours left of darkness belonged to silence, not to someone on her skin, in her mind. It had been too much, the betrayal by Chrysomallo, the fight with Hecebolus, her expected and yet still painful rejection by the Bishop.
She stood in the cool night. The sky was clear and the constellations marked, reminding her how far she was from home. Sophia had been right, she was a fool. Hecebolus was not her friend and he never could be. Theodora had lived as an adult woman since she was twelve years old, but on this occasion she’d behaved like a girl, allowing herself to fall in love with a man who was never going to do for her what she did for him. Certainly he’d been a good lover, for quite a while, longer than many. So maybe she wasn’t an utter fool, there were always things to learn; as Menander had drummed into them often enough, even a dire performance had lessons, and quite often they were things that could not be learned from a perfect show. She’d learned how to take care of a household, not a skill she could imagine herself using again any time soon, but a skill nonetheless. She’d enjoyed her conversations with the Bishop, realising that she could hold her own, if not in strict theology, at least in her ability to discuss the ideas. She might have gone to the old man virtually unschooled, but she proved a quick student, and had showed herself she was of value – though not enough for the fearful priest, and, more disappointingly, not enough for her own friend either. She walked on, away from the centre of the city, steering clear of the Governor’s house, heading south and east of the port, to a small promontory that jutted away from the harbour. Theodora had nowhere to be, and so she went where she had always gone when there was nowhere else to go. She went to church.
Just beyond the main walls of the city, Roman walls built on Greek walls built on however many unknown empires before, Theodora turned a corner and stood before the Church of St Anthony. It had been remade after the earthquake a century before, though like most of the municipal buildings, was constructed as much from the stones of Greek temples as from the broken-down remains of the earthquake rubble. In her time in Apollonia she had attended servic
es as part of Hecebolus’ retinue, never processing alongside him of course, and of all the churches they’d been to this was the only one Theodora found welcoming. Perhaps it was the proximity to the sea, or the mix of old stone and newer marble that suggested a faith from the past, as well as one reaching into the future, suggesting that continuity might be possible, no matter how lost she felt right now. It was the only building she’d truly felt at ease in and the one she was drawn to in the dark.
She let herself in through the big wooden doors, turned immediately to her left and felt her way upstairs to the gallery, the wooden and stone interior walls deeply perfumed from years of incense. She found a place by the window where the cloud-reflected moon offered a soft light, and she sat down, and cried. Tears of frustration and hurt and anger, of bitterness and self-hatred. Tears of jealousy that though she did not want a child now, had not much wanted her own daughter in the past, she knew she had not only lost a useful bargaining tool with men like Hecebolus, she had also lost a possible future.
After a while, Theodora took off her cloak, spread it on the floor as both mattress and blanket. She lay on her side, her head on her bag, pulled the cloak up and settled down. She’d slept on plenty of floors in her time, and the cloak Armeneus had given her was warm and soft. The bag, however, was decidedly lumpy. She sat up again, opened it, and carefully pulled out the offending articles. One was the wrist-wide, ornately decorated candlestick she had stolen from Hecebolus’ room when she was gathering her own things that afternoon, knowing she’d need to be ready when the storm broke. This piece, a gift from his father, would fetch a good price at the market, and she would need money for her journey to come, wherever she ended up going. It had been a risk taking it, not least because Hecebolus often counted out his personal goods, reminding himself, stuck out here in the Pentapolis, of the wealth from which he’d come, of his own failing ambition. Theodora had walked away from the house terrified that its weight would make her bag too heavy, that Chrysomallo would notice her well-trained friend was carrying something even she had trouble with, but Chrysomallo only had eyes for Hecebolus, and he for her. And so Theodora left with the richest piece that Hecebolus’ none-too-generous father had ever given him. She placed it down now, in the light from the window, and enjoyed the weight and solidity, the work of a good silversmith in every curve. There was no point trying to sell it here, something as well crafted as this would need a big city trader to appreciate its worth: it would come with her to Alexandria. She had to go somewhere, it would be easier to get home from there. If she was going home. One step at a time. Picking an initial destination would do for now.
