by Stella Duffy
On her forty-third day in the Palace, the consular celebrations took place. If no one truly believed the title meant a great deal any longer – certainly it was not the commanding role it had been in the glory days of the first Rome – it did at least indicate even more clearly to the people, and to the Palace, where Justin intended the succession to fall. Like any big royal event, it was a cause for public celebration, a chance for ordinary people to join in the festivities. Early in the morning there was a simple procession to Hagia Sophia, where Justinian was blessed, then everyone slowly marched back to the state rooms where Justin conferred the title of Consul on his nephew – while those four who had directly missed out, despite having their own familial claims on status – Germanus, Probus, Pompeius and Hypatius – did their best to smile on the scene, each one playing the role of less-favoured heir with varying degrees of success.
The City was a choreographed mess of joy and colour, song, dance and plenty of food. Theodora had insisted Justinian give pivotal roles to people from both Blue and Green factions, whatever the preferences of the Emperor and Empress, and whatever her own allegiances, this was the best way to ensure that no part of the celebrations, from the games in the Hippodrome to the street fair in the Mese, to the new performance on the Kynegion stage, would be interrupted by drunken youths from one faction provoking or attacking the other. Comito sang a new solo written for the occasion; Sophia sang another, decidedly less elegant version, and Constantinople partied for an entire day and night, praising the new Consul, appreciative of the Emperor’s role in choosing him and, if anyone outside the Palace was aware of Theodora’s role in the proceedings, it was merely with a grateful nod in the haze of hangover. The new regime of Justin and Justinian had created a whole army of advisers for this and that under the eunuch in charge; appointing the reformed Theodora to advise on today’s show had been one of his smarter decisions. Justinian would do well to hold on to that one, as a worker if not the lover most people assumed she already was.
‘No, really, we’re not.’
‘Bollocks.’ Sophia was leaning over the windowsill, looking down to the Palace gardens, the lawns laid out in symmetrical patterns, the raised beds and deep fountains sloping gently down to the wall, the sea beyond. ‘Is it just because he’s so boring you don’t want to say?’
‘I’m not. And he’s not.’
‘What?’
‘Boring.’
‘If you say so. Can we go out? That fountain’s enormous. I could do with a swim, I’m shattered after last night.’
‘You shouldn’t have got quite so drunk after your performance, should you? Then you wouldn’t have spent most of the night dancing with young men half your age.’
‘And twice my size,’ Sophia laughed. ‘So go on, come for a swim?’
‘Sophia, of course you can’t dive into the fountain, we can’t even go out there, that’s the Empress’ private garden, and she’s angry enough that they’ve given me a room with a view of her lawn as it is, without you making it worse.’
‘Yeah, but that’s not the main reason she hates you, is it? Extart comes knocking at the door of the would-be ruler? You really thought they’d buy that weaver story?’
‘They did for a while – long enough for me to organise the celebration anyway.’
‘Yeah, and long enough for Lupicina to feel even more duped when someone told her your real history.’
‘I was introduced as a penitent, that is no lie. And she’s the Empress Euphemia to you. The woman was a slave, you could show her some pity.’
‘I would if she wasn’t such an arrogant cow. I heard she was his concubine.’
‘Justin’s? Some say. But she was never a—’
‘Dancer?’
‘Actress.’
‘Hah, not with a face like that, no.’
Both women laughed then, Theodora more carefully than
Sophia, uncomfortably aware that these walls had far too many ways to siphon secrets.
‘Really though, I’m not sleeping with the Consul.’
Sophia sat back down on the couch, picking through the bowl of nuts for the sugared almonds she preferred. ‘What’s stopping you?’
Theodora shook her head. ‘I don’t know … he likes me.’
‘Plenty of men have liked you before.’
‘He likes me for who I am, what I can do.’
‘You made a nice job of the celebration, I’ll give you that.’
‘Thank you. And I enjoy talking to him.’
‘He likes men?’
‘No.’
‘You sure? That Narses is his best boy, isn’t he?’
Theodora winced. ‘I don’t think you’d call Narses his boy if you’d met him. And no, he’s not sexual in that way, the way of men when they are lovers. Justinian listens to me, he thinks I have good ideas.’
‘You do. When they involve giving me work. Though I’d have been happier with a paid job.’
‘It’s a prestigious appointment to sing for the Consul.’
‘So you said. Go on.’
Theodora shook her head. She’d been trying to analyse it herself in the long nights when she’d been working out routes for street entertainers, and staying up with Narses to plot how best to keep both Blues and Greens mollified; in the few moments she’d had between work and exhausted sleep, she’d thought about little else other than what was growing between her and Justinian, what it was she felt.
‘He acts as if he believes I know what I’m talking about.’
‘You do as far as theatre is concerned. Less successful at picking your men, though.’
‘I’m not picking this one, he’s my friend, we talk.’
‘About what?’
‘About … everything, nothing.’
‘Oh good, nice he’s so specific.’
The call for evening mass rang out then, Sophia’s cue to leave for her late rehearsal, and Theodora was glad to be spared explaining exactly what she and Justinian talked about when they sat together, as both the candle and his officials acting as unofficial chaperones burned out and the two of them continued on late into the night. In their discussions – first about the form of the celebration, then about how best to please the people, leading neatly into celebrations they both remembered, times they’d been happy to be party to big events – Theodora and Justinian had talked about memories, fleeting images caught as children and now recalled in this planning. Talking around past pleasures, remembered celebrations, meant they spoke more often in Greek. Even for Justinian, born into a Latin-speaking part of the Empire, Greek was an easier language for the nuance of nostalgia and remembrance. The Greek led them to discover their joint passion for language, for languages, a shared interest in the muscularity of Latin, the poetry of Greek, the faith of Aramaic and Hebrew and Syriac, the secrets of Egyptian and the other African tongues Theodora had heard; Justinian’s passion for his homeland’s native languages, long superseded by the Latin of the conquerors, had never quite been lost. They taught each other new words from languages they barely knew, shared stories based on the foreign phrases they understood together, played word games around false translations. Between them they fed a desire to share words, play in words.
Theodora didn’t have the words to help Sophia understand. She wasn’t having sex with Justinian, not yet: maybe never. His role in the Imperial and government hierarchies meant it was impossible to think of him as anything but a potentially dangerous friend. If he ever did become her lover, it could only be difficult. She was well aware of an undercurrent of opposition to her presence in the Palace, an undercurrent that became more blatant the closer she found herself to the Empress, especially once the full extent of her past had been revealed and the Empress realised Theodora had taken the work of weaver as a penitent. Unlike the religious, Euphemia didn’t fully believe in the possibility of total absolution. Even beyond the displeasure at their growing friendship, there was the simple fact that it was legally impossible for Theodora and Jus
tinian to have anything more than an affair. The legal barriers that prevented an actress, indeed any woman of no status, from marrying a man of rank were no different than they had been when she was with Hecebolus.
Mindful of her duty to the Patriarch, who no doubt had his own plans for her future, as well as her precarious position as staff and yet not staff, Theodora left every step up to Justinian. It had been Justinian’s idea for her to move into the Palace, the better to be able to work with him at all hours, Justinian’s idea – with Narses’ prompting – to give her the small staff of her own, to help her feel more comfortable in the vast warren of buildings that could just as easily resemble a prison, Justinian’s idea to speak in Greek when Latin did not offer them enough scope. Whatever came next, it would be Justinian’s move. Theodora’s job was to wait and see what that might be.
Twenty-Nine
During her work on the consular celebration, Theodora became friendly with Antonina, an older woman, the wife of Belisarius, one of the few men Justinian truly trusted. Belisarius was everything the new Consul was not: strong, brave, respected in the ranks and, as Theodora told his wife, he was really very lovely. According to Justinian, Belisarius was a fine specimen of the old Empire, the kind of Roman he kept in mind when he talked to Theodora, at length, about his plans for the new forms of government, law and architecture that might renew the Empire’s pride. It was clear that Justinian was not merely interested in the law; no matter how bookish he was perceived to be, his ambition extended far beyond the borders of his library and office. Unlike most men though, as well as dreams, he now had the power to bring them to fruition.
Belisarius was indeed beautiful and his wife Antonina, ten years his senior at least, was one of the toughest women Theodora had ever met, herself and Sophia included. Like both of them, Antonina had once been a dancer. She had, however, only ever worked privately, and so had never gained the kind of reputation – for skill either on stage or in the bedroom – that provided Sophia with her hungry audience and made Theodora the target of snide Palace gossip. Antonina maintained she had remained virginal throughout her few years as a dancer, and had been a good wife to her first husband. Belisarius backed up her claim that she was a chaste widow when they first met, and though the priest was not a little disapproving, there was no legal reason that a young, very hopeful soldier and a widow could not be married. Had their union come later, when Belisarius had been promoted through the ranks, it would have been a different matter, but with Justin so heavily reliant on Justinian’s judgement, and Justinian so fond of Belisarius, any censure Antonina might have experienced in the Palace could not readily show itself; not without seeming small-minded at least, or incurring the anger of the Emperor. This did not stop the Empress Euphemia or her friends from sneering at Antonina, but it did stop them doing so when either Justinian or his uncle was present.
The most vindictive of Euphemia’s friends was the dowager Juliana Anicia. She of the bald spot Theodora had first spied from the aqueduct as a child. Now an even wealthier widow, Juliana had provided herself with an array of methods to hide her problem, creating something of a fashion for wigs and hairpieces among the older women at court. When the old lady spoke rudely to her, or condescendingly to Antonina – or not at all, which was more usual – it helped Theodora to remember that the wigs weren’t merely for fun. As Theodora had been quick to learn and use in the consular celebration, the people liked shows of wealth, displays of grandeur, status symbols that included them, and for many years now Juliana had been endowing city buildings with her own personal wealth. A new church here, a monastery there, she gave the people what they wanted – not the bread and circuses provided by the state-supported games, but elegant, longer-lasting and determinedly Christian marble and stone. Further, the older woman understood perfectly that neither name nor money counted for long without power and so, while she mocked the once-concubine Empress in the privacy of her own home, in public she was happy to be seen as Euphemia’s good friend. It did Euphemia no harm to have the aristocratic Juliana of the Anicii as her confidante either. Wealth met power, prestige met name in the friendship between these women. They made a successful and formidable pair. If Juliana Anicia had had her way, and she’d certainly tried, she would have married her own granddaughters into Justin’s family, but although Germanus had married her niece Pasara, Justinian had never paid any attention to the girls of her dynasty. Which made it all the more galling when people began to say that the one woman he was interested in was that slut Theodora – not that Juliana Anicia had ever been to the theatre, but she’d certainly heard stories.
In one part of the Palace then, Juliana Anicia was regarded as the wealthy endower of grand new buildings, useful to the Emperor who needed someone to put gold into the walls and the streets, as he certainly wasn’t interested in spending the Empire’s wealth to do so. Justinian would have spent more on building and state occasions – for a man supposedly obsessed with his books, he had a passion for building that rivalled Juliana Anicia’s – but Justinian was not Emperor, and while he and his uncle agreed on many things, finances weren’t one of them. Which was why Theodora was applauded by the businessmen of the Palace: she’d not only brought the consular celebrations in under budget, she had somehow fooled the people into thinking more money had been spent on them than ever before. Theodora believed any good actor should be able to make something out of nothing, light from shade, rich cake from dry bread, but the Palace was not used to such impressively lavish economy. It was the reason the Emperor Justin warmed to the girl. That and her delicious breasts, though he didn’t say so to Justinian, or to his own wife.
Justinian didn’t enjoy Juliana Anicia’s company any more than Theodora did, but he did agree with the dowager on one thing: like her, he didn’t much trust Antonina. He did not fear Antonina’s ambition, Justinian had no problem with ambition that accorded with his own, and he trusted Belisarius implicitly for both his heart and his skills; he’d happily promote the younger man when the time came. It was more that Antonina seemed to enjoy too many secrets, and while Justinian was very keen to keep his own secrets, he didn’t like other people to have them. Theodora noticed this early on and made sure she told him hers directly – those she wanted him to know. Once Narses had explained about her theatrical past, Justinian felt he knew more than enough anyway. It wasn’t all, but it sounded like plenty, and helped him trust her. Most of the time.
‘But why not? It’s a very useful proposal.’
Theodora, always polite, certainly deferential in front of Justinian’s servants, chose not to bite back the sharp tone in her voice. She’d been trying to get Justinian to agree to a dinner between City officials and several key military figures for a few days now. In her self-assumed mission to make the Consul more popular with the people, Theodora thought it an ideal opportunity for him to show that he could converse as well with soldiers and generals as with librarians and lawyers.
Justinian sighed, motioning for his servants to leave them. The small entourage backed out of the room as silently as possible and when the door was closed with a soft shush, he answered, ‘Because I don’t want a dinner. I can talk to any general or soldier any time I want in the baths, that’s where half the conferences go on anyway.’
‘Yes, and then the men keep it between themselves.’
‘Isn’t that the point?’
‘It would be, sir,’ she added, ‘if you wanted a secret meeting about kicking the Goths out of Italy or something equally irrelevant to our own City …’
Justinian winced, all too aware of Theodora’s raised voice and that this kind of talk kicked off wildfire rumours, especially in Palace state rooms where no one was ever truly alone. ‘Luckily I don’t have to think about that right now, what with merely being Consul?’
His heavy eyebrows were raised as high as they would go and she lowered her tone, took a step closer. ‘But you don’t want, always, to be just Consul …’
‘Just?’
‘Gossip?’
Theodora smiled. ‘Dissemination.’
‘And you’d like to disseminate the idea that I’m capable of talking intelligently to a couple of soldiers?’
‘Frankly sir, I’d like to disseminate the idea that you’re capable of talking at all.’
‘We are not talking?’ Justinian shifted to Latin to emphasise his disappointment that this woman, with whom he enjoyed all manner of conversation, seemed to be dismissing their relationship.
‘What we do doesn’t count,’ she answered in Latin herself now, before reverting to Greek, the better to make her point. ‘It’s what the people think that matters. And Narses is the one who’s keen on you talking to soldiers …’
‘So you’ve dreamed this up between you?’
Theodora went on, ‘Antonina would welcome a chance for Belisarius to be seen more at the Palace.’
‘I’m sure she would, she’s an extremely ambitious woman.’
‘Married to an extremely capable young man. Narses says—’
‘Again? You two have become very close?’
‘We have an understanding, sir. And we both have your best interests in mind.’
Justinian sat down heavily, causing the thick leather of the stool to creak. ‘Go on.’
‘Narses maintains that ambitious soldiers can be dangerous. I believe he feels it is best to encourage loyalty.’
‘And he thinks I can best encourage loyalty in this boy-wonder, who is already a friend, by the way, by inviting him and his hard-faced wife and God knows how many others to a dinner? By making a show of a friendship that is already real?’
