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“What do we say?” Comito asked in a terrified whisper.
“Don’t worry,” I said. The response already tumbled through my head. We stopped before the Blues, and I waited for the crowd to quiet enough so I could speak, no mean task as most stomped and cheered. “Noble and Christian Blues, the daughters of Acacius thank you for your mercy. Your hearts are warm, and thus, over the Greens you shall rule!”
The crowd erupted into laughter and furious cheers. Some hurled things toward the Greens—a rotten cabbage and the head of a mackerel hit Asterius in the chest. The leader of the Blues, an elderly man with a shiny scalp and an ornamental sword at his hip, gave me a gentle smile, but my eyes strayed to the scenica seated next to him. Her copper hair flouted the customary veil and was instead piled high upon her head to accentuate pink pearls the size of cherries hanging from her ears. She was the woman from the bathhouse this morning. She wore a blue stola that matched the color of the sky at dusk, layered with a delicate blue and lavender paludamentum pinned at the shoulder with a gold brooch like a flaming sun. The city’s wives were relegated to stand in the top tiers, but a handful of courtesans draped themselves across the other Blues. Yet the copper-haired woman was so radiant that men stopped to stare when she moved. Women like her had power, power I wanted.
The chants of the crowd changed from “Long live the Blues” to the name of one of the charioteers, our plight already forgotten. The Blues waved us onto their dais as eight chariots took the track—four decorated with green ribbons and charioteers dressed in green tunicas, and four blue—their horses prancing with high steps on the way to their boxes.
The scenica turned in her seat as we settled in. “You did well tonight.” Her hand caressed the back of her patron’s neck. “Begging before these men was daring.”
I searched for malice in her face but found none. “Better than begging on the street.”
“Extremely pragmatic for one so young.” Her eyes twinkled as the consul gave a great yell and tossed the red and purple mappa into the air. The mechanical gates to the starting boxes swung open, and the chariots bolted onto the track amid cheers so loud the courtesan had to yell to be heard. “My name is Macedonia.”
I knew the name—Macedonia was Constantinople’s greatest scenica, but she had started as a dancer in the Kynêgion. They said she knew tricks only the devil could have taught her.
“I’m Theodora,” I said. “And this is Comito.” My sister shrank back—apparently she wasn’t keen on the idea of befriending a known whore. I had no such scruples.
“And your mother?”
“Is with our sister.”
Macedonia raised an elegantly penciled brow. “With her new husband?”
I didn’t know how this woman knew Vitus even existed.
She must have guessed my thoughts. “Asterius made a bit of a gaffe when he installed his paymaster as the Greens’ Master of Bears.” She glanced at the first heat. A blue chariot had overturned on this side of the Egyptian obelisk, its driver impaled through the ribs by one of the shafts—quite messy.
A man behind us cursed and launched a handful of roasted almonds toward the track, landing several in my lap. I helped myself and handed one to Comito. “I’m afraid I don’t understand why the Blues would take us on.”
“The Blues’ bear master recently made an unfortunate miscalculation.” Macedonia shivered. “They recovered most of him after the bear was finished. The Blues will take your new father as their bear trainer. At least then you’ll have a roof over your head.”
“How do you know all that?”
She smiled. “Men like to talk. I prefer to listen.”
A giant cage of gray parrots was released as the first chariot crossed the finish. I was happy to note its horses were festooned with blue ribbons. The birds would be captured later, but now they squawked as they flew over the spectators toward false freedom.
Macedonia smiled and turned her attention to her patron. “Good luck, girls. I hope everything works out for you.”
We didn’t have a coin to our names, but we’d had plenty of luck tonight.
Unfortunately, luck never lasts.
Chapter 3
I yawned into my hand as we approached the Boar’s Eye. Comito and I had stayed at the Hippodrome until after the last race was won, enjoying our new celebrity. A man old enough to be our father’s father—or possibly even his father—had offered three goats for Comito’s hand in marriage. She refused him, but I thought it a rather generous offer.
I wished I’d had at least a few coins to bet—the Blues won seven of the ten heats, and then there were the wrestlers and tightrope walkers to cheer. I’d gritted my teeth until they threatened to crack when the Greens paraded out their bear to finish, the same flea-infested beast my father had trained.
Oil lamps flickered outside the taverna, illuminating the flaked painting of a fat brown pig with one enormous eye like a Cyclops. Drunken laughter spilled onto the steps. Inside, the open room stunk of stale barley water and unwashed male bodies. Several curvaceous women sat on the laps of grinning patrons before the tiny hearth. Its oversized pot hung from a giant chain suspended over the smoking fire. The fug of boiling onions and carrots reminded me that I hadn’t eaten all day, save for the few almonds. Decades of fires in the hearth had blackened the walls, and a dull haze hung low in the air. The Boar’s Eye was a good place for trading secrets, but I had none to tell, not now that the entire city knew my story.
“I don’t see them,” Comito said. There was no sign of my mother or Anastasia. Or Vitus.
He might have abandoned us, cut his losses, and run. Then we’d be in the gutter again, no position with the Blues, no address of residence. No bread.
“We should try the rooms upstairs,” Comito said. “There are usually one or two empty ones the owner rents out.” Yet another discovery my sister had likely learned from the butcher’s son.
Catcalls followed us as we made our way up the narrow staircase, the well-trod boards creaking underfoot. Only halfway up I heard the screams, like someone being tortured. The voice was familiar.
I took the steps two at a time, and I shoved open the first door so hard it bounced back at me. A tiny bench was cut into the wall and on it was a pornai riding a brown-haired youth in a position God never intended.
“Come to join us, love?” The girl’s grin revealed two missing teeth. Another cry ripped the air.
“This one.” Comito pushed open the next door.
Inside, my mother sported a fresh gash on her cheek, and the start of a black bruise blossomed over her eye. She held a dirty bandage—one that matched the hem of her green tunica—to the sides of Anastasia’s head as my little sister gulped for air. Tears cut swaths down her cheeks.
“What happened?” I yelled. Vitus stood at the only table in the room and wiped a bloody knife on an old rag. On the table were two knobby lumps of pink flesh.
Ears. Two tiny ears with blood on the edges where they’d been sawed off.
I screamed and lunged at Vitus, but he turned the rusted blade on me.
“Stay back, you little vermin, or I’ll cut your ears off, too.” He waved the blade between Comito and me. “It’s your fault I had to do this—you who eat my food and sleep under my roof, but don’t bring home a single nummi to pay for any of it.”
“You slimy piece of offal!” I screamed. “We were out begging for your position while you butchered my sister.” I collapsed next to Anastasia and kissed her sweaty forehead as she sobbed, thumb in her mouth. I wanted to fix her, make her whole again, but there was nothing I could do. I should have told my mother my plan before we left for the baths, or we should have come straight home before the races—then none of this would have happened. This was all my fault.
Vitus picked up his bear whip, and I steeled myself for the blow; instead, he stormed from the room, slamming the door behind him.
“I tried to stop him.” My mother’s eyes were dead. “He said Anastasia would bring
in more than both of you.”
She peeled the filthy bandage from the holes where Anastasia’s ears should have been, prompting a fresh gush of bright red blood and another scream from my sister. “We have to stop the bleeding.”
Comito ran out without a word. I wanted to lob curses at her retreating back, but Anastasia’s fresh cries stopped me as blood soaked through the dirty linens. I crooned to her, songs my father used to sing, hoping they might soothe her and trying to think what to do. I tucked the stained blanket to her chin, ignoring the cloud of dust that billowed up from it. She settled into intermittent sobs and hiccups, but clutched my hand tight as she clasped her one-eyed doll to her chest.
I had done this. And there was nothing I could do to fix it.
…
Comito returned in the pitch of night with an apothecary’s bottle and fresh linens. She doused the linens—the brown liquid smelled like urine—and pressed them to the bloody wounds of Anastasia’s ears as I rocked her. I was so thankful for the supplies I didn’t bother to ask where she’d gotten them.
“The saint said we need to keep the wounds clean,” Comito said. “He told me he’d pray for her.”
I sent my own prayers to God, not trusting the word of some brown-robed apothecary. I offered God whatever he wanted to heal my sister, to save us all. And if that wouldn’t work, I’d start praying to every demon in the underworld.
…
It became apparent a week later that our prayers hadn’t been enough. Vitus had abandoned us, but Comito had managed to persuade the owner of the taverna to let us keep the room so we at least had the bread dole. My older sister was never around anymore, but I’d seen her talking to Mother, and later I’d heard her voice in one of the upstairs rooms, followed by the grunts of the owner. I didn’t ask questions.
I awoke in the middle of the night to Anastasia’s convulsing. It was cool in the room, but she was burning up. She whimpered as Mother lit an olive oil lamp, illuminating the wall frescoes of men and women in various compromising positions. A line of drool slipped from the corner of my sister’s mouth to her chin as her muscles twitched in a terrifying dance.
My mother poured a clay cup of watered wine and held it to Anastasia’s lips, but she wouldn’t open her mouth. “Sweet pea, this will make you feel better. Please open up.”
My sister only cried, her jaw locked tight. We were up all night, and the spasms became so strong my mother feared Anastasia’s arm had broken, the bone on her upper arm bent at a painful angle as my little sister screamed through clenched teeth. The muscles in her back moved of their own accord, and she arched into my mother as she lost control of her bowels, the stench of blood and feces filling the room.
“A demon has possessed her,” my mother said. “There’s nothing I can do.”
Comito returned with the first light of dawn, blanched at the scene before her, and pressed a kiss onto our sister’s forehead. “I’ll fetch the saint.”
My mother muttered prayers as I took Anastasia, her hot little body bent like a bow as her birdlike hands fluttered on my lap, her eyes closed as I sang over her gasps, a jumble of hymns and taverna songs. Her eyes rolled back into her head, only the eerie whites staring unseeing, and her lips pulled back in a horrible grimace, her tiny teeth bared like a dog’s. Then she was still.
“Anastasia?” I hoped she had gone to sleep, but there was no slump of relaxation, no even breathing. There was no breathing at all.
My mother tried to take her from me. “Anastasia?”
She shook my little sister, but it was no use. She was gone. The saint Comito brought to save Anastasia said her last rites instead, anointing her forehead with cooking oil from the taverna’s hearth below as we stitched her stiff body into a moth-eaten blanket.
We had no money for a coffin and nothing to tuck next to her body since I had hidden her one-eyed doll under my pallet, wanting to keep something she had touched. Through her tears, Comito plaited Anastasia’s hair like a patrician’s daughter, looping the braids around the mottled flesh where her ears should have been. We buried her close to our father the next morning in the churchyard outside the city walls and piled her grave high with wildflowers, the stench of fermenting fish still permeating the air.
That night I slept with Anastasia’s doll tucked under my chin, the mattress soaked through with my tears. I wished I could take her place—it was my fault Vitus had attacked her, my fault my little sister was cold in the ground while I lay warm in her bed.
Vitus had the decency not to show himself again. I prayed the devil found new ways to torture him.
…
None of us wanted to face the next day, but the keeper of the taverna called on us before the sun had risen. “I need this room for paying customers,” he said, avoiding our eyes as he wiped his hands on his stained tunica. “You’ll have to leave by this evening.”
“Tonight?” I asked.
He opened his mouth to answer, but Comito pushed me out of the way. “We’ll be gone tonight,” she said, slamming the door in his face.
“Where are we going to go?” I gestured to our filthy room with its stone bench and risqué frescoes. Pigs lived better. “Without this we won’t even have the bread dole.”
“I’ll be back in an hour,” Comito said. She pinched her cheeks and slipped out the door before any of us could say anything. I wanted to follow, but she was already gone. Mother and I sat in silence while we waited for her return—there seemed to be nothing left to say that wouldn’t remind us of Father or Anastasia.
Comito’s promised hour stretched into two and almost three by the time she returned. “Did you find us somewhere to stay?” I asked.
“No.” Comito stood still for a moment, her chin trembling. Then she threw herself onto the bench and sobbed into our mother’s lap.
Christ’s blood. We were about to be turned out again, and now we had to deal with Comito’s theatrics? I yanked her up by her arm. “What happened?”
“Karas told me he loved me—we had talked about getting married.” She wiped her eyes with her sleeve. “I thought he would help us, but he told me he couldn’t see me anymore—that I’d disgraced myself.” At this she dissolved into tears.
I sat next to her, patting her leg awkwardly as my mother stroked her hair. “He doesn’t deserve you then,” I said. “We didn’t disgrace ourselves by begging—”
“Not by begging.” Comito’s blotchy face was truly unattractive, but now probably wasn’t the best time to mention that. “He found out about the other men.”
“What men?” I had my suspicions.
“The apothecary across from the butcher.” She blubbered into her sleeve. “When Anastasia was hurt. And the taverna owner—”
“Karas is a fool.” My mother pulled Comito to her chest. “You did what you had to.”
“I love him,” Comito sobbed. My sister was a fool, too. But I stopped myself from saying so.
“I thought he would marry me and we’d be happy the rest of our days. I’m tired of being so poor we can’t count on having bread on the table or a roof over our heads.”
That made two of us.
Comito sniffed, her face mottled as a freshly plucked chicken. “I could work here. The owner offered me this room, but I turned him down.”
“No. That’s a life sentence,” my mother said. We sat in silence for a moment, and then she heaved a long-suffering sigh. “You girls must take to the stage. I’ve tried to protect you from it, but that’s the only way.”
Comito and I stared dumbstruck at her. Being an actress was only one step up from a pornai.
“I’m terrified of performing,” Comito said. “And Theodora is too young.”
I’d had my moon bloods for several months now—I could do all that was expected of me as an actress, including any offstage duties that would be required in a room like the one we sat in now. I just wasn’t sure I wanted to.
“I was an actress before I met your father,” my mother said.
“How do you think we met? Your father trained animals and I danced. I was good, too.” She stood and pushed the ragged curls from her face, revealing new streaks of white at her temples. “There are only two options open to our type of women: the stage or a man’s bed. I’m too old for the stage, and neither of you has a chance at making a decent marriage. You’ll both go to the Kynêgion today and do whatever it takes to get on that stage. Unless either of you has any better ideas.”
There was nothing to say to that—she was right. Men would love to see Comito prancing around the stage, especially clad only in the girdle the law required. I had to admit she had a decent singing voice. And she could dance.
I, on the other hand, would likely be as successful as a goat onstage. This became painfully obvious as we practiced with our mother that afternoon.
“This isn’t going to work,” I said, after stomping on Comito’s foot for the third time. “No Master of the Stage in his right mind would hire me as an actress.”
“Stop complaining,” my mother said. “Follow Comito’s lead.”
But Comito sat on the bench, nursing her flattened toes. “Theodora’s right. But I’ll still need her help.”
“On the stage?” I asked.
She laughed so hard her eyes watered. “No, goose. As my servant.”
“No.”
She shook her head, instantly sober. “If I’m to do this, I’m going to do it right. All the actresses have pretty slaves to help dress them, carry their chairs. We can’t afford to buy a slave. You’d be perfect.”
I’d be a candidate for sainthood if I had to be Comito’s servant. Unless I killed her first, which was a distinct possibility.
“Both you and Theodora will ask the Blues for a position on the boards,” my mother said. “Your sister earns no money if she only assists you.”
I had never been so thankful for my mother in all my life.