B009KUWVHG EBOK

by Thornton, Stephanie

  Someone cleared his throat, and I stamped out the symbols in the dirt. Areobindus held a steaming tray of food, and a slave with a large wooden box stood behind him. I waved away the soup—garlic and leek from the smell of it—and took a glass of watered wine, intent on the dirt before me.

  Areobindus didn’t move.

  I set down the stick I’d been using to trace letters and rubbed my scratchy eyes. “May I help you?”

  “You need to eat, Augusta. And I think something in the box might prove a pleasant diversion.” His smile would have made a younger woman weak in the knees.

  I opened my mouth to dismiss him, but my temples ached. Perhaps a break might help clear my mind.

  I snagged a poppy seed roll from the tray and gestured to the crate. “Shall I open it?” He stepped back, barely able to keep a straight face.

  I lifted the lid and groaned.

  The slate-colored puppy yipped and peered out of the box, its ears flopping over as it gave me a quizzical look.

  “The last thing I need is a greyhound.”

  Areobindus picked up a stick. “You’ll break his heart if you reject him now. I’ve already told him how lucky he is to have the Empress as a mistress.” He tossed the stick, and the dog catapulted from the crate. Its back legs slid out from under it on the turn so it skidded into a rosebush. I couldn’t help but laugh as it launched itself back toward us.

  “Does this little demon have a name?”

  He shrugged. “I’ve been calling him Cyr, but I’m sure he wouldn’t mind a name of the Empress’ choosing.”

  “Cyr it is.”

  He threw the stick again, but it splashed into a tiled pond of goldfish. Cyr swerved to a halt at the edge. He touched his foot to the water and looked back at us, whimpering. Areobindus grinned. “You weren’t supposed to realize he was a daisy until later.”

  He gamboled back with the dog and was about to throw the now-dripping stick again when I gasped and clutched my throat.

  “Where did you get that?”

  He looked behind him. “Get what?”

  “That.” A silver cross hung round his neck. It must have been tucked into his tunica until he bent down to pick up the stick.

  Amber inlaid in silver, with a mosquito frozen in the center.

  I grabbed the cross and twisted it to see the words etched into the back.

  Let love and faithfulness never leave you; bind them around your neck, write them on the tablet of your heart.

  I dropped the cross and stumbled back as if scalded, knocking my chair to the ground. “Who gave you that?”

  Areobindus touched the cross. “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.”

  “I’ll have the skin flayed from your back if you don’t tell me.”

  He dropped the stick, and Cyr loped away with it. “You gave it to me.”

  I couldn’t move. For a moment I couldn’t breathe.

  “In Bithynia,” he said. “Don’t you remember? The day I rode the elephant and we fed the giraffes. I was known as John then.”

  I shook my head, violently. “That’s not possible. That cross was lost long ago.”

  “I’ve worn it every day since you gave it to me.” He knelt before me, clasping my hands in his. “I’d have told you sooner, but I feared your reaction. I thought it best to let you find out on your own.”

  I pushed his hair back to see the white scar on his temple, the shape of a young moon. A gift from Photius years ago for stealing his pens.

  Suddenly Macedonia’s message seemed perfectly clear—HC, but missing the middle letter. Hic. Here.

  “How is this possible?”

  His gaze fell. “I’d rather not say. I have no wish to be sent away from court.”

  “Tell me now. I have a right to know.”

  “John the Cappadocian is my father.” He bowed his head as if waiting an executioner’s blade.

  I almost laughed aloud. “John the Cappadocian is not your father.”

  “It is the unfortunate truth. I lived with General Belisarius for many years, but then my true father claimed me.”

  “Why didn’t you come to court with Euphemia?”

  He flushed. “I’m only one of my father’s many bastard children, and not his favored daughter. I despised life in Prusa, but I changed my name with the belief that it might be safe to approach your court in Hieron now that my father has been banished. He forbade me to ever come to court.”

  For fear I might recognize my own son. John had stolen him from me and raised him to believe the lies he had threatened to tell Justinian.

  “You are my son. I am your mother, but the Cappadocian is not your father.”

  His face hardened. “Don’t toy with me, Augusta.”

  “I gave that cross to my son. And sent him away with Macedonia to protect him from John the Cappadocian. I was told you died on the journey, but they must have kept you hidden in Prusa instead.”

  “I don’t understand. If that’s true—,” Areobindus said, breaking off, and I could tell from the look on his face that he didn’t believe it was. “If that’s true,” he continued, “then who is my real father?”

  I thought of Hecebolus, not wishing him on any child. “It doesn’t matter. He’s dead now.”

  “It matters to me.” Cyr pushed his muzzle into Areobindus’ hands, but my son didn’t notice. His face was so anguished, I had to resist the urge to pull him into my arms, to stroke his hair and tell him everything would be all right.

  “Your father was my patron for a time,” I said. “A governor of Pentapolis. He cast me off before I realized I carried you. And then he died.”

  “This doesn’t make any sense.” He ran shaky hands over his face. “Why did you send me to live with Belisarius and Antonina? And how did I end up with John the Cappadocian?”

  So many questions. And none of the answers made me seem anything but a demon.

  “I never told Justinian I had a son.”

  He stepped back and looked at me with horror. “You sacrificed me.”

  I grasped his hands, desperate not to lose him again. “I planned to tell him, but by then it was too late. I sent you to live with Antonina so you’d be safe, but the Cappadocian discovered you. He was using you to blackmail me.”

  “All while he lied to me, made me believe he was my father.” He pulled his hands from mine, then ran them through his hair in a gesture so like Justinian’s my heart almost broke. “What will you do now?”

  I searched his eyes for the answer he hoped to hear. A boy’s eyes on a grown man. My son, returned from the dead. There was only one answer.

  “I’ll do what I should have done long ago. Tell Justinian the truth.”

  “What will he do?”

  “Justinian will forgive me. And he will accept you as his son.” I spoke with a certainty I didn’t feel. “One day, you may be Emperor. Until then, you shall assume the position of my chief steward.”

  It was unheard of for an ungelded man to assume such a position, and Areobindus was not only a man, but also young and pleasant to the eyes. Rumors would fly, but since when had I cared about such things?

  I wrote to Justinian that night, unable to sleep, and asked for him to come to Hieron. It took three days for him to find the decency to send a reply, one so cold I could hear his disdain in my head as I scanned the parchment.

  Dear Theodora,

  I received your invitation, but I am far too busy to leave the Sacred Palace for a pleasure cruise to Hieron. My eyes and ears tell me you are enjoying your holiday—it must be a relief to abandon your responsibilities for a time.

  Justinian

  I held the vellum over the dancing flame of an olive oil lamp, watching the fire consume Justinian’s words. If his tone was this frigid before I told him of Areobindus and my duplicity, then I could scarcely imagine how he’d react to my confession. But it didn’t matter.

  I had hoped Justinian would throw open the Golden Gate to usher me back to the Sacred Palace as he had ye
ars ago upon my return from Bithynia, but I would take my chances and make my way home uninvited. I ordered my slaves to pack my trunks for departure the next morning.

  I did not know death would stall our reunion.

  Chapter 31

  “Augusta, wake up.”

  An oil lamp illuminated Areobindus’ face, framed by my bed curtains with the evidence of hasty packing behind him, half-full trunks and an explosion of silks and shoes. I had finally ordered my slaves to their pallets sometime after midnight and managed to find sleep myself shortly after, despite much tossing on my feather mattress. Only a crisis would prompt anyone to wake me at so ungodly an hour.

  “What’s wrong?” I rubbed my eyes and pulled myself to sit. Cyr blinked from the foot of the bed and pushed his muzzle into Areobindus’ hand.

  “Reports of plague.” He covered his mouth with a square of linen and pressed another to my nose, a bouquet of rosemary, bay, and vervain to ward off the sickness.

  “Here?” I crossed myself as my feet hit the cool mosaic floor.

  “In the capital. Confirmed yesterday, probably carried by an Egyptian grain ship—the Alexander. Most of the crew is already dead. The Virgin’s icon has been paraded about the walls, but people in the city are dying.”

  I crossed myself, and Areobindus followed suit. “What about the Sacred Palace?”

  His voice could scarcely be heard behind his linen. “The Emperor has ordered everyone to stay indoors.” His eyes flicked to mine. “Including us.”

  I was trapped in a cage of my own making, quarantined from my own palace. But Justinian was still alive. That was all that mattered.

  I waited until the door closed behind Areobindus, then sank to my knees, dropping my posy to clasp my hands before me. “Mary full of grace.” My eyes flickered toward the heavens, but then I squeezed them shut. “Please protect Justinian from this plague. Keep my love safe.”

  …

  Plague raged through Constantinople and spilled into Hieron while my husband barred the gates and locked the doors to the city. I paid an Emperor’s ransom to the man collecting the dead to travel to Tasia’s villa and find out how they fared, but he returned empty-handed. Their gates were locked, the villa empty of both the living and the dead. Tasia was a smart girl—I prayed they’d managed to escape to the country in time.

  We had enough food in Hieron to last a few weeks, but messages shouted up the walls informed us that death’s appetite was far from sated. Ten thousand people a day died, so many that their graves couldn’t be dug fast enough. I watched from the window as a wagon made its way to gather more bodies, already creaking under its heavy load. A young girl lay atop the mountain of corpses, her black hair cascading in a waterfall over the tangle of white limbs and waxy faces. I let the curtain fall.

  Easter neared, and with it, the fifteenth anniversary of our coronation, but there would be no games, no plays to celebrate our longevity on the throne. Nothing but black.

  My eyes shut out the plague, but my other senses were not so lucky. The bronze doors to my palace were barred; yet someone pounded from without for the better part of the day. The horizon had swallowed the sun by the time silence fell. I awoke that night to the smell of fire. It was Nika resurrected, the same stench after the riots as the bodies of non-Christians burned. I’d heard of the mass graves nearby in Sykae, and I knew there weren’t enough people living to bury the dead.

  My palace was a fragile bubble of safety, but every bubble must burst.

  I passed two kitchen slaves on my way to prayer one cloudy morning. A fire roared in the hearth and sprigs of dried rosemary and thyme hung from the rafters. The girls’ words stopped me dead.

  “—Stricken with plague, too. What’ll the Empress do when she discovers it?”

  The slave yelped to see me in the doorway and dropped the mound of dough she’d been kneading. The other almost missed cleaving off the head of a speckled chicken to strike her own fingers instead. She cursed, and the knife struck again. The head rolled off the table, and blood poured to the ground.

  Plague here, in my palace. God couldn’t be so cruel. “Who is stricken?”

  The girl turned as pale as her bread dough.

  “Tell me, or I shall cast you into the street.” Whoever was ill, I would send the victim to a physician in the city—they couldn’t stay here and infect the rest of my household, including my son. The girl’s lips knit together, and her friend studied the dead chicken.

  I heaved a sigh. “I’ll have the name beaten out of you if I must. We can’t risk contagion.”

  A tear slid through the streaks of flour on her cheek. “It’s not here, Augusta.”

  Her friend pulled feathers from the headless bird and let them fall to the ground. She wiped the hair from her eyes, leaving a smear of wet blood across her forehead. The first slave fiddled with the dough. “We heard from the cook’s son who heard from the Master of the Horses”—she looked at me with wide eyes—“there are reports of plague in the Sacred Palace. And the Emperor’s taken to the streets.”

  I worked to swallow, glad for the table’s support as my bones turned to water. “He’s mad.”

  “No one knows if the Emperor is stricken.” The girl mistook me—some of those taken with fever in the early stages of the illness wandered the streets, raving lunacy and threatening to kill themselves. Justinian was never sick, at least not since his early illness that had robbed us of children. Plague might carry away half the population, but Justinian would find a way to outsmart death. He had to.

  The slave trembled. “That’s all I know, Augusta. I’m sorry—I’ll do extra penance for listening to such gossip.”

  I left the girl begging me not to have her beaten. Plenty of patricians surrounded Justinian in the Sacred Palace, many of whom would have been happy to attend his funeral. He needed those who were loyal to him, but I was all the way across the Bosphorus.

  I flung open the doors to my empty chamber and rifled through the freshly packed chests, searching for my traveling cloak. Bent over a particularly large trunk, I almost hit my head when someone cleared his throat behind me.

  “What are you doing?” Areobindus had stepped inside the threshold, but barely.

  “I’m going to the Sacred Palace,” I said. “Now.”

  “It’s not safe.”

  Since when did I care about safety? God would watch over me now as He always had—playing it safe had cost me almost everything.

  “Everyone else shall stay here.” I’d swim if I had to.

  “I’ll come with you.” A loaf of moldy bread hung suspended from the arch over Areobindus’ head. It was believed the bread captured the miasmas in the air, but it only served to make my chambers stink like mold. “You’ll need someone to row you across the Bosphorus.”

  “Absolutely not. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m a grown man who can make decisions for himself,” he said. “I’m going with you.”

  “No, you’re not.” I might lose Justinian—although I refused to think on that now. I couldn’t bear the thought of losing my son, too.

  Areobindus crossed his arms in front of his chest. “I’m going, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

  “Please,” I said, feeling the hysteria rising in my throat. “I don’t know what I’ll find at the palace—”

  “You’re not going to lose me.” He clasped my hands. “No matter what you find in the palace, I promise I’m not going anywhere.”

  I turned without answering, wincing to hear my son’s steps follow me.

  I drew my wool cloak closer to ward off the chill of the rain once we were outside. No boats darted over the gray waves of the Bosphorus—none had for almost a week—but Areobindus found an abandoned skiff to carry us across the water, little better than a child’s toy and ready to sink at the slightest breeze.

  My son handed me to my seat as the rain picked up and soaked through to my skin. I didn’t mind—the wet chill reminded me I was still alive. Ar
eobindus arranged the oars, then threw off the ropes. The boat slipped into the embrace of the dark water. The Bosphorus was patient today and allowed us easy passage despite the rain. I watched another boat embark from the opposite shore, its deck piled high, but then stop and a man use a long pole to tip his cargo into the sea.

  Bodies.

  They fell like giant white spiders. The man was still at work as we bobbed past, and the stench of rot and decay hit us, conjured from the depths of Gehenna. I’d left my posy in my haste and buried my nose in my cloak, breathing in the damp wool as we passed the walls of Sykae.

  Areobindus glanced at me and then at the towers that punctuated Sykae’s walls, his nose pressed into a square of white linen. “The city started storing bodies in the towers—there’s nowhere else to bury them.”

  The corpses of Constantinople clung to my nostrils. It was too much to bear—I heaved the contents of my stomach over the side of the skiff. Areobindus kept his eyes averted as I dragged the back of my hand over my mouth.

  The air should have rung with barked orders to slaves unloading ships and the cries of shopkeepers hawking their wares under awnings along the city walls. Instead, rotting melons lay in abandoned stalls, and the Baths of Zeuxippus watched over the bedraggled Queen of Cities, the bathing pools drained of the dangerous waters believed to spread contagion. My own pale marble face stared down at me from atop a porphyry column in the empty courtyard, a gift from Justinian years ago. We passed the old wool house where I’d once worked, now transformed into a hospital, and heard the death rattles of the hundreds of dying souls within. A piece of parchment tumbled down the cobbles in the breeze, an advertisement for a performance of Antigone set for a few days hence, a tragedy that would likely never play with most of the actors and audience dead in their beds. We covered our mouths with our cloaks as we passed through streets filled with ghosts, a forest of black slashes on the doors of those stricken with plague. The doors of those not afflicted were barred to shut out plague demons.