A Triple-headed Serpent: A Story of Theodora, Empress of Byzantium Read online

  “It looks like her?” he asked, clambering down from his perch. “I have never actually seen the Despoina.”

  “It looks like her,” I said, clearing my throat. “But it is too tall. She is … quite little, in person.”

  “So we were told. But from an artistic point of view, she must dominate her group, as Justinian dominates his, I think you will agree.”

  “Yes. They both do.”

  “See, the solid purple colours of the royal robes also help to achieve that effect. These mosaics are not only religious in nature and purpose, you understand. Obviously, the two sovereigns are making offers to the Church, as I hope I have shown.”

  “He offers the bread, she offers the wine,” I said. “And the magi feature on the hem of her chlamys. I like that.”

  “Yes. But these portraits are here to make a political statement also.” His brown eyes were shrewd. He rubbed his hands, sticky with fixative, on a rag.

  “Emphasising the Imperium. Particularly here, in this city,” I said.

  “Exactly. I see you are a man of insight. That was never put into words, of course.”

  I nodded. “And you’ve included the most likely successors.”

  “Yes. The nephews, with the Empress, the Empress’s grandson, with the Emperor.”

  “Prelates, military officers, the Empress’s ladies. Mmm.”

  “I put in all the persons on the Emperor’s list,” he said. “You seem to have some reservations? Is there something wrong?”

  I had to concentrate on keeping my voice level. “Nothing. No. You have made an exceptional work of art. You are to be congratulated.”

  “Thank you.” He looked gratified. “You will give a favourable report? It was a demanding task. I have done the best I could.”

  “Oh, yes,” I said. “A favourable report, certainly. You have acquitted yourself well.”

  Chapter 20: When you walk inside, is it shadowy … ?

  Narses returned from Ravenna to find the Empress resting on a day-bed in the Daphne Palace. “I had hoped to find you better, Despoina,” he said, his face crumpling with distress. “I am so sorry to see you still weary.”

  “And wan, I fear,” said Theodora, suppressing a cough. “I wish one could just live without food. It’s such a struggle to eat. But let’s not waste time discussing what can’t be helped. Tell me about the mosaics – I’ve been so eager to hear about them.”

  “The artist made two very detailed drawings for you of the completed mosaics, Despoina,” he told her. “But before you study them, I will describe the setting.”

  “Yes! Make me see it,” said Theodora, leaning back and closing her eyes.

  “The basilica itself is a domed octagonal building of brick. It does not compare with the Hagia Sophia in size, yet it is impressive in its own way.”

  “When you walk inside,” said Theodora, “is it shadowy, or …”

  “Oh, no, there is a remarkable quality of light,” said Narses, “streaming through the windows, reflecting from the marble and gold on the inside walls. The ceilings of the choir and apse glitter, green and gold. Every surface is covered with a profusion of flowers, stars, birds and animals, including peacocks and a ferocious lion. And then of course there are many holy figures and scenes. Like tapestries, only made of tesserae.”

  Theodora sighed. “It must be beautiful,” she said.

  “It is uplifting, truly. One enters the chancel through a triumphal arch, with Christ at the apex. The mosaics depicting yourself and your entourage and the Emperor with prelates and military officers face each other on the walls of the apse close to the altar. One could view the church as a stage space, in which the mosaics create a powerful sense of your presence on that stage.”

  “Stage?” echoed Theodora, smiling. “All my life!”

  “The Emperor is depicted stage right and yourself stage left. The mosaics give one a striking impression of Imperial and religious authority.”

  “You have described them very clearly,” said Theodora. “Thank you for that.”

  “Now, Despoina, you should look at the artist’s drawings, with colours indicated in paint,” he said, placing two large pieces of vellum on a table beside her. “Although of course, seeing them in situ, full size, with the light reflecting from the gold and the glass tesserae, is far more spectacular.”

  “Thank you! This is good to have.” She leaned forward to study the drawings. “Our purple cloaks look very rich, I must say. Oh, my word, I don’t believe it! Justinian and I both have haloes!”

  “Yes, they gleam,” said Narses.

  Theodora chuckled, gasped and coughed. “So, I have made the long journey all the way from sinner to saint. If Procopius ever sees these, he will choke.”

  “They will outlast him,” said Narses.

  She pored over the depiction of herself with entourage. “Antonina looks well, and Joannina. Gorgeous colours he’s given their silks. I love the red shoes. But what do you make of this detail?” she asked, pointing to the curtain being drawn aside by Sophia’s new husband, Justin, who featured with his brother Marcellus on her right.

  “Well, Despoina, your group appears to be moving forward. Into the next room, perhaps? Or into the next life, in a Christian sense?”

  “Or into the future. As Justinian’s nephew, Justin could succeed, although I believe it should be Anastasius.”

  “He’s here too, with the Emperor and Belisarius. The artist has covered various possibilities.”

  “And you, Narses?” She looked up. “Where do you feature?”

  “Ah, um, nowhere, Despoina. One is surely not important enough.” But his face, though schooled to be impassive, still betrayed hurt.

  “That is not acceptable,” said Theodora. “Absolutely not.” She examined the two pictures again, frowning.

  “I would have wished you to be in the same panel as myself,” she said. “I should have insisted on it, from the beginning. But I can’t see where … Oh, Narses, I’m sorry, I’m terribly sorry! I’ve been distracted.”

  “It doesn’t matter, Despoina.”

  But it clearly did. She went on examining the two drawings carefully. “Here!” she exclaimed. “In the panel with the Emperor! You see, on his left, there’s the Bishop Maximianus? There’s a fair amount of space between the two. Right here, the artist could fit you in.”

  He looked doubtful. “There’s hardly room, Despoina.”

  “Can be done. Not a full-length figure, no, but head and shoulders, top half, definitely.”

  “Bottom half of me was never significant,” said Narses. “If it’s done that way, I’ll look much taller than I am.”

  “Well, that will make two of us,” said Theodora. “You’ll have noticed that I’m depicted as the tallest of them all, and in truth I’m the smallest. Now then, you should give orders for the addition to be made.”

  “Despoina, if you’re sure …”

  “I insist,” she said. “At my expense. It must be done.”

  Much to his obvious delight, Narses was duly inserted into the group, between Justinian and Maximianus. The bishop was not best pleased, and asked to be labelled, so that no one should mistake him for the Grand Chamberlain. Who was a eunuch, after all.

  In the spring, Vigilius finally produced the promised Judicatum. It was a miracle of ambiguity. On the one hand, he condemned the works of the three theologians identified by Justinian in no uncertain terms, thus giving firm support to the Edict of the Three Chapters. But, in a transparent attempt to maintain his own prestige, he went on to affirm his faith in the Council of Chalcedon. He was merely denouncing Nestorianism, he insisted, but he was not pronouncing in favour of Monophysitism.

  “He has angered just about everybody,” observed Narses, “both the Monophysites and all of the bishops in the Orthodox camp. He has succeeded in only one thing.”

  “And what is that?” enquired Theodora, who was not delighted with the long-awaited document.

  “He has injured himself
. His reputation will never recover. Whatever happens to him from here on, he will earn no respect.”

  “You are saying that history will not be kind to him.”

  “No, it won’t. And he will have richly deserved what opprobrium he may receive.”

  One matter, however, was going well for Theodora. At long last, the Church of the Holy Apostles was making good progress. The fifth and largest cupola was in place. The massive, rounded bulk of the great church was a central landmark in the bustling city. Already the faithful came regularly to attend Mass, and to light votive candles before the rows of richly ornamented reliquaries containing the relics of a variety of saints, with amongst others, the skulls of Andrew, Luke and Timothy. But it was not yet the time for her and the Emperor to go and view it together. He knew the project was continuing and that much still remained to be done.

  “I want to go and look at it, just quietly, alone,” she said to her ladies one morning. “Let me wrap myself in a long hooded cloak, and go in an ordinary carriage.”

  Her Mistress of the Bedchamber sighed, but she gave the orders. It always made the staff nervous when the Empress took it into her head to move about in the city without her customary entourage. It was dangerous. But sometimes she insisted and then they would detail some guards to trail along behind her in the uniforms of regular soldiers, keeping a careful eye on the small figure without making themselves obvious.

  When the Empress walked into the vast, ordered spaces of the church, she did not do so with the measured pace and stiff pose that characterised her formal public appearances. She moved with the hesitant steps of a small woman who felt old and ill and weary and did not wish to be looked at. She was not on display. She was the one looking at something great and grand.

  Yet it was also, already, a working church. There were people there, even though it was not the time for a Mass. Many votive candles had been bought and lit and carried the scent of smoke and prayers upwards into the vast arched domes and hopefully to the attention of the saints, the Holy Mother and to God. It was a building made by men under the guidance of a woman but it had become more than bricks and mortar and coloured glass and marble and stone. It has a spirit, she thought. The building itself has a spirit, holy and serene. As she walked forward she staggered slightly, putting out a hand to steady herself on a table bearing candles for sale.

  A broad-shouldered young priest walking by noticed her and asked: “Are you all right, little mother?”

  “I’m all right, thank you,” she said, in her soft and husky voice, smiling at his kind tone. “I just came to look at it.”

  “It’s magnificent, isn’t it?” he said, staring up at the tall columns of polychrome marble that marched in rows along the arms of the cruciform interior, and the stained-glass windows that transformed the morning sunlight into glowing, hieratic images.

  “Yes, it is.”

  “Not altogether finished yet,” he said. “Won’t be properly inaugurated for about two more years, I should think. We’re to have colourful marble slabs lining the walls, and plenty of mosaics eventually, on a gold background, I expect. Now it’s just paint.”

  “But the light falling through the windows creates colour,” she said. “Rainbows of colour.”

  “Indeed it does. The tomb for the Emperor and his family is complete, though. Used up the last of the available funding, I understand.”

  “Ah. Must have been expensive.” So, she thought, the last of the gold coins discovered in the foundations had gone on that. She wondered again whether Narses had indeed secreted them there in the first place. It was quite likely. If true, she thought, Narses has bought me a grave.

  “Expensive, yes, it’s huge. Over there, at the east end of the north-cross arm.”

  “I see it,” said Theodora. It was a dominating structure, with tall alabaster columns supporting a green marble roof. In a central position loomed two enormous, ornate, deep purple porphyry sarcophagi. “How on earth,” asked Theodora, “will they lift and replace those lids?”

  He looked surprised, no doubt not having expected so practical a query from such a source. “They have a system of pulleys,” he said. “They climb up ladders beforehand to put them in place. It will be mechanical.”

  “Ah. I understand.” The thought of it made her feel slightly faint again.

  “Are you sure you’re well, little mother?”

  “I’m all right. I’ll just walk nearer and take a good look.”

  “Well, then. I must go.”

  “Thank you, Father,” she said.

  “The confessionals are over there,” he told her, pointing. “But I can’t imagine, little mother, that you have anything to confess.”

  She did not answer him. He strode away with the firm tread of a young and virile man. She walked carefully across the nave and closer to the tomb. That will be my last resting-place, she thought, wrapped in her cloak, staring up at it. Probably quite soon.

  She had slept in many places in her life: a narrow cot in a poor tenement building in Constantinople; a comfortable bed in the villa of Darius Pollo; a bunk in a tossing ship en route to Africa and then a luxurious bed in the governor’s palace in the port of Apollonia; she had lain bleeding on the floor in the same palace, and after that she had been housed by nuns in Alexandria on a narrow cot similar to the one she had slept on as a child. In Antioch she had shared quarters with a soldier; in Constantinople, she had been brought into a palace by Justinian. They had slept together first in the Hormisdas Palace and then in the Imperial Palace, on a bed carved from rare wood, inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl, with bedding woven and sewn from the best and softest materials, silk and pure lambswool and brocade.

  And ultimately they would share a mausoleum in one of the greatest churches in Christendom. It was strange to imagine herself and the Emperor lying there. Two people who had in life been so driven and so passionate. Lying there in decorous silence, side by side. Mouldering. Reduced, at last, to dust and bones.

  She looked up at the colossal porphyry sarcophagi and she thought: Well, I did say the purple would make a good winding sheet.

  Theodora sent for Aetios. The physician had a suite of rooms in the Sacred Palace, close to the Sacred Cubicle. He came promptly to the Daphne Palace, where she now spent most of her days resting.

  “Despoina,” he said. “You sent for me?”

  “Yes. Aetios, tell me the truth: I am not … ever going to be well again, am I?” She spoke with some difficulty.

  He looked at her with a face moulded into grief. “I fear not, Despoina. I hear it in your voice. It is very hoarse and soft. You are finding it ever harder to swallow, am I correct?”

  “Yes,” she said, blinking back tears. “And even to … breathe. It is as if somebody has a grip on my throat and is … relentlessly … choking me.”

  “It is a canker,” he said. “I have feared it might be that. I have seen it before.”

  “And there is nothing … to be done? There is no cure for this?”

  “No cure. I am deeply sorry. If there is pain, we can relieve it.”

  “What may I expect?”

  He stood with his head bowed, pained and mute.

  “Please tell me, simply, so that I can understand.” She coughed. Every breath she drew could be heard: a susurration. “It is going to happen to me, whatever you say or do not say.”

  “Despoina,” he said, reluctantly, “it will become impossible to swallow at all.”

  “Then I will die of hunger and thirst.”

  “I fear so, Despoina.”

  “Like a person in a besieged city,” she said.

  “Yes. Like that.”

  “I haven’t much time left, have I?”

  “No, Despoina.”

  “I don’t want the Emperor to be … distracted,” she said. “He has so much to do.”

  “Indeed, the Despotes has many worries, many demands, many decisions,” agreed Aetios.

  “But I don’t know how … to keep it f
rom him. He knows … I’m ill, of course, but he still thinks … I will recover.”

  “You should go away,” he suggested. “To Hieron, your summer palace. Even though it is only spring. I will tell the Emperor I have recommended complete rest.”

  “Very well.”

  “Don’t take the usual hordes. Take a few ladies that you can trust.”

  “Will you come with me? I’m … somewhat afraid.”

  “I will come, Despoina. For a while. But we must come back, before … before …”

  “Before the very end,” she said, understanding. “You can’t let me die … where he doesn’t see it. He’d be so distraught, he might … anyway, he would want … to say goodbye.”

  “We are agreed, then.”

  “Agreed.”

  Theodora lay thinking: It will be hard for me, to go now. But I must do this for Justinian. He must be spared as much sorrow as possible.

  The flotilla that accompanied the Empress to Hieron was considerably smaller than usual. No administrative officials went along. No guests were invited, not even close relatives. No regiment of chefs, no huge stocks of food. No entertainers, dancers, or musicians, except for one harpist. Only Theodora’s most trusted ladies-in-waiting were to go with her, and the minimum of servants. Just a few slaves. Narses was sorely distressed when he was told to stay behind.

  “But Despoina! I should be with you!”

  “No, Narses. The Emperor needs … his Grand Chamberlain. Your place is with him.”

  “You will need me,” he protested. “I should come with you. Please, Despoina …”

  “No. We each have our duty.” She coughed. “Mine is to go. Yours is to stay.”

  He stood frowning, silent but mutinous.

  “Aetios will come with me.”

  Aetios received a murderous glare.

  “You must stay, Narses. It is … an order.”