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

  He would pick her up effortlessly and carry her over to the turned-down bed. Squeals and laughter, a deep rumble and a lighter, joyous range of notes, would emanate from behind the ornately carved doors. Most of the time the excubitors on guard outside gazed into the middle distance, maintaining their imperturbable poses. Only occasionally, exchanging glances, the older man would respond to the younger one’s flush of hot embarrassment with a sardonic leer.

  By the time autumn came to Constantinople, a great deal of restoration had been achieved, and the life of the city returned to its customary rhythms. Justinian had given a general pardon to the survivors of the insurrection. He restored to the children of Hypatius and Pompeius their former titles, and their confiscated property. Once again the racing chariots of the Blues and the Greens duelled in the Hippodrome, cheered on to victory by supporters who seemed unaware that the shout of “Nika!” had, for a brief and bloody period, united them in rebellion against the crown. They were opponents once again, but in a disciplined manner. No longer did the vicious partisan gangs who had infested the streets prey on the populace. Order reigned.

  Justinian was busier than ever, overseeing the rebuilding of several great edifices. This activity created many jobs, absorbing large numbers of the poor who had participated in the attack on the throne because they were hungry and desperate.

  “We’re making remarkable progress,” he reported to Theodora. “And I’ve decided to reinstate my key people. Now we’ll really get things done.”

  “Which key people?” she asked, suspiciously.

  “Eudaemon,” he said. “Best praetorian prefect this city has had. I admit he misjudged popular sentiment during the uprising, but now everyone has calmed down. He’ll keep the peace in future.”

  “And?”

  “And Tribonian.”

  She frowned.

  “He’ll know better than to accept any more bribes – I’ve given him strict instructions to apply justice according to the law. But there’s no one better, nor even half as good as he is to lead my legal commission.”

  “Well, he did get the Codex done in short order,” conceded Theodora. “I didn’t think it would be humanly possible to sort out the tangle of laws so quickly. If at all.”

  “See, he has both the knowledge of the law and the ability to cut to the essence.”

  “Mmm,” said Theodora. “Two out of the three officials you dismissed during the riots back in office? Is that wise?”

  “Three out of three,” he said.

  “You haven’t reinstated Cappadocian John?” she demanded in alarm. “Surely not him!” We were warned, she thought. The sibyl warned against this. But Justinian would not heed the words of such a woman.

  “My dearest, we are in dire need of funds. I need his fearless efficiency. Taxes must be collected.”

  “That man is dangerous,” said Theodora. “You will regret it.”

  “We can’t rebuild without funds. Nor can we wage war on the Vandals. I’ve not given up my dream of expansion. One can’t govern without money, and that’s the simple truth.”

  “You promised,” said Theodora. “You promised the people that those three would be dismissed.”

  “A promise made under duress,” said Justinian. “It is not binding.”

  “Narses says Cappadocians are always bad, worse in office, even worse with money – and worst of all when riding around in a grand official carriage.”

  “I need him,” insisted Justinian. “Gross though he is, our financial needs are paramount. He stays.”

  Chapter 3: Impostors

  “A young man has arrived with an extraordinary claim, Despoina,” said the Chief Usher, who arranged audiences with the Empress and managed her daily programme. “Completely unheard of. Yet I thought … maybe … I should repeat his message.”

  “Claim? What do you mean?”

  The man looked extremely embarrassed. “It is … truly very strange. I almost sent him packing, but then I thought … well, I did not know …”

  “Stop dithering,” said Theodora, “and tell me what this is all about.”

  “He claims … he claims to be …”

  The usher swallowed and stared down at his boots.

  Theodora frowned. “What does he claim?”

  “That he … that he … is your son, Despoina.”

  “He claims what?”

  “That he is your long-lost son, Despoina.”

  Theodora shuddered. “I have no son,” she said. “That is well known. How on earth can he … does he … support this … this ridiculous …”

  “He says he was born to you here in Constantinople, when you were fifteen, just becoming a stage star. But his father … he took him away to Egypt, from where he has now returned to look for … for the, ah, the mother he never knew.”

  A huge wave of heartache almost swamped Theodora, catching her unawares. She found it necessary to sit down. She took a deep breath, fighting for her usually firm self-control and regal poise.

  “Despoina? This is an impostor, of course? Shall I send him away?”

  “Yes … No, no … I don’t know …” Her thoughts were jumbled. She had to find out, if she could, who was behind this. “Have him wait. And – and – tell Narses to interview him. And then he should report to me.”

  “Yes, Despoina. Immediately, Despoina.” He was clearly relieved to have passed on responsibility.

  Theodora sat, dumb and stricken. There was nobody to whom she could speak of this. Not one living soul in the world knew exactly why the arrival of this youth with his impertinent story was so very hard for her to bear. Certainly everybody was aware of the fact that she had only the one child, a daughter she had borne to Hecebolus, whose mistress she had been in the African Pentapolis. Everybody also knew, of course, that she greatly desired a son and had tried every possible method to promote conception, including a trip to the Asclepion in Bithynia. A spectacular progress, that had been, and the physicians there had tried every conceivable remedy, but in vain.

  She cringed at the memory of the many avid faces who had watched her abase herself before the holy man, St Sabas, who had come to Constantinople to plead for funds to restore Jerusalem. The triclinium had been full of courtiers, officials, guards, petitioners and general hangers-on when she descended from her throne chair on the dais to kneel on the hard marble and beg the saint to pray that she would conceive. Yes, she thought, there had been plenty of people who could repeat the delicious tale of her humiliation when the holy man refused her plea since he considered her religious beliefs to be heretical.

  But even though these things were widely known, there was yet more. Known only to her mother, who was dead, and to Fat Rosa the washerwoman, who was dead also.

  Narses found her pale and shaken.

  “This is dreadful, Despoina,” he said. “I was not told. I would not have …”

  “It is diabolical,” she said. “Have you seen him? How old is he?”

  “No longer a child,” he said, “but not more than a youth. He says he is eighteen.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “He has black hair, and dark eyes. And he is slightly built.”

  Somebody has chosen this impostor well, she thought. She could have borne a son of that description. It would seem plausible.

  “He grew up in Alexandria. Never had a mother, he says, he thought she had died giving birth to him. His father and his grandmother brought him up.”

  “So? What made him come here, now, with this …”

  “His father died. And then a man came to see him, and told him that he was the son of the Empress of Byzantium.”

  “Does he believe this himself, do you think? Or is he part of a plot to discredit me?”

  “He looks naïve,” said Narses. “I think he would very much like to believe it. He probably dreams of a life of luxury and ultimate power. Understandable. Had he truly been your son, after all, would the Emperor not perhaps adopt him?”

  “
And how has it been explained to him? What does he think happened?”

  “This man who came to see him – a military man, he says – told him that his father had slept with the Empress when she was a young girl who performed on stage … but had taken him away because he … he did not trust her with a child. And she just wanted to be rid of him.”

  “It is diabolical,” she said, again. She kept her arms folded tightly across her chest, as if to hold herself together.

  “The timing, unfortunately, fits. His age, I mean. If you had had a child at fifteen …”

  She said: “People will be only too willing to believe this. There are many who would be eager to believe any vile calumny about me. They have never stopped gossipping about me. Have they?”

  “There are those that remember,” he said carefully, “that you were an actress, Despoina.”

  “Yes, and they remember my lewd pantomime with the geese,” she said. “And they think I was a whore. Do you think I was a whore, Narses?”

  His usually imperturbable face quivered. “No, Despoina.”

  “I had this act, you see … Did you ever witness it?”

  “No, Despoina.”

  “It was lewd in the extreme. Geese used to peck up grain from between my legs. I appeared to be naked, but in fact I wore a flesh-coloured linen shield. Then I would mime sexual ecstasy.”

  “I have heard tell of it,” he admitted.

  “On the stage, my performance was shameless and abandoned. Yet off the stage I was an ordinary girl. Ordinary and naïve. I fell pregnant to Gaius Lepidus, and yes, I was only fifteen.”

  “The champion charioteer?”

  “Yes. He would not acknowledge the child, would not marry me, would make no provision.”

  “And you were poor.”

  “Yes, very. And my mother was ill. I could not bear that child. We were going hungry as it was.”

  “Despoina, you need not …”

  “I will tell you,” she said. Not even to Justinian could she speak of this. He knew who and what she had been, but he did not know of this. Even to her close female friends she had not told it. But Narses, Commander of the Palace Guard, was a eunuch. Somehow that fact seemed to make him a safe confidant about such matters. Also she had come to place absolute trust in him. She felt that he was more than an official; he was her friend. “I aborted that child,” she said. “Does the general gossip include a story about that?”

  He avoided her eyes. “They say all kinds of rubbish, Despoina.”

  “Do they say that? Answer me!”

  “They say … they say … that when you were young, you fell pregnant many times. But … but … I have never credited it, Despoina.”

  “Many times,” she said. “And aborted every one. Murdered all my sons.” Her black eyes glittered with unshed tears.

  “They are ignorant, and malicious, Despoina.”

  “Yes, what do they know? I murdered only the one.”

  “Despoina …”

  “Fat Rosa helped me,” she said. “Gave me some witch’s brew she had from her grandmother. It was early on, I didn’t know … I thought it was just …” She sat staring at a brilliantly coloured mosaic on the palace wall, but what she saw was another image altogether: Blots of clotted blood on the tiled floor of Fat Rosa’s apartment. Amid the red slick, a tiny form. A tiny mannikin. A head, disproportionately large, emerging from a kind of transparent sac, complete with features that might have been formed in clay: blind eyes, a nose, a mouth. Tiny arms and legs that ended in stumpy, club-like hands complete with fingers. A vestigial member. She had screamed at the sight. If only she could eradicate that image, like taking a hammer to a wall mosaic and utterly destroying it. But she did not have a hammer with the power to obliterate that dreadful memory.

  “I had a son,” she said. “But I murdered him. I could not have done that more than once.”

  His face was doleful. “Circumstances, Despoina …”

  “Yes, circumstances cause things to happen. The Church teaches us that we have free choice. In my experience, you know, I have not often felt that I had free choice.”

  “I understand you were … a courtesan. From necessity.”

  “I had two … no, actually three protectors,” she said. “First there was Darius Pollo. Then I went to Apollonia, in the African Pentapolis, with Hecebolus. He promised to marry me. I was going to be the governor’s lady.”

  “He was the father of Juliana?”

  “Yes. She was the one good thing that came of that. But he turned out to be jealous and violent. He almost killed me, but his major domo saved me and the palace priest took me to the nuns in Alexandria. And then I was … briefly … with a soldier. Just to … just to get … home.”

  “But that life is behind you now, Despoina. The Emperor adores you.”

  She nodded, remembering Justinian’s words when first she came to the palace. He had quoted St Augustine: No one can ever control your will, even if they are able to control your body. If the soul is pure and virtuous, then it cannot be lost, even if the body is violated. His understanding, when she had expected judgement and rejection, had been the most precious gift she could ever have desired. Nonetheless, she could never feel entirely at ease.

  “Yes, he does. But try though I may, I cannot finally put that life behind me. I still feel, sometimes, like an impostor. As if at any minute all this …” she gestured around her, “… may disappear. May be taken away from me.”

  “The throne is stable now,” said Narses.

  “But there will always be those who plot and scheme,” she said. “And find ways to frighten and humiliate me. Like this … this episode, sending a supposed son.”

  “I understand how painful it must be,” said Narses.

  “People might believe this,” she said. “If it became known. It is a cruelly brilliant idea. I wonder who put the boy up to it. For sure he did not think of it himself. Who has a mind capable of this?”

  “Perhaps the name is an indication,” suggested Narses. “John.”

  “John? Ah, you mean the Cappadocian?”

  “It has his signature,” said Narses. “I suspect, also, that he is behind an increase in damaging tales about your past, Despoina.”

  She nodded thoughtfully. “Very likely.” She thought, it is as the sibyl said, he is waging war by underhand and devious means. “Well, send the youth away. I will not speak to him. I cannot bear to look at him. But Narses …”

  “Yes, Despoina?”

  “Make it clear to him that if he ever shows his face in this city again, he will lose his life.”

  “Yes, Despoina. I guarantee he will not trouble you again.”

  “So,” said Justinian, “the work on the Church of the Holy Apostles goes well?”

  “Remarkably so,” said Theodora. “Anthemius has created a design of great beauty. I’m enjoying this project.”

  “And the company of your handsome young steward,” said Justinian. “Which is plain for all to see.”

  She looked at him in puzzlement. His face was set in dour and disapproving lines. It was not an expression that he had ever turned on her.

  “Areobindus? What do you mean?”

  “There is … talk,” he said.

  “People always gossip about me. I find it best just to ignore them.”

  “You should dismiss him.”

  “But Justinian, I can’t do that! He’s so helpful and efficient! Truly, one can’t let malicious rumours rule one’s life.”

  “So you can’t do without him?”

  “I don’t see why I should.”

  Justinian’s mouth turned into an angry fold, like that of a miser robbed of a solidus. Usually his displeasure, seldom directed at his beloved wife, would melt away in the satisfactions of work and her loving attentions. But this time his anger remained obdurate. He did not seek her company for lunch each day. He did not confer with her about state matters requiring decisions. He did not meet her in the rooms they were accus
tomed to share three nights a week, but kept to his suite in the Sacred Palace, sleeping alone in the Sacred Cubicle, and leaving her to lie awake and terrified in the Daphne Palace where her household was ensconced.

  This rejection reminded her of the coldness Hecebolus had shown in Apollonia when he had tired of her. She remembered how hard she had tried to recapture his love, how she had used all her wiles to seduce him once again, and with what fury he had turned on her when the ship brought gossip from Constantinople, descriptions of her “insatiable lasciviousness”.

  She lay alone in the dark in her plush bed with its gilded posters and silken drapes, its embroidered sheets and plump down-filled pillows, and she trembled. Could she lose the love of Justinian? The prospect filled her whole being with desolation. When Hecebolus rejected her, she had already seen the selfishness, corruption and cruelty that lurked behind his mask of urbane charm. Her fear then had been the loss of prestige and security. Now, divorce would bring about a far greater fall, for she could be stripped of her title and cast into the streets, once more destitute and despised. And yet the tears that slid over her face were not shed because she feared the loss of power. She wept in terror of the loss of love.

  Who had brought this gossip to his ears? Had young Areobindus been bragging about her supposed favours? She suspected the Cappadocian of inventing the lie, but she had no proof. The thought of the wretched man finally dried her tears and pricked her courage. In the dark night she gathered her resolve. She refused to let him destroy her marriage. She would consult Narses, first thing in the morning. He would know what she should do.

  “My husband is so terribly angry with me,” Theodora said. “You must help me. I didn’t realise this matter was serious. Somebody must have filled the Emperor’s ears with poison.”

  “Cappadocian John,” suggested Narses.

  “Probably. No proof, though. I’ll just dismiss the boy, he’s not irreplaceable. But … but … how do I convince the Emperor that there never was anything between us, that he was merely a very useful servant? He won’t believe me now! Oh, Narses! What can I do?”