lacking the blessing of the Patriarch and enacted with a borrowed golden chain fashioned into a makeshift diadem – even so, he had been crowned. But the Empire of Byzantium can have only one emperor.
They had to be executed. So they were. And I saw them taken away like flotsam, drifting out to sea on an ebbing tide, the would-be emperor nothing more than food for nibbling fish.
No, no easy task to unseat a reigning emperor. Justinian has reasserted his right to the throne and his power in utterly convincing terms.
And yet he has been weakened. The formerly unthinkable has been thought, and almost turned to deed: there nearly was another emperor. The populace desired another emperor. So did the great landowners and the nobility, who have never truly accepted a peasant and a former actress and courtesan on the throne. Everybody has considered this possibility: there could be another emperor.
Perhaps this end may yet be striven for, though possibly by other means.
We must be vigilant.
Chapter 1: A particular question
Theodora sat on the terrace of the Hormisdas Palace, a wedding gift from Justinian. Since the Emperor and Empress had other quarters, it currently housed her friends from her acting days who had fallen on hard times – Chrysomallo and Indaro – and many Monophysite religious refugees. It was cold, but she was well muffled in a fur-lined cloak, with her small feet on a foot warmer filled with coals. She always loved to sit here, but now even more so, since the view was out across the Sea of Marmara with the houses of the rich dotted on a slope to the side and there were no blackened ruins to remind her of the convulsion the city had just gone through. No smell of smoke on the clean and salty air. Just heaving water the colour of pewter with white foam glistening where the waves broke on the shore, a vaulted sky white with cloud cover and one black cormorant perched on a rock, drying its wings.
A month and a half had passed since the rioting had ended. The Greens and the Blues, the two semi-military factions that held so much power in the capital, had joined forces in the recent insurrection, but their militant ambitions had been eradicated by the slaughter of thirty thousand rebels in the Hippodrome. A dull calm had settled on the stricken city. But Theodora was still in a state of shock. She had not yet been able to gather her strength to follow her customary routine and to pursue her usual goals. She sat like an invalid, unaware of the outside world, turned inward, nursing her injured spirit.
She felt as if she had been dealt a grievous wound by some powerful, half-tamed creature that she had mistakenly come to trust; a creature she had fed and tended, sheltered and loved. A creature that had turned on her in rage and violence beyond any expectation or understanding and had left her devastated. She felt completely sundered from the people – her people, for whom she had, by her lights, tried to do so much. She did not want to go out and see what had become of her many charitable institutions. She did not want to take part in the regular ceremonial processions in which she had delighted before. She did not want to set one small foot out into the ravaged streets of her beautiful city.
Justinian and Narses were baffled. In their view, the insurrection was over, the ringleaders dealt with, calm and order restored. They were looking forward. She could not explain to them that when she walked out into the streets of her city, or rode in state, she sensed at her back and shoulder the massed spectres of the rebels who had bled and died in the Hippodrome, the silently accusing ranks of the fallen: thousands upon thousands of men – husbands and fathers, lovers and brothers and sons, cut down by the swords of the mercenaries who had fallen upon the uprising because of her words, because of her speech rejecting flight. A horde of phantoms marched behind her, their feet striking no echo on the hard roads: a presence voiceless yet overwhelming, hostile and relentless. She found it unendurable.
Quick, firm footsteps on the flagstones heralded the arrival of Justinian, looking to share his usual frugal lunch with his beloved wife. He put his hands on her shoulders, leaned down and kissed the top of her shining black hair. “Come away, my love,” he said, “It’s much too cold out here.”
They both ate sparingly, and drank only a small amount of wine. His round peasant face was flushed and he was filled with energy. “Only forty-five days since it was burned down, and the rebuilding of the Church of the Holy Wisdom has already begun,” he told her. “Most of the rubble in the city has been cleared away. We are returning to normal.” He spooned up vegetable soup.
He had not, she saw, been shattered by the recent insurrection as she had been. Already his mind was focused on the future, a future he was certain of being able to direct and control. She cleared her throat and forced her voice to achieve a level tone.
“Who has done the design?” she asked.
“I am fortunate,” said Justinian, “in having two men of genius to work on this project. Anthemius – he’s difficult, but brilliant – and Isidorus, who’s practical besides being extraordinarily inventive.”
She frowned. “Are they not university men? My sister used to have them to dinner.”
“Yes, they are. They both know mathematics, and physics, and engineering. But I’ve hired them as architects. They’re not afraid to try new things. This will be a building such as the world has never seen.” He took a bite of fresh bread with his strong white teeth. “In a way, the destruction has served a good purpose. Constantinople can now be magnificently rebuilt.”
She nodded, saying nothing. His enthusiasm had not kindled hers as it usually did. He put a large hand over her small one. “You are very quiet, my love.”
“I am still … somewhat … staggered by what happened,” she said. “It was so dreadful. I can’t believe that the people … that they … have come to hate us so much. We meant to do so much good, for the city, for the Empire …”
“Mistakes were made,” he said. “And mobs have no judgement. They become animals, truly. The slaughter in the Hippodrome was drastic, but it was necessary, to restore order and retain the throne.”
“They were all traitors, weren’t they? Cheering the usurper! I fail to see how they could have dreamed of accepting Hypatius,” she said. “A complete nonentity, and a coward to boot.”
“Well, he’s gone for ever, and so is Pompeius. Nothing more to fear from them. And now that we have stabilised society, we can continue to reign with assurance.”
“Yes. But I feel that there is a wound in the civitas.” She used the Latin term from St Augustine, rather than the Greek they usually spoke, like most of the population. “We have been sundered from our people. It is not good.”
“We will carry out our great projects. Then they will understand that we have their interests at heart.”
“Justinian. We have always striven for the greater good. That’s true, isn’t it? What did we do to deserve such … such …”
“You must look forward, my love. There is no use in looking back. There is much work to be done. It will heal,” he said, “in time.”
Theodora confided in Narses, as she so often did. “The Emperor tells me we must look forward, and of course he is right. But I … I don’t know. I just feel … I need … Oh, I wish my mother was still alive! I need to talk to her.” Despite her effort to remain calm and controlled, two tears slipped down her cheeks.
Narses looked anguished, as always when she was miserable.
“One has heard,” he offered,
