best of all was the Emperor game. Someone in the group of children who took part hid a scarlet scarf which represented the purple which only the Emperor was allowed to wear, and all the rest had to search for it. Whoever found it, tied it on, and became Emperor for the day. Everyone had to serve and obey the Emperor.
Theodora had never before been the one to find the magical scarf, but one day she did find it, hidden under a stone beneath a drainpipe. A narrow edge peeped out at her, a rim of scarlet in the grey background. She pounced on it.
“I’ve found it!” she rejoiced. “I’ve found the scarf! Now I’m the Emperor, and all of you must serve me!”
“You’re just a girl,” objected the scrawny son of the blacksmith, who was as small and thin as his father was tall and muscular. “You can’t be Emperor.”
“Nonsense,” said Theodora, and she looped the bright piece of material around her neck. “There’s no such rule. I have the scarf. I’m Emperor.” She stared the objector down haughtily. “And the first thing you people have to do is to build me a throne.”
Several of the boys grumbled, but such was the power of her black-eyed glare that they did begin to cast around them. They were playing on an empty lot at the end of the street opposite the blacksmith’s shop, with a railing to which horses were often tethered in the shade of a somewhat spindly tree. But there were no horses today.
“In the shade,” said Theodora as she tapped her small foot. “And hurry up about it.”
“Well … we could tip the rain butt over,” suggested the scrawny one. “It’s empty. She could sit on its bottom.”
They up-ended the butt and crowned the new emperor with a garland of yellow flowers picked from a nearby bush – a weed, but no matter. She ascended the throne with the aid of a box that served as a step, folded her hands in her lap and surveyed her kingdom. There was rather a lot of manure about. “This palace needs to be cleaned,” she said regally. “See to it at once.”
Ordered from above, according to the rules of the game, her minions swept her domain with branches.
“Now I should like something to eat,” said the monarch. “Something sweet.” A small girl dutifully brought some dates, which Theodora ate slowly and daintily, ignoring pleading looks. As the afternoon wore on, the game continued: she commanded, they obeyed. When she demanded to be entertained, everyone shared in the jokes, the stories and the laughter.
Finally she clapped her hands. “Now then,” she said, “bring me a goat.”
“Why?”
“Because I want one.”
Her subjects stood in a circle staring at one another. “No! I’m not playing any more,” said the scrawny one. “Go find your own goat. Enough is enough.” He turned to go home.
“You come back here,” ordered Theodora. “I have not dismissed you!”
“This game,” snarled the boy, “is over.” The rest giggled and backed away from her, bowing in exaggerated submission. Then they all fled, their mocking laughter fading down the street.
Theodora was furious. She climbed down stiffly and walked home, still clutching the scarlet scarf. She had decided to keep it. They shouldn’t have it back. She hated to be laughed at.
“Where were you?” Anastasia asked. “What were you playing at?”
“I was the Emperor,” she said. “But they didn’t want me any more. They ran away.”
“Were you a good emperor?” Anastasia ladled out the vegetable soup she had made for supper. It was fragrant with herbs and smelled delicious.
Theodora blinked. In her mind, an emperor was an emperor: a person with all the power who could order everyone else around. A good emperor?
“What makes an emperor good?” asked Comito, hungrily spooning up soup.
“They’re a m-mad, b-bad lot,” grunted Peter with a mouth full of bread. “M-murder their m-mothers. M-make people worship their horses.”
“No, no, they’re not all like that, that was Caligula. He was crazy, yes,” said Anastasia. “But our emperors are Christians now. A good emperor must be close to God. I would think that’s the first thing.”
“Close to God,” Theodora repeated thoughtfully.
“And a good emperor serves the people,” Anastasia went on. “Stasie, you can’t eat soup with your hand.”
“I thought the people are supposed to serve the Emperor,” Theodora said with a frown.
“Well, yes. But the Emperor has a mission, which is to rule well and wisely, to ensure justice and make the kingdom great. So you see, he serves the people too.”
Theodora ruminated on this until she had finished her supper. “Mother, where’s my box?” she asked. She wanted to hide the scarlet scarf before she was made to give it back.
“Box? What box?”
“My sandalwood box. Father used to keep his sharp knives and small tools in it,” said Theodora. The tools had been buried with Acasius, but there had not been room for the box inside the coffin.
“Oh, that box. I gave it to Peter,” said Anastasia. “He needed a box for something.”
Theodora stood and glared from her mother to her stepfather, who was slurping up his second helping. “That was my box,” she said, furiously. “That was my father’s box, and now it is my box, and you had no right to give it to him, and he has no right to have it.” Angry tears glittered in her dark eyes. She had been mocked, and now she felt suddenly, deeply wronged. Her chest heaved with sobs and her voice rose. “He is not my father,” she said passionately. “He came here … he came and he … he takes up all the space, and he uses our father’s things, and he talks too loudly, and he eats too much, and he … he is not my father! And he can’t have my box!” Furious tears streamed down her face. She stamped her foot. “It’s my box! Mine! Mine! Not his! Not his!”
Peter was shocked to be the sudden focus of such grief and animosity. “I d-didn’t know … I’ll g-give it b-back,” he said, humbly. “I’m s-s-s-s-s-s …” His throat worked to no avail.
“Hush,” said Anastasia, alarmed. “Theodora, calm down, behave yourself! You have been extremely rude!”
Theodora wept inconsolably. A suffocating wave of sorrow had engulfed her, at the thought of the tools put away in the coffin, next to the stern face she had loved so much. He had not been stern with her. He had loved her and protected her and taken her to the Hippodrome with him and told her stories and made her wooden toys. And now he had gone, and he would never come home again. Never. Never. She was wrung with longing, and with anger at the interloper.
Comito began to look weepy too. Stasie’s round brown eyes also filled with tears and her lower lip wobbled. Loud, cross voices always made her cry.
“Oh, God,” said Anastasia desperately, and picked up her youngest, who at almost four was amazingly solid, like a small bag of sand, and too heavy to carry around, although she still constantly wanted to sit perched on someone’s hip.
