long before they reached the outer region of the city, where there were only stretches of untilled land covered in bushes and weeds, her legs began to ache and she felt desolate again, and when they finally came to a halt at the cemetery with its rows of slabs like beds of stone, she was once more in tears. The men manoeuvred the coffin into place. The priest spoke words that blew away over her head. No miracle, she thought sorrowfully. The Lord Jesus hadn’t made a miracle.
She looked up at the colossal ramparts, the thick walls that ringed the city, part brick, part stone, edged with moats and crowned with tall towers at intervals. The Walls of Theodosius, her father had told her. The figures of the guards on watch looked small against the massive battlements. The mourners chanted as the coffin began to sink into the gaping hole. Fat Rosa’s voice soared into a piercingly sweet descant above those of the rest of the choir. Then, just as the grave-diggers bent to their shovels and the first clods thudded onto the coffin, the harsh, brassy notes of trumpets rang out.
Theodora whispered to her mother: “How do they know?”
“What? How do … who?”
“How do they know Father is being buried now? The trumpet-players?”
“No, sweetheart, it has nothing to do with … with this. It’s a fanfare for the changing of the guard up there,” the widow whispered.
“Oh,” she said, disappointed. “I thought it was for Father.” She felt that there should be something more than men simply shovelling in earth. They should have meant the fanfare for him.
At last it was all done. Now there was the long road back. Theodora sighed and began to trudge, dragging her feet. It suddenly seemed a very long way home. And she was the smallest person in the whole procession. It wasn’t fair. Then a large hand enfolded hers.
“T-tired, little one?” It was Peter.
“Yes.” She could not keep her voice from quavering.
“C-can I carry you?”
She peered up at him. “Yes, please?”
His powerful arms grabbed her and she let out a shriek as she found herself hoisted right up into the air and settled on his broad shoulders with her legs dangling down his chest.
“Hold on to m-my hair,” he advised, and she clutched at his wiry brown curls that smelled a bit like dog. He held her ankles and strode forward. Ah, this was good, this was the way to travel! Better than a sedan chair, she thought triumphantly. Now she was high up, almost as high as the crosses on the roofs, and she could see over the fences and into windows and clear across the orchards and fields. She could see a woman kneading bread in her kitchen and another one milking a cow in her back yard and others drawing water from a well. She could see a man chopping at weeds with a hoe. She could look down on all the mourners, even her mother whose wavy hair, worn loose as a sign of mourning, bobbed on her shoulders, and she was much higher than Comito, who was always taller than she was because she was older and grew faster anyway. She thought: I am higher than everybody. Even higher than the priests. She wriggled with delight. Peter tightened his grip.
“Be c-careful,” he said. “You don’t want to f-fall.”
“Oh no,” she said. “Oh no. I’m holding on. Tightly.”
“What are you going to do?” Fat Rosa sat in their front room and fed Stasie bread soaked in milk. “Do you have family that might support you? Parents or a brother maybe?”
“Nobody,” said Anastasia shortly. Rosa irritated her, but she could hardly afford to make an enemy of her. The woman meant well. And she helped with the children. “This is not our city. It is not our country, in fact. We … we came from Syria. My husband had a brother who lived here, he was a businessman, he had a house … a good house, we thought he might have room … while we … but …” She struggled to control her breathing.
“Ah. Well, what about him?”
“He’s dead,” said Anastasia. “He died just before we arrived, he and his wife both, of a flux, they told us. Some said a servant they had angered poisoned them, but I suppose it was just … bad water, or something. Anyway, they were dead. Acasius managed to get the job at the Hippodrome.” She didn’t add that it was her last few gold coins, which she had sewn into her cloak when they fled, that had helped to convince Asterius of her husband’s suitability for the post.
“And there’s no one else? Not even a cousin?”
“Not a soul,” said Anastasia.
“Mmmm. I suppose you don’t earn enough yourself to keep out of the almshouse.”
“No,” said Anastasia.
“Convent for the girls, then. Or adoption, perhaps? It’s lucky they’re pretty,” observed Rosa judiciously, combing her fingers through Stasie’s brown ringlets. “Somebody’s sure to want them.”
“No!” yelled Anastasia. “No, and no, and no! I’ll not go to the almshouse, I’ll not go to a convent and I’ll not give my girls away!” She glared at Rosa.
“Well, excuse me, I’m sure,” said the woman, affronted. “I was just–”
“We’ll manage,” stated Anastasia. “Church charity will help. Even if I am an actress, and everybody thinks I’m a whore as well, I’m still a member of the church. And … I’ll … I’ll … think of something.”
Rosa had set the child down and hauled herself to her feet. She looked Anastasia up and down with a leer. “I’m sure you will,” she nodded and departed majestically. “Oh, no doubt, you will.” An aroma of soap and the goose grease with which she rubbed her hands remained behind.
“Cow,” spat Anastasia, and hurled a milk-jug at the wall. Stasie began to wail. Her mother gathered her up and held her tightly, rocking and hushing her. She didn’t feel able to cope with one of the child’s full-blown attacks of misery. Despite her brave words to Rosa, she had no idea what she might do. The steady centre of her precarious world had been ripped out. She had to hold the tattered remnants together with an act of will. Each night since her husband died, she had lain in her empty bed, alone and lonely, trembling with longing, helpless with fear.
Now she was suddenly filled with fury. “How could you do this to me, Theophilus?” she groaned aloud, using the old name for Acasius, his real name, the name that had belonged to a Syrian Christian priest who was a man of substance with standing in the community, not a lowly bearkeeper who earned barely enough to keep them from penury. Who had to humble himself before an upstart like Asterius the Dancing Master. Who had been torn to pieces by a bear, when he should have known better than to go so near to it. “Oh, God, I should have had a son!”
Comito, her eldest daughter, who had just turned six, looked at her with tears in her eyes. “Will we have to be adopted, Mother?” she asked fearfully. “Will we go to a … to a kind family? Will we?”
With Stasie on her arm, Anastasia dropped to her knees next to Comito and Theodora where they sat side by side on a narrow cot against the wall. She gathered all three her small daughters to her and inhaled their warmth, their scent of milk and bread and the goat’s cheese that had been their supper. She buried her face in Comito’s hair, a tousle of chestnut curls so like her own. Her hands curled themselves around the arm of one daughter, the solid little leg of another, as if to prevent them from being torn away that very
