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

by Marié Heese

  Soon the news came that Belisarius had sent Bloody John out to attack fortresses at Auximum and Urbinum. John, however, judged both to be too difficult to capture and instead pressed on to Ariminum, which he captured at first assault.

  “Gross disobedience! One should be angry, but it may just have a useful result,” said Justinian. “Since Ariminum lies but a day’s march from Ravenna, perhaps Witigis will fear for the safety of the Gothic capital. This might cause him to raise the siege.”

  Witigis raised his siege of Rome on 12 March 538. His troops burned their camps to the ground, reported Procopius: Their siege engines, temporary huts and even the palisades went up in flames and were reduced to cinders. The dispirited Goth army has retired north-eastwards toward Ravenna. I doubt that one will find another instance in the annals of war where so large a city was defended for such a long time by a garrison so drastically outnumbered.

  “Belisarius has done it again,” said Justinian. “As one expected him to.”

  Chapter 9: We have built for the ages

  While the war in Italy did not always proceed as the Emperor wished it to, at home in Constantinople there was reason for rejoicing. One afternoon Justinian came to the Daphne Palace where Theodora was resting. His face, for some time now set in sad and tired lines, had suddenly taken on a far happier cast.

  “What are you doing today?” he asked. Not waiting for an answer, he went on, “I want you to come with me.”

  “Right now?”

  “Right now.”

  “What are we going to do?”

  “You know that the Holy Wisdom will be inaugurated tomorrow?”

  “Of course. I have had a lecture from Narses about protocol.”

  “I want us to go and look at it now. Without all the people. Without all the pomp and ceremony. I want to show it to you. Don’t bring a whole entourage. Just come.” He spoke with urgency and energy.

  “I’ll be ready in a minute.”

  Soon they were on their way in a nondescript carriage, not the splendid official one that would convey them on the following day. Only two Imperial guards rode with them. The newly rebuilt cathedral was not very far from the bronze gates of the palace complex, but they could not simply walk. There had been considerable fuss about this unscheduled outing, but Justinian had swept all objections from indignant staff aside, and firmly refused any further escorts. It was a bright, crisply chilly winter’s day. Theodora, wrapped in a furlined cloak, suddenly felt the way she had as a child when her father smuggled her into the Hippodrome to see the chariot races: slightly guilty but filled with heart-racing anticipation.

  The carriage took them up to where the Hagia Sophia reigned: on the top of the first hill of Constantinople, at the tip of the peninsula, with water, glittering in the sunlight, on three sides – the Sea of Marmara, the Bosphorus and the Golden Horn. There the newly completed church stood: a dominating, powerful presence, with its hulking masses of vaults and half-domes piling up to the huge central dome. The outside walls gleamed with fresh stucco, smoothly applied over the brickwork.

  This, thought Theodora, is our Imperial response to the injury of the Nika riots for all to see and marvel at – and we have not merely rebuilt what was. This is an emphatic statement of power, expanded and triumphant. Let it be noted, now and in future; we have built for the ages.

  Justinian handed his wife down and said to the guards: “Stay outside. We want to go in alone.”

  “But Despotes …”

  “This is a church,” said Justinian. “We will be safe. Stay outside. That is an order.”

  An army of workers were at it, sweeping and scrubbing and watering down the entire surrounding area and nearby streets. Ropes of white and green flags and green garlands were being nailed to poles and arches. After the last artisan had finally downed tools, cleaning up must have gone on for days. Every last vestige of the building activities – mortar-mixing containers, scaffolding, ladders, unused marble, left-over bricks, glass shards, mosaic-fixing glue, worn-out brushes and general building detritus – had been carted away. Justinian and Theodora walked across the paved courtyard toward the three high arches of the western entrance and through the imposing central double doors.

  Inside, they encountered several workers washing the marble floor.

  “Here, Kyrios, Kyria, look where you step,” said one buxom woman, furiously wielding a mop. “We don’t need anyone tramping dirt in here again. Worked ourselves to a standstill, we have. Purple carpet’s got to be rolled out soon.”

  “I beg your pardon,” said Justinian courteously. “We just want to have a look.”

  “Right then. And don’t slip, neither. It’s wet.” She wiped her forehead with her arm, leaving a streak of dust.

  “We’ll be careful.”

  “It’s a marvel,” she called out to their backs as they walked by. “Bloody great silver iconostasis, acres of it. Don’t know who they think’s going to polish it. Won’t be me.” Vigorously, she attacked the next dirty spot.

  “I’ll wager you didn’t think of that,” said Theodora.

  “No,” he admitted. “But I’m sure somebody has the problem well in hand.”

  Through the atrium and the narthex they walked, past majestic colonnades of polychrome marble and walls covered with brilliantly gilded mosaics. Then they reached the gigantic nave. To the north and south they could see side aisles with galleries over them, covered by vaults, carried at both levels by monolithic columns of green and white marble and purple porphyry. The capitals were engraved with the initials J and T. At the eastern end of the nave, the enormous silver iconostasis behind the altar shone.

  Theodora did not need to walk right up to the altar to know what was inscribed on it, for she and the Emperor had composed it themselves, had pored over it by lamplight, thought hard about the right wording, argued, changed phrases, rewritten and polished it. At last they had agreed on a statement that reflected their shared belief in one faith and one church:

  We, your servants Justinian and Theodora, offer to you, oh Christ, what is yours from what is yours. May you accept it benevolently, oh Son and Word of God who became incarnated and were crucified for us. Keep us in your true faith, and increase and protect this empire that you have entrusted to us for your glory, with the intercession of the holy Mother of God, the ever-Virgin Mary.

  No, they had not come to look at the inscription. They had come to look at the completed basilica, but mainly they had come to see the vast, incredible dome that spanned the nave. The two of them stood still, hand in hand, staring up. The afternoon sun streamed in through the corona of arched windows just below it, so that it was flooded with light, like a colossal golden shell, and it appeared to be floating without support. Miraculously.

  Theodora drew in her breath. She knew she was looking at a mathematical and engineering and architectural feat never before achieved in the history of the world. Yet also, she thought, it was vision and courage expressed in brick and stone: Justinian’s vision and courage. And his unswerving tenacity.

  Justinian flung out his arms toward the mystical light above him and exclaimed: “Solomon, I have outdone thee.”

  In that moment, Theodora was suffused with a wave of love for this extraordinary man whom she had married. And she found that she had regained her capacity to be glad.

  A joyous sound suddenly soared into the vast, empty building where, the next day, five thousand people would be congregated. For a moment it seemed to Theodora that the cathedral itself had found a voice and begun to sing. But then she realised it was a choir of monks practising for the inauguration. The pure chant rang out, thirty voices combined into one supple instrument.

  “Make a joyful noise unto the Lord, all ye lands,” sang the choir. “Serve the Lord with gladness: come before his presence with singing.”

  Theodora shivered, her arms covered with gooseflesh. Justinian looked down at her with a radiant face.

  “Know ye that the Lord he is God: it is he th
at hath made us, and not we ourselves; we are his people, and the sheep of his pasture. Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.”

  The choirmaster clapped loudly. The sharp sound echoed in the vast enclosed spaces. The voices trailed off. “No, no,” he called out. “Articulate, everybody, articulate. The sound is good, but we must hear the words. Again, from ‘Enter into’. Watch me. One, two.”

  “Enter into his gates with thanksgiving, and into his courts with praise: be thankful unto him, and bless his name.” The sound swelled into a glorious paean: “For the Lord is good; his mercy is everlasting; and his truth endureth to all generations.”

  “Amen,” said Theodora.

  The numerous and extensive rebuilding projects and ongoing warfare demanded that the Imperial treasury should be fattened with taxes and tribute from inside the borders of the Empire and also from the vassal states. In the year after the Holy Wisdom cathedral was completed, the Armenians rebelled against the continuing heavy taxation. Since Belisarius was engaged on the Italian front, Justinian dispatched General Sittas to quell the uprising. He had not been gone long when a courier brought the awful tidings: the general had been killed in action in Armenia.

  Theodora went at once to the villa in Sykae which was the general’s home when he was on leave. She found her sister staring disbelievingly at a scroll bearing a military seal. Her thick golden-brown tresses had been cut very short, and stood out around her head like a lion’s mane.

  “Oh, Comito! You’ve cut your beautiful hair!” Somehow the sight of the cropped poll made Theodora cry harder than she had at the news of Sittas’s death.

  “Well, I’m a widow, what do you expect?” Comito’s tone was angry. “And I wasn’t even there when they buried him. I must do something … to show …”

  “I’m so sorry,” said Theodora. “I’m so very sorry, Comito darling!”

  “He’s been properly interred, I’m reliably informed,” her sister went on, still in the same fierce manner, “by this officer who was at his side when he was killed. He’s been put in a xenotaph with an inscribed stele. And the funeral oration was very moving. I am told.”

  “Is that … who wrote …”

  “An officer named Rufus,” said Comito, squinting at the scroll. “Listen to this. I can’t believe it. He writes: Owing to the roughness of the terrain, full of ridges and precipices, the force under General Sittas had become dispersed, and we had been cut off from the main body of men. So it happened that we were isolated on the side of a ravine, facing a party of Armenians, also on horseback as we were. With the General in the lead, we crossed the ravine and advanced against the enemy. The Armenians retired some distance and came to a stop. General Sittas, believing that we had driven off the enemy, stuck his spear into the ground and removed his helmet.

  “Now one of the Armenians recognised the General and cried his name, and they realised that he had with him but a few men. So then the enemy rallied, and attacked the General with great eagerness. A soldier who overtook him in the ravine, struck his head with a glancing blow of his sword and sliced off his whole scalp …

  “Oh, my God!” said Comito. She closed her eyes for a moment, then went on reading, with a kind of desperate determination to plough through the entire terrible narrative.

  “Bleeding profusely, the General continued to press forward with his sword in hand, valorous to the bitter end, but he was blinded by his own blood. Finally, it was a sword-thrust from the hand of the General Artabanes, a Persarmenian aristocrat – that’s good to know, that’s a comfort to me: an aristocrat! – that killed the General. I regret to inform you, Kyria, that the wound was in his back. Death came quickly. Yet I felt, truly, that he deserved to die a better death. A better death!” Comito dashed furious tears from her eyes. “What is it, with these soldiers! Oh, why didn’t I marry a merchant who risks nothing more than his wealth!”

  Theodora went to stand beside her sister, holding the furry head against her breast. “You’d have been bored by a merchant,” she said. “You loved him because he had a soldier’s qualities.”

  “Yes, it’s true. And his daughter takes after him,” said Comito, with a sobbing laugh. “Sophia is just as tough and uncompromising as her father was. Even at … even at … only nine.”

  “Will you stay on here?” asked Theodora. “By yourself? It’s a huge villa to be alone in. You’d be welcome in the palace …”

  “No, no. I’m not about to join your horde of refugees. I’m capable of being here by myself … not that I ever am alone, with this huge household. I’ve been here without a husband often enough.”

  “He has been away a lot, hasn’t he?”

  “I suppose I could have gone with him on campaign,” said Comito, “like Antonina. But I’m not cut out for that. I can’t ride a horse. Would’ve had to be carried in a litter. Or driven in some kind of bloody cart. I couldn’t …” She stopped, to draw breath. “Ah, well. I should have expected this. A soldier, after all. Only, it was so soon. So sudden, and so soon.”

  “How long were you together? Nine, ten years?”

  “Married, almost ten. Together? If you add it up … probably no more than three.”

  “I’m sorry,” reiterated Theodora, feeling useless.

  “So. Now I’ll be the widow of General Sittas. You know, Theodora, we came up in the world, we certainly did, thanks to you. But we’re still defined by men. Stasie, by herself, is nothing. Now she’s the Senator’s wife. Quite something, and proud of it. Me … I was once the mistress of Anicius. Then I was the wife of Sittas. Now I’ll be the Widow Sittas, and do good works.” She ran her fingers through her cropped mane and sighed.

  “You could help me with my charities,” suggested Theodora. “My Metanoia convent …”

  “Heavens, not that! I couldn’t face all those so-called reformed prostitutes, me with my background, and keep a straight face.”

  “One can overcome one’s antecedents,” said Theodora frostily.

  “Oh, right, you’ve done that, haven’t you? You’re the one of the three of us who’s become a person in her own right. The gracious Empress. And yet, if Justinian were to die, who would you be? Would you even survive?”

  “Don’t say such things,” said Theodora.

  “Probably have to marry someone else,” said Comito. “Double-quick, like our mother.”

  “Don’t even speak of it,” said Theodora. “You’re tempting fate.”

  “What a pagan concept, my dear sister!”

  “I have to go back now,” said Theodora, feeling that she was not achieving anything. “My carriage …”

  Comito got up hurriedly and flung her arms around her small sister. “I’m glad you came,” she said. “Thank you. I’ll be all right soon. Just have to get used to it.”

  “We usually do,” said Theodora. “We cope.”

  In the Hormisdas Palace, Theodora’s religious refugees remained untroubled by outside events. She still visited them at regular intervals; then she went to see Chrysomallo and Indaro, who besides being links to her past, were good friends to whom she could say anything. That was where she would seek comfort when she was seriously upset. As she was when Justinian announced, in 538, that he had decided to make John of Cappadocia a consul of the Empire, in recognition of his huge contribution to the Imperial economy.

  “Consul! It is a position of too much power,” she said. “It is dangerous, for a man like that, to be so honoured. He’s immensely arrogant as it is.”

  “You don’t have any proof that he’s not to be trusted, do you?” asked Indaro. “No way to turn Justinian against him?”

  “No definite proof, no. Of course I have him watched. I have regular reports on what he does and says. Do you know what he said when he heard that Saint Sabas had refused to pray for me? Refused to petition God to give me a child?”

  “No. What did he say?”

  “He roared with glee, and said, ‘God
forbid that another such as she should issue from her womb.’”

  “Bastard,” said Chrysomallo. “He makes me sick. Can’t you think up a plan to get rid of him?”

  “I would if I could. But he brings in the taxes.”

  “Isn’t the treasury stuffed full, with all the gold from Africa?”

  “No, it’s not enough. The war’s taking so long, and we’re building so much. And there are Justinian’s promises he made to Jerusalem.”

  “The Cappadocian is unbelievably gross. Yet do you know, he has such a lovely daughter, sweet and gentle, and one would swear well bred,” said Chrysomallo. “Hard to believe she is his child.”

  “How did he manage that?”

  “His wife was a fine woman. Died in childbirth, though. The girl’s been brought up by a very strict aunt, and schooled by nuns.”

  “Have you met her?”

  “Indaro and I used to do performances at his villa.”

  Cappadocian John’s consular celebrations outshone all such festivities that had gone before. He could not altogether equal Belisarius in the splendour of his largesse, but he made sure that the festivities would be far grander. Farming in the provinces had recovered with the reinstatement of adequate transport and the blessing of clement weather, and John had contacts across the country. A positive armada of supply carts descended on Constantinople, loaded to the gunwales with fruit, vegetables, tottering piles of carcasses destined for venison pies, and stacked cages holding squawking chickens, cackling geese and honking ducks. Hordes of pigs, goats and oxen were driven bleating and lowing to the slaughterhouse. Enough beer was brewed to fill all the cisterns in the city designed to withstand a year-long siege.