by Stella Duffy
The ship’s captain snarled at his men every time one of them mentioned the tart from the stage by her more usual name, Theodora-from-the-Brothel. Hecebolus, or his Imperial masters, in paying for this entire journey, had also paid for the entire crew. If the new Governor of the Pentapolis chose to spend the first days of his commission in the arms of that woman, then they were not to judge. And Mistress was as good a name as any if his men needed to address her, though he’d prefer they did not; women were always a distraction, and Theodora was more siren than most. His fierce injunctions to be polite and to acknowledge the woman only in her new role did not, however, stop the captain blessing himself every time he passed her on board, nor did it stop him from offering libations to the sea gods at any opportunity. He asked the Christ’s blessing on the vessel too, of course, but he was a sailor, he’d sailed plenty of seas, including the one in Galilee. It was all very well to assume the Christ had walked on that particular body of water, the Mediterranean was a very different matter, and with a whore on board – no matter what her current job title or how he’d ordered his men to treat her – he wasn’t prepared to take chances, so he enlisted both Neptune and Peter the Fisherman in caring for the safety of his ship.
Not that Theodora minded: as Hecebolus’ mistress she occupied one of the finest cabins on board, and she had her own assistant to take care of any other needs. Chrysomallo had come with her from the theatre. Her friend was very pretty, but that was about all that could be said for her acting and dancing skills, and with no abilities other than her looks and an adequate voice, she had jumped at the chance to leave the company before she was fired anyway. There would be plenty more staff for the Governor’s concubine to take charge of in their residence in Apollonia, but for now one ex-colleague-as-maid, all to herself, and one adequately sized cabin, in which she entertained only Hecebolus, was more than enough for Theodora.
She filled her time with entertaining her lover and ignored the tiny waves of panic whenever she remembered that, for the first time in thirteen years, she had no idea what came next. There were private suppers for the lovers, private rituals performed within the four sloping walls of the cabin or, late at night, on deck, with kind under-lighting provided by the moon’s reflection on a swaying sea. The ship stopped off in several ports along the way, with goods for the captain to pick up and drop off: his cut from the sales and the taxman was a sizeable chunk of his income. Mostly the time on board was one of easy loving and easy laughter for the new couple, and this ease made both Hecebolus and his new mistress kind to their fellow travellers.
Theodora may well have been the whore of her legend, but the sailors found her willingness to pass the time of day with them – especially when their captain wasn’t looking – extremely refreshing. And when the captain was about, her ability to talk to everyone, from lowest cabin boy to her own new master, in the same elegant tone was also impressive. Every now and then, though notably when Hecebolus was otherwise engaged, she gave the seamen a tantalising glimpse of her former life in rather less refined tones, provoking pack laughter and the sailors’ increasingly devoted appreciation. No matter what her new title might be once they arrived in the Five Cities, she was certainly no lady, and they liked her all the better for it.
Theodora was definitely in lust, suspected she might even be in love – though she wasn’t sure she knew that state well enough to judge – and, once she allowed herself to relax into the lack of routine, she found it was possible to actually enjoy doing nothing other than waiting for another day to pass in the warmth of the growing sun. It was only when they were passing the southernmost Cycladic islands that she started to look behind as well as forward. At Sifnos they stopped to pick up silver for trade and various trinkets to adorn Theodora’s fine neck and arms, and at Milos Hecebolus went ashore with several sailors, ostensibly to catch a fresh goat for their supper – which they did – but more specifically to climb one steep hill after another to a hidden temple, there to sacrifice the one goat they did not bring back to eat, offering thanks to local gods, as well as the Christ, for a safe first half of the journey and obeisance for more of the same on the second leg. Slowly Theodora began to acknowledge how much she was leaving behind.
They rounded the long, flat face of Crete and she stood, late one night, on the prow of the ship, alone but for a watchman high above her, crying into the salt water below. Theodora didn’t understand these tears, they were not from physical exhaustion or hunger or anger at an uninterested crowd, this was a sadness that could not be quelled with wine or dancing, the kind of feeling she usually let seep into the church floor and away from her body, from her understanding. Theodora was missing the City. She shook her head, angry at giving in to such a pathetic emotion when so much lay ahead, angry and feeling it regardless. Far off on the Cretan hills she could just make out tiny sparks of light from farmers’ home fires, from herders grazing goats, keeping their night fire warm until the morning, drinking wine in the dark and wild sage tea with the dawn. She would not want their lives, she had never possessed the simple acceptance all farmers must have in facing the elements, but she knew, too, that once away from Crete and out into the really open sea, she would be facing a new world in earnest.
At first she thought the sound came from the island, a slow plaintive flute, perhaps, the long-held note of a young farmer bored with the night and his sleeping animals. Then she heard the same note again, and again, and realised it came from far closer than the dark mass of land. She followed the call back, quietly making her way towards the stern, and there, small as her fist, perched on a pile of carefully folded and stacked sails, was the tiny Skops owl, the one the sailors called the invisible minstrel, heard often in the night and rarely seen. She sat ten steps from the bird and waited. She held her breath, willing it to stay. It let out three more long cries, then, in moonlight turned milky by the thin clouds, she watched it turn its fine head towards her, give out one more low call, and simply lift off from its perch, arcing slowly above the boat and away, back to land.
Many days later, on the last leg of their journey, Crete far behind them and only Africa ahead, Theodora – with Hecebolus’ permission, acknowledging he was her new troupe-master now – danced for the ship’s company while Chrysomallo sang. Neither woman was exhibiting her best skills, Theodora was fully dressed and, with her mouth open to let out the semi-pure notes, Chrysomallo could not offer the finest pose of her perfect face, but the sailors were entertained. Theodora and Chrysomallo were delighted with their applause. The captain led a toast to the women and Hecebolus was praised by all the men for his choice of lady as he grinned and bowed and held his Theodora tight with one arm round her waist, smacking his free hand on his thigh in loud applause.
*
An hour later he was smacking that same hand across Theodora’s back and legs. Like Menander, he knew exactly where to hit so the bruises would not show in public. Theodora and Hecebolus had engaged in play-fighting for sex, more than once, but this was not fun and the third time Hecebolus lifted his hand against her, Theodora backed away.
‘Stop. I don’t like it.’
‘I don’t like you flirting with the entire fucking ship’s company.’
‘It was a show.’
‘It was showing off, and I know you well enough to know you weren’t acting when you sucked up their praise. You loved every minute of it.’
‘Of course I did, you stupid bastard. I like praise. Who doesn’t?’
‘A lady should not enjoy the praise of a bunch of sweaty, dirty working men.’
Theodora stared at him then, ‘I’m sorry?’
‘A lady should not—’
‘But I am not a lady,’ she stopped him. ‘I could act like one. I could be reserved, constantly aware of my status. I could believe myself to be better than those men simply by virtue of being born to a rich father, but then you would never have met me, I would not be here now. You would have found some other theatre trollop to come with you on this
great new adventure. You chose me – I was no different then.’
‘We will arrive in a day or so. It is important to start as we mean to go on, I have to make a good impression in Apollonia.’
‘Hecebolus,’ she said, softening her voice. She looked at this angry, worried young man, the second son of a successful dye merchant, trying to make his own path, away from his family’s demands and constraints, ‘There is nothing I don’t know about making a good impression.’
‘They will talk.’
‘Who?’
‘The crew.’
‘Yes,’ she nodded, explaining. ‘And they’ll say I was kind, pleasant. They’ll say that although I didn’t take off my clothes or sing dirty songs, I gave them an hour of fun. It will be busy, hard work for them when we arrive, they need to let off steam first. Their captain said as much himself, he was grateful. He wasn’t just being polite when he toasted me, I know when men are being polite. He meant it.’
Her lover rubbed his eyes, torn between jealousy and understanding. He tried another tack. ‘Fine, but that’s done. I need you to behave like a lady now.’
‘You mean act like a lady?’
‘If that’s the best you can do.’
‘Oh, I can do far more than that,’ she answered, her own anger rising again as he failed to accept her compassion, to pick up on her conciliatory tone, ‘I could actually be a lady. A real one, elevated in social status as well as pretence, but I’d have to marry a gentleman for that to happen.’ She waited, a half-pause to see if he understood her. His anger was still too high in his face though, and she chose to speak with still more clarity just to be sure. ‘And a gentleman would have to ask me.’
They stared at each other then. She knew he could not ask her to marry him, his father would never forgive him if he did and anyway, the law and too much that lay back in the City made it impossible. Hecebolus was a product and a property of the Empire. Other actresses might do well, in time, with their own money and their own fame, but Theodora had been so well known, it was too soon. She understood that his father would die eventually, Hecebolus knew that her fame would fade, faster for being away from the City, that anything might happen one day: with time in Africa and a chance for her to gain a different status away from the stage, new choices might yet be made. In time. One day. Not now.
In the dark that was nearly morning, and for much of the following day and night, they made love that was nearly anger. Passion with a biting edge, literally, of frustrated hope and muttered disappointment. Neither could change their place in their world, neither wanted to accept that this journey, almost complete, to a new continent and a new life might not make the difference both hoped for. And so they fucked the dark into light through another day and, as the setting sun turned the new world a deep red, they arrived in Africa, each knowing the other a little better, and not necessarily happier to be wiser.
Ten
After a full night and most of a day given to their bodies, the landing was a disappointing return to the real world. When they disembarked in the port of Apollonia, the centre from which the new Governor would rule the Five Cities, the harbour waters were choppy, the moorings littered with rotting vegetable matter and packing materials from the last ship in dock, and the Governor’s retinue that arrived to greet them stood in a slovenly mass of bodies that gradually morphed into a few soldiers, an ageing household master and someone who announced himself as Hecebolus’ new treasurer but who, given his lack of beard and the uncertain timbre of his voice, would have been better used playing Theodora’s understudy.
The messy welcoming party led them along a pitted road that had long lost its Roman elegance, to a house that was little bigger than the tenement where Theodora was raised. True, she and Hecebolus didn’t have to share it with four other families, nor was their water supply from a single well at the far end of the street, but they did need to make space for the servants his status demanded, and the various clerks he would have to employ under his own roof. Overcrowding was a minor problem, compared to the architecture of the place. Theodora had always thrilled to space and light. She adored the openness of the Kynegion stage, the high gallery of Hagia Sophia, had performed in hundreds of private homes where the views from balconies and terraces conformed to the revered Constantinopolitan law that no one home should block the sea view of another. Even in poverty, Theodora had understood that much suffering could be alleviated by light and space, and if she couldn’t have that at home or in the crowded streets of her home town, she had always been able to find it on the Marmara shore, in the expansive arc of an aqueduct, or high on one of the City’s hills. There was virtually no natural light in her new home. The Governor’s dwelling was sensibly made of thick walls, designed to keep out the brutal North African summer heat; it had high narrow windows too, to make it harder for the fine gritty sand to flow in, though flow it did. Even if their home had been staffed by the most accomplished servants, it would have been impossible to keep the place truly clean at this time of year, when the building was daily assailed by a sand so fine and constant it became a solid dust in the air, in the eyes, the throat – and their home was not staffed by the most accomplished servants.
As a star in her own right, Theodora had grown accustomed to good service. In Apollonia though, she was no star, she wasn’t even Hecebolus’ wife. At best she was considered his companion, an assistant perhaps, but not the mistress of the new home, and certainly not someone with the right to order incompetent and insolent servants. It was a mess in which Hecebolus was meant to entertain bishops, play Governor, demand taxes from recalcitrant overlords, all the while carrying out any number of reforms that were bound to alienate the local populace. The residence needed to look like a mini-palace and Theodora, once she overcame her initial disappointment, had plenty of suggestions for ways to achieve this. She was furious that her renovation plans needed to be turned into requests for finances, and her orders to the higher-ranking staff had to go through Hecebolus’ clerk. In Constantinople she had known her place, it was flung in her face by every arrogant patrician wife who caught her husband staring too openly at Theodora’s breasts or was said to applaud too heartily from his private front bench, but she had also been able to carve out a comfortable life from the little she was permitted. She could not marry or legally own property in the City, but she could rent and she could hire a maid who would call her mistress to her face, no matter what she called her in private. In Apollonia it soon became clear that the only time Theodora was called mistress was to differentiate her new job description from the more respected title of wife.
‘They hate me.’
Theodora was lying in Hecebolus’ bed, her narrow frame draped across his much larger torso, her legs twisted into his.
‘Why do you care?’
‘So you agree they do hate me?’
He sighed, his chest rising and falling heavily with the effort of going over this once again. Four months into the job and his concubine’s paranoia was rather less interesting to him than grain yields and tax thresholds and how best to maintain order in the overcrowded Ptolemais ward that looked ready to erupt into street fighting any day.
‘I didn’t say that. I said, why do you care?’
‘I don’t want them to hate me.’
There was a whining note to her voice that Hecebolus was tiring of, especially first thing in the morning.
‘They’re just servants.’
‘Is it wrong to want them to respect me?’
‘My darling girl, for a woman of the stage, you know fuck- all about human nature.’
The last thing Hecebolus wanted was yet another complaining mistress, he’d already left one of those behind in his home town of Tyre, dropped when she started nagging about children and family, and another in Constantinople, deserted when it became clear that he might actually capture the famed Theodora for himself. It had never occurred to him that a girl from the bowels of the Hippodrome would find anything to complain about o
ut here. And there was no chance he’d find an even bearable replacement in Africa. Hecebolus knew the further reaches of the Empire and wasn’t much impressed by what they had to offer in the way of tarts. He needed to get Theodora past this, he wanted his smart-mouthed little acrobat back, his passionate woman – not this grumpy, disappointed girl.
‘Look, this lot, they’re servants in the arse-end of the Empire and the best job they can find is to clean up after you. Of course they’re going to behave like cunts. We’re here to rule them and they hate that too. We come from the City and like any other small-town plebs, they hate that. We don’t think much of their housing and we’ve stated very clearly their furnishing is crap, and whoever the artist was who did that vile mosaic in the dining room should be roasted slowly over a spit of his own making. It would at least make a better meal than the swill we’ve been offered so far.’ She laughed and he went on, ‘You and I appreciate theatre—’
‘They have a theatre,’ Theodora interrupted him.
‘Yes, and they’re so insanely religious that most of them won’t go and the ones who do are treated to some third-rate tour of a show written when my grandfather was a child. We’ve had our pick of good music and fine storytelling in Constantinople; these dogs like cheap wine and flat doughy bread, and falling pissed on their faces counts as entertainment out here.’
‘I don’t mind their bread, it’s good for soaking up what little gravy they serve with the meat.’
‘Fair enough, and we’ve both been known to drink more than our fair share of cheap wine as well …’