Theodora

by Stella Duffy

  All the while Orontes was lecturing, Macedonia had been quietly working her way around the edge of the inner crowd, and she was now positioned directly in front of the shaking woman. Just as Macedonia had predicted, Orontes now upped his pace, his circling became faster, his rhetoric more fevered, with insults shouted directly at Phebe. The crowd were shuffling closer, starting to join in; Orontes heard their engagement and simplified his speech so they could become his chorus. In just a few minutes their responses had shifted from a staggered, individual, murmured agreement to a communal chant – evict the whore, evict the whore. No matter that Orontes had started his oration by explaining she was leaving them: this crowd were determined to expel her first.

  Macedonia nodded to Theodora across the tight circle. Then there was a call from the centre of the courtyard, an ululating cry seemingly set up by the woman around whom so much was happening but actually coming from Macedonia’s closed mouth. It set off all the others and the circle immediately began to buckle in on itself. Orontes slipped backwards, joining his wealthy guests on the safer raised dais at the side, leaving Phebe to the anger of the crowd. In the mess of bodies, Macedonia pulled the confused Phebe away, passing her first to one strategically placed contact, then a second, and then dragging her out of a back entrance, sliding beneath the kicking feet and the angry hands that were clawing in the centre of the courtyard, hungry to grab the traitor. Theodora slipped forward to cover herself with the blanket and take Phebe’s place. There was yelling and shouting, pushing from the outer edges, people fighting to get closer to the centre, to the spot where Theodora now crouched and finally, above it all, she heard a whistle from Macedonia, brief and sharp.

  Theodora waited, one, two, three long breaths, and then, grabbing at the booted foot that was aimed at her face, she stood, knocking her aggressor flat, and threw down the blanket, sending the crowd back several inches in surprise. This was not the woman they had come to attack. Climbing on the shoulders of the closest man she could find, an elder statesman of Orontes’ church, who was so shocked to be touched by a woman for the first time in years, let alone scaled by one, that he stood silent in fear – and not a little pleasure – as Theodora, one foot on his shoulder, the other on his head, called across the horrified crowd, ‘Marcus Orontes, your mistress is gone. The show is over.’

  She then ran across the crowd, lightly stepping from head to shoulder to head, to the main entrance. Years ago she had crossed half the Kynegion audience in the same way, back then the applause had been tumultuous, and Menander’s fury palpable. Now the crowd were momentarily silent in shock, but Orontes’ anger was just as fierce, screaming at his men to grab her, his perfectly elegant tones cracking with rage. Theodora was at the entrance to the courtyard, ready to leap from the last shoulder to the ground, when she was pulled down by several of the young men in the crowd, suddenly brought to their senses by the rage of their leader. It was only the fact that they started arguing over what to do that limited her pain to a fierce slap across the back of the head and a few flailing kicks to her back. One of the young men then pulled his fist back aiming a punch and Theodora brought up her own foot in a blow to his groin. He doubled over, howling in silent agony, as two guards arrived from the outer door and, grabbing an arm each, hustled her into one of the long corridors of the main house, away from the baying mob.

  She could hear Orontes’ voice fading as she was pushed up stairs and through long low rooms. The elder guard was all for throwing her out on the street there and then, leaving her to the anger of their fellow faithful, but the younger insisted Orontes would want to speak to her, find out what was going on.

  Theodora spoke quietly, wincing a little where the blow to her head had made her bite the inside of her cheek, pointing out she was no prisoner.

  ‘No, of course not,’ replied the younger man, with a smile that was not quite as charming as his leader’s, ‘but I don’t imagine it’s entirely safe for you to leave, not just yet. And perhaps you would like a cool drink? You must be tired after all that exertion?’

  Theodora nodded, ‘I would, thank you.’

  She was led to the wide, bright chamber where Orontes greeted his most favoured guests. Exactly where she wanted to be.

  Twenty-Three

  ‘Theodora, what a pleasure. I saw you perform once, years ago.’

  ‘How nice.’

  ‘We were both young.’

  ‘No doubt.’

  ‘We’d heard rumours you were in town.’

  ‘A man of your influence, you’d have been notified the moment I came ashore, surely?’

  Marcus Orontes smiled, ‘Well, it didn’t take long. I gather you underwent a conversion in the desert?’

  ‘I have turned my face more clearly to the Christ, yes.’

  ‘And more clearly away from man? You’re living with the dancer, Macedonia?’

  ‘I have a place in her house.’

  ‘And in her bed, no?’

  Theodora smiled and said nothing. Enjoyable though it might be to engage in verbal sparring with a skilled partner, she really didn’t have time. She was in his house, with guards hovering twenty feet away and a crowd of followers furious that they hadn’t seen their promised spectacle this afternoon. Theodora wasn’t here to fight with Orontes or his people.

  He preached, she listened. He mocked, she smiled. She smiled, he liked it. He flirted, she parried. He dismissed the guards, and told them to wait just outside, she found a cushion and a soft cloth to lay over it. She poured his wine, he drank it. She laughed with instead of at him, he liked it even more. She leaned back, her breasts elevated, her legs stretched, her arms wide, he sat and stared, waiting. He kissed, she kissed back. He led her through a door behind a curtain into a bedroom.

  ‘I don’t doubt you came here planning to seduce me, Theodora.’

  ‘You’re entirely correct,’ she answered, stepping up naked to his bed, her stomach flipping and hands shaking as she did so.

  It wasn’t the thought of sex with a stranger, this stranger, that was unnerving her, or that by most standards this was hardly the behaviour of a new convert, no matter how well she accepted Macedonia’s belief in a pragmatic life for the greater sake of the faithful – it was the fine line between doing this for Macedonia, for Timothy, for the cause, and doing it for herself. The fear that her body, that old betrayer, might slip away from the very new mooring that was her faith. Theodora had enjoyed feeling her body and spirit as one since the coming together in the desert, and was not keen to embrace again the pain of dissociation, no matter how useful it might be right now. And so, by force of will, she held her spirit present, in her body, as she stepped naked to the man. It was harder to do than letting her mind, letting her spirit fly away, but it was more true, and the converted Theodora would now have herself be more true, whatever she was doing.

  Not that Marcus Orontes noticed: he was still talking about himself.

  ‘I’m not sure what you’re doing here, but you won’t persuade me to take her back.’

  ‘That’s not why I’m here.’

  ‘My people hated that Greek bitch. Phebe was a foreigner to them, so Western, they don’t like foreigners here.’

  ‘No one likes foreigners, Marcus, that’s the way of the world.’

  ‘Very true. Fortunate that we’re both from the City, then.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’

  It was three in the morning before Marcus Orontes was sated, later still before he was sleeping. When he finally gave in to the demands of his exhausted body, it was the sleep of an unworried man who knows his home is protected, his life well arranged, and that a lovely young woman is lying beside him. He knows this because he is sleeping on his front, one arm pulled tight around her neck, and a dead-weight leg slumped over both of hers, caring more to keep her safely beside him than to sleep comfortably.

  Fortunately Theodora had been in this position more times than she cared to count. She slipped her legs out from under his prone form, one tin
y movement after another, each one barely noticeable, so that she was always moving while always seeming still. He stirred, once, but did not wake. With her legs free, the weight of his arm was even stronger across her neck, pushing into her windpipe. She forced herself to breathe carefully, keeping her heartbeat steady and light. Infinitely slowly, she levered herself up on to the balls of her feet: her legs and full torso were now off the bed, the only parts of her touching the smooth sheet were her toes and the weight of her head where his arm pushed down on her neck. Reaching behind her, she bunched up the cushion she’d used as pillow, with her free hand gently and slowly tickled his ear, all the while hissing a tiny sibilant mosquito buzz. She continued until the minute movement and noise registered in his consciousness, felt the moment he woke just long enough to swat the non-existent creature. As he lifted his arm she pushed off from her toes into a side-twisting somersault, landing silently on the floor by the edge of the bed, at the same time pushing the cushion into place for the return of his arm. Even as she immediately moved away towards the door, she kept up the rhythmic sounds of her own breathing, increasing her volume the further she was from the bed. Her heart was racing but there was no trace of it in her breath.

  Grabbing her robe, she carefully pulled back a hanging on the far wall, opening a narrow door behind it. She stood between both rooms and waited until her eyes adjusted to the total darkness of the small, windowless antechamber and she could clearly discern two lots of breathing. One was a small child, his breath the snuffling repetition of a little one who has fallen asleep crying for his mother, the other was very close, older, and drunk. Theodora headed for the child; feeling the low bed cutting into her shins, she bent and reached out her arms to the boy. Her robe was partly around her, her skin was warm, she hoped that, for a few moments at least, the two-year-old would imagine she was his mother, that she wouldn’t further upset him, not least because a screaming baby did not feature in Macedonia’s plotting for the success of their mission.

  Three minutes later the child was strapped to her back, pulled close with a combination of her own robe and his light blanket, the two cloths twisted round her body, locking him tightly to her back as she’d seen the Nubian women wrap their babies in the Alexandria market. Then the little boy simply settled comfortably against her, with no protest, nothing to disturb the night nurse. Crossing the small room to the opposite door that opened into the main hallway, she gently pulled back the bolt. The guards were stationed outside Orontes’ door, twenty paces to her right. The standing guard kept on with his broken snore, the rhythmic clicking of the dice assured her his seated companion was no more alert. She rounded the corner and broke into a silent run, bare feet hardly touching the stone, the way Menander had trained the dancers from their very first class: ‘We don’t want to know you exist until the moment you arrive, so shut up and do it again. Better.’

  Then she climbed through the window at the end of the hallway, let herself down to run along a high wall, finally jumping to the neighbouring garden, where, despite Macedonia’s reassurance, Phebe was now frantic. The little boy’s strong neck was arching back, his mouth ready to howl, and then Theodora had unwrapped him, a gift of flesh and blood, warm child to fear-cold mother, and the boy’s unhappy mouth was stoppered with his mother’s breast, Phebe shaking with tears and hysterical relief, Macedonia both proud and worried. Theodora herself was quiet and drained, and without even taking time to whisper a greeting, immediately headed back the way she’d come.

  This time she made no pretence of hiding from the guards. Her robe barely covering her front and none of her back, she sauntered along the corridor, coming to stand very still in front of the dice-thrower.

  ‘Morning, men.’

  Her breasts were head-height, her smile wide. His friend still dozing against the wall, the young man blushed and demanded to know how she’d left the room without them noticing.

  Theodora shrugged, letting the robe drop a little further. ‘I hate to piss in front of a man I’ve just serviced, especially one as pretty as your boss. So I went through the brat’s room, his nurse stinks of wine and the child of his own dirt. Someone ought to sort them out. If you’ll excuse me, I’m heading back to the preacher’s bed, I’m sure Marcus Orontes has plenty of prayer to share with me yet.’

  She went in, leaving two very frightened men at the door, both wide awake.

  Theodora was on her knees before Orontes when the nurse came in, screaming that the child was gone. It was good timing and not at all accidental. Orontes looked down, Theodora looked up, and they understood each other perfectly. He issued all the appropriate orders, shouting at the nurse and the men at his door, but, Theodora thought, his performance lacked a little urgency.

  She was strapping on her sandals when he dragged her up from the floor, one hand round her throat.

  ‘You’ve taken my son?’

  Theodora kept her voice quiet and low. ‘Your mistress’s son, Orontes. I don’t think he is yours, strictly speaking. And neither is she any more, didn’t you throw her out?’

  ‘He has lived in my home since he was a baby.’

  ‘Perhaps he wanted a change, you know what little boys are like.’

  ‘You think he left by himself?’

  She twisted, reaching one hand up to his face, her fingers stroking his cheek, her voice a whisper, ‘I have no idea what the child did or did not do last night.’ His hold on her neck was still tight and she pulled her hand back a little from his cheek, spread her fingers wide and held them, sharp-nailed, just a breath from his eyes. Her voice still a whisper, she continued, ‘But if you don’t let me go now, I will put out your eyes. Our Greek classics are littered with blind characters, I understand the people are meant to value their words more highly, purely because they cannot see – will you be a blind teacher, Marcus?’

  He let her go then, but not before he had kicked out at her, catching her deep in the belly with his full foot, ripping at the new scar tissue in her gut.

  Theodora was winded and fell to her knees. Orontes leaned down to her, pulling back her hair: ‘I won’t forget this, I won’t forget you.’

  Theodora used every theatre trick she knew to get back her breath and replied, ‘Neither will I, I assure you. But you’ve got what you wanted, surely? Phebe and her bastard are gone, you are free to continue your work, unencumbered.’

  ‘My work matters.’

  ‘I know you think it does. I know you think your faith justifies any behaviour.’

  ‘I have done nothing wrong, you are the thief here.’

  ‘Well, nothing unless I tell your people a little of what happened in your bed last night. Between us? I don’t suppose that even this city with its amazing ability to party until dawn and then pray all day would quite understand the allure of fucking Theodora-from-the-Brothel.’

  ‘But you’re converted, you’re faithful now. Redeemed.’

  ‘True, but I will tell them otherwise if I have to. And I’ll add to the story in the telling. That young man out there, the one who fumbled with his dice all night outside your door, haven’t you noticed how he looks at you? I’m sure some of your people have. I don’t think it would take much to persuade them you are more to him than a teacher.’

  ‘They won’t listen to your gossip.’

  ‘Really? Are you sure?’ She waited for her threat to sink in, felt his hold on her hair loosen just a little. ‘You continue on your path, Orontes, I’ll take mine. You didn’t really want to keep that child, did you?’

  He shook his head. ‘Not much, no. But I do not like to be tricked.’

  ‘Who does? Take it with good grace and be quiet about it. The less people know about what happened here, the sooner you will forget.’

  ‘I’ll never forget.’

  ‘Well, more fool you. You can waste a very long time looking back.’

  Theodora left then, while Marcus Orontes was briefly calm, not at all sure he would stay that way for long.

  Safely in Mace
donia’s house, Phebe and her child already shipped out of the city, Theodora told her night’s story, unburdening her physical and emotional discomfort as she gave her body to Macedonia’s care, first to warm water and then to soothing oils.

  When eventually they made their way to bed, Macedonia admitted she was impressed. ‘You’re even stronger than they’d told me.’

  ‘They?’

  ‘Timothy’s people.’

  ‘I thought I was done whoring.’

  ‘Is it whoring to save a woman and child from someone like that?’

  ‘The cause was good, yes,’ said Theodora, ‘but a cock in your mouth, for reasons other than love? My dear, that is always whoring.’

  ‘Would you rather have taken care of the hysterical mother?’

  ‘Nothing a slap across the face wouldn’t fix. Couldn’t see you turning a side somersault to get off his bed, though.’

  ‘Really? I haven’t lost all my skill.’

  ‘No, but you have a few years on me, you’re not quite so delicate on your feet. And you’re tall, tall girls lack agility …’

  Their teasing became kissing, and the kissing became passion, and the passion was not whoring.

  Twenty-Four

  For the first few weeks after they rescued Phebe and her son, Theodora and Macedonia had to contend with verbal attacks in the market and, once, an actual physical assault from one of Marcus Orontes’ followers – the physical assault didn’t stand up to Macedonia’s strength or Theodora’s agility, but it was disturbing enough. Orontes though, realising outright hostility didn’t look good while trying to recruit new faithful to his Church, eventually called his people off, insisting they were all happier without Phebe and her brat.