Read Online The Purple Shroud: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stella Duffy - Free Book Online Page A

and the women would still need work. Instead she put up the funds to buy twenty-five girls out of their contracts, young girls who had either come to the City with their refugee families and been lured away by the promise of pretty sandals or a warm bed, or, worse, who had been sold by their own parents. In hard times a good-looking child could fetch a nice fee for a farmer suffering under the burden of a bad harvest and high taxes.
    The girls themselves were less easy to deal with. For the first two weeks Theodora housed them in the women’s wing of the Palace, but it quickly became obvious they needed a permanent home, not least because her household food budget increased threefold, while the amount allocated to her managers remained the same.
    ‘Twenty-five girls?’ Narses frowned. ‘You don’t think I have enough going on right now?’
    ‘I thought this might be a pleasant distraction.’
    ‘Twenty-five girls trained only to be whores? I’m too old for this.’ Narses sat at his desk, head in hands. Sighing, he looked up at Theodora. ‘Menander always said you would either rule the world or be hanged by it.’
    ‘Menander said many things, let’s hope he was only half right. Come on, Narses, I’m trying to do the right thing.’
    Narses sighed, turned to a map on his wall pinned all over with notes and diagrams, lists and letters.
    ‘Let’s see…we could send them off to attack the Persians? Little girls can be devils with knives. Things are uncertain in the west again too, soldiers complaining about not being paid their full fees – maybe we could throw a girl into each regiment? That’ll keep them quiet for a week or so.’
    The scribe kneeling beside him on the floor started to write down his master’s thoughts and Narses kicked him, not lightly. ‘Don’t be stupid, boy.’
    ‘Not quite what I had in mind,’ said Theodora.
    ‘I imagine you very likely had nothing in mind at all. You made a grand gesture and now I have to deal with your mess.’
    Theodora had been playing along with Narses; now she had had enough. ‘Leave us,’ she said to the scribe, who scrabbled up and ran from the room.
    Slowly, Narses rose from his chair, ‘Mistress?’
    ‘You’re right. I did make a gesture. I know you’re busy – the Persian negotiations are difficult, the peace impossible to agree. There are problems with the Treasury, the religious arguments rage on. You have far more important things to concern you than twenty-five girl whores. But you were sold to be a eunuch, yes?’ Narses nodded and Theodora continued, ‘Your parents gave you to this life, you had no choice, and yet you’ve done well. We both have. Yes, we’ve both worked – and planned and schemed – to have the lives we now lead—’
    ‘And we continue to plan and scheme,’ Narses interrupted.
    ‘True, we can never relax. And I agree with the August that the Empire, his vision of one people, one land, will be good for all of us. But you made me study history and strategy when I first came to the Palace, encouraged me to care about more than just my position, whether or not people bow correctly, remember to call me Mistress…’
    ‘Unless it suits you to use that as a stick to beat them with?’
    ‘Yes, unless it suits me. The point is, I want to make things better in my City.’
    ‘Because you think you were fated to wear the purple?’
    Theodora shook her head. ‘Because I’m sick of the idea of fate, of feeling like it’s being done to me. If I choose to take what feels like my destiny and turn it into my…’ Theodora stopped, groping for the word.
    ‘Mission?’ Narses offered.
    ‘That’ll do, my mission – to be Justinian’s partner, to use that power – then at least it makes some sense of why I’m here. We need small improvements as well as huge change. I see no point otherwise.’
    Two days later Narses told Theodora that he had found an old palace, on the eastern side of the Bosphorus, large enough to