had seen thisscene dozens of times. As the dancers mimed brushing their mistress’s hair, readying Leda for her husband, the audience were confused: more straight acting, more traditional theatre. But when Theodora lay back on the cushions the dancers had piled high behind her, the short robe she was wearing fell apart, revealing that she was almost naked beneath. The crowd let out a gasp that became a sigh of collective relief and obvious enthusiasm and the show proper – the show they had been hoping for – began. Each of the dancers reached into the cleavage of her own, equally brief, classical dress, pulled out a small gilt bag and began sprinkling grain over Theodora’s torso and legs. Several young men on the front benches offered to come and help.
When her lower body was covered in little mounds of grain, she called off-stage, ‘Come husband, come master, come King!’ One of the oldest actors in the company waddled on, looking even fatter and more lecherous than usual, and a laugh ran through the crowd. This was more like it, the much-loved Petrus of Galatia as Spartan King. The moment his plump and wrinkled fingers touched the edge of Theodora’s spread cloak, the dancers, now reformed as Chorus, began to whisper the arrival of the god, Zeus himself, and then the actor sat back, opening his own robe and allowing half a dozen geese to jump out on to the stage. The geese, having been starved for a day prior to the show, began, quite naturally, to peck at the trail of grain laid across Theodora’s body. Chorus and old actor stepped back and with each peck Theodora screamed Zeus! and oh god! and more, please more! writhing and undulating on the stage. The audience were delighted – the elegant and ferocious god-as-swan of myth reduced to six fat geese, the virginal Leda a rapacious tart, and the Chorus intoning the many names of the great god Zeus exactly as they would have done in a serious theatrical production while Theodora provided a counterpointof wriggling orgasmic squeals. Ten minutes later she left the stage after the third round of raucous applause, pausing as she went to allow half a dozen of her most eager fans to prostrate themselves, granting them one by one the great privilege of kissing the soft arch of Theodora’s daintily proffered left foot.
Much later that evening, to the continued applause of her delighted co-workers, sweet wine and honey-grilled figs protecting her hard-worked vocal cords, Theodora adopted the voice and pained expression of one of the City’s most notoriously hard-line bishops, intoning in his strong Thracian accent, ‘The girl’s a slut, it’s true, but it’s the old gods she mocks, not the Christ. I’ll say this much for her – she’s no pagan.’
Seven
Theodora, seventeen years old, toast of the Kynegion, beloved comic of the theatres, star of the Hippodrome, was not prepared for the pain she felt when her little sister Anastasia died. She and Comito clung to each other sobbing, holding their dazed mother between them. They stood the requisite distance behind the men at the funeral, praying to the Christ and His mother for succour, for understanding. Praying too, silently, to the other god, the one they had learned of from that impossibly ancient woman, Hypatia’s grandmother who’d lived with them when they were very little girls. Theodora’s earliest memories were of her grandmother’s frail body hunched over the fire, mixing herbs for teas and poultices for their father’s animal scratches, offering remedies in her strong Syrian accent, and whispering of the seasons and the moon and her own family’s prayers from a time before the Christ was King: the prayers which still permeated everyday life in the City, which popped up unannounced in the thoughts and wishes of the people; prayers to the now-defunct gods whose statues remained above the town walkways, whose chants and charms filtered down through the drunken songs of old men and the whispers of
When her lower body was covered in little mounds of grain, she called off-stage, ‘Come husband, come master, come King!’ One of the oldest actors in the company waddled on, looking even fatter and more lecherous than usual, and a laugh ran through the crowd. This was more like it, the much-loved Petrus of Galatia as Spartan King. The moment his plump and wrinkled fingers touched the edge of Theodora’s spread cloak, the dancers, now reformed as Chorus, began to whisper the arrival of the god, Zeus himself, and then the actor sat back, opening his own robe and allowing half a dozen geese to jump out on to the stage. The geese, having been starved for a day prior to the show, began, quite naturally, to peck at the trail of grain laid across Theodora’s body. Chorus and old actor stepped back and with each peck Theodora screamed Zeus! and oh god! and more, please more! writhing and undulating on the stage. The audience were delighted – the elegant and ferocious god-as-swan of myth reduced to six fat geese, the virginal Leda a rapacious tart, and the Chorus intoning the many names of the great god Zeus exactly as they would have done in a serious theatrical production while Theodora provided a counterpointof wriggling orgasmic squeals. Ten minutes later she left the stage after the third round of raucous applause, pausing as she went to allow half a dozen of her most eager fans to prostrate themselves, granting them one by one the great privilege of kissing the soft arch of Theodora’s daintily proffered left foot.
Much later that evening, to the continued applause of her delighted co-workers, sweet wine and honey-grilled figs protecting her hard-worked vocal cords, Theodora adopted the voice and pained expression of one of the City’s most notoriously hard-line bishops, intoning in his strong Thracian accent, ‘The girl’s a slut, it’s true, but it’s the old gods she mocks, not the Christ. I’ll say this much for her – she’s no pagan.’
Seven
Theodora, seventeen years old, toast of the Kynegion, beloved comic of the theatres, star of the Hippodrome, was not prepared for the pain she felt when her little sister Anastasia died. She and Comito clung to each other sobbing, holding their dazed mother between them. They stood the requisite distance behind the men at the funeral, praying to the Christ and His mother for succour, for understanding. Praying too, silently, to the other god, the one they had learned of from that impossibly ancient woman, Hypatia’s grandmother who’d lived with them when they were very little girls. Theodora’s earliest memories were of her grandmother’s frail body hunched over the fire, mixing herbs for teas and poultices for their father’s animal scratches, offering remedies in her strong Syrian accent, and whispering of the seasons and the moon and her own family’s prayers from a time before the Christ was King: the prayers which still permeated everyday life in the City, which popped up unannounced in the thoughts and wishes of the people; prayers to the now-defunct gods whose statues remained above the town walkways, whose chants and charms filtered down through the drunken songs of old men and the whispers of
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