The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stephanie Thornton

Others—like your sister—are beautiful but dumb as rocks. You were blessed with both brains and beauty. Those gifts are your weapons, but you certainly don’t use them.”
    I ignored her, stripped out of my stola, and almost tossed it on the table, an ancient old thing with carved lion’s legs. The lion appeared to have lost a fight—one leg was mangled as if a dog had used it as a chew toy.
    “I see having this little mite has filled you out a bit.”
    “Perhaps.” I eyed the cedar box as I slipped into an old tunica. “What’s going on, Mother? Why are you here? And why are you in mourning?”
    “Vitus is dead.”
    I sat down on the pallet. Hard. “Really? Devoured by wild dogs? Covered with leeches until they sucked him dry?”
    The grin she flashed me reminded me of when I was young and we’d hide from my father, only to jump out and scare the breath from him. “Nothing so exotic, unfortunately. Stabbed in the back after a horse bet went bad.”
    My little sister would sit with the angels while Vitus burned for eternity. “May the man who did the deed be sainted by God.”
    My mother raised her cup to me. “Amen.”
    “And Comito?” I held my breath.
    “Your sister would be happy to have your head on a pike within the city walls. Or anywhere, really.” My mother looked entirely nonchalant. “You really should be ashamed for what you did to her.”
    As if I needed reminding.
    The silence expanded around us. “You didn’t come all this way, with a trunk, to tell me about Vitus.”
    My mother sighed and tried to shift in her seat, but she gave up when Tasia stirred. “No, I did not. I’m moving in with you.”
    “What? Here?” I gestured to the room, so small Antonina and I could scarcely lie head to head without our feet touching the walls. We’d tried it.
    “Your sister has a patron now, some Tyrian dye merchant.” My mother shrugged. “There’s not exactly room for me in his villa.”
    My proud, passionate mother. This was not the life she’d envisioned for herself, for any of us. “I don’t know—it’s not my room. Antonina’s gone most nights, and I’m going to find a position as soon as I’m clean.”
    “I’ll take care of Tasia while you two are out—God knows she’ll need someone to make sure she doesn’t end up like you. You won’t even know I’m here.”
    “Right. It’ll be like sharing a room with a fury.”
    She made a noise in the back of her throat, half laugh, half snort. “Sometimes I think I should have drowned you at birth.”
    Ah yes. It was so lovely to have my mother back.



Chapter 7
    I hugged my sleeping bundle as Antonina and I crested the city’s tallest hill and approached the domes of the Church of the Holy Apostles. Laid out like a crucifix, the white and gray basilica held the remains of our Emperors all the way back to Constantine, but it looked like a haggard old woman with its crumbling façade and chipped mosaics. The dank and gloomy interior reminded me more of a cave than a sanctified house of God.
    Under the largest dome, mothers with ragged hair and dark smudges under their eyes held squalling and sleeping infants. A pigeon had made its nest on a niche above the altar, and a waterfall of white and black droppings obscured the face of Saint Peter on a fresco of Jesus surrounded by the twelve apostles. Despite the shabbiness of the church that held our Caesars, I rather liked the idea of Tasia being baptized there. I wished Comito could see this, but it was still too soon to go begging my way back into my sister’s good graces. Mother was absent, too, sleeping off a bout of too much wine. Old habits died hard, or not at all.
    Tasia woke as the priest finished the baptism service, ending with theusual verse in Latin from the Gospel of Matthew. “‘Then little children were brought to Jesus for him to place his hands on them and pray for them,’” he said. “‘But the disciples rebuked those who brought them. Jesus said, “Let the