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

“Take her for me, will you?” I murmured to Antonina. “I’ll meet you back home, but find her some goat milk if I’m late.”
    She slipped out of her gray
paludamentum
embroidered with black and white fish swimming up the front, and tied it over my now rather ample breasts. “My bloods started today, so take as much time as you’d like—I’m looking forward to a few days off. Good luck.”
    I watched them go, then ducked into one of the corner shops to ask where I might find the closest theater.
    “An actress, eh?” The man grinned, revealing carcasses of brown teeth. “Follow the aqueduct to the Cistern of Aetius. The Seneca’s on the other side, but don’t blink or you might miss it.”
    “Thank you.” I did as he said, stopping to wash my hands and face in a fountain spewing water from a lion’s mouth. A couple of women with hennaed hair and garish turquoise stolas pushed past me, close enough so that I gagged at their cloud of cheap perfume. The façade they’d just come from leaned precariously against the hillside, hiding what must have been the world’s tiniest stage. I’d slit my wrists if I couldn’t get hired here, but between my pregnancy and Comito, I knew I wasn’t welcome at the Kynêgion any longer.
    A man I presumed to be the Master of the Stage stood under the façade’s arch and whistled at another departing actress. His eyes flicked over me. “You here for a position?”
    I gave my most becoming smile. “You guessed right.”
    “You clean?” He rubbed one side of his face as he studied me. “No scabby tarts for the fine patrons of the Seneca.”
    “Clean as the day I was born.”
    “That’s what they all say.” He bit his fingernail and spit a piece at my feet. “The best I got might be a trooper in the chorus.”
    Right back where I was at the Kynêgion. “Fine,” I said.
    His bushy caterpillar of an eyebrow arched. “You sing?”
    “A little.” It wouldn’t do to lie—I wouldn’t miraculously become a songbird overnight.
    He gestured with one hand for me to show him, and I managed to squawk out the first line of a popular
troparion
often sung in church.
    “‘O Gladsome Light of the Holy Glory of the Immortal Father, Heavenly, Holy, Blessed Jesus Christ!’”
    He rubbed a finger in his ear, rolled the yellow smear of wax between his fingers, and wiped it on his tunica. “Dance?”
    “Some.”
    “Instruments?”
    “No, but I’m good for a laugh.”
    “No trooper then,” he said. “But maybe a mimic.”
    I wouldn’t even wear a mask if I became a mimic. In fact, I’d never wear much of anything. But something was better than nothing.
    He opened a thin book with broken seams, one full of contracts from what I could see, most marked with a cross at the bottom. “You got experience?”
    I wasn’t sure if the truth would harm me or help me, but it probably couldn’t hurt. “I played at the Kynêgion for the Blues.”
    “Name?”
    “Theodora.”
    “Daughter of Acacius?” He shut the book. “I don’t hire crazy.”
    “What?”
    “We Masters of the Stage talk. I don’t hire girls who aren’t dependable”—he mimicked a pregnant belly—“and who like the bottle too much.” I sputtered at the lie, but he shook his head. “Sorry, sweet. Don’t let the door hit your pretty little arse on the way out.”
    I’d strangle Comito next time I saw her. I didn’t know what other tales she’d told Hilarion, but she’d definitely found her revenge. I watched the Master of the Stage walk away. “Just one question,” I said, thanking God when he turned around. “I suppose Hilarion told all the stage masters in the city about me?”
    “Prob’ly a few outside, too. No one goes against Hilarion, not if we want to keep our stages open.” He gave me a grandfatherly smile. “Maybe try a taverna?”
    I wouldn’t resort to a taverna—patricians rarely frequented the filthy houses, and I didn’t want the average pleb. I wandered a bit longer before