Theodora Read Online Free PDF Page B

wait another hourat least while Comito, in a private bedroom, earned extra coin for herself as well as their master, heard Menander’s words and felt the stinging blows as praise. Which they were.
    While Theodora was feeling the bite of Menander’s cane, and Comito and the older girls were entertaining senators and City merchants in private rooms, some of the other guests were already making their way home. Several travelled together, talking about Comito’s amazing voice or Anastasia’s pretty face, and then, in lowered tones, one mentioned Theodora, another raised an eyebrow, a third whistled quietly. It was one thing to acknowledge a fine singer, quite another to comment, no matter what was going on in the private bedrooms behind them, on how very forward the small dark girl was, how at ease she seemed on stage, in her body, in her flesh. These men prided themselves on their cosmopolitan nature and broad minds, they made a skilled audience, and it was obvious they were watching a child on the cusp of blossoming into a fine comic actor. In addition though, to her clear intelligence, Theodora also had something almost primal about her, something that glowed on stage – very carnal, very old Rome, definitely not quite the new Christian. The sooner her family married her off, the better – that one was clearly wilder than was good for her, or for any man who might be tempted.
    Most of those leaving early were happily married men who preferred the charms of their wives to those of dancing girls, one or two were committed Christians – as was every citizen, no doubt – but these few took the religious injunctions against adultery and lasciviousness more seriously than others. Justinian was leaving for neither reason. He simply wanted to get back to his desk. There was work to do.
    Justinian had come to the City as Flavius Petrus Sabbatius, atwelve-year-old boy, sent from Illyricum to live with his uncle Justin, who himself had travelled as a boy from their Slav village, had risen steadily through the ranks, and was now Chief of the Excubitors, the Palace guards. He renamed the boy for himself and brought him to live in an extended family that included another nephew, Justinian’s cousin Germanus. Germanus had followed their uncle into the military, but Justinian had always preferred the intricacies of strategy and historical battles to the truth of blood on the field. His work in the Palace, in the study, creation and implementation of law, gave him access to the libraries and the records dating back to the City’s founding that were stored in locked vaults beneath the Hippodrome. Justinian believed his uncle knew enough about the military for any man; if Justin was to rise even higher than his present rank – and it certainly seemed possible – he needed to know about everything else as well. Justinian was far too interested in his work aiding his uncle’s ambitions to waste a night with a dancing whore.
    He had certainly enjoyed the evening, the food was excellent, the wine even better – what little of it he took, never one to indulge his appetites – and the dinner companions proved themselves not only wise but useful. The host, a fellow Slav whose family had done very well for themselves both at home and in the City, had promised that several of the other guests would be good contacts for Justin, and he had been true to his word, making introductions that Justinian was keen to follow up on later. Unlike most of the other guests though, once those contacts had been made, Justinian was as keen to sit at his desk as he was to dine, to read a treatise on the new Egyptian tax proposals as to read a young girl’s face, to study by lamplight and to sleep in curtained dark as to pay for a dancer by the hour.
    His ambition, for power, for office – both for his uncle and,maybe, eventually for himself – was born of a desire for change. Justinian was not impressed with Emperor Anastasius’ strategy of safety and