The Colour of power. Marié Heese

she clapped her hands. “Now then,” she said, “bring me a goat.”

      “Why?”

      “Because I want one.”

      Her subjects stood in a circle staring at one another. “No! I’m not playing any more,” said the scrawny one. “Go find your own goat. Enough is enough.” He turned to go home.

      “You come back here,” ordered Theodora. “I have not dismissed you!”

      “This game,” snarled the boy, “is over.” The rest giggled and backed away from her, bowing in exaggerated submission. Then they all fled, their mocking laughter fading down the street.

      Theodora was furious. She climbed down stiffly and walked home, still clutching the scarlet scarf. She had decided to keep it. They shouldn’t have it back. She hated to be laughed at.

      “Where were you?” Anastasia asked. “What were you playing at?”

      “I was the Emperor,” she said. “But they didn’t want me any more. They ran away.”

      “Were you a good emperor?” Anastasia ladled out the vegetable soup she had made for supper. It was fragrant with herbs and smelled delicious.

      Theodora blinked. In her mind, an emperor was an emperor: a person with all the power who could order everyone else around. A good emperor?

      “What makes an emperor good?” asked Comito, hungrily spooning up soup.

      “They’re a m-mad, b-bad lot,” grunted Peter with a mouth full of bread. “M-murder their m-mothers. M-make people worship their horses.”

      “No, no, they’re not all like that, that was Caligula. He was crazy, yes,” said Anastasia. “But our emperors are Christians now. A good emperor must be close to God. I would think that’s the first thing.”

      “Close to God,” Theodora repeated thoughtfully.

      “And a good emperor serves the people,” Anastasia went on. “Stasie, you can’t eat soup with your hand.”

      “I thought the people are supposed to serve the Emperor,” Theodora said with a frown.

      “Well, yes. But the Emperor has a mission, which is to rule well and wisely, to ensure justice and make the kingdom great. So you see, he serves the people too.”

      Theodora ruminated on this until she had finished her supper. “Mother, where’s my box?” she asked. She wanted to hide the scarlet scarf before she was made to give it back.

      “Box? What box?”

      “My sandalwood box. Father used to keep his sharp knives and small tools in it,” said Theodora. The tools had been buried with Acasius, but there had not been room for the box inside the coffin.

      “Oh, that box. I gave it to Peter,” said Anastasia. “He needed a box for something.”

      Theodora stood and glared from her mother to her stepfather, who was slurping up his second helping. “That was my box,” she said, furiously. “That was my father’s box, and now it is my box, and you had no right to give it to him, and he has no right to have it.” Angry tears glittered in her dark eyes. She had been mocked, and now she felt suddenly, deeply wronged. Her chest heaved with sobs and her voice rose. “He is not my father,” she said passionately. “He came here … he came and he … he takes up all the space, and he uses our father’s things, and he talks too loudly, and he eats too much, and he … he is not my father! And he can’t have my box!” Furious tears streamed down her face. She stamped her foot. “It’s my box! Mine! Mine! Not his! Not his!”

      Peter was shocked to be the sudden focus of such grief and animosity. “I d-didn’t know … I’ll g-give it b-back,” he said, humbly. “I’m s-s-s-s-s-s …” His throat worked to no avail.

      “Hush,” said Anastasia, alarmed. “Theodora, calm down, behave yourself! You have been extremely rude!”

      Theodora wept inconsolably. A suffocating wave of sorrow had engulfed her, at the thought of the tools put away in the coffin, next to the stern face she had loved so much. He had not been stern with her. He had loved her and protected her and taken her to the Hippodrome with him and told her stories and made her wooden toys. And now he had gone, and he would never come home again. Never. Never. She was wrung with longing, and with anger at the interloper.

      Comito began to look weepy too. Stasie’s round brown eyes also filled with tears and her lower lip wobbled. Loud, cross voices always made her cry.

      “Oh, God,” said Anastasia desperately, and picked up her youngest, who at almost four was amazingly solid, like a small bag of sand, and too heavy to carry around, although she still constantly wanted to sit perched on someone’s hip.

      Peter, clearly overwhelmed by the level of female distress in the small room, got up abruptly and walked out.

      Anastasia sat down on the narrow cot against one wall with Stasie on her lap, and dissolved into tears herself. It was too much. She had tried to hold it all together, but it was too much. She was so tired. And now Peter was probably angry, as he had every right to be. He did his best, he was good to them all. It wasn’t his fault that his salary was not enough. He gave it all to her. He was loving and faithful and he was devoted to her.

      But he would never understand that this very devotion was hard for her to bear, that it was burdensome. Theodora in her fury had said things that Anastasia also felt: He did take up too much space. He was too big, too loud, too demanding; his very devotion, his humility, his unqualified adoration made demands on her patience and on her ability to respond. She was too old for him, she thought. He should have had a much younger woman who had not yet borne children and who had strength and desire to match his. She couldn’t. She felt used up. Hot tears dripped into Stasie’s hair.

      She knew he had been hurt. Perhaps he would never come back. If he didn’t, that would mean the end for them. Yet she understood Theodora’s sorrow and anger. It was as if Acasius had been wiped out. Removed not only in body but in memory. She had done the only thing she could think of to keep them together, but it had been so sudden that none of them had had time to grieve. Now it seemed that all the tears that they had held in check needed to overflow.

      Clinging to each other, the small family of Acasius mourned their loss.

      First interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 14 January, AD 532

      Narses the eunuch: his journal

      In the year of Our Lord 532, January 14

      Today is Wednesday, the day after the ides of January, and chariot races are usually run. This morning, after a night of respite, those of us sheltering in the palace were hopeful that the riot was dying out like the smouldering embers of the previous day’s conflagration.

      Justinian had probably not slept much; he seldom sleeps more than a few hours at the best of times, which this is not. Yet his round cheeks still had a healthy blush, like those of a robust peasant, which is of course exactly what he is – or was, before he took the purple. He summoned me early.

      “Narses,” he said, “I intend to appear in the Kathisma. I will speak to my people. Can you guarantee the loyalty of the Imperial Guard? Will they protect my back?”

      “For certain, Despotes,” I assured him. “The excubitors will be at their posts.”

      Even in so tense a situation he allowed himself a wry smile. He has himself borne the sword of an excubitor, and he knows as well as I do that the other classes of guards are mostly ornamental. “I won’t expect any of the Scholarian or Domestic Guards to sully their elegant uniforms,” he said.

      “Despotes,” said General Belisarius, “my men are quartered in the palace barracks. At any time, they are ready to go forth.”

      “As are my Heruls,” added General Mundus.

      “I am aware of that,” Justinian