Alchemy of Fire by Gillian Bradshaw

Author:Gillian Bradshaw [Bradshaw, Gillian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History - Byzantine
Published: 2004-07-01T04:00:00+00:00

Seven

It was dark by the time the supper things were put away. Theodosia returned, flushed with the admiration of her friends, and hung up her court dress in the workshop, draped over a basket of saffron crocuses, so that it could absorb the scent.

Anna gave Kallinikos’ tunic a scrubbing and hung it up by the kitchen fire, but it was still soaking wet. She did not have the heart to send him home to the Platea Gate dressed only in a borrowed cloak. She made up a bed for him in a storeroom upstairs and told him he could go home in the morning.

“Why can’t we rent him that room?” Theodosia asked, as she and her mother prepared for bed. “All we use it for is imported aromatics, and we don’t have hardly any of them right now. I know you say you can’t have a man staying in the house, but other women take lodgers.”

“Other women are wives or widows,” said Anna bitterly. “I am neither. At your cousin’s court they will describe me as a whore. Don’t look like that: you’ll hear it from them, so you might as well get used to it.”

“But you’re not!” protested Theodosia.

“I slept with your father, and he rewarded me with a perfumery,” Anna stated flatly. “To the world, the only difference between me and the girls in the Amastrianon Market is that I was paid more.”

“But . . . but you never slept with anyone else, and you loved him, didn’t you? So you’re like a wife. You can’t say that anyone who gets something from sleeping with someone is automatically a whore! People marry for money all the time!”

“Don’t ask me to explain the world’s reasoning! I’m telling you what they’ll say, Theodosia. The Great Palace isn’t like Philadelphion. Here people know me, they see me as successful and respectable. There I’m nobody and I will be treated with contempt, you can be sure of it.”

“I won’t let them say things like that about you!”

“How are you going to stop them?”

Theodosia frowned at her. The frown deepened steadily, and then she burst out, “You’re still really angry and upset about it! It worked, and he was really nice to us, but you’re still angry with me about it!”

“Angry?” repeated Anna. “My darling, I love you very much. If I’m angry, it’s because I’m afraid of losing you.”

Theodosia’s face cleared a little, and she said, “You think he’ll make me marry some barbarian, and you won’t see me again?”

Anna sighed. She sat down on the bed. “Theodosia – love – do you really think that nothing important is going to change?”

The frown deepened again. “What do you mean?”

Anna shook her head. “My love, do you think an imperial lady-in-waiting is supposed to trot down the Middle Street with her court dress over her arm, and change when she gets to the palace? The Emperor acknowledged you as his cousin and a member of the house of Heraclius. Princesses of the imperial house don’t live above a shop on the unfashionable end of the Middle Street.

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