One for Sorrow

Chapter Five

Elsewhere in the city, another girl, lips trembling, warily pushed open the heavy, rotting shutter of a second floor tenement room. The air outside was fetid, smoky, sour with the stench from the alley beneath the window, but still more breathable than the air inside, thick with the smell of humanity and cooking. The girl’s husband rolled over in his sleep, muttering, disturbed by the creak of the shutter. He flung one heavy arm out, barely missing the pot of night soil the girl had set next to the window. He was big and could almost reach across their space, one of several created by subdividing an already small room with thin, rough boards.

During the day he worked as a laborer at the new church Justinian was building. Or had until his fall.

“The dome will rival the heavens,” he had told her.

“Why do the heavens need a rival? Aren’t the heavens we already have good enough?”

“They may be but they are hard to appreciate from a miserable city room.” He must have regretted his words, seeing her frown, because he continued, “You don’t regret leaving the country with me, do you?”

“You’re my husband.” It was a simple statement, carrying everything within it. “We’re not country folk now. This is Constantinople, the greatest city in the world. Our home.”

She had made herself smile.

Then one afternoon he had fallen from high up in that great dome. His fall had been partially broken by scaffolding. There was something wrong with his skull, one leg was broken, and a physician could probably have found other injuries, if there was any money for a physician. That he had survived had been a miracle, but perhaps a short-lived one. His fever had returned.

Now she bent to pick up the heavy pot, averting her face. She was exhausted. But then, what a night it had been. The second time she had opened the shutters after her first fright, it had been even worse. What had she seen but a corpse apparently looking straight up at her. And to think she’d had the pot in her hand. It seemed indecent. She had almost dishonored the dead.

She forced herself to peer down into the alley. This third time, at last, it seemed deserted. She emptied the pot, leaning over the sill. Its contents splashed on the cobbles below.

She sank wearily down next to her husband and hoped for dreams of the country.

***

Though the night was far advanced, the liquid sounds of syrinx and flute filled the perfumed air of a private dining room deep inside the palace. A scantily clad girl danced down the middle of a long table that was covered in purple and gold. Not that she knew how to dance. She simply kept her narrow hips moving suggestively while stepping nimbly over and around plates of pomegranates, figs, and boiled duck. The young men on the couches flanking the table laughed as she went by, trying to look up her short green tunic. They seemed pleased.

She was only a girl, young enough so she could remember when men had not noticed her. This new power she had been given was fascinating. She could sense the men’s probing thoughts. Their attention exhilarated and repulsed her at the same time.

One of the diners had grabbed her around the waist and thrust her onto the table. She could smell sour wine on his breath. As he embraced her, his stubble brushed the side of the breast that her tunic, tied only at one shoulder, had left exposed in what Madam Isis had explained was the ancient manner.

“What’s your name, little one?” the man had demanded.

“They call me Nymph,” she had replied, mindful of Madam’s admonition to give only that name and not to reveal her real name, which was Berta. She was puzzled when the man burst into laughter.

“Dance for me,” he’d commanded, and so Berta danced.

Perhaps she would please this man or another so that he would bring her to live at the palace. It could happen. Look at the empress herself. She had once been an actress.

She had been hand-fed a few morsels from the table, a slice of an unfamiliar fruit more succulent than anything she had tasted before. All was luxury here. Even her indecently brief tunic was of silk, smooth against her skin. Her underclothing, too, the same.

As she danced amid the plates, bare feet still retaining their instinctive childish agility, she felt the smooth material caressing her thighs.

The flutes played faster, cymbals underscoring their sinuous rhythm. The girl danced in time, skipping between chalices, ducking under a huge golden bowl of fruit suspended by chains from the ceiling. A flush rose on her cheeks. Surely this was heaven. But then, wasn’t the emperor a god?

She caught a glimpse of an unwelcome figure. A garishly dressed page who leered at her from a corner. Odious little boy. He’d pawed her on her way to the table.

Distracted, she failed to clear the roast boar.

Berta toppled off the edge of the table into an obviously male lap. Recovering her senses, she rolled over to look up into the face of whoever had broken her fall. Perhaps he would take her to his house tonight.

She assumed her most dazzling, ingratiating smile. And gasped. Later she insisted to her friends that the face looming above her was the oldest thing she had ever seen. Older than the headless eroded statue in the ruins near the city wall, more ancient and weathered than the mummy exhibited in the forums by the traveler from Egypt. The face was brown and wrinkled as the head of John the Baptist-if that relic truly existed. But when the man’s leathery lips parted they revealed surprisingly white teeth.

“I am a soothsayer,” said the ancient. “I need no chicken entrails to tell me what a lovely creature you are. Do you want to earn a trinket?”