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just because he’s a good lawyer.’
    ‘A brilliant lawyer.’
    ‘Yes, but any other Pagan would have lost their job. Most of them have. Yet he’s allowed to keep on with his gods and goddesses…’
    ‘I thought you liked Tribonian?’
    ‘Like hardly comes into it where your staff are concerned. Unlike the Cappadocian drunkard, he is polite to me. Unlike Belisarius, I trust he’s truly on your side. Unlike Germanus he has no thought that your title might have been his.’
    ‘And unlike Sittas?’
    ‘Unlike my brother-in-law, he’s not a bore.’
    ‘Because he likes to talk strategy? It’s his job, you were once devoted to your work.’
    ‘Not quite, I loved my work, but I’ve always had a deeper devotion to living my life. I wanted to do it all, experience it all.’
    ‘Most people think you did.’
    ‘Most people would – mostly – be right,’ she smiled.
    ‘Maybe that’s why Tribonian annoys you less than the rest of them: his paganism reminds you of your old world?’
    ‘I think it’s more that I know he has no designs on your position. And even if he did, the people would never allow one scholar to take over from another.’
    ‘So it’s only military men I need worry about?’
    ‘Yes.’
    ‘Wise of me to keep them close, then.’
    ‘Perhaps. But you don’t often work late with Tribonian, what else is there?’
    Justinian shook his head. ‘I don’t want to bother you.’
    Theodora looked squarely at her husband. Justinian talked to her about everything, used her as his voice of the people,and not without reason. Now forty-six, the Emperor’s life had been centred on the Palace since he was eleven years old, Theodora, still two years off thirty, had lived, worked, struggled and survived in the Empire they now ruled over, had travelled from Constantinople to Cyrenaica on the northern shore of Africa, through Alexandria and Antioch, all the way back to the slums of their city.
    ‘What is it?’ she pressed him.
    Justinian darted a glance at Narses, but Theodora saw the look and raised herself on her toes to stand more squarely in his eyeline. ‘The eunuch’s busy. I’m here, and yet you don’t want to talk to me about it, so I can only presume it’s the Church?’
    Justinian sighed, rubbed his heavy-shaded eyes, a gesture that always made her wince as he rubbed them redder still. ‘Isn’t it always and ever the Church?’
    Theodora nodded. ‘Our curse to be born in a time of such faithful confusion.’
    If the August couple’s building programme had created consternation among those who worried it was costing the state too much, there was even more interest in Justinian’s swiftly enacted religious laws. Within months of taking office, the Emperor banned Jews, Pagans and Arians from holding many official positions. It was hardly unusual to attack the Jews, or the small but defiantly separate Christian sect of Arians, the Pagan bans were more problematic. While the City was nominally Christian, there were many still praying to the old gods as Tribonian did. But Justinian was adamant: if he was to achieve his dream of a revitalised Rome, then all must be one – one Empire, one Church. More recently he had, to a muted outcry from some academics, and loud applause from his chief priests and theologians, closed down the Academy inAthens. He felt it both a grand and a depressing gesture at the time, but it was also important in uniting Christians under his rule, uniting believers still profoundly divided over the most basic of questions; five hundred years since the death of the Christ, the Church was still trying to specify the nature of His divinity. The Emperor believed in the Council of Chalcedon’s ruling, that the Christ was both divine and human, a union, but not a mingling, of divinity and humanity. A smaller number, including Theodora, disagreed, and were equally sure that while the Christ possessed both states, His divinity and His humanity were entirely and inextricably