Read Theodora for Free Online

thrift: it kept the coffers full and the military well fed, strong enough to defend the borders – but it was not exciting, it was not what Justinian expected of an Emperor of the new Rome. Nor, as a Western Roman, did he approve of the August’s anti-Chalcedonian leanings. This Emperor was good enough for now, but there would be better times to come, and Justinian wanted to be at the centre of them. Not that he shared these thoughts with anyone other than his uncle, but the boy who had travelled halfway across the Empire at just twelve years old admitted in private that his true aim was to help realise a glorious new Rome. Wider and stronger and fully one. One state, one Church, one leader. It was a big idea, and Justinian – lacking the battle scars or the charisma of other equally ardent men, of his cousin Germanus, even – set out to do what he could, in the way that suited him best. He went back to history and studied strategy instead of force.
    Justinian enjoyed his life, working with his books and papers, advising his uncle, and if his few friends sometimes mocked him because he didn’t want to pay for a different actress every second night, or because he was overly temperate with his wine, he didn’t mind. Let them think he was boring, he already knew that seeming dull was a better cover for ambition than any backtracking his cousins could manage when they were hungover and apologising the morning after for abusing the Emperor or rudely mocking the Patriarch. There was only one other person Justinian discussed his hopes with, and the brilliant Narses could hardly be considered competition. A eunuch might rise high in the court – with no children to build his own dynasty on, he would always be considered safer than a whole man – but no matter how well he did, or how loved he might be, he could never become Emperor.
    Justinian walked out into the spring evening. The night smelt of wood smoke and, this close to the harbour, the mussels the fishermen had earlier boiled up for supper before their own night’s entertainment with other young women, whose stage would only ever be the street and the harbour bars. He turned away from the crumbling stones on the waterside, walking steeply uphill, picking his way through the people still out despite the late hour, soldiers and beggars and a few drunk young men; he felt safe from their often violent and always lewd late-night behaviour more because he was a fellow Blue than whatever sanctity his patrician’s cloak supposedly offered.
    Before going into the house, down the long passageway that opened out from a very ordinary street into the spacious and beautiful courtyard of his uncle’s home, he peered up through the low cloud, hoping to check the stars. Several astronomers had suggested they would see a new comet soon; if they were correct, there were plenty of people, from the fully ignorant to the best educated, willing to believe that the comet was a sign in itself. One of those believers was the Emperor Anastasius; the first sighting would be a good time for Justin to propose some of the new ideas they’d been discussing for the military. Justinian and his uncle both believed in the value of military might, the City needed a fine army, it was the present core of the great Empire after all, an Empire that was rising in the east even as it was, unfortunately, fading in the west. But the clouds were too dense for him to see clearly, and whatever comet might be on its way would not be revealed tonight, so Justinian, his duty done, went inside.
    Within ten minutes he was settled at his desk, a glass of well-diluted wine close by, the evening still clear in his mind. That girl who’d saved the little one’s skin with the bear story, she was very clever. It had been a joy to see such a child – she couldn’thave been more than ten or eleven – put her native intelligence to such good use. And of course, clever was even more enjoyable – though his very proper