In keeping with the bucolic surroundings, she wore a short brown tunic, one that might well have belonged to a farmer’s wife provided the farmer had happened to plow up the chest full of jewels that adorned the rough cloth, and bartered his crops for the golden bees ornamenting her hair.
The obligatory announcements and encomia accompanied her ascent to the makeshift throne. Anatolius paid little attention, having written them.
Servants bearing silver salvers appeared and began a circuit of the table.
Horrified gasps erupted among the guests.
At first Anatolius did not understand, then, as one of the servants drew nearer, he realized with a trickle of shock that those now serving the first course had almost reached their last.
The servants were covered in black boils and their tight-fitting tunics did little to disguise the huge swellings in their armpits.
Theodora emitted a caw of laughter. “My friends, fear not! Is not your righteousness an armor? Eat and be thankful! The entertainments will begin shortly!”
Shrinking away from the slaves circling them, her high-born guests, as frightened by the empress as by the plague, tried to subdue their cries of dismay.
Anatolius looked at the chunk of bread that had been set before him on an earthenware plate and then at the small jug of water beside it. Crinagoras, as pale as a lily, poured water into his cup with a shaking hand.
Theodora, with a scimitar of a smile, nodded to an attendant, who strode swiftly away.
A few heartbeats later, a cart rolled into view and even the presence of the empress could not mute the chorus of full-throated cries that rose into the azure sky.
The cart was piled with half-naked dead and driven by a wizened, sinewy man dressed only in a dusty loincloth.
“It’s that holy fool I saw at Nereus’ house!” Crinagoras looked prepared to run away as the macabre conveyance rumbled to a halt at the head of the table. “He looks ready to join his passengers at any instant!”
As if to prove Crinagoras wrong, the driver gave a terrible grimace, leapt from his perch, and scrambled onto the table. He danced along it wildly, kicking off plates and overturning cups with filthy, bare feet.
“Eat the bread of affliction and drink the tears of sorrow,” he shouted, making an obscene gesture at Crinagoras as he went by. “They’re more than you deserve! Eat well and hearty, my friends, for tonight you may be traveling in a cart like mine! For all your finery and fancy airs now, your only attendants then will be the flies, and who will sacrifice on your behalf to Zeus Apomyios?”
Theodora laughed loudly. One or two of her guests tried valiantly to follow suit, but their forced merriment was put to rest when one of the dead suddenly sprang from the cart.
Anatolius nudged Crinagoras in the ribs. “See, they’re all alive. It’s just one of Theodora’s nasty ideas of entertainment.”
“Alive?” Crinagoras appeared about to swoon with relief.
It was true. The dead had already risen and were now reenacting the arrival of the plague in the city and its deadly progress through the streets. The plague itself, Anatolius noted, was played by the driver, who, with coarse comments and foul language, strutted about slapping his fellow performers’ faces and exhorting his listeners, including the empress, to repent their sins while they still had time. Those struck by the fool staggered, wailed, and fell down in convulsions.
“My friends, eat, drink, as the holy fool bids you,” Theodora urged, sinking her teeth daintily into a miniature loaf which, Anatolius noticed, was gilded.
Crinagoras choked down a crumb or two and then asked Anatolius in an undertone if he thought any of the servants really were suffering from the plague.
“Of course not. I told you, it’s just something she considers amusing.”
The performers, having mimed agonizing deaths, were loaded on the cart by a pair of guards. The holy fool climbed back on the table, waved skeletal arms, and urged the assembled company to sing a blasphemous ditty with him.
“Interesting that Theodora knows all the words, isn’t it?” Anatolius noted. “The fool reminds me of someone, but I just can’t call him to mind.”
Trailing curses, the holy fool finally remounted his cart and drove off as a few of his passengers waved feeble farewells.
Theodora smiled benignly at her guests. “I trust you have taken his exhortations to heart. Now, I have invited a few luminaries to inspire us further during this dark time. Lucilius…” She nodded toward a stout, red-faced fellow seated directly across the table from Anatolius.
The man rose to his feet, revealing that he wore a ludicrously oversized toga. He bowed. “Lucilius is most humbled to be permitted to enter into the presence of our most glorious empress. Were the emperor here I would implore him to commission your fair likeness in gold and silver, marble and mosaic, ivory and paint, for every corner of our city so each of us could always bask in your light. However, I most certainly would not engage the portrait painter Dordanus, who has never yet produced a good likeness, and that includes his own children.”
Several of the guests tittered. Crinagoras pursed his lips with displeasure.
“Let us hope that none here need resort to the ministrations of physicians,” Lucilius continued. “Why, just last week a physician killed his patient while operating. It was a mercy, he told the widow, because otherwise your husband would have been lamed for life.”
Theodora guffawed.
“Did you hear,” Lucilius went on, “that the very same physician called on a statue of Jupiter yesterday? And even though it was marble and Jupiter, its funeral’s tomorrow.”
“I’ve heard that jest before,” muttered Crinagoras, his voice barely audible for the laughter all around.
Lucilius waved his wide sleeves, giving the impression of a fat seagull unable to get off the ground. “Which is it better to trust, a physician or a soothsayer? A traveler went to a soothsayer to ask whether it was safe to sail to Bretania. The soothsayer consulted his oracle and said, ‘If you have a new ship, and an expert captain, and set sail in the summer rather than the winter, and the winds are favorable, you will have a safe voyage, unless of course you’re captured by pirates.’”
“Nicarchus,” Crinagoras said in outraged tones. “Those are all epigrams written by Nicarchus. The villain’s stolen them and is passing them off as his own!”
“I shall give you some advice myself, my friends,” Lucilius was saying. “Steer clear of toads, vipers, and Isaurians. Also at all costs avoid those afflicted with the pestilence, mad dogs, and Isaurians. Keep far from scorpions and burning tenements, and did I mention Isaurians?”
Crinagoras fretted as the literary thief rambled on. “Why did the empress invite me here, if this sort of nonsense is what her guests are likely to enjoy?”
“They enjoy whatever Theodora says they will enjoy, Crinagoras. No doubt your poems will serve as a welcome contrast.”
“Yes, there’s that.”
Lucilius sat as a last gust of hilarity swept the table. Theodora turned her gaze toward Crinagoras.
He climbed shakily to his feet and muttered the brief words of praise for the empress with which Anatolius had coached him on the ride there.
The empress offered only a glimmer of a smile. “Proceed, dear Crinagoras.”
He looked around the table, licked his lips nervously, and began his recitation. “Alas, woe, poor, bereft Crinagoras.”
Before he had reached the end of his fourth verse a few guests shielded their mouths to muffle snickers.
Crinagoras stopped.
The purple canopy made snapping sounds in a freshening breeze. A bird called from the underbrush fringing the open space.
Crinagoras cleared his throat and began again, his voice shaking. “Alas, woe, poor, bereft Crinagoras, he who lingers behind fair Eudoxia, she of the-”