The Secret History: A Novel of Empress Theodora by Stephanie Thornton

this torture surged through me. “Long enough.”
    Someone cleared his throat—I hadn’t noticed the man in the shadows. There was a low murmur of voices and then footsteps retreating into the darkness. I should have known she wouldn’t stick around. Time’s edges blurred as my pains bled into one another. Then something cold rummaged between my legs. I yelped.
    “Relax,” Antonina said. “It’s not as if I’m the first to be in your skirts.” I tried to push her hand away but had as much effect as a drunken baboon. “I need to see how far the baby’s dropped.” She pushed a chipped cup into my hand. “Drink this.”
    I must have glared, because she rolled her eyes. “It’s only willow bark. It’ll take the edge off the pains.”
    I’d drink nails if she promised it would make this easier. “Get it out of me.”
    “All in good time,” Antonina said. “And not much time from the look of it.” She peered down the alley, hands on hips. “The only midwife I know is on the other side of the city. It looks like it’s you and me.”
    “Why in Christ’s name would you help me? You hate me.”
    “I do. But somehow I doubt anyone else is going to come along and deliver you.”
    She had a point.
    “I still hope you choke on a pomegranate one day.”
    Antonina laughed. “Right back at you, darling.”
    Another pain gripped me—either the willow bark didn’t help or my pains were stronger—but this time Antonina helped me sit on the crate and rubbed my back. The rest of the night was a blur. Death hovered near, yet I fought for life. For my life and my child’s.
    “I’m sorry,” I sobbed to Antonina from all fours. My legs and arms could no longer hold me, and I pressed my forehead to the dirt. “I can’t do this.”
    She didn’t move from her station next to me. “Yes, you can. And you will.”
    “I’m sorry for all the noise I’m making.”
    Antonina let out an exasperated sigh. “Stop apologizing and push!”
    Sometime before dawn broke, I screamed. I hadn’t screamed all night, but now I let fly the wail of pain I’d held inside. A weight fell from my womb into Antonina’s waiting arms.
    My daughter.
    I clutched the flailing little thing as Antonina lifted her stola to retrieve a tiny knife from her boot. It flashed in the moonlight as she cut the umbilical cord with one swift motion. My daughter rooted at my breast, her eyes pools of darkness and a black whorl of hair on her scalp still tangled with the debris of birth. “What do you want to do with her?”
    I hadn’t exactly plotted out a future for myself and a baby on the streets of Constantinople. “I don’t know.”
    Antonina set to work again as the afterbirth came. My mother had planted the placentas from her children back in Cyprus’ rich soil. Mine would be left in the garbage heap of a taverna.
    Ripping her
paludamentum
down the middle, Antonina wrapped my daughter in one piece and handed me the other to staunch the flow of blood between my legs. She seemed to look everywhere but at thechild. “You could leave her under the elephants of the Golden Gate. Someone might take care of her.”
    “And if no one does?”
    Antonina’s face was a mask. “You’ll never know. Or there are the bathhouse drains. She wouldn’t be the first child to be dumped there.” She shrugged when I didn’t answer. “Children of whores usually die young anyway.”
    The baby whimpered, denied the breast she sought. Antonina watched me for a moment, then wiped her hands on the back of her tunica. “You’d best feed her then. Nothing worse than a crying baby.”
    I let the baby suck, awestruck at the little fingers splayed across my breast with their tiny fingernails. I ruined almost everything I touched, but somehow, despite everything, I had managed to create this perfect little person. And yet, because of me, there was no one I loved here to see her. I gave a strangled little sob and clutched my baby to me. It shocked me how much I wanted