Justinian Read online

  She drank down the cup, then said something in her own language. I knew none of that, but from the flat, resigned tone could guess what she meant: something on the order of Might as well get it over with. She pulled the long tunic off over her head, let it fall to the ground, walked over to the bed, and lay down.

  I stared at her a moment before undressing myself; she was as well made as she was beautiful, which says a great deal. When I lay down next to her, she did not turn her head toward me, but kept looking straight up at the poles and ropes supporting the pavilion and the silk cloth stretched over them.

  I bent my mouth to hers. She let me kiss her, but her lips did not respond in any way. She lay there, still, unmoving, expressionless, as I kissed and fondled that splendid body. Even when I brought my tongue down to her hidden parts, she did not stir. I thought she thought she might escape by not responding. That angered me.

  Roughly, I pulled her legs apart and poised myself between them. Roughly, I thrust myself into her. She was wet enough, from my spittle if nothing else. I forced myself hilt-deep, drew back, rammed again. All the while, I watched her face. She might not have been there with me at all, but somewhere far, far away.

  I took my pleasure, and did not withdraw afterwards. Being a young man, I knew I would soon rise again. And so I did, and began the act once more. Save that she was warm and breathing, it was like carnal congress with a corpse. Only after I spent myself a second time and pulled out of her did she move: she rolled onto one side and drew up her legs. I thought about taking her again, this time from behind, but before I could, I stretched out to rest a bit and let my spear regain its strengtha160… and I fell asleep.

  It was, no doubt, one of the stupider things I ever did, but war and wine and venery had their way with me. Had she so chosen, the Sklavinian woman could have found a knife, could have smashed in my skull with the wine jar, could have done any of a multitude of deadly things. Murder is easy. I should know.

  On waking, some time in the middle of the night, I realized how lucky I was to wake. I had twisted so that I lay on my side, facing away from the Sklavinian woman: a posture not far from the one she had assumed. Since she had not slain me, I decided I would enjoy her again. Before I rolled over to do just that, though, I took a deep breath.

  My nose wrinkled. "Ignorant barbarian," I muttered to myself. By the odor, either she had not know enough to put the lid back onto the chamber pot after she used it or she had not known enough to use it at all, but had done her business on the ground like an animal.

  I did roll over then- and discovered she was not in the bed. Confused, I wondered where she had gone: she could not have escaped the tent, not with guards and servants all around, and what point to hiding anywhere inside? I sat up, and I saw her.

  While I slept, she had taken her linen tunic, twisted it into a rope, tied one end to the bronze handle of my clothes chest, and tied the other in a noose around her neck. The handles were about at chest height; she had had to lie out at full length to strangle herself, which was exactly what, in grim silence, she had done. She must have been determined to perish, for she could have saved herself by getting up on her knees before consciousness left her. Her eyes stared sightlessly in a face almost black. What I had smelled was the result of her bowels letting go as she died.

  "Mother of God, help me," I whispered, and made the sign of the cross. I started to shout for my servants, but then checked myself. What could be a greater rebuke, a greater humiliation, than a woman who killed herself after I brought her to my bed? The servants might never have the nerve to bring it up in my presence, but that would not keep them from spreading the tale when we returned to Constantinople. A servant who does not gossip is a servant who has had his tongue cut out.

  Abruptly realizing I was naked, I quickly put on the robes I had doffed to have the Sklavinian woman. Then I undid the knot attaching her makeshift rope to the wooden chest, and after that the knot around her neck. Touching the dead flesh I had caressed not long before made my own flesh creep but, mastering my revulsion, I dragged her body behind the chest, where it would not be seen if I opened the tent flap.

  And I did open the tent flap. A couple of excubitores stood guard in front of the pavilion- not too close, for they knew better than to eavesdrop on the Emperor, or rather, to risk getting caught eavesdropping on the Emperor. The moon, shining through scattered clouds, showed the night to be more than half spent. The camp was quiet, almost everyone asleep, for which I thanked God. "Is anything wrong, Emperor?" one of the guards asked as they hurried up to me.

  "What could be wrong?" I answered, doing my best to sound bluff and cheerful. "One of you go fetch me Myakes. Something I need to ask him."

  The excubitores looked at each other. I could read their thought: won't it wait till morning? But I was the Emperor. One of them trotted away, shrugging as he went.

  He came back with my faithful friend almost as soon as I had hoped. As Myakes drew near me, I smelled stale wine on his breath. Even torchlight made him blink and squint: he had been celebrating our triumph himself. "Go off to bed," I told the excubitores who had been guarding the pavilion. "I'm safe enough with Myakes here."

  They looked at each other again. Obeying might get them in trouble with their superior. Disobeying would get them in trouble with me, the Emperor of the Romans. Sensibly, they obeyed. "Thank you, Emperor," one of them called over his shoulder as they left.

  I went into the tent, holding the flap open for Myakes to follow. As soon as we were both inside, he asked, "What's gone wrong, Emperor?" Though never what a pedant would call a clever man, Myakes was no one's fool.

  Wordlessly, I pointed around behind the clothes chest. H e walked over to see what I meant, and suddenly stopped dead. As I had, he made the sign of the cross. "She did it herself," I said quickly, not wanting him to think I had killed her for the mere sport of it. I have done a deal of killing since, but never for the mere sport of it- which is not to say I have taken no pleasure in the destruction of my foes. In a few words, I explained how I had discovered her body.

  He nodded, clicking his tongue between his teeth a couple of times. "She probably watched her man get killed earlier today," he said. "These Sklavinian women, they're not like Romans- they don't want to live without their husbands."

  Having heard that more than once before, I accepted it all the more eagerly now. "Even if the blame does rest with her, though," I said, "the embarrassment will be mine. Unless- Has the grave in which we flung the bodies of the barbarians been filled in?"

  "No, Emperor," he answered, and then, without so much as a hesitation, "You want me to toss her into the pit?" No, Myakes was no one's fool.

  "That's just what I want," I said. "She's a pagan, and damned, and a suicide and so doubly damned; it's not as if I'm depriving her of Christian burial."

  Myakes only grunted. That aspect of things worried him not at all. He picked up the linen tunic, untwisted it and shook it out as a washerwoman might a towel, and then put it back on the corpse, which turned out to be a harder job than I had thought it would. But when I said as much, he replied, "Be thankful she hasn't been dead long, and started getting stiff. That would really make things tough." He paused, then added, "It would be the devil's own time carrying her that way, too."

  Having dressed her, he stooped, slung her over his shoulder, and, grunting again, rose. I nodded in approval. Her face lay against his chest, and her fair fell down over it, obscuring it further. And it would be dark outside. "If anyone stops you-" I began.

  He followed my thought perfectly, interrupting, "I'll say she's drunk herself blind. Everything should be all right, Emperor. Will you open the flap for me? I ought to be back pretty soon."

  Open it I did, and out into the night he went.

  MYAKES

  Well, Brother Elpidios, what the devil was I supposed to do? She was dead. I hadn't killed her, and Justinian hadn't killed her, either. She was a pagan who'd killed herself. What? She wouldn't have done
it if he hadn't abused her? Maybe, but maybe not, too. It's not a lie, what I told him about Sklavinian women. If their husbands die, sometimes they will kill themselves. It's something they do, the way we Christians cross ourselves. Of course, they can only do it once.

  No one did stop me till I got to the camp gate nearest the burial pit and the prisoner pen. I saw a couple of other soldiers carrying women through the camp, as a matter of fact; it was that kind of night. The ones in their arms probably were just drunk, though.

  The gate guards laughed as I came near them. "Used her up, did you?" one of them said.

  "You might say so," I answered. "What with the wine and everything else"- I grinned and rocked my hips forward and back-"she's gone." And Lord, wasn't that the truth?

  All of a sudden, he made a nasty face. "Aii, get her out of here!" he exclaimed. "She stinks- she's gone and shit herself." His comrades all got out of the way then. They didn't want anything to do with me, not after that.

  It was easy as could be. The moon ducked behind a cloud right after I walked out of the gate. The night turned black as the soot above a lamp that's been hanging in the same place for twenty years. Instead of going all the way out to the prisoner pen, I stopped by the burial pit. It was closer. Nobody saw me heave her in. Nobody heard the soft thud her body made, landing on the others. I waited long enough so it would seem I'd gone to the pen. Then I walked back to the gate. The guards jeered at me. I swore at them, enough to sound convincing. They laughed and waved me by.

  I went back to Justinian's pavilion.

  How do I feel about it, Brother Elpidios? I'd sooner not have done it, I'll tell you that. But the Emperor told me to, so I did. I haven't thought about it much since then; some things you'd rather not remember. You ask all the questions, Brother. Let me ask you one for a change. Suppose Justinian had told you to dispose of her. What would you have done then?

  JUSTINIAN

  When the tent flap fluttered open, I reached for a sword- you never lose by being too careful or worrying too much. But it was faithful Myakes. "You took care of it?" I asked him.

  "I did, Emperor," he said. "No one's the wiser." His eyes went to the jar of wine I had ordered brought for the Sklavinian woman and me. After what he had done, he needed fortifying. I waved for him to help himself. The cup he picked up and filled was the one from which she had drunk, but I-

  MYAKES

  Mother of God, Brother Elpidios!

  JUSTINIAN

  – did not tell him that, he having done me a great service. He drained the cup, then set it down with a sigh. "Ah! Better."

  "If you want gold for this, you have it," I told him. "If you want rank, you have it. If you want-"

  "Emperor, what I want is to go back to bed," he said. That also being in my power to give him, I waved him out of the pavilion. I lay down myself, though I did not sleep the rest of the night.

  And the Sklavinian woman? No one ever asked me about her, the early shifts of guards assuming I had sent her away after I went off duty, the late shifts believing her already gone before they arrived. When you are of no consequence, how easy you are to forget! I found that out for myself, a few years later.

  I greeted the replacements for the two guards I had sent away after summoning Myakes, and sent them away, too, clouding matters further. Not that I needed to worry, as things turned out: what did one prisoner, one woman, matter?

  The next morning, we began the hunt for Neboulos.

  ***

  Word of what we had done to the Sklavinian kinglet's stronghold spread rapidly among the barbarians. Some of them did go on hiding in trees and flinging javelins at us when we passed below; some kept shooting arrows at us out of the bushes alongside the tracks we traveled. Here and there, villagers would offer battle when the Roman army came into sight.

  But, ever more often as my advance through the Sklavinias continued, the Sklavenoi yielded rather than fighting. Columns of wide-faced, fair-haired men and women went tramping down the forest paths toward the Via Egnatia and, ultimately, toward Anatolia. A few of them, when they found the chance, bolted into the woods, preferring their native wild lawlessness to life within the boundaries of the civilized world. By far the greater number, though, let themselves be resettled without the least difficulty, as reports reaching me in the field made plain.

  One great reason so many of the Sklavenoi surrendered was the impression the liquid fire made on those who escaped from Neboulos's village. The tales they spread among their tribesmen grew in the telling, too, as such tales have a way of doing.

  Bardanes Philippikos came up to me of an afternoon, bringing with him a Sklavinian whose long yellow beard had ugly streaks of gray. Bardanes' swarthy face bore an amused expression. "Emperor, this fellow wants to see the dragon we used to burn up Neboulos's wagons," he said.

  "Does he?" I did not smile. I made a point of not smiling. "Tell him he may not see it. Tell him God gave that dragon to the Emperor of the Romans, who looses it against his enemies. It is not to be seen by the common run of barbarian, unless he be a foe facing the fire."

  Bardanes started to laugh. I looked very fierce. If the Sklavenoi believed what I was saying, they would be more inclined to give up. His expression changed. He translated my words into the nasty grunts the yellow-bearded man used for speech. The Sklavinian gave back a guttural torrent of sound. When he was through, Bardanes said, "He thinks you are some kind of wizard."

  "Good," I said. "Tell him that if the Sklavenoi anger me enough, I will turn them all into mice. Tell him to tell some of his friends, and then let them go into the forests to spread what I say to their kinsfolk who still skulk out there." If the foe was superstitious, I would take advantage of it.

  Bardanes translated again. The Sklavinian stared at me. His eyes were big and wide and blue and stupid. His hand twisted in some sort of apotropaic pagan gesture, he being too ignorant to make the sign of the holy and life-giving cross. I scowled at him, stuck out my front teeth ahead of my lower lip, and said, "Squeak!"

  The barbarian almost wet his trousers. Bardanes looked as if he would burst, but did not let out the laughter he held inside. In Greek, he said to me, "Now I see what you are doing, Emperor: you are playing on his fears."

  "Of course I am," I answered, surprised as I had been with Basil that anyone would need such a lesson. Well, at least Bardanes understood it when it came in front of his face. My time at the imperial court, and particularly my time on the throne, had shown me how seldom men grasp the lessons they are offered.

  ***

  On through the hills and valleys of Thrace and Macedonia we went, cleansing them of Sklavenoi either through their voluntary surrender or by fire and sword. I wondered if I had Mardaites to spare for Thrace, to set up a military district there like those in Anatolia. If I could find the men for a military district, their presence on the land would protect Constantinople against barbarous assault.

  No matter where we went, we did not catch up with Neboulos. That grated on me; I was never one to like the ends of a knot left loose. I doubled the reward for his capture, then doubled it again, but he still eluded us. Like water through a clepsydra, time was running out in the campaigning season. And then, as I began to despair of laying hands on the Sklavinian kinglet, he once more sent me envoys.

  These men were not so arrogant as his previous ambassadors had been. They wriggled on the ground before me like worms. When at last they rose, their tunics were filthy and covered with leaves and twigs. Their spokesman came straight to the point: "Neboulos yield to you, you let him live?"

  I thought it over. I would sooner have taken his head, but leaving him alive and in my hands was better than letting him run loose through the winter, rebuilding strength with no Roman troops around and probably compelling me to fight this campaign all over again. "I shall let him live," I said, not without an inner pang.

  "You swear this?" the Sklavinian asked. "Swear by your god, your funny god, god no one can see?"

  I cros
sed myself. "By God, by the holy Mother of God, and by all the saints in heaven, I swear no harm will come to Neboulos if he comes to me of his own free will."

  "He come," the Sklavinian said. "He come three days' time. You stay here, no fight, no burn, three days' time?"

  I hesitated before answering. The Sklavenoi might have been trying to buy time for some mischief, or even for a full-scale assault on us Romans. If they did try that, though, I was confident they would regret it. And so I said, "Very well. We shall stay here for three days without making any attacks. But if by the end of the third day Neboulos has not yielded himself up to me, there will be such a great burning that any crow flying across the Sklavinias will have to carry its own provisions, for it will find none here."

  The Sklavinian wheezed. At first I thought him consumptive, then realized he was stifling laughter. He translated my remark for his comrades, who evidently had no Greek. They laughed out loud. What I had intended as grim threat, they took for a joke. Truly there is no reasoning with barbarians!

  I cast a wide net of scouts around the open meadows where we encamped. If the Sklavenoi contemplated assailing us, they would not catch us napping. The wait in one place, I must say, did the army good, and was in particular a boon to our wounded, who no longer had to endure jouncing along over roads more imaginary than real in our supply wagons. Several men the doctors had given up for lost recovered, thanks in great part to the quiet rest they were able to enjoy.

  And, on the third day, true to his promise, Neboulos came to our camp. He rode in alone, on a better horse than any other I had seen in the Sklavinias. I received him on a portable throne, surrounded by servants and excubitores, reproducing as best I could in the field the splendor of the great palace of Constantinople.