Justinian Read online

  "It is not enough, not close to enough," I told him. "Begone! Since you are in a Christian land here, go to the church of the Holy Wisdom and thank God for my mercy in not sending you home with stripes on your back. And while you are there, pray to God to grant you some of His wisdom, for plainly you have not got enough of your own."

  He fled. Some of the oldest courtiers had served since the last days of my great-great-grandfather's reign, nearly half a century before. They united in telling me they had never seen anyone withdraw from the imperial presence so precipitously. "Anybody'd think he'd been struck with the urgent squats," one of them said, chuckling.

  I froze him with a glance, whereupon he withdrew from my presence almost as fast as John the Cypriot had done. I remembered too well how my father had died. At the next imperial audience, the old fool did not attend me, pleading an indisposition. I sent word that the longer he remained indisposed, the happier I would be. He never returned to court, and died the following year. His funeral, for that of a man of such high rank, was remarkably ill-attended.

  John soon went back to Cyprus, sadder and probably not wiser. His pleas, even if I could not honor them, left me thoughtful. If I resettled the Cypriots on territory definitively Roman, I could gather for myself all the taxes they yielded, sharing none with Abimelekh. Since the treaty between us said not a word about such resettlement, I would have been within my rights to do so.

  But the time was not yet ripe. The war with the Bulgars might well have continued into the following campaigning season, and I did not wish to embroil myself with them and with the followers of the false prophet at the same time. So long as Abimelekh paid his tribute as he should, Cyprus would have to wait.

  Not long after John had returned to Cyprus, the ecumenical patriarch Paul approached me, saying, "Emperor, your piety is renowned among Christians throughout the civilized world."

  "For which I thank you," I said. His opening obviously being preface for a request of one sort or another, I said no more, waiting instead to see how he would proceed.

  "The sixth holy and ecumenical synod was a splendid jewel in your father's crown of accomplishments, perhaps the most splendid in all his reign," he said.

  "Perhaps, though he would have been in a poor position to call the synod had he not protected Constantinople from the deniers of Christ," I returned.

  "Rooting out the misguided doctrines of monotheletism and monenergism weighs more in the scales of God, Who surely aided him in preserving the imperial city so that he could restore correct dogma to the true and holy faith," the patriarch said.

  "It may be so," I admitted after a little thought, for who can deny that the world to come, wherein we shall exist for all eternity, is of greater moment than our tiny eyeblink of life here on earth?

  "It is so," Paul declared, luminous faith on his face. After a moment, he went on, "Magnificent as the ecumenical synod was, however, and marvelously as it established the doctrines of the holy Christian church, its work, regrettably, was incomplete. As had the fifth ecumenical synod before it, convened by the great Roman Emperor who bore the name with which your father endowed you, it dealt with doctrine at the expense of discipline."

  I knew that, as my father had known it before me. Some questions of discipline, now, had awaited settlement for nearly a century and a half: not surprisingly, dogma had to be established first, whereupon, all too often, the zeal of the holy fathers flagged. I asked the question he no doubt expected me to ask: "What remedy do you propose?"

  "A new synod, Emperor," he replied, "one that will deal solely with the matters of discipline the last two holy and ecumenical synods failed to cover. You must agree, these matters have gone neglected too long."

  "I do agree," I said.

  Paul took no notice. Once started on a chain of thought, he would pursue it link by link, even if the person to whom he was speaking had skipped several links and reached the end before him. Now he said, "Matters such as ordination, proper clerical dress, simony, and alienation of monastic property stand in urgent need of definition and legislation. So do less purely ecclesiastical matters like marriage and public morality, manumission of slaves, and the correct representation of our Lord Jesus Christ and the suppression of base and ignorant superstition."

  He ticked off the points on his fingers, one by one, as if to make sure he omitted none. Plainly, he had forereadied them. I thought more of him for that, not less, having had many hours of my life wasted by lackwits unprepared for the audiences they had gained with me.

  "All those matters, and others as well, do need regulation," I said. "I agree."

  He gaped at me in glad surprise. "You do?"

  "I said so. Twice, now." I put a hand on his shoulder. "Begin getting ready for the synod at once. Send out letters to bishops within the Roman Empire, to those under the control of the Arabs, and to those in the western lands the blond German barbarians rule. Set the date for the synod as, hmm, two years from now. That will give all the clerics wishing to attend time enough to come to Constantinople, and will give us plenty of time to prepare for their arrival."

  He bowed. "Emperor, you are generous beyond what we deserve."

  "Nonsense. Without the church, how shall we be saved?" After a moment, I went on, "And I want as many bishops from the western lands as possible to come. There were only a few"- I particularly remembered Arculf of Rhemoulakion-"at the holy ecumenical synod, which I suppose is why they would not admit their Pope Honorius was anathematized at the synod. I want no such, ah, misunderstanding after the synod to come."

  "Quite right, Emperor," the ecumenical patriarch said. "The pretensions of the bishop of Rome grow tedious at times. Peter may have founded their church, but Andrew founded ours, and he too was an apostle. And Rome, these days, is a contemptible ruin of a town, as your grandfather discovered when he traveled to the west, while Constantinople is and shall always be the grandest city in Christendom. Let the ignorant western bishops see our magnificence and taste of our learning and return to their own lands better and wiser men."

  "They will be as good as they will be," I replied. "Let them return with correct doctrine, and spread it through those barbarous regions."

  "Yes, Emperor. That, too," he said.

  MYAKES

  Everyone who talked with Justinian around that time did his best to talk him out of resettling the Cypriots then and there. In all the hundreds of years of the Roman Empire, I don't think there's ever been such a man for resettling people as Justinian was. If you lived somewhere and your ancestors had lived there for the past five hundred years, to him that was plenty of reason all by itself to move you someplace else.

  You know what it puts me in mind of, Brother Elpidios? It puts me in mind of the Assyrians in the Holy Scriptures, who resettled the ten tribes of Hebrews so well, they've never been heard from since. Ah, now I've gone and surprised you- I hear it in your voice. Yes, I've paid attention when they read the Holy Scriptures here. Why shouldn't I? I'm an old blind man; being read to is all I'm good for.

  Anyway, this time we managed to keep him from shipping the Cypriots to Anatolia. He would sometimes listen to reason, and with everyone telling him to wait, to be patient, where reason lay was pretty plain this time.

  Sometimes, of course, he wouldn't listen to anyone or anything at all. Life gota160… interesting then, for him and for the whole Roman Empire.

  JUSTINIAN

  The next spring, I crossed over into Anatolia to see how the Sklavenoi I had resettled were getting along, and how Neboulos was progressing with the creation of the so-called special army. Most of the Sklavenoi had been transferred to points along the Gulf of Nikomedeia, the easternmost projection of the Sea of Marmara. Had I given more detailed orders to the men bringing them into Romania, they would have been widely scattered across Anatolia. As things were, though, their keepers had taken them along the military road to the eastern frontier, from Chalcedon across from the imperial city to Libyssa and then to Nikomedeia, and ther
e, perhaps forty miles from Constantinople, had turned back toward the capital, leaving the Sklavenoi to fend for themselves.

  That the sturdy barbarians had done. As I traveled the military road myself, I saw a good many thatch-roofed huts like those the Sklavenoi had made in the villages I had captured the year before in Thrace and Macedonia. The men and women working in the fields were fair-haired Sklavenoi, the sun making their yellow locks shine like gold. Although not long in their new homes, they had wasted no time in buckling down: sensibly so, for, had they dawdled, they would soon have begun to starve.

  From Nikomedeia, the military road runs east. Another, lesser, road goes south from the fortified town toward Nikaia, site of the very first holy ecumenical synod. It leaves the Gulf of Nikomedeia at the harbor of Eribolos, ten miles south of Nikomedeia. I did not follow the road all the way to Nikaia, but went west along the southern shore of the gulf about halfway to the seaside town of Prainetos, for more Sklavenoi, Neboulos among them, had been resettled thereabouts.

  Only a track hardly deserving to be called a road ran from Eribolos to Prainetos; most travelers from one to the other would have gone by sea. Sometimes there were cliffs right at the water's edge, with more high ground lying farther inland. But here, as on the flatter terrain north of the gulf, Sklavinian farmers were out in the fields, tending their crops and minding their flocks and herds.

  As he had before he surrendered to me, Neboulos made his home in a village larger and wealthier than the mean Sklavinian mean. When, accompanied by my excubitores, I rode up to that village, I saw fair-haired men wearing leather jerkins practicing with javelins in a field close by. Neboulos himself stood among them. I could not follow his barbarous dialect, but he seemed to be congratulating the warriors who threw well and upbraiding those who did not.

  A broad, sincere smile was on his face as he left the Sklavenoi and approached me. "Have a care, Emperor," Myakes muttered. "Anybody in charge of soldiers who looks that cheerful, there's something wrong with him."

  "Ah, Emperor!" Neboulos called. "You come to see my special army- your special army? I have them go through their paces for you."

  "That is what I came to see," I told him, wondering if he was not too eager to show off the barbarians. How convenient that he should have had a unit of them exercising just when I arrived. Was it too convenient? Word of my coming might have got there ahead of me, giving him the chance to show me what he wanted me to see.

  Nothing I could do about that, though. Being shown what others want him to see is a bane of the Emperor's existence. Everything is always prettied up, everyone on his best behavior. And so I watched perhaps a thousand Sklavenoi march and countermarch, throw javelins, and shoot arrows at bales of hay. They did well enough to look to be a useful addition to the Roman army.

  "Are these the only men with whom you've been working?" I asked Neboulos. "How many men do you propose having in the special army?"

  "These are not only men, no," Neboulos answered. "How many men do you want in special army? You resettled lot of Sklavenoi in this country. If you want twenty thousand men, I give you that many."

  "If you can give me twenty thousand men…" I felt weak and dizzy with desire, as if, like David spying Bathsheba, I had suddenly and unexpectedly come upon a beautiful woman in her nakedness. But my lust was for martial conquest, not carnal. With twenty thousand fierce Sklavenoi joining the cavalry from the military districts, I might be able to seize Damascus, the Arabs' capital. I might even be able to take back from the followers of the false prophet the holy city of Jerusalem, as my great-great-grandfather Herakleios had regained it from the Persians.

  "I put twenty thousand men in your army, Emperor," Neboulos promised. "Maybe thirty thousand, even. We march where you march, we fight where you fight."

  That promise he ended up keeping, too. My own euphoria did not last long, for I was used to men exaggerating what they could do in hope of gaining advantage they did not deserve. I would have been satisfied had he ended up giving me half of what he claimed, but, as I say, he, unlike so many, did fulfill his promise. That, unfortunately, proved to make matters worse rather than better… but, as I do too often, with such comments I get ahead of myself.

  At Neboulos's command, the Sklavenoi cut the throats of enough sheep to feed me and my escort along with themselves, then butchered the carcasses and roasted them over fires made in pits they dug in the ground. They served us the mutton along with both wine and the barley drink they brew: rough fare, rougher even that I had eaten when campaigning against them, but filling and in its own way satisfying even so.

  I had mutton fat in my mustache, and could smell it every time I inhaled no matter how often I wiped my mouth. Neboulos leaned over to me and asked, "Do I hear right, Emperor: your wife is dead?"

  "Yes," I said shortly. Who could expect a barbarian to have manners?

  "You stay here with us tonight, yes?" he said, and went on without waiting for my answer: "Shall I bring you pretty woman, to keep you warm, to keep you happy?"

  Most times, most places, I should have said yes to that in those days. But hearing Neboulos put me in mind of the night after we sacked his village, and of the Sklavinian woman I had chosen from among the captives. "No!" I exclaimed, perhaps more sharply than I had intended.

  Neboulos, being an ignorant heathen who knew no better, then asked, "If you do not want pretty woman, shall I bring you pretty boy?"

  "No!" I said again, even more sharply that before: so sharply, in fact, that Neboulos's eyes widened in surprise. I explained: "In the law of the Roman Empire, those who partake of this impious practice are put to the sword: it is criminal, as the Holy Scriptures clearly set forth. Even bishops who succumb to it face harsh punishment. I know of one who was tortured and sent into exile, and another who was castrated and paraded through the streets for the people of his city to mock."

  "Seems silly to make such fuss over this thing," Neboulos said, never having had the privilege of learning the precepts of the true and holy Christian faith. Then, though, he shrugged. "If you do not want pretty girl or pretty boy, I do not bring you pretty girl or pretty boy. You sleep by yourself. You are Emperor; you can do as you like."

  I was not altogether by myself in bed that night, being accompanied by an inordinate number of mosquitoes. But pederasty is not only against the law of God and man, it has never been to my taste. And, remembering the one untamed Sklavinian woman, I was not anxious to try another.

  What Neboulos had shown me left me encouraged on my return to the imperial city. He did seem at least to be attempting to do as he had promised when he surrendered up north of Thessalonike. Perhaps the special army he had vowed to create would be worth hurling at the Arabs. Better by far, I thought, to spend Sklavinian lives than Roman.

  ***

  "Emperor," Stephen the Persian said, "I want you to examine these coins we have received from the followers of the false prophet in their latest tribute payment." His voice quivered with indignation. Stephen could be relied upon to take seriously anything pertaining to gold.

  The coins he handed me were not Roman nomismata, though their obverses, copied from goldpieces of my predecessors, closely resembled our mintings. When I turned the coins over, though, I saw at once what had upset him. It was not so much that the deniers of Christ truncated the cross on the reverse of their goldpieces; thanks to their false religion, they had been doing that for some time. But the inscriptions on these new coins were not in the Greek and Latin characters we Romans use on our nomismata; they appeared instead in the sinuous, ophidian letters the Arabs employ to write their own jargon.

  "What do they say?" I asked.

  "Something extolling their false prophet and senseless god, I have no doubt," Stephen replied. "That they copy our coins is bad enough. That they do such a thing as this is much worse."

  "I wonder how they would like it if we minted coins with legends calling their Mouamet a liar," I said, and then, in an altogether different tone of voice,
"I wonder how they would like it if we minted coins calling their Mouamet a liar." The idea appealed to me, not least because it would be the plain and simple truth.

  "That is an interesting notion, Emperor," Stephen the Persian replied, "but not one that is germane here, the question at hand being, what is to be done about the presence of these anomalous coins in this year's tribute?"

  As I had seen, in matters having to do with money he was single-mindedness itself. The notion of calling the false prophet a liar and a blasphemer on our nomismata remained most tempting, for those coins pass current far beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, and it was an opportunity for us to tell the Arabs what we thought of their misguided, diabolically inspired heresy. Reluctantly, I brought my mind back to the question the sakellarios had asked, and I asked a question of my own: "Are these goldpieces of the proper weight and purity?"

  "They are," he said, sounding as if he hated to admit it.

  "Then this year, at least, we shall accept them," I said. "We can melt them down and remint them so these offending messages do not spread through the Empire. It is a nuisance, I know, but I am not yet fully prepared to go to war with Abimelekh."

  "As you wish," he said, again unhappily. Listening to him, I got the idea that, for the sake of any tiny alteration in the goldpieces we received as tribute, he would have sent every soldier we had marching against the miscalled commander of the faithful.

  Never having been one to turn the other cheek to slights no matter how small, I might under other circumstances have felt the same. When I did not, I wondered why, and realized I wanted to wait until Neboulos's special army should be ready before warring against the Arabs. Only then did I fully understand how much hope I had for that army.

  "The tribute will stop, at least for a while, when we do go to war against the deniers of Christ," I reminded him. "I want to be certain we have enough in the treasury to fight for a long time even without the tribute's coming in, and also to run the state afterwards without it."