by Marié Heese
Suddenly thundering footsteps approached along the corridor connecting the palace to the Kathisma. Expecting an onslaught by rebels, Justinian stepped in front of Theodora. The double door burst open and two men in the uniform of the Imperial Guard almost fell into the room. They ran to abase themselves in front of Justinian.
“Despotes!” they exclaimed in unison.
“Boraides! Justus!” said Justinian, recognising his nephews. “What news?”
They spoke together: “The day belongs to the soldiers, Despotes. It is a massacre.”
“They were caught like rats in a trap. Belisarius is mowing the rebels down.”
“Mundus?” demanded Justinian.
“Ferocious. Unstoppable.”
“Where are Hypatius and Pompeius?”
“Still in the Kathisma, Despotes.”
“Go at once and arrest them both, also anyone you find with them. Bring them here to me.”
“Yes, Despotes. At once, Despotes.”
There could be no doubt as to where their allegiance now lay. They scrambled to their feet, reversed out bowing and charged back along the corridor.
Theodora stepped away from the window. “Come,” she said to her husband. “When they are brought in here, we should be seated.” Completely calm, she walked over to an ornate, high-backed chair, one of a pair on a dais set against a richly panelled wall. Justinian settled himself in the other one. The three officials took place side by side on a couch. They did not have to wait long.
The sound of marching feet and shouted orders heralded the arrival of Boraides and Justus, together with several more newly devoted guards. They dragged their captives into the triclinium, flung them triumphantly at the royal feet, and stood over them with drawn swords. Cappadocian John let out a grunt of satisfaction. Eudaemon folded his arms and frowned.
Justinian surveyed the sorry group that knelt before him. “Remove the common rebels and lock them up,” he ordered, waving away the redhead and some other ragtag supporters of the usurper. Off they went, accompanied by guards anxious to demonstrate efficiency. Tribonian sniggered, but softly.
Anastasius’s two nephews were left alone to face the Emperor’s ire, with Boraides and Justus still flanking them. Hypatius’s diadem had resolved itself back into a chain and hung incongruously around his pudgy neck. He and his brother were garbed in tunics considerably the worse for wear; if they had had cloaks at any time that day, these had been lost. Pompeius was in tears, which he tried ineffectually to wipe away with a bare arm.
“Well?” said Justinian, glaring at the elder brother. “And what have you to say for yourself? No doubt you have an explanation for accepting elevation to the throne?”
“Despotes,” said Hypatius in a shaky voice, “we had no choice. Truly, they would not listen, I tried to tell them … I tried, but they just … So I went along, but I sent a message, Despotes, I did – ask Pompeius, Despotes, he was there …”
“He sent a message,” confirmed Pompeius, nodding vigorously. “He did, Despotes, truly, I heard him.”
“I received no message,” said Justinian.
“It was a man called Ephraem, Despotes, he was running around all day, I told him, I told him to say I was just playing along,” insisted Hypatius.
“I received no such message,” reiterated Justinian.
“And, see, why I was playing along, Despotes …” Hypatius opened his small black eyes wide as inspiration struck. “I intended to lead them to the Hippodrome, Despotes, it was my plan. Because, because there, it would be easy to attack, they would be contained. They could be wiped out. As indeed, they are … are being wiped out. It was my plan.”
“He had a plan,” echoed Pompeius. “Definitely.”
“You knew the mercenaries would strike?” interpolated Theodora. “Nobody else did, but you knew?”
“I … I anticipated it,” said Hypatius, scraping rags of dignity together. “I am a military man, Despoina. We are both military men.”
“Yes, indeed, military men,” said Pompeius, shoulders well back.
“And they wouldn’t take no for an answer,” added Hypatius. “Just wouldn’t listen. I … we … acted under compulsion, Despotes.”
“Never had a choice,” agreed Pompeius. “They forced our hand. They were most insistent.”
Justinian frowned thoughtfully. He looked at Eudaemon. “It is true, one supposes, that they had no alternative,” he said. “I have no doubt that the mob was persuasive. Well. Shall we pardon them?”
Not one of the three officials on the couch had a word to say.
“No,” said Theodora. The three men blinked.
Justinian turned to his wife, again surprised by her voice in a council.
“It is too dangerous to let them live,” said Theodora. “They would always be a focus for rebellion. They would always be puppets to be used by traitors against the throne. And besides …” She glared at Hypatius, now visibly trembling. “He has been crowned.”
“That’s so, Despotes,” growled Cappadocian John.
“Indeed,” agreed Eudaemon.
“Might cause all kinds of legal wrangles later on,” put in Tribonian. “Rival claims. Not to be countenanced.”
Justinian sighed. Left to himself, he would have chosen clemency. But the truth had been spoken. “Take them away,” he ordered Boraides and Justus. “They shall be executed tomorrow, at dawn.”
Hypatius moaned. Pompeius let out a frightful shriek. They were dragged erect by their eager guards. “Please, Despotes, please, Despotes, please, please …” gabbled Hypatius as he stumbled out, propelled at swordpoint. Pompeius wept.
Out they went. The doors swung to. Suddenly the triclinium was silent. Procopius, who had been watching in speechless astonishment, snatched up his pen and resumed writing. Theodora sniffed; there was a peculiar odour in the room, a familiar odour, one she knew well but could not immediately identify. Then she remembered Fat Rosa’s buckets outside the laundry when she was a child. Ah, yes. Ammonia.
Pompeius had pissed himself.
Finale: The Nika revolt ends, 18 January, AD 532
Narses the eunuch: his journal
In the year of Our Lord 532, January 18
I saw it all. I knew I should have gone back to the palace to report to the Emperor. But I could not leave; there was a horrid fascination in the scene. I stood with my back to the wall just inside the Hippodrome beside the Nekra Gate. The one through which Mundus and his Heruls had stormed, the gate through which chariot drivers are carried out if they are killed during a race. Well, today all the gates were Nekra gates. There were so very many dead. More than thirty thousand rebels died. Cut down like wheat. A gruesome harvest. But not clean like wheat. It stank: the blood of more than thirty thousand men, spilled in one place, spilled on wooden stands and marble seats and the hard earth compacted by thousands of thundering horses’ hooves. Not on the kind of ground where battles are usually fought. There was no sand to drink it in. It spurted and ran and dripped and puddled. The mutilated corpses that peopled the stands were clothed in it. The seats were draped in red. When at last Belisarius said: “Put up your swords,” they had painted the entire Hippodrome red. Power wears a purple robe, I thought, but the true colour of power is the colour of blood. Red.
I saw, also, framed above the starting pens for racing chariots like a puppet show, the palace guards come rushing into the Kathisma to lay hold of the newly crowned Hypatius and his brother Pompeius and drag them back into the palace through the Ivory Gate, together with their recently assembled entourage. I witnessed the brief reign of the usurper coming to an ignominious end. Henceforth, I thought, the Emperor will owe his authority to his wife.
When the massacre stopped, I sat down on the nearest bench. My knees were suddenly weak. Nightfall was coming on. The Goths and the Heruls were now looting the corpses, working them over systematically. I had been so intent on the slaughter that I had been like a deaf man, but now I could hear again, and the air wa
s rent with moans and groans and calls for help. But these were soon silenced as the soldiers moved among the fallen, slitting throats before they took their booty.
Well, it was over. All was quiet now. There was nothing more that I could do. I got up and walked out through the Nekra Gate. Just outside, a woman grabbed my arm.
“Hey, you,” she said. I stiffened, but then I realised that I looked like a slave, not like the Commander of the Imperial Guard.
“Yes,” I said. “What do you want?”
“I’m looking for my husband,” she told me. “I’ve heard there was a frightful battle. Men are coming home with such wounds … Is it true that there are thousands dead?”
“It’s true,” I said.
She frowned; quite a comely woman, I noticed, with fair hair escaping from a loose plait. She hunched her shoulders, drawing her woollen cloak closer. “And the wretched fool had to go and get involved in it,” she said. “I told him, I said, now don’t you go and run around with the mob, you’ve no business out there. They’re up to no good, that lot, burning down buildings, destroying things … Your business is at home, I told him, your business is here, with me, with our children, I told him. But did he listen? Do they ever listen to a woman? Don’t you believe it. You didn’t see him maybe? Not old, he’s not old, and not very tall, you’d know him by his nose, there’s a knob on the end of it.” She touched her own, quite small and pert.
“No,” I said. “I haven’t seen him.”
“No sense in his head,” she said. “Wouldn’t listen to me. Well, I’ll have to go inside, then. Have a look around.”
“No,” I said. “You don’t want to do that.”
“What? Why not? The silly fool might be injured. Wounded. And then how’s he to get home?”
“You’re not allowed,” I said. “There are soldiers … you’ll not be let in. That’s the Nekra Gate.”
“But what am I to do then?”
“Go home,” I said. “Go home, and wait.”
In the year of Our Lord 532, January 30
Hypatius and Pompeius were executed at dawn. As the Commander of the Imperial Guard, I oversaw the execution of the brothers as ordered by Justinian and I stood on the icy shore when their bodies were cast into the sea. I saw the usurper float away into the deeps.
I believe that Justinian, left to himself, would have been merciful. But the Empress Theodora was correct in pointing out that the sorry pair would always remain a possible focus for discontents, since they did have royal blood, and Hypatius had been crowned. Even such a travesty as it had been, lacking the blessing of the Patriarch – even so, he had been crowned. But the Empire of Byzantium can have only one emperor.
They had to be executed. So they were. And I saw them taken away like flotsam, drifting out to sea on an ebbing tide, the would-be emperor nothing more than food for nibbling fish.
It is no easy thing, to get rid of an emperor. One who has been accepted by the Senate, supported by the army and proclaimed to the populace. Thrice August. Crowned and consecrated, God’s Vice-regent here on earth.
The people of Constantinople now know this fact. The Sanitation Department has removed the corpses, all thirty thousand of them, from the Hippodrome, and the tiers of seats that ran red with blood have been scrubbed with lye. But memories are harder to eradicate, and the people will never forget the day they tried to put a different despotes on the throne. There are surely few among them who did not lose a father, brother or a son, a friend or lover, when the generals Belisarius and Mundus fell upon the mutinous gathering in the great circus with their Goths and Heruls and cut out the heart of the revolt.
No, no easy task to unseat a reigning emperor. Justinian has reasserted his right to the throne and his power in utterly convincing terms.
And yet he has been weakened. The formerly unthinkable has been thought, and almost turned to deed: there nearly was another emperor. The populace desired another emperor. So did the great landowners and the nobility, who have never truly accepted a peasant and a former actress and courtesan on the throne. Everybody has considered this possibility: there could be another emperor.
Perhaps this end may yet be striven for, though possibly by other means.
We must be vigilant.
Selected sources
Print media
Amery, Heather & Patricia Vanags. 1979. The time traveller book
of Rome and Romans. London: Usborne.
Bridge, Antony. 1993. Theodora: Portrait in a Byzantine landscape.
Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers.
Bury, J.B. 1958. History of the later Roman empire, Vol. 2.
New York: Dover.
Cesaretti, Paolo. 2004. Theodora: Empress of Byzantium.
New York: Magowan.
Durant, Will. 1950. The Age of Faith. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Evans, James Allan. 2002. The Empress Theodora: Partner of Justinian.
Austin: University of Texas Press.
Fauber, L.H. 1990. Narses, Hammer of the Goths.
New York: St Martin’s Press.
Freely, John. 1996. Istanbul: The imperial city. London: Viking.
Freeman, Charles. 1996. Egypt, Greece and Rome.
Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Graves, Robert. 1938. Count Belisarius. New York: Literary Guild.
Herrin, Judith. 2001. Women in purple: Rulers of medieval Byzantium.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Herrin, Judith. 2007. Byzantium: The surprising life of a medieval empire.
Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Holy Bible, King James version.
Hunt, Sara (ed.). 1995. Heroines: Remarkable and inspiring women.
Long Island Sound: Saraband.
Lamb, Harold. 1963 (1952). Theodora and the emperor.
New York: Bantam Books.
L’Aver, James. 1969. A concise history of costume.
London: Thames & Hudson.
Lawhead, Stephen R. 1996. Byzantium. New York: HarperTorch.
National Geographic, Vol. 164, No. 6. Dec 1983. “Byzantine Empire”:
709-739.
Norwich, John Julius. 1997. A short history of Byzantium.
London: Penguin.
Procopius. The secret history. 1981 (first published 1623;
ms completed 550). Translated & edited G.A. Williamson.
London: Penguin.
Reed, Mary & Eric Mayer. 1999. One for sorrow.
Scotsdale: Poisoned Pen Press.
Reed, Mary & Eric Mayer. 2005. Four for a boy.
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Online sources
Orthodoxwiki
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Wikipedia on key topics
The End
Copyright © 2011 by Marié Heese
First published in 2011 by Human & Rousseau,
a division of NB Publishers,
40 Heerengracht, Cape Town, 8001
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including photocopying and recording, or by any other information storage or retrieval system, without written permission from the publisher
ISBN: 978-0-7981-5280-8
EPUB: 978-0-7981-5912-8
ISBN: 9780798161107 (mobi)
Table of Contents
Title Page
About the Author
Dedication
List of Characters
Contents
Prologue: The Nika revolt begins, 10-13 January, AD 532
Part 1: The bearkeeper’s daughter AD 505-507
Chapter 1: Exit Acasius
Chapter 2: For whom the trumpet sounds
Chapter 3: Only silence
Chapter 4: A scarlet scarf
First interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 14 January, AD 532
Part 2: The actress AD 512-516
Chapter 5: Comito acts
Chapter 6: The insatiable whore
Chapter 7: No more honey-cakes
Chapter 8: What have you done?
Second interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 15 January, AD 532
Part 3: The courtesan AD 516-518
Chapter 9: A spectacular performance
Chapter 10: The mistress
Chapter 11: An invitation
Chapter 12: The Governor’s lady
Third interlude: The corridors of power, AD 518
Part 4: A long way home AD 518-520
Chapter 13: Pictures
Chapter 14: Darkest night
Chapter 15: Alexandria
Chapter 16: Identities
Fourth interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 16 January, AD 532
Part 5: Becoming royal AD 520-527
Chapter 17: Home at last
Chapter 18: The Hormisdas Palace
Chapter 19: Dangerously ill
Chapter 20: Ceremonies
Fifth interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 17 January, AD 532
Part 6: Wearing the purple AD 527-532
Chapter 21: Despotes and Despoina
Chapter 22: Ensuring the succession
Chapter 23: War and peace
Sixth interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 18 January, AD 532
Chapter 24: A new emperor
Seventh interlude: The Nika revolt continues, 18 January, AD 532
Chapter 25: Carnage
Finale: The Nika revolt ends, 18 January, AD 532
Selected sources
Copyright Page