Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  For five springs in a row, the deniers of Christ sailed forth from Kyzikos against this God-guarded and imperial city. I grew to take their yearly arrival utterly for granted: anything that happens through half a boy's life becomes fixed in his mind as an ineluctable law of nature.

  What a host of warlike men they threw away in their futile assaults! They could not breach the land walls, nor, as they found in the last year of the siege, could they undermine them. And, on the sea, the fighting towers on our dromons and the liquid fire they hurled gave us Romans the victory again and again. As if I were a pagan watching Christians martyred by fire in the arena, I stared avidly out from the seawall as the followers of the false prophet burned alive, the unquenchable fires on their galleys foreshadowing the flames of hell. Myakes usually stood at my side, as he had been since the second spring of the siege.

  Toward the end of that fifth summer, the Arabs sailed away from their Thracian camps earlier than was their wont. Their warships withdrew from our waters. Cautiously, my father ordered our dromons across the Propontis to spy out the enemy. And when those dromons returned, they did so with hosannas and cries of thanksgiving, for the followers of the false prophet were abandoning their enterprise and their base there, and were returning in disgrace to the lands ruled by their miscalled commander of the faithful.

  How we praised God for delivering us from the foe despite the multitude of our sins! And how many more sins, I have no doubt when looking back on the time with a man's years, were committed to celebrate that deliverance. Having then but nine years, I was limited as to the sins of the flesh, but poured two cups of neat wine into my little brother Herakleios, laughing like a madman to hear him babble and watch him stagger.

  When my uncles saw little Herakleios, who would have been three then, they laughed themselves hoarse. When my mother saw him, she was horror-stricken- but she laughed, too. And when my father saw him, he laughed so hard, he had to lean against the wall to hold himself upright- and when he was done laughing, he gave me a beating that, like so many of his, made the one I had had from Myakes seem a pat on the back by comparison.

  I went looking for my only friend, but did not find him, not then. I had a hard time finding any excubitores. Had an assassin wanted to sneak into the palaces and slay my father, that would have been the time to do it, with so many guardsmen off roistering. But, on that day of days, surely the assassins were off roistering, too.

  "Nothing I can do, Goldentop," he said the next day, when I did tell him my troubles. "The Emperor is your father, and he has the right to beat you when you do wrong- and you did wrong." He spoke slowly, carefully, and quietly, not, most likely, for my sake, but for his own, for he must have been nursing a thick head.

  With anyone else, I would have been angry, but Myakes could say such things to me, not least because with him, unlike my father and my other kinsfolk, I was the one who chose how much heed I paid. "Where everyone else is glad, I am almost sorry the Arabs have gone away," I said.

  "What?" He stared at me. "Are you daft? Why?"

  "Because now I won't be able to go out with you and watch the fights by land and sea," I answered.

  Myakes laughed at that, but quickly sobered. "They didn't come here for your amusement," he said, his voice as serious as if he were talking to a grown man. Even when I was a boy, he always took me seriously; I had taught him, up on the land wall, I was not to be trifled with. He went on, "They came to sack the city and kill your father the Emperor and kill you, too, or make you a slave or a eunuch or both. War is not a game. If you go into it, you go into it with everything you have. Your father would tell you the same."

  He was right, of course. I did not need to ask my father; I could hear the truth in his words. I have remembered them from that day to this, and when I war against the enemies of the Roman Empire, or against the vicious, treacherous dogs who overthrew me once and conspire against me even now, I fight with everything I have.

  ***

  Even beyond the frontier between this Roman land, this Romania, and the dominions of the miscalled commander of the faithful, the Emperor's reach remained long. My father urged the brigands known as Mardaites to sweep down from their fastnesses onto the plains of Lebanon, which they did, overrunning nearly the whole of the country and discomfiting the Arabs no end.

  And God also revealed His love for the Roman Empire and for the Queen of Cities in other ways. Although the followers of the false prophet had abandoned Thrace earlier in the season than was their habit, and although they sailed away from Kyzikos well before the coming of the autumnal equinox in the hope of avoiding the storms that wrack the Mediterranean with the arrival of fall, they could not escape the heavy hand of divine punishment.

  A great tempest overwhelmed their expedition off the southern coast of Anatolia. The fleet was smashed to bits by Pamphylian Syllaion, with only a handful of men coming home to Phoenicia and Palestine and Egypt and Alexandria to tell the tale of what had befallen them.

  Hardly had this news reached our God-guarded and imperial city when word came that three of my father's generals, Florus, Petronas, and Kyprianos, had crushed an Arab army, slaying, it was said, thirty thousand of the followers of the false prophet. Truly God was merciful to the Romans in that year and at that season.

  Again and again, folk reveled in the streets of Constantinople. Again and again, the great church- the church of the Holy Wisdom- the church of the Holy Apostles, and all the other innumerable churches in the city filled as worshipers offered up thanksgiving to God and His wholly immaculate Virgin Mother for delivering the Roman Empire from the jaws of the Arabs. The sweet savor of incense rose from the churches in clouds so thick that for hours at a time you could scarcely discern the usual city odors of horse dung and slops.

  Mauias, the Arabs' leader, concluded further warfare against Romania was useless because of our divine protection. He sent two men to Constantinople to seek peace.

  All the imperial family received them sitting in a row: my father, I, my uncle Herakleios, my uncle Tiberius, and my brother Herakleios. This display of might, or at least of fecundity, was intended to overawe. The Arabs' envoys prostrated themselves before us. When they rose, one of them addressed my father, in whom, of course, all true power rested: "Very well, Emperor, you have won this round. The commander of the faithful will pay you a tidy sum to put the Mardaites back on the leash."

  "He speaks Greek," I whispered to my uncle Herakleios. "He speaks good Greek."

  He was glad to whisper back: like me, he was there only for show. "Why shouldn't he speak Greek? The Arabs still use it in their chancery, and Damascus was still a Roman city when he was a boy."

  I started to say something more, but my father chose that moment to reply to the ambassador. I looked for him to hurl anathemas and the fear of hell like a churchman; how often, in years gone by, he had scorned the Arabs as infidels and heretics and urged our Roman people to defend not only the Queen of Cities but also the true and holy faith.

  But what he said was, "He'd better. It'll cost him plenty, too, after everything he put us through the past few years. I'm going to squeeze him by the money bags till his eyes pop."

  Of all the sovereigns in the world, only the Arabs' ruler stands in rank with the Emperor of the Romans. My father, then, addressed him as an equal through his emissaries, and not only as an equal but almost as a near neighbor. I thought- and think still- this beneath the dignity of the Emperor, but it was my father's way. Who would have presumed to differ with him?

  In my years of lonely exile at Kherson, I watched men in the marketplace dicker for hours over the price of the smoked flesh and salted roe of the mourzoulin and other fish like it. So, like a man buying salt fish in the market, my father dickered with the Arabs. The haggling went on not just for hours but for days. In the end, coming to no agreement with Mauias's envoys, my father sent them back to Syria, and sent with them an ambassador of his own, John Pitzigaudis.

  He chortled after sending th
em off by land, and told me and whoever else in the palaces who would listen to him: "John will do better with Mauias than I could with his emissaries. He's sure of heaven, for if by some mischance or great sin he winds up in hell, he'll dicker his way free out of the devil."

  He knew whereof he spoke. He never lived to grow old- I am one-and-forty as I go over these words, and have not far from a decade more than he ever attained, while at the time of which I speak he was but twenty-seven- but even without great experience he was a keen judge of men. After long discussion, John Pitzigaudis came back from Damascus with an agreement that the followers of the false prophet were to send us three thousand nomismata, fifty high-bred horses, and fifty bondsmen a year for the next thirty years.

  One of the eunuch parakoimomenoi, Stephen the Persian, rubbed his hands together in delight and crooned, over and over again, "Three thousand pieces of gold a year," as if every one of them were to be delivered straight to his chamber.

  He carried on for so long and acted so foolish that at last my mother, who hardly ever spoke up to rebuke anyone, reminded him, "The money goes to the fisc, not to you." Stephen turned red, then white. He bowed to my mother and took his leave, but he was still mumbling of nomismata. I never saw a man with a passion for gold to match his, but then, he had no other passions he could satisfy.

  MYAKES

  Justinian was wrong there, and he must have known it when he was writing, but you can't think of everything all the time. Only God can do that, eh, Brother Elpidios? There's another passion a lot of eunuchs have, and Stephen the Persian had it more than most: he was as nasty an item as I ever had the misfortune to meet.

  What do I mean? What eunuchs hanker after, Brother, is revenge, revenge on the whole world. When you think about it, you can't hardly blame them, now can you? If somebody cut me like that, I would have- Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord? Oh yes, of course, Brother Elpidios. That is what the Holy Scriptures say. But not every man can follow them as well as we might like. If we could follow them better, we'd not need them so much, eh? Am I right or am I wrong?

  No. Wait. Never mind. We can argue theology or you can read. We can't do both at once. I'd sooner you read, if you don't mind. Ah. I thank you, and may God bless you and keep you.

  JUSTINIAN

  News that the followers of the false prophet had agreed to make peace and pay tribute spread all throug h the world with amazing speed, proving to the lesser rulers that the Roman Empire, while diminished in extent from what it had been in the reign of Justinian my namesake, yet remained, as of course it shall forever, the grandest and mightiest empire of them all.

  Realizing this once more, the lesser rulers hastened to send envoys to Constantinople to congratulate my father for what he had achieved and to confirm that he was also at peace with them. First, for their lands were nearest, came men from the Sklavinias, the little territories the petty kings and princes of the Sklavenoi have carved out of the land between the Danube and the sea. They brought bricks of beeswax and pots of honey to lay at my father's feet.

  One of those feet was bandaged when he received the Sklavenoi, with myself, my uncles, and my little brother once more ranked beside him to lend ceremony to the occasion: he suffered from gout, and, when it flared, the slightest touch was to him like the fiery furnace into which the king of Babylon cast Daniel long ago. The whole of the Empire presently suffered from this, as I shall relate in its own place.

  The Sklavenoi, fair-haired, round-faced men in linen tunics elaborately embroidered with colorful yarns, stared in awe at our crowns and the shimmering silk robes we wore and at the jewels and pearls decorating our raiment. Their pale eyes also went wide at the marble and gold and silver in the throne room, at our thrones of gold and ivory, at the precious and holy icons of Christ and the Virgin and the saints on the wall (although, being pagan, they appreciated the beauty and ornament that went into their creation, not the piety), and at the floor mosaics, which I believe they took for a moment to be real things rather than images.

  While they spoke to my father in bad, mushy Greek, I turned to my uncle Herakleios and said, "It's as if they've never been inside a building before."

  "They haven't, not a building like this," he answered. "They live in little huts with straw roofs, mostly by riverbanks. Christ crucified, if poverty is a virtue, they're the most virtuous people in the world. But they can fight."

  I did not fully understand him, not then. How could I? I had spent all my life in the palaces. What did I know of huts made of sticks and straw? But I have learned. And when you are cold and wet and hungry, a hut is more a palace than a palace is when you have all you want.

  Afterwards came emissaries from the khagan of the Avars- swarthy men with narrow eyes set on a slant, flat noses, and even flatter faces, all of them bowlegged from spending most of their time in the saddle. Their gifts to my father included a double handful of fair-haired young women: slaves taken from among the Sklavenoi, several of whose tribes were under the dominion of the khagan.

  I reckoned them a paltry present- some of them looked to be only a couple of years older than I was myself. But my father and my uncles inspected them with scrupulous attention to detail. At last my father said, "I shall put them to work here in the palaces. I expect we'll get good use from them."

  He laughed, something I had never heard him do at an audience, which is in most instances almost as formal and solemn as the celebration of the divine liturgy. My uncles laughed, too, and so did the Avar envoys.

  Again, I did not understand. I had but nine years at the time.

  We also received ambassadors from the Lombards, whose possessions in Italy were and are mixed promiscuously with our own. After all these years, I do not recall which of their dukes and princes sent us men along with those who came from their king. There were several; I remember that much. The Lombards fight among themselves and seek our support in their quarrels, just as we try to use them to our own advantage. As he had with the various Sklavenoi and the envoys of the Avar khagan, though, my father made peace with them and sent them away happy.

  There also came to this God-guarded and imperial city an emissary from the king of the Franks, the blond tribe now ruling in Gaul. I was excited when I heard of his arrival, for, as I told my brother, "The kings of the Franks are called the long-haired kings, which means they have hair growing all down along their backs like hogs. Maybe their ambassador will, too."

  Herakleios, who by then was four years old, received my news with the usual amount of fraternal trust: "You're making that up," he said.

  "What? About the Frankish kings? I am not," I said, and hit him, whereupon the little wretch ran and tattled to my father, who hit me a good deal harder.

  I still believe, though I have never seen one, the Frankish kings have hair growing down their backs like swine. Their ambassador did not. He had no hair on his cheeks and chin, either, though he let his mustache grow long and droop down over his mouth to show he was no eunuch. He could not even speak Greek, but had to mumble away in Latin while his interpreter- an Italian, I suppose- turned his words into ones we could understand. Once translated, those words seemed friendly enough. After an exchange of presents and of good wishes, he departed from Constantinople on the long road back to his cold, gloomy homeland.

  When the Frank had left the throne room, my father, though still in full regalia, abandoned imperial solemnity for a moment. "We've got it!" he cried. "Full peace, complete peace, freedom from all care, north and south, east and west- we've got it!" He turned to me, to drive home the lesson. "Not since your great-great-grandfather's day, since Herakleios beat the Persians and the deniers of Christ had not yet burst out of Arabia to torment us, has the Roman Empire been at peace against all its many foes at once."

  "Then it will probably be just as long," I said, "before we know such peace again."

  He boxed my ears, right there in front of everyone. But I was right.

  ***

  Having made p
eace with all our neighbors, my father decided to see if he could also create peace within the holy orthodox church. This was no easy task, for the clerics had been at strife with one another for as long as we had been at war with the Arabs and our other enemies.

  Indeed, the two struggles bore no small relationship to each other. The Christian folk of what were in Herakleios's day the provinces of the Roman East, Syria and Palestine and Egypt, have for centuries wrongly emphasized Christ's divine nature at the expense of His humanity, even claiming that after the Incarnation He had but one nature, the divine. The fourth holy ecumenical synod, that which was held at Chalcedon, condemned the impious heresy, but the foolish obstinacy of the Syrians and Egyptians made them cling to it nonetheless.

  By my great-great-grandfather's time, the Roman government had been trying to root out the monophysite heresy for almost two hundred years. This, of course, was as it should have been, for the one true and God-guarded Empire must have only one true faith; how else is unity to be maintained? But, as I said, the heretics were stubborn, and would not abandon error.

  My great-great-grandfather Herakleios sought a theological formula both the orthodox and the monophysites could accept, seeking to plaster over the differences between them rather than destroying the heresy. The patriarch of Constantinople in his day was himself of Syrian blood, and had monophysite ancestors. This fool of a Sergios suggested the Emperor declare that, while Christ did indeed have two natures, a single- divine- energy animated them.

  Herakleios, being a better soldier than theologian, duly did this. The patriarch of Rome- the pope, as he is often known- at the time, a man named Honorius, assented in the doctrine of one will, if not energy, in Christ. The monophysites rejoiced, recognizing this doctrine as their own heresy in sheep's clothing. But the patriarch of Jerusalem anathematized Herakleios's formula.