Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

By Easter, which fell in that year on the fourteenth day of April, the ecumenical synod had nearly finished its work. Had that not been so, the assembled bishops would have faced my father's displeasure, for he, who had waited in Constantinople while the holy season- and three precious weeks of spring- passed, was eager to depart and assail the Bulgars. This he did, less than a week after the day of our Lord's resurrection from the dead, satisfied the synod had defined the faith as he desired.

  He left me to preside while the bishops discussed other matters of canon law unrelated to the doctrine of Christ's two wills and two energies. On some of these, they in the end reached no firm conclusion, a failure like that of the holy fathers who took part in the fifth holy ecumenical synod, the one convened by the Emperor for whom I am named, the first Justinian, almost a century and a half earlier. Before my treacherous overthrow, I made good the deficiencies of those two synods, summoning my own to deal with matters they had neglected.

  The other remaining subject of debate was that of anathemas. Polykhronios had richly earned his: there everyone agreed. Past that, consensus faltered. Four patriarchs of Constantinople ended up condemned: Sergios, who first proposed monenergism to the Emperor Herakleios, and his successors, Pyrrhos, Paul, and Peter, who upheld monenergism and monotheletism.

  Some of the bishops more aggressive in their piety, and some of those from the western lands, also suggested anathematizing Herakleios and Constans. When one of their number proposed casting my great-great-grandfather and my grandfather into the outer darkness of anathema, applause rang out in the great church.

  "No!" I shouted. "I forbid it!"

  They stared at me. I had not quite twelve years then, and my voice had not broken. But I was older than Constans had been when he became Emperor of the Romans, and only a bit more than five years younger than my father when he gained the rule- and he had also been administering affairs in Constantinople for some time before that. I had no excubitores at my back; they had accompanied the Emperor in his campaign against the Bulgars. I knew what he would say, I knew what he was liable to do, if he returned to the imperial city to find his ancestors condemned to anathema.

  The bishop who had made the proposal said, "Prince, they deserve the sentence no less than their misguided patriarchs. After all, it was your grandfather who made the holy Pope Martin and Maximus the Confessor suffer on behalf of the doctrine we ourselves have declared true and correct, and so-"

  "No!" I said again. "It shall not be." I did not need to think of my father's certain rage; I was filled with rage myself, rage at the idea that these little, sniveling men- for so they seemed to me at that moment- could think of declaring my kinsmen heretics. "Without Herakleios and Constans, we should have no universal Empire to accompany the true and universal faith. The Queen of Cities would belong to the Persians or the Avars or the Arabs. Let the Emperors enjoy credit for what they did, and do not judge what you cannot match."

  After a moment, bishops who lived within the boundaries of the Roman Empire spoke up in support of what I had said. All of them, of course, remembered how my father had turned back the followers of the false prophet; most recalled the ceaseless exertions of my grandfather against the Arabs; and a few, the old men among them, had seen my great-great-grandfather repel the Persians and the Avars both. If they accepted my father as Romania's savior, how could they deny the similar achievements of his ancestors? They could not.

  Once that move was defeated, the ecumenical patriarch George had his revenge on the westerners who had thought to condemn Emperors of the Romans. His voice smooth and sweet as sce nted olive oil, he said, "Honorius the bishop of Rome confessed one energy in Christ. If we anathematize the patriarchs of Constantinople for this false doctrine, how can we look approvingly upon it in other prelates? Let Pope Honorius be anathema!"

  Oh, how the bishops from Italy and Gaul and Africa screamed and bellowed at that! They might have been so many just-castrated swine. Fat Bishop Arculf of Rhemoulakion turned not red but so dusky a shade of purple that I feared he would suffer an apoplexy on the spot.

  But the western bishops, though raucous, were few. And those from within the Roman Empire not only outnumbered them but had grown weary of their constant prating of perfect orthodoxy in doctrine. Here was not merely one of them but their patriarch shown by the words written in his own hand to be a misbeliever. Like Polykhronios, like Sergios, like the rest, Pope Honorius was condemned in the acts of the sixth holy and ecumenical synod. No doubt he shall suffer in hell for all eternity on account of his errors.

  Having anathematized Honorius, the synod had in essence completed its labors. All that remained was for the Emperor of the Romans to ratify what it had done and dismiss the assembled bishops. But my father, as I have said, had left the Queen of Cities to campaign against the Bulgars, the barbarous horsemen who had begun to harass the Romans living nearest the Danube. And, on returning to Constantinople, he found trouble more urgent than any the bishops of the ecumenical synod had caused. Thus those bishops remained assembled, though no longer meeting, until almost the autumnal equinox.

  MYAKES

  People nowadays say Constantine didn't take the Bulgars seriously enough. What? How do I know what people say nowadays, Brother Elpidios? Well, there you have me. Am I blushing? I ought to be. Twenty years ago, when I was still out in the world, people said Constantine didn't take the Bulgars seriously enough. There. Are you happier, Brother? You'd make a fine canon lawyer, I have no doubt of that.

  Whenever people say- said- that about Constantine, it makes- made, excuse me- me angry, for it isn't so. He had detachments from all the military districts of Anatolia cross into Thrace for the campaign. Why not? We were, for once, at peace with the Arabs, and they were paying us tribute. He didn't figure they'd jump us from behind, and he was right.

  Most of the troops from the military districts slogged north toward the Danube on horseback. The rest, along with us excubitores and the Emperor, sailed up the coast and inland by way of the Danube. The Bulgars, in those days, didn't live south of the river. They stayed up beyond it, in the swampy country in the angle between the Pruth and the Seret. They had a sort of a camp there: not really a town, but a bunch of tents all in the same place, and ringed round with palisades of brush and sticks and whatnot, as much for keeping their cattle in as for keeping enemies out.

  They must have been pissing themselves when we came up toward that camp, let me tell you. We made a proud spectacle: thousands of men on horseback, all of us in chainmail that glittered in the sun, the imperial guards with silk surcoats dyed in all sorts of bright colors, banners and crosses and icons going before the companies and regiments and divisions of the army. The Bulgars took one look at us, fled back inside the camp, and didn't come out for three days straight. We could have gone right in after them, too, easy as you please.

  But what's that the Book of Proverbs says? "Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall"? Yes, that's the passage I meant, Brother Elpidios. Thank you. You give me those so quick, I don't have to grope for them with my own poor wits. We thought the Bulgars would flee back to the eastern lands they'd come from, but they didn't.

  Oh, other things went wrong, too. The soldiers from the Anatolian military districts didn't care for the country they were in: it was damp, it was boggy, it was misty, it was everything the land they were used to wasn't. And everybody remembered that the last Roman army that had gone north of the Danube was the one that had mutinied and murdered Maurice, back an old man's lifetime before. No one said anything about that, but you could tell it was in people's minds.

  Even with that, though, everything might have been all right if only Constantine's gout hadn't flared up. But flare it did, not only in his big toe- which was where it usually bit him- but also in his heel and up the calf of his leg.

  I happened to draw guard duty outside the imperial pavilion the night everything went sour. He should have been asleep in there. He'd brought up a featherbed covered
in silk and stuffed a cubit thick with goose down, so soft it'd be sinful for a proper monk to think about it, let alone lie down on it. You'd take oath a man could set that featherbed on knives and still sleep sound.

  Except Constantine couldn't. He'd moan and he'd curse and he'd moan a little more and he'd curse a lot more. What he wanted to do, I think, was scream, but he wouldn't give in to the pain enough for that. Finally, when the stars said it was getting close to midnight- time for me to roll up in a blanket a lot scratchier than what Constantine had- he came hobbling out on two sticks, his leg all swaddled like a baby and bent so his foot wouldn't accidentally bump the ground and make him hurt even worse than he did already.

  He looked bad. He looked old. He couldn't have been thirty yet, but shadows from the torchlight filled and deepened all the lines in his face. You could see white streaks in his beard. Even in the torchlight, he was pale. "Mother of God, help me," he groaned. "I have to get some rest."

  I glanced over at my partner, a thick-shouldered Armenian nameda160… nameda160… well, whatever his name was, all those years ago, he looked as worried as I felt. "Wine with poppy juice in it, Emperor?" I suggested.

  Constantine shook his head. His face was shiny with sweat, not on account of the heat but because he was maybe a step and a half away from keeling over dead. "I can't," he said. "I need my wits about me. I've beaten all my other enemies, all around the borders of the Empire. Once I smash these louse-eating Bulgars, too, I'll have made a clean sweep."

  My partner and I looked at each other. What were we supposed to say, Brother Elpidios? You have to stop or you'll die? For one thing, we didn't know that was so. Only God knows such things. And for another thing, do you think Constantine would have listened to us? If you had any sense, you wouldn't have bet a forty-follis copper piece against a stack of gold nomismata that any Emperor from the line of Herakleios would listen to anybody. By the way he sounded, Constantine didn't care whether he went on living or not, so long as he got rid of the Bulgars.

  He said, "I'm going back inside, boys. I will get some rest." He was giving orders not to us but to his own body, which didn't much feel like obeying. But he was clumsy with his sticks, because he didn't need them all that often, and as he turned himself around to go back, he whacked himself right in the sore foot with one of them.

  Poor devil. He started to fall down. I grabbed him, so that didn't happen, but he threw back his head and howled like a wolf. Everybody awake in our camp must have heard him, and he probably woke half the troopers who were sleeping. Except for the sizzle of my own eyeballs cooking, it was the most dreadful sound I ever heard. Christ, wouldn't surprise me if it woke up Asparukh, the Bulgar chief.

  He clamped down on it fast as he could- made his mouth close and bit the inside of his lower lip, hard, maybe to make one pain fight another. "I will rest," he said again, in a ghastly voice, and a little blood trickled down off his lower lip.

  He made it back inside. My partner and I, we closed the tent flaps after him. He wouldn't rest, not after that. He hadn't a prayer, and we couldn't do a thing to help him. After a while, our reliefs came. I didn't think I'd sleep, either, but I did.

  The sun woke me. I sat up, praying God had worked a miracle and healed Constantine overnight. Then I heard a groan from inside the imperial pavilion and knew it wasn't so. God works miracles when He feels like it, not when you feel like it. I snagged myself a mug of wine and went over there to find out what Constantine was going to do. The only thing I was sure of was that, if we attacked, he couldn't lead.

  I got to the pavilion about the same time Florus and Kyprianos did. Florus was the ugliest man I've ever seen, with a big nose, no chin to speak of, and big ears that stuck out like open shutters on two sides of a house. Kyprianos, now, Kyprianos looked like a pretty catamite grown up to middle age. You ask me, though, Florus made the better general.

  Constantine came out to meet the two of them. He looked worse by daylight than he had in the middle of the night. The purple circles under his eyes said he hadn't slept at all, not even a little bit. When he said, "If I don't get relief, I'm going to die," Florus and Kyprianos both nodded. He meant it, and they could tell as much.

  Florus pointed north, toward the Bulgars' camp. "What about the barbarians? What do we do with them if you're not here?"

  The Emperor made a rude gesture. "Drag them out of hiding with your lances. You won't need me here for that. They're frightened spitless of Roman power. Make them come out and fight and you'll smash them."

  "We shall do as our glorious sovereign commands!" Kyprianos cried. He wore chainmail, but he talked like a courtier.

  Florus said, "The men won't like that you're going, Emperor. They'll think you're leaving them in the lurch."

  "I have to go," Constantine answered. He wasn't lying about that; just standing up on one foot and two sticks took an effort that left him white and trembling. "I'm sailing down to the baths at Mesembria; after I soak there, I always feel better. I expect I'll see you soon, with captives and booty to show me."

  "We shall drag the barbarians forth from their lairs and crush them in your name," Kyprianos said. Constantine nodded. An Emperor always hears yes. Who'd dare tell him no? And Kyprianos wasn't the worst soldier around. He'd helped beat the Arabs a few years earlier, when they'd lost thirty thousand men. I guess he really thought he could do what he promised. But Florus, I noticed, didn't say anything.

  Along with five shiploads of excubitores- me among 'em- Constantine sailed down the Danube and then south along the Black Sea coast to Mesembria. It sits out on a rocky peninsula, and makes a good harbor. The Emperor took the waters there. Before too long, he was feelinga160… not good, but better.

  "We should be getting news," he'd say, and try to put his sore foot on the ground. "We should be getting news." He must have felt like a bear in a cage. He talked about going back up to the frontier and taking over again, but he wasn't up to that. He waited. we all waited. If you weren't soaking your foot, Mesembria was a boring place to get stuck. Even the whores were clumsy… Sorry, Brother. That just slipped out.

  By luck of the draw, I was attending Constantine when the first messenger arrived from the north. We'd just come out of the basilica called the Old Metropolis, where the Emperor had been praying for victory. A fellow who looked like he'd just about killed his horse getting there galloped up, jumped off the poor, worn beast, and threw himself facedown in the street. "Emperor!" he cried.

  "Get up, man," Constantine said. "What news?" He quivered like a bowstring when you've strung it too tight.

  The messenger didn't get up. I suppose he didn't want Constantine to see his expression. Still grinding his face into the dirt of the street, he cried, "Disaster!"

  Constantine took a step toward him. By the look on his face, he aimed to murder the poor luckless messenger right then and there. Not quite by accident, looking clumsier than I was, I bumbled out between the Emperor and the fellow who'd brought bad news. Constantine had to stop, just long enough to let him start thinking. He was headstrong, but God help you if you thought he was stupid. "What happened?" he ground out.

  The messenger spewed out this great long tale of woe. The meat was what Florus had said it would be: without Constantine there, the men wouldn't go forward against the Bulgars. Some of them started saying the Emperor ran away. Then they panicked and ran away themselves, even though the Bulgars weren't after 'em.

  "The wicked flee where no man pursueth"? No, not quite, Brother. The stupid fled where no one pursued, more like.

  Of course, after a little while the Bulgars figured out the Romans weren't trying to lure them into some kind of trap and really were running away. They came to the Danube and crossed it, sweeping up our soldiers as they went. By the time the messenger got to Mesembria, the barbarians were already down to the Haimos Mountains and threatening Varna, not fifty miles north of where we were.

  Constantine listened to it all without twitching a muscle. "Ruined," he said at la
st, and nothing more. I didn't know what to say. There wasn't much I could say. He wouldn't be able to put together another army like the one he'd thrown away, not for years- too many men gone. Ruined was about right.

  He kicked at the dirt, hard, with his bandaged foot. I don't want to imagine the pain that must have cost him. His face didn't so much as twitch. We sailed for Constantinople the next day.

  JUSTINIAN

  My father's return to the imperial city took everyone by surprise. Stephen the Persian was particularly vexed, for he had no chance to prepare a triumphal procession to celebrate the extermination of the Bulgars. But when my father reached the palace- bare moments after word he was in the city came to us- one look at his face said no procession would be needed.

  "Father," I said proudly, stepping forward when everyone else hung back, "the acts of the holy ecumenical synod await your review and approval."

  "That is good," he said, and seemed to mean it; he was a good and pious Christian, as concerned with the world to come as with our own. But he had other things on his mind. "I shall review those acts… eventually."

  Still full of myself and what I had done while he was gone, I demanded, "Why not now?"

  "Because we were beaten, and beaten badly," he answered, getting all the poison out in one sentence.

  I gaped, speechless. Despite the grim, pain-filled expression he bore, the last thing in all the world I had imagined was that my father, who had turned back the followers of the false prophet and had received envoys not only from them but from all the lesser kinds of the inhabited world, could have gone down to defeat at the hands of a band of ragged barbarians.

  My mother, normally of sunny disposition, made the sign of the cross and burst into tears. One of the golden-haired Sklavinian maidservants the khagan of the Avars had presented to my father, a pretty little thing who had been baptized under the name of Irene, dropped the goblet of wine she had been carrying to him.