A Triple-headed Serpent: A Story of Theodora, Empress of Byzantium

by Marié Heese

  “What about you? The army, of course, would support you to a man. I think you would be accepted by the Senate, and the people admire you enormously.”

  “I have never had ambitions to rule, you know that. If I were called to serve … But there are other blood relatives to the Emperor. His young nephew Justin, for example, his sister’s son. And he may have named someone before he died. We have too little information.”

  “Yet whoever it may be, must be acceptable to the army,” said Antonina. “That is always so.”

  “Indeed, it is the custom. I’ll call a conference of my senior generals. It’ll take some days for them all to arrive.”

  One after another, the officers rode into camp. When all were present, Belisarius presided over a meeting under the spreading branches of a tree. Bloody John was the last to arrive and sat at the back with his entire body expressing disgruntlement. He listened without speaking.

  Belisarius asked each officer to state his point of view. Bloody John just shook his shaggy head and glowered. There was general agreement that a male successor would be necessary. General Bouzes, Belisarius’s second-in-command, stressed that the Goths and the Vandals, many of whom were by this time incorporated into the Imperial Army, would undoubtedly reject a female ruler. “We all remember what happened when Amalasuintha tried to hold on to power after Athalaric died. It would not do,” he said. “What about yourself, General?” he asked, to a general murmur of agreement. “You would certainly be the army’s preferred candidate.”

  The agreement now grew louder, with the exception of Bloody John.

  “No, no, gentlemen. I do not desire the throne,” said Belisarius. “There are several possible candidates with royal blood. Yet of course, the army must have its say. Shall I formulate a statement that we can vote on?”

  The upshot was a joint decision, that they would await more official communications from the stricken capital, but that there should be a male successor, and that the army would expect to exercise its entrenched right to recognise whichever candidate might be put up for consideration by the Senate.

  “This has always been the procedure,” said Belisarius. “Even in a time of pestilence, the army should still have its say.”

  On this, all present were agreed.

  “I was quite expecting Bloody John to make some kind of trouble,” said Antonina. “He’s never forgiven you for taking the position that he and his men should have been left to starve at Ariminum.”

  “I know,” said Belisarius. “He only obeys me because the Emperor gave clear instructions. But this was a clear-cut issue, after all. The army must approve the final candidate. Now, we wait for further news and instructions from the capital.”

  “Just as well Khosrau is also preoccupied by the plague.”

  “Yes. We can rest. Training will continue, though. And I’ve strict protocols in place should anyone show signs of pestilence. This plague is a terrible, terrible visitation. One can hardly believe the reports coming through. I don’t know how the Empire of Byzantium is going to survive. Especially now, with the grievous loss of our Emperor.”

  “There should be an official announcement from Constantinople any day now.”

  Narses the eunuch: his journal, AD 542

  Walled about by the bodies of the dead

  June, AD 542

  This is a city overwhelmed by death. I went out early this morning to review the situation, and to make recommendations to the Empress, who is currently in charge of the Byzantine Empire. Even though I am generally known to the populace, nevertheless I wore a tag around my neck with my name upon it, as every other citizen has lately had to do, so that they may be identified in case of sudden death. Mine states: Narses, Grand Chamberlain to the Emperor Justinian. In case of death, inform the Imperial Palace.

  Constantinople is eerily silent these days. In the beginning, the streets were loud with lamentations, but all is quiet now. Some shops have been boarded up, some villas shuttered and locked, and some offices bear a poster that says: Closed until further notice. But in other instances, shopkeepers, home-owners and officials seem to have simply abandoned everything and disappeared. It is possible to walk in and help yourself to whatever the owner was about to enjoy. Yet even the looters are no longer around. There are very few people about in the street. The horse-drawn dead-carts no longer do their morning rounds, so anyone you may come across will likely be carrying a corpse, if they have the strength.

  As I walked down the Mesê, holding a nosegay of lavender and garlic to my nose to ward off contagion, I could hear no footsteps other than my own, echoing on the empty street. Then, when I had walked some distance from the palace, I heard an odd squeaking drawing nearer along an alley. At first I thought it might be some kind of animal, but it was too regular for that. I stopped and waited.

  At length the source became clear: it was a two-wheeled cart, ancient and wobbly, being pulled along by a young boy not yet at the age of puberty; I judged him to be no older than twelve. It was a while since he had bathed or donned clean clothing, yet he did not have the look of dire poverty or neglect. He was quite sturdy and had doubtless been used to regular meals before food was no longer imported and produce stopped coming in from the farms and market gardens. His face was dirty and his eyes looked blank and glazed over, as if he was walking in his sleep. He marched forward fairly steadily, dragging his heaped cart with dogged determination.

  So intently had I been observing him that I had taken no notice of his load, but now I did look down and it almost caused me to scream. The cart held what I had at first taken to be a bundle of clothing. Yet there were limbs protruding from the folds of material: arms, legs … something round and fuzzy … here a foot, there a hand … and a grey-haired head, tilted backward, snaggly teeth bared in what could be either a laugh or a snarl.

  “What is this, boy?” I asked. “Where are you going?”

  “It’s my gran, Sir, and my littlest brother,” he said, in a conversational tone. He set the two shafts down to rest his arms a bit. “They’re the last ones left. Now it’s only me still at our villa. I’m taking them to the cemetery, Sir, they must be buried. You have to catch them at the right time, you see, to fit them in. Straight after is best, ’cause after a while they go stiff for a bit and then it’s very hard. And if you leave them, if you wait, they soften up again, but then they stink. That’s how it is.”

  How young he was, I thought, to have learned so well such lessons of death and decay.

  “And they can’t stay, they must be buried. My big brother carted the rest, but he went out yesterday and he’s not come back yet, so now I have to do it. How far is it, Sir, do you know?”

  “As far as the walls,” I told him. “They’re putting them into the walls. But what are you going to do?”

  “I can load up with food when I come back,” he said. “There’s lots of stuff to be took. Some’s gone bad, but there’s still enough, people just left things.”

  “I saw that,” I said.

  “I only take what I need,” he assured me. “Just enough. For me and my brother. My brother told me, we mustn’t steal.” His reasonable, level manner of speaking was at odds with his dazed appearance.

  “You should walk down that way,” I told him, pointing. I would have wished to take the child back with me to take care of him. But there would be thousands like him all over the city. Everyone would simply have to survive as best he could.

  “Thank you, Sir,” he said, took up the shafts and leaned into the weight again. Off he went, squeaking, toward the Walls of Theodosius.

  In the beginning those who died were given a proper burial. But very soon the numbers swelled and more and more bodies were flung together into enormous pits that were dug at Sykae. As time went on there were not enough sturdy men left to dig such huge mass graves. People began to scrape ever more shallow trenches. At last all the cemeteries were full, inside and outside the walls. And now, those left standing to bury the dead do not have th
e strength to dig even shallow trenches. Nor is there ground enough.

  The official charged with disposal of corpses has finally turned in desperation to the walls themselves. His workers have knocked the roofing off the towers; the dead are being put inside; also packed into the walkways between the double walls. I would go myself to check what was being done, I thought. First, though, I needed to talk to the Chief Physician at the Hospital of St Panteleimon, built where the Empress’s little villa had stood; I recalled that his name was Aetios, and that he had been helpful to the Empress in the past.

  The large building with its long passages giving on to wards was almost empty and echoed to my footsteps. Everywhere I saw disarray, with brooms and mops leaning against the whitewashed walls, cots stripped down and standing askew, filthy bedding and bandages piled in heaps, buckets and bins filled to overflowing and abandoned, and the stench of putrefaction overall. Footprints criss-crossed each other drunkenly in the muck that covered the floor; tracks made by feet that would never walk this earth again.

  I found the Chief Physician in his office, slumped with his head in his hands: he had grown very thin and had lost some more of his fuzzy brown hair. He was pale with fatigue. The room was an oasis of order in the chaos of his hospital, the walls lined with shelves for codices and scrolls, neatly stowed, his desk tidily equipped with pots of ink and pens. He staggered slightly when he rose to greet me.

  “I’m not ill,” he hastened to assure me, “just very tired. I regret I have nothing good to show you, Grand Chamberlain.” He fell back heavily into his chair.

  “Even you have no treatment to suggest? One has heard that you are a learned man, who himself writes medical texts.”

  “My learning has availed me nothing here,” he said in a desolate tone, making a hopeless gesture with his hands, that trembled as he laid them palms upward on his desk. “Nothing whatsoever. This is probably the best place of healing in the world, and we have been helpless.” His brown eyes shone with tears. “We have not been able to do much else than relieve pain. Some patients suffer greatly, as I am sure you are aware. Now, people no longer even come here. There is no succour anywhere.”

  “The Empress has requested that you should come to the Imperial Palace.”

  “Oh, God, has she too been taken ill?”

  “No. She has escaped, so far.”

  “A woman of exceptional strength and courage.”

  “Indeed. But the Emperor …”

  “Word is, that he has passed away. A great man gone.”

  “No, Doctor, that report is premature. Rumours run riot at a time like this. The Emperor is gravely ill, but he lives. The Empress would like a new opinion.”

  “That is a relief to know. Or we might have had serious convulsions in the government.”

  “Most probably. So, will you …”

  “I will make haste to obey, Grand Chamberlain. But please understand, I can hold out no hope of a cure.”

  “I understand. I have still to go and observe the burials. The Empress wants to know.”

  “Not everything,” he said. “You’ll see.”

  Even before I could see the Walls of Theodosius, I could smell the corruption; a sick miasma that the wind was spreading across the city: the horrid, sweetish, rotten odour that emanates from battlefields when the dead lie putrefying in the sun – once smelled, never forgotten. Black birds were circling overhead in large numbers: not gulls, I realised. Vultures. Drawn to the smell. It took considerable resolution for me to keep walking toward the source of it, when all I wanted was to flee in the opposite direction. But I had to see for myself so that I could report to the Empress. I have been a general on the field of war, I said to myself. I have seen terrible things. I must not flinch. Holy Mother, I prayed, do not let me flinch.

  But I was hard put to it not to throw up when at last I came close to where the disposal squad was at work. The double walls are tall and broad, built of brick and stone, and in excellent condition, for Justinian fairly recently had them renovated and strengthened to protect his city from attack. The figures of the workers were quite small from where I stood, as close as I could force my unwilling feet to carry me. At first I could not see what they were doing. It almost looked as if they were marching up there. Even, perhaps, doing some kind of dance. It puzzled me. But then I understood: they were trampling down the bodies to make room for more. To and fro they stomped, and rivulets of blood trickled down over the bricks. Also streaks of white liquid. Lime, no doubt, I thought. In places the blood and lime ran into pink, scribbling melancholy graffiti on the walls.

  At the foot of the walls lay piles of corpses awaiting disposal. They had constructed a kind of sling, I saw, that could hold several bodies at once, with a winch to haul up the dreadful load. I saw a worker bend down to pack a slingful. Up it went, swinging slightly, bumping protruding arms and legs against the brick. When it reached the top two workers decanted its burden onto the heap while the others went on tramping to and fro.

  Words from the Bible rushed into my mind: And the angel thrust in his sickle into the earth, and gathered the vine of the earth, and cast it into the great winepress of the wrath of God. And the winepress was trodden without the city, and blood came out of the winepress, even unto the horse bridles, by the space of a thousand and six hundred furlongs.

  I thought: Aetios was right. I will not tell the Empress this. I will say, the men are being efficient. They are executing their task. But I will not tell her this.

  Chapter 14: Please, God!

  The physician Aetios rocked back on his heels where he stood in the Sacred Cubicle beside the huge bed that dwarfed the recumbent figure of the Emperor. The purple veil that surrounded the bed at night had been looped back. On the other side sat Theodora and next to her stood Narses, both intently regarding the Thrice August. Illness had leached the flesh from his face and his closed eyes looked sunken. His skin had a yellowish cast.

  “He hardly breathes,” said Narses.

  His wife leaned forward and took his hand. “Yet he is warm,” she said. “And he responds to my touch. Look.”

  Indeed, the hand of the Emperor gripped his wife’s fingers convulsively.

  Theodora looked at the physician, lifting her husband’s tightly clasped hand to her cheek.

  “What may we expect, Aetios?” she asked. “Is there any likelihood of … a positive outcome?”

  “Despoina, truly I cannot say. On the one hand, my examination showed that the major buboe in His Majesty’s groin has begun to suppurate. This is sometimes a good sign, since the evil concentrated therein is thus expelled.”

  “But?”

  “But, I understand that His Majesty’s physicians have had to administer large doses of opium over several weeks. I would have done the same, since it’s the only way to counteract the destructive hallucinations that, I’m told, so violently disturbed the Emperor’s mind. This has effectively induced a coma.”

  “Is that dangerous?”

  “There might be damage to the brain,” said Aetios.

  “When will we know?”

  “When the buboes have definitely healed. If … if they do.”

  “How long?” asked Narses.

  “Several weeks, at best. I would strongly advise treating all the buboes with warm mustard plasters. Not caustics, though, just warm plasters. If the buboes harden, they are usually fatal. Patients are consumed, as it were, by an internal gangrene. If the … saving your presence, Despoina …”

  “Tell me. I need to know.”

  “If the pus is expelled from all the buboes, recovery is very probable. But then, it will take time to bring the Despotes out of the coma. It will be necessary to reduce the poppy juice gradually. It cannot be done suddenly. He will have acquired … a dependency. It will not be easy.”

  “And only then will we be able to judge the state of the Emperor’s mind?” said Narses. “Just to be clear?”

  “That is correct.”

  “Aetios,�
� said Theodora, “we require a new Chief Physician. The present incumbent is old and weary and it is time for him to retire. This responsibility is too much for him.”

  “But, Despoina, I would not want …”

  “He dithers,” said Theodora. “And he cannot stand up to the Emperor. We must have a doctor who can do that, when the Despotes recovers. He is not a good patient. He does not have the habit of obedience.”

  Aetios could not restrain a smile, but he wiped it away with a respectful hand and coughed.

  “You are appointed,” said Theodora. “Effective immediately. It is a royal command.”

  While Justinian lay insensible in the Sacred Cubicle, Theodora had to hold the reins of government in her hands. No formal court functions were held, but still there were decisions to be taken, plans to be made, orders to be given. Those citizens of Constantinople who had survived the pestilence were on the brink of starvation; there were stocks of grain in hand, but there were not enough bakers to bake bread, nor enough officials to distribute it. Farmers who were able-bodied and capable of farming were reluctant to venture into the city to bring their produce to market.

  “Soup,” said Theodora. “Vegetable soup. One can live on that. We did, when I was a child, at times. I believe there are still operative market gardens, outside the urban area. But we need to get supplies into town.”

  “Use the military, Despoina,” said Narses. “There have been many losses, but we do still have the palace garrison. And the urban militia. We can get them organised into squads with carts. I’ll devise a system where the farmers can deposit sacks of vegetables at collection points, and the soldiers can fetch them, leaving payment. They’ll bring their stuff then, they just don’t want to expose themselves to infected people or infected houses. For that matter, they could bring goats and sheep, and cattle, using the same system.”

  “Butchers?”

  “Soldiers, again. We just need the animals skinned, and chopped up. What are swords for?”