Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  Even before then, Theodore had sent runners to every quarter of Constantinople, calling on the soldiers of the Anatolian military districts to assemble at the Forum to hear him and me. "That could get sticky, Prince, if your uncles the junior Emperors- the former junior Emperors, I should say- show up there, too," he told me. "But I don't think they will. I think they'll suspect a trap, and so stay away."

  "I think you're likely right," I answered. "They have to suspect everything and everyone now. If we can keep them afraid instead of bold, we shall win. If you are afraid, you do not deserve to rule."

  Yes, I was parroting my father, but his words had struck deep into my soul. Theodore's hard features showed little expression, but I thought he looked on me with approval. And Myakes, who marched along with the rest of the excubitores, beamed and winked at me. He knew my nature: no one better.

  When we got to the Forum of Constantine, we found it full of rowdy Anatolian soldiers, many of them so full of wine you could get drunk from their breath. The excubitores, a disciplined band in the midst of these wild men, cleared a path for Theodore and me up to the base of the porphyry column on which stood a great statue of the first Constantine decked in a gilded crown with sun rays spiking out from it as if he were the false god Apollo himself.

  "Soldiers of the Empire, hear me!" Theodore shouted, and then, "Soldiers of Constantine, hear me!" That was clever, for it reminded the mob that the present Emperor bore the same name as the one in whose Forum they had gathered. Faster than I had expected, he got something close to quiet.

  Into it, he said, "Soldiers of Constantine, I won't take up much of your time. I just want you to remember a few things. Who beat the Arabs? Was it Herakleios? No. Was it Tiberius? No. It was Constantine- the Emperor. Who got the followers of the false prophet to pay us tribute? Who got the Sklavenoi and the Avars and the Lombards and the Franks to pay us tribute? Was it Herakleios? No. Was it Tiberius? No. It was Constantine- the Emperor.

  "In fact"- he warmed to his theme-"just what the devil have Herakleios and Tiberius done? When you look at it, boys, they haven't done a damn thing. For years now, they've sat around the palaces drinking fancy wine and pinching pretty girls on the bottom. It's nice work if you can get it, aye, but does it set you up to be the Emperor? Not on your life.

  "Christ crucified, lads," Theodore went on, "Constantine's son has already done more than either one of those worthless brothers, and he's only twelve years old. Here, Prince, you tell them about it. You don't need me."

  I did not yet have a man's height. Myakes set his shield on the ground and motioned for me to stand on it. When I had done so, he and a couple of other stalwart excubitores lifted the shield, with me on it, so the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts could see me. And when they did see me so upraised, the silence they gave me was deeper than any Theodore of Koloneia had got. This, of course, was not merely for who I was but for who I might become: being raised on a shield is, or can be, the first step in the coronation of an Emperor.

  I glanced down at Myakes, thanking him with my eyes for his quick wits. He winked at me again. In that moment, whatever nervousness I might have felt addressing a plaza full of unruly warriors, all of them angry at my father and therefore at me, vanished. I said, "Soldiers of Romania, who guided the two hundred eighty-nine bishops to the true doctrine of Christ's two energies and two wills? Was it my uncles? No- it was my father and I. Thanks to us, there is once more peace in the church all through the inhabited world."

  Most of the soldiers cheered at this, but a few let out hisses and catcalls. By their looks and accents, most of them were Armenians, whose church, being both heretical and in the iron grip of the followers of the false prophet, has to this day, almost thirty years after the time of which I write, failed to ratify the sixth holy and ecumenical synod.

  MYAKES

  You'll remember, Brother Elpidios, that the true name of Philippikos who overthrew Justinian that second time was Bardanes, so he was an Armenian himself. That accounts for the synod he called, the one that condemned the sixth ecumenical synod. Whatever you call him, though, he lasted only a couple of years on the throne himself, and then he went onto the dung heap, and his miserable synod with him.

  What? You didn't remember that? I forget- twenty years ago, when Justinian met his end, you were a boy, or at most a youth. What did you care then about Philippikos's real name? How time goes, Brother. How time goes.

  JUSTINIAN

  I went on, "When that fraud of a Polykhronios said he could use the lying doctrines of the monothelites to raise the dead, who hoped he would? My uncles- my father's brothers. With my own eyes I saw them. And did he raise the dead? No! God let that poor man stay dead, to show us that dogma was false. My father didn't believe. I didn't believe. But my uncles did! After that, soldiers, do they deserve to wear the crown?"

  Many men shouted, "No!" But others kept up their vain and foolish chant: "We believe in a Trinity- let us crown all three brothers!"

  "Hear me, then, soldiers!" I cried to them. This was to have been Theodore of Koloneia's part, but I had been with him and my father when they devised their scheme, and I was up on the shield now. So I was the one who set it forth: "Let ten of your leaders come forward to me. They will meet with my father and the nobles of the Empire to discuss this matter. The rest of you, go ba ck to Sykai. By God I swear you will learn from your leaders tomorrow what my father has decided."

  I waited, looking out at them, watching them chew that over to see what it tasted like. They must have liked the flavor well enough; the only trouble we had was keeping the number of self-proclaimed leaders down to ten, for ten times that many tried to come forward. But ten would do nicely, and the excubitores, under Theodore's direction, chose a mix of officers and private soldiers who did indeed seem to have some gift of leadership.

  The rest of the men from the Anatolian military districts dispersed more readily than I had dared hope. We had heard them; we had spoken to them; they were satisfied. And, being satisfied, they streamed out of the Forum of Constantine toward the wharfs on the Golden Horn for the trip back across it to Sykai.

  "Tomorrow," I told Theodore, "we must give orders that no ferries are to cross from Sykai to the imperial city."

  "Prince, I have already made those arrangements." Theodore paused, studied me, and slowly nodded. I walked straighter. I felt I had passed a test.

  We took the self-styled leaders of those who favored restoring imperial rank to Herakleios and Tiberius back toward the great palace. As we marched east along the Mese, the excubitores surrounded these men more and more closely. Taking alarm at last, one of them cried, "Are we ambassadors or prisoners?"

  "I promised you would see my father," I answered, "and so you shall." That kept the leaders quiet as we hustled them along toward the palace.

  See my father they did. As soon as they were inside the palace, the excubitores laid hold of them and stripped them of their weapons. Then, with Theodore of Koloneia and me leading the way, they frog-marched the wretches into the throne room.

  "So," my father said, fixing them with a glare that had chilled my blood often enough, "you are the traitors who want to give my worthless brothers their crowns back, are you?"

  The fellow who had asked if they were prisoners- an officer named Theophylaktos- repeated the senseless jingle they had been bawling all along: "We believe in a Trinity- let us crown all three brothers."

  "No, let us not," my father said, his voice deadly cold. "What I believe in, now, is rooting out treason wherever I find it." He turned to Theodore. "Illustrious patrician, take them to the Kynegion and dispose of them, then take the bodies across to Sykai and hang them on gibbets so the troops from the Anatolian military districts have something instructive to contemplate."

  Theodore bowed. "Emperor, workmen are already building the gibbets." He nodded to the excubitores, and they took the wretches off to the Kynegion- an amphitheater near the sea, where miscreants were frequently dispatch
ed- for execution. Theophylaktos and the rest bawled like castrated bullocks, screeching they had been betrayed- as if they, having betrayed their sovereign, had any cause for complaint.

  All went just as my father and the patrician Theodore devised. Indeed, they even added a refinement: they had scribes write the word TRAITOR on ten large placards, and hung one around the neck of each executed man. Thus, when the executioners tied the wrists of the dead leaders to the upthrusting arms of the gibbets, the corpses displayed the reason for which they had been put to death.

  By the altogether immaculate Virgin Mother of God, I wish I could have been in Sykai when the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts woke up and found out what had become of the fools who, they thought, were getting what they wanted from the Emperor. Instead, those fools got what they deserved.

  The soldiers could not even take their worthless outrage to Constantinople, for no ferries were crossing the Golden Horn and, should they have tried to march around it, the gates of the city wall were closed against them. Later that day, ferries did go to Sykai, but the only place their captains would take the soldiers was across the Bosporos to Anatolia.

  When the soldiers made as if to balk at this, the captains delivered to them my father's warning: "Go home to your farms now, while you still have the chance. Otherwise, you will envy the fate of your leaders."

  I am told the men looked long on the ten bodies hanging from the gibbets, then began filing onto the ferries. By the time the sun set, the whole disgruntled lot of them were back in Anatolia, and no one in Constantinople said one word more about crowning Herakleios and Tiberius again.

  ***

  Somehow, my uncles got back into the city and returned to the palace without my father's knowing of it until they appeared at breakfast the next morning as if nothing had happened. "Go ahead," he told them. "Sit there smug as you like. The crowns will never go on your heads again."

  "That's for God to decide, not you," Tiberius said, meaning, I suppose, that my father could not know whether he would die tomorrow, and perhaps also that he and Herakleios might have a hand in my father's demise.

  Then Herakleios pointed at me and said, "Better we wear the crowns than this arrogant little bugger."

  With ten casually spoken words, my uncle snuffed out the last of my boyhood. I thought we had always got on well, Herakleios and I; we used to mutter to each other as we sat through endless ceremonies where our role was purely ornamental. But my uncle, having seen himself demoted, could not bear the thought that I might gain one day that to which he could no longer aspire: not only rank, but power. I was not his nephew any more, only someone who stood between him and what he wanted above all else.

  My father said, "He's done well, by the Virgin, and he's done things for me- the ecumenical synod, to name just one. You, Herakleios, you just want to do things to me."

  "Give Tiberius and me our rights," Herakleios said. "That's all we ask."

  Tiberius added, "Our father crowned all three of us. Who are you to take away what he gave?"

  "Yes, our father crowned all three of us," my father answered, "but he set me to rule from the day he sailed off to Italy and Sicily. Somehow you always manage to forget that. Who am I, you say? I am the Emperor, the Emperor. Give you your rights? I'll give you more than that- I'll give you your deserts!"

  Having made up his mind, my father, as was his way, acted at once. He summoned once more the nobles of Constantinople, before whom a few days earlier he had demoted Herakleios and Tiberius from the imperial dignity. Now, though, instead of sitting beside him, they stood in front of the throne like any other men who were to be judged. I sat at his left hand, and my little brother to my left.

  My father gave my uncles one last chance even then, asking them, "Well, Herakleios; well, Tiberius- what am I now? Am I your brother or your Emperor? If you tell me I am your Emperor, all will be well for you. But if you say I am only your brother-" He let them draw their own conclusions.

  Tiberius stood silent, perhaps hoping silence would be taken for acquiescence. But Herakleios turned, as if appealing to the courtiers and bureaucrats who had been brought together to hear his fate. He answered, "You are our brother, and the eldest, and we honor you for that. But we cannot call you our Emperor, for our father, the Emperor Constans, crowned us all together at the same time."

  "Tiberius, is this your word also?" my father demanded.

  Miserably, Tiberius nodded. He and Herakleios looked to the nobles of the city for support. They found.. none. My father had saved the city from the Arabs, my father and I had restored peace to the church- and my father had mutilated Leo for daring to speak on my uncles' behalf.

  "So be it- you have condemned yourselves," my father said to Herakleios and Tiberius. Sighs ran through the throne room: the moment, though expected, was hard when it came. My father passed sentence: "You shall have your noses slit so that, being physically imperfect, you shall no longer be able to aspire to the throne, and you shall be sent into exile."

  Tiberius simply stood and stared, perhaps accepting his lot, perhaps unable to believe he was about to suffer the deserved fate of all failed plotters and rebels. But Herakleios stabbed out a finger at my father and cried, "May what you give me fall on you one day, brother!" Then that finger, which at the moment seemed long and thin and sharp as a claw, pointed first to me and then to my little brother. "And may it fall on your heirs as well!" To emphasize what he said, Herakleios spat on the mosaic-work floor.

  My father made the holy sign of the cross to turn aside the words of evil omen. So did I. So did my brother, clumsily and a beat late. So did the assembled nobles and the excubitores who crowded the throne room. Neither my brother nor my father lived long after that, but on neither of them did Herakleios's curse fall. On me, by the incontestable judgment of God, it did.

  But my uncles, whom the excubitores now led away, never were seen in this God-guarded and imperial city again. Herakleios's curse fell on me, aye, but I have overcome it like every other obstacle in my path. And with him and Tiberius gone, no more obstacles stood between me and eventual imperial rank.

  ***

  I wondered whether my father would immediately have me crowned as a junior Emperor, now that my uncles were vanished from the scene. In fact, I expected him to crown me: had I not earned a coronation of my own for helping to persuade the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts to stay loyal to him and not go over to Herakleios and Tiberius?

  But no ceremony seemed forthcoming. Emboldened by my new status as heir apparent (even uncrowned), I asked him why not. To my relief, he took the question seriously instead of growing angry, and replied, "I think my father made a mistake by crowning all three of his sons. I don't want to imitate him. If I crown you, how can I keep from crowning your brother with you? And if I crown you both, I sow the seeds of strife for a new generation."

  "I don't think little Herakleios could ever be a danger to me," I said. I did not think my younger brother was likely to live out the year, but I did not say that to my father.

  He set a hand on my shoulder. "You never can tell, son," he said. "When I was a boy, my brothers were so much smaller and younger than I was that I didn't think they could be dangerous, either. But as you both grow older, differences in age become less important than they are when you're children. And so I was wrong, and you might be, too. You never can tell."

  When I look back on all the twists of fortune that have gone into the skein of my life, I have to say he was right about that.

  And then any notion of crowning me was forgotten, for the Bulgars sent three envoys to Constantinople seeking tribute in exchange for refraining from penetrating deeper into Romania than they already had. Having seen so great a part of his force heedlessly thrown away, my father felt he had little choice but to pay the barbarians what they demanded.

  He summoned them to the throne room to impress them with the splendor still remaining in the Roman Empire. My brother and I, as part of that splen
dor, sat at his left hand. Our three seats were the only ones there; the two additional thrones formerly occupied by my uncles had vanished, I never learned whither.

  The Bulgars- their names, as best I can set them down in Greek letters, were Krobat, Batbaian, and Kotrag- were quite the ugliest men I had ever seen. They were short and squat and swarthy, with wide, flat faces, noses almost bridgeless, and narrow eyes set in their heads at a slant. They could raise hardly more beard than a eunuch; a few hairs sprouted on their cheeks and chins, and a few more, enough to make up scraggly mustaches, on their upper lips. They smelled of horses.

  Instead of silk and linen, they wore fur and leather, and also, as if to make up for their physical hideousness, great quantities of gold: rings and armlets and necklaces and clasps and even, in the case of Krobat, who was their leader, hoops in his ears. I stared, never having seen a man decked out in that effeminate style.

  They all spoke Greek, after a fashion. My father ignored their twittering accent and their endless solecisms, treating them with as much dignity as if they had come from the misnamed commander of the faithful in Damascus. The question was never whether to pay them, only how much, for my father reckoned himself unable to drive them back north of the Danube.

  He did not let them know that, however. Instead, he made sure that, wherever they went in Constantinople, they were sure to see large numbers of soldiers, as if he were contemplating renewed war should their demands prove exorbitant. The ploy worked. They cut their demands in half, and then in half again.

  "Your people has no great need for gold," my father told Krobat, pointing to the numerous ornaments of precious metal adorning the barbarian. "It is only a symbol of the relationship between us." He then had to spend some time making sure Krobat knew what a symbol was. That done, he went on, "If the symbol is more expensive than the war it replaces, we would sooner fight."