In his bad Greek, Krobat said, "You talk like- what is name?- fish merchant. Like fish merchant, yes." He sneered. He had big yellow teeth, made for sneering.
My father simply stared at him. So did I, adding my indignation to his. My brother may well have done the same thing, but I did not shift my eyes to look at him. I kept staring at Krobat, letting him know without words he could not address an Emperor of the Romans thus.
Silence stretched. At last, Batbaian muttered to his leader in their ugly tongue. Krobat muttered back, angrily. But when Kotrag also spoke to him, he returned to Greek and growled out something that would do for an apology. My father dipped his head to accept it, and the dickering went on as if the insult had never occurred.
MYAKES
Constantine had that knack for looking at you- looking through you- so you knew he thought he had every right to command you, and you believed it, too. Yes, Brother Elpidios, Justinian had it, too. I was about to say so. Patience is a virtue, or so I hear tell. The veterans among the excubitores said Constans had it, so it must have run in the blood. Herakleios, now, Herakleios was forty years dead by then, but he couldn't very well have been without it, not with everything he did.
What's that, Brother? What do I think of Leo, the Emperor we have now? Aside from the icons, I expect you mean? Well, you could compare him to Constantine, I suppose, on account of they both held the Arabs away from the imperial city. But you have to remember, Brother, I knew Leo when, as they say. He may be a strong Emperor now, but he wasn't born to it, and I'd bet that shows.
And who knows what his son, his Constantine, will turn out to be like when his time comes to wear the crown? Is the story they tell true, that when he was a baby he shit himself in the baptismal font? Not the best omen you could have, no indeed it isn't.
You ask me, they don't make 'em the way they used to, and that's a fact. The world isn't the place it was when I was young, and I don't need eyes to see as much. But then, what old man doesn't say the same?
JUSTINIAN
The sum the Bulgars finally agreed to accept was twenty pounds of gold a year: fourteen hundred forty nomismata. They went back to Asparukh with the first year's installment in their saddlebags, and seemed happy enough to get it.
After they were gone from the capital- not before- I said, "That's not what I would have done, Father. I'd fight the barbarians and beat them once for all."
"When the Roman Empire is yours, you'll do as you judge best," he answered. "Now it is mine, and I reckon this course best. We have peace on all our borders, to give us time to recover from our wars, and we take in more than twice as much gold from the followers of the false prophet as we pay out to the Bulgars."
To my surprise, I found myself agreeing with Krobat, at whom I had scowled a few days before: I thought my father was running the Empire as if it were a fishmonger's shop, calculating every follis of profit and loss. But, as he had spoken, I dared not continue the argument, and while he lived we paid the Bulgars their tribute.
***
The sixth holy and ecumenical synod held its final session a few days before the fall equinox. By then the two hundred eighty-nine bishops, who had labored for ten months, were anxious to depart for their homes, especially those of them who had to travel by sea. My father and I presided together over that last session, which was held in the great church.
"By your acts," my father told the assembled bishops, holding up the copy of those acts to which they had affixed their names, some in the uncial script in which books are usually copied, some in the newer cursive, "by your acts, I say, you have restored peace to all us Christians. May that peace be deep and lasting."
He made the sign of the cross, as did many of the bishops who listened to him. During those last few years of his life, peace was very much on his mind, as if, having seen so much of war and strife in the earlier years of his reign, he wanted to avoid them at all costs thereafter. Understandable enough, I suppose, but not my way.
He went on, "By your acts, you have also rightly defined our holy Christian dogma for the rest of time. A thousand years from now, men may not remember your names- though some of you, surely, shall be among the saints- but, whenever they confess Christ's two natural wills and energies, they will remember what you have done here."
I had not thought of the synod's work in those terms, but no doubt he was right, just as today, no doubt, many confess that Christ and God the Father are of the same substance without ever thinking of St. Athanasios, who saved our holy church from the vile and infamous heresy of Areios.
It seemed also to have been a new thought to many of the bishops, but one of which they approved, not least because it magnified their importance in the scheme of things. Bishop Arculf of Rhemoulakion, for instance, paused long enough in eating whatever he was eating on that particular day to clap both hands together. Arculf did not return to the synod I summoned ten years later to decide questions of canon law left behind by the fifth and sixth ecumenical synods. I sometimes wondered if he safely reached his home in distant Gaul. Later, to my surpise, I learned.
George the ecumenical patriarch blessed the assembled bishops and thanked them for giving of their piety and wisdom for the benefit of all Christians throughout the inhabited world. The bishops bowed to him and then filed out of the church of the Holy Wisdom for the last time. The world will not soon see such a gathering of great theologians again.
MYAKES
Aye, Brother Elpidios, Justinian was pious. No one, not even his enemies- of whom he had a great whacking host- would have denied that. But I don't think it's from piety alone that he has such fond memories of the ecumenical synod. That was the time, that was the place, when he first started doing things on his own. He found out he could, and he liked the feeling.
Me? Yes, I think the bishops were a good and pious bunch. They started only a couple of tavern brawls I know of, and over the space of most of a year that's pretty fine, don't you think? And only one woman I heard about claimed a bishop got her with child, and not everyone believed her.
You say your standards are higher, Brother? Well, you have to remember, you're a holy monk, and I was just an excubitor. In those days, I started tavern brawls aplenty, and if no pretty girl said I put a loaf in her oven, it wasn't for lack of trying. Yes, I was a sinner. And Constantinople was a good town for a young man- oh, all right, for a sinner- to be alive in, too, that it was.
What's that? You never saw the place? You never saw Constantinople? Well, yes, now that I recall, you have said you were born in the provinces, and of course you've been here since you were young. But you've missed something mighty fine, that you have. There's not another place like the Queen of Cities in the whole wide world, not half there isn't. Damascus? Damascus can't hold a candle to it. Thessalonike? Thessalonike's not a bad town; I was there with Justinian. He'll talk about that later on, I expect. But Thessalonike is a town. Constantinople's a city- it's the city. They don't call it that for nothing, you know.
How is it different? Well, just for starters, it's got more people in it than you can shake a stick at. You'll never in all your days see so many people all in one place. You'll never in all your days smell so many people all in one place, either. It's a strong odor, but it's not always a nasty one. And in Constantinople, there always seemed to be a hint of spices and perfume to it- it's not just ordure and folks who've gone too long between baths. Ah, maybe that's an old man's memory playing tricks on him, but maybe it's not, too.
But where else could you walk down the street and see good old ordinary Romans and blond Slavs and Arabs in robes and Persians in hats that look like chamber pots and Lombard merchants with greasy hair and folk from who knows where bumping elbows with one another and not even hardly noticing they were doing it? You ever notice how, when a stranger comes into a village or a little town, everybody gives him the once-over, even if he's a Roman like everybody else? It's not like that there. There's too many people for them to keep track of who belongs and who
doesn't, so they treat everybody like he belongs. Takes some getting used to, I know, but it's true. And they'll swindle their fellow townsmen just as happily as they will a stranger, too. Oh, aye, indeed they will. They'll steal the tunic off your back and sell it to you before you notice how you got to be naked.
But you can get anything you want there. Anything at all, I think. If you can find it anywhere in the world, you can find it in Constantinople. That means churches, too, mind you, Brother Elpidios. When you think of Constantinople, you think of the church of the Holy Wisdom, of course, and maybe the church of the Holy Apostles, too, where they bury the Emperors and their kin- you'll hear about that in due course. But those are only the big ones. They've got other fancy ones dedicated to the Virgin and John the Baptist and Saints Sergios and Bacchus anda160… I could go on for a while, but you get the idea. And they've got little tiny churches that maybe only a dozen people can crowd into at a time, some of them dedicated to saints nobody three blocks away ever heard of. Something for everybody, like I say.
Even leaving the palaces out of the bargain, you've never seen the like of some of the houses there. They don't build 'em like that out in the country, let me tell you. I grew up in a shack made of mud bricks; my old man had to shore it up after every big rainstorm. Not like that in the city, no sir. The fancy brickwork the rich folks have on their houses- Lord! Baked bricks, one and all, and not just baked bricks, but bricks baked in different colors to make pictures or designs. Makes me shudder to think what work like that must cost, so it does.
No, poor folk don't have anything that fancy, of course, but they do live in stone houses or ones made of baked brick. Some of 'em just have rooms in big buildings, four or five stories high, they put up so they can crowd more people into the same space. You won't see anything like that anywhere else, either.
The main streets are all cobblestoned, so you can use 'em in any weather. That's not so in the alleys, I grant you, but still. How many times have you gone outside in the rain and sunk up to your backside in mud? A good plenty, I don't doubt, same as me- same as anybody. But you don't have to, not in Constantinople. Not all the time, anyhow.
And the things you can buy! Let me tell you, Brother Elpidios, along the Mese there's everything your heart could desire. There are shops that sell frankincense and myrrh from down in Arabia, and others that sell amber from way up north somewhere- God must know where the stuff comes from, but I don't, not exactly. There are coppersmiths and jewelers and potters and leatherworkers and candlemakers and oil sellers and boatbuilders and fishermen and weavers and tailors and cattle drovers and wool dealers and butchers and bakers and glassblowers and scribes and.. and I don't know what all. Everything!
What's that? You can find people who do those things in every town? You can find one or two, maybe, most places. In Constantinople, there are dozens, sometimes hundreds, of people who have the same trade, so you can pick exactly the one you want, the one who does your kind of work at your kind of price (or who's sly enough to make you think it's your kind of price, anyhow).
And you will find trades at Constantinople you won't see anywhere else. Silk weavers, for instance, and the dyers who make the purple for the Emperor's robes. There's always the stink of rotting sea creatures round their shops, but you can buy the meat from the murexes for cheap, because they don't use most of it. Take 'em to a tavern for the cook to fry up in bread crumbs and olive oil, and they're as tasty a little supper as your heart could desire.
Oh, the taverns! If you had gold in your pocket, you could drink with the lords of the city, so you could, and the places they'd go were near as fancy as their houses, don't you doubt it for a minute. Some of them liked buying excubitores drinks; they hoped we'd tell them things about the Emperor. Gossip in Constantinople's like nowhere else, too. Anybody who let his mouth get ahead of his wits didn't last long, though. Things went down from there, too, down to dives nastier than I've ever seen anyplace else, dives where the wine was vinegar and the beer was mule piss- and piss from a sick mule, at that. Some folks, though, don't go to a tavern to talk. They go there to drink. Vinegar and mule piss will get you where you want to go, if that's all you've got in mind. Like I keep saying, something for everybody.
Girls for every price, too. No, I don't remember how fancy a wench it was who said a bishop put a loaf in her oven. A bishop, though, you'd think he'd want something choice along those lines, wouldn't you? Yes, of course I mean if he was sinner enough to want anything along those lines at all. You could find 'em- if you were looking- in taverns, or strolling along the Mese (after all, they were for sale, too), or in brothels, too, of course. Some of 'em ended up marrying well; some saw the light and went into convents (Eh? God bless them? Of course, God bless them- did I say anything different?); some just got old and ugly. Some weren't that young and weren't that pretty to start with. They couldn't charge as much, unless they did things none of the others felt like doing. Oh, sure enough, a young man with a little gold- or even a little silver- in his belt pouch could have himself quite a time, that he could…
Aye, if I hadn't had my eyes burned out, I'd likely be a sinner still. I make no bones about it. All things work for good in the end, is that what you said there? I won't argue, Brother Elpidios. How could I argue with the likes of you?
JUSTINIAN
A couple of months after the end of the sixth holy ecumenical synod, my father suffered his first attack of stone. I learned of it when my mother, at most times a quiet woman, let out a shriek at dawn one morning that had everyone in the palace rushing toward the bedchamber she and my father shared.
Because the rooms holding my bed and Herakleios's were close by that of my parents, I was among the first into the imperial bedchamber, and what I saw there made me slam the door in the faces of those who came more slowly, including my own brother. My father lay senseless on the floor; a shattered chamber pot close by had spilled a night's worth of piss over it and over his tunic.
Even as I turned back from the door, he groaned and sat up, one hand going to the small of his back. His face was pale as parchment. "Mother of God, help me," he said in a voice not his own, and then, wonderingly, "She has helped me- the pain is gone." He got to his feet and, though he swayed a little, did not seem on the point of falling.
"What happened?" my mother demanded. Her nightgown was wrinkled from sleep, her fair hair wild around her head. I could not remember the last time I had seen her anything but perfectly robed and coiffed.
"I woke up, perhaps half an hour ago," my father answered, plainly explaining as much to himself as to her and me. "At first I thought it was the gout again, but the pain lay here"- he touched his back again-"not in my foot. It moved- slowly." He ran a hand down his back, toward the bottom of the cleft of his buttocks. Even the memory of the pain made sweat bead on his face, though the bedchamber was cool. "It felt- it felt as if there were a torch soaked in liquid fire burning inside me, all the way down. I got up to make water, hoping to squeeze the pain down further, and- I woke up on the floor." Suddenly noticing his tunic was soaked and dripping, he let out a hoarse cry of disgust.
At that moment, someone rapped on the door, a loud, peremptory knock that cut through the Babel out in the hallway. "Let me in, curse it!" a man- presumably the fellow who had knocked- called in a loud, deep voice. "How the devil am I to attend my patient with him on one side of the door and me on the other?"
I looked a question to my father. He nodded, saying, "Let Peter come in- but no one else, mind you. A physician will do me no harm, though he probably won't do me much good, either."
I opened the door a palm's breadth, repeating my father's command as I did. In spite of it, the forward rush almost overcame me: it was as if a besieging army had broken in the gate of a city. But a big, burly man with a thick black beard threw a couple of judicious elbows that doubled over the men just behind him. Peter got in, then helped me shut and bar the door once more before anyone else could follow.
That done
, he turned to my father and, as ceremony required even under those circumstances, began to prostrate himself before him. When my father waved for him not to bother, he said, "Tell me your symptoms." My father did, in words almost identical to those he had used with my mother and me. Peter listened attentively, then said, "You passed a kidney stone, Emperor. What you felt was it moving from your kidney down to your bladder. It may stay there, or you may pass it out of your body sometime in the next few days when you make water."
"Will I get more of them?" my father asked. "One, let me tell you, was enough for a lifetime."
"Everyone who suffers from stone says the same thing. Thank God, if you care to, that yours passed quickly instead of lingering for hours or even days," Peter said. My father shuddered. The physician went on, "Will you get more?" He spread his hands. "God alone knows. I pray you don't." He hesitated, then said, "Suffering from stone, Emperor, along with your gout, is not the best of signs."
My father shrugged. Could the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts who said he ran away from the Bulgars have seen him them, they would have quivered in shame. "Akhilleus chose glory over length of days, or so the pagans say," he told Peter. "My family has a way of dying young- my father to a murderer, his father to consumption. My life may not be long, but already it has been full. Having saved the Empire from the followers of the false prophet and our holy Christian church, I leave the rest in God's hands."
Peter crossed himself, then bowed very low. So did I; I had never seen my father more worthy of respect. Holding faith in the face of pain is the hardest thing a man can do, and he did not merely hold it: it shone forth from him, as light does from a lamp.
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