Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  "How large a draught of the poppy did you give him?" my mother asked.

  Peter had spirit, answering, "As large as I judged he could stand. If his dysentery is not abated…" He spread his hands. "If God grants my prayer, he will sleep the day around and be better when he wakes."

  "And if not?" I said roughly.

  Before the physician could reply, my father grunted softly in his drugged sleep. The latrine stink grew gaggingly thick; so did the iron odor of blood. "He's fouled himself!" my mother cried. She rushed to tend him with her own hands.

  As she gently stripped my father of his robe and wiped the blood-streaked dung from his buttocks and legs with cloths she wet from a pitcher, I looked to Peter and saw him make the sign of the cross. He caught my eye and murmured, "Pray indeed, Prince. It's out of my hands now." He pitched his voice low so my mother would not hear, but how could she help but understand that for herself?

  For the next three days, she cared for my father herself, driving away the servants who tried to help. Me she tolerated, and Peter the physician, though him just barely- and less and less as it became clear his nostrums would not make my father well. She must have slept some during that time, but if she did, I did not see it.

  My father's life flowed out of him in a foul-smelling tide. If the poppy juice could not stem the dysentery, it did keep him from feeling any great pain. When he was awake, which happened at irregular intervals by both day and night, he knew who my mother and I were.

  I do not think he knew he was dying. Because of the drug, he had no clear notion of time. Once he exclaimed in surprise that suddenly it was night, when a moment before the sun had been shining into the bedchamber. The hours between simply did not exist for him.

  Not long before the end, he looked at me and said, "High time we found a girl for you, Justinian. By your age, I'd already married your mother."

  "Yes, Father," I said. He surely knew I was no virgin: he wanted me to have a wife. Though I seemed obedient, the idea of being limited to one woman did not appeal to me. Still, he was right: for the sake of the dynasty, I needed an heir, and a legitimate one. And even had he been wrong, who would contradict a man on what was plainly his deathbed?

  Someone- I do not know who- perhaps my mother, perhaps Peter, perhaps Stephen the Persian or some other palace functionary- summoned George the ecumenical patriarch to administer the sacrament of unction to my father. George looked in need of unction himself; his own health was visibly failing. My father did not wake while the patriarch anointed him and prayed for the forgiveness of his sins.

  He roused a little while afterwards. His eyes found mine. He inhaled once, deeply. I thought he was going to tell me something. Ever so slowly, his breath sighed out. His eyes stayed open. When I moved, they did not follow me. I gestured to Peter. He felt for a pulse, then let the wrist drop, limp. First the right, then the left, he closed my father's eyes.

  MYAKES

  After Herakleios, none of that dynasty lived to grow old. They didn't last long, but God and all the saints, they burned hot while they were here.

  Strange to think about it, Brother Elpidios, but, do you know, Constantine could be alive today. He'd be eighty, more or less: a great age, aye, but not an impossible one. He was a fine man while he lived, maybe even a great one when you remember all he did while he ruled.

  And he's been gone these past forty-five years and more, and who thinks about him today? You and me inside this monastery, and nobody else in the whole wide world. That's what fame in the world is worth. Peace with the Lord is better. Or maybe having some fun in the world and then peace with the Lord.

  Oh, don't click your tongue between your teeth at me, Brother. Weren't you the one who was asking questions about women and-? All right, I'll not go on, not if you say it upsets you. It didn't upset you then. It-

  Yes, Brother. Constantine. A fine man, as I say, and a pious man, a good Christian. Yes, if he'd lived longer, he might have tried holding the Empire on a more peaceful course. But he didn't live longer. That left it up to Justinian. He had his own ideas about things and, now, no one to tell him no.

  JUSTINIAN

  My father's washed and anointed body lay in state in the throne room for two days. He faced east, as is the custom, his arms formed in the sign of the cross on his chest, a holy icon in his right hand. Candles and incense burned to either side of him. My mother and I spent most of our time there, lamenting, while nobles and clergy and soldiers and common people filed past to look on him one last time and to mourn with us.

  We laid him to rest in the church of the Holy Apostles; he being the Emperor, no other choice was conceivable. For the second time in little more than half a year, my mother and I, dressed in black, paraded through the streets of the God-guarded and imperial city to lay our nearest kin to rest.

  My father's body, still dressed in imperial robes as it had been while it lay in state, rested in a wooden coffin on a black-painted cart drawn by a pair of lowing oxen. Excubitores in black surcoats, their spears fixed with black streamers, marched to either side of the cart. Behind my mother and me came a great crowd of nobles and palace servants, all of them crying out their grief that the lord of the inhabited world, the vicegerent of God on earth, was dead.

  The people of Constantinople lined the Mese and packed the squares of the city to bid my father a last farewell. "What will we do without Constantine?" my mother shrieked, over and over again.

  I set my hand on her shoulder. "I will care for the Empire now," I said, "and care for you as well."

  She shook me off. "I pray to God you make a good Emperor, as you are a good son," she said, "but you are not my husband, nor can you be." She was far from an old woman, and I, at thoughtless sixteen, did not understand how much of her life had come to an end along with my father's.

  Past the church of St. Euphemia, through the Forum of Constantine, and through the Forum of Theodosios the funeral procession made its slow, sorrowful way. Then we proceeded northwest up the Mese toward the Kharisian Gate, past the church of St. Polyeuktos- after the church of the Holy Wisdom, perhaps the grandest in the city- past the column of the Emperor Markianos on the opposite side of the thoroughfare, and on to the church of the Holy Apostles, less than a bowshot from the remnants of the first inadequate wall Constantine the Great had built for the new Rome that came to bear his name.

  The church of the Holy Apostles resembles that of St. John in Ephesos, being of cruciform plan with five domes. The excubitores lifted my father's coffin down from the cart and carried it into the church. The mosaic on the floor of the narthex showed Constantine the Great offering the basilica to Christ. My mother and I both crossed ourselves as we walked over the mosaic and into the church itself.

  After setting the coffin on a stand next to the altar, the excubitores withdrew. My mother went up into the women's gallery, whence she could gaze down on my father, or the mortal part of him, for the last time. George the patriarch prayed for my father's soul, as he had for that of my brother, and also prayed for the Roman Empire, as is usual when an Emperor passes from men.

  "We are fortunate," he said in a slow voice that put me in mind of nothing so much as a tired man scuffing through dry leaves (plainly his patriarchate would not long outlast my father's reign), "we are fortunate, I say, that Constantine, who must now sit at the right hand of God, left behind for us a successor who, being just now arrived at the first flush of manhood, will surely rule for many long and prosperous years."

  I stood straighter. Till then, I had been so consumed with my father's passing and with readying his funeral, I had not thought ahead to what would be my reign. Now I did, just for a moment. My father had not run the Roman Empire as I would have, nor had he heeded me when I told him as much. The power had been his. Now it was mine. I could make changes. I would make changes- soon.

  George having finished celebrating the liturgy, my mother came back down to the main level of the church. The excubitores returned and, lifting the coffin,
carried it down the marble stairs to the mausoleum below. I followed, as did my mother and George. The ecumenical patriarch had trouble going downstairs; after a moment, a priest hurried up to lend him support.

  Despite torches and candles and lamps, the air in the mausoleum was cool and rather damp. I went from one sarcophagus to another, reading the great names: the first Constantine; the first Theodosios, who beat the last pagan army in the west and ended the Olympic games; the second Theodosios, who erected the walls fortifying Constantinople to this day; the Justinian for whom I was named; and my great-great-grandfather, Herakleios. My father would rest in worthy company.

  The excubitores set down the coffin that had borne my father from the great palace to the church of the Holy Apostles. They lifted his remains from the coffin and placed him in the stone sarcophagus that awaited him. When they set the lid on the sarcophagus, my mother wailed anew.

  "Console yourself, Empress, with the knowledge that your husband has gone from this world into one far better, one where he will know God face to face," the ecumenical patriarch told her, pausing for a moment in his prayers.

  "What you say is true," my mother answered through her tears, "but life is hard for those left behind." That also being true, George bowed his head in silent agreement. His lips had a bluish tinge to them; before long, he too would know God face to face.

  When the last prayers were over and we went out of the mausoleum, the young, strong priest had George put an arm around his neck and bore most of his weight and the climb upstairs. While performing his ecclesiastical duties, the patriarch was strong and vigorous. When he had to be a mere man, he faded. Either his spirit or the spirit of God working within him imbued him with holy zeal, in the same way that soldiers in the heat of battle perform prodigies of valor they cannot even contemplate when times are quiet.

  Once on the main level of the church, George sank panting into a chair with a back of carved ivory that had been placed by the altar, perhaps, for just such a need. I strode up to him and said, "I hope you will be well soon." That was true; I did not expect it, but I hoped.

  He caught all the meanings underlying my words. "I will be well enough," he said, "for your coronation."

  ***

  I assumed the imperial crown four days later, a week to the day after my father's passing. Instead of the black robes of mourning, I donned for the first time the full imperial regalia: the long red tunic, the skaramangion; over it the cloak known as the sagion or, in the ancient usage, the chlamys, in purple with gold-embroidered border and ornamented with shimmering pearls; the long bejeweled scarf of the loros draped over my chest in the shape of the letter chi- X- symbolizing Christ's holy and victorious cross; and on my feet the tzagia, the purple boots, permitted to the Emperor alone.

  The procession from the great palace to the church of the Holy Wisdom was not what I had imagined it would be when I was small. I had thought of being crowned a junior Emperor like my uncles, and had expected them to be there along with my father and my brother. But they were mutilated and exiled, and my brother and father dead. I was the center of every eye, and would be for as long as I ruled- for the rest of my life, I thought, not knowing all that lay before me.

  My mother, still in black, walked behind me to the great church. Excubitores, now resplendent once more rather than somber, kept back the people who crowded close. Some of the people's exuberance, surely, was due to the pleasure Constantinopolitans take at spectacle of any sort, but more sprang from the silver miliaresia and gold nomismata palace servitors flung into the crowd as largesse to celebrate my coronation.

  Late in my father's reign, the imperial mint was lucky enough to find a certain Cyril, an engraver of such genius that he could show a man's perfect portrait in the compass of a coin no broader than a thumbnail. Having made the last nomismata of my father's reign marvels to behold, he now worked his magic with me. Some of the gold pieces the servitors gave out had my picture on them, as I looked then: under the imperial diadem I would don that day, a long, thin face with rather pinched cheeks and a narrow, pointed chin. As my beard was still thin and spotty, I shaved my cheeks and jaw, a practice I would soon give up. I do not know what prodigies of labor Cyril required to ready these new nomismata for the day, but ready they were.

  And ready- and more than ready- the crowds were to receive them. Fights broke out among the people struggling for them, as always happens at such affairs. So long as men battled only with fists and elbows and knees, the excubitores took no notice of their sport. But when, just as we arrived at the church of the Holy Wisdom, one ruffian stuck a knife into another not twenty feet from where I stood, the guardsmen waded into the crowd and seized him. The victim, I believe, recovered.

  Stephen the Persian turned to me. "Emperor, must we give out this largesse?" he asked in his sweet eunuch's voice. "It brings with it nothing but strife."

  "We'd have worse strife if we didn't," I answered. "The people expect it, and if they don't get what they expect…"

  He sniffed. "Mob rule," he said disdainfully. And, though I think more than half his objection sprang from spending the money, I have seen enough of demokratia since that day to admit he had a point. And since, in his blind avidity for gold, he incited the mob against him (among other outrages)…

  But my pen races years ahead of events. To divert the city mob from its squabbles over coins, I signaled for the excubitores to raise me on a shield, thereby showing the army accepted me as legitimate heir to my father. The four men chosen for the ceremony were Christopher the count of the excubitores; his mandator, Theodore of Koloneia, of whom I have already had a good deal to say; a captain who must then have been prominent but of whom I remember nothing save a huge black mole right between his eyes; and faithful Myakes.

  I promoted him to officer's rank so he would not seem out of place alongside his colleagues in the ceremony. To my surprise, he tried to refuse the promotion, surely one of the rare instances in the history of the Roman Empire where a man sought to avoid aggrandizing himself rather than the reverse. But when I ordered him to accept, he obeyed, for how can any man refuse the command of the Emperor?

  MYAKES

  Christian humility, Brother Elpidios? I wish I could take credit for it, but that's not what made me want to stay a simple soldier. Why did I? Nothing simpler: I was happy right where I was. The duty was easy, the pay was fine, I had plenty of good food to eat and good wine to drink, and the girls were just as impressed by a plain excubitor as they would have been by a fancy one, if you take my meaning.

  Officers yelled, officers worried, officers had to keep track of a pack of wild men like me. From where I stood, it looked like too much work to be worth the bother. And when Justinian promoted me in spite of my squawks, I found out I was right: it was too much work to be worth the bother.

  But he's right. Once he'd said yes, I couldn't say no.

  JUSTINIAN

  These four men, then, hoisted me up on that shield for the crowd to see. Though no Emperor had been crowned for almost a generation, the people knew (and some, at least, had been rehearsed in) their role. "Tu vincas, Justinian!" they shouted, and then other acclamations, some of them quite antiquated, suitable for the occasion: "Many years, Justinian!" "Justinian, ruler of the world!" "Flourish, Justinian, bestower of honors!" Then came a new acclamation, one devised by Stephen the Persian: "Hail, Justinian, restorer of a rich name!"

  I stood on the shield, supported by the stalwart shoulders of Myakes and of the three other officers of the excubitores, waving out to the people, letting them see me, and letting them get used to the idea that I rather than my father would be appearing on ceremonial occasions from now on. They waved back at me and kept on cheering, more, I daresay, for the diversion I represented than for any virtues inherent in myself. An elephant might have done even better, but we had no elephants, so they had to content themselves with me.

  After the city mob had gawped at me long enough, I looked down at Christopher and hissed, "Ge
t on with it!" The count of the excubitores, Myakes, Theodore of Koloneia, and that captain, whoever he was, slowly carried me into the church of the Holy Wisdom. The folk outside bore up philosophically at being deprived of my presence, for the palace servitors threw fresh handfuls of coins into the crowd.

  The people inside the great church were of more consequence to me, for I would rule through the high-ranking bureaucrats and soldiers and clerics who packed it tight. Their robes made a bright rainbow of color within the church. These men- and their wives and daughters and, no doubt, concubines in the women's gallery above- shouted acclamations as the common people had outside.

  I stared down from my high perch. Along with the army, these men had to acknowledge me their sovereign, as they were doing. Then one of my bearers missed a step. That, added to my own inattention, nearly made me fall off the shield- whose bronze surface was smooth, almost slick- and smash my head on the floor of the great church. A worse omen at a coronation I can hardly imagine. But Myakes, bless him, reached up with his free hand and caught me by the ankle till I steadied, just as he had stopped me from leaping off the city wall when the deniers of Christ besieged Constantinople.

  We reached the ambo without further mishap. George the patriarch stood there waiting, leaning on a stick to take some of the weight from his legs. His vestments of silk and wool, worked with gems and pearls and gold threads in the shape of many crosses, rivaled the imperial regalia in splendor.

  On the ambo rested a cushion of purple silk embroidered with eagles in gold thread. And on that cushion sat the crown that had for so many years been my father's. Its golden circle of bejeweled and enameled panels, the glittering prependoulia that dangled from it, and its surmounting cross were of surpassing magnificence.