Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  I was not most lads. I was Emperor of the Romans. I had all the power of the Empire behind me, and all the wealth, too. I could do as I chose, not as anyone chose for me. It had not been done that way before? Precedent and conventional usage argued against it? So what?

  Furthermore, I saw- I was certain I saw- an opportunity to which my so-called counselors were deliberately blinding themselves.

  After the failure of their impious and infamous assault upon this God-guarded and imperial city, the Arabs had fallen into disarray. Mauias, their longtime ruler, passed from this earth into hellfire two years after they gave up the siege. Upon his death, several misnamed commanders of the faithful held their throne in Damascus in quick succession, none securely. Abimelekh, the latest, had gained it in the same year I did, though already older than my father at his death.

  Through all the turmoil among the deniers of Christ, my father had sat quiet, content to receive the tribute Mauias had agreed to pay after his fleet was destroyed and his army beaten. He preferred that to battle.

  I thought otherwise. Summoning my advisers, I said, "With the followers of the false prophet quarreling among themselves, should we not seize the moment to take back some of the lands they stole from the Romans during the reigns of my grandfather and my great-great-grandfather?"

  The sakellarios, a dour man named Romanos, said, "The treasury has not the gold for a long campaign, Emperor."

  "Since we are at peace, should we not remain at peace?" John the city eparch said, though nothing outside Constantinople was properly his area of concern.

  And Christopher, the comes excubitorum, said, "Having been little used of late, the army will not be at its peak fighting condition."

  I clapped a hand to my forehead. "We have not fought and so we cannot fight? The longer we do not fight, the worse we will fare when the time for fighting comes! If we stay at peace for a generation, will we be altogether destroyed when war breaks out?"

  "That is not what I meant, Emperor. I-" Christopher began.

  I cut him off, declaring, "I do not care what you meant. I hear d what you said, and I did not care for that, either. We shall take advantage of Abimelekh's weakness, and the war, undoubtedly a short and successful one, will more than pay for itself."

  "Such promises are more often made than fulfilled," Romanos said sourly.

  "You have heard my will expressed. You shall carry it out," I said. They all bowed in submission. I glowered at Romanos. I did not need a treasurer who told me why I could not do things. I needed one who would find ways for me to do as I wanted. If this copper counter obstructed me, I would replace him- and I knew with whom.

  But that could wait. More urgent was picking the proper general to lead the campaign against the followers of the false prophet. Christopher the comes excubitorum I dismissed out of hand. The only military virtue I had seen him display was looking splendid in his gilded shirt of mail. That sufficed in Constantinople. In the field, it did not.

  If I appointed Theodore of Koloneia commander of the army, that left the imperial bodyguards with no one to keep a tight rein on Christopher. I decided I dared not take the chance. Theodore also stayed in the imperial city.

  Of the three generals who had beaten back the Arabs in my father's day, Kyprianos had by this time met the common fate of mankind. When I asked Myakes what he thought of Petronas, he rolled his eyes. "He promises more than he can give," he said.

  "What do you mean?" I asked.

  Myakes explained how, in my father's expedition against the Bulgars, Petronas had promised victory after my father went off to Mesembria on account of his gout. I knew too well he had no victory there, only defeat and humiliation. And so I resolved not to name Petronas to high command.

  Florus, now, was another matter. No one faulted either his cleverness or his generalship. And yeta160… having had the chance to marry Florus's daughter but instead having chosen another, I hesitated. Did he harbor, did he hide, did he nurture resentment under that clever mask? If he did, his strategic ability might prove more dangerous to me than to the deniers of Christ. When my house rose to power through civil war, when my grandfather was murdered as the overture to uprising, I had to make these calculations. Florus might have done well, but I did not send him east.

  Having eliminated all these candidates, I summoned a man I knew much less well, a man of my father's generation: Leontios, whom I last remembered seeing at the time of the ecumenical synod. He was as I remembered him: round-faced, broad-shouldered, with open, smiling features and a hearty manner.

  "Turn me loose on them, Emperor," he boomed. "That's all I ask- turn me loose on them. I'll beat 'em for you. You just see if I don't."

  This was what I wanted to hear. One of the things I had already found out, though, was that the Emperor always heard what he wanted to hear, or what the man speaking to him thought he wanted to hear, regardless of its truth. And so I asked Leontios, "Why are you so confident?"

  "Why? I'll tell you why, Emperor." He had the habit of repeating himself. As he spoke, he ticked points off on his fingers, something else he did all the time. "The Arabs, they've been through civil war. And they've been through famine. And they've been through plague. And the Armenians hate them, because the Armenians, they're Christians even if they're heretics, and they don't have any use for the false prophet. If I march an army into Armenia, the princes there, they'll rise up and help my boys throw the Arabs out. That's why I'll beat 'em."

  "Good," I said- and the reasons he had named were good. Coupled with his confidence, they gave me reason to hope he could do as he claimed. I said, "I shall send you forth, Leontios, and may God grant you the victory you deserve. And, to help ensure it, I will write to the Mardaite chieftains and turn them loose against the deniers of Christ, too."

  Leontios's eyes glowed. "That's fine, Emperor. That's mighty fine. With them and me hitting the Arabs at the same time, their caliph"- having fought a good deal in the east, he used the Arabs' own name for their miscalled commander of the faithful-"he'll be itching so many places at once, he won't know which one to scratch."

  He was not an educated man. He was not a particularly clever man. But he had a bluff vitality to him that made those deficiencies matter less than they would have in many another. Soldiers followed him, not just willingly but eagerly. I also heard that women fell all over him, but that, true or not, had nothing to do with matters military.

  He having satisfied me, I sent him forth. And, thanks to him and to the Mardaites, I showed my quivering, cowardly advisers what fools they were. Leontios ravaged that part of Armenia under Arab control, and succeeded so well there that he went on to plunder not only Iberia but also Media, the northwesternmost province of what had been the Persian Empire before the followers of the false prophet burst from the desert and subjected Romania's ancient foes.

  From all these lands he sent back to Constantinople a large sum of money, which was most welcome. I knew the fisc would make good use of every follis Leontios sent, too, having replaced Romanos as sakellarios with Stephen the Persian. Many eunuchs could care for my comfort as well as Stephen had; few men, entire or not, had the gift of caring for the revenue accruing to the imperial treasury.

  And while Leontios was campaigning in and beyond Arab-held Armenia, the Mardaites ravaged the borderlands from Mopsuestia in Kilikia- not far from Antioch- north and east up to the Roman province of Armenia, from which my general had set out. For a long time, their depredations kept Abimelekh from responding in any way to Leontios's invasion.

  God granted us Romans another boon at this time, in that one more spasm of civil war convulsed the deniers of Christ not long after Leontios attacked them. Distracted as Abimelekh was- one of the rebels against him even succeeded in briefly seizing Damascus, his capital- he could not hope to withstand our armies. And so, for almost three years, we swept everything before us.

  As Mauias had after his force shattered itself against the walls of this God-guarded and imperial city, t
he miscalled commander of the faithful sent an embassy to Constantinople, asking our terms for breaking off the conflict. Abimelekh's ambassador, a Greek-speaking Christian named Mansour, had the gall to protest that I had broken the thirty years' truce to which my father had agreed.

  In his presumption, he might as well have been one of my own advisers, not Abimelekh's. "I am not my father!" I shouted to him, as I had to my own bureaucrats. "Unless I so choose, his acts do not bind me. Here, I do not so choose."

  Mansour bowed his head. What I had said was simple truth, as any fool could see. Was Abimelekh likely to do exactly as his predecessors had in all things? Of course not! It was a diplomat's trick, an effort to make me feel I was in the wrong. But I did not fall for it.

  Having put old Mansour in his place, I turned him over to the diplomats whose job it was to negotiate the fine details of treaties and let him haggle with them. Unlike my father, I reckoned it beneath my dignity to dicker like a tradesman with foreign envoys.

  ***

  And I had other things on my mind. I had never sired a bastard on any of the serving girls with whom I had dallied, but Eudokia's courses failed and, presently, her belly began to bulge. I puffed up with pride like a pig's bladder. To tell the truth, I had feared my seed was cold within me, and was relieved and delighted to find this not so.

  "What shall we name the baby?" Eudokia asked when she was certain she was with child.

  I had been thinking about that since we both began to wonder. I would have liked to name a boy Herakleios, after the founder of my dynasty, but that also meant naming him after my uncle, the traitor. "We'll call him Constantine," I said instead. I had not been overfond of my father, but he had been a strong Emperor- and the name would make my mother happy.

  Timidly- more timidly than she usually spoke- Eudokia asked, "And if it should be a girl?"

  My mind and my hopes being set on getting an heir, I had not worried about what name to give a girl. By chance, Eudokia herself bore the same name as the first Herakleios's first wife, from whom I am descended. "There's always Maria," I said, a careless, indifferent answer that left Eudokia visibly discontented. As I was assotted of her, I did not want that, and so put some thought into my next essay: "What about Epiphaneia? That's the name of the first Herakleios's mother."

  "Epiphaneia." Eudokia tasted the name on her tongue. Her brow smoothed. "Yes, it will do."

  That problem was easily solved. For my part, whenever I spoke of the child to come, I called it Constantine. Everyone around me took up the habit, as was only natural: an Emperor needs a successor. Sooner than leaving the throne empty, an Emperor might marry three or even four times, I would say.

  MYAKES

  Brother Elpidios, if you set fire to the book, you won't be able to read the rest of it. What do you mean, you don't care? You've come all this way, you've read lewd things and turned- well, hardly a hair, and now you want to feed the codex to the brazier a leaf at a time? I don't understand, and I'll own as much. Justinian was just talking about what he might have done if-

  Heresy? Blasphemy? Brother, if you don't calm down, you'll feed yourself to the brazier a leaf at a time, sounds like. Tell me what's on your- Oh, marrying three or four times. He wasn't talking about it for the sake of fornication, Brother Elpidios, but for the sake of getting an heir. "It is better to marry than to burn," eh?

  Not three times? Especially not four times? Not even to keep the Empire from the threat of civil war? You don't th ink an Emperor would be able to find a priest who would give him a dispensation for something like that? What? You'd break from communion with a priest who did something like that, you'd go into schism? You're aa160… pious man, Brother Elpidios.

  In any case, you don't need to burn the book. Justinian married only twice, and canon law says nothing about that, now does it? He was only saying what he thought about a might-have-been that never was. Maybe he was wrong. It wouldn't have been the only time, God knows.

  What about me, Brother? No, I never married, and yes, maybe I'll burn for it. I was like Justinian before he wed Eudokia, and I didn't have his excuse of being a young pup. I liked women so well, I never settled on any one woman. Life is like that sometimes. It'll get right past you if you don't watch out, and then you look back and you say, "Oh, Lord, what have I done?" Or you say, "What have I missed?"

  Do I repent of my sinful ways? I've been a blind monk these past twenty years. If I haven't repented by now, when do you suppose I'd get round to it?

  JUSTINIAN

  I had hoped to get even more from the Arabs than we ended up acquiring, but they scored a victory or two of their own to begin balancing ours: they captured Kirkesion, our outpost on the eastern Euphrates, and raided west from Antioch. The arrival of that news made Mansour more stubborn than he had been.

  Even so, thanks to the invasion of Armenia I won far better terms from Abimelekh than my father had from Mauias. Mansour agreed to pay us a slave and a high-bred horse for every week of the year, an arrangement much like the former one, but Paul the magistrianos, at the urging of Stephen the Persian, held out for a large increase in the amount of gold we were to receive each year.

  When he came to me to report what Mansour had conceded, his eyes were round and staring. "A thousand nomismata a week, Emperor!" he exclaimed. "We were getting only three thousand a year before."

  "You see?" I said triumphantly. "I knew we'd hurt the deniers of Christ. You may agree to that, Paul, but make certain you don't sound too eager doing it."

  "I understand," he said. Then he coughed. "While the payment lies at the heart of the treaty, Emperor, it is not the only provision involved. In Abimelekh's name, Mansour has proposed an arrangement the likes of which I have never heard before; you must weigh its advantages and disadvantages for yourself."

  "Tell me, then."

  "He says that, while his master Abimelekh commonly controls Armenia and Iberia, our continued raids on those lands and the uprisings they spark create such disruption that he cannot collect the taxes owed him-"

  "Good!" I said.

  But Paul continued, "Mansour also says we do not bring in enough money from the raids to make them worth our while, either. Through him, Abimelekh proposes that both sides give over warfare in those provinces, that we let the Armenians and Iberians carry on their lives in peace, and that we then tax them and divide evenly the money we receive."

  "That is a novel suggestion," I admitted, rubbing my chin. Whiskers rasped under my fingers; my beard had thickened to the point that I was letting it grow. "But is Abimelekh sincere in this, or only trying to keep us from raiding Armenia and Iberia?"

  "I cannot judge, Emperor," Paul said. "Mansour seems sincere, but he is an ambassador. Did he not seem sincere, he would fail of his purpose."

  "Let me think on it," I said, and sent him away. I summoned him again two days later. He having prostrated himself before me, I said, "So Abimelekh says we should stop these attacks because they cost both sides money, eh?"

  "That is how Mansour represents the matter, yes," the magistrianos answered, diplomatically cautious.

  I pounced: "Will Abimelekh then agree likewise to share the tax revenues from the island of Cyprus, and to order his fleets to leave off ravaging its coastal towns? If he is sincere, he will agree to stop raiding as well as to keep from being raided."

  Paul's bow showed respect for my person now, not merely for the imperial office I happened to hold. "I shall put the question to Mansour, exactly as you have put it to me, and shall immediately report to you his response."

  That response was in essence no response: on the grounds that the matter of Cyprus was beyond the scope of his instructions and that he dared not decide without having consulted his principal, Mansour felt compelled to write to the misnamed commander of the faithful in Damascus before replying. The letter went east, negotiations pausing while we awaited Abimelekh's reply.

  With the impatience of youth, I chafed at the delay. Paul tried to calm me, saying, "Em
peror, we remain at peace with the Arabs while the letter and its reply go thither and return hither. A bit of time-"

  "A bit of time?" I burst out. "Weeks, a bit?" Waiting seemed unconscionable. Even now, when I have had to wait years to return to my throne, I hurl myself headlong into every enterprise. Then, I daresay, I had no patience whatever.

  After what seemed a very long time, a messenger brought Abimelekh's answer to the imperial city. His arrival made the delay seem, if not worthwhile, at least tolerable, for the Arabs' ruler agreed to codominium over Cyprus as well as over Armenia and Iberia. That agreement, I had hoped, would let us complete the treaty, but Mansour, at Abimelekh's urging, raised yet another issue.

  Paul the magistrianos brought the matter to me: "Emperor, the commander of the faithful"- almost like Leontios, he was so used to dealing with the Arabs, he did not append misnamed to Abimelekh's title-"urges you to take an unusual step in securing the border between his land and making sure no trouble that endangers the peace being arranged between us, which peace, he adds, he will at once assent to upon your agreement to his proposal."

  "And that proposal is?" I asked.

  "Emperor, he asks you to remove and resettle the Mardaites, whom he terms brigands and bandits and robbers and thieves, taking them into Roman territory and away from his own."

  "You don't like the idea," I said. Though he had continued to speak dispassionately, diplomatically, Paul had made that very clear. By the way his nostrils flared, by the way he quivered ever so slightly, Abimelekh, as far as he was concerned, might have been demanding we serve him up a stew of Christian children as prerequisite for ratifying the treaty.