Justinian

by Harry Turtledove

  Having been given permission to speak his mind, he exclaimed, "Emperor, I do not! The Arab's offer is a snare, a delusion, a deception. For a generation and more, the Mardaites have stood like a wall of bronze on the Roman Empire's eastern frontier. Removing them, resettling them, would accomplish nothing but a mutilation of the Empire. Your father used them to keep the Arabs busy close to home so they could not attack us, and you yourself augmented Leontios's campaign by loosing them against Abimelekh at the same time as he invaded Armenia. What we have done before, we shall surely need to do again."

  "And yet," I said musingly, "when the Arabs make a treaty, they generally honor it, don't they?- they being our most civilized neighbors." Though plainly reluctant, Paul had to nod. He could scarcely do anything else, since our other neighbors included, then as now, barbarians like the Lombards and the Bulgars, as well as Sklavinian tribes like the Croats and the Serbs, who hardly deserved to be called even barbarous. I went on, "If the deniers of Christ may be relied upon to keep agreements once made, would it not be wise to shift proven fighting men and their families to frontiers where fighting is likelier to break out unexpectedly?"

  "It goes against all traditional usage," Paul said, his voice stiff with disapproval.

  He spoke as if he were a bishop arguing a theological position by citing the view of the church fathers of old and the text of the Holy Scriptures. But the Scriptures are divinely inspired, while the Roman Empire's dealings with its neighbors (save insofar as God guards us) are but human, and therefore mutable.

  Besides, arguing tradition to a man who has not yet seen twenty years is like arguing chastity to a billy goat: no matter how eloquent you are, he will not listen to you. I said, "Perhaps we can resettle some of the Mardaites elsewhere and leave some of them in place. We truly could use such warlike men in other parts of the Empire. Abimelekh has compromised in these negotiations before; maybe he will again. Put the matter to Mansour as I have stated it."

  "But, Emperor-" Paul began to protest anew.

  I cut him off. "I am the Emperor of the Romans, and as Emperor of the Romans I command you. Obey or abandon your office."

  "Yes, Emperor," Paul said, in tones suggesting I had given him over to martyrdom. But obey he did, as all subjects of the Emperor of the Romans must.

  MYAKES

  Do you know, Brother Elpidios, the things you do sometimes end up causing other things you never would have- never could have- expected. When Justinian ended up shipping those Mardaites to Europe- I daresay he'll have more to tell about that soon enough- one of them was a little brat who then would have been.. oh, I don't know how old exactly, but not long past the age of making messes in his clothes.

  What? Oh, aye, Brother, there would have been a lot of brats like that. The one I'm thinking of in particular, though, came out of Germanikeia in northern Syria. Does that give you enough of a clue? Why, so it must- I hear how you suck in air in surprise. Yes, the Emperor Leo who rules us now was one of those resettled Mardaites.

  Who can guess how things would have turned out if Leo and his family had stayed behind in Germanikeia? Who would be Emperor of the Romans now? Would there be an Emperor of the Romans, or would the Arabs have taken Constantinople in that second siege? It would be a different world, one way or another, that's certain. Would God allow such a thing?

  No, don't consult the Scriptures now, Brother Elpidios. It will wait. You have Justinian's book in front of you. Read that instead.

  JUSTINIAN

  While we were awaiting Abimelekh's reply to Mansour's letter asking if he would accept partial rather than complete resettlement of the Mardaites, Eudokia went into labor. Looking back on these leaves, I realize I have scanted my wife, saying little about her since the time we were wed. I can offer no better defense than saying quiet contentment leaves little to record.

  My mother brought me the news. "I have attended to everything," she said. "I have summoned the midwife, I have summoned Peter the physician, though God forbid he be necessary, I have summoned the patriarch to bless the baby and to exorcise the evil spirits that attend a birth, and I have ordered a girdle brought from the monastery of the Virgin to make the labor easier."

  I bowed to her, as if I were a servant. "And what is left for me to do?"

  "Wait," she snapped. "Pray. When the time comes, receive your son or daughter in your arms and say what a beautiful child it is. It won't be- newborns are of an odd color, and their heads are apt to be misshapen. Say it anyhow. Eudokia will expect it of you." Having outlined her plan of campaign and given me her orders, she went off to help Eudokia through her trial.

  I waited. I prayed. Those palling, I called for wine. Eventually, I fell asleep. I woke in darkness. My head ached. It was the eighth hour of the night, two thirds of the way from sunset back to sunrise. I called for more wine, and some bread to go with it. Sopping the bread in the wine, I made a nighttime breakfast of it. I prayed some more. I waited some more.

  Presently, I summoned a serving woman and told her to bring me back word from the birthing chamber. When she returned, she said, "The physician- Peter is his name, yes?- is busy in there, and shouted at me to go away. I told him you had sent me, and he told me to go away anyhow." Her eyes were wide and astonished: Peter had defied me. "He was most rude."

  I hurled across the room the heel of bread on which I had been nibbling. That Peter had shouted was of small moment to me. That he was busy in there, though, made me tremble with fear.

  On the one hand, it is against all custom for a husband to enter the chamber where his wife is giving birth. On the other hand, that which is pleasing to the Emperor has the force of law, as the jurists who served my namesake put it. And if I scandalized the midwife, I expected a few nomismata would put things right.

  Serving women fled gabbling before me when they saw where I was going. I sighed. I would have to put things right with them, too. I was about to round the last corner when I heard the high, thin, indignant cry of a newborn babe.

  The midwife was holding the baby. It had already been washed and swaddled in woolen wrappings. She nodded to me; thanks to the servants, she had known I was coming. "Emperor, you have a daughter," she said, and held the baby out to me. "What will you name her?"

  "Epiphaneia," I said shortly. I did not take her from the midwife. Instead, I started for the chamber in which she had been born. The midwife moved to put herself between me and the door. We stared at each other. "My wife," I said. "Eudokia."

  "Pray for her," the midwife said, and made the sign of the cross. "It was a hard birth, and she began to bleed. I could not make it stop. I wasted no time calling in the physician, Emperor. Your mother was there- she's in there yet- and she will tell you the same. I know Peter; he is better than most of the butchers who go by the name of doctor. But there is only so much to be done-" She held out the baby again. "You have a fine daughter here, strong and healthy."

  "Stand aside," I snarled, and in my fright and fury I would have struck her had she dared disobey. That she did not; she scuttled aside like a frightened mouse. But, at the same time as I set my hand on the latch, a great burst of lamentation came from inside the chamber. I knew my mother's cries of anguish: how could I not, having heard her mourn my brother and my father? Mixed with them were Peter's vile but helpless curses. Death had beaten him again.

  Numbly, my hand fell away from the door. As if from very far away, I heard myself say, "Kyrie eleison. Christe eleison." I felt as if I had been rolled in ice: cold and stinging at the same time. A woman who lies down in childbed risks her life, no less than a man going off to war. We men do not think on this, not until- or unless- we are are forcibly reminded.

  The door to the birthing chamber opened. Out came my mother, her face haggard and drawn. When she saw me, she cast herself into my arms, tears flooding down her cheeks. "Too much, God!" she screamed. "Too much. How can You let one person, one family, suffer so much?"

  I had no tears, not yet. Those would come later, when I
started to believe. Nowa160… now Peter the physician came out. He had washed his hands and arms, but Eudokia's blood, still fresh and red, splotched his tunic; on looking more closely, I saw it under his fingernails as well. Behind him lay a still form covered by a sheet. The sheet was stained with blood, too.

  Noting the direction in which my eyes had moved, he made haste to close the door after himself. Then he stood very straight, as if he were a sentry acknowledging a general's presence. "I failed you, Emperor," he said baldly. "She hemorrhaged. I did everything I could to stop it. Nothing worked." He spread his hands- his bloodstained hands, I thought, although, as I have said, the only blood physically on them lay under his nails. "Do what you will with me."

  It occurred to me then that I could order him slain, as Alexander had the physician who could not save his beloved companion Hephaistion. The temptation, the desire, were very strong. That must have shown, for Peter's face, already pale, went paler. "Get out of my sight," I said, my voice thick with the fury I strove to hold in.

  Peter, if not wise enough to save either my father or my wife, had the sense to obey me. His withdrawal was the next thing to headlong flight. He did not show himself before me for some weeks thereafter. By then, my grief having lost its edge, I was willing to suffer him to live.

  My mother took Epiphaneia from the midwife. The baby made noises that put me in mind of an unhappy kitten. As the midwife had, my mother held her out to me. "Take your daughter," she said.

  But I backed away as if she had offered me a viper. "No," I said. "If it weren't for her, Eudokia would be, would bea160…" Then I felt myself start to cry, although I had not willed it. I tried to stop. I could not. I stood there in the hallway, tears streaming down my face, my hands balled in useless fists at my sides.

  My mother gave the midwife back the baby. She took me in her arms. We clung to each other and wailed to a Heaven that had proved itself deaf to us. My brother, my father, my wife, all young, all stolen from me in the span of four years. To this day I pray God forgives me for the blasphemies I loosed against Him in the madness of my grief.

  The door to the chamber where Eudokia had died opened once more. Out came the ecumenical patriarch, looking as grim and mournful as Peter the physician had. Thinking back on it, seeing the man's face once more in my mind, I recall that the patriarch was Paul, not Theodore, who had suffered a fit of apoplexy and expired while conducting the divine liturgy a little more than a year after I restored him to his throne: not the worst way for a bishop to be called to God.

  Paul must have heard my vain, useless, senseless railing against the Lord of all. Being a kindly man, he forbore to mention it, saying only, "Because of her great virtue, your wife is surely in heaven even as we speak." He made the sign of the cross.

  I remembered myself enough to do the same. "I am glad you were here to give her unction," I said.

  "As I am," he said gravely, "even if I was summoned for another purpose." He turned to the midwife and pointed to tiny Epiphaneia. "But you are blessed with a fine and, God willing, healthy daughter to remind you of her."

  "Get out!" I shouted. Had my mother not restrained me, I would have set on him. But she held me back, and Paul, shock and fear both on his face, half staggered away from me. "Get out of here!" I cried again. "I never want to have anything to do with her- never, do you hear me? She killed my wife. She killed Eudokia. If it weren't for hera160…" I dissolved in tears once more.

  Paul crossed himself again. "You are distraught, Emperor," he said, which was certainly true. "When you are more fully yourself, I trust you will change your mind. You cannot blame the child for what is surely God's will."

  But I did blame Epiphaneia, and I never changed my mind. I could not stand to be near her; she reminded me too much of what I had lost. And even the marriage I eventually tried to arrange for her was as much a punishment, a revenge, as anything else.

  Having already written overmuch in these pages of funerals, I shall say little here of Eudokia's. She was laid to rest in the church of the Holy Apostles, in a sarcophagus of rose-pink marble. May God have had mercy upon her. If I am lucky enough to be forgiven the many sins staining my soul, I shall see her again in heaven.

  With Eudokia I buried, I think, a great part of my own youth. It is, I daresay, no coincidence that shortly after this time I summoned to the palace Cyrus the engraver and ordered him to mint nomismata of a new type, showing me as the man I was rather than the beardless youth I had been. The portrait he produced for these new nomismata had all his usual skill. I approved it, and the goldpieces were duly struck. Yet it left me dissatisf ied in a way I could not define even to myself. I was searching for something else, but would not find it for another couple of years.

  MYAKES

  Well, Brother Elpidios, I have to say Justinian is right when he talks about himself so. Up till Eudokia died, he could be playful every now and again, but not afterwards, not for years and not until a lot of water had flowed under the bridge. When he lost her, he lost something special, something he couldn't find anywhere else.

  Me, Brother? Yes, I liked Eudokia pretty well. Can't say I was what you'd call close to her. That wouldn't have been fitting, not with another man's wife. But she treated me- she treated all the excubitores- like flesh and blood, not like part of the furniture. She was a soldier's daughter herself, you'll remember. That probably helped.

  What? Did I upbraid and exhort Justinian to pay poor Epiphaneia more heed? You don't upbraid and exhort the Emperor of the Romans. I mentioned her once or twice. Every time I did, he gave me a look fit to freeze my marrow. I'm not stupid. I got the idea, and shut up.

  JUSTINIAN

  Emperor of the Romans though I was, the world did not stop turning because of my sorrow. Abimelekh eventually responded to Mansour's question. Paul the magistrianos brought me that response, along with Mansour's graceful expression of consolation and condolence, which I listened to although I did not much want to hear it.

  "Mansour says Abimelekh says he will accept a partial resettlement of the Mardaitesa160… provided it includes at least twenty thousand men of fighting age," Paul reported, his tone going from sympathetic to cold and sardonic in the space of a sentence.

  "Good heavens," I said, "he wants us to take away the substance and leave behind only the shadow. I doubt the Mardaites have more than twenty-five thousand men under arms all along our border with the Arabs."

  "Exactly so, Emperor," the magistrianos replied. Had I not been Emperor of the Romans and he, like everyone else within the Empire, my servant, I have no doubt that, instead of agreeing, he would have said I told you so.

  "He asks too much," I said. "He is the one who wants this treaty, not I. Tell Mansour the war goes on if that number does not come down." Paul bowed and departed. I had no doubt he would convey my words exactly as I intended, for I meant every one of them. I was ready- I was more than ready- to hurl Leontios into Armenia once more. If Abimelekh wanted to avoid more war, he could meet my terms.

  And the numbers did come down. Paul and Mansour haggled like a couple of old women trying to get the better of each other over the price of a sack of beans. At last, Paul came to me, reporting, "He is down to fourteen thousand, Emperor. I had hoped for twelve, but-"

  "Tell him twelve thousand or war," I said. "If you hoped for that, we shall have it."

  And we did have it. Faced with that bald choice, Mansour capitulated. Paul and Mansour having drawn up the terms of the treaty, I signed two parchments in scarlet ink and affixed my seal to each of them. Paul then accompanied Mansour to Damascus, where Abimelekh, observing virtually the same ceremonies I had, also signed and sealed both copies of the treaty. He kept one and sent the other back to this imperial city with the magistrianos, to whom he had shown every honor while Paul was in Damascus.

  Also accompanying Paul on the road back from Damascus was the first year's payment of the new tribute: fifty-two thousand gold nomismata, more than seven hundred pounds of gold. Some of th
e coins were old Roman mintings, dating from before the days when the Arabs stole Syria and Palestine and Egypt from us. Some were newer, obtained from us in trade. And some were their own issues, imitating ours. But all were of the same weight and purity, as the treaty had specified. Seeing them, I felt like Midas in the pagan myth.

  The treaty having been completed, both Abimelekh and I sent messengers to the chieftains of the Mardaites, ordering them to assemble at Sebasteia, in the eastern part of the military district of the Armeniacs, for resettlement. Several of the messengers did not return. Some of them were returned to officials of the misnamed commander of the faithful and to my own officers- in pieces. The Mardaites were convinced the orders they had received were a trick on Abimelekh's part to lure them from their mountain fastnesses and destroy them. And, I daresay, had the Arab thought of such a ploy, he would have used it.

  Paul the magistrianos and several of my other advisers were almost jubilant on account of the Mardaites' intransigence: if my plans failed, they would regain lost influence. But I did not intend to fail. Summoning Paul and the others, I said, "I will travel to Sebasteia myself. If the Mardaites know I am there, they will not be afraid to go there themselves. Let word of my journey go forth."

  Word went forth, and, in due course, so did I. Up till then, I had never traveled far from Constantinople. Oh, I had been out of the imperial city now and again, once or twice visiting Philaretos by the Long Wall and often crossing the Bosporos to hunt in Asia, but my life had revolved around the palace, the court, and the city.

  I was anxious to leave for more reasons than one. Not only did I want to see more of the Empire I ruled, but I was also eager to leave Constantinople behind for a while, to escape the memory of Eudokia. And so, riding my own horse rather than traveling in a cart or horse-drawn litter, I set off across Anatolia for Sebasteia.