But what really wrecked things for him was that he went on doing whatever he thought he needed to do right then, and never had a clue that people were starting to spit when somebody said his name. Paul the patriarch and Sisinniakes both tried to tell him- you read me what they said. And you heard for yourself- he wouldn't listen.
Remember something else, too, Brother. Justinian was writing here years after what he's talking about. He still doesn't see or doesn't believe what people were telling him back then. He knew what happened to him. As long as he lived, he never figured out why.
JUSTINIAN
Not long after the letter to Zachariah started on the long journey to Ravenna, I was startled to receive a request for an audience from the monk Paul, who had been identified to me as a warm friend of Leontios's. Not only was I surprised, I was intrigued. This Paul must have known I knew of his attachment to a man who, to put it mildly, I did not find pleasing. Under those circumstances, asking for an audience with me took a certain amount of what was either courage or hubris. Trying to learn which, I granted the request.
Paul put me in mind of my Theodotos: he was intensely certain of his purpose. Also like Theodotos, he wasted no time in small talk. Having risen from his prostration, he said, "Emperor, I have come to ask you to free the brave general Leontios."
"Why should I?" I demanded, my tone halfway between anger that he should dare to say such a thing and curiosity as to why he said it.
"First and foremost, from simply Christian charity," he answered. "No man deserves to be caged like a wild beast, and Leontios less than most."
I shook my head. "As a man, I might do this," I said. That left open the possibility I also might not do it, which was far more likely. I continued: "As Emperor of the Romans, I cannot. By his bungling, Leontios cost the Roman Empire far too much to let me casually forgive him."
"But, Emperor, in his earlier campaigns he gained great glory and advantage for the Roman Empire," Paul said. "Should you not weigh the one in the pans of the balance against the other?"
"When he won victories, he was promoted. He was rewarded. How else did he become a rich man, and a general to whom I entrusted a great army?" I said. Paul remained silent- what could he reply to that? Leaning forward on the throne, I asked him, "Are you telling me a man who is rewarded for his successes should not be punished for his failures?"
"No, Emperor," he said; had he said anything else, I would have had him thrown out of the throne room. He had spirit, though, continuing, "But does he deserve to be punished so harshly for a misfortune that partly sprang not from any error of his own but from the treachery of the barbarous Sklavenoi?"
As he had been nowhere near the field by Sebastopolis, he must have spent a lot of time listening to Leontios in his cell. I answered, "I have punished the Sklavenoi, or such of them as I have laid hands on, as they deserved. Shall I treat Leontios as I treated them?"
"No, for he was no traitor, only a man brought down by the treachery of others," Paul said, arguing like a lawyer.
"That is not so; he disobeyed my orders, which, had he followed them, might have brought us victory in spite of the Sklavenoi," I told the monk. He looked down at the floor, again not knowing how to respond. I daresay Leontios, doing his utmost to show himself in the best possible light, had never bothered to mention that small detail. Scowling down from the throne at Paul, I said, "Can you still honestly tell me this wretch deserves his freedom?"
To my surprise, he nodded. "As I said before, Emperor, a tiny, stinking cell is no fit home for a man. If you cannot find it in your heart to forgive him, would you be generous enough to commute his sentence from imprisonment to exile?"
That, I must say, was clever, exile being a common punishment for those who have offended their sovereign. After some thought, I answered, "I shall not do that at this time. I do not reject it out of hand, though. Should I change my mind, or should a proper situation arise, I will think on it again."
"You are gracious, Emperor," Paul said. I did not feel particularly gracious; part of the reason I had said what I said was to make him go away without committing myself to anything. He added, "Leontios will be glad to hear he has some hope of seeing the light of day once more."
I started to tell him not to let Leontios get his hopes up, but then held my tongue. For Leontios to be in prison was torment, as Paul rightly said: I had intended it to be such. But for Leontios to be in prison, thinking each day might be the one on which he was set free, disappointed each night when he lay down on his pallet, hope building again the next morning, only to be dashed once more: was that not torment more exquisite? If Paul wanted to inflict it on his friend, he was, as far as I was concerned, welcome and more than welcome to do so.
"I am glad to see you smile so, Emperor," Paul said. "It gives me hope you will soon show my friend the light of your mercy."
"Does it?" I said, and smiled more broadly.
***
I walked through the gardens around the palace with Kallinikos. It had rained earlier in the day. Drops of water still glistened here and there on leaves and flowers, and all the trees and shrubs and plants glowed with the special green they take on just after a rain.
My mind, however, was not altogether on the garden. I pointed to an old, run-down church dedicated to the Mother of God that stood near the palace. "Hardly anyone goes in there these days," I remarked.
"A pity," the patriarch said, trying as usual to guess my mood and to accommodate himself to it.
This time, he guessed wrong. "What I have in mind," I told him, "is tearing it down and putting up a fountain and some seats there, so I can have a convenient place to receive the nobles when the weather is fine."
"You want to- tear down the church?" he said, frowning. This was not the sort of request he received every day.
But I nodded. "You can rebuild it somewhere else- in the district of Petrion, say. There aren't that many churches near the Golden Horn now. You need not pay for this," I added. "Since I am tearing this one down, I'll pay for the replacement."
That put a different light on things, as I had thought it might. Now Kallinikos almost purred: "Of course, Emperor. It shall be just as you say." I could see from the gleam in his eye that the church he would build in Petrion would be far grander than the one already crumbling to ruins of its own accord here.
"Oh," I said, as if just thinking of it. "One thing more: I want a public prayer from you as the workmen start to tear down this church." I pointed again toward the tumbledown building.
The ecumenical patriarch frowned again. "A- prayer, Emperor? We have many prayers for the construction of a church, but I do not know of any for the demolition of a church." He risked a jest: "I am certain the followers of the false prophet know several."
I looked down my nose at him, being more than a palm's breadth the taller of us two. "I daresay you can devise one," I said coldly.
Kallinikos's coughing fit would have done credit to his predecessor, although Paul, being consumptive, had the better excuse for suffering such a spasm. "Emperor, if you require this prayer of me-"
"Would I have asked you for it if I did not require it?" I demanded. "I am not in the habit of making jokes, particularly in matters of piety."
Kallinikos stopped coughing. He started shaking. That suited me better. "If, as I say, you require this prayer of me, you shall have it."
"I hoped you would say that," I told him, smiling in such a way as to make him shake even more.
We held the ceremony for the demolition of the church a few days later. Splendid in his patriarchal regalia, Kallinikos raised his arms to the heavens and intoned, "Glory to the long-suffering God at all times: now, forever, and through eons upon eons. Amen." God certainly must be long-suffering, for Him to have put up for so long with such a lump of suet on the patriarchal throne.
Having knocked down the church, I duly erected the fountain and the reception area around it. There, on pleasant days, I passed time with aristocrats from the
old families, many of whom affected to regard Constantine the Great as an upstart. We drank wine. We ate sweet cakes. Occasionally, when they felt bold, they would complain to me of the tax assessments Stephen the Persian and Theodotos levied on them. Since the occasions were social, I pretended to listen.
What did my forbearance gain me? Only betrayal.
MYAKES
Are you all right, Brother Elpidios? I haven't heard you sputter that way since the first time Justinian talked about having a woman. What's your trouble now? Oh, calling Kallinikos a lump of suet. Brother, I saw Kallinikos a good many times. If you rendered him down for fat, you'd need a big tun to hold it all.
The prayer when they knocked down the church? No, Justinian never figured out the patriarch meant God was long-suffering for putting up with him. A good thing for Kallinikos he didn't, too, or we'd have found out exactly how much fat he had in him. Justinian would have cooked him over a slow fire.
Yes, Justinian should have paid more attention to what the nobles were telling him. He should have paid more attention to what a lot of people told him. He didn't listen to me, either. You've seen that. You'll see it again, God knows. Justinian was good at a lot of things. Listening wasn't any of them.
JUSTINIAN
Zachariah did not bring Pope Sergios back to the imperial city under arrest, as I had charged him to do. He went with an army of soldiers from Ravenna and some of the cities south of it down to Rome, intending to arrest Sergios and put him on a ship.
Unfortunately, however, through some mischance word of what the exarch intended to do reached Rome ahead of him. The people of Rome prevailed upon Zachariah's army not to let Sergios be taken out of the city and carried away to Constantinople. Although Zachariah himself was a fine man, steadfast both in his loyalty to me and in his purpose here, the soldiers under his command, being for the most part of the same Italian blood as the city mob of Rome, were persuaded by them, and mutinied against the exarch.
Some few of the soldiers remaining loyal to Zachariah, he used them to seize the pope in his residence. But his force was so small and that outside so large and inflamed that he lost hope of accomplishing the command I had given him. All at once, it was as if the wretched Sergios were holding him and his few faithful followers, rather than the other way round.
In his letter to me retailing these events, Zachariah maintained he yielded to necessity. Years later, I heard he cowered under the pope's bed, with the mutineers baying for his blood. God knows the truth in this matter. I do not. I do know Sergios, perhaps fearing my vengeance if the exarch were slain, did not let the mob work its full and ugly will upon him. Instead, he was merely expelled from Rome after being reviled and beaten.
Had the exarch been murdered by these semibarbarous Italians, I would unquestionably have sent a fleet from the imperial city to burn Rome to the ground and to bring Sergios here for trial as a common murderer. As things were, I by no means abandoned my intention of arresting Sergios and placing on the episcopal throne of Rome another, more tractable, man.
Before I could make arrangements to bring that to pass, however, another concern forced itself upon me: I received from Thessalonike word that Dorotheos, whom I had appointed general of my new military district of Hellas, had without warning lost his life. Having read so far and no farther in the announcement informing me of this, I assumed him to have fallen to some unsubdued Sklavenoi. But I soon discovered such was not the case. Rather, his horse threw him as he was riding into Thessalonike after hunting. His head smashed into the ground. He lay without speaking or moving for three days before breathing his last.
Military districts need generals at their head. This was especially true of one such as Hellas, with barbarians to the north and to the west. Leaving a vacancy there would have invited the Sklavenoi in the area to make trouble, perhaps negating everything my campaign against them had accomplished a few years before.
As one must do in such circumstances, I pondered whom to appoint as Dorotheos's successor. None of the other officers in Thessalonike at that time had particularly impressed me (nor, for that matter, had Dorotheos; his virtue, such as it was, lay in avoiding serious error, not in accomplishing anything great). That meant I would need to choose a general either in Constantinople or from one of the Anatolian military districts. Who, I wondered, would be willing to leave the imperial city or the long-civilized lands of Anatolia for a frontier district like Hellas?
And then I had what struck me as a happy inspiration. Having a pretty good notion of where the monks Paul and Gregory the Kappadokian were to be found, I sent messengers thither, summoning them to the throne room. While waiting for their arrival, I sent other messengers to the Proklianesian harbor in the southern part of the city.
The monk and the former kleisouriarch did not reach the palace until late afternoon, coming in with the stink of prison still clinging to their clothes. Ignoring that, I waited until they had prostrated themselves before me and arisen before saying, "You want Leontios free, not so?"
Their eyes widened. They glanced at each other, though neither of them turned his head. Cautiously, Paul said, "Emperor, that is so." He could scarcely deny it, but, for all he knew, I was about to order their heads taken for persisting in a desire I had no wish to fulfill.
Instead, I said, "Take him, then, and go." I held out an order to them. "This will authorize his release. You may tell the guards they shall answer to me if they fail to obey my command."
Now they were both frankly staring. Gregory took the sheet of papyrus from my hand as if afraid it would burst into flame if he touched it. His lips moving, he read it to assure himself it was what I had said. When he saw it was, he blurted, "What made you change your mind, Emperor?" The order said nothing about that, concerning itself only with Leontios's release from imprisonment.
"I am naming him general of the military district of Hellas," I answered. "Three dromons wait in the Proklianesian harbor to take him- and you- to Thessalonike. Once you get him from the prison, go to the harbor without delay. If you are in Constantinople when the sun comes up tomorrow, you are dead men. Do you understand?"
"We do," Gregory said with a crispness proclaiming him a former officer.
"We thank you for your mercy, Emperor," Paul added.
"Go," I told the two of them, "and remember what I have said." They hurried out of the throne room. I never expected to see them or Leontios again. What I hoped was that Leontios, trying to accomplish something great and redeem himself from exile (not that I ever expected to allow him to return to the imperial city), would make the intimate acquaintance of a Sklavinian arrow and die a slow, painful, lingering death. I was pleased at my cleverness in sending him away; not only was he likely to perish, but I would get some use from him before he did. Not even Stephen the Persian could have found a more economical solution- so, at any rate, I told myself.
But the dawn of each new day does not necessarily bring that which one expected the afternoon before, nor that for which one had hoped.
MYAKES
What would I have said, Brother Elpidios, if Justinian had asked me whether I thought he should let Leontios loose? I probably would have told him he had a pretty good idea there. Leontios mured up in jail made people pity him and try and work for him. Leontios gone, though, would have been Leontios forgotten after a couple of weeks.
But Justinian made one mistake, Brother. He gave Paul and Gregory the order releasing Leontios. That was fine. He had the little fleet waiting to take them to Thessalonike. That was fine, too. And he told the two monks, once they had Leontios, to take him down to the harbor and put him on one of those dromons. And even that was fine. But he didn't send any soldiers down to the harbor with them to make sure they put Leontios on the dromon and then got on themselves.
Would I have reminded him to do that? How can I say, after more than thirty-five years? I like to think so, but who can be sure of such things? Any which way, I never got the chance. The company I led wasn't at the pala
ce that evening; we were scattered among several buildings. With a squadron from them, I was watching over the Praitorion, on the Mese not far west of the grand palace, to make sure nobody stole either the papyri or the prisoners stashed there.
The duty was about as exciting as watching paint dry: a dead quiet night if ever there was one. To liven it up, some of the boys and I were rolling dice. Yes, I know that's a sin. Yes, I know the fifth-sixth synod had said so not long before. I wasn't planning on living like a monk, not in those days I wasn't.
Where was I? Ah, that's right. Down on one knee in a back room. All of a sudden, somebody started banging on the front door. It was barred, of course. I'd just won three throws in a row, and I didn't feel like getting up while the dice were hot. I pointed to a new excub itor, a little skinny fellow named John- or maybe Theophanes. After all these years, I forget which. Anyway, I told him, "Go see what the devil that is and make it stop."
Off he went. I heard him talking, but I couldn't make out what he was saying- like I told you, we were in a back room. A minute later, he came running back. "It's the Emperor!" he exclaimed.
"What?" I said. "What's the Emperor doing here, this time of night?"
"Says he's got some business needs taking care of," answered John or Theophanes or whatever his name was.
"Business?" I scratched my head. The only business Justinian usually did in the nighttime had to do with serving girls, and he wasn't about to come to the Praitorion to take care of that. The pounding started up again. I stared at John. "Didn't you let him in?"
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