"Do not ask me to fathom the western mind," Cyrus said, "for I cannot. But with the principle already enshrined in the acts of the ecumenical synods, as you say- and your learning is marvelous, marvelous- perhaps we need not insist on its formal acknowledgment here."
"Perhaps," I said grudgingly. "What of the thirteenth canon, then?"
"The thirteenth canon does allow clergy in barbarous lands to retain their previous practices where those are not clearly forbidden," Cyrus said. "That offer, if not grounds for agreement, is at least grounds for negotiation."
"Very well," I said. "Go ahead and negotiate with Cyrus, since he seems willing to talk. Yield as little as you can, and accept nothing before submitting it to me for approval."
Cyrus bowed. "It shall be exactly as you say, Emperor, in every particular."
I was surprised that he needed to reassure me on the point. Did it prove other than exactly as I said in every particular, Cyrus's tenure as patriarch of Constantinople would come to an abrupt end. I had raised him to the patriarchal dignity because of his loyalty to me; should that loyalty falter, Kallinikos's fate would also fit him.
While he and Constantine sent letters back and forth, a desultory war with the Arabs broke out in southeasternmost Anatolia. The deniers of Christ, after some months' fighting and after Roman forces fell into confusion because of quarrels among their generals, succeeded in breaking into Tyana, north of the Kilikian Gates. They were unable to go farther, though it gave them a base from which they might later try to effect deeper penetration into Romania.
Under other circumstances, the fall of Tyana would have filled me with fury. But I paid little heed to it, nor has it much concerned me since. For one thing, the negotiations with Rome at last seemed likely to bear fruit, and gaining the pope's acceptance of the canons of the fifth-sixth synod counted for more with me than losing a dusty Anatolian fortress.
"The only remaining sticking point," Cyrus reported to me after exchanging a couple of letters with Constantine, "is the thirty-sixth canon, the one proclaiming Constantinople's authority equal to that of Rome, and Rome's primacy that of honor and seniority alone."
"Are you truly certain this point is adequately covered in the canons of the first ecumenical synod at Constantinople and that held at Chalcedon?" I said.
"I believe so, yes," Cyrus replied.
"You do not feel the dignity of your see impaired if the bishop of Rome rejects this one canon?"
"Emperor, I do not," the patriarch said.
"I have seen since naming you that you are zealous in protecting Constantinople's ecclesiastical rights and privileges," I said, whereupon Cyrus inclined his head in modest acknowledgment of the praise. "If this does not trouble you, I shall accept it."
"That is splendid news, Emperor," Cyrus exclaimed. "I confess, I had looked for you to be more refractory. I shall write to Bishop Constantine at once; I'm certain he will be as delighted as I am."
"Go ahead and write," I said indulgently. "Let us have this matter settled, it having hung over us for almost twenty years."
Under other circumstances, Constantine's preposterous obstinacy would have filled me with fury. As things were, however, it, like the faraway trouble in Anatolia, mattered little to me. I was engaged in the work that would be- that will be, by God and His Son!- the capstone of my revenge against all those who wronged me during the time in which I was denied my God-given right of sitting on the throne and ruling the Roman Empire.
Arrogant, cowardly little manikins that they were and are, the rich men who rule in Kherson- ruling, by their way of thinking, being defined as playing Roman influence off against the power of the khagan of the Khazars, as centered in the Khazar tudun in the city- had presumed to try to take me into custody and deliver me up to Apsimaros, that the usurper might deprive me of my head.
And not only shall I avenge myself upon them. I intend to remove Kherson from the map, to wipe it off the face of the world as a man wipes shit from the cleft of his buttocks, to leave no single stone, no brick, standing upon another. Nine mortal years I passed in that wretched, fish-stinking town. Only in the monastery where I dwelt and in the brothel where I took occasional comfort did I find the slightest trace of human kindness for a soul in anguish. Those I would let stand. The rest? Let fire take it!
Furthermore, the Khersonites are the only ones who remember seeing me with my mutilation. I also intended, and yet intend, to remove all memory of that from mankind. That an Emperor of the Romans should have suffered the humiliation of being allowed to couple with a whore only in darkness absolute, and then for double the going rate, shall be as forgotten as the ultimate fate of the ten lost tribes of Israel.
When I fall upon Kherson, I purpose doing so in force so overwhelming, the Khersonites shall be able neither to resist nor to summon the Khazars to their rescue. Ibouzeros Gliabanos, having survived his visit to Constantinople, might be tempted to thwart me there. That I will not allow.
Reasoning thus, I began gathering dromons and merchantmen to carry troops and horses not only at the imperial city but also at Kyzikos and Nikomedeia. To command the expeditionary forces, I chose my spatharios Helias, Stephen the sailor who had aided me with the bureaucrats reluctant to join my feast, and black-bearded Mauros, reckoning them well suited to my purpose.
"Helias," I said to the spatharios, "you shall govern the new Kherson when the expedition has succeeded in destroying the old. We will settle it by means of merchants and artisans transplanted from elsewhere in the Empire."
"Yes, Emperor," he said, making a show of submissiveness. "Just as you say, Emperor." He coughed a couple of times, then went on, "You are aware, of course, of the grumbling among the property owners of the city at the taxes they have had to pay for your force."
"Theirs is to obey," I growled. "Mine is to decide what the Empire requires. If they grumble, their heads will decorate the Milion, which has looked rather bare of late. Keep your ear to the ground, and bring me the names of those who complain. Have your friends do likewise. We shall nip this in the bud."
"Of course, Emperor." Bowing deeply, Helias departed.
Myakes, who had stood silent by the throne while Helias and I conversed, spoke up after the spatharios left. "That's trouble, Emperor."
"What, Helias?" I said. "I think he's safe enough."
Myakes' shoulders went up and down in a shrug. "You know I don't much like him, so I won't waste your time with what I think there. But remember when Stephen the Persian and Theodotos were squeezing Constantinople so tight fifteen years ago? That got you hated, and it helped Leontios send you into exile."
"I'm ready for trouble this time, Myakes," I said. "Let it come. I'll make a bigger slaughter here in Constantinople than I intend to make in Kherson." Thinking about it was plenty to make my member rise in anticipation.
"Emperor, isn't it better not to have trouble than to smash it when it comes?" Myakes asked.
"I need the great fleet to send against Kherson," I replied. "If building it causes no trouble, well and good. But I shall build it, whether it causes trouble or not." I folded my arms across my chest. "I have spoken." Having spoken, I expected no further comments from Myakes, and in that I was not disappointed. He has never failed me through disobedience.
MYAKES
You see how it was, Brother Elpidios? Every so often, I would try to get him to listen. Christ on His cross, even Helias tried to get him to listen. He wouldn't do it. We might as well have been talking to the city wall. Justinian was going to do what Justinian was going to do, and if the world didn't like it, he figured, that was the world's hard luck.
Yes, he bent a little for Pope Constantine. Less than you'd think, though, and he'd seen dickering in the church always had a bit of give-and-take to it. Anything outside the church, it was all take and no give. And even with Constantine, Justinian wasn't the one who did most of the bending. You'll see, I expect.
JUSTINIAN
Cyrus came to me in a state of high excite
ment, waving a sheet of parchment. "Emperor, not only has the bishop of Rome agreed to all canons of your fifth-sixth synod save only the thirty-sixth, but he has requested your leave to come to the imperial city so that he might personally show forth his affection for you."
"Has he?" I said. "Well, he is welcome here, since he accommodated himself to me more than I to him. You may write and tell him I shall be pleased to receive him when he comes."
"I shall send the letter this very day," Cyrus said. "But, Emperor"- he assumed an expression of concern-"what if you are away from the imperial city when the holy bishop of Rome arrives? You have been traveling a good deal of late, and-"
"And I aim to go right on traveling," I broke in. "Preparations for the expedition against Kherson go better when they are under my eye. If I'm away when he comes, either I'll return or he can come to me. But I will not keep myself locked up in Constantinople to wait on any man- most especially not for a backwoods bishop with a pretentious title. Is that plain?"
Cyrus's eyebrows climbed on his hearing my true opinion of the pope's view of his own importance. "It is most plain, Emperor," he answered after a moment. "But who can receive the bishop of Rome in your absence?"
"As I say, I won't be absent long at any one time. Surely you can keep Constantine happy for a little while." I laughed. "And even if I am in Nikomedeia or Kyzikos, a Roman Emperor will be residing in Constantinople."
"The Emperor Tiberius?" By his face, Cyrus could not decide whether to be dismayed or delighted.
"He's five years old now," I said. "I don't expect him to rule yet- I don't expect him to rule for many years- but he can serve as my substitute in ceremony."
"I suppose that's so, Emperor." Cyrus looked like a man casting about for objections but unable to find any. He left the grand palace to compose his reply to Pope Constantine and extend my invitation to the Queen of Cities.
That afternoon, I asked my son, "How would you like to welcome the pope of Rome if he happens to come here while I'm out of the city?"
"I don't know," he answered. "Can I cut off his head if he doesn't do as I tell him?"
I folded the boy into an embrace. "By Christ and all the saints, you are truly my son!" I ruffled his hair, which was almost as dark as Theodora's. "I'm proud of you."
"Can I?" Tiberius asked eagerly.
"I'm afraid not," I said. "He's supposed to be making a friendly visit, so people would be upset if he went back to Rome without his head."
"All right," he said, his voice grudging. Then he brightened. "Can I put his eyes out, the way you did with the bad patriarch and the bishop who was a dirty rebel?"
"I don't think we'll have to do that, son," I said. "If he were being disagreeable, then we would have to think about it. It would make all the churches in the west very upset with us."
"So what?" Tiberius said.
"They were upset with us before, when I was a boy, and my father went to a lot of trouble to make friends with them again," I said. "I don't want to make them angry now unless I have no other choice." I rumpled his hair again. "But I do like the way you think."
"You won't let me do anything, though," he complained.
He sounded very much like my uncles, Herakleios and my son's semi-namesake Tiberius. How they chafed as junior Emperors under my father, and how, once they grew to manhood, they tried to supplant him. Casting a speculative eye on my Tiberius, I wondered whether, in ten years' time, he would be tempted to seize the reins of power before having any right to do so. If he did, he would regret it as much as my uncles had done after their bid for the throne failed. Kin could prove more deadly than common traitors, being liable to retain one's trust too long by virtue of their blood ties.
MYAKES
As things worked out, Brother Elpidios, Justinian wasn't in Constantinople when Pope Constantine got close to the city. The Emperor had gone down to Kyzikos, to see how the fleet there was doing, when messengers got to Constantinople saying Constantine would be there any day.
What, Brother? Me? I was in Constantinople. No, I didn't go to Kyzikos with Justinian. He took along Helias and Stephen and the other officers who'd be heading for Kherson as soon as everything was right. He knew I didn't much care for his plans, and so he just left me out of them. We'd been together for thirty-five years and more, him and me, and now it was like I wasn't there any more. It hurt, I'll tell you.
Cyrus the patriarch forgot Justinian wasn't there. He came to the Blakhernai palace himself instead of sending over a flunky, the way he would have done if he knew he couldn't talk to the Emperor himself.
"You planned all of this out ahead of time," I reminded him when he started having kittens right there in front of me. "Justinian hasn't fallen off the edge of the world. He's in Kyzikos or Nikaia or maybe even Nikomedeia by now. He'll either come back here or see Constantine in one of those places. Tiberius can welcome the pope to Constantinople."
Tiberius reminded Justinian of himself as a boy, eh? He reminded me of Justinian, too. Back when Justinian was little, I'd wondered how he'd ever manage to live to grow up without somebody hitting him over the head with a rock first. I wondered the same thing about Tiberius. But Justinian doted on him. Blood calls to blood, they say, and like to like. That was one place where I wasn't ever going to tell the Emperor what I thought, believe you me I wasn't.
Once Cyrus calmed down and stopped running around like a chicken with a fox on its tail, he did pretty well. We had a few days to get ready. For a wonder, Theophilos, who wasn't what you'd call bright, sent word ahead that the bishop of Rome had got to him instead of letting Constantine come on to Constantinople without any warning. Those were the kinds of surprises you didn't want to have.
When Constantine finally got there, he landed at the seventh milestone outside the imperial city. That let Cyrus spread himself, as the saying goes. Out he went, dressed in his fanciest robe. Out went Tiberius, in one of Justinian's old robes and a crown that must have belonged to one of his great-uncles once upon a time. What he looked like was a pretty little ferret in a doll's robe. Out went Theodora, who never quite figured out how vicious her son was.
Out went the nobles, the new ones Justinian had made and the handful of old ones still left alive. And out streamed the people, in swarms and droves. The idea of a pope in the imperial city was a spectacle that ranke d right up there with the hippodrome. The last time a pope had come to Constantinople was during the reign of Constans, Justinian's grandfather. The last time a pope had come to Constantinople without being in chainsa160… I don't know how long ago that was. A bloody long time, I'll tell you.
Anyway, up came the dromon, and beached itself within spitting distance of the seventh milestone. What? Yes, I was there, guarding Tiberius's nasty little neck. We all went out to meet Constantine- Tiberius, Theodora, and Cyrus ahead of everybody else- everybody but the excubitores, that is.
Constantine was out of Syria, and spoke Greek as his native language. He wasn't just a barbarian from the west, in other words- he understood showmanship. He waited till the people who counted were close enough to see what he was doing before he let the captain let down the gangplank. He must have been saving the robe he had on for just that moment, too. It outshone Cyrus's the way a bonfire outshines a lantern.
Despite turning green as an unripe fig when he saw that gorgeous robe, Cyrus kept his wits on what needed doing. He coughed a couple of times, till Tiberius remembered his line: "In the name of my father, I, the Emperor Tiberius, welcome your holiness to the imperial city."
"Poor servant of the servants of Christ that I am, young Emperor, I thank you for your gracious welcome," Constantine answered in gutturally accented Syrian Greek. He looked east, toward the walls and big buildings of Constantinople on the horizon. "I look forward to seeing your great capital, and to meeting your father, the grand and glorious Emperor of the Romans."
He laid it on with a trowel, Pope Constantine did. Well, he hadn't come all that way to tell Justinian what a wicked fello
w he was. If he'd been stupid enough to try that, they'd have chosen a new bishop of Rome right afterwards, because the one they had wouldn't have been worth anything to 'em any more.
But that's just chatter, Brother Elpidios. We had some fine horses from the imperial stable waiting for Constantine and the other churchmen he'd brought. They were all tricked out fancy, with gilded saddles and bridles and with saddlecloths of imperial crimson. Along with his gaudy robe, Constantine was wearing a camel-hair cap that reminded me of nothing so much as a woven cowflop, but he was the pope, so who was going to tell him he couldn't?
Cyrus the patriarch rode alongside him as they paraded back toward Constantinople. They were thick as thieves, talking about God and Christ and how to deal with recalcitrant bishops and all sorts of other holy things. I heard bits and pieces of it, because I was marching along by Tiberius's litter, which wasn't far away. If I'd known then what I know now, I'd have understood a whole lot more of it.
We went into Constantinople through the Golden Gate. Constantine had been staring at what he could see of the city over the top of the wall- and at the wall, too, come to that. When he finally got inside, he stopped his horse, took a long look around, and said, "I wouldn't have believed it, no matter how many things I've heard."
Everybody who sees Constantinople for the first time says something like that.
Constantine went on, "Rome is a skeleton of what it used to be. Here at last I see a great city in the flesh."
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