Justinian

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.

Cyrus came to me in a state of high excitement, 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.