Justinian

JUSTINIAN

My father's return to the imperial city took everyone by surprise. Stephen the Persian was particularly vexed, for he had no chance to prepare a triumphal procession to celebrate the extermination of the Bulgars. But when my father reached the palace- bare moments after word he was in the city came to us- one look at his face said no procession would be needed.

"Father," I said proudly, stepping forward when everyone else hung back, "the acts of the holy ecumenical synod await your review and approval."

"That is good," he said, and seemed to mean it; he was a good and pious Christian, as concerned with the world to come as with our own. But he had other things on his mind. "I shall review those acts… eventually."

Still full of myself and what I had done while he was gone, I demanded, "Why not now?"

"Because we were beaten, and beaten badly," he answered, getting all the poison out in one sentence.

I gaped, speechless. Despite the grim, pain-filled expression he bore, the last thing in all the world I had imagined was that my father, who had turned back the followers of the false prophet and had received envoys not only from them but from all the lesser kinds of the inhabited world, could have gone down to defeat at the hands of a band of ragged barbarians.

My mother, normally of sunny disposition, made the sign of the cross and burst into tears. One of the golden-haired Sklavinian maidservants the khagan of the Avars had presented to my father, a pretty little thing who had been baptized under the name of Irene, dropped the goblet of wine she had been carrying to him.

Some of the wine splashed the robe of Stephen the Persian, who was standing near my father. The eunuch stared down at the red stain for a moment, then, quite coldly, slapped her across the face. "Clean up the mess, you clumsy whore," he hissed in a voice that might have been chipped from ice.

I gaped again; the imperial court was never subjected to such unseemly displays. But my father, lost in his rage and misery, said nothing. Irene stood stock-still long enough for the print of Stephen's hand to form itself in red on her cheek. Then, bowing, she said, "I sorry. I fix," in the broken Greek she had learned, and hurried away. Coming back with rags, she began mopping up the wine on the floor.

No one save Stephen and I looked at her, he in satisfaction, I in stupefaction. Everyone else formed a tableau as frozen as the mosaic scene Irene labored on hands and knees to clean. When my eyes moved away from her, I found myself, as it were, turned to stone as well, for my father was staring at- trying to stare down- his two younger brothers.

Herakleios and Tiberius had not burst into tears when my father admitted his defeat. Far from it. By their gloating expressions, they had everything they could do to keep from cheering out loud, or perhaps even from turning handsprings like acrobats earning coppers in the Forum of Theodosios. All three of them had been crowned Emperor, but all power had been in my father's hands since my grandfather was murdered in Sicily: thirteen empty years for my uncles. Now my father, instead of moving from triumph to triumph, had blundered. His brothers had to be wondering, could they strip that power from him?

He knew what they were thinking. How could he not have known what they were thinking? Had he been born second or third rather than first, he would have been thinking the same thing himself.

My brother Herakleios let out a loud, wet cough. Even he had been watching my father and my uncles trying to stare one another down. His name, as I have said, was a bone my father had tossed to my uncle after one of their earlier fights. Most of the time, though, my father did not deign to toss bones. He was the Emperor, after all, and commonly was to be appeased, not the appeaser.

But today, sensing his weakness, his younger brothers gave as good as they got. Instead of breaking under his gaze and slinking off with shoulders slumped and eyes downcast, they stood straight against him. Nor did they glance suspiciously at each other, as sometimes happened: they knew that, if they cast down my father, only one of them could take up the reins of power they both wanted. Without casting him down, though, neither of them could seize those reins, and for once they remembered as much.

My little brother coughed again, and again, and again, and began to turn blue. That drew my father's notice. He went over to young Herakleios and took him in his arms, which made me angry and jealous. My uncles Herakleios and Tiberius strode away, as if they had won a victory, and so, perhaps, they had.

Herakleios- my brother, not my uncle- slowly came out of his paroxysm and, rather to my disappointment, regained his natural color. My father ruffled his hair, which was darker than mine, and sent him on his way, then turned to me. "Speak of the synod," he said.

I did, retailing to him the arguments over the anathemas and how I had kept the names of our ancestors from being maligned for all eternity. He nodded to me: for the first time in my life, as one man to another. "You did well," he said, "in that and in the matter of Pope Honorius. Misbelief must be uprooted no matter where it hides. Even if the affairs of men suffered, those of God went well, and for that I thank you. It's more than my brothers would have done, Lord knows."

"Thank you, Father," I said, probably sounding surprised, for I was unused to praise from him.

"You're growing up," he said. His tone too was less certain that it might have been; I daresay he found the idea startling. But he faced it head-on, as was always his way. "High time you wore an Emperor's crown on your head, not just a prince's circlet. If you can do the work, you deserve the rank."

Now I know I stared. If he crowned me Emperor, that pushed Herakleios and Tiberius even further into the background, for my rank would vault over theirs, and I would be my father's formally designated heir. In a small voice, I asked, "What will my uncles say to that?"

"I will tend to your uncles, never fear," my father promised.

Herakleios and Tiberius tried to tend to my father first. I think they might have done it anyhow, but hearing that he intended to acclaim me Emperor- for he made no secret of that: to the contrary- forced their hand.

Soldiers from the Anatolian military districts- the men who had run away from the Bulgars rather then routing them while they had the chance- began trickling into the imperial city, seeking passage back to the farms they worked when not summoned to war. They blamed their ignominious defeat not on their own vile cowardice, but on my father's having abandoned them: fools, wretches, liars, knaves! My uncles went out among them, not to calm their discontent but to fan it.