Justinian

MYAKES

Ah, Theodore. Been a good many years since I thought of him, and that's a fact. What? Justinian mentioned him before? I missed it. I am sorry. I am old. He was one harsh man, every bit as rough as Justinian makes him out to be here. A few years after this, still far from an old man, he retired to a monastery. I wonder how he fared as a monk: he was used to having people obey him, not to obeying other folk himself.

But if he was harsh, he was also able. He had to be, to rise so high with a nature like that. Give him time in a monastery and he'd probably wind up the abbot there. And then Kyrie eleison on all the monks under him! He'd enforce every last rule St. Basil ever thought of, and likely a good many Basil never imagined.

Unseemly levity, Brother Elpidios? What? You think I was joking? Read on about Theodore, then. Did I tell you he was sneaky, too? You don't have to believe me. Justinian will tell you. He was there, along with me.

My father and Theodore put their heads together. My father was all for mustering the excubitores and turning them loose on the Anatolian rabble. "If they ran away from the Bulgars, they'll shatter like glass facing real soldiers," he growled.

But the patrician said, "Emperor, I'll do that if you command it, but it's a waste of lives on both sides. I can do it for you cheaper, if you'll let me." He spent the next little while explaining how.

My father was not a man greatly given to laughter, but he laughed then, loud and long. "By the Virgin, Theodore, I should have left you in command against the Bulgars, not those blockheads who called themselves generals. How many men will you need, do you suppose?"

"A troop's worth, to make sure the soldiers don't mob me before I can harangue 'em," Theodore answered. Then he turned to me. "If the prince comes with me, too, it will make the offer look better."

I very much wanted to go; if I could do anything to keep my uncles from stealing my rightful place in the succession, I would. But I looked for my father to hesitate: if Theodore betrayed him and handed me over to Herakleios, Tiberius, and the soldiers they led, that would greatly aid their cause and hurt his.

He, however, nodded and replied at once: "Yes, take him." Not until years later, when the throne was mine, did I realize he dared not let any doubt he might have had show. That could have put doubt in Theodore's mind as well, which was the last thing my father wanted. The best way to keep your subjects from doubting you is to look sure, regardless of whether you are.

Theodore of Koloneia was like my family and unlike most other men I have known in that he made up his mind quickly and wasted no time in acting upon whatever he decided. By the time the sun reached its high point in the sky, he, I, and the troop of excubitores he had asked for had left the palace and were on the way to the Forum of Constantine, the plaza commemorating the founder of the imperial city, the Emperor who, like a thirteenth Apostle, made the Roman Empire Christian.

Even before then, Theodore had sent runners to every quarter of Constantinople, calling on the soldiers of the Anatolian military districts to assemble at the Forum to hear him and me. "That could get sticky, Prince, if your uncles the junior Emperors- the former junior Emperors, I should say- show up there, too," he told me. "But I don't think they will. I think they'll suspect a trap, and so stay away."

"I think you're likely right," I answered. "They have to suspect everything and everyone now. If we can keep them afraid instead of bold, we shall win. If you are afraid, you do not deserve to rule."

Yes, I was parroting my father, but his words had struck deep into my soul. Theodore's hard features showed little expression, but I thought he looked on me with approval. And Myakes, who marched along with the rest of the excubitores, beamed and winked at me. He knew my nature: no one better.

When we got to the Forum of Constantine, we found it full of rowdy Anatolian soldiers, many of them so full of wine you could get drunk from their breath. The excubitores, a disciplined band in the midst of these wild men, cleared a path for Theodore and me up to the base of the porphyry column on which stood a great statue of the first Constantine decked in a gilded crown with sun rays spiking out from it as if he were the false god Apollo himself.

"Soldiers of the Empire, hear me!" Theodore shouted, and then, "Soldiers of Constantine, hear me!" That was clever, for it reminded the mob that the present Emperor bore the same name as the one in whose Forum they had gathered. Faster than I had expected, he got something close to quiet.

Into it, he said, "Soldiers of Constantine, I won't take up much of your time. I just want you to remember a few things. Who beat the Arabs? Was it Herakleios? No. Was it Tiberius? No. It was Constantine- the Emperor. Who got the followers of the false prophet to pay us tribute? Who got the Sklavenoi and the Avars and the Lombards and the Franks to pay us tribute? Was it Herakleios? No. Was it Tiberius? No. It was Constantine- the Emperor.

"In fact"- he warmed to his theme-"just what the devil have Herakleios and Tiberius done? When you look at it, boys, they haven't done a damn thing. For years now, they've sat around the palaces drinking fancy wine and pinching pretty girls on the bottom. It's nice work if you can get it, aye, but does it set you up to be the Emperor? Not on your life.

"Christ crucified, lads," Theodore went on, "Constantine's son has already done more than either one of those worthless brothers, and he's only twelve years old. Here, Prince, you tell them about it. You don't need me."

I did not yet have a man's height. Myakes set his shield on the ground and motioned for me to stand on it. When I had done so, he and a couple of other stalwart excubitores lifted the shield, with me on it, so the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts could see me. And when they did see me so upraised, the silence they gave me was deeper than any Theodore of Koloneia had got. This, of course, was not merely for who I was but for who I might become: being raised on a shield is, or can be, the first step in the coronation of an Emperor.

I glanced down at Myakes, thanking him with my eyes for his quick wits. He winked at me again. In that moment, whatever nervousness I might have felt addressing a plaza full of unruly warriors, all of them angry at my father and therefore at me, vanished. I said, "Soldiers of Romania, who guided the two hundred eighty-nine bishops to the true doctrine of Christ's two energies and two wills? Was it my uncles? No- it was my father and I. Thanks to us, there is once more peace in the church all through the inhabited world."

Most of the soldiers cheered at this, but a few let out hisses and catcalls. By their looks and accents, most of them were Armenians, whose church, being both heretical and in the iron grip of the followers of the false prophet, has to this day, almost thirty years after the time of which I write, failed to ratify the sixth holy and ecumenical synod.