Justinian

A couple of months after the end of the sixth holy ecumenical synod, my father suffered his first attack of stone. I learned of it when my mother, at most times a quiet woman, let out a shriek at dawn one morning that had everyone in the palace rushing toward the bedchamber she and my father shared.

Because the rooms holding my bed and Herakleios's were close by that of my parents, I was among the first into the imperial bedchamber, and what I saw there made me slam the door in the faces of those who came more slowly, including my own brother. My father lay senseless on the floor; a shattered chamber pot close by had spilled a night's worth of piss over it and over his tunic.

Even as I turned back from the door, he groaned and sat up, one hand going to the small of his back. His face was pale as parchment. "Mother of God, help me," he said in a voice not his own, and then, wonderingly, "She has helped me- the pain is gone." He got to his feet and, though he swayed a little, did not seem on the point of falling.

"What happened?" my mother demanded. Her nightgown was wrinkled from sleep, her fair hair wild around her head. I could not remember the last time I had seen her anything but perfectly robed and coiffed.

"I woke up, perhaps half an hour ago," my father answered, plainly explaining as much to himself as to her and me. "At first I thought it was the gout again, but the pain lay here"- he touched his back again-"not in my foot. It moved- slowly." He ran a hand down his back, toward the bottom of the cleft of his buttocks. Even the memory of the pain made sweat bead on his face, though the bedchamber was cool. "It felt- it felt as if there were a torch soaked in liquid fire burning inside me, all the way down. I got up to make water, hoping to squeeze the pain down further, and- I woke up on the floor." Suddenly noticing his tunic was soaked and dripping, he let out a hoarse cry of disgust.

At that moment, someone rapped on the door, a loud, peremptory knock that cut through the Babel out in the hallway. "Let me in, curse it!" a man- presumably the fellow who had knocked- called in a loud, deep voice. "How the devil am I to attend my patient with him on one side of the door and me on the other?"

I looked a question to my father. He nodded, saying, "Let Peter come in- but no one else, mind you. A physician will do me no harm, though he probably won't do me much good, either."

I opened the door a palm's breadth, repeating my father's command as I did. In spite of it, the forward rush almost overcame me: it was as if a besieging army had broken in the gate of a city. But a big, burly man with a thick black beard threw a couple of judicious elbows that doubled over the men just behind him. Peter got in, then helped me shut and bar the door once more before anyone else could follow.

That done, he turned to my father and, as ceremony required even under those circumstances, began to prostrate himself before him. When my father waved for him not to bother, he said, "Tell me your symptoms." My father did, in words almost identical to those he had used with my mother and me. Peter listened attentively, then said, "You passed a kidney stone, Emperor. What you felt was it moving from your kidney down to your bladder. It may stay there, or you may pass it out of your body sometime in the next few days when you make water."

"Will I get more of them?" my father asked. "One, let me tell you, was enough for a lifetime."

"Everyone who suffers from stone says the same thing. Thank God, if you care to, that yours passed quickly instead of lingering for hours or even days," Peter said. My father shuddered. The physician went on, "Will you get more?" He spread his hands. "God alone knows. I pray you don't." He hesitated, then said, "Suffering from stone, Emperor, along with your gout, is not the best of signs."

My father shrugged. Could the soldiers from the Anatolian military districts who said he ran away from the Bulgars have seen him them, they would have quivered in shame. "Akhilleus chose glory over length of days, or so the pagans say," he told Peter. "My family has a way of dying young- my father to a murderer, his father to consumption. My life may not be long, but already it has been full. Having saved the Empire from the followers of the false prophet and our holy Christian church, I leave the rest in God's hands."

Peter crossed himself, then bowed very low. So did I; I had never seen my father more worthy of respect. Holding faith in the face of pain is the hardest thing a man can do, and he did not merely hold it: it shone forth from him, as light does from a lamp.

The clamor in the hall got louder. "What shall I tell them?" Peter asked.

"Tell them I had an attack of stone. Tell them it has passed, and I am well again." My father smiled a thin smile. "All that has the advantage of being true. Tell them also that in most cases the stone does not recur."

From what Peter had said, that was not true. A physician, however, being able to do so little against illness, carries hope as a standard medicament. And Peter, with his big voice and bluff, blustering manner, was the perfect man to put forward what my father wanted everyone to believe. By the time he was done haranguing the servants and guardsmen out in the hall, they all sent up cheers and cries of thanksgiving to God that my father's trial had been so light and so fortunately ended.

Also in the hall, close to the door, stood my brother. Despite Peter's glib, fluent speech, Herakleios's face, always pale and thin, remained tight with worry. He knew illness too well to believe it could be so casually dismissed.

He looked a question at me. I nodded, as reassuringly as I could. After a moment, he nodded, too. I have always wondered whether he believed me.

My father's next attack of stone came halfway through the spring.