Justinian

JUSTINIAN

Not only did I seek out Irene whenever I found the chance, I also got in the habit of going around with a sweet bun or two from the kitchens. Having caught one fish with that bait, I went angling for others- and my luck, while not perfect, was good enough to make me a happy, or at least a sated, young man. Though the first lesson teaches most of all, I learned a good deal afterwards, too.

That was a happy time for me, that little stretch of years beginning my manhood: the happiest time I have ever known, save these past few years when I have found revenge a pleasure surpassing the love of woman, as the Psalmist said with somewhat different meaning to the words.

My father had the peace he desired, the peace he had bought and paid for. He took great delight in it, in spite of, or more likely because of, his growing bodily infirmity. Gout and stone continued to wrack him, though he was, or should have been, still in the prime of life, and he pissed blood after some of his attacks.

His physician, Peter, muttered darkly at that symptom, but Peter, I was discovering, was given to dark mutters at any excuse or none. A man's body can go wrong in so many ways, and God has given us knowledge to fix so few of them, that anyone choosing the physician's trade, if not a bit mad merely for entertaining the desire, will be driven so by the frustrations of his craft.

And yet… I touch my nose and I remember that not all the doctor's art is useless, or not entirely so.

In sickness and in health, as I said, my father maintained peace, both with the Empire's neighbors and within the church. This latter required some effort, for, as we learned a couple of years after the fact, when the bishops of Rome translated the acts of the sixth holy ecumenical synod into Latin for the benefit of the westerners too ignorant to have learned Greek, in the anathemas they mentioned Pope Honorius but deleted his title, so as not to have to acknowledge his heresy to that part of the world administered by the see of Rome.

On hearing that, I grew furious. "You ought to order the exarch of Ravenna to send troops down to Rome and force the pope to tell the whole truth," I said to my father.

But he shook his head. "For the sake of preserving the work of the synod, I shall practice economy here," he said.

Economy is the term theologians use for overlooking differences without doctrinal import. Without it, I suppose, there would be endless friction in the church, as if sand were poured into the gearing of a waterwheel. But too great an exercise of it countenances heresy.

I said as much to my father; I was at the age where I challenged him more freely than I had. He shook his head again. "The anathema against Honorius remains. He is who he is, and burns in hell for what he did, regardless of whether they give him his proper title."

I could not sway him, though I said, "Surely the pope who gave the order for this lie after sending bishops to the ecumenical synod will also burn in hell."

"Agathon, the pope who sent bishops to the synod, is dead, and facing the decrees of a judge greater than I," my father answered.

"His successor, then," I persisted. I had not heard that Agathon was no longer among men, but then Rome, being at the very edge of the Empire, seldom drew my notice.

And my father said, "His immediate successor, Leo, has also suffered the common fate of mankind. The new bishop of Rome, a certain Benedict, has in his brief time been a good enough man on the whole- one more reason to stay quiet about the way the anathemas were translated."

And, indeed, Benedict and my father exchanged a couple of cordial letters, my father writing in Greek, which the papal secretaries could render into Latin for the bishop of Rome (I hoped more accurately than they had the anathemas), and the pope in Latin, which, despite its being little used in these parts save in the army and, to a lesser degree, among lawyers, we managed to puzzle out.

One day my father summoned me and my brother Herakleios to the metropolitan's church near the palace, a crumbling wreck of a building seldom used for anything. I went unwillingly, for the summons meant I could not keep an assignation I had made with some girl or another: at fifteen, which I was then, you feel your life will be blighted forever if you do not dip your wick on the instant. But, had I disobeyed my father, I knew perfectly well what sort of unpleasant things would have happened to me, and so, though unwilling, I went.

I was surprised to find not only my father but also George, the ecumenical patriarch, awaiting Herakleios and me. I was even more surprised to find Theoktistes the barber waiting with them.

"What's this, Father?" I asked. "You're not making us into monks, are you?" Herakleios laughed at that- one of the few times I remember making him laugh- but I wondered if I was joking. Had my father decided for some secret reason of his own to be rid of us, what easier way than shaving our heads and clapping us into a monastery? Monastic houses are easy to enter, but hard to leave.

But my father shook his head. "No, hardly," he said, and I relaxed. He went on, "The bishop of Rome, this Benedict, has asked if he might become your spiritual father, and I have agreed." He made the sign of the holy cross. "A man can never have too many prayers in this world, and those from a good and pious man will surely be effective. As a token that I do agree to this spiritual adoption, Justinian, I will send him a lock of your hair, and one of yours, too, Herakleios."

That explained why Theoktistes was there, then. George the patriarch, who was present in lieu of the pope, prayed while Theoktistes snipped a lock from where my hair grew long behind my ears and then did the same with my brother, whose hair was several shades darker than mine. The barber wrapped my hair in a square of red silk, Herakleios's in a square of green, and handed them both to my father.

"Well done," my father said, as if Theoktistes did not make his living trimming hair. "I shall have the artisans fashion a container suitably fine for such a rich gift, and send it on to the pope in Rome. May his prayers sustain both of you as the blessing of the bishops of Rome have helped me since I decided to convene the ecumenical synod and restore and renew the orthodox faith."

"May it be so," Herakleios and I said together, both of us crossing ourselves. Alas! God, Whose judgment in all things is beyond the ken of mere men, chose for His ineffable reasons not to grant my father's wish.

My brother Herakleios died three months to the day after Theoktistes cut the locks from our hair. When he fell ill, no one, not ever Peter the physician, was much concerned; over the years, he had shown he fell ill at any excuse or none, and always managed to recover.

But not this time. I hardly remember the earliest course of his illness; at most, I would have thought something like, Mother of God, has the little wart caught another cold? He milked his diseases for all they were worth, and I often wondered whether he was as sick as he made himself out to be, or if he was faking to get sympathy he did not deserve.

After a couple of days, neither I nor anyone else thought he was faking. His fever rose till his face looked and felt like red-hot iron. He coughed and coughed and coughed and would not- could not- stop. Weak lungs had been the death of our great-grandfather, and they were the death of Herakleios, too. Peter did everything he could, with poultices and plasters and fomentations smelling tinglingly of mint, but to no avail. After raving in delirium, Herakleios slipped into a sleep from which he never wakened. He had just reached his tenth year.

Anyone's death brings mourning and lamentation from those who knew and loved him. A child's death comes doubly hard, for in it the natural order of things is reversed and the old must lay the young in his grave. And when the child who died was son to the Emperor of the Romans, that cast all of Constantinople into gloom.

Because Herakleios, like me, had never been crowned junior Emperor, my father chose not to bury him in the church of the Holy Apostles, which has served as the final resting place of Emperors and their consorts since the days of Constantine the Great. Instead, he was laid to rest in one of the hypagogai, the underground vaults, used for the interment of the nobles of the imperial city.

My father, my mother, and I, all wearing black robes, all beating our breasts and wailing, followed the servants who bore my brother's pitifully small corpse, shrouded in white linen, to its tomb. Beneath the rituals of grief, my feelings were curiously mixed. He was my brother, true, and I had grown used- resigned might be a better word- to having him around. But then again, in the imperial family, having brothers was dangerous. I needed to look no further than the case of my father and my uncles to prove that to me. Suppose I became Emperor of the Romans. Would Herakleios have tried to steal the throne from me, as his uncle Herakleios tried to steal it from my father? Maybe I was better off without him.

"Surely God will take his soul into heaven!" my mother wailed. "Poor chick, he was too young to have stained himself with sin."

I made the sign of the cross. Now that Herakleios was gone from the earth, I did wholeheartedly wish him to join God rather than having demons drag him down to eternal torment. But I also crossed myself for the sake of my own soul. Every fornication with a maidservant, back to that first one with Irene, smote me like a slap in the face. How would I defend myself before the Judge of All when my time came to stand in His presence?

Fear of death fires every man's faith. Could we live our lives thinking each moment likely to be our last, how much better and more pious the world would be!

We went down into the hypagoge and laid Herakleios's body in the niche that had been readied for it. Lamps made the underground chamber bright; incense spiced the still, quiet air. George the ecumenical patriarch prayed for my brother's soul, though what he might have said that would have moved God if my mother's plea failed was beyond me.

Then the mourners who had accompanied us departed one by one, taking their lamps with them, until at last only we and the patriarch and a single lamp burning before Herakleios's last resting place were left. We went upstairs. He stayed behind, all alone. Soon, so soon, the lamp would gutter out, as had his poor life.

It had begun to rain while we were in the hypagoge. "The very heavens mourn your loss," George said.

"If the heavens mourn, why did they allow it?" my mother said harshly. George did not answer. That question has no answer, nor ever had, nor ever shall have, save only the will of God, which may not be questioned.

Sorrows hunt in packs, or so it seems. Just when you are over the first- or sometimes before you are over the first- along comes another to tear at you, till you wonder how you can bear griefs piled one upon another like Pelion upon Ossa. The only way to make them more terrible would be to have them known in advance, as they are to God, and even that might let you prepare for them, so far as it is granted to mankind to prepare for anything.

Autumn passed into winter, winter into spring, spring into summer. I wish I could say the sense of sin that filled me at my brother's funeral persisted and enabled me to maintain bodily continence, but I know too well it is not so. Within weeks- no, the truth here: within days- I found a new washerwoman (a girl, actually; she was younger than I) who stirred me, and nothing would do but that I storm the fortress of her virginity, which, I discovered in due course, someone had conquered before me. My life, as life has a way of doing, went back to its usual rut, in all senses of the word.

The same was true for my parents, though for them, and especially for my mother, sorrow lingered longer. My father seemed in better health than he had in some time, being less afflicted by both his gout and his kidney stones than had been so of late. Perhaps to celebrate his reborn feeling of well-being, one hot, muggy evening not long after the summer solstice he doused his plate of roast kid with half a pitcher's worth of fermented fish sauce.

I remember my mother wagging a finger at him. "I wish you wouldn't do that in this weather," she said in mild reproof. "Fish doesn't stay good."

"Oh, rubbish, Anastasia," he said, and, to show he would not be thwarted, poured on the rest of what was in the pitcher, till his meat was fairly swimming in sauce, far more than he would have normally used. He ate it with every sign of enjoyment. Being the man he was, he would have done that, I am certain, even had he despised it, but he always was fond of kid in fish sauce.

Dessert was as splendid a honey cake as the cooks ever made, with fine, fine flour mixed with boiled must to give the sweetness a winy tinge, and covered over with candied figs and apricots. Had it been given to me alone, I would have gone through it like an army sacking a town without a wall; as things were, I begrudged my parents the slices a servant set on their plates.

My father did not finish his, at least not right away. He left the table suddenly, with a startled look on his face. "I'll be back," he told my mother and me. "Keep eating." Had he not spoken up, we should have had to stop, too, the custom being that everyone is done when the Emperor rises.

He returned some little while later, by which time I had done formidable damage to that part of the cake which had not been served out at once. In the lamplight, his face was shiny with sweat and a little pale as he sat down once more. "Are you all right?" my mother asked, for he had been fine when he left.

His chuckle sounded both forced and self-conscious, which last was most unlike him. "Perhaps I should have listened to you about the fish sauce, dear," he said- again, the sort of admission he seldom made. "That was- unpleasant."

He picked up his slice of honey cake and began to eat, but had taken only a couple of more bites when he had to rush away again. "There, do you see?" my mother said severely when he came back once more. "You've gone and given yourself a flux of the bowels."

"So I have," he said through clenched teeth. He made no move to finish the cake now, but gulped wine, no doubt hoping it would restore him. A little color came back to his face, a hectic splotch of red over each cheekbone. He breathed slowly and carefully, as if each inhalation hurt.

"Maybe you should go to bed, Father," I said, for he had not looked much worse during his most savage attacks of stone.

"Yes, maybe I should," he answered, and I knew then he was seriously ill. He rose and started for the door. Halfway there, his departure turned into an undignified dash. With that gait, he was running for the latrine, not the bedchamber.

"I'm going to send for the physician," I declared, as if I expected my mother to argue with me. Had she argued, I would have overridden her. But she said not a word. She nodded to me, her eyes wide and worried. I pointed to a servant and told him to fetch Peter at once.

Instead of leading Peter to my father, the idiot brought him back to the dining room. The physician looked first at my mother, then at me. "Dyspepsia?" he asked. He could be more cutting with fewer words than any other man I have known, the others approaching him also mostly being physicians. Seeing so many sick and dying people they have but small chance of helping does something to their spirits, just as experience in war inures a man to gore.

"We are well, thank God," I said, resolving to have the servant whipped for his stupidity, which I did the next day despite the chaos engulfing the palace. "You need to attend my father." I explained the symptoms, and how they had suddenly come upon him.

Peter looked grave. "You did well to call me. Anything with bad fish in it is not to be taken lightly." He bowed to me, then to my mother, and hurried off toward the imperial bedchamber.

Now I drank unwatered wine, a large goblet, though in hopes of restoring my spirit rather than my body. My mother spent the time until the physician returned praying quietly to God and to the altogether immaculate Virgin. I prayed, too, wishing all the while I could do something more. For as long as I can remember, I have been one who prefers acting to waiting for the actions of others. Here, unable to act, I felt it acutely.

When Peter returned, I did not like the flat, blank expression he wore like a mask. "Well?" I demanded, my voice cracking; I was, after all, but newly turned sixteen.

"He is not well, Prince, not well at all," the physician answered. "He suffers from a violent derangement of the entrails, with the bloody flux typically accompanying such derangements."

"I told him not to drench his kid in fish sauce," my mother said.

Peter bowed. "Would that he had listened to you."

"What can you do for him?" I asked, always the critical question when dealing with a physician. Identifying an illness is oftentimes easier than treating it.

"I have given him a large dose of poppy juice," Peter answered. "Not only will this relieve some of the discomfort from which he suffers, but its constipating action should to some degree oppose his diarrhea."

"To some degree?" I said, surprised. Like anyone who could afford it, I used poppy juice to fight disturbances of the bowels. It always plugged me tighter than the bung driven into a barrel for days at a time.

But the physician replied, "Yes, to some degree, Prince. As I said, this is a violent derangement, and I would hesitate to offer a prognosis before seeing how nearly the poppy brings the flux under control."

With a small shock, I realized he was telling me my father's life was endangered. My mother grasped that a moment after I did, and let out a keening cry of despair, as if my father had already passed from the world of men. My father had been strong for her when Herakleios died. Who now would be strong if my father died? No one but I could do that. Becoming a man, I discovered, had aspects less enjoyable than hiking up a maidservant's tunic and yanking down her drawers.

"It will be all right," I told my mother, though I knew nothing of the sort. She nodded, trying to reassure me as I was trying to reassure her. I got up from my seat. "I'll go see him now."

"And I," my mother said, her voice small but determined.

Peter hurried ahead of us. I started to order him back, then held my tongue. My father might tolerate a physician catching him squatting over the pot, but would not want me or my mother to see him in the throes of such fleshly weakness.

After going into the bedchamber, Peter emerged and nodded. "The drug has begun to take effect, at least on his spirit," he said. "He does want to see both of you, though." As if he were a common servant himself, he held the door open for my mother and me.

Even before I went inside, the sickroom stench hit me. I knew it all too well from my brother's room: a combination of the chamber pot, sour sweat, and medicaments of one sort or another. Here, though, the odor was sharper, harsher than I had smelled it before; it had a metallic stink I could not place till I remembered the doctor had spoken of a bloody flux.

My father lay on the bed as if he had been poured there, as if not even an earthquake that threw the palace down around him could make him get up and move. His eyes traveled slowly from me to my mother and back again. The lamps were not bright, but his pupils were so small, he might have stood in noontime sun: an effect of the poppy juice, I learned later.

"Bless you," he said to both of us. His voice was thick and slow and slurred, as if he were drunk. "Pray for me. I have- things- left to do." He seemed to want to say something more, but his eyelids slid down over his eyes. A moment later, he began to snore.

"How large a draught of the poppy did you give him?" my mother asked.

Peter had spirit, answering, "As large as I judged he could stand. If his dysentery is not abated…" He spread his hands. "If God grants my prayer, he will sleep the day around and be better when he wakes."

"And if not?" I said roughly.

Before the physician could reply, my father grunted softly in his drugged sleep. The latrine stink grew gaggingly thick; so did the iron odor of blood. "He's fouled himself!" my mother cried. She rushed to tend him with her own hands.

As she gently stripped my father of his robe and wiped the blood-streaked dung from his buttocks and legs with cloths she wet from a pitcher, I looked to Peter and saw him make the sign of the cross. He caught my eye and murmured, "Pray indeed, Prince. It's out of my hands now." He pitched his voice low so my mother would not hear, but how could she help but understand that for herself?

For the next three days, she cared for my father herself, driving away the servants who tried to help. Me she tolerated, and Peter the physician, though him just barely- and less and less as it became clear his nostrums would not make my father well. She must have slept some during that time, but if she did, I did not see it.

My father's life flowed out of him in a foul-smelling tide. If the poppy juice could not stem the dysentery, it did keep him from feeling any great pain. When he was awake, which happened at irregular intervals by both day and night, he knew who my mother and I were.

I do not think he knew he was dying. Because of the drug, he had no clear notion of time. Once he exclaimed in surprise that suddenly it was night, when a moment before the sun had been shining into the bedchamber. The hours between simply did not exist for him.

Not long before the end, he looked at me and said, "High time we found a girl for you, Justinian. By your age, I'd already married your mother."

"Yes, Father," I said. He surely knew I was no virgin: he wanted me to have a wife. Though I seemed obedient, the idea of being limited to one woman did not appeal to me. Still, he was right: for the sake of the dynasty, I needed an heir, and a legitimate one. And even had he been wrong, who would contradict a man on what was plainly his deathbed?

Someone- I do not know who- perhaps my mother, perhaps Peter, perhaps Stephen the Persian or some other palace functionary- summoned George the ecumenical patriarch to administer the sacrament of unction to my father. George looked in need of unction himself; his own health was visibly failing. My father did not wake while the patriarch anointed him and prayed for the forgiveness of his sins.

He roused a little while afterwards. His eyes found mine. He inhaled once, deeply. I thought he was going to tell me something. Ever so slowly, his breath sighed out. His eyes stayed open. When I moved, they did not follow me. I gestured to Peter. He felt for a pulse, then let the wrist drop, limp. First the right, then the left, he closed my father's eyes.