Justinian

JUSTINIAN

The next spring, I crossed over into Anatolia to see how the Sklavenoi I had resettled were getting along, and how Neboulos was progressing with the creation of the so-called special army. Most of the Sklavenoi had been transferred to points along the Gulf of Nikomedeia, the easternmost projection of the Sea of Marmara. Had I given more detailed orders to the men bringing them into Romania, they would have been widely scattered across Anatolia. As things were, though, their keepers had taken them along the military road to the eastern frontier, from Chalcedon across from the imperial city to Libyssa and then to Nikomedeia, and there, perhaps forty miles from Constantinople, had turned back toward the capital, leaving the Sklavenoi to fend for themselves.

That the sturdy barbarians had done. As I traveled the military road myself, I saw a good many thatch-roofed huts like those the Sklavenoi had made in the villages I had captured the year before in Thrace and Macedonia. The men and women working in the fields were fair-haired Sklavenoi, the sun making their yellow locks shine like gold. Although not long in their new homes, they had wasted no time in buckling down: sensibly so, for, had they dawdled, they would soon have begun to starve.

From Nikomedeia, the military road runs east. Another, lesser, road goes south from the fortified town toward Nikaia, site of the very first holy ecumenical synod. It leaves the Gulf of Nikomedeia at the harbor of Eribolos, ten miles south of Nikomedeia. I did not follow the road all the way to Nikaia, but went west along the southern shore of the gulf about halfway to the seaside town of Prainetos, for more Sklavenoi, Neboulos among them, had been resettled thereabouts.

Only a track hardly deserving to be called a road ran from Eribolos to Prainetos; most travelers from one to the other would have gone by sea. Sometimes there were cliffs right at the water's edge, with more high ground lying farther inland. But here, as on the flatter terrain north of the gulf, Sklavinian farmers were out in the fields, tending their crops and minding their flocks and herds.

As he had before he surrendered to me, Neboulos made his home in a village larger and wealthier than the mean Sklavinian mean. When, accompanied by my excubitores, I rode up to that village, I saw fair-haired men wearing leather jerkins practicing with javelins in a field close by. Neboulos himself stood among them. I could not follow his barbarous dialect, but he seemed to be congratulating the warriors who threw well and upbraiding those who did not.

A broad, sincere smile was on his face as he left the Sklavenoi and approached me. "Have a care, Emperor," Myakes muttered. "Anybody in charge of soldiers who looks that cheerful, there's something wrong with him."

"Ah, Emperor!" Neboulos called. "You come to see my special army- your special army? I have them go through their paces for you."

"That is what I came to see," I told him, wondering if he was not too eager to show off the barbarians. How convenient that he should have had a unit of them exercising just when I arrived. Was it too convenient? Word of my coming might have got there ahead of me, giving him the chance to show me what he wanted me to see.

Nothing I could do about that, though. Being shown what others want him to see is a bane of the Emperor's existence. Everything is always prettied up, everyone on his best behavior. And so I watched perhaps a thousand Sklavenoi march and countermarch, throw javelins, and shoot arrows at bales of hay. They did well enough to look to be a useful addition to the Roman army.

"Are these the only men with whom you've been working?" I asked Neboulos. "How many men do you propose having in the special army?"

"These are not only men, no," Neboulos answered. "How many men do you want in special army? You resettled lot of Sklavenoi in this country. If you want twenty thousand men, I give you that many."

"If you can give me twenty thousand men…" I felt weak and dizzy with desire, as if, like David spying Bathsheba, I had suddenly and unexpectedly come upon a beautiful woman in her nakedness. But my lust was for martial conquest, not carnal. With twenty thousand fierce Sklavenoi joining the cavalry from the military districts, I might be able to seize Damascus, the Arabs' capital. I might even be able to take back from the followers of the false prophet the holy city of Jerusalem, as my great-great-grandfather Herakleios had regained it from the Persians.

"I put twenty thousand men in your army, Emperor," Neboulos promised. "Maybe thirty thousand, even. We march where you march, we fight where you fight."

That promise he ended up keeping, too. My own euphoria did not last long, for I was used to men exaggerating what they could do in hope of gaining advantage they did not deserve. I would have been satisfied had he ended up giving me half of what he claimed, but, as I say, he, unlike so many, did fulfill his promise. That, unfortunately, proved to make matters worse rather than better… but, as I do too often, with such comments I get ahead of myself.

At Neboulos's command, the Sklavenoi cut the throats of enough sheep to feed me and my escort along with themselves, then butchered the carcasses and roasted them over fires made in pits they dug in the ground. They served us the mutton along with both wine and the barley drink they brew: rough fare, rougher even that I had eaten when campaigning against them, but filling and in its own way satisfying even so.

I had mutton fat in my mustache, and could smell it every time I inhaled no matter how often I wiped my mouth. Neboulos leaned over to me and asked, "Do I hear right, Emperor: your wife is dead?"

"Yes," I said shortly. Who could expect a barbarian to have manners?

"You stay here with us tonight, yes?" he said, and went on without waiting for my answer: "Shall I bring you pretty woman, to keep you warm, to keep you happy?"

Most times, most places, I should have said yes to that in those days. But hearing Neboulos put me in mind of the night after we sacked his village, and of the Sklavinian woman I had chosen from among the captives. "No!" I exclaimed, perhaps more sharply than I had intended.

Neboulos, being an ignorant heathen who knew no better, then asked, "If you do not want pretty woman, shall I bring you pretty boy?"

"No!" I said again, even more sharply that before: so sharply, in fact, that Neboulos's eyes widened in surprise. I explained: "In the law of the Roman Empire, those who partake of this impious practice are put to the sword: it is criminal, as the Holy Scriptures clearly set forth. Even bishops who succumb to it face harsh punishment. I know of one who was tortured and sent into exile, and another who was castrated and paraded through the streets for the people of his city to mock."

"Seems silly to make such fuss over this thing," Neboulos said, never having had the privilege of learning the precepts of the true and holy Christian faith. Then, though, he shrugged. "If you do not want pretty girl or pretty boy, I do not bring you pretty girl or pretty boy. You sleep by yourself. You are Emperor; you can do as you like."

I was not altogether by myself in bed that night, being accompanied by an inordinate number of mosquitoes. But pederasty is not only against the law of God and man, it has never been to my taste. And, remembering the one untamed Sklavinian woman, I was not anxious to try another.

What Neboulos had shown me left me encouraged on my return to the imperial city. He did seem at least to be attempting to do as he had promised when he surrendered up north of Thessalonike. Perhaps the special army he had vowed to create would be worth hurling at the Arabs. Better by far, I thought, to spend Sklavinian lives than Roman.

"Emperor," Stephen the Persian said, "I want you to examine these coins we have received from the followers of the false prophet in their latest tribute payment." His voice quivered with indignation. Stephen could be relied upon to take seriously anything pertaining to gold.

The coins he handed me were not Roman nomismata, though their obverses, copied from goldpieces of my predecessors, closely resembled our mintings. When I turned the coins over, though, I saw at once what had upset him. It was not so much that the deniers of Christ truncated the cross on the reverse of their goldpieces; thanks to their false religion, they had been doing that for some time. But the inscriptions on these new coins were not in the Greek and Latin characters we Romans use on our nomismata; they appeared instead in the sinuous, ophidian letters the Arabs employ to write their own jargon.

"What do they say?" I asked.

"Something extolling their false prophet and senseless god, I have no doubt," Stephen replied. "That they copy our coins is bad enough. That they do such a thing as this is much worse."

"I wonder how they would like it if we minted coins with legends calling their Mouamet a liar," I said, and then, in an altogether different tone of voice, "I wonder how they would like it if we minted coins calling their Mouamet a liar." The idea appealed to me, not least because it would be the plain and simple truth.

"That is an interesting notion, Emperor," Stephen the Persian replied, "but not one that is germane here, the question at hand being, what is to be done about the presence of these anomalous coins in this year's tribute?"

As I had seen, in matters having to do with money he was single-mindedness itself. The notion of calling the false prophet a liar and a blasphemer on our nomismata remained most tempting, for those coins pass current far beyond the borders of the Roman Empire, and it was an opportunity for us to tell the Arabs what we thought of their misguided, diabolically inspired heresy. Reluctantly, I brought my mind back to the question the sakellarios had asked, and I asked a question of my own: "Are these goldpieces of the proper weight and purity?"

"They are," he said, sounding as if he hated to admit it.

"Then this year, at least, we shall accept them," I said. "We can melt them down and remint them so these offending messages do not spread through the Empire. It is a nuisance, I know, but I am not yet fully prepared to go to war with Abimelekh."

"As you wish," he said, again unhappily. Listening to him, I got the idea that, for the sake of any tiny alteration in the goldpieces we received as tribute, he would have sent every soldier we had marching against the miscalled commander of the faithful.

Never having been one to turn the other cheek to slights no matter how small, I might under other circumstances have felt the same. When I did not, I wondered why, and realized I wanted to wait until Neboulos's special army should be ready before warring against the Arabs. Only then did I fully understand how much hope I had for that army.

"The tribute will stop, at least for a while, when we do go to war against the deniers of Christ," I reminded him. "I want to be certain we have enough in the treasury to fight for a long time even without the tribute's coming in, and also to run the state afterwards without it."

"You may depend on me for that," Stephen the Persian said. "I should also note that my colleague Theodotos, whom I commended to you before, has proved most ingenious in gaining for the fisc all taxes due it."

"Good," I told him. "Congratulate him on his diligence. Gold will be scarce when the Arabs leave off paying tribute. However large a store of nomismata we can build in advance will help us pay for the war. We must get this money, by whatever means prove necessary."

"By whatever means prove necessary," Stephen repeated. "You may depend on me- and on Theodotos- for that."

He was as good as his word, and so was Theodotos, who proved so capable, I promoted him to general logothete, a position of equal rank to Stephen's. Over the next few months, petitions pertaining to the collection of taxes increased sharply. So did the anguished tone of those petitions. When handing me one sheaf of them, the logothete in charge of petitions, a white-bearded bureaucrat named Sisinniakes who might have served the Empire since the days of my great-great-grandfather, said, "Emperor, these people hate your tax collectors so much, they and others like them are liable to end up hating you, too."

If I had not heeded that advice from my mother, I would not heed it from Sisinniakes, either. I stared at him until he lowered his eyes and muttered in embarrassment at having spoken out of turn. "The fisc must be served," I said. "Those who seek to cheat it of its rightful due must be discovered and made to pay in full. Remember, your pay comes from the treasury, too." He bowed and withdrew, leaving the petitions behind.

More soon came in to the palace: fools kept grumbling because the state that protected them from the ravages of the barbarians and the followers of the false prophet could not do so free of cost. But Sisinniakes was right at least to the extent that even the grumbling of fools could prove dangerous. And so, summoning Stephen and Theodotos to the throne room in the grand palace, I allowed some of those alleging my officials had wronged them to come before me and try to convince me they were right.

Stephen, as was his wont, dressed richly: he had the love of ostentation so common among eunuchs. His undertunic was of gold silk, the robe he wore over it of green. Gold rings gleamed on his fingers; a heavy gold chain stretched around his fat neck. The buckles of his sandals were also of gold.

Theodotos, by contrast, wore a plain black wool robe, as if he were still back in the Thracian monastery from which he had come. He was tall and thin and pale, a pallor accentuated not only by the robe but also by his hair (one lock of which kept flopping down over his forehead) and his long, thick, beard, which were both the color of pitch. His cheeks were hollow, he continuing to practice an ascetic way of life here in Constantinople, while his eyes, though dark, glowed as if from an inner fire.

The first to protest against his exactions was a certain Artavasdos, a wine merchant. After prostrating himself before me, he pointed at Theodotos and said, his voice quivering with fury, "Emperor, inside that monkish robe dwells a wolf. Do you know what he did to me? Do you know?"

"I collected the monies due the fisc," Theodotos said calmly. He sounded, as he usually did, as if he knew precisely what he was doing and would proceed on that course without hesitation. No wonder, then, I favored him, my own mind running in similar channels.

Artavasdos leaped into the air, a remarkable turn for such a short, plump man. "He came to my shop, Emperor, with soldiers. They tied my hands together with ropes and hung me up over a beam. Then they piled sawdust and chaff and such under me and lighted them with a lamp. They smoked me, Emperor, like a ham they smoked me over the fire, till I thought I was going to die, to make me tell them where I hid my money."

I turned to Theodotos, who was sorting through sheets of papyrus. "What have you to say about this matter?"

"Emperor, Artavasdos son of Symbatios owed the fisc the sum of "- a long, pale finger slid down the list of names he was holding-"twenty-four and seven-twelfths nomismata, said arrears having accumulated over the period of four years. After my visit to him, his debt to the treasury was paid in full."

"Did you owe this sum?" I asked Artavasdos.

His already swarthy face grew darker yet, rage suffusing it. He pointed at Theodotos again. "What he did, Emperor, only a monster would do, not a human being. I was choking in the smoke, coughing, wheezing, my shoulders like to be torn out of their sockets, and he stood there laughing- laughing, I tell you."

"Do you deny owing the fisc these twenty-four nomismata?" I demanded.

Suddenly getting my drift, Artavasdos stopped blustering. "No," he said in a small voice.

"Did he and the fisc take any more money than was owed?" I asked.

"No, Emperor," Theodotos said, and, most reluctantly, the wine seller agreed.

"Get out of here!" I shouted. "Get out of here and give thanks to the merciful Mother of God that I don't tear out your cheating tongue. You dare to rob the treasury, and then complain when you're caught? Good Theodotos here should have smoked you into ham, for you're a swine wallowing in the trough of our generosity. Get out!"

Court ceremonial forgotten, Artavasdos left at a dead run. He might even have been faster than John of Cyprus. Several men who I thought might be petitioners also hastily departed without pleading their cases before me. But one group in tunics plainly their best and as plainly none too good did come before me. Having completed their prostrations, they rose. Their spokesman, a loutish fellow as shabbily dressed as the rest, said, "Emperor, I'm called Ioannakis." Whoever had styled him little John had done so on the principle of contrariness, for he was large and burly, with a wrestler's shoulders. He went on, "I'm one of the heads of the carpenters' guild, and these here are some of my boys." His companions nodded.

He spoke a rough Greek, of a kind seldom heard in the grand palace, but seemed to be doing his best to be polite with it. "Say on," I told him.

Ioannakis pointed to Stephen the Persian; a lot of men pointed fingers in the throne room that day. "Emperor, that fellow is a bad one," he said. "He cut our pay for some of the repair work we've been doing here at the palace, and when we complained about it, he set ruffians throwing stones on us. Look and see for yourself." He pulled up one sleeve of his tunic, displaying a jagged, poorly healed scar on the big muscle of his upper arm.

"Emperor, the pay for these workmen comes from your privy purse," Stephen said smoothly when I looked a question at him. "I discovered them working more slowly than they should have, and adjusted their wages accordingly."

"That's a lie!" Ioannakis shouted, and several of the men with him shook their fists at Stephen and bawled coarse curses. "We were doing fine till he stuck his pointy nose in where it didn't belong, looking for ways to make us hungrier. Don't see him looking any too hungry," he added, staring insolently at Stephen's plump prosperity.

Imperturbable, the eunuch said, "It is not a lie. The work to be completed would not be finished by the time assigned, necessitating the reduction in wages previously mentioned. Following the reduction, the workers threatened to damage such work as they had already done. I found a way to force them from the area without summoning soldiers and provoking worse bloodshed."

Ioannakis and the other carpenters kept shouting and cursing, even after I raised my hand for silence. As Stephen's comments had already shown, they knew neither discipline nor respect for their betters. I gestured to the excubitores flanking the throne. Only when they slammed the butts of their spears against the marble floor did the carpenters come to their senses and quiet down.

Now I pointed at them. "If you cannot do that which is required of you, you have no business coming here and complaining to me of it. Obey those set above you and you will do better. Now go." I pointed again, this time to the way out.

But instead of obeying, as all subjects are obliged to do when the Emperor of the Romans commands, Ioannakis, hubris filling his spirit, shouted out to everyone who would listen: "This is a cheat! Do you see how he cheats us?" His vain, insane followers bellowed like nonsense.

Rage ripped through me. I pointed first to the carpenters, then to the excubitores- yet more pointing fingers on that day. "Seize these men!" I told my guards. "Cast them into prison until we can properly decide their fate."

Then Ioannakis and his henchmen did make for the door, but more excubitores stood there and prevented their leaving. The guardsmen who had been stationed to either side of the throne advanced on them, trapping them between two groups of soldiers. After a little scuffling, the arrogant, insolent, mannerless wretches were seized and taken away. Calm having been restored to the throne room, the rest of the day's audiences proceeded smoothly.